The Ironclad Alibi

by Michael Kilian

  To the anger and consternation of many, Harry pushed his way past them into the building, then through more of them within as he sought the stairs. General Lee’s anteroom was filled as well. Harry went directly to the young major serving as aide de camp.

  “I won’t be bothering the general,” Harry began, but was cut short by the young officer.

  “Indeed you won’t,” said the major. “He has not yet arrived, and, when he does, he has many with more vital matters than yours awaiting him.”

  He gestured to the full chairs behind Harry.

  Harry declined to look. “I am at a point of impasse. The authorities at Libby refuse to let me speak to my slave, and I cannot resolve this issue without doing so.”

  “They put your Negro in Libby?”

  “Yes, sir. It was General Winder’s doing.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  “Perhaps. What will be more unfortunate is that I may be compelled to go to the Richmond Whig or some other paper to relate the full details of this sorry episode and make the public aware of the injustice being done to me.”

  The major flushed a little. “I am sure that General Lee would view that as most regrettable—as would President Davis. But if you think the general would be persuaded to assent to your demand or change his views in any way because of your threat, you are seriously misinformed as to his character.”

  The words stung.

  “You are right,” said Harry, more gently. “I regret the rashness of my remarks. But they are an indication of my desperation. I needn’t bother the general. All I need is a simple scrap of paper authorizing me to talk to the man, which is only fair. He belongs to me.”

  Shaking his head, the major reached for a small sheet of letter paper and then a pen. He scratched out something hurriedly, then affixed his signature, adding a “for” and the name of Gen. Robt. E. Lee.

  “There.”

  “Thank you,” Harry said, pocketing the paper before it could be snatched back.

  “I would remind you that the general remains mindful of your promise to him,” the major said. “Concerning your military service.”

  “I am mindful of it as well.” He hesitated, realizing he must avail himself of every opportunity. “There’s something else I need.”

  The major threw up his hands.

  “I need to know the units and locations of three officers, all of whom have a bearing on this case—a Captain Carreau, a Lieutenant Pemberton, and a Major Broward.”

  Now the major lost all patience. “It may come as a surprise to you, sir, but this sort of thing is not among General Lee’s many responsibilities.”

  “Might you direct me to whoever’s it is?”

  Another note was hastily scribbled and pushed across the desk toward Harry. The major then turned to other work without further word.

  “Obliged,” said Harry.

  Harry turned, thrusting both prized scraps of paper into a coat pocket and started toward the door. It was then that he saw the tall officer sitting stiffly in a wood chair at the other end of the room. He had a kingly beard, going from black to gray, and, behind a pair of gold spectacles, hard, dark-brown eyes that stared past Harry as though he were invisible.

  Harry stood his ground, waiting for recognition. When none came, he walked over to the man, standing uncomfortably before him.

  “Father?”

  There was no response. Harry did not exist.

  Sensing the stares of everyone in the antechamber now, Harry twitched, uncertain as to what to do.

  “I’ve come home, Father,” he said.

  Finally, the cold eyes shifted to take him in. To Harry, it was much the same as being run through with a bayonet. After a long, painful moment, the officer looked away.

  Harry faced away, shaking his head, and started toward the door—achieving no more than a single step when he was nailed to the place by the first words he had heard from that gentleman in nearly four years.

  “I will speak to you,” his father said, “when I see you in the uniform of your country.”

  Harry knew better than to look back.

  The clerk in the War Department’s paymaster section seemed dubious about the freshly written authorization Harry presented him, but agreed to the request. Unfortunately, he said, it would take all day, and he instructed Harry to come back at four o’clock that afternoon, or better, the next day.

  Harry’s impatience was beginning to frazzle him. “If it were President Davis asking this, would you tell him to come back tomorrow?”

  “Are you President Davis?”

  “No, but …”

  “Come back tomorrow, sir.”

  Libby much like Willard’s Hotel in Washington City, was a series of three connected buildings. Set on the flats near the river at the bottom of Church Hill and served by a railroad spur, the thickly walled and floored structures had been warehouses used for grain, tobacco, and manufactured goods before the war. Now they held men, crowded into pen-like enclosures on each floor.

  Some of the officer residents were high-ranking, and for a time, their inmates included Congressman Albert Ely of New York, captured at Bull Run when he’d pressed forward too adventurously during the fighting for the Stone Bridge. He’d been paroled and exchanged the preceding fall.

  The interior was dark, dank, stagnant of air, and malodorous. There were stoves, largely for the benefit of the jailers, but most of what heat there was came from the sheer volume of closely packed human flesh.

  It was also a noisy place, a steady drone of conversation punctuated by continual coughing and occasional angry oaths and wails.

  With marked disgust and reluctance, a sergeant led Harry down wooden stairs to the basement of the central building. Pushing through the prisoners with pistol out at the ready, carrying a lantern in his left hand, the man growled and snarled his way to a small wooden door set in the masonry wall at the rear. Harry and two Confederate privates with muskets followed closely behind.

