The Spymistress (32 page)

Lizzie fervently agreed with that brave, lone congressman, but the opinion of the majority carried greater influence, and so General Winder, Captain Alexander, and Detective Caphart retained their positions without receiving so much as a word of censure. They all carried on as before, and their cruelty persisted unabated.

Not long after Captain Alexander was exonerated, Lizzie was on the front portico playing dolls with her nieces when a rumble of thunder announced an approaching storm. “Come along inside, girls,” she said as the rain began to pelt the floor, first a few fat, loud drops, and then a torrent, stirring up a smell of dust and iron. Shrieking and giggling, the girls gathered up their toys, but just as Lizzie was ushering them inside, she heard a sudden, quick splashing sound from behind her and instinctively turned to look.

A young man holding his jacket over his head was dashing up the walk toward her. “Excuse me,” he called, breathless. “May I beg the shelter of your portico until the rain stops?”

“Of course,” said Lizzie graciously, with a graceful turn of the wrist to invite him to ascend. Putting on a pleasant expression, Lizzie kept her eyes on him and bent low to murmur into Annie’s ear. “Take Eliza and find Hannah, will you?”

When Annie nodded and took her little sister’s hand, Lizzie ushered them inside, closed the door, and turned to face her visitor, who had hurried up the steps and stood a few paces away shaking the rainwater from his coat and hat. “Are you Miss Van Lew?”

Lizzie hid her surprise. “I am, sir.” As far as she could recall, she had never seen the young man before, and his accent had more of South Carolina than Virginia in it. He looked to be in his midtwenties, with a thick shock of sandy-brown hair, brown eyes, and a stubble of a beard. His clothes fit him as poorly as if he had accidentally grabbed his elder brother’s in the predawn darkness of a shared room, but his boots looked almost new.

“I have heard you are much admired in Richmond.”

Lizzie laughed. “Well, then, sir, you are either trying to flatter me or you have very poor hearing.”

“Or we have mutual friends,” he suggested, grinning. “For surely your friends have nothing but good to speak of you.”

Lizzie regarded him for a moment, not quite sure what to make of him. “Actually, I don’t think my friends are in the habit of discussing me with strangers.”

“Of course not, Ma’am,” he said, removing his hat and looking abashed. “I meant no insult. In fact, I have something to tell you which I think will interest you—and the government also.”

Lizzie was tempted to ask him which government he meant, but instead she smiled. “I can’t imagine what you would have to say on that subject to interest me, but I confess you’ve piqued my curiosity. Would you care to come in for a cup of tea until the storm passes?”

He promptly accepted, and when Lizzie called for tea and escorted the visitor to the parlor to introduce him to her mother, he gave his name as Billy Dockery and said he was employed as a courier.

“Not soldiering?” inquired Mother politely.

“No, Ma’am, that’s not for me.” He grinned again; it seemed his natural expression. “I’m no coward, I just don’t like being told what to do. I like to go my own way at my own pace.”

“Then it would seem you’ve found an occupation well suited to your temperament,” Lizzie remarked.

“That’s mostly true, but even a courier has to go where his clients bid him.”

Caroline came in with the tea, and Billy looked on eagerly as she set out little sandwiches and sliced peaches.

“I imagine your occupation is particularly dangerous in wartime,” said Mother, looking on as their guest loaded his plate.

“Dangerous, but all the more profitable for it.” He devoured a sandwich in two bites. “The people I meet and the things I hear—why, you wouldn’t believe half of it.”

“Probably not,” said Lizzie pleasantly, sipping her tea.

“I come to Richmond often, but I don’t stay long enough to justify the expense of taking a room.” Billy looked around, and suddenly his eyes widened as if inspiration had struck. “Say, I had a thought. I could board here with you.”

Lizzie and her mother exchanged a look. “I’m sorry, but we aren’t taking on boarders at present,” said Mother.

“Why not?” he protested. “You got enough room, as anyone can see. There’s not a closet in a boardinghouse to be found anywhere in the city.”

“Nor here either, I’m afraid,” said Mother regretfully.

He looked from one to the other, perplexed. “But I know you’ve taken boarders before.”

