The Secrets of Mary Bowser (34 page)

There is one mind
. These opening words of the first essay were underscored with a smudge of some brownish substance that served as the prisoner’s extempore ink. What did the phrase mean? My eyes tripped down the page to the second paragraph. A portion of its first sentence was marked as well.
of this
mind
history
. The word
mind
was crossed through, and there was a double line under the
y
. I stared in wonder at the two sentences, until I noticed that in the opening sentence
one
was struck through as well, so lightly I hadn’t noted it right off.

I closed my eyes, arranging the words in my mind just as I had when Mama first taught me to read, or when I began my Latin lessons at Miss Douglass’s school.

There is
one
mind of this
mind
histor
y
.

There is mind of this histor
y
.

T— i— m— o— t— h—y.

The prisoner’s Christian name was Timothy! My eyes flew open, and I turned the page, anxious to test my theory.
The
Sphinx must
solve her own riddle.
If the
whole of
history
is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience
. The name leapt right off the page.
Sphinx must if the history
, Smith. Timothy Smith. From the underscoring and cross-outs on the next page, I learned that the 3rd Maine was his company, and he hailed from Augusta.

Somewhere in Augusta, Timothy Smith had a mother, and she was worrying on him. Had they heard word of Manassas there yet? Did she know the 3rd Maine had taken the field? Surely if she did, she was anxious for her boy.

But it was more than one mother’s worry I could answer now. The Confederates were being deliberate in holding back the names of their prisoners. Unable to march on to Washington like they’d hoped, they knew for now Manassas was all the victory they had. The more Union soldiers who were believed dead on the battlefield, the grander that victory seemed. Maybe Timothy Smith realized that, or maybe he just wanted to assuage the fears of as many mothers and fathers, wives and children, as he could. Because on page after page of Mr. Emerson’s
Essays,
he’d encoded the names and companies of the men who were held prisoner in Liggon’s tobacco warehouse.

When Wilson’s footsteps sounded on the stairs an hour later, I folded my copied-out list of soldiers and tucked it into my apron.

“For once, my wife looks contrite,” Wilson said when he saw me sitting with my hands clasped in my lap. “I suppose she’s hungry, doesn’t want to start up until after I cook supper.”

“I’m not much hungry for supper.” I rose and kissed him hello.

He hummed with pleasure, moving his lips up to my ear to whisper, “Perhaps you’d rather get right back into bed, return to where we were when Bet barged in?”

Though I thrilled at the warmth of him, I shook my head. “We need to find McNiven.”

“McNiven? I can name a thing or two I need right now, and he sure isn’t one of them.”

“This is important, Wilson. It’s about the battle, and it can’t wait.”

“So much for my wife’s contrition.” Not one for sighs of resignation, still he loosed a deep exhalation to cool his passion. “What exactly can’t wait?”

I told him about the prisoner’s request and Winder’s edict, how I managed to find a way to communicate with the New Englander after all. How I decoded the names of prisoners the Confederates wanted kept secret. How we needed to bring the list to the house McNiven had let over on Eighth Street and Clay, in the hopes he could somehow get the information to Washington.

“You managed all this just since morning, not even knowing you were going to the prison till Bet arrived here?” Wilson scanned the lengthy list I held out to him. “I don’t suppose you could have done much better if you planned it for a month.”

“Wasn’t me who planned it. It was Jesus.” It felt strange to say it aloud, even to Wilson. I wasn’t sure I could make him understand. I wasn’t quite sure I understood it myself. But he was my husband. I had to try.

So I told him about Mama insisting on Jesus’s plan, explained how her insistence sustained me and mystified me both, through my whole childhood and then even more in Philadelphia, until it brought me back home to Richmond. How I never fully believed it myself, but when I opened Mr. Emerson’s
Essays
and deciphered the Yankee’s markings, the meaning came to me so easily it felt like maybe it really was His plan.

My husband let out a low whistle. “What can a man say when he learns his beautiful wife is an angel sent from Heaven?”

