Spy of Richmond

by Jocelyn Green

  As the applause receded, Harrison Caldwell jostled his way to Silas, Liberty, Amelia, and Bella. He had surprised Bella by arriving with Amelia’s building supplies last month, but he had shocked her outright with his decision to stay. He’d spent every day helping Silas refurbish Liberty’s house, raze the old barn to the ground, and build a new carriage house.

  “How did you rate our speakers?” Silas asked him.

  Harrison straightened the slouch hat on his head. “I preferred Lincoln.”

  “A newsman would. Shorter is better, right?”

  The reporter chuckled. “Usually, yes. But a little clarification would have been appropriate. Lincoln said that the men who died here gave their last full measure of devotion in doing so. But I believe the fullest measure of our devotion to the cause is not just dying for it, but living for it. From where I’m standing, each one of you is giving your full measure of devotion in your own way.”

  “Let me guess,” said Bella, barely suppressing a smirk. “You want to write a story about it.”

  “It’s a great story.” A smile brightened his face. “But you should be the ones to tell it. Write your story. The world needs to hear your voice, not just the voices of the reporters.”

  “Women don’t publish,” said Amelia. “It isn’t ladylike.”

  Harrison shook his head and pulled from his knapsack the package of licorice wafers Bella had given him yesterday. “I’m telling you, just write it.” He popped a wafer in his mouth and tucked it in his cheek. “If you don’t, no one else is going to do it for you.”

  “And what will you do?” Liberty asked, clearly still content to remain in Silas’s arms.

  “Me? Oh, I’ll keep writing stories, but my battle days are behind me.”

  Bella nodded. At thirty years old, he was six years her junior. Above the freckles dusting his nose, his eyes were deep, dark pools of stories she suspected he would never want to pen.

  Harrison tilted his head toward the platform. “I should at least try to get an interview with the President.” He shook hands with Silas, Amelia, Liberty, and Bella. The brightness gone from his voice, he added, “I deeply regret any sorrow or pain I may have caused you all.”

  Liberty reached out and squeezed his hand. “God used it for good, Mr. Caldwell.” The child was right. If Harrison hadn’t dug up their story—and leaked it to the New York Times—Liberty may have lived her entire life without knowing Bella was her mother.

  Smiling, Harrison nodded, tipped his hat, and melted into the crowd encircling the president.

  Amelia’s voice registered vaguely in Bella’s ears, but she did not turn to face her. Instead, Bella stood watching the throng of people who had come for this momentous day. For one glorious, irrational instant, she thought she saw her own Abraham among them, but immediately dismissed the idea, ashamed of her desperation.

  Truth was, Bella missed her husband, and the way they had left things, she had no idea if he missed her or if he even thought of her. She’d had no word from him since August and still no paycheck. The uncertainty wore her down, like pebbles in her shoes. One look at her daughter, however, left no doubt that she was as certain about Silas as he was about her. When the wind teased a curl of her ebony hair from its pin, he brushed it from her face, and her cheeks bloomed pink in response.

  Bella cleared her throat. “We’ll see you back at the inn, Liberty, Silas.” With a gentle nudge to Amelia, they left the young couple alone.

  By the time Liberty and Silas made their way back home, Bella was not at all surprised at the sunlight glinting on her daughter’s ring finger. Meeting her on the pumpkin-lined porch, Liberty hugged her fiercely around the neck and whispered, “I’ve finally found where I belong.” Tears fell from her sapphire blue eyes, and Bella wiped them away, though her own face was wet as well. After everything she had gone through, from being a widowed bride two years ago to being steeped in the ghastly field hospital that had become her home, Liberty more than deserved this happiness. This was what Bella wanted for her.

  Yet, even as she congratulated Liberty and Silas on their engagement, she felt her world shift beneath her feet. With Liberty taken care of and Abraham gone, she could not help but feel untethered. For the first time in her life, Bella did not know her place.

  “I figured I’d find you in the kitchen.”

