The Spymistress (10 page)

“Not within my own home, I’m not. Who here would betray me?” She fixed Mary with a challenging stare, and when Mary looked away, she steeled herself and turned to John. “You say it was a costly victory. Dare I hope the Union did not suffer as many casualties in defeat?”

It was a vain hope, and she knew the answer even before John shook his head. “There were heavy losses on both sides. It may prove to be the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil.”

“Hundreds of women were made widows yesterday,” said Mother softly. “Hundreds of children lost fathers. Hundreds of parents lost sons.”

Suddenly Lizzie felt heartsick and ashamed for bickering so pettily while young men were dying, and one glance at Mary convinced her that her sister-in-law felt the same.

. . .

After so many parades and bonfires and artillery salutes, the day was strangely still as an expectant hush shrouded the city. The Confederates had won, but at what cost? Later, when John came home from Van Lew & Taylor, he reported that Mayor Mayo had presided over a citizens’ meeting at City Hall, where they had organized three committees: one to establish hospitals and care for the wounded, another to raise funds, and a third, led by the mayor himself, to travel to the battlefield and help tend to the casualties. A storm rolled in that afternoon and a heavy downpour fell throughout the night, but thousands of citizens waited anxiously in the rain at the depot for the trains from Manassas, hoping for some word of their loved ones.

President Davis returned to the capital on Tuesday, and he offered a speech on the train platform and another, later, from the Spotswood Hotel. In the days to come, Lizzie would learn that he had described how the Confederate heroes had repulsed the Yankee invaders, sending them scurrying back to Washington City. She would hear that Mr. Davis had not led troops into battle after all but had kept well behind the advancing lines, rallying stragglers, reassuring the wounded, and congratulating the victors. She would hear tales of how Colonel Thomas Jackson had spotted a gap in the defensive line and had driven his troops forward to protect it against a Union attack, inspiring one impressed general to exclaim, “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall!” He earned a promotion to major general for his courage and quick thinking on the battlefield—and a new nickname.

The number of Southern men killed, wounded, and captured was still being tallied as the press lauded the fallen as heroes and declared that the victory proved that neither raw Yankee volunteers nor the regular army could withstand the charge of the Confederate bayonet. “It would be difficult to overestimate the effect of the victory that has been gained for the Southern cause,” proclaimed the
Examiner
, reveling in the great number and value of Union men and artillery captured and predicting dire consequences for Yankee recruitment efforts, as well as the United States stock market. “By the work of Sunday, we have broken the backbone of invasion and utterly broken the spirit of the North.”

Lizzie fumed at the suggestion that the Union would abandon hope so readily, and even Mary fretted at the newspaper’s boast that “the sentiment of invincibility will take possession of every man of the South,” and its extraordinary prediction that the worst of the war was behind them. “Mrs. Chesnut says that Mr. William Trescot says that these easy, early victories will lull the South into a fool’s paradise of conceit, and in the meantime, the shameful losses will light a fire beneath the men of the North.”

“Mrs. Chesnut said Mr. Trescot said that?” Mother asked lightly. “Goodness. I’ve never met the gentlemen, but he talks like a Yankee. Did anyone ask where he was born?”

“South Carolina.” Mary shook her head. “I don’t mean to say that I asked him. Mrs. Chesnut told me. I never would have embarrassed him by making him admit he was not born in Virginia.”

“Well, we can’t all be,” said Mother, the only one among them who had not been.

“We’ve discovered another common cause, you and I,” Lizzie told her sister-in-law with a levity she did not feel. “We agree that the Confederates may become overconfident, and we’re united in our displeasure with the press.”

“These are strange times indeed,” Mary replied. Lizzie burst out laughing, but only after Mary shot her a sour glare did she realize that her sister-in-law had spoken in all seriousness.

