Girl in Disguise

by Greer Macallister

  But I could seek out Hattie, and I needed to. I was too late to save the man I loved, but I could at least find a good woman who deserved to live and find a love of her own. If it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t have been a spy in the first place, so I owed it to her.

  I didn’t know where to find her, but I had an inkling of where to start. The Southern ladies of Washington had been all abuzz about a Northern lady of Richmond, one Elizabeth Van Lew. She was a Richmond girl but educated in Philadelphia, and her family had freed their slaves twenty years before. So naturally, she was suspected of being a Yankee spy. I went to her, hoping the rumors were true.

  Naturally, she was suspicious of me and would neither confirm nor deny any of her spying activities. And I was wild-eyed, not my usual subtle and careful self. She was right to keep me at arms’ length.

  Leaning back in a sumptuously padded chair as high and elegant as a throne, she appeared unruffled. She did confirm that the female spy captured a few days before was being held in Castle Thunder but would not support my visits to her. The most she could do, she said, was to recommend that if I needed to get into Castle Thunder, I should invoke the name of Belle Boyd.

  “The partisans in the prisons go bonkers for that girl, like everybody else,” she said and excused herself from the room to check on the tea.

  This left me alone in the room with Mrs. Van Lew’s butler. He lingered in a spot to the left of my chair, which I thought was odd. Lost in thought, I had an awareness that he was there but brushed it aside to wrack my brain. How far should I push Mrs. Van Lew? Should I risk exposing myself by telling her the truth? The gossips said she was on the Yankee side, but what if the gossips were wrong?

  There was a blur of motion, just a small one, coming from the butler’s direction. It happened again. What was he doing?

  Without meeting my eyes, he moved his hand in a strange signal, bringing his fingers together and then apart. There was something familiar about it. He repeated the signal, so I knew it was deliberate, but I couldn’t place it.

  And then I could. I hadn’t seen it in years, but deep in my mind, there was the image of Allan Pinkerton himself making that motion during my very first week of training. It was the signal Pinkerton agents exchanged to identify themselves to each other.

  The butler was a Pinkerton agent.

  I repeated his signal, carefully, and raised my eyes to his.

  In a deep, husky voice, he said, “You must be the great Kate Warne.”

  “Not so great, I don’t think. How did you know?”

  “I saw your picture once, in the Chicago office. I trained there, before I was placed here with Mrs. Van Lew, last year.”

  “Does she know?”

  “No. She does much for the Northern cause, but my position is a secret from her and everyone else, for safety.”

  My next question sprang instantly to mind. “Why didn’t you get turned in with Bellamy and Lawton?”

  “We never worked together at all. Just the three others.”

  “Three?”

  “There was a third agent.”

  “Who?”

  “Never got his name.”

  The door rattled, and Elizabeth reentered the room, followed by a young Negress carrying a tea tray. The butler and I pretended we hadn’t been talking. In the end, I never learned anything more about him. But between his information and Mrs. Van Lew’s, my visit had not been in vain.

  • • •

  Castle Thunder, a warehouse in the Tobacco District hastily converted by the secessionists for their purposes, was located on the north side of town. After finding out from Mrs. Van Lew that Hattie was locked up there, I got what other information I could, but there wasn’t much. The proprietress of the lunch counter gleefully informed me that the place was particularly known for ruling its occupants with an iron fist. After that, every hour, I worried about how to get in to see Hattie, and every hour, I worried that I would hear she had already died.

  In the end, I entered through a complete, fabricated bluff. I walked straight in the door of Castle Thunder, the black-and-white cockade affixed to my broad-brimmed hat, a soft drawl and a firm confidence my only weapons. I wouldn’t attempt a prison break, at least not on the first day. The first order of business was to find out exactly where she was. All I had to do was convince the guard that I was one of the local Daughters of the Confederacy, here to monitor prisoner health and comfort in the name of fine, kind Southern tradition.

  “Our Yankee enemies may be heathens, but we are not, suh,” I said imperiously.

  “Well, we only have the one woman prisoner right now,” he said. “Filthy spy.”

  “She is still a lady.”

  “She is still a prisoner.”

  “I’ll be brief,” I said, and to my great relief, he stepped back.

  As he walked me deeper into the prison, I took careful note of my surroundings, drawing a map in my head. There was the door, barred. There were the paths to exits, there was the guard station, and there was where the guard wore his keys on his right hip and his holstered gun on his left.

  When he unlocked the cell, I noted the exact position, which key he used, and in which direction he turned it. He motioned for me to step inside, and I did, hesitating briefly for show. Prisons did not deter me, of course, but it would be a useful thing to remind him of my femininity. So I raised my handkerchief to my mouth and breathed delicately through its flowers.

  “Much obliged, suh,” I whispered.

  The bars clanged behind me, and for a moment, I thought this could be a ruse to trap me. What if he knew he had two Union spies in his cell instead of one? It was too late, in any case. I quickly turned back to the matter at hand.

