The Spymistress

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Mary was getting better, Lizzie thought, her relief interwoven with worry. How much longer until she demanded that Annie and Eliza be returned to her?

  On the last day of the year, Lizzie learned from Lieutenant Ross that of the two hundred wounded prisoners brought from Fredericksburg and placed in the hospital of Libby Prison, at least twenty-­five had died. If not for Lizzie’s bribe money and Lieutenant Ross’s clandestine influence, the number would have been much higher, but she took little comfort from that.

  She was all too glad to see 1862 end, but she looked ahead to the New Year with dim hopes that they had passed through the worst of the war.

  Still, 1863 began on a glorious note, full of hope and promise, for January 1 was the day President Abraham Lincoln signed the revised Emancipation Proclamation. Soon after he set pen to paper in Washington, the text of the official document was telegraphed far and wide, and two significant changes immediately seized the attention of all who read it. First, the list of territories under Union control had been revised to note the advances the army had made in the interim. Second, but far more significant, were two new paragraphs that had not appeared in the preliminary version released the previous September. In the first of these, President Lincoln enjoined the people newly freed by the proclamation “to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-­defense.”

  The words were simple, straightforward, and of great consequence. Never before had slaves been permitted to defend themselves physically, to fight off a vicious beating by a cruel white master or mistress. Now they had been granted the right to stand their ground and fight to preserve their lives, if confronted by such a choice.

  The second addition was more astonishing yet.

  President Lincoln declared and made known that such persons among the newly emancipated “of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.”

  Lizzie could scarcely believe it, and she had to read over the proclamation twice to be sure that she had not skipped a critical line or misunderstood the phrasing. But it was the same upon each reading. Unless the typesetter had gotten it wrong, in the rebellious territories, slaves were free and men of color would be allowed to take up arms and fight for the Union.

  Across the South, newspapers denounced Mr. Lincoln as a barbarian, a villain, a coward, and in some towns he was burned in effigy in the streets. That, of course, reflected the sentiments of the white population. Lizzie suspected that, like the people of color in her own household, most colored residents of Richmond, slave and free, privately rejoiced—­although beyond the larger cities, she supposed that most colored folk were utterly unaware that anything had changed, just as William had said.

  It was a cold, gray, blustery day, but within the Van Lew residence, all was merry and bright, more joyful even than at Christmas. Mother arranged for them to enjoy a luncheon feast, where they all sat down at the table together and toasted Mr. Lincoln’s health and General McClellan’s and their own, and they prayed for the Union army and for all the people held in bondage who had no idea that they had been freed. “You all are free now too,” Lizzie told the servants, beaming. “What the law forbade us to do, Mr. Lincoln has done. You can leave us if you wish, or stay on as paid employees as before, but either way, you are free.”

  “In your eyes and in your mother’s, we have been for years,” William said. “But not so to the rest of the world, not then and not now.”

  Some of the elation faded around the table, and the servants grew silent and somber, except for Hannah, who could not stop smiling. She was free at last, and her sons were free, and that was all she had ever wanted. The practicalities of the matter could not diminish her joy.

  “That is true,” said Mother. “If you remain with us, we will have to keep up the pretense. If you wish to be truly free, you should seek your fortunes in the North.”

  “We can smuggle you out of the city and set you on your way,” said Lizzie. “If you go to Philadelphia, my sister will help you get settled.”

  One by one, they all shook their heads and told her soberly that they would stay, for now. It was not for her, Lizzie knew, or even for her mother, whom they all loved dearly, but for themselves, for the families and friends they could not leave behind, not just yet. After the war they might go, but their new freedom was too tenuously held and the times too uncertain to risk such drastic changes.

  The meal was finished, the mess cleared away, and the servants dispersed to enjoy the rest of the day off. Lizzie was in the library indulging in a novel, a Christmas gift from John, when Peter cleared his throat in the doorway. “Miss Lizzie,” he said, “can I talk with you?”