“Yes, but not anymore,” said Lizzie. “My nieces are living with us now, and they’re terribly noisy, especially at night and in the very early morning. You would get no sleep at all.”

For a moment Billy Dockery said nothing, allowing the silence to refute her claim. “I’ll sleep anywhere,” he eventually said. “Here, on the sofa. In the library. On the floor.”

“Dear me, you are most insistent,” said Mother with a little laugh. “I cannot tell you how much it grieves me that we’re unable to accommodate you. Do take another sandwich.”

Scowling, he obeyed, and Lizzie turned the conversation to the scarcity of food in the capital and how fortunate they were to have early peaches and how exciting and dangerous a courier’s life must be. Grumpily at first, but soon with more enthusiasm, he told them enough of his adventures for Lizzie to conclude that he probably truly was a courier, or had been, but for whom, and why he was so determined to board with strangers he had only just met, she could not say.

They were as polite and charming as could be for nearly an hour, but when they finally managed to send him on his way, Lizzie felt as if she had been soaked in hot water and put through the mangle. Mother looked equally wrung out and limp. “What on earth was the meaning of all that?” she asked, smoothing back tendrils of silver-gray hair that had escaped from her bun. “I don’t fault him for wanting to live here, but what an odd way to go about finding lodgings.”

“Perhaps we should warn the Carringtons. He may be going from house to house until he strikes gold.” Lizzie inhaled deeply and pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. “He knew my name. He said he had something to tell me that would be of interest to the government.”

Mother’s eyebrows rose. “Which government?”

“We’ll never know.” Lizzie went to the front window and drew back the curtain, but when she peered outside, she saw only puddles and rain and a couple hurrying down the sidewalk beneath a shared umbrella. “He’s gone, and I don’t think we’ll ever see him again.”

She was wrong.

The next week, while she and Eliza were marketing for the prisoners at Libby, a regiment of South Carolina volunteers marched by, new recruits from the look of their uniforms. As they approached, Lizzie glanced up from a sparse bin of turnips and spotted Billy Dockery marching among them, clad in the garb of a private.

He did not glance her way and probably never knew she was there, but she knew him, and she stood and watched, seized by a chill so intense she almost dropped her basket, until the regiment marched out of sight.

Spring and summer brought more fighting, more carnage, more prisoners, and more grief to Richmond.

In early May, Union troops again ventured perilously close to Richmond, wreaking havoc in the suburbs, cutting telegraph lines, capturing horses and mules, burning warehouses full of Confederate supplies, and destroying railroad bridges, engines, boxcars, and miles of track. Richmond—and indeed, the entire Confederacy—plunged into mourning when the beloved General Stonewall Jackson, the hero of Manassas, died from injuries received by friendly fire at the Battle of Chancellorsville. When his body was brought back to the capital, bells tolled solemnly for hours in expectation of his arrival at the depot, where thousands had gathered to follow the hearse to Governor Letcher’s mansion. The next morning, a solemn and ceremonious funeral procession escorted his coffin to the Capitol, where twenty thousand mourners paid their respects as he lay in state in the House chamber. Although Lizzie would not speak ill of the dead, she could not bring herself to truly grieve for General Jackson, for he had chosen to betray his country and had brought untold grief to countless Northern families. She knew she was nearly alone in this. The rest of Richmond seemed to suffer his death with a sharper pain and greater sense of loss than any other calamity that had yet befallen them in that war.

Union prisoners and Confederate wounded kept coming to Richmond, an unrelenting stream that ebbed and flowed but never ceased entirely as skirmishes broke out and great battles were waged. Chancellorsville was followed by Port Gibson, and then by a second battle at Fredericksburg, and then Salem Church, and then more engagements in Mississippi that culminated in the Sieges of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and then more fighting in Virginia at Brandy Station and Winchester.

As the Union stranglehold tightened around Vicksburg more than nine hundred miles to the southwest, threatening to wrest control of the Mississippi River from Confederate grasp, General Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia once more into Pennsylvania, even as rumors came that Union troops were approaching Richmond from the Peninsula. The public knew only that General Lee was on the move, but while dusting Mr. Davis’s study, Mary Jane had fortuitously glimpsed documents outlining their plans. The general intended to take his troops north not only to feed his men and horses on the bounty of fresh territory, but also to win a decisive victory on Union soil, ideally the capture of an important city. General Lee and Mr. Davis agreed that a bold, decisive strike might finally impress France and England enough that they would intervene in the war on the side of the Confederacy—and perhaps frighten Washington into suing for peace.

