The Crescent Spy (18 page)

Ludd also seemed nervous and had been pacing back and forth across the deck, stopping periodically to ask Josephine if she’d heard or seen anything. She had pieced together the commodore’s battle plan by asking pointed questions of the crew, but she wasn’t going to explain it to her rival, so she shrugged and claimed ignorance. At last, the tension seemed too much for Ludd, and he fled belowdecks where he supposed he’d be safer.

Near as she could tell, the plan was simple. Hollins would send
Manassas
in first, to seek out the biggest Union warship and ram it. The instant the ram made contact, its captain was to send up three signal rockets to notify the rest of the mosquito fleet, after which the men on
Ivy
,
McRae
, and
Tuscarora
would light their fire rafts and send them downstream. There, the chains that held the rafts together would hopefully close them against the prow of one of the other Union ships and set it on fire. When that happened, and with
Manassas
continuing to sow fear and confusion, the rest of the mosquito fleet would steam into battle, firing with everything they had.

Calhoun
pulled in behind the ram, which could no longer be seen in the darkness. Here Hollins ordered the crew to maintain position, the paddle wheels holding them steady in the current, while he waited for
Manassas
to do its work.

From ahead came a burst of sparks from the single stack of
Manassas.
They’d kept her fires damped, but now, Josephine knew, they were throwing in pitch, sulfur, and tallow to stoke the engines as they gained speed. All stealth was gone. Now was the time to play out the battle.

From the Union forces ahead came a red signal light, followed by another. Dark, menacing shapes formed a V across the river downstream. Suddenly, the night exploded with the flash and roar of cannon fire. Illuminated was a big Union warship, and the dark, low-slung shape of
Manassas
thrusting toward it, seemingly unharmed by all the shells blasting in its direction. A second Union warship let loose with a roar of cannon.

There was a terrific grinding, splitting sound. Metal tearing through wood. Three signal rockets went up, and a cheer went up from the deck of
Calhoun
. The ram had struck true.

Hollins shouted orders. Men went running everywhere. Someone tried to drag Josephine below, but she resisted, and he soon gave up. One by one the fire rafts of the Confederate force were lit, and they drifted downstream, their flames illuminating the night in garish orange and yellow light.

Now all four of the powerful Union warships were blasting away, shooting at
Manassas
, at the fire rafts, and into the darkness, as if they could sense the Confederates lurking upstream. One of the Union sloops came steaming upriver. It dwarfed
Manassas
below and would soon overtake it. But then the Union crew seemed to see the fire rafts drifting toward it, and the sloop reversed course and fled back downstream. Now it was
Manassas
that seemed likely to be caught by the burning rafts. Josephine had a vision of the rafts entangling the iron ram and cooking all the men inside like frogs boiling in an iron kettle, but at the last moment the ram steered toward the shore, as if attempting to ground itself among the knees of bald cypress trees.

The Union ships continued to launch broadsides, and shells came raining down all around. The smaller boats from the mosquito fleet returned fire, but it was obvious that if the Union could get around the fire rafts, their superior size, guns, and speed would make short work of the Confederates. For the first time, the men of
Calhoun
seemed close to panic.

But as the fire rafts of the Confederates drifted into the Union anchorage, the big sloops raised sail, fired up their boilers, and headed downstream to escape the conflagration. Only a couple of smaller, auxiliary ships kept up the fight.

Unfortunately for the Confederates, both
Manassas
and
Tuscarora
had run themselves agro
und in the chaos of battle and the small Union vessels remaining were enough to fight the mosquito fleet to a standstill. Once again, Josephine was shocked that the more powerful Union warships had not stayed to fight. If they had, the Confederates would have been in trouble.

The next few hours were a chaos of short, running battles. The mosquito fleet, trying to organize itself, eventually pulled upriver to regroup. When dawn came, word came that only a couple of small Union boats remained at Head of Passes, and Hollins ordered the mosquito fleet to regroup and charge back downriver. They came around a bend in the southwest passage and discovered that one of the federal sloops and a small side-wheel steamer had come upriver again. In the Confederate fleet,
Ivy
had the biggest gun and seemed to be scoring direct hits against the main Union warship, but it was shortly driven off again by the Union ship’s big guns.

