The Spymistress Read online

  Scarcely more than an hour after they departed, the brothers returned, grim-­faced and breathless, as if they had been pursued. Taking her mother’s arm, Lizzie ushered them into the library, glancing over her shoulder to be sure that Mary would not observe them. She would no doubt welcome the bitter news, and if she clapped her little hands and cheered, Lizzie could not trust herself to hold her tongue.

  “They gone and done it,” Peter reported after Lizzie shut the door behind them. “They voted, and Virginia’s out of the Union.”

  “Oh, my word,” said Mother, sinking into a chair by the fireplace.

  Lizzie patted her mother’s shoulder absently, her gaze fixed on the brothers. Perhaps there was yet hope. Whatever measure the secession convention had passed that day would still need to be ratified, and if enough reasonable men voted against it—­ “The ordinance must have passed by a very narrow margin to have passed at all.”

  William shook his head. “Not even close. Eighty-­eight to fifty-­five.”

  “How can this be?” Lizzie exclaimed. “There were more Unionists than secessionists among the delegates. For all his grave predictions, even Mr. Lewis acknowledged that.”

  “Dozens of ’em must’ve had a change of heart,” said Peter. “They say the old governor Mr. Wise made a fiery speech right before the vote. Maybe that’s what did it.”

  “But there have been countless speeches already.” Dizzy, heartsick, Lizzie grasped the tall back of her mother’s chair to steady herself. “Mr. Wise is a fine orator, I grant you, but how could one more bit of rhetoric cause men to abandon all reason?”

  “It wasn’t just powerful speechifying,” said William, “or the old horse pistol some say Mr. Wise was waving around while he spoke. There’s more to it, something we couldn’t quite figure out. So many rumors flying around, it’s hard to tell what’s real. Something about captured federal fortresses.”

  “You mean Fort Sumter, of course,” said Mother.

  “No, not Sumter, not anything in South Carolina,” said Peter. “Here, right here in Virginia.”

  Lizzie went cold. Mother gasped and pressed her fingertips to her lips. “That’s all you know?” Lizzie’s voice sounded distant to her own ears. “You heard no mention of any specific cities, fortresses, anything?”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Lizzie,” said William. “That’s all we got. Maybe if we went back out—­”

  “No, absolutely not. Your mother would never forgive me.” Night had fallen, and it was simply too dangerous to send the Roane brothers out again past curfew, passes or no passes. “You’ve done well. We’re better informed now than we were before, but—­” She steeled herself, suddenly glimpsing a dark and uncertain future that had been awaiting her all along, though she had stubbornly refused to see it. “But in the days to come, we must all endeavor to sharpen our ears and our memories.”

  When the brothers nodded, Lizzie forced a smile, thanked them, and sent them off to the kitchen for their supper. Then she began to pace from the fireplace to the door to the window. A glance outside revealed only the faint glow of lights to the west, where bonfires and torches and effigies were surely burning. “Mr. Lewis will know more,” she said, letting the lace curtain fall, obscuring the glass. “When he returns, he’ll tell us what happened within the Capitol today, and perhaps things will not look so bleak.”

  “Or perhaps they’ll look much worse.” Two deep creases of worry had formed between Mother’s brows. “He’s late. I pray he hasn’t come to any harm.”

  Lizzie glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, and her heart skipped a beat when she discovered that Mr. Lewis was an hour overdue. “I’ll ask Caroline to keep dinner warm,” she said, as calmly as if a ruined meal were the greatest of her concerns. “I’m sure he’s fine, merely delayed, and that’s certainly understandable given all this—­this nonsense.” She waved a hand toward the west, to the Capitol, where madness apparently ruled the day.

  Another hour passed in anxious waiting. When Caroline protested that the chicken would only grow drier and the salad more wilted as the evening wore on, Mother agreed that the family should sit down at the table. They hoped Mr. Lewis would join them belatedly, but the meal was finished and the dishes cleared away, and still he did not return.

