On Secret Service (9 page)

Washington was a carnival or a cesspool, according to your politics. Margaret thought it the latter. After a perilous April week of railroad bridges burned and telegraph wires cut, a week that had left the city trembling with fear of invasion, the wires were spliced, the trestles repaired, and southbound trains again delivered soldiers to the capital.

She thought of them as Attila's Huns. They sneered at the muddy, dilapidated city they were called to defend. They slept and built cook fires in government buildings. They disfigured open spaces with sprawling tent villages. They were serviced by greedy sutlers and enterprising soiled doves arriving on every train from the West. They held target practice on the Smithsonian grounds with no thought for civilians close by. Whether ruffianly Zouaves from Brooklyn fire engine companies or kid-glove playboys from the Seventh New York, they savagely beat citizens for any fancied slur or slight.

They drilled, drummed, and bugled at all hours. They brawled and rioted in the taverns and the streets until the provost guard subdued them with fire hoses. They presented regimental band concerts under the trees of President's Park. They protected the Potomac bridges with mounted sentries. They refused to dig latrines and urinated and defecated wherever they chose. With its fouled canals and sewage-ridden river, Washington had always smelled; now it stank unspeakably.

On a mild May afternoon, Margaret left Franklin Square in her smart little piano-box buggy. When the buggy stalled behind a broken-down dray, one of the Yankee vulgarians lurched off the curb to accost her, heedless of her black bombazine dress, black gloves, black hat.

The man had yellow chevrons on his blue flannel shirt. His breath smelled like gin-soaked garbage. He laid a hand on her leg and asked wouldn't she sleep with a defender of freedom?

She slashed his cheek with the buggy whip and drove through a narrow lane that opened next to the dray.

With a shaky hand, she returned the whip to its socket. A thread of bright blood stained the shaft. She hadn't known so much accumulated rage was still buried within her.

She tied the horse to a ring post in front of the brick manse at Sixteenth and I Streets. Her face, powdered carelessly, resembled a grotesque white mask in the sunshine. She noticed unweeded flower beds. The Negro gardener who tended them must have abandoned his job.

When the door opened, Margaret said, “Rose, do you know the Yankees killed my father?”

“Yes, I heard. I am so terribly sorry.”

“I'm here because I've been indifferent to important things. That was wrong. You're acquainted with so many people who must be in sympathy with Mr. Davis and his new government. Is there any way I can help them?”

Rose Greenhow smiled in a slow, warm, almost seductive way. “Of course. Come in. We'll talk.”

 

Rose's parlor had an airless and dusty feel. Only thin blades of sunshine slipped between closed draperies. Margaret heard no one in the house except little Rose, who was stomping upstairs.

Rose looked stunning in dark red silk with pagoda sleeves and a tightly fitted bodice that flattered her ample figure. When she sat down, Margaret glimpsed scarlet stockings.

“I'm sorry you have been through an ordeal,” Rose said. “Will you tell me the tragic details?”

Margaret related the story. “I've worn these weeds for a month. It's time I put them away. My brother, Cicero, left for Richmond last week.”

“It will soon be the capital of the Confederacy, I hear. Montgomery will be abandoned.”

“Cicero's determined to help the cause, as I am. With his infirmity he'll never be a soldier, but he's clever. He'll find a place.”

Little Rose flounced into the parlor. She darted behind her mother and deliberately tipped a vase of tulips. Water ran over a fine inlaid table. When Rose scolded her, little Rose bawled, threw herself on the carpet, and bit a table leg, leaving deep teeth marks.

“Excuse me, Margaret.” Rose dragged the screaming child upstairs by the ear, locked her in her room, and came down again.

“When I deny the little imp anything at all, she retaliates for hours. I'm afraid she has the true rebel spirit.”

Margaret smiled. “I've closed the house in Baltimore. Simms, our colored man, will continue to live there as caretaker. Father's estate will pay him. I don't intend to go back to Baltimore until the war's over in ninety days or so.”

“That may be optimistic. Captain Jordan—do you remember him?” Margaret said she did. “He's back and forth to Richmond, and he says Beauregard will soon come up from Charleston to take command of the Alexandria line. Did you hear that Lincoln offered command of the Army to Bob Lee and Lee turned him down? He's joining Virginia.”

“Will the armies fight there?”

“Undoubtedly. It will be crucial for Beauregard to have information about enemy strength. Let me show you something.”

Skirts rustling, Rose took Margaret into a small library where she displayed a sizable stack of newspapers. “
New York Herald. Washington Evening Star.
Here's the filthy rag the local Republicans publish. The editors have one thing in common. Great generosity with reports of the Yankee regiments, where they are, where they're going, in fulsome detail. Until our Northern friends realize how stupid that is, we are in their debt. Captain Jordan takes care of forwarding papers to Richmond. He's resigning his commission, by the way.”

“Isn't he a West Point man?”

