Alias Dragonfly (22 page)

My aunt, Nellie and I buried Isaac in a colored cemetery, of course, as Negro folks couldn’t even lie dead next to the whites of this city. How many times will I be dressed in mourning black? I shuddered.

We knelt before a headstone with Isaac’s name etched on it, paid for by my aunt, a gift of sorts she could hardly afford. As we walked from the gravesite, I spotted a familiar figure over by a clump of trees.

“I’ll catch up with you, Aunt Salome,” I said, “I want to linger here for a moment.” I pressed my aunt’s hand to my lips. I had no words for what she had done and how I had misread her.

I watched the two women leave. My aunt’s arm was around Nellie’s shoulders.

When I was sure they’d gone, I hurried to Mr. Webster. I’d learned to spot my teacher from afar. He looked so tired, and much, much older. He moved stiffly—rheumatism, he said.

“Miss Madeline, Mr. Pinkerton wants you to know he was most saddened to hear about Nellie’s brave son. Isaac’s work will continue until all his people are free. Mr. Pinkerton promises that. That is the great task of this war.”

“I know it is, sir.”

Mr. Webster got up very slowly. His back was hunched. He grimaced in pain. “You are an able agent now, Miss Bradford. When I first met you, I saw a youngster of rare abilities. Now I see that you are becoming a strong woman.”

“Thank you for being my teacher, sir. I could not have asked for better.” I was flooded with emotion and pride. “Are you going back to Richmond?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, sighing.

“I’ll go with you!”

“You cannot. Mr. Pinkerton is sending Jane Smith with me. We will be posing as husband and wife. I’ve prepared my Confederate contacts there for the arrival of my ‘wife.’ I’ve gotten her a job as a clerk in their war department. It is a complete infiltration, as Mr. Pinkerton would say.”

Was I envious? Oh, yes, but after all, I was a newcomer. Mr. Webster and Jane Smith were part of the early force, Mr. Pinkerton’s best, and all seemed arranged.

I must have looked downcast. “There is much for you to do here, Miss Madeline. But be on alert at all times.” He touched my face.

“Do you know anything about Jake Whitestone, Mr. Webster?”

“When he wrote in his last dispatch that Richmond was ‘The Kingdom of the Cruel,’ the Confederates I have cultivated there vowed he would be captured and imprisoned. I could not stop them.”

“Is he still there?”

“I don’t know. I hope not. A Richmond prison is a terrible place to be. I’ll do what I can to help Mr. Whitestone. Goodbye, Miss Madeline.”

He said goodbye with such finality, it was like a ghost had floated out from a grave and passed right though him.

A low billow of fog drifted over the grass. He walked away into that fog.

Remember when I told you about my nightmare? Here is how it really happened.

I stayed in the cemetery until it was nearly dark, just sitting on the ground and thinking about all that had happened to me. I was so lost in thought that I did not sense her approaching. That was a grave error. I vowed I would never let it happen again.

“Turn around,” a female voice whispered. “Now.” Before I could duck away or kick back or grab her arm, I felt a gun against my head.

I turned slowly, my hands in the air.

I faced her full on. I gasped. We are so alike: wide-set blue eyes, rambling brown curls, and tall, close in age—young, we are young. We are wearing wrinkled black frocks that hang loose on our thin frames. Are we in mourning, or in disguise? We might pass for sisters. But I don’t have a sister, not a living one.

I locked eyes with her, planning my next move. She cocked her pistol.

I ducked down and darted past her. She fired at me. The bullet grazed my hair. I heard her panting hard behind me like a slave-tracking hound after its quarry. I turned and slammed my boot into her knee. She fell; her weapon flew out of her hand, and into the grass. I grabbed it. I put my foot on her back. She thrashed, cursing.

I yanked her up by the arm, my gun in her side. “Walk,” I ordered. She stamped down hard on my foot. “No! Damn you, Yankee devil.”

“You’ll never see tomorrow,” the girl whispered as we fought. I reached for her head, but my hand slipped to the ruffling at the top of her bodice. It ripped apart. A piece of rolled-up paper fell from the tear and dropped to the ground. I grabbed it up and jammed it down into my boot.

She kicked me hard in the side, knocking me to the ground. Then she leapt up and ran. I crawled after her, breathing hard. Just as I reached her, she yanked up a wooden door that was on the ground and pushed me into a big hole.

The skirt of my dress caught on splintering wood as I plunged into inky darkness, grasping for anything to break my fall. Something hit my face, something long. It was a rope with a bucket attached to it. I was falling into a well! I could hear water bubbling and sloshing below me. I grabbed the rope and held on with all my strength.

“Night, night, little darlin’,” she called out, her laughter echoing in the well until she slammed the wooden door shut. I heard the heavy thuds of rocks being piled above, sealing me in. And then, there was dead silence. Any jot of sympathy for this Rebel left me.
You are not going to die here,
I told myself.

I took long, deep breaths to quiet my tumbling mind. I imagined my hands were made of iron and my legs were like twisty snakes. So like a monkey on the trunk of a thin palm tree, I pulled and grasped and heaved and hoisted myself up the rope. I twisted my body, until I was upside down. When my feet touched the trapdoor, I kicked at it. Hard.

The door flew open an inch, but the weight of the rocks on top slammed it shut again. Still holding fast to the rope, I swung my legs until finally, on the last heave, the rocks flew off the trapdoor. I pulled myself over the edge and landed in a soggy pile of pine needles. My eyes were fixed on the darkness, my ears strained for the slightest sound.

I crouched down, testing my legs and moving my aching arms, the torn skirt of my dress dragging on the ground; my mess of curls dripping with leaves.