  Long after Lizzie’s nieces were tucked into bed and Mother too had bade her good night, Lizzie sat alone in the library with an unopened book of poetry on her lap and a cup of tea cooling on the table by her side, brooding. At the sound of the front door opening, she tossed the book aside, leaped to her feet, and reached the foyer just as William was helping Mr. Lewis out of his coat. “Thank heavens you’re safe,” she greeted him.

  “My sincere apologies for worrying you,” said Mr. Lewis, removing his hat and handing it to William. “I would have sent a message, but there wasn’t a messenger to be had.”

  Lizzie took his arm and led him to the dining room, where Caroline quickly appeared with a remarkably appetizing plate considering how long Mr. Lewis’s dinner had been kept for him. Lizzie held back her questions as long as she could to allow her ravenous guest to eat, but when his pace slowed a trifle, she said, “How did this happen?”

  “I warned you that it might.”

  “Yes, and I thought you were being ridiculously pessimistic, and for that I apologize.” She reached across the table and lay her hand on his arm. “Mr. Lewis, don’t mince words out of concern that you will worry me. I’m not easily frightened, and nothing you say could be worse than what I imagine.”

  Mr. Lewis sat in quiet contemplation, placed his hand over hers for a moment, then took up his knife and began to butter a slice of bread. “In the hours leading up to the vote, I was told that if I failed to vote for secession, I would never leave Richmond alive.”

  Lizzie’s heart thumped, but she held on to her composure. “And yet here you are, safe and sound. I assume you intend to leave the city soon, before they can make good on their threats.”

  He regarded her with an expression of surprise and gratitude. “You didn’t ask me how I voted.”

  “I don’t need to.” She managed a smile. “You of all people would never allow the Intimidation Convention to sway your vote. I can only assume that a great many other delegates lacked your courage.”

  “At the crucial moment, their fear for their own safety outweighed their love of country.” Mr. Lewis’s gloom deepened, and he pushed his plate aside. “Any man who dared profess love for the United States was jeered and stoned whenever he set foot outside the Capitol. We were told we must vote for secession or the streets of Richmond would run with blood.”

  Lizzie sighed and sat back in her chair. If only John Minor Botts had not been excluded from the convention. He would have rallied the Unionists. He would not have allowed them to falter. “I heard a rumor that federal arms have been captured in Virginia.”

  “It grieves me to tell you that’s no mere rumor. And because of it, the vote was lost.” Mr. Lewis rested his arms on the table, his shoulders slumped in exhaustion, all formality momentarily forgotten. “For weeks, perhaps longer, our erstwhile governor and his fellow radicals have been demanding that Governor Letcher seize all federal posts in Virginia before the secession vote. He refused, again and again.”

  “More credit to him,” said Lizzie staunchly, remembering how he had sent the celebrating crowds home after the Confederates captured Fort Sumter.

  “Don’t praise him just yet. Mr. Wise must have grown impatient with Governor Letcher’s delays, because he took matters into his own hands.”

  “What? But how? What do you mean?”

  “Wise ordered the Virginia militia to seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry and the navy yard at Gosport across the river from Norfolk. When it was all said and done, Governor Letcher had no choice but to endorse the actions after the fact.”

  “He certainly did have a choice,” Lizzie prot
ested, stunned. So much of her hopes for Richmond’s future depended upon Governor Letcher’s faithfulness to the Union, which seemed to have crumbled. “He could have denounced Mr. Wise’s treasonous actions. He could have had him arrested.”

  “I don’t know that he could have. All was bedlam in the Capitol, Miss Van Lew—­anger surging, tempers flaring, voices rising. If Letcher had given the order, I don’t know who would have dared to carry it out.” He inhaled deeply, straightening in his chair, interlacing his long, bony fingers on the tabletop. “Near the end of the session, Mr. Wise took the floor and made the most astonishing, the most supernaturally excited speech I’ve ever witnessed.”

  “We heard something of it,” said Lizzie. “I understand he brandished a horse pistol.”