Finally, the Union fleet seemed to be retreating for good, and Hollins ordered his forces to pull back upriver to lick their own wounds. They’d taken too much damage and expended too many shells to keep up the fight. Several of the Confederate guns had been knocked off their carriages, two boilers had taken damage, and the ram
Manassas
was crippled, its stack knocked off, and it needed to be towed upriver. Still, Hollins’s men were celebrating on the decks. Rumors were flying that they’d sunk one of the big Union warships and crippled two others that would be lucky to make it into the Gulf without going down. The blockade was as good as broken.

Josephine hadn’t seen that. She’d seen a battle won only through the incompetence and lack of command from the Union side, and through sheer luck by the only slightly less disorganized Confederate mosquito fleet. None of the Union ships had been lost. She was sure of that.

But later, as she filed a jubilant report, she reported the misinformation that would also soon be appearing in the
Picayune
as well. She filed two more, longer stories, sent upstream by courier, while she stayed behind at the forts to do reconnaissance and to meet with the crew of
Manassas.

On October 23, the crippled ram finally arrived in New Orleans under tow, a full week and a half after the battle. Josephine traveled with the towing boat, writing and writing and writing during the entire trip. Far from discouraged by the Union loss, she was energized by what she’d seen and learned.

From the docks, she made her way straight to the house of Mrs. Dubreuil in the Garden District, armed with a fully realized plan for the Union capture of New Orleans.

M
rs. Henry J. Dubreuil, neé Margaret O’Reilly, was a statuesque beauty, her hair still black and lustrous even though she appeared to be over fifty. She had one of those interesting faces that made Josephine wish she had studied portraiture so she could paint it, with a strong chin, high cheekbones, and hazel eyes flecked with green.

The woman seemed momentarily surprised when the doorman admitted Josephine, but quickly recovered. She said she had another guest in the back parlor, but if Josephine could wait in the music room, she would return shortly. Meanwhile, she would send in tea for Josephine while she waited.

Mrs. Dubreuil lived in a handsome two-story brownstone with wrought-iron fencing protecting its sumptuous gardens. The fireplace was marble, the furniture of black walnut, upholstered in damask. Thick burgundy carpets covered the floors. A beautiful green-lacquered grand piano sat in one corner. The tea arrived served in fine china, with silver teaspoons imported from England. Josephine ate the cucumber sandwiches, wishing she’d taken the time to return to the hotel to change and clean up before rushing over.

She was hungry, however, and after two weeks living with sailors and soldiers, seemed to have lost her manners. She’d devoured the entire plate of sandwiches before she caught herself. What was keeping that woman? It must have been forty minutes.

Unbidden, Josephine’s thoughts turned to that night in Congo Square at the end of September, when she’d spied the Colonel and Francesca arm in arm. They’d spotted her, too. Josephine had studiously avoided thinking about them, but now she couldn’t help it as she considered who Mrs. Dubreuil might be meeting with.

The first shock had been seeing the Colonel with her mother’s former dancing companion. Josephine couldn’t remember anything more than friendly, cordial behavior between the two women during the time on
Crescent Queen
, but of course Josephine had been thirteen years old at the time. Maybe the Colonel and Francesca had been lovers all along. They must have found some way to connect after the Colonel was caught cheating at cards. He’d been persona non grata on
Crescent Queen.

Never mind that. How and when they’d ended up together wasn’t as important as figuring out why they were in New Orleans. Francesca must have recognized Josephine during the crossing on the blockade-runner. Probably not at first, or she wouldn’t have changed her story to claim she was French, and not Spanish. But eventually she had recognized her, maybe during that dinner at the Paris Hotel. Francesca then traveled upriver to Memphis to tell her husband, the so-called “great patriot.”

After that, the two of them must have come to New Orleans with the express purpose of searching for Josephine. But why? To look for the gemstones the Colonel had hidden in the lacquered box? Or did he mean to worm his way into her affections again? Hah. Josephine could not, would not forgive him for what he’d done. And if Francesca was his wife or mistress, that made her an enemy, too.

Josephine was starting to think about that horrible night of her mother’s death. With the memory of the river battle at Head of Passes so fresh, it was easy enough to recall the way the fire reflected off the river. The heat, the noise. And that brought the memory of screams, the scent of burned flesh. The panic when the drowning man threw his arm around her neck and pulled her under.

