The Spymistress (23 page)

“Did he share the bad news with the party?” asked Mother.

“No, but I managed to be nearby when he took his wife aside and told her.”

“What did he say?” Lizzie prompted, impatient, wishing she too could befriend Mrs. Chesnut and be included on the Davises’ guest lists.

“Union gunboats are heading up the James.”

Mother gasped, and Lizzie clasped her hands to her heart. “Praise God,” she exclaimed. “When are they expected to reach Richmond?”

“That, I don’t know. Mr. Davis told his wife that he hoped the gun batteries along the riverbank and the torpedoes and vessels they sank in the channel would prevent the Union boats from coming too close, but just in case, he commanded her to take their children and valuables and flee the city.”

“The president’s family, evacuating the capital,” Lizzie said in wonder. “Our deliverance is at hand.”

“Unless this proves to be another ‘Pawnee Sunday,’” cautioned Mother, but her eyes shone with hope.

“Mr. Davis apparently doesn’t think it is,” said John. “This morning, Mrs. Davis and the children were seen boarding the train to Raleigh.”

Many other citizens soon followed their example. The Confederate Congress had already decamped from the capital—abruptly, and immediately after voting themselves a pay raise—citing vague fears of potential accidents on the railroad. In their absence, their clerks hurriedly stacked packing cases full of essential documents outside government offices, preparing them for shipment to Danville or Columbia. Businessmen boarded up their windows and locked their doors. Many residents fled into the countryside, fearing that if Richmond were taken by the Yankees, they would be subjected to the same harsh treatment General Butler had inflicted upon the defiant citizens of New Orleans. Houses were deserted, while every wagon and canal boat heading west or south was packed full of frightened people and their suitcases and trunks. At the same time, streams of rural dwellers flooded Richmond from the Peninsula ahead of General McClellan’s advancing army, believing they would be safe if only they could reach the city.

General Robert E. Lee, who had been summoned back to Richmond to serve as Mr. Davis’s military adviser a few weeks before, reportedly vowed that Richmond would never be surrendered, but others planned for it nonetheless. Some of the richest men in town declared that they would set fire to their homes rather than allow them to be desecrated by the Yankees, while others made the same promise regarding the Capitol. The
Dispatch
urged that Mr. Houdon’s magnificent statue of George Washington be removed from the “rickety old State House” for safekeeping, and rumors circulated that the president’s cabinet had issued orders for all tobacco warehouses to be burned rather than allow such a valuable resource to fall into enemy hands.

Lizzie observed the frantic activity with increasing alarm, wondering if her family should move to the farm until the invasion was over, though it was impossible to know whether they would be any safer on the outskirts of the city, and she was reluctant to abandon their home to the vengeful citizens of Richmond. Nor did Lizzie want to leave the Union prisoners, now that Erastus Ross had been appointed clerk of Libby prison and she could do more good there. Though she was still forbidden to enter, Lieutenant Ross had persuaded the more lenient guards to carry her gifts of food and books to the prisoners on her behalf, and news had a way of finding its way out when her baskets were returned to her. From the prison’s upper floors, the inmates had an excellent view of the bridges over the James connecting Richmond and Manchester, and they took careful note of train movements and any other activity that could be of interest in Washington.

Lizzie had also forged a bond with a particularly useful inmate—Robert Ford, a Northern free man of color who had been employed by the quartermasters’ department of the Union Army as a teamster. Upon his capture at the end of May, he was sent to Libby and assigned to work as a hostler, tending the horses of the prison keeper and second in command, Richard Turner. Since he was often outside, Mr. Ford was able to pass messages between Lizzie and the inmates, whom she could only glimpse at a distance through the windows. Lizzie arranged with Mr. Ford to quietly point her out to the prisoners, tell them where she lived, and instruct them to seek sanctuary at her home if they should ever find occasion to escape. After Mary Jane Bowser and the Roane brothers vouched for her integrity, other colored workers employed in the prison also agreed to help, at no small risk to themselves. Nearly every Sunday, Lizzie would stroll down from Church Hill at a leisurely pace and pass along the street in front of Libby Prison, never glancing toward it for fear that a look in that direction might betray her keen interest in its inhabitants. At that very moment, a colored worker might set down his mop, look over his shoulder to be sure no guards were near, and point out the window, whispering, “That is Miss Van Lew. She will be a friend to you if you can escape.”

