The Spymistress (22 page)

He laughed abruptly and set down his teacup. “Miss Van Lew, I’m trying to stay
out
of prison.”

“We need a man on the inside,” Lizzie explained. “As clerk, you would be privy to all manner of valuable secrets, which you could pass on to me. You can tell me what the prisoners need and help me get necessities to them. You could smuggle in money so they can bribe the guards for better treatment. I’m sure you know they’re beaten if they cannot pay.”

Mr. Ross nodded, pained. “I’ve heard the rumors. If...I suppose if I were made clerk there, I could put a stop to it, or at least try—”

“No, you could not,” Lizzie interrupted. “You must seem as indifferent to the prisoners’ suffering as every other guard or you’ll raise their suspicions.”

He winced. “So I must work at the prison, and observe the guards’ cruelty, and witness the prisoners’ suffering, and keep silent and ignore those I most want to help.”

Lizzie nodded.

He inhaled deeply, set his jaw, and gazed out the window in silence, brooding. Lizzie and her mother exchanged an anxious look, but just when Lizzie could not bear the tense silence a moment longer, he said, “I’ll apply for the transfer. I’ll invent some excuse about how it’s always been my ambition to become a warden, and this job at Libby Prison would be—I don’t know. A promising first step. I’ll think of something.”

“Be sure to figure out your story before you approach Captain Godwin,” Lizzie cautioned. Mr. Ross managed a wry smile and assured her he would.

Very soon, Lizzie hoped, she would have an important contact well placed within the prison. Until General Winder relented and permitted civilian volunteers to visit the prisoners, Erastus Ross would be her eyes and ears.

Lizzie’s stubborn hopes also allowed her to believe until the very last hour that the condemned spy Timothy Webster would somehow escape execution.

At the end of April, as reports of Union advances upon New Orleans began trickling into the capital, Mr. Webster waited out his last days in Castle Godwin—and Lizzie waited, increasingly anxious, for the announcement that his sentence had been commuted.

On the appointed day, Lizzie rose before dawn, forced herself to choke down some tea and toast, and waited for Peter to return with the early editions. Every paper noted that the gibbet had been erected at Camp Lee, and that Captain Alexander was expected to escort the condemned man there shortly after dawn.

Lizzie was torn. If Mr. Webster was to die, she ought to bear witness to his final moments, to pray for him, to let him know he was not alone. However, they had never met, so he would receive no comfort from the presence of a friend but would assume she was just another voyeur. She also did not know, despite the grim scenes she had grown accustomed to within the prisons, whether she could bear the ghastly spectacle of a hanging.

“I’ll go,” Peter said, after she had paced and wrung her hands and pondered her options until time had almost run out. “You shouldn’t. People will take notice of a lady like you, but I’ll be just another colored man in the crowd.”

With a pang of relief and pain, Lizzie gratefully agreed, and Peter set out.

When he returned, hours later, she knew from his expression that Mr. Webster was no more.

From what Peter was able to learn, at a quarter past five o’clock, Captain Alexander had come to Mr. Webster’s cell and ordered him to prepare himself. Mr. Webster asked for more time but was refused, so he bade farewell to his wife, who had been permitted to spend his final hours with him. Then the captain took the condemned man by carriage from Castle Godwin to Camp Lee, but no crowds lined the roads, as if everyone had assumed this execution too would be halted at the last minute. They stopped along the way to pick up a minister, whom Mr. Webster asked to read the Psalm of David, invoking vengeance on his enemies. When the minister indignantly rejected his choice, Mr. Webster angrily rebuffed him, so the offended minister refused to offer him any comfort whatsoever.

When he arrived at Camp Lee, Mr. Webster might yet have entertained hopes that he would not be put to death, thinking, perhaps, that it was all a sham meant to intimidate him into betraying his country’s secrets. But when he was taken from a holding pen and beheld the gallows, and the gathered soldiers, and about two hundred civilians who had taken to trees and rooftops to obtain a better view of his death, the truth dealt him a staggering blow. He began to shake, and asked for a chaplain, and pleaded to be shot like a soldier instead of hanged like a common criminal. He was granted the chaplain—a different man than had accompanied him in the carriage—but was refused the bullet.

