The Spy on the Tennessee Walker (17 page)

CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 37

VICTORIA TO GABRIEL, 1864
VICTORIA TO GABRIEL, 1864

My love,

Every wonder in my life comes back to you. I had felt attraction to young men before you, I had even flirted with those whom I found witty or clever or charming. But love, now that is an entirely different matter. Today, you have shown me another wonder: how wide and magnificent the world can look when we are drifting overhead. I never imagined that my disguise as Virgil would yield this unique experience, standing by your side in the basket of a surveillance balloon. My heart beat so fast when you brought me to the launch site, not because I was afraid of heights, but because I didn't know if your story about training me as a backup telegraph operator would be believable. But your Mr. Pinkerton seemed eager and completely unperturbed, complimenting you on your foresight. I didn't know where to look when you were unspooling that fanciful story. And then, Mr. Pinkerton had more questions. Where had we met? How did I learn my trade at such a young age? How did I feel about going up in the air? I answered his questions, focused on breathing in and out, slowly and regularly, the
same technique I employed when riding with the Cavalry. The more frightening the encounters, the more I concentrated on slowing my breath. At the end, though, I think I strayed too close to the truth. “Gabriel is a skilled teacher,” I said. “I am not afraid when I am in his hands.” Your face was impassive. You and I both knew what risks we were taking, but on we went.

At first I was startled by the sound of the hydrogen generators roaring as they slowly, slowly inflated the balloons. Then, with your assistance, I scrambled into the basket of the
Intrepid
, and with two aeronauts aboard, off we went. I was at your side, ostensibly observing the telegraphic process up in the air, but truly marveling at what we saw from 500, then 1,000 feet above the ground. I had heard so much from you about Professor Lowe and his genius, but now I was experiencing it! And you were right, I was not frightened or giddy, not a bit. I was thrilled. I cannot wait until this war is over and we can share more adventures.

All my love, V

CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 38

MAGGIE
MAGGIE

SAN FRANCISCO

Reentry is always an adventure. The stack of folders on my desk was approaching Leaning Tower status. Gertie, my assistant, critic, and official “Mum” of the
Small Town
wolfpack, had printed out a one-page summary of emails she considered urgent, cheerily color-coded, escalating from blue to yellow to red. “You know,” I protested, “I actually look at my emails when I'm away.”

“Just a convenience,” she said. “That way I don't lose track of anything either.”

I handed over a box of pralines. “Thanks for minding the store.”

She took the box with a grimace. “Thanks for sabotaging my diet.” She looked over her shoulder. “Hoyt's hovering.”

“Hoyt,” I shouted. “Come in quick or Gertie will start lecturing me about any number of things I've left undone.”

Hoyt came to the door, armed with two cups of coffee, eyed Gertie's box of pralines, and stood by my visitor chair. “Oh, go ahead and sit,” said Gertie. “I'm the kind of Midwest broad you shouldn't waste all that chivalry on.”

I reached out my hand and Hoyt delivered the coffee, precisely the color of caramel I liked, enough cream so that I believed I was ingesting some essential Vitamin D. “Bless you,” I said.

Calvin stuck his head in the door and, without an invitation, came in and collapsed on the tiny couch against the wall, his legs draped over the arm rest on one end. “Make yourself at home,” I said tartly.

I delivered Hotty Toddy tea towels to Hoyt. He lit up. “These are perfect!” And I handed Calvin a box of Phoebe's cheese straws.

“Fat pills,” he said. “Also perfect. Now, let's hear all the family gossip. You know, you should think about taking me with you next time — stir up some gossip about you philandering again, this time with some preppy darkie.”

Hoyt shook his head. “Calvin, do you
ever
think before speaking?”

“Advantage of being an independent contractor,” he said. “Although I willingly slave for
Small Town
in whatever photographic trenches you toss me into, I am, happily, not on the payroll.”

I glanced at my watch. “I've got twenty minutes before my first fabulous date this morning with our accountant.”

“Tell all,” said Hoyt. “We want the gossip, the food report, celebrity sightings, and most of all, what you found out about the mysterious Victoria.”

“Plastic surgery has made inroads into Oxford, Mississippi, with women in dark glasses spotted skulking around the Square. The whole pop-up tent thing in the Grove is weird but convenient. Aunt Phoebe treated us
like we'd just been liberated from a prison camp for anorexics. We had meat and many, many sides. Every day, every meal. Saw two Manning guys at City Grocery, and Morgan Freeman at Ravine. Oh, and Ole Miss lost the Egg Bowl….”