  Bella smiled as she sprinkled cloves and nutmeg into the pumpkin pie filling she stirred. With nothing else pressing for her attention and no one waiting for her at home, baking a pie at Liberty’s house-turned-inn just seemed like the right thing to do. “And I figured you wouldn’t be out taking battlefield tours with the rest of the group.”

  “You figured right. I’ve seen enough of those fields. Still do, almost every night …” he trailed off, and Bella did not draw him back. If he wanted to talk about his nightmares, he would do it on his own. But he didn’t.

  “Don’t step on the dog.” Bella pointed to Liberty’s Newfoundland, Major, sprawled on the floor across a fading patch of day’s last light.

  Harrison chuckled as he knelt and stroked the dog’s fur like so many wounded soldiers had done here just a few months ago. Then, straightening, he inhaled. “Smells divine.”

  Nodding, Bella poured the batter into the waiting crust. “Sure was good of you to help fix this place up. I feel a weight lifted to know it will bring Liberty income now.”

  “I consider it an honor to be among the first paying customers. I admit it will feel strange to leave after being here for the last few weeks.”

  “I bet you’re eager to get home to Philadelphia tomorrow. Amelia, too.”

  “Will you miss me?” he teased, and she could not help but smile at his boyish grin.

  “Well, I’ve grown accustomed to you being around Liberty Inn, just like I’ve grown accustomed to that clock on the wall. When you leave, I’ll notice you’re gone, but I’ll sure enough get by.”

  “Ah well, we can’t all be heroes, can we?” His words were playful, but his eyes were distant. “Say, did you see the mail on the hall table for you?”

  Bella frowned. “Now why would I be getting mail here when my house is on Washington Street?”

  “Apparently a letter for you was mixed in with your neighbor’s mail. Aunt Hester, I think it was. She stopped by to see the Liberty Inn in all its shining glory, and dropped that off for you while she was here. I’ll fetch it.”

  Heat flashed on Bella’s face as she opened the cast-iron door and slid the pie in the oven to bake. Closing the door again, she wiped her hands on her apron and met Harrison in the hall. Taking the envelope from him, she turned it over, inspecting the unfamiliar handwriting and return address.

  “Someone you know?” Harrison asked, ever the nosy reporter.

  “I don’t think so.” She slit the envelope, and pulled a small, terribly creased and smudged paper from inside. “What on earth?” She glanced at Harrison.

  “Come to the parlor, there’s better light.”

  She did so, and was grateful to find it empty. Easing into the armchair, she slanted the paper into the kerosene light. Suddenly, the tiny script loomed like dusk’s lengthening shadows. “It’s Abraham.” Her breath suddenly burned her lungs. And Daphne? “It can’t be,” she whispered. Her twin sister had become a chalky memory already half rubbed away. Shock descended upon Bella like a curtain. Numbness allowed her to continue functioning as if she hadn’t just learned her husband was in the cellar of a Richmond prison, as if she hadn’t just learned he’d found her sister.

  “Mrs. Jamison?”

  She met his earnest eyes. “He’s in prison. In Richmond.”

  He blanched. “But how? After South Carolina, the 54th Massachusetts went to Florida, did they not?”

  “Abraham was on his way home on furlough.” To me. “The ship wrecked. He was captured by a Southern blockade runner.”

  Harrison jumped to his feet and began to pace the braided rug. “And yet still alive. Astonishing!”

  She
glared at him. “Why astonishing?”

  Harrison raked his hand through his hair. “The Confederacy’s policy is to treat colored Union troops as runaway slaves.”

  Bella’s stomach roiled as the meaning filtered through her consciousness. They could put him in bondage, though he was born free. Or they could put him to death.

  “But you say they’re holding him in prison?”

  Bella looked at the slip of paper again. “Yes. Libby, I think it says. Libby? Can that be right?” Libby. Libbie. Liberty. Prison, her daughter, freedom. The words clanged madly together in her mind.

  Harrison grimaced. “It is notorious. What else does he say?”

  “That he expects to die there.” She blinked as she spoke, and noticed that the corners of her vision were veiled in white, as though she were seeing things through a thin gauze frame. “That he is starving and beaten and that colored prisoners disappear every week. But is there no hope for exchange?”