  “Of course, Peter,” she said, marking her place, closing the book, and beckoning him into the room. Then, with a sudden jolt, she said, “You haven’t decided to leave us after all, have you?”

  “No, Miss Lizzie,” he said, shaking his head. “I intend to stay, and since I will be staying, I have a favor to ask of you.”

  She regarded him, puzzled. He was usually the more lighthearted of the brothers, but at that moment he seemed as serious as William. “Certainly, if it’s in my power.”

  Peter crossed the room and halted a few paces in front of her chair. “You’ve met my wife, Louisa.”

  “Yes, I have.” Lizzie recalled a bright, slender girl, a head shorter than her husband, with apple cheeks and a beautiful singing voice. She had worked for a family a few blocks away on Church Hill until early in the war, when she had been sold to a Confederate colonel who had moved his wife and children from Mississippi to Richmond to better promote his rise within the administration.

  “Louisa’s master got himself shot at Fredericksburg, and he passed on a few days ago. Now her mistress wants to move back to their plantation, and she’ll take Louisa with her.”

  “Oh, no, Peter, no,” Lizzie exclaimed. “How dreadful! I can’t imagine how you must feel, to be separated from your dearest love—­”

  She stopped short, and her hand involuntarily went to the locket around her neck, and she felt the weight of the watch in her pocket. No, that was not true. She could imagine very well what it felt like.

  “Yes,” said Peter grimly. “Yes, it’s dreadful. It’s the cruelest pain I’ve ever felt. But it doesn’t have to be.”

  “No?”

  “Not if you help us.” Peter hesitated, a muscle working his jaw, and then he plunged ahead. “I would like you to buy my wife.”

  She blinked up at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I want you to buy my wife, please.” He took from his pocket a sizable fold of bills, most of them Union notes, with a few Confederate dollars mixed in. “I have this to put toward the cost. I know it won’t cover everything, but it’s a start, and I can work off the rest. If I have to work the rest of my life I will pay you back, Miss Lizzie, I swear.”

  Lizzie felt faintly ill. In her heart and in her mind and to the very core of her being, she believed that slavery was the whole and sole cause of the dreadful war. The slave state crushed freedom of labor. It was arrogant, it was jealous and intrusive, it was cruel and despotic, not only over the slave, but over the community, the nation.

  “You want me to buy a slave,” she said, pained and bewildered. “On the day President Lincoln declares all slaves in the states under rebellion henceforth and forever free, you want me to perpetuate the institution you know I abhor.”

  “I want you to buy my wife’s freedom,” Peter said, emphasizing each word. “I’m not asking you to buy her to keep her in slavery, but to get her out of it. You and your mother have done that before, for other folks.”

  That was certainly true. Her father’s will prevented them from freeing or selling any of the slaves Mother had inherited upon his death, but his decree held no sway over any sla
ves they might purchase afterward. Before the war, they had on several occasions bought and freed particular slaves, usually elderly relations of their servants. What Peter wanted was essentially no different, but to buy a slave on the very day she had toasted Mr. Lincoln for ending slavery seemed utterly wrong.

  But Peter might never see his wife again if she did not.

  “Put your money away,” she told Peter, smiling fondly, and yet feeling a pang of regret. She should not have to buy Louisa. Louisa was no longer a slave, and she ought to be able to walk away from her mistress’s household unimpeded as she wished. “You’ll need it when you and Louisa start a family. John tells me children are quite expensive.” She rose and smoothed her skirt. “While you get the carriage ready, I’ll tell Mother we’re going out. Let’s go fetch your wife home.”

  Louisa’s mistress proved a shrewd bargainer. She knew she had the advantage and she pressed it, bemoaning the loss of her favorite maid, who would be extraordinarily difficult to replace. Eventually she named a fee five hundred dollars above the going rate, to which Lizzie agreed, smiling through clenched teeth as they shook hands.