If any fugitives did make their way to Church Hill, Lizzie was determined to have a safe hiding place ready for them. She had William and Nelson cut a hole in an attic wall and build a small chamber in the eaves above the front portico, which she furnished with bedding, blankets, a lamp, and other small comforts. It was not luxurious by any means, but it was tidy and snug, and since the panel over the entrance could be completely concealed by a large box, it was all but undetectable unless one knew precisely where to look. It would serve well as a fugitive’s temporary quarters until he could be smuggled from the city to the farm and onto Union lines.

The days passed, and tensions grew, and as General McClellan’s army pushed forward and Johnston’s fell back, all of Richmond seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the colossal battle that would surely determine the outcome of the war. Mr. Davis rode out into the field daily to observe the defenses, and some wags remarked that his stony expression suggested that he was annoyed with General Johnston and was considering taking command of the army himself. Women like those of Mary’s sewing circle, who had been stitching sandbags for fortifications, switched to rolling bandages. Governor Letcher and Mayor Mayo recruited boys sixteen to eighteen and men over forty-five to form a Home Guard, and the sixty-six-year-old mayor evoked cheers when he declared that if needed he would take up arms himself. Overnight, painted slogans appeared on the walls of shops and warehouses—“Now is the time to rally around Old Glory!” “Hail, Columbia!”—but proud, affronted Confederates scrubbed them away before noon.

In the Van Lew mansion, apprehension and fear and excitement built to such heights that Lizzie thought the pressure might shatter the windows and burst through the roof. She wished she possessed her mother’s inherent serenity rather than dull spirits and raw nerves. She needed to do something bold, something to restore her optimism, something to give her hope for liberation the way creating the secret chamber had given her hope that eventually prisoners would escape from Libby and use it—

And suddenly the answer came to her.

“Mother,” she said, slowly turning as the vision unfolded in her mind’s eye. “General McClellan is coming.”

“Yes, dear,” her mother replied. “That is what we all pray for.”

“Yes, we do, but Mother, I don’t mean I
hope
he is coming. I mean he
is
coming, and he will be here soon.”

Mother paused and rested her knitting in her lap. “You seem...very certain.”

“I
am
certain, but there’s a problem.” Lizzie spread her hands. “He has no place to stay.”

“Well...” Mother studied her curiously. “The Spotswood Hotel comes very highly recommended.”

“And it’s been packed full for nearly a year, not that we would dream of allowing such an illustrious personage to stay in a hotel when we can accommodate him far more comfortably here.” Lizzie clasped her hands together, beaming. “We must prepare a room for him.”

After a moment, a slow smile appeared on Mother’s soft, lined face. “Why, yes,” she declared. “That is the very ideal. How better to thank our liberator than to welcome him into our home.”

“After so many days eating camp food, and so many nights sleeping on the hard earth—or a cot, perhaps, he
is
a general—think what a pleasure it would be for him to enjoy Caroline’s cooking and a soft featherbed.”

“The very best we could offer would be no more than he deserves.”

“My thinking exactly.” Beaming, Lizzie crossed the room, took her mother’s hands, and pulled her to her feet, letting her knitting tumble to the floor. “We must start right away. He could be here any day.”

“Any hour,” Mother corrected, eyes shining.

And so they set about preparing a chamber for General McClellan, choosing a room with a beautiful view of the gardens to the rear and the James River below, a landscape sure to be of keen interest to him. They put up new wallpaper, the best they could find from the days before blockades prevented drapers and shopkeepers from replenishing their inventory with the latest fashions. Judy, Caroline, and the other servants helped from time to time, but although they never said so, the glances they exchanged suggested that they considered the project an impractical waste of time.

John showed no such restraint. “How will General McClellan even know to come to you?” he asked when Lizzie stopped by the hardware store for a jar of paste.