To distract herself, she picked up her leather satchel and took out the thick sheaf of papers—the work of two weeks, and, she was convinced, information and analysis vital to the war effort. She was engrossed in rereading it when the door to the music room opened. It wasn’t Mrs. Dubreuil, but it wasn’t the Colonel, either, thank God.

Instead, she found herself facing Franklin Gray. The young Pinkerton agent looked trim and in good health, and pleased to see her. She rose to her feet, her relief giving way to embarrassment at her bedraggled appearance.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Oh, was it you Mrs. Dubreuil was meeting with on the other side of the house?”

“She wasn’t meeting with anyone. That was to keep you still while she sent for me. When I heard, I came as fast as I could.” Franklin shook his head, looking disappointed. “We have a system for sending information. Why didn’t you follow it?”

“That system led to the ridiculous lost opportunity at Head of Passes. I had advance notice of rebel intent, but no way to warn the fleet. If I’d had a way to send a telegraph—”

“You could have sent a telegraph straight to Washington and it wouldn’t have done any good. The fleet had no way to receive it. Anyway, what’s the rush now? You weren’t supposed to make direct contact with Mrs. Dubreuil.” Franklin held out his hand for the papers, but she was reticent. “Come on, hand them over,” he said.

“This has to get through. And to be honest, I don’t trust you to do the job.”

“I would never censor your observations.”

“It’s not my observations that will make you balk, it’s my analysis.”

“Oh, right.” He looked irritated. “More from the petticoat general.”

Her face flushed with heat. “Why, you devil! How dare you?”

“It’s your own fault.” Franklin held up his hands to head off her huffy reply. “We agreed that you would equivocate last time around. Instead, you sent the same ‘do this, do that’ report that you showed me in the first place.”

Some of her anger deflated. “I tried to rewrite it, but I couldn’t manage. All that equivocating larded up the prose. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s flabby writing.”

“It wasn’t a question of writing, good or bad—”

“It’s always about the writing,” she interrupted.

“It’s a question of politics. You can’t tell these generals what to do. You have to let them believe they came up with the idea themselves. That goes doubly if you’re a woman.”

Josephine grunted. “So what happened? They dismissed it out of hand?”

“Worse than that. I was ordered to send you back to Washington so they could find someone more tractable.”

“I’m not going back. I don’t care what they say.”

“Now, hold on. It didn’t end there. I protested—there was some argument. Somehow the whole business found itself on the president’s desk. He threw sand on the fire, and that was the end of it. You’ll stay in New Orleans.”

Josephine sat down with a sigh. She thought about all the hours she’d spent writing her military suggestions. No doubt it would be tossed in the rubbish bin as soon as it arrived in Washington, if the couriers even risked carrying it via the network of trains and riders necessary to travel the breadth of enemy territory. And this was not the sort of information that could be sent by telegraph.

She thumbed through the papers until she found what she’d written about the current condition of Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip. “Look at this.”

Franklin sat next to her and looked it over. “Hmm.”

“So you see that we missed an opportunity. A few hundred men could have taken the fort in August. Not anymore.”

“Just because it could have been taken, didn’t mean that we had the means to do so. You saw it yourself—Commodore Hollins routed us from the river.”

“I’ve considered that, too.” She pulled out a few more papers. “Forget the nonsense I wrote in the
Crescent
. This is my true analysis. We should have won easily. The Confederates had initiative and energy, but nothing more. The rebels didn’t break the blockade, we raised it for them by fleeing in terror. And after all that, I’ll bet we’ve closed the passes again already.”

Franklin didn’t answer that, but shrugged without looking up from her papers.

“There’s no need to keep secrets from me,” she said. “Right now I know more than the War Department.”

“You’re right. Nothing was sunk on the Union side. The blockade is back in place. Captain Pope is being replaced by someone with more intestinal fortitude.”

“Pope?” she asked. “He was the one on
Richmond
? Very poor showing. If he’d taken two ships upstream, he would have found the ram lodged in the mud and destroyed or captured her. Likely would have trapped Hollins’s entire fleet before they reached the safety of Fort Jackson’s guns.”

Her confidence was growing, and now she took out her battle plan and put it on his lap.