  Louisa was summoned, and although Lizzie knew the younger woman recognized her, she accepted the news stoically and went to gather her few possessions. Peter did not embrace her as he helped them into the carriage, nor did she greet him with anything more than a murmur and a nod. Only when the carriage had pulled away and turned the corner did her composure break, and she wept tears of joy. “I thought if the mistress knew how much I wanted to leave, she’d never let me go,” she confessed, wiping her eyes.

  The Confederate government was less willing than Louisa’s mistress to let its slaves go.

  In the middle of January, when the Confederate Congress reconvened, Jefferson Davis delivered to them a lengthy address in which he responded with fiery indignation to Mr. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which he excoriated as “the most execrable measure in the history of guilty man.” People of all nations, Mr. Davis declared, following the instincts of their God-­given common humanity, were readily able to “pass judgment on a measure by which several millions of human beings of an inferior race—­peaceful and contented laborers in their sphere—­are doomed to extermination, while at the same time they are encouraged to a general assassination of their masters by the insiduous recommendation to abstain from violence unless in necessary defense.” In retaliation, he vowed to turn over all Union officers captured in the South to local authorities, who would ensure that they were “dealt with in accordance with the laws of those States providing for the punishment of criminals engaged in exciting servile insurrection.”

  Lizzie understood that very well to mean that the enlisted men, whom Mr. Davis dismissed as mere pawns following orders, would be treated no better or worse than before, but their officers would be summarily executed. Never could Lizzie have imagined that warfare, already brutal, cruel, and merciless, could become any more barbaric. Now it seemed that every week ushered in a new horror once beyond imagining.

  What these new evils were building toward, where it would all end, was too horrific to contemplate.

  Chapter Fifteen

  * * *

  FEBRUARY-APRIL 1863

  T

  he winter dragged on, interminably miserable, dark and wet and cold. The stench of death hung everywhere, seeping from the hospitals and prisons until the odor rather than the steel-­gray clouds seemed to blot out the sun. Food had become scarce, and shockingly expensive when it could be found. Lizzie and her mother knew of many true-­hearted Unionists of the working classes whose families suffered terribly, and they took to preparing baskets of food and necessities for them, and providing funds so they could buy coal or pay a doctor’s bill. Smallpox broke out in Castle Thunder and quickly spread through the poorer neighborhoods, terrifying the citizenry and compelling the authorities to establish separate hospitals where the suffering patients would be nursed, and the affliction, it was hoped, would be contained.

  The usual illnesses—­dysentery, typhoid, scurvy, jail fever, mal­nutrition—also continued to torment the prisoners wherever they were held, and in early February, Lizzie took a particular interest in a Lieutenant McMurtries, who had been wounded at Fredericksburg, and soon thereafter had taken ill with a terrible fever. Lizzie provided soups and custards for all of his meals, heartened by Lieutenant Ross’s reports that he was showing steady improvement. Then, to her surprise, she learned that the prison commandant, Major Thomas Pratt Turner, had apparently been monitoring the lieutenant’s condition as well.

  C. S. Mil. Prison

  Richmond, Va, Feby 15, 1863

  Miss Van Lew

  Dear Madam—­

  Lt. McMurtries being now nearly well I have to request that you will discontinue furnishing him his meals.

  Abundant and palatable food is prepared for the patients in the prison Hospital, and I would prefer that they be not supplied by persons outside, as it has a tendency to subvert the consistency of Prison rules and discipline.

  I am, Madam,

  Your Obdt. Servt.

  Th. P. Turner

  Maj. Commanding

  Angrily Lizzie crumpled the note in her fist. Adequate food was certainly not provided for the patients or any other Union prisoners, as their wasted frames and hollow cheeks made evident. As for its palatability, the men were usually fed little more than a thin, watery, insubstantial soup with a piece of bread so coarse Lizzie could not conceive how it could be eaten, the flour having been supplemented with pieces of corncobs and coarse bran and meal. Major Turner’s assessment of the prisoners’ rations was a bold untruth, and they both knew it, and Lizzie was shocked at his audacity.