Captain Alexander led Mr. Webster to the foot of the gallows, but he climbed the stairs alone, slowly, calmly, and erect, clad in a black suit and silk hat. As he stood on the platform, his jailers bound his hands and legs, the minister spoke a solemn prayer, a black hood was drawn over his head, the noose slipped around his neck, the trapdoor sprung—and Mr. Webster plummeted straight through the platform, hitting the bare earth below with a sickening thud.

The hangman’s knot had come undone. Stunned from the fall, bound hand and foot, Mr. Webster lay limp and motionless before the gathered throng. Quickly, Captain Alexander ordered his men to lift him up and carried him back up to the scaffold.

“I suffer a double death,” Mr. Webster was heard to say as his jailers hastened to adjust the trap and again placed him upon it. The noose was again slipped around his neck, this time so tight as to be excruciatingly painful. “You will choke me to death this time,” Mr. Webster rebuked them hoarsely, his voice muffled by the rope and the enveloping hood.

A moment later, the trap was sprung a second time, and within a minute, Mr. Webster was dead.

Blinded by tears, Lizzie groped for a chair and sat heavily as Peter reached the end of his grisly tale. “We must do something for his poor widow,” she said.

“Surely she will be released now,” said Mother, pale and shaken. “Surely, now that they have killed her husband, they will allow her to return to the North.”

“We shall take her in until they do,” said Lizzie decisively. “We will persuade them to parole her into our care. If they can parole an outspoken Unionist like Mr. Botts, they can certainly free a grieving widow whose only crime was to faithfully attend her husband.”

Mother agreed, but she begged Lizzie not to visit the prison alone out of a superstitious fear that she would not be allowed out again. Lizzie soon enlisted Eliza as her companion, and together they ventured to Lumpkin’s Alley and Castle Godwin, where Captain Alexander had already returned from Camp Lee. He looked a perfect villain, Lizzie thought as they were introduced, large, dark-haired, and thick-bearded, with a belligerent set to his jaw. As a lieutenant in the Confederate army, he had been captured on the Eastern Shore and imprisoned in Baltimore for three weeks, but while awaiting execution he had escaped by leaping from the fort, badly injuring his ankle. As his injury prevented him from returning to the battlefield, he had been assigned to prison duty, and—both strangely and sadly, Lizzie thought—his brief experience as a prisoner of war had rendered him less rather than more empathetic to the captives under his control.

Something about his manner made Lizzie instinctively adopt a respectful, deferential tone when she asked him to release Mrs. Webster into her care. “She is a poor, agonized widow, and powerless to harm anyone,” Lizzie implored. “Let her remain with us until she can be transported to the North.”

“No,” Captain Alexander flatly replied. “She’s going to be sent off soon enough, and until then she can enjoy the finest hospitality a spy deserves.”

“She is no spy,” protested Lizzie. “Her only crime, if such it can be called, was to be a dutiful and obedient wife. Please don’t punish her for her husband’s deeds.”

The captain barked out a laugh. “Even if I were inclined to release her, which I am not, I would never let her stay with you.” He fixed Lizzie with a steely gaze. “You introduced yourself simply as Miss Van Lew. Are you not Miss Elizabeth Van Lew of Church Hill?”

Her stomach turned queasily. “Yes, I am. As the only Miss Van Lew in Richmond, I saw no need to elaborate.”

An insolent smile crept over his face. “It may interest you to know that you have already been reported several times.”

Lizzie’s heart thudded, but before she could speak, Eliza said, “What an outrage! Reported for what?”

His gazed drifted laconically to Eliza. “For improper attention to the Union prisoners.”

“Nonsense! Anyone who would spout such ridiculous accusations is either ignorant or lying. Did those same informants mention that Miss Van Lew welcomed Captain Gibbs and his family into her own home for nearly two months when they had nowhere else to go? Did they describe the many entertainments she has hosted for the Richmond Howitzers and other regiments? Why, just last week she hosted a dinner for a whole contingent of Texas cavalry officers commanded by Colonel Trinidad Martinez. They have not yet left Richmond, I believe. You can ask the colonel what he thinks of these spurious reports about the Van Lew family.”

“I can ask him and I will,” Captain Alexander said, a lazy threat in his voice. “Your eagerness to defend your friend is commendable, but don’t get carried away.”