  Hattie Lawton sat on a cot in the corner of her cell, her feet on the floor, her elbows on her knees. She’d been taken prisoner on a particularly festive day, it appeared. Her full-skirted dress was printed with a gay pattern of pink roses with green stems and leaves, so artfully done that I could see the thorns from a distance. A pink ribbon at the front, in a bow. Despite her dishevelment, the bow had been tied to a perfect jauntiness and not allowed to unravel.

  “Dear lady. I am Sarah Harrington, a good friend of Belle Boyd. I’m here to make sure you’re as comfortable as you can be, in the circumstances.”

  She did not respond. She merely lifted her head long enough to take me in, and her face gave nothing away.

  “Are you hurt, young lady? Are you well?”

  I worried what they’d done to her. Did she not recognize me? Or was she just being careful, given the circumstances?

  “Let me think on it,” Hattie said guardedly.

  I reached my hands out to hold hers. “We want to do everything we can.”

  The guard lingered behind me. Just reassuring myself that Hattie was still alive was only part of my purpose here. If I could, I needed to speak honestly to her, as ourselves.

  “Might we have some privacy?” I asked. “I need to ask the prisoner some questions about her…female needs.”

  As I’d hoped, the man winced and hastened to get out of our way. I waited until I heard the gate lock behind him, two dozen yards away, so I knew he was out of earshot.

  We lowered our voices. She said it out loud first.

  “Kate, I’m so sorry. They hanged him.”

  “How did they know? Who gave him away?”

  “Rose Greenhow,” said Hattie. “It must have been.”

  I shook my head. It didn’t add up. “But if she knew about him, she’d know about me.”

  “Not necessarily. She might have had her suspicions, but she couldn’t know for sure you were in it together. Many wives don’t know what their husbands do.”

  “Did the third agent get arrested?”

  “What third agent? It was just us two. Me and Tim.”

  I wante
d to ask more, to pry, to seek the truth, but there was so little left in me to fight. I couldn’t hold back any longer. “Oh, Hattie.”

  “Shh,” she said.

  I needed to collect myself. I knew better.

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, then with the sleeve of my butternut homespun dress, much the worse for several days of wear. At least I had the option of changing clothes, a luxury Hattie would do without during her imprisonment. And both of us had much more important matters than fashion to concern us.

  I said softly, “How can I get you out? What’s the best way?”

  “Nothing. Do nothing at all.”

  “How am I supposed to leave you here?”

  “You can, and you will,” she said firmly.

  On some level, some part of me—the remote, recessed part that was still alive—was proud of her. I had chosen her well, all those years ago, and even in these crushing circumstances, she was strong. If she survived, she might grow into a better agent than I’d ever been.

  If she survived.

  “Leave me here,” she said. “They’ve got no real evidence. If they’d had any, they would’ve hanged me with Tim. They don’t hesitate to hang women down here.”

  “Could they be so awful?”

  “What’s awful about it?” She shrugged. “Our crimes are as serious as theirs. Our punishment should be too.”

  “A miserable sort of equality to hope for.”

  Even in these terrible circumstances, she looked proud. “If we take the good, we also have to take the bad. We don’t get to fetch it up piecemeal.”

  I wanted to hug her, but it would raise too much suspicion. I was only supposed to be asking about her needs. And the guard might be back at any moment.

  “We’ll try for an exchange.”

  Then I heard the clinking of keys and knew the guard would be upon us. So I raised myself and said, “It is a terrible story you tell, and I regret that your stay here will last any length of time at all. But my sisters and I will try to come from time to time for conversation and to bring you any items that a lady needs.”

  “Enough now,” said the guard.

  Hattie said, “I’m grateful to you, Miss Harrington.”

  And then we were parted, the heavy bars sliding back into place, with one of us on either side.

  • • •

  Half of me swore to remain in Richmond until I found the person responsible for Tim’s death, no matter what; half of me wanted to flee that cursed city immediately. It was a danger to be there, every moment. My cover identity was a tissue; I had no safety net. If I were captured, no one would come to my aid, not even Hattie. Pinkerton would swear ignorance were I fool enough to implicate him, which I was not. Knowing how desperate my situation was made me feel strangely confident. If I was dead already, I risked nothing; there was no life left to lose.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Hattie’s certainty that only Rose Greenhow could have been responsible for Tim’s betrayal. Nor could I get it out of my head that Pinkerton had contributed to his death by sending him here, and I still did not know whether he’d done so to get him away from me. I couldn’t risk another interview with Hattie, not so soon. And speaking with Pinkerton was out of the question.

  The only way to find out whether Mrs. Greenhow was responsible, I told myself, was to get back to Mrs. Greenhow. I’d been gone only a few days, and I hadn’t used my Washington identity in Richmond. I might be able to slip back into Annie Armstrong’s life, just for a little while.

  I didn’t know what they’d done with Tim’s body. His family would have liked to have it back, I was sure. Perhaps that would happen. But I was out of designs, out of ideas, out of the kind of energy that drives a person forward. I could not wrestle it back, not that day. It was all I could do not to let myself fall from the banks of the river into the swift current. Indeed, I even stood at the river and looked down for a long time. The day was cloudy, and the river reflected the clouds, all churning white water. The rapids looked strangely soft, like soap bubbles or cotton. Perhaps it wouldn’t even hurt.