“When he enters the city, I’ll have Peter deliver an invitation.” She sighed at her brother’s dubious look. “Oh, John, indulge me. It’s my time to waste, if that’s what I’m doing, but I must believe that the general’s arrival is imminent if I am to endure the wait.”

John nodded and dropped the matter, and he did not discourage her again.

On the afternoon of May 31, Lizzie and her mother were on the piazza sewing pillowcases for the general’s bed when a distant dull roar shook the house and rattled the windows.

“Thunder?” asked Mother, glancing up at the overcast skies.

Another boom sounded, and Lizzie shook her head.

“Cannon,” called Nelson from the garden.

Lizzie and her mother exchanged a look, apprehensive and hopeful. “He’s coming,” Lizzie said determinedly, setting herself back to work. Before long, the wind carried the sharp, rapid cracking of musket fire to them. Distracted, Lizzie kept glancing up from sewing to gaze out upon the river, impatient for her first glimpse of Union gunboats, until she was picking out one stitch for every two she made.

“Oh, Lizzie,” said her mother, shaking her head and smiling, although the strain showed around her eyes. “You fidget as if your chair were made of hot iron. Why don’t you go see what’s happening, if you can?”

She needed no further inducement. Quickly she set aside the pillowcase and hurried upstairs to the rooftop, where she found William, Peter, and Caroline studying the southeastern horizon. Lizzie shaded her eyes with her hands, but all she could see was gun smoke drifting in the distance, and in between, the hills and rooftops of Richmond crowded with curious, anxious onlookers. When the rumble of artillery fire built to a crescendo, loud cheers rose from the crowds, and when the sounds diminished, their voices sank into an unintelligible murmur as they debated whether an important tactical advantage had been won.

“President Davis is out there,” Peter remarked, nodding toward the gun smoke clouds. “So they say.”

“What else do they say?” Lizzie queried.

“Rumors and more rumors,” scoffed Caroline. “It’s a waste of time to try to sort it out before it’s over.”

“You can only believe what you see with your own eyes and not what you hear,” said William. “That’s why we’re up here, watching and waiting.”

Lizzie stayed and watched with them a while longer, but when nothing about the scene changed—no Union gunboats suddenly appeared from around a bend in the river, no strong wind blew away the smoke clouds to reveal the Confederate army in hasty retreat—she returned to the back piazza, her mother, and her sewing.

General McClellan was coming, and his room must be ready.

That evening, a seemingly endless procession of ambulances, ox carts, and wagons brought the dead and wounded into Richmond. The hospitals filled and then overflowed. Hundreds of suffering soldiers—battered, bleeding, groaning in anguish, or silently slipping away—were carried to warehouses or into abandoned homes. Hundreds more were unloaded from wagons and train cars onto the sidewalks until it seemed that the entire city had become an open-air hospital. The women of Richmond rushed to their aid, offering food and comfort and whatever nursing skills they possessed. Young mill girls and seamstresses toiled alongside elegant society matrons, the war having made colleagues of women who otherwise never would have met. Lizzie’s mother went out once, to distribute bread with a group of ladies from Saint John’s, but otherwise she and Lizzie stayed home, redoubling their efforts to prepare the general’s room, which seemed ever more likely to welcome its honored occupant soon.

The fighting resumed in the morning about five miles outside Richmond, but by noon it was over, ending in a tactical draw—a vicious, bloody stalemate. Over the next few days, rumors coalesced into truth, and Lizzie learned that the intractable, thin-skinned General Johnston had been seriously wounded, and that President Davis had placed Robert E. Lee in command of his army. General Lee promptly renamed his forces the Army of Northern Virginia and set his men to work fortifying Richmond’s sparsely defended earthworks and gathering his brigades for a counterattack.

The Richmond papers praised General Lee’s appointment and declared the Battle of Seven Pines a glorious victory, but General McClellan’s army, some one hundred thousand troops strong, remained encamped on the outskirts of Richmond. From the rooftop Lizzie could easily see their observation balloons floating above the earth, and the deep booms of their heavy artillery reverberated throughout the city. If McClellan’s army advanced any further, the city would be in range of the big guns, and it would surely fall.