“…but won the party,” said Hoyt. “Come on, tell us about your mystery ancestor.”

“In a nutshell —” I stopped. How to tell Victoria's story — or at least what I know of it — in anything remotely resembling a nutshell?

“Let me put it this way. I think Victoria must have been the gutsiest person ever. She defied her family to become a nurse, and she worked at the Confederate hospitals — the biggest one, Chimborazo. And then she switched sides. She got married three times — twice for love, I believe, and once for protection. She went to jail for being a spy.”

“Oh, my,” said Hoyt. “This is a story.”

“There's more,” I said. “She also disguised herself as a man and joined the Cavalry, with her horse, Courage. Oh, and then there's Gabriel, the great love of her life and husband number two. He was black, which was considered immoral and illegal six ways to Sunday.”

“She married a brother?” asked Calvin. “In the 1860s? Sounds like she was the one who should have been named Courage.”

“Or Gabriel should have,” I said. “He would have been the one likeliest to get strung up on a convenient tree.”

“Love,” said Calvin. “It's a dangerous thing. But you've got to hand it to the both of them — willing to take such crazy risks.” He shook his head. “But what
about the time she didn't marry for love? What was that all about?”

“Childhood friend, who grew up to be something of a wheeler-dealer. He lent money to the Confederacy to finance their blockade-running, but if I understand things correctly, he did that just to get some inside info. He was a Union sympathizer, even though he'd grown up in Oxford, Mississippi — which is how his family and Victoria's family knew each other. And he's the one who recruited Victoria as a spy and introduced her to Rose Greenhow, the notorious flirt and Rebel loyalist.”

“Greenhow,” said Hoyt, “I know who she was. There's a book about her — one of my aunts bought it for me at the International Spy Museum in DC. Went to prison with her youngest daughter, right?”

“Yep,” I said. “Little Rose was nearly as much of an operator as her mother. But things didn't end well for Mrs. Greenhow. After she was released from prison, she was exiled to the Confederacy, which suited her just fine. She had stashed Little Rose in the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Paris — and then the fearless Mrs. Greenhow made the mistake of stepping onto the
Condor
, a blockade-runner headed to Bermuda, Halifax, and Wilmington, North Carolina.”

I took a sip of coffee. “I can finish telling you about this later. I know we've got a crazy day.”

“Are you nuts?” said Calvin. “Finish the story.”

“So…first the
Condor
ran into bad weather, and then it ran into a Union gunboat. Rose practically ordered the captain to lower a lifeboat. He resisted, but Rose could be persuasive, and so she and two other Confederate agents set out in a small lifeboat on bad seas.” I
sighed. “They only had two hundred yards to go, but the boat overturned, and Rose and her accomplices had to swim for shore. She was a good swimmer, but she was wearing a heavy dress and carrying a bag of gold coins tied around her waist, supposedly money she'd been paid for the memoir she'd written,
My Imprisonment
.”

Hoyt said, “She drowned.”

I nodded. “She did. Her compatriots made it to shore, and Rose's grand plans to deliver critical information to Jefferson Davis were dashed.” I took a sip of my coffee. Heaven is a stimulant. “But you have to give her credit — she never gave up her cause.”

“I'm still thinking about the poor schlub Victoria married that she didn't love. Probably carrying a torch for her all those years, and then she just used him.” Calvin sat up. “By the way, Maggie, you need a new sofa — this one is way too short for proper lounging.”

“Feel free to run right over to Macy's and purchase a new one. Using your credit card. And by the way, I think the ‘using' was mutual. Married women were not nearly as suspect as single ones — in some ways, they had far more freedom than their unmarried counterparts. And they had the ‘protection' of a husband. I think Eli Mays — that was Victoria's first husband, the childhood pal — greatly benefited from Victoria's spying activities. He traded in information, and she provided it.”

“Speaking of protection,” said Calvin. “Assuming Victoria and Eli consummated their unromantic union, what did people in the Civil War era do about not making babies?”

“I think that's a story all by itself,” I said. “Turns out that some version of condoms and of diaphragms were
already in use in the nineteenth century.”

