The Spymistress (46 page)

“We don’t want any trouble,” Lizzie called to them sharply. “Leave now and I’ll forget you were here.”

A chorus of boos and hisses greeted her words. “If Richmond falls, you’re going down with it,” a man in a rumpled, threadbare suit snarled, his face distorted by rage.

“You’re a goddamn abolitionist Yankee,” another shouted, balancing on crutches, his trouser cuffed at the knee where his right leg had been amputated.

“How dare you?” Lizzie exclaimed. “I’m a proud Virginian. I was born in this city. How many of you can say the same?”

“Light up the place, boys,” cried another, and a match flared, and a torch was kindled.

“Don’t be fools,” Lizzie snapped. “If my house burns, yours will follow. I know who you are,” she declared, thrusting a finger toward a man on the right. “Mr. McKinney, the shoemaker. And you, Mr. Fannin, you live above your grocery on Main Street.” Defiant, glaring, she leveled her gaze upon each man in turn. “You are all known to me. If I am what you think I am, do you really believe you could destroy my home and not suffer the consequences, with General Grant about to take the city? And if I am
not
what you say, may God strike you down for burning innocent women and children out of their home. Shame on you!”

The man with the torch halted, and a few of his companions exchanged wary glances.

“Leave now,” Lizzie ordered firmly. “Go home. Protect your families and your property. Leave the judgment of my actions to history and to God.”

After a long moment that crackled with tension, one by one, the men drifted away. When the last of them had disappeared into the traffic of frantic, frightened citizens hurrying to and fro, Lizzie’s knees weakened beneath her and she would have crumpled had not Louisa steadied her. “Thank you, all of you,” she breathed, forcing herself to stand.

“This is our home too, Miss Lizzie,” said William. “You’ve said so enough. No one’s burning us out, not after all we’ve suffered, not when we’ve almost reached the end.”

Had they? Lizzie wondered. They had struggled so long it was almost unfathomable that deliverance could finally be at hand. It was almost impossible to believe that there would ever come a time when they could lay down their burdens and rest.

While the men arranged to stand watch from the rooftops in shifts throughout the night, the women anxiously packed valuables and food, only what they could carry, and left them in bundles by the front door to snatch up quickly were they obliged to flee. Then Lizzie put her nieces to bed, heard their prayers while artillery rumbled in the distance, and kissed them good night. Mother and most of the servants went off to bed soon thereafter, including William, who planned to relieve Peter on the rooftop at two o’clock, but the bursting shells rending the night air and lighting up the darkness kept Lizzie and Louisa awake, pensive and watchful lest the vengeful men or an even worse threat return.

They were sitting in the library chatting wistfully about their plans after the war—Louisa dreamed of opening a dressmaker’s shop, while Lizzie longed to visit Anna and her family in Philadelphia, followed by a sojourn in Washington City—when not long after midnight, the front bell rang. Wondering why William had not raised the alarm, the women steeled themselves and hurried to the foyer. When Lizzie opened the door, she was shocked when three thin, filthy, shabbily clad men tumbled inside.

Dumbfounded, Lizzie recognized the tallest of the three. “Why, Mr. Lohmann,” she exclaimed.

“Miss Van Lew,” he greeted her, winded and weak but drawing himself up proudly. “Allow me to introduce my companions, Mr. John Hancock and Mr. William White, late of Castle Thunder.”

“Oh, my goodness. Come in, come in,” Lizzie urged as Louisa shut the door behind them. While Louisa raced off to the kitchen to find them something to eat, Lizzie led them to the back room she and her mother had prepared more than a year before in expectation of the mass breakout from Libby Prison. After seeing to their comfort and confirming with William at his lookout post that the men had not been followed, she attended them while they ate and explained how they had made their escape. As the government was evacuating, the authorities had rounded up the Union prisoners and marched them across Mayo’s Bridge to the southern shore, determined to keep them out of reach of the advancing Union army. In the chaos, some of the men had managed to slip away from their captors, and under the cover of darkness Mr. Lohmann had led his companions to Lizzie’s front door.