  It was the prisoners’ eyes that most unsettled Harry. Never before in his life had he felt himself the focus of such intense, collected hatred. One set of very blue eyes seemed the most hateful of all, oddly belied by a slight curl of lip. The man was taller even than Harry’s six feet, and extremely muscular, standing out considerably in that regard from his fellow prisoners. Otherwise, he was much like them, his white cotton shirt soiled and torn, his uniform tunic bearing captain’s bars on the shoulder straps but missing buttons.

  Startled by the man’s appearance, Harry gave a slight nod and then hurried on to catch up with the sergeant, who waited at the door unhappily. “How long you need?” he asked.

  Harry had no idea. Presuming his presence would be a comfort to Caesar Augustus, he would want to stay with him as long as he could.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready to leave.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” said the sergeant, unlocking and then swinging open the door.

  Caesar Augustus had been kept in total darkness. Harry could see him curled up on the floor of this ridiculously small chamber, a vague figure in the shadows.

  “I’ll need more than that,” Harry said.

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  “Give me the lantern,” Harry said, taking it from the other’s hands. At that instant, he saw advantages to becoming a Confederate officer, if only to have the chance to discipline the likes of these prison guards.

  Lowering his head, he crawled into the small space. The door was slammed, and, from the sound of it, locked behind him.

  Caesar Augustus sat up. The smell in here was the least pleasant of all.

  “Where you been, Marse Harry?”

  “Doing my damnedest to get here. It’s taken the help of General Lee and President Davis himself to do it.”

  The black man shifted, with a heavy clank of chain and manacle, moving to lean back against the wall. Harry took his flask from a coat pocket and handed it to his friend, who readily ac
cepted it.

  They hadn’t searched him for weapons or asked him to surrender any. He still carried his two-shot Derringer pistol. For a passing moment, he considered leaving it with the prisoner.

  But that could prove a deadly mistake. They’d have provocation for killing him.

  “Thanks,” said Caesar Augustus, handing back the whiskey after a second swallow.

  “Keep it. If nothing else, you may be able to trade it for easier treatment.”

  “Marse Harry, they keep sayin’ they’re goin’ to hang me. But then the next day, they don’t.”

  “I’m trying to make sure they never do.”

  “And what chance we got?”

  “I’m making progress. And we have friends.”

  He took a sip of whiskey himself.

  “I believe two people killed Arabella. And at least one may have been a white man.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Found a witness.”

  No Confederate court or police official would much credit what the boy had to say, but he had satisfied Harry’s with his veracity.

  “This witness saw them do it?”

  “No. He only saw them enter the hotel—using the back door by the kitchen.”

  Caesar Augustus looked away. “That don’t do me much good, Marse Harry.”

  Harry put his hand to the man’s shoulder. “Well, it helps me.”

  Time was passing. The sergeant would be back. Harry wished he’d had the foresight to bribe the man beforehand.

  If nothing else, he might arrange for his friend to get better food. Harry had noted a plate with a half eaten piece of wormy bread on it, soaked in grease. There was a cup, doubtless containing only water.

  “Caesar Augustus, I have only a few days more. You’ve got to help me. You have to tell me where you were that night. I need to establish an alibi for you.”

  “I already said I can’t do that.”

  “It could mean your life, sir.”

  “Marse Harry, the folks I was with, they’re all black. Nothin’ they say is going to count. Forget that.”

  “We have to try everything.”

  “No we don’t. Like you say, there’s no time.”

  Harry sat back on his heels. The sergeant would return directly, yet his mind was an utter void.

  “Can you tell me anything? Anything at all?”

  “I already told you everything. I was somewhere else. When I came back, there she was. I’m sorry, Marse Harry, but that be all I know. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t do anything to harm her.”

  “She said you quarreled with her.”

  “She did?”

  “When you visited Estelle. Are you sweet on the girl, Caesar Augustus?”

  “Was once.” His eyes had become wary, unfriendly. Harry was prying—but he had to.

  “She’s with me.”

  “Who, Estelle?”

  “Yes. She’s outside. She ran away from Mills. I’m pretending I bought her.”

  “God Almighty, Marse Harry. She’s done for now. And I am done for. I come down here with you, and now I’m in the clutches of the devil. That’s what he is, that Jeff Davis. That’s what they all are. Maybe you, too.”

  “I’ll get you out of this,” Harry said.

  “No. I’m a dead man. Save yourself. Save Estelle.”

  “Damn it all, you could help, you know! Tell me where you were. Tell me what you know.”

  Caesar Augustus folded his arms around his knees and put his head down.

  “Get Estelle out of this hellhole, Marse Harry.”

  There was a loud rapping at the door, metal on wood. The sergeant.

  Harry turned to leave, then hesitated. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the carved African figure he’d retrieved from his room at the Exchange.

  “This is yours,” Harry said. “Maybe it’ll bring you luck.”

  Caesar Augustus took the object, eyeing it almost with wonder.

  “They took everything of mine,” he said. “Everything I had.”

  “You must have dropped it,” Harry said. “In the hotel room.”

  “In the hotel room.” Caesar Augustus put it in a pocket of his trousers.

  “Raines!” shouted the sergeant. “Your time’s up!”