He thumbed through the thick, handwritten document, complete with sketches. “What is this?”

“This is how we capture New Orleans.”

His eyebrows raised. “Oh?”

“Read it,” she urged.

“No, you tell me.”

“New Orleans is on a swamp. Fewer than five thousand poorly trained militia defend it, and it can only be reinforced by water, either from the river or from Lake Pontchartrain. And any reinforcement would take weeks. Even with sufficient men, New Orleans wouldn’t be easy to defend. Few fortifications, and half the city lies below river level. A ship like
Richmond
could blast holes in the levee and flood it.”

“If the rebels can’t defend it, then how do you propose that the Union do so once it’s taken?”

“It can’t be defended from the land. But we have a navy. The Confederacy has merely a mosquito fleet. It can sting and bite. It can’t sustain a campaign.”

“Until the ironclads are finished. That will change the rules of the game.”

“And when will that happen?” she asked.

“They say the first of the year. I’m not so sure. Maybe February?”

“All the more reason to move now.” Josephine took back one of the papers and turned it over to show her calculations. “I figure we need ten thousand men to take the city by force and garrison it, and ten or fifteen warships to patrol the water between the Gulf and Baton Rouge.”

“You make it sound so easy. There are a dozen enemy forts and fortified cities between here and Union territory. It might be a year before we can control the Ohio, let alone come down the Mississippi to seize Vicksburg and Baton Rouge. Until they fall, New Orleans is safe.”

“I’m not talking about sailing down the river. I’m talking about coming up. Bringing wooden ocean vessels over the bar from the Gulf.”

“After what just happened? Now is hardly the time—”

“Especially now. Trust me when I say it would work. The key is to get past Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip. That’s the only difficulty.”

“Oh, is that all? And I suppose you have a scheme for that?”

She chewed her lip. “That’s admittedly a weak point in my plan. But not insurmountable.” She pointed to a diagram of the land below Fort Jackson. “Look down here. The Confederates haven’t cleared the woods. Troops could land here, protected from the enemy guns, and march overland to take the lower fort. After that, we cut the chain barrier and bring the boats to make a fast run past St. Philip to New Orleans. Once the city falls, St. Philip will be forced to surrender or starve.”

Franklin studied her diagrams and analysis in silence for several minutes. At last, he shook his head. “I simply don’t know enough about either naval or land operations. This is either brilliant or harebrained. Maybe both.” He looked at her, admiration and wonder in his eyes. “How do you know so much about these things?”

“I am a quick study,” she said with a hint of false modesty.

“Yes, but where? How do you even know these military terms?”

“I’ve always been fascinated by military matters.”

“You said as much in the White House. I didn’t understand the full extent of your interest or knowledge. Why? And how?”

“Why, who can say? I had a book about Waterloo that I read as a girl and learned everything I could about Napoleon. I talked to old soldiers and looked at forts on the river. But my interest was casual, undisciplined. Then, as soon as the war broke out, I realized that with a more thorough knowledge I could be a war writer without equal. That sounds boastful, I know, but you’ve read the rubbish that passes muster with the papers.”

“Most of it is rot,” he agreed. “Go on.”

“I started reading everything I could get my hands on about the subject. An officer from the military-strategy department at West Point kindly loaned me a trunk full of books. Then I interviewed officers and enlisted men as the fighting started in Virginia and along the coast. I toured forts, inspected encampments.”

“But you’re a woman.”

“Exactly. How do you think I kept my cover as Joseph Breaux for so long? Nobody expected a woman to be covering military affairs.”

Franklin looked back at her pages. “I may not know much, but one thing I do know is that generals don’t like advice from civilians. Even the president has a hard time getting through to them.” He hesitated. “If I send this, there’s a good chance that I end my career.”

“But if it works, if the War Department adopts the plan and takes New Orleans, you’ll be a hero.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “I’ll get all the credit if it fails. But if it works, generals and politicians will take the glory.”

“But you’ll always know the truth. That’s what matters.”

He gave her a look. “Oh, so now you’re disavowing personal glory?”

Josephine grinned back at him. “Of course not. When the war is over, I plan to write a tell-all. Once the truth is out, they’ll put my bust on a pedestal beneath the Capitol rotunda.”