An hour later, just as the men had settled down to sleep, exhausted but well fed for the first time in months, a soft rapping came upon the front door—another fugitive from Castle Thunder, this time a woman of Isle of Wight County in West Virginia named Mary Pitt, who had been imprisoned for spying since late October. Lizzie sent Louisa on to bed and tended to the woman herself, who was emaciated and covered in bruises and wept silently from relief as Lizzie, angered and horrified by her condition, fed her and washed her face and hands and helped her into a clean nightgown and bed. She could not think of Mary Pitt without imagining the fate that she herself had perhaps only narrowly escaped.

Lizzie could not sleep from anger and worry and excitement, so she went to the library and hastily wrote an account of all that had transpired that day, but whether it was the beginning of a dispatch or an entry for her occasional journal, only time would reveal.

She must have dozed off in her chair, for hours later, she was startled awake by an enormous explosion that shook the house. The smell of smoke permeated the room.

It was not yet dawn. That much she understood through the thick fog of fatigue and fright muddling her thoughts as she pulled herself to her feet and stumbled into the hall. The odor of burning hung faintly in the air, but in the foyer she saw no smoke, and as her disorientation faded, she realized that the smell dissipated as she moved away from the open windows.

She heard footsteps behind her and whirled about. “William,” she gasped. “Is it fire?”

“Yes, Miss Lizzie,” he said, “but it’s not the house. It’s the city.”

“The Yankees have done this?”

“No, the rebels. Mr. Davis left by train at about eleven o’clock last night, but he gave orders to set fire to the railroad bridges to cut off pursuit, and to the warehouses full of cotton and tobacco so the Yankees couldn’t have them.” William shook his head, his expression drawn and apprehensive. “The wind from the south has been picking up, and the fire’s spreading.”

Lizzie gathered up her skirts and raced upstairs and out to the roof, where she discovered Annie and little Eliza staring at the churning black smoke and red flames in the distance below, Eliza with her mouth agape in stunned horror. “Girls,” Lizzie cried. “What are you doing up here alone? It’s dangerous.”

“I’m holding Sister’s hand,” Annie pointed out. “I wouldn’t let her fall.”

“Will the fire burn our house too?” Eliza asked plaintively.

“No,” came Lizzie’s firm, immediate reply, but then she looked again and was relieved to see that her instinctive reassurances appeared to be true. The wind seemed to be carrying the flames toward the Capitol, away from Church Hill. But it was a dreadful sight to behold nonetheless—black smoke billowing, tongues of fire devouring, ruins of once-proud structures crumbling. A huge explosion sent a fireball curling into the sky and shook the house; instinctively she gasped and clutched the girls to herself—the fire had engulfed an armory, setting off all the ordnance within. In the early morning light, the railroad bridges over the James were clearly visible as outlines of red flame against the black water below. Strangely, Mayo’s Bridge seemed undamaged, but as Lizzie strained her eyes to see, she thought she saw wagons and men on foot racing to Manchester on the opposite shore, and flickering lights at the terminus that could have been torches, ready to set it ablaze after the last fleeing rebel crossed.

Suddenly she realized that aside from the distant roar of the flames and the occasional explosion as heat and fire set off stored ammunition, all was silent. Richmond was burning, but the alarm had not been sounded. Why had the authorities not rung the tocsin?

Lizzie stood motionless and scarcely breathing, her gaze locked in horror upon the conflagration, which threatened to engulf the entire business district. Her heart ached for anyone in the path of the dreadful, hungry flames. She thought she glimpsed small figures darting about, but only a few seemed to be fighting the fire, while the others—looters, she realized with a chill. Law and order had apparently fled with the Confederate government.

“Annie, take your sister inside,” Lizzie instructed. “Hannah must wonder what’s become of you. She’s probably searching everywhere. Find her, then wash up, get dressed, and go down to breakfast—and don’t come up here again without an adult.”

“Yes, Aunt Lizzie,” Annie replied obediently, and with Lizzie’s help the girls climbed back into the house. Lizzie meant to follow immediately after, but she could not tear herself away from the nightmare scene unfolding in the distance below. Suddenly she heard a shout, and when she spun to face it, she spotted a man clad in a prison officer’s uniform sprinting for the Van Lew mansion as if death pursued him.

Lizzie knew at once who the frantic runner was. “Lieutenant Ross,” she breathed, and whirled about, and scrambled back in through the window. By the time she reached the foyer, William had let him in, and he stood with his back to the door bent over and gasping, his hands on his knees.

“Miss Van Lew,” he said in a strangled voice. “I beg you to hide me. The prisoners—they’re free, and they all want my head. They don’t understand.” He coughed, fighting for breath. “I’m a dead man.”