At the end of June, Governor Letcher summoned all men liable for duty in the militia and anyone else capable of volunteering in other capacities to organize for the defense of the capital. The next day, as excitement and alarm swept through the city, Mayor Mayo issued broadsides warning that the enemy was approaching and calling the people to arms. “Remember New Orleans!” he exhorted. “Richmond is now in your hands. Let it not fall under the rule of another Butler.”

Alarm bells rang out on July 2, and as the militia scrambled to respond, Lizzie and her mother distracted themselves from worry by refreshing the room they had once prepared for General McClellan. He no longer led the Army of the Potomac, and they were not certain whether General Hooker was in charge or if, as rumors claimed, he had been replaced by General Meade, but whoever liberated them, he would find comfortable accommodations awaiting him.

A few days later, a frenzy of fear swept over Richmond as Yankee cavalry destroyed the train depot at Ashland, not twenty miles to the north. Farther afield, no one, not even President Davis, knew exactly what had happened or might still be happening in Pennsylvania and Mississippi. Rumors reached the capital that General Lee had taken Harrisburg, but from the South trickled reports that Vicksburg had fallen, so no one knew whether to rejoice or to lament. On July 7, the Richmond
Sentinel
reported that General Lee had routed the Union army at Gettysburg and had taken forty thousand prisoners, while the
Dispatch
exulted with the news that Generals Johnston and Pemberton had outmaneuvered General Grant at Vicksburg. Later that same afternoon, Mary Jane discovered the truth in Secretary of War Seddon’s official report to President Davis: Union general Ulysses S. Grant had taken Vicksburg. Lizzie shared the joyful news with Mr. Ford, who shared it with the Union prisoners in Libby, who broke into cheers and a rousing chorus of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and kept their furious guards awake past midnight singing “John Brown’s Body.”

Reeling from the terrible loss of Vicksburg, all of Richmond waited, anxious but hopeful, for a reliable account of General Lee’s invasion of the North. On July 9 the news finally came: the Army of Northern Virginia had been repulsed from Gettysburg with heavy losses and was retreating to Virginia.

Soon thereafter, Mary Jane surreptitiously read letters the general and the president exchanged in the aftermath of the demoralizing defeat. General Lee accepted full responsibility for the outcome of the battle, as he had told his men as they dragged themselves back from Union lines. He asked Davis to replace him with someone younger and stronger who still possessed the confidence of the people. Mr. Davis would have none of this, and immediately wrote back, “To ask me to substitute you by some one in my judgment more fit to command, or who would possess more of the confidence of the army, or of the reflecting men of the country, is to demand an impossibility.”

And so General Lee retained his command—which greatly disappointed Lizzie, who had hoped Mr. Davis would hasten a Union victory by appointing a far less capable man.

The war raged on as the blood-soaked summer crested and began its slow, gradual descent into autumn. Every prison in Richmond was packed full of more Union soldiers than it could possibly hold, and the situation worsened as exchanges ground to a halt over procedural disputes, especially the Confederacy’s refusal to treat colored Union soldiers as prisoners of war rather than recaptured slaves. As bad as conditions were in Libby Prison, they were far worse on Belle Isle, where on average fifty men perished every day, and the rest languished in their fragile tents or on the sandy plain, cadaverous, hollow-eyed, and despairing. Lizzie trembled from outrage when she learned that boxes of food and clothing that the federal government, the United States Sanitary Commission, and Northern civilians had sent for their relief had been confiscated by their jailers. Prison officers, surgeons, and stewards sipped the rich coffee and dined upon the good beef Union commissaries sent to Richmond, while the prisoners for whom the provisions were intended gnawed on dry gristle and bone and drank ersatz coffee made from chicory and toasted okra seeds. The Confederates attributed the disturbing death toll on Belle Isle to dysentery, but it was a poorly kept secret that exposure and starvation were equally to blame.