There was little enough to laugh about in the days following the Battle of Manassas. Soon hundreds of wounded came streaming into Richmond, quickly filling the hospitals and overflowing into schools, hotels, and warehouses that had been hastily turned into makeshift infirmaries. Many citizens welcomed ill and wounded soldiers into their own homes, tending their injuries and nursing them back to health as best they could. Dozens more soldiers were brought back to the city in plain pine boxes, to be buried in Richmond or to be shipped farther South to their grieving families. Across the street from the Van Lew mansion, Saint John’s Church hosted an almost continuous succession of memorial services, and from her window Lizzie observed so many military funerals for slain Confederate officers, with black-clad bands in procession with marching soldiers and warhorses bearing empty saddles that she could not keep track of their numbers. The scenes of mourning wrenched Lizzie’s heart, not only because she knew many of the deceased and had considered them friends before secession had driven a wedge between their families, but because their deaths were so needless. The cotton states never should have seceded, Virginia never should have cast her lot with the South, and war never should have broken out.

Soon, into this strange, volatile brew of triumph and mourning spilled nearly a thousand Union prisoners, bedraggled, demoralized, and hungry, many bearing untended wounds. With county jails already full beyond capacity, the captives were marched from Richmond’s Central Depot to Liggon’s Tobacco Factory, mere blocks from the Van Lew residence. When Lizzie read the terse newspaper accounts of hundreds of men being squeezed into a three-story brick structure that could not possibly accommodate them all, she became almost breathless from dismay. There were no beds, no sanitary facilities, no kitchens in the factory, only tobacco presses and perhaps a few offices. Reports that Brigadier General John H. Winder, the inspector general of military camps for Richmond, intended to commandeer a few other factories and warehouses to convert to military prisons did nothing to alleviate her worries.

She wasted not a moment worrying what the neighbors might think, nor did she pause to invite her mother or Eliza to accompany her. Instead she left her house alone, nodded to the man with the tobacco-stained beard sitting on a fence across from Saint John’s—he nodded sheepishly back—and strode purposefully downhill toward the river, pausing at Twenty-Fifth and Main to study the prison and steel her nerves. From the street, the building seemed unchanged except for the uniformed military guards posted at the main entrance and others patrolling the block, rifles in hand.

Lizzie took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and approached the nearest guard. “Good afternoon,” she said pleasantly, fixing the plump young fellow with a winning smile. “I’m here to see your commandant.”

“You mean Lieutenant Todd, Ma’am?” The soldier frowned at her quizzically. “Is he expecting you?”

She took her watch from her pocket, glanced at the time, and feigned surprise. “My goodness, no. It’s not yet half past one.” Taken separately, both statements were true. “Would you be so kind as to escort me nonetheless?”

He hesitated, but then he nodded and showed her inside, where the smells of tobacco and sweat mingled unpleasantly above something else, something rotten and fetid that she dared not allow herself to think too much about. Floorboards creaked overhead as if trod upon by hundreds of aching, poorly shod feet, and in the distance she heard a long moan of pain, which cut off abruptly just as her guide halted at a closed door. “Wait here, if you please, Ma’am,” he said, and ducked inside, only to return a moment later looking somewhat shamefaced. “The lieutenant will see you, Ma’am. You can go on in.”

She thanked him graciously and swept into the small office, which boasted a worn pine desk with a pair of low-backed wooden chairs arranged before it. Along the walls, bookcases were stuffed with hundreds of papers and files. Behind the desk, a man who looked to be not yet thirty rose and gave her a stiff bow. His dark hair was parted on the right and combed back, and his visage boasted a long, tapered mustache that curved upward and thick, short chin whiskers. “Good afternoon, Madam,” he greeted her, gesturing to one of the low-backed chairs. “You must forgive me for not offering you a more solicitous welcome, but I was not informed of our appointment, nor did my aide think to introduce us. I am Lieutenant Todd, the commander here.”

Lizzie’s heart thumped as she seated herself. The prison commandant was none other than David Humphreys Todd, half brother to Mary Todd Lincoln and brother-in-law to President Abraham Lincoln. How did a man with such relations end up a rebel? “I am Elizabeth Van Lew, of Church Hill. Thank you for seeing me.”

“It’s my pleasure,” he said perfunctorily, but as he returned to his chair behind the desk, a glimmer of recognition appeared in his eye. “Van Lew of Church Hill. Are you not the widow of John Van Lew, who made his fortune in hardware?”