  Harry put his hand on the black man’s arm, then moved toward the door.

  “Marse Harry!” It was a loud whisper.

  “Raines!”

  Harry leaned back. “What?”

  “Trust the lady on the hill. No one else.”

  The door clanked shut behind him. Standing up fully straight, Harry followed the sergeant out through the crowd of prisoners who had gathered around. Passing through them and heading for the stairs, Harry suddenly halted. “I need to use the sinks,” he said.

  “Got an outhouse behind the office.”

  “No. I can’t wait.”

  He’d noticed the long, running urinal on the opposite wall when he’d entered this section. Turning, he pushed his way through the prisoners. The tall, red-haired, muscular man in shirtsleeves pressed in beside him.

  “What in hell are you doing here?” Harry asked.

  “Got taken prisoner,” said U.S. Secret Service Agent Joseph “Boston” Leahy. “Quickest way to get into Richmond.”

  “The ways out are slower.”

  “Not planning to stay long.” He lowered his head. “Talk to me through Crazy Bet.”

  “Joseph, they’ve got Caesar Augustus in there. Can you help me get him out?”

  “You bet.” Leahy stepped back. “Get away from me, you Secesh bastard!”

  Harry was genuinely startled. He retreated, until the sergeant caught hold of his arm and dragged him out of the crowd of prisoners to the stairs.

  “Maybe you better not come back,” the sergeant said. “I think some of these Yankee boys would like to kill you.”

  Chapter 14

  Harry took Estelle by the hand. He had an impulse to put his arm around her, for she looked so forlorn. But that would attract stares and unwelcome speculation. As it was, he heard catcalls. Not knowing whether they came from prisoners at the windows or the Confederate soldiery by the gate, he kept going, not looking back.

  She tottered along behind him, as though she were still wearing shackles.

  “You see Caesar Augustus?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What he say?”

  “He’s kind of blue.”

  “He say anythin’ about me?”

  “He said he’s fond of you.”

  She hurried her pace to catch up with him. “Where we goin’ now?” she asked.

  “Away from here.”

  The walk back to the boarding house took him along a familiar way. He knew almost every storefront, recognized old dogs and horses tied to rails. Yet the city now seemed an altogether different and frightening place. There was a hungry look to some of the people, wariness, and the beginnings of despair. There were beggar children on Main Street, with clutching hands and dirty faces. He ignored the prostitutes, who were as numerous as the pigs in the dirty streets, but one of them simply overwhelmed him. Dressed in torn and faded finery, she must have been sixty years old.

  There were many in Richmond, he knew, who yearned to see Miss Van Lew reduced to such a state.

  He gave the poor woman a dollar, then took Estelle by the arm and hurried on.

  The proprietor was waiting in his parlor, reading the Richmond Whig. At Harry’s entrance, he took out his watch.

  “Is it over?” he asked.

  Harry stopped, trying to redirect his mind to the question. “Is what over, sir?”

  “The buryin’. They’re putting Mrs. Mills in the ground. The paper says it was to be this morning.”

  Harry sighed. His spirits were as low as they’d been since he’d arrived in this city. “Where?”

  “Hollywood Cemetery.”

  “Not Shockoe?”

  “No, sir.”

  The Hollywood burying ground
was down by the river just west of the city—and just upstream from Tredegar.

  “I’ll saddle my horse.”

  He was reluctant to leave Estelle in his room, fearing she’d wander away—or into some trouble.

  “You’ll come with me,” he said. “You can ride behind me.”

  Their way took them by the Virginia State Penitentiary, which was too full of genuine criminals to provide room for Union soldiers. To the west, two military camps sprawled over the rolling landscape, the white tents so numerous they resembled some sort of agricultural crop in the distance.

  Harry turned his stumbler of a horse another way, following a path across the grounds of the Belvidere House that led to a slight hill overlooking the cemetery grounds.

  The burial service was still under way. There were few mourners. Pulling on his spectacles and standing in his stirrups, Harry thought he could recognize Palmer Mills, but none of the rest.

  “You goin’ down there?”

  “When they’re done.”

  “I goin’ stay here.”

  “No, you stay with me. This city’s a dangerous place for any woman now. There are drunken soldiers and criminals everywhere. You best stay with me until I figure out what to do with you.”

  “You goin’ to give me freedom?”

  “You already have that, as far as I’m concerned. But we have to get you out of the Confederacy.”

  “North?”

  “To the Union. After I attend to Caesar Augustus.”

  Harry returned his attention to the burying party down the hill. He could hear singing. When it ceased, the few figures began to turn away and walk toward the carriages parked in the cemetery drive. Mills proceeded in a different direction, angling toward the river. Tredegar was not far.

  When they were gone, Harry dismounted and led his horse down the slope, holding Estelle tightly by the wrist. She was far more reluctant than the animal. He saw that she was frightened.

  “What is it?” he asked. “You afraid of her ghost?”

  Her eyes replied in the affirmative, but she spoke no word.

  Reaching the grave, he saw that there was as yet no headstone; only a mound of fresh dirt and a few paper flowers. Letting go of Estelle’s arm, Harry moved close to it, shaking his head.