  She also understood that the letter was meant to forbid her from providing food and nourishment not only to Lieutenant McMurtries, but to every prisoner henceforth. “Again and again they banish me,” Lizzie muttered, alone in the library. She was tired of having her permission granted and revoked, restored and revoked, but it would be a waste of breath to protest to the Major Turner, an odious and utterly depraved man. She would appeal directly to General Winder.

  They had no ginger for ginger cakes, nor fruit for a tart, and few preserves to spare, but they did have fresh milk, and butter as well, thanks to the bounty of their farm as well as Mr. Rowley’s generosity, so Lizzie had Caroline bake a loaf of her finest bread, simple and wholesome and nourishing, which she packed in a basket with a ball of butter and a bottle of milk. Then Lizzie and Peter set out in the carriage in a freezing drizzle, which turned to snow by the time they arrived at the general’s headquarters at Broad and Ninth Streets.

  Lizzie was determined not to be put off by the general’s secretary this time, not to be delayed or told that the general was out when she knew he was in. “I must see General Winder at once,” she announced, setting her basket on the secretary’s desk with a thud. She did not need to give her name, so familiar had she become to the staff. The smell of freshly baked bread, quite possibly one of the most enticing aromas ever created, wafted out from beneath the cloth. Whether inspired by the promise of her basket or intimidated by her imperious manner, the secretary hurried off and returned moments later to say the general would see her.

  Before he could change his mind, Lizzie assumed her most charming smile and swept into his private chamber. “General Winder, what a pleasure,” she purred, hastily concealing her shock at his appearance. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, worry had cut new furrows in his brow, and his haggard look spoke of exhaustion and toil.

  “Miss Van Lew.” His greeting was curiously flat, although a new interest came into his eye as he spied the basket and caught the delicious aroma. “What delicacies have you brought to tempt me today?”

  “Nothing too fancy, just simple bread, butter, and milk.” She smiled as she set the basket before him and drew back the cloth. “What evokes fonder memories of home than a good loaf
of freshly baked bread?”

  “Apples plucked fresh from the tree,” he said distantly. “Sweet and ripe, a perfect fit to the hand. The view from my father’s hayloft.”

  Lizzie regarded him with true sympathy as she seated herself. “I’m sure you must be terribly homesick.”

  “Yes, well, as to that—­” He sat up and briskly straightened a few scattered papers on his desk. “I sleep in a comfortable bed at night rather than in a tent in the mud like so many thousands of our brave soldiers, so it would be unconscionable for me to complain overmuch. What do you require of me today, Miss Van Lew?”

  She tried to conceal her surprise at his sudden directness. “Major Thomas Pratt Turner has forbidden me to send food to the men suffering in the hospital of Libby Prison. I cannot understand his presumption in countermanding your orders.”

  “What orders of mine has he countermanded?”

  “Why, you granted me permission to provide food, delicacies, and other necessary items to the prisoners,” she said, bewildered, “and he will not allow it.”

  “I have charged him with maintaining order. If he feels that your gifts subvert his authority and discipline, then he is right to refuse you.”

  Lizzie studied him, mindful that General Winder’s explanation echoed words from Major Turner’s letter, as if they had conferred before he wrote it. “Major Turner denies me because he believes the prisoners receive good food in ample quantities. You and I both know that is not so.”

  “No one in Richmond receives enough good food these days, whether they be prisoners, soldiers, politicians, or civilians.” He scowled and added, as if to himself, “Or wretched newspapermen.”

  “I do what I can to see that your pangs of hunger are few and far between,” Lizzie reminded him, gesturing to the basket. “But let us speak of the prisoners and what they suffer. Perhaps you are unaware that there are more than one hundred men crammed into each of the six rooms on the upper floors of Libby. They endure scarce rations, regardless of Major Turner’s protestations to the contrary, and lacking cutlery, they eat with their fingers like savages when permitted to eat at all. Their quarters are poorly ventilated and lit, they have no furniture and few blankets, and they are subject to all manner of cruel abuse from their guards.”