Eliza pressed her lips together indignantly and bowed her head. Lizzie suddenly, desperately, wanted to get away. She murmured pardons and farewells, took Eliza by the elbow, and steered her back out to the street, jumping when the heavy doors clanged shut behind them.

“I don’t know what came over me,” said Eliza faintly as they hurried off toward Church Hill. “Thinking of that poor widow, and the threats against you—”

“You did well. I just stood there dumbfounded, too frightened to speak.” Lizzie quickened her pace, eager to put the prison behind her. “I wouldn’t have thrown that dinner party for just anyone. Colonel Martinez is a longtime friend of the family, the son of a prosperous and influential rancher. We don’t agree on politics, obviously, but he is otherwise an intelligent man of sound judgment and integrity. He will have nothing but sincere praise for my family to offer if Captain Alexander does question him.”

“Perhaps you should host another party for the Richmond Howitzers soon,” Eliza said, anxious.

“Yes, I shall, the very day they next return to the city.” People’s memories were short except when it came to scandal, and Lizzie would be wise to bring out the façade of Confederate loyalty for a good polish more often. “In the meantime, I’ll see if Captain Alexander wants to board with us as Captain Gibbs once did.”

“Lizzie,” Eliza gasped, halting abruptly. “You cannot be serious!”

Lizzie laughed, a trace of hysteria in her voice. “Evidently I can’t. Eliza, forgive me. That was my poor attempt at a joke.”

“Very poor,” Eliza spluttered, shaking her head as she resumed walking. “Very poor, and not at all funny, because that’s exactly the sort of dangerous, foolhardy thing you would do, if you did not have wiser, more prudent friends to advise you against it.”

“If only I listened to you more often,” said Lizzie ruefully, slipping her arm through Eliza’s.

“Yes, if only you did.”

“You must admit, though, taking in Captain Alexander as a boarder would convince even my most suspicious neighbors that I have nothing to hide.”

“Yes,” Eliza grumbled reluctantly. “It probably would. But promise me you won’t do it. My nerves are frazzled and frayed enough without bringing him to the neighborhood.”

Lizzie fervently vowed that she would not. It would be an easy promise to keep. The very thought of seeing Captain Alexander again repulsed her, and her heart sank as she realized she dared not approach him a second time about paroling Mrs. Webster. She only hoped he was telling the truth when he said that the grieving widow would be returned to the North soon, for Lizzie was powerless to help her.

Chapter Twelve

APRIL–JUNE 1862

I
t was curious, Lizzie thought, how the most exciting news of the war always seemed to come to Richmond on a Sunday.

It was the last Sunday in April when word came that Union gunboats steaming upriver from the Gulf of Mexico had captured New Orleans, the largest city in the South and the gateway to the mighty Mississippi. It was a tremendous blow to the Confederacy, the worst loss the South had yet suffered.

As Union general Benjamin Butler invaded New Orleans a thousand miles to the south, the people of Richmond were distracted by a much closer threat. General George McClellan had moved his troops from the outskirts of Washington City down the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay to Fort Monroe, and from there north along the Peninsula toward Richmond. Now, about sixty miles to the southeast, he assembled his massive army at Yorktown, where, six days after the fall of New Orleans, General Johnston withdrew and pulled his troops back toward the Confederate capital, abandoning Yorktown, Norfolk, and the Lower Peninsula—and leaving the entryway to the James River vulnerable. On May 6, Union troops took Williamsburg, and three days later, the rebels were forced to evacuate their naval base at Norfolk.

The next day, John arrived at the Church Hill mansion just as Lizzie and her mother were sitting down to lunch. Delighted by the unexpected visit, they cajoled him into joining them, but even as he sat down, it was evident that he had brought urgent news.

“Last night, Mary and I attended a reception at the Executive Mansion,” he began, accepting a cup of coffee from Caroline with a nod of thanks.

“Again?” Lizzie felt a sharp sting of jealousy. “You spend more time with the Jefferson Davis family than with us anymore.”

John’s wry look told Lizzie that he did not relish those social engagements, as she ought to know. “Mary’s friendship with Mrs. Chesnut ensures that we’re invited to far more gatherings than I wish to attend. Yesterday evening I couldn’t come up with an excuse good enough to satisfy my wife, so attend we did. At one point Mr. Davis was called away by a messenger, and when he returned, his expression was grave.”