“No, indeed you’re not,” she vowed, hurrying to his side. “You’re safe with us. You’ll live to hear their thanks once they know all you’ve done.”

His fear of reprisals was so great that she led him upstairs to the secret attic chamber rather than to the back room, where the other men still lay abed. There he told her what he knew of the chaos outside. The explosion that had woken her before daybreak was the CSS
Virginia
, the Confederate flagship, destroyed along with the rest of the ironclads while their crews escaped upstream in wooden gunboats. The fire had begun at dawn when the provost marshal, reluctantly obeying orders, set the torch to Shockoe and Van Gronin’s warehouses, and then to the railroad bridges. No one had thought that the wind might rise, or that the liquor the Confederate government had ordered dumped into the gutters would fuel the flames. The looting had gone on all night, ignited when the officials opened the commissary warehouses rather than leave the provisions to the Yankees. When the starving citizens pushed their way in and discovered how much flour and bacon had been locked away, their fury erupted, and after plundering the commissary the crowd turned upon private shops, snatching up shoes, clothes, hats, candy, whatever they could lay hands upon.

Lieutenant Ross asked for paper, pen, and ink so he could write letters to his family, and after fetching them for him, Lizzie returned downstairs to find her nieces chatting happily with Mr. Lohmann and his companions in the back room. Miss Pitt had walked thirty-two miles the previous day, first in the forced march from Castle Thunder and then as she followed a circuitous route to her sanctuary, so Lizzie did not wake her for breakfast but set a tray outside her chamber door instead. The rest of the household she called to the table, but they had just sat down when they heard a familiar tune piping merrily outside.

“‘Yankee Doodle,’” Annie cried, bounding out of her chair and racing to the window. She glanced outside but, dissatisfied with the view, she ran from the room, little Eliza on her heels. Lizzie and her mother rose to follow them outside, and when they caught up with the girls at the bottom of the garden, in the distance below they saw soldiers in Union blue marching up Main Street.

Overjoyed, they cried out and embraced one another, and tears of happiness filled Lizzie’s eyes, and the children danced and twirled and cheered. Then Lizzie realized that the streets of Church Hill were empty, and that the smell of smoke hung thickly in the air from fires burning out of control not far away, and that any neighbors observing them from their windows were likely seething with anger and hatred. Richmond had fallen, but the war was not over.

“Let’s go inside,” she said, taking Mother’s arm and herding the girls back to the piazza.

They returned to the dining room to share the good news with their guests. Lizzie ate quickly, finishing well before the others, and then she begged their pardon and excused herself. Her work was not yet finished.

The presence of Union soldiers in the city streets reassured her that it was safe to go out, probably, so she tied on a bonnet, snatched up a basket, and set off on foot toward the War Department. Most Confederate offices had packed up their important files before the evacuation, but in their haste, they couldn’t have taken everything of value. Lizzie was determined to gather whatever useful information or evidence she could from what had been left behind before fire or frantic Confederate clerks destroyed the documents.

Lizzie strode as quickly as she could, a handkerchief to her nose and mouth to ward off the thick, drifting smoke. The streets were quiet and empty compared to the frantic, frightened mayhem of the night before, but as she drew closer to the Capitol, she saw more riders in Union blue. She wanted to clap her hands and cheer, and run to them and thank them and offer them bouquets of daffodils from her garden, but she had no time.

Then she came upon Capitol Square and stopped short in amazement: Union soldiers were marching on Governor Street, cheered on by throngs of joyful, cheering, elated civilians, most of them people of color, who waved handkerchiefs and sang and offered the soldiers fruit and flowers as they passed, celebrating as if the day of Jubilee had come. Lizzie nearly sobbed with relief and happiness when she looked up and beheld the Stars and Stripes flying in the smoky air above the Capitol once more. As she made her way through the crowded streets and sidewalks, she observed Union officers organizing every able-bodied man regardless of color to go and fight the fire. Then, through a break in the milling crowd, Lizzie spotted hundreds of people—men, women, and children, rich and poor—huddled on the fresh spring grass of the Capitol Square, some with nothing but the clothes on their backs, others with hastily packed bundles on the ground beside them, their soot-streaked faces turned dully toward the marching Yankees or deliberately turned away. With a pang of sympathy, Lizzie hurried on.