“I’m no angel, Wilson Bowser, as you of all people should know.” I didn’t mind conceding as much to him, pleased as I was with what I’d done. “But this all-too-human wife of yours has got yet more work that needs doing. So we best find McNiven before the sun goes down and curfew comes on.”

Even as we crossed into the Richmond summer evening, a warm wind urging us along, I couldn’t quite be sure what path I was setting myself—and my husband—on. But I knew it was one I couldn’t put off taking, for all it might mean to the Federals, and to the slaveholding Confederates who fought them.

Sixteen

F
or the next week, we kept up our charity visits, Bet trumpeting over all she was doing to aid the Federals, and me careful not to let on that I was doing much more. Timothy Smith kept slipping me information—names of new prisoners, gossip overheard from the guards, ship movements on the James observed from the windows of the prison’s upper stories. And I kept passing what I learned to McNiven, to be smuggled North. It might have felt like I was no more than playing a riddle-me-ree parlor game, memorizing whatever scenes of possible military interest I observed at the prison or puzzling out another of the New Englander’s encoded messages—except for my recollection of the Manassas dead, the agony of the living wounded, and the Confederates’ foaming determination to do yet more damage to the Union, all of which served as stern reminder of the twin import and imperilment in what I’d taken up.

Wilson, long accustomed to the Railroad work, insisted we carry on as same old, same old, as we could to avoid suspicion. Which meant that on the twenty-ninth July, I was doing our laundry, just as I did every Monday. All through our scant months of matrimony, I took a secret satisfaction from seeing the variegation of my husband’s things intermingled with mine as they hung on the line behind our building. But that morning I was too harried to savor any domestic bliss as I struggled to get everything pinned in place so I could head up to Church Hill.

There were near to a thousand Federals in Richmond by then, spread across a range of converted prisons, and Bet meant to tend as many as she could. General Winder’s men were providing the meagerest of rations, so she concentrated on procuring dainties and savories, scaring up linens and clean garments, and supplying such diversions as the Federals might enjoy. The last meant a goodly share of the books from her father’s library, which she was glad to lend, little imagining how valuable they proved to me and Timothy Smith and anyone else he let in on our system of communication. But the rest of it meant sewing, lots of sewing. Bet set her mother on it, knowing it did the older woman good to have a task to distract her, when everything she held dear was being crushed under the boots of the troops mustered around the city. And Bet stitched away as though she were Penelope herself, pestering me for every minute I wasn’t pulling a needle with them. Knowing my entree to the prisons depended upon her good graces, I gave whatever time I could to oblige her.

But as I rushed to get my washing done, everything went wrong. Water spilt and soap run low and misplaced pins and not room enough on the line. Just as I was hanging the last of Wilson’s shirts, he came barreling around the corner of the building, waving one of the daily news-sheets.

“What do you mean, giving me such a fright?” I asked, hand over my palpitating heart.

“I’m the one who’s had a fright. One of my customers was cussing over the
Examiner,
so upset with what he read that he recited it aloud to the whole shop. Plenty of others were just as angry when they heard.”

“Heard what?”

He thrust the paper at me, pointing to the headline
SOUTHERN WOMEN WITH NORTHERN SYMPATHIES.

Two ladies, mother and daughter, living on Church Hill, have lately attracted public notice by their assiduous attentions to the Yankee prisoners confined in this city. Whilst every true woman in this community has been busy making articles of comfort or necessity for our troops, or administering to the wants of the many hundreds of sick, who, far from their homes, which they left to defend our soil, are fit subjects for our sympathy, these two women have been expending their opulent means in aiding and giving comfort to the miscreants who have invaded our sacred soil, bent on rapine and murder, the desolation of our homes and sacred places, and the ruin and dishonour of our families.

Out upon all pretexts of humanity! The Yankee wounded have been put under charge of competent surgeons and provided with good nurses. This is more than they deserve and have any right to expect, and the course of these two females, in providing them with delicacies, buying them books, stationery and papers, cannot but be regarded as an evidence of sympathy amounting to an endorsation of the cause and conduct of these Northern Vandals.