  Mr. Lewis nodded. “Brandished it, then placed it on the desk before him, then lashed out at us Unionists with supernatural fury. When he announced what the militia had done, the chamber rang with wild applause. He seemed charged with electricity, the hair standing straight up from his head. I’ve never witnessed anything like it.”

  He fell silent, his gaze far away. “All around me I could feel my friends’ courage wavering, but I could not hope to rally their spirits against such a powerful display. The vote followed only moments after Wise finished, but I knew then that we had lost, before a single ballot had been cast.”

  Lizzie clenched her hands together in her lap, aching from the effort to hold herself perfectly still. She wanted to bolt to her feet, overturn the table, raise her face to the skies, and let out a ferocious howl of rage and betrayal. But she could do nothing. She could not vote. She had no husband whose vote she could influence. There was nothing she could have done to prevent her city from hurtling itself toward disaster, and yet she must suffer the consequences of actions she had not chosen.

  They would surely be swift and terrible in coming.

  Early the next morning, after a hasty breakfast, Mr. Lewis departed, but not before confiding to Lizzie and John another startling revelation—­he and other Unionist convention delegates from western counties were planning to meet at the Powhatan Hotel to discuss their next step. “We may not secede from the Union with the rest of Virginia,” he said, lowering his voice. He could not be too cautious, even within the home of longtime friends; Mary, bustling and cheerful, could scarcely contain her delight at the result of the vote that had left the rest of the household stunned and outraged, and the makings of a Confederate banner were draped over her sewing basket in the parlor. “It’s been suggested that we break off into our own separate state and remain within the Union.”

  “Is that possible?” queried John. “Is it legal? Constitutional?” Then he shook his head, exasperated with himself. “Foolish question. If Virginia can secede from the United States, western counties can secede from Virginia.”

  “If only Richmond could go with you,” said Lizzie, impassioned. But she knew that was not possible, nor was it what she truly wanted. The breaking apart of her beloved Virginia was almost as terrible as leaving the Union, and it was all too clear that most of her fellow citizens were clamoring to join the Confederacy. Already rumors were circulating that the Confederate capital might move from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, although some newspapers had brazenly proposed Washington instead, as if it were dangling unprotected from a low bough, ripe for the picking.

  Lizzie knew the Union would not relinquish its capital city without a fight.

  “What should we do now?” she asked her brother after Mr. Lewis left. Even as she spoke, she realized that circumstances had stampeded furiously past her, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, while she had stood by watching in disbelief. Now she wanted desperately, irrationally, to shut the corral gate even though she knew it would not bring the wild herd back.

  John thought for a moment. “I’m going to open the hardware store.” He placed a hand on her shoulder and kissed her forehead. “And you, dear sister, should keep to the house unless you can better conceal your feelings. Loyal Unionists like us are outnumbered and surrounded, and until we know who our friends are, you cannot afford to antagonize the rebels—­including my wife.”

  “In that case, it might be more prudent for me to go out,” Lizzie retorted, but his words unsettled her. Until that fateful vote, she had believed herself a part of the political majority, but everything had shifted around her. The Van Lews—­except for her sister-­in-­law—­now resided in enemy territory.

  Lizzie followed her younger brother’s advice for the rest of that day, but the next, impatient and determined to see this strange new Richmond for herself, she decided to call on her friend Eliza Carrington and propose a stroll downtown. Eliza lived on “Carrington Row,” across the street from the Van Lew mansion, and although she was nine years younger than Lizzie, she was her most intimate friend. With Eliza, a proud Virginian and loyal Unionist like herself, Lizzie could speak her mind freely, if only in whispers.

  Eliza greeted her at the door, her soft, wide brown eyes shining with unshed tears. “Oh, Lizzie, it’s too terrible to be believed,” she lamented, flinging herself into her friend’s embrace. Lizzie had to stand on tiptoe and Eliza had to stoop to meet her.

  For a moment, Lizzie clung to her friend, as slender and gentle as a doe, but then she remembered herself. “We mustn’t look too unhappy,” she warned, glancing over her shoulder to see if they had been observed. “Too many of our neighbors are rejoicing.”