  “I’m afraid not,” he replied gently. “The Confederacy refuses to acknowledge black men as soldiers, so they cannot be exchanged as prisoners of war.”

  Her cheek twitched, even as Harrison drew near. “There’s more.” She handed him the letter and watched his brow furrow as he deciphered the tiny print.

  “Daphne!” His head jerked up. “Your twin sister.” When Harrison met Bella last summer, her face had reminded him of Daphne, who he’d seen on the auction block in Georgia. It was why he so doggedly investigated Bella’s identity. “She’s in Richmond!”

  “But not well.” Bella’s voice was wooden. Harrison ran his finger along the text, then stopped. “Typho-malaria … And no quinine.” Light glinted in his eyes as he looked into Bella’s. “Blast the blockade,” he growled. “Blast this insufferable war!”

  “You think she’ll die.” An observation, not a question.

  Harrison set his jaw. “I pray not. But I’ll not mince words, Mrs. Jamison. Others—countless others—have died when quinine could have saved them.”

  Daphne could be dead already. The truth neither one would voice. And yet, “Abraham, at least, still lives.”

  His eyes narrowed as he regarded her. “What makes you think so?”

  “If he died, I would have felt it.” Their last meeting had been tense enough, but that did not erase the union they shared. “Surely his soul cannot depart this earth without my own feeling its void.” She shook her head. “No. No. He lives, I know it.” Her nostrils flared with conviction. “But for how long I cannot say.”

  Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

  Friday, November 20, 1863

  The clock in the hall chimed twice, but for once, Harrison Caldwell did not mind his insomnia. I can do this. Just how many miles he had paced inside his room at Liberty Inn that night, he did not know, nor did he care. His thoughts, at least, were finally getting somewhere.

  I can do this, he told himself again. I can do something worthwhile. He would talk to Dr. O’Leary back in Philadelphia as soon as he could. As a delegate of the Christian Commission, the doctor had tended the patients here in this very house right after July’s battle. He knew Bella and Liberty—surely he would give Harrison some quinine to take to Richmond. Of this, he had no doubt. If he could reach Daphne in time to save her life, it would be worth the risk.

  After all, it was a risk he had taken before. Posing as a Southern slave trader at the Weeping Time had gone off without a hitch. No one had detected that the man in the straw hat and gold-rimmed spectacles was a Northern reporter. If they had, he’d surely be hanged from the nearest tree, or perhaps merely tarred and feathered.

  It had taken no small dose of repugnance for him to play the part of a bidder and inspect the slaves up for auction. Never one to forget a face, he saw many of these slaves still, when their images weren’t crowded from his subconscious by the cadre of dead parading through his nightmares. Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Shiloh, Seven Pines, Gettysburg. Harrison had been at all of these battles, seen boys and men torn apart by war. He never forgot their faces, whether they were blank with tedium, tight with terror, or bloated with death. It was his curse, the reason insomnia was a relief, and why he refused to cover another battle. He simply was not strong enough to carry more ghosts.

  Harrison paused at the window and pressed his palm to the pane, allowing the cold to jar him back to the present moment and away from the hot sulfurous breath of battlefields. An owl gurgled, and Harrison picked up his detailed train of thought and set it chugging back in motion. This is about Daphne.

  It was also about Sophie, if he were honest with himself. Abraham’s letter had said Daphne’s mistress, a Miss Kent, routinely brought food to Libby. Could it be anyone other than Sophie Kent? He’d seen her at the Weeping Time, where her father had purchased Daphne four years ago. Hornets swarmed his middle at the idea of seeing her again, even after all this time—and this war—had separated them. Of course it had been impossible for her to meet him in Philadelphia last spring. But had she wanted to? Did she think of me?

  Harrison Caldwell had considered himself immune to feminine wiles long before and long since meeting Sophie Kent. But Sophie had been guileless. Harrison’s mother had been a friend of Sophie’s mother, when they’d both been students at the boarding school, themselves. So when Sophie enrolled, Christine Caldwell rejoiced to have her nearby and asked Harrison to go out of his way to make the shy young woman from Richmond feel welcome. He had.