I folded the news-sheet so the screaming headline wouldn’t show. “I best take this to Bet. Who knows but they’ll be hurling bricks through the windows and her not even realizing she needs to close her shutters.”

Wilson caught my wrist, as though to tether me to our yard. “Are you mad? I show you this, your first thought is to go up there and put yourself in harm’s way. For what?”

I thought of Bet’s mother, still weak with palsy but thanks to the news-sheet more at risk than I was, for all I’d done against the Confederates. “After John Brown’s raid, Bet did what she could to assure me Papa was safe. If the Van Lews are in danger, the only right thing for me to do is let them know. Just like the only right thing to do is help those Federals, who are fighting our fight. You know that.”

“All I know is, since Virginia seceded it’s been harder than ever to get baggage out of Richmond. And while you have it in your head that this war is going to end slavery, Lincoln himself says otherwise.” Before I could argue back, he added, “I don’t care for my wife endangering herself over some white lady.”

I pulled free of his hold. “And I don’t care for my husband telling me what to do.” I turned and hung the clothespin purse on the line, keeping my back to Wilson as I headed around the building to Broad Street.

Up on Church Hill, I found the Van Lew women in their sitting room, sewing away like nothing on earth was the matter. “Good of you to join us at last,” Bet said, as reprimand for my tardiness.

I chose my words with care, not wishing to frighten her mother. “Miss Bet, there’s something I must show you, out in the yard.”

“This is no time for distractions,” she said. “I should like to get to Liggon’s before too long.” But she set down the Federal jacket she was mending and followed me outside.

Peering around the lot, she asked, “What is it?”

“Have you seen the
Examiner
today?”

“Hardly. I wouldn’t let that rag into the house, even to line the slop pail.”

“Perhaps you ought to have a look at it.” I drew the news-sheet from my apron and handed it to her.

Her eyes darted over the article, a broad grin breaking across her narrow face. “I hadn’t realized our good work attracted such notice.”

“Attracting notice means attracting trouble. It doesn’t take but one or two rowdies, they could come here and do who knows what.”

“I should like to see them try.” She raised herself up straight. She meant the gesture to be defiant, but it looked ludicrous, short as she was. “I am proud to have these uncouth Rebels know all that we are doing for the Union. I only wish we could do more.”

It wasn’t just the thick heat and the fast walk up Church Hill that had my head swimming. “Miss Bet, I’m already doing more.” I was Mama’s daughter—I wasn’t about to mistake Bet’s interests for my own. But I resigned myself to telling her about my espionage, knowing I needed to keep her from doing anything that would draw more scrutiny from the Secessionists.

She must have been mighty surprised, because she didn’t say a word to interrupt as I explained how I made the daily exchange of information. But when I got to the part about how McNiven rode what I gathered to some distant corner of northern Virginia, from whence my messages were secreted into Maryland and then to Washington, she said, “Why that’s foolishness.”

Anyone calling me a fool to my face might have been taking as much risk with me as I’d taken with the Confederates. But Bet didn’t give a moment’s pause to consider my feelings. “Mother and I have a pass for travel to our market farm. I shall ride the messages there, and they can be sent down the James to the Bay and out to Fort Monroe in a matter of hours.” She frowned at the
Examiner
. “I suppose we must be more discreet concerning our work among the prisoners, for the sake of the Union. I shall write up a cipher for our messages, and we can commence at once.” She strode back inside. Within a quarter hour she presented me with a card on which she gridded out letters and numbers for me to use to code my messages, no matter that it would take me at least an hour more each night to write them out.

That was Bet a hundred times over. So full of sanctimonious effrontery she’d seize on whatever might be someone else’s and make it hers, without offering so much as a nodding at-your-sufferance. I dawdled at the wash line when I returned home that evening, not wanting to admit to Wilson that he was right. But he read the news on my face just as soon as I brought the basket of laundry inside, and I didn’t bother keeping any of the details from him.