“That would be my mother, Eliza Baker Van Lew,” said Lizzie. “I am their eldest child. My brother, John Newton, runs the store now.”

“Ah, yes, of course.” The lieutenant’s brow furrowed. “And to what do I owe the honor of your visit?”

“I come on a mission of Christian charity,” she said. “I would like to serve as hospital nurse for the Union prisoners.”

He had taken up a pen, but at her words his hand froze in the air, suspending the nib above the ink. “You are the first and only lady to make any such application.”

“Why, then, the need is even greater than I anticipated.”

Lieutenant Todd set down his pen emphatically, steepled his fingers, and rested them upon the desk. “If charity is what compels you, why not offer to nurse our own suffering soldiers?”

Lizzie smiled knowingly. “The young belles of Richmond nearly ran me over in their haste to volunteer for that noble duty. Since our gallant soldiers have an abundance of nurses, I thought I would be more useful caring for those who might otherwise be neglected.”

“Our soldiers don’t have an abundance of anything,” said the lieutenant sharply. “And neglect is better than the Yankee scum deserve.”

“Lieutenant Todd,” said Lizzie, shocked. “Wounded men suffer whether they hail from the South or the North. Where is your compassion?”

“I’ll reserve my compassion for the innocent and the just.” He shook his head and leaned back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest. “Altogether I find this a very odd and disquieting request. A prison, even a prison hospital, is no place for a lady. I cannot believe you would volunteer for such work if you knew what it’s like in here.”

“I would like to know,” said Lizzie. “May I meet some of the prisoners?”

“Absolutely not. I would be remiss in my duties to expose you to such filth.”

“Only the officers, then,” Lizzie quickly countered. “Surely they are gentlemen despite being Yankees, and they would behave as gentlemen ought.”

“I’m not willing to give them a chance to disappoint you.” He rose and came around the desk to assist her to her feet, and her heart sank as she realized the interview was over. “If you want to serve the Confederacy, then look to our own suffering men. Your good works would be wasted upon these wretches.”

She pressed her lips together tightly and nodded as he showed her to the door, unable to trust herself to speak. The same guard was waiting in the hallway, and he escorted her outside, where she thanked him graciously, as if the meeting had gone exactly as she had wanted. Then she turned and walked briskly away, her anger smoldering. How dare Lieutenant Todd turn her away! It would cost him nothing in time, money, or inconvenience to let her nurse the poor injured men, and yet he would prefer to let them suffer.

She would have to go over his head—but to whom?

She pondered her options as she walked the mile between the prison and the Custom House on the corner of Tenth and Main, where the Confederate government kept its offices. Gazing up at the five round arches that formed the arcade marking the entrance to the grand Italianate structure, she quickly ran through a mental list of the men who toiled within its granite and limestone walls. To whom could she appeal? She knew no one in the president’s innermost circle; there were no Virginians in the Cabinet, as the Confederate government had formed before Virginia seceded. Who, among these people who did not know her, would listen?

And then she remembered Mr. Memminger.

Christopher G. Memminger, the secretary of the treasury, was a native of Germany but had immigrated to the United States with his mother when he was a very young child. He was a South Carolinian to the core—and also a devout Christian. Although he had no direct authority over the prisons, he had influence with those who did.

Lizzie gathered up her skirts and climbed the stairs, passing beneath an enormous Confederate flag as she entered the stronghold of the rebel government.

Perhaps curiosity inspired Secretary Memminger to make time to speak with her, because she waited in his outer office scarcely a quarter of an hour before an aide ushered her inside. The room was about the size of Lieutenant Todd’s, but much tidier and brighter, with a window that looked out upon Bank Street and the pleasant smell of lemon oil and fresh sawdust in the air, the latter a remnant of the partitions hastily constructed to divide a large room into several smaller, private chambers.

Secretary Memminger rose and bowed when she entered. “Miss Van Lew, welcome,” he greeted her, offering her a comfortable chair by the window, though he remained standing. He was a gentlemen not yet sixty years of age, with fair hair, dark-blue eyes, and chiseled features. “What request would you make of the Department of the Treasury?”