  The only thing that kept me on the bank was the idea that Tim’s killer needed to be caught and punished, and I wanted be the one to make that happen. I might be the only one who could. And if Mrs. Greenhow were the one responsible, I saw no reason not to kill her with my own two hands.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Actor

  Riding back into Washington alone made my whole body ache. It was not the same city it had been when I left. It was the city where I had fallen in love with Tim. To be there without him would be torture. Yet it was also the same pulsing, lively city, the same beating heart of the nation. The same subtle battleground, the same chessboard, where spies like me and spies like Rose Greenhow met and curtsied and lied to each other’s faces while we dug furiously for secrets.

  The city had not changed. I had. I was in mourning now.

  I needed to remember my mission, which, like me, had changed. My mission had been to find the secrets that would help the Union. Now my mission was to find and punish those responsible for Tim’s death. Inasmuch as those missions overlapped, I could do both. But if I had a choice to make, I knew which I would choose.

  Climbing the steps into the hotel was so terrible, I almost turned and ran. I put one foot in front of the other, and then another, and by the time I crossed in front of the desk, I was fully upright. I wasn’t able to pretend that everything was as it should be, but at least I looked normal enough not to set off alarms in every person I saw.

  “So good to see you’re well!” said the clerk.

  “Oh? I just had some urgent business to settle. I’m sorry I didn’t let you know.”

  “There’ve been messages for you.”

  He handed me a stack of papers, and I swept them into my other hand without looking. I resisted the urge to pitch them out the nearest window. No doubt Pinkerton was furious with my desertion and commanding me to appear for his pleasure somewhere. I was falling apart, and all he would think about was duty. I had a different duty now. My duty was to Tim.

  Upstairs, I set the pile of telegrams on the side table and turned my back on them. I bathed myself and set aside the dress I’d worn in Richmond. I wanted to burn it in the fireplace, but the smoke would have drawn too much attention. I tucked it into an unused suitcase. I was fresh as a daisy on the outside, though a crumbling wreck on the inside, when the clerk called up to announce my visitor.

  It was Rose Greenhow.

  I had wanted to take my time and think how best to approach her. I needed to carefully plan out what I’d say and how I could bring matters to a head without exposing myself. This was not to be. It would have looked too odd to refuse her, so I accepted, and she swept into the room with a gay, bright voice.

  “Mrs. Armstrong! We were so worried about you!”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. Unavoidable. My father’s health…”

  “Where does he live, did you say?”

  “I don’t think I did say. Western Pennsylvania.”

  “And you went all the way there and back alone? Is he all right?”

  “He’s not well,” I said, “but he’s out of immediate danger. Thank you so much for your concern. But is there anything I’ve missed in my absence? Did the Tarletons finish those improvements on their house? Is Mrs. Stone feeling better after her flu?”

  She did not accommodate my wish for light news but instead steered the conversation in the one direction I was not sure I could comfortably handle. “Did you hear they finally hanged a Yankee spy?”

  “No,” I said, “I haven’t seen the papers. Who was it?”

  “It wasn’t in the papers. They don’t want the Yankees to find out.”

  “But people talk.”

  “Officially, there was no such hanging. Because if we hang one of theirs, they’ll
hang one of ours.”

  “If they can catch one.”

  If there was any speck of good in what she said, it was that the hanging was unlikely to be publicized here. If it were in the newspaper, there might be a picture, and someone might remark on the resemblance of the dead man to Mr. Armstrong. It was difficult enough having to talk about him as if he were alive when I knew he wasn’t. I would have to be prepared for new levels of lying, new demands on my acting abilities. I wasn’t sure I could do it. But I looked into Mrs. Greenhow’s eyes and thought, If you did this, I swear, in a week, you’ll be as dead as he is.

  I managed to hold myself together for a half hour of polite conversation, and I sent Mrs. Greenhow off with a promise to call on her the next day. When the door closed behind her, I fell apart immediately. Tim had taken most of his clothes and gear with him, but there was a hastily discarded pair of socks in the corner he had peeled off before climbing into bed with me that last night. I had left them there so my eye could fall upon them, and I could remember him and feel like he was not so far away. Only now, I knew just how far away he was and would always be.

  Still, I left them. They were something he had touched while alive. No hands, even mine, had touched them thereafter. There was some good in that, even as the tears stung my eyes and I wanted to fall down weeping, pounding my fists against my skirt. Even if I missed him so much I wasn’t sure I could bear it. Even if I cursed myself, moment by moment, for my part in the events that led to his death and listed other names I might curse along with my own.

  I searched the room for something else to focus on. My eye fell upon the discarded pile of telegrams that I had not yet opened. Might as well go through them. I could always consign them to the fire if the spirit moved me.

  As I went through them, my brow creased, and I took a seat. If they were from Pinkerton, they were his strangest communications ever and not at all like what he usually sent.

  I KNOW YOUR SECRET

  I looked at the next, dated the following day.