As I was crawling along, I spotted the Rebel girl clawing at the grass, searching for her lost dispatch. Before she could move, I pinned her, face down, my body lying across hers. She bucked and scratched as I held her down. Straddling her, with one hand I ripped a piece of cloth from my skirt and bound her hands behind her.

I pulled her to her feet. “Welcome to the Union, little darlin’,” I whispered in her ear. She kicked me hard in the shin. I pushed her along. My bosses’ headquarters wasn’t far. Out of the darkness, a hard little hand gripped mine. I went to bite down on whomever it belonged to when—

“Ouch! Cut it out! It’s me,” he said. “We’ve been looking all-the-heck over for you.” The little hand with a bite mark on it was attached to a small, well-muscled arm that was attached to a tiny body topped by a jaunty, round face under a battered slouch hat.

No wonder I didn’t sense Mike close to me. His stealth was legendary by now.

“We have to get her dispatch to headquarters,” I said, holding out the tiny rolled-up paper. The girl cursed again.

I pulled some kind of a wiggly black bug from my curls. It skittered away.

“What’s your name, Miss Reb?” Mike asked. The girl was mute, head down, eyes shut.

“She ain’t talking yet, but she will, kid.” He grinned.

“When are you going to stop calling me kid?” I was careful not to say his name, at least not in public in front of a Rebel agent.

Sure Mike’s best cover is as a little boy, but really! Kid? Did he forget I’m almost sixteen, or what?

“Sheesh, touchy, ain’t you?” Mike said, pulling two more bugs from my hair.

“Maybe these insects are Rebs. Can’t be too sure, right?” He nudged the girl and squashed a bug under his tiny boot. She winced. Her fancy bonnet hung in tatters. Her dress was just as messed up.

“Did you have to kill them?” I asked.

“The Rebs or the bugs?” Mike’s voice hardened. He squashed the other one.

“What do you think?” He said to me. “You got lucky this time. You’re alive, right?”

“This time, Mike.” I said. This time. And that’s why I’m writing this all down. In case there isn’t a next time.

Mike and I pulled the girl
along until I reached the photography studio. Mr. Pinkerton said someone on the force would always be there if help was needed. Sure enough, Mr. Riley came out of the darkness. Even if he had not, I knew I could have handled her.

Inside, the girl collapsed in a chair, her head down. “This time,” I said to her, “this time we win.”

Mr. Riley pulled the girl up by the arm.

“What is your name, girl?” he asked.

She fell forward, her foot unable to support her weight.

She was mute.

“The interrogators will get plenty more,” Mr. Riley said, lifting her into his arms and carrying her toward the door. “Damn you,” she said, spitting words like bullets at me.

Her face was ashen, but defiant. The door slammed behind them.

Mr. Pinkerton came into the room. I was decoding her dispatch. He was looking over my shoulder. Black letters of the alphabet tracked across the page. Both sides sent these swift, secret jottings: a pattern of single letters of the alphabet, out of order, arranged in a square, like the shape of an animal pen. If you look at the first letters, and track down to the next, you can figure out what letters correspond to the first line on the square. Keep going, up and down, until they make a pattern, and reveal a key word that unlocks the code.

This is what it said:

Yanks on to Richmond. 10,000 man force. Meet with 20,000 of ours at the Rappahannock.

“Maybe the Rebels will not be warned. Maybe we’ll take the enemy city,” Mr. Pinkerton said. “Good, lass, good.”

He handed me a hot cup of tea. A strong brew, tinged, I swear with a bit of whiskey. It warmed me to my bones.

“You’ll need a new location for a time,” he said. “They’ll be back for you with others unless we find the rest of them first.”

“Yes, sir,” I answered, wiping the girl’s face from my mind. I must have looked troubled. You couldn’t look troubled in front of Mr. Pinkerton.

“Do not weaken, Madeline,” he said. “For every one of us, there are at least the same number of them willing to die for their cause.”

“You’ll go back to the boardinghouse under guard. Pack your things.”

Did President Abraham Lincoln’s chief of detectives look tender and almost fatherly at that moment? Perhaps. But don’t be fooled, as you know, he is a hard man, and a master deceiver. We all are now.

While Mr. Pinkerton’s guard waited outside the boardinghouse, I packed my things. Where would I be sent, and for how long?

The house was still. Aunt Salome had gone to stay with her sister.

“Where will you go, Madeline?” she’d asked before she left.

“Mr. Webster has arranged lodgings for me. I’ll be fine.” I promised that if she didn’t come back to the boardinghouse, when the war was over, I would visit her. I meant it.

“I will never forget what you did for Nellie and her son, Aunt Salome. Never.” I hugged her goodbye. She was trembling. I could feel her bones, her thinness under my hands. She looked so very old to me.

Now, as I was closing my trunk, I heard footsteps. I held my weapon and followed the sounds. Had someone gotten past the guard?

His back was to me.

“Stop,” I said, holding my gun on him.

He turned around.

“Don’t shoot!” Jake Whitestone said, raising his hands.

I lowered the gun. I wanted to rush into his arms. I couldn’t rush into his arms. I had to go.

I thought,
don’t love a spy. Don’t love me
.

“You are free, Jake,” I said instead. “Thank goodness.”

“Maybe not goodness. Try someone important pulling some strings. I don’t know who.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“Not like things I saw them do to others.” He shuddered. “I promised the Rebels that when I got back to Washington City, I’d try to be more objective in my reporting.”

“Will you?”

“I don’t know. The people of Richmond are not to blame. Their leaders are.”

I wanted to hold him. I couldn’t hold him. I looked away. I had to go.