  Quickly Eliza released her, straightened, and wiped tears from the corners of her eyes. “Yes, of course you’re right. We must be cautious. But surely we aren’t the only citizens of Richmond who are mourning today?”

  “Surely not the only,” Lizzie conceded, “but I suspect our numbers are few. Why don’t we see for ourselves?”

  Eliza darted back inside to inform her family and returned moments later in her dove-­gray shawl and a new bonnet trimmed in dark purple—­the colors of half mourning, although the choice was probably unintentional. They linked arms and strolled off toward the heart of the city, stifling gasps at the sight of Confederate banners hanging from windows of people they liked and had thought they knew well. Instinctively, they drew closer together whenever they passed a cockerel of a politician standing on a soapbox on a street corner, denouncing the “criminal abolition president,” urging the young men of Richmond to take up arms in defense of their state, and calling for swift measures to join the Confederacy. “We shall have war now,” Lizzie heard a young woman call from her window joyfully, waving her handkerchief at passersby. “We shall have war, if Lincoln is not a coward!”

  Lizzie felt a chill raise the hairs on the back of her neck, and beside her, Eliza moaned and froze in her tracks. War. Of course war was inevitable now. “Come along,” Lizzie murmured, propelling her friend forward. Eliza took a few stumbling steps until she steadied herself, her grip upon Lizzie’s arm tightening.

  Then they turned a corner and through the trees caught their first glimpse of the Capitol building, and they halted, insensible to the crowds milling about them. The flag of the Confederate States of America that Lizzie had glimpsed through the carriage window on Mary Jane’s wedding night was no longer flying atop the dome, replaced by the state flag of Virginia. Lizzie gazed up at the state seal upon the field of bold blue, the Roman goddess Virtus standing with spear and sword above a defeated enemy. The flag was too far away for her to read the motto emblazoned beneath the figures, but Lizzie knew it by heart. “Sic semper tyrannis,” she said quietly, watching the flag of her beloved Virginia snap and wave in the breeze. It was a small comfort that the flag of treason had been taken down, but Lizzie did not doubt that it would fly there again soon.

  “Oh, what will become of our city?” Eliza whispered, her voice breaking. “What will become of us?”

  “Don’t lose heart.” Perhaps it was the sight of the flag of Virginia, but suddenly Lizzie was filled with a sense of calm determin
ation and resolve, stronger than she had ever felt. “We will endure. Whether it takes weeks or months, whatever comes, we will endure.”

  Eliza choked out a nervous laugh. “I wish I could be as brave as you. The sight of that flag makes me want to scurry home and draw the curtains.”

  “Well, then, that is precisely what we must not do.” Lizzie led her friend on at a brisker pace, head held high. “We cannot cower at home. Let us see what we’re up against.”

  Eliza nodded, assumed an air of confidence, and strode along beside her. As they approached the Capitol, the crowds swelled, the air shifted, and voices rose in jubilation. Young ladies and their beaux linked arms and sang “The Marseillaise” while cheerful, whistling clerks adorned shop windows with bunting and banners. People thronged around the bulletin boards posted outside the newspaper offices, jostling one another as they pressed forward, some exclaiming aloud at whatever it was they read there. On street corners and in front of hotels, officious gentlemen took down the names of younger fellows in small leather books, calling out for other volunteers to enlist, warning them that now was the time to choose their company rather than await a possible draft later and risk being stuck in an undesirable post. Lizzie shuddered and said a silent prayer of thanksgiving that John would surely be too old for a draft, if the rebel government decided to implement one. Elsewhere, she spotted other men, pale and silent, walking alone with their hands in their pockets and shoulders hunched, while others gathered in small groups, speaking quietly and exchanging furtive glances. She recognized a few—­the red-­haired, stocky Scottish baker; a tall, black-­bearded man in a railroad engineer’s suit and cap—­but most were strangers to her. The guarded anger in their eyes reminded her of John’s warning to conceal her feelings, and with great effort she relaxed her strained features and put on a vaguely pleasant smile.