“What of it? Some of the best graduates of that place have already come over. Lee is the most brilliant of them. If only Jeff Davis will give him his head! Davis graduated from the Academy and served in Mexico, so he mistakenly fancies himself a supreme strategist.”

Rose shut the library door and they returned to the parlor. Margaret realized the house was deserted, the Negro servants gone, for a more subtle reason than a desire for privacy.

“If you join us, you'll learn of some other work the captain's doing,” Rose said.

“Then there's a place for me?”

“Yes, in a small, select circle of refined ladies and gentlemen who will take on the clandestine task of supplying military information to our generals in Virginia. The South needs far more than newspaper subscriptions.” Margaret's heart began to beat hard in her breast.

“The work will call for keen wits, and the courage to face down some of these Yankee ruffians in an emergency. We do have an advantage. Most of them are ignorant peasants. Will you take a day or two to think about it?”

“I don't need a day, Rose. I came to you hoping for something like this. What you've told me exceeds my hopes.”

Rose swept to her feet. “Be very sure of your decision.”

“I am.”

“You are pledging yourself to loyalty and secrecy, no matter what hazards may arise. You must obey instructions without question or hesitation.”

“I will.”

Rose embraced her warmly. “Then you'll be a great asset. Attractive young women won't be suspected by these Yankee clods. Do you have servants here in Washington?”

“Only a marvelous cook who's a perfectly awful and lazy housekeeper.”

“Discharge her. Colored people can't be trusted. Not in these times. The paramount thing to remember is this: We're at war. We must win the war even if we sink to behavior none of us would have contemplated before.”

 

Two nights later, Margaret returned to Rose's house and repeated her declaration of intent to Captain Thomas Jordan. At the end she asked, “Did it cause you pain to abandon your commission?”

Jordan snorted and tugged his beard. “General Scott's staff was a fine source of information for a while, but my sentiments were known, and they began to restrict what I could see. Otherwise I have no regrets. The volunteers backslap their commanders, address them by first names—won't obey an order if they don't happen to like it. They elect all officers but the colonel according to popularity. That isn't an Army—it's a rabble. I'm glad to be free. Furthermore, within our new organization, Captain Jordan no longer exists. I'm Rayford. Assumed names are a necessary protection.”

Jordan told her he was establishing safe houses in southern Maryland and recruiting watermen to ferry couriers across the Potomac to Virginia. Rose's men and women would be called on to carry coded messages out of the city to the couriers waiting at the safe houses.

“Do you know anything about codes and ciphers, Margaret?”

“Just what little I came across in Edgar Poe's stories.”

“Let me show you one cipher we'll use. It's called the pigpen cipher, or sometimes the Rosicrucian cipher, because the sect used it for secret documents. It's very old, but once you understand it, you'll find that you can easily encrypt a message.”

He spread writing paper on the lamplit table. “It's a symbol cipher, not a substitution code that uses patterns of words to stand for other words that are the nulls and clears.”

“I beg your pardon. Nulls and…?”

“Clears. Nulls are words in an encrypted message that have no meaning. Only the clears reveal the content. Here's the pigpen.” He drew two horizontal lines, crossed them with two verticals, creating an open-sided grid of nine boxes. Starting with ABC in the upper left box, he filled each with three letters. The lower right box held only Y and Z.

“Because the grid's open on all sides, no two boxes are alike. For a coded message, you draw the shape of the box required for the letter you want, then put in one dot for the second letter in that box, two if you want the third letter, or if it's the first letter, none. You repeat the process for the rest of the letters in the message. I'll write the word
cat
.”

Jordan laid his pencil beside the paper. “You can see it isn't sophisticated. Hardly worthy of an Army in the field. But we aren't yet an Army, so we make do. We will be an army soon. This house will help bring that to pass. Therefore let me say welcome.”

He offered his hand. Margaret took it, shivering with uncontrollable excitement.

 

Next day she was browsing among Shillington's books when a voice startled her. “Margaret?”

“Good heavens. Hanna.” Her friend was unflatteringly dressed in trousers and a mannish frock coat. Her blonde hair was barbarously short. A clerk stared; two patrons whispered.

Margaret wrapped Hanna in a hug. “How are you? It's been ages since we've seen each other.”

Hanna touched Margaret's black silk sleeve. “Has there been a death in the family?” Margaret told her about Calhoun Miller. Hanna squeezed Margaret's hand.

“How dreadful. I remember meeting your father. He was such a smart, polite gentleman.”

“He was callously murdered by a pair of Yankee detectives, though I don't know which one fired the shot. I'll be a long while getting over it. How is the major?”

“Much better than he's been in a while. He's working for Secretary Cameron in the War Department.” Margaret thought of her new allegiance to Rose and “Mr. Rayford.” All other relationships had to be scrutinized in light of it.

“He's happy to be in the center of the war,” Hanna went on, “but of course he's dissatisfied with the pittance they pay him. He'll never rest till he makes a fortune, though I don't see how he will in Washington. Is Rose still conducting her salon?”