  Harrison drummed his fingertips on the sill. Sophie could be trusted not to turn him over to the authorities when he arrived with medicine for Daphne. He wouldn’t stop there, either. Somehow—he would weigh his options once he knew them—he would get a letter from Bella to Abraham. Surely she would jump at the chance. If he could only find a Confederate uniform, perhaps he could pose as a newly detailed guard and get it to him himself.

  Anticipation thrummed through Harrison. If he could pull this off and infiltrate Libby Prison, he would see for himself the conditions for both the white officers and the Negro soldiers in the cellar. Imagine! He could interview the prisoners directly. Experience the truth for himself rather than relying on the rumors that so often passed for news these days. Just possibly he could manage to befriend an unsuspecting young guard and question him—casually, of course—as well. The main priority in Richmond would be Daphne and Abraham. But as long as he was there, if he could produce an investigative report of the Confederacy’s most notorious prison, all the major city papers of New York, Philadelphia, and Washington would be bidding top dollar for exclusive rights to print it.

  “It could work,” Harrison whispered to the haggard face in the window. “It could work!” Louder this time, before he realized the other guests might hear him through the walls. Slapping his thigh in a burst of excitement, he spun on his heel and began pacing again. There were a few challenges to overcome, such as getting through the picket lines—but challenges had never stopped Harrison Caldwell before. A grim smile stole over his face as he stared, unseeing, at the door.

  The sooner he could leave, the better.

  Long before dawn’s pale fingers poked through the scalloped curtains of her house on Washington Street, Bella had given up on slumber completely. She had no appetite for breakfast, not when she knew Abraham was hungry, and Daphne was at death’s door. She had brewed some coffee, purely from habit, and now the cup sat untouched on the table, and cold.

  Bella stared at the empty chair across from her, and could barely remember what it felt like to have it occupied by her husband. To have his strong hands ease the tension from her neck and shoulders while he told her about his day at the blacksmith shop. “I bent more iron to my will today,” he would say, chest puffed up, just to make her laugh. The house barely felt like home without him in it.

  Yet the distance between them was more than time and space. Since he’d become a soldier, he hadn’t yet been paid. He had fought, he had been wounded, and he had done it for free, rather than accept a salary less than the white
soldier’s. On their last reunion, in Beaufort, South Carolina, this had been their conversation. Did I even tell him I loved him? That he was brave and courageous? Bella pressed her fingertips to her temples, but could not remember.

  “Just what am I supposed to do now?” she questioned the emptiness that surrounded her. “Just sit and wait for this all to play out?” That was Daphne’s way. It had never been Bella’s, not ever. “No,” she said aloud, and the force of her voice startled her.

  Bella was a fighter, and she had the scars to prove it. Even when there had been no hope of success, she had stood up to her foes—and to the foes of her family. Whether it was an overseer bent on bedding her mother or a relentless reporter threatening to expose her daughter to scandal, Bella had stood staunchly in the way. Defending her family was in her blood. And now her family was in peril again.

  Something uncurled inside Bella and lifted her from the inside. Rise up, she had so often told Liberty. Now Bella was on her feet, too, her spine ramrod straight, her shoulders squared. She could not be at ease now, not when her family was in danger.

  A knock on the door spun her around. Opening the door, she was immediately struck by the fire lighting Harrison Caldwell’s brown eyes. She had seen that fire before. The last time Harrison had been in Bella’s house, it had been to tell her that though Liberty didn’t know she was Bella’s daughter, Harrison did. And that he was going to tell the world.

  “May I?” And in he came, bringing a damp gust of November wind along with him. He hung his hat on the peg behind the door but did not sit. “Do I smell coffee?”

  “It’s cold, but I haven’t touched it.” She pointed to the lonely cup, then raised an eyebrow at him. They’d said their goodbyes last night at Liberty Inn. “Well?”

  “I’ve got a plan.” His step-by-step description burst from him like a geyser, until he was nearly out of breath.

  “You’re going to Richmond.” Bella sat, and motioned for him to do the same. “For people you don’t know?”