“Made of
what
?” asked Calvin.

“Well, rubber was involved. I think it was the modern evolution of the famous French letter. Instead of sheepskin and other yukky animal membranes, Charles Goodyear vulcanized rubber, which made it more durable and flexible. Though from what I've read, these nineteenth-century condoms were not one-time, use-and-discard deals. You had to clean them out and use them again and again.”

“Yeech,” said Calvin. “I like you empowered feminists with your handy-dandy birth control pills.”

“Of course you do,” I retorted. “And you'll be happy to know, there were all kinds of rubber-product versions for the ladies. My favorite was something called the ‘womb veil.' I was telling Michael about this, and he said it sounded to him like a really untrustworthy temporary patch you'd put on an inner tube.”

“I'm hoping we're moving on to a different subject soon,” said Hoyt.

“I've gotten way too interested in this whole Civil War–era contraception subject,” I said. “I've got an idea for a
Small Town
story.”

The room grew quiet. “You think I'm nuts, don't you? But here's my idea: We call it
Devices and Desires
— you know, that P.D. James novel that featured her poet-policeman, Adam Dalgliesh. I think human beings have always been looking for the next great answer to how they can have consequence-free sex. I mean, Margaret Sanger didn't invent the term ‘birth control' until about the time of World War I, but for thousands of years — literally — people have been trying to figure it out.”

“Sounds like a history piece to me,” said Hoyt. “Not quite what our readers are interested in.”

“I beg to differ. We're all about what's going on in our ‘small town,' what's new, what's trending, etcetera, etcetera. In fact, right now, there's a little movement to return to more ‘natural' methods of birth control. I mean, I can't believe it, but apparently there are some hipsters who are out there advocating for the strategically timed pull-out. And the rhythm method.”

I scanned Hoyt's and Calvin's faces. Calvin was horrified. Hoyt looked puzzled.

Gertie stuck her head in. “Five minutes to come-to-Jesus time with the accountant.” She glanced around the room. “What are you guys discussing?”

“The rhythm method.”

“Oh,” she said, “my favorite method of birth control.”

“Really? Why?” I asked.

“It gave me both my sons. Doesn't
prevent
anything, just appears to facilitate the whole process for a Catholic girl like me.”

“And on that note, back to work,” I said.

Calvin fell into step with me as I headed down the hall. “Hey, Mags,” he said. “Were you kidding about the devices and desires story? If you're not, I've got some great ideas about doing some way-out-there photos.”

“Not really,” I said. “I haven't thought it through yet, but there's something in the idea that we can have all these lofty thoughts and feelings — passion, love, betrayal, sorrow — and at the end of the day, there's this practical element. Victoria was conflicted about the war, but she made a choice, and that choice involved masquerading as a Cavalry soldier. So she did it! She
dressed as a young man, she rode into battle, she gathered information, and it must have been useful.”

“I'm not following what that has to do with being practical?”

I grabbed Calvin's arm. “It's everything. It's Victoria learning spycraft from Mrs. Greenhow. It's Eli sending her out riding without a bonnet or gloves to roughen her skin. It's figuring out how to not get pregnant — until she wanted to. After all, she slept with three men: Eli as a comrade, Gabriel as her true love, and Jules as her husband and the man who made her a mother and a grandmother and a great-grandmother. It's Rose Greenhow dying because she
didn't
think through the practicalities of swimming to shore in a heavy dress with a sack of gold tied around her waist.”

“What about the marriage between Gabriel and Victoria?” asked Calvin. “That was nuts, and I say that as a brother who believes in love. There was nothing practical in it — they took terrible risks. Don't you think that if Gabriel hadn't gone down in the balloon, he'd have been strung up for defiling a white woman?”

“Ah,” I said, “that's why this is such a good story. For all their passion, they were careful people — not because they were afraid, I think, but because they wanted to protect each other. We don't really know where they had their assignations, but my guess is that Gabriel's sister, Sarah, provided them shelter. She was a seamstress and a young widow, and she lived alone in the woods. No one would have noticed if her brother and a friend were visiting.”

“How much of that are you making up, Maggie?”

I shrugged. “Some of it. Not all. I know she was a
seamstress. She made the dress Victoria got married in.”

We arrived at the conference room. I gave a little wave to Mr. Lofter, our accountant. I know he had a first name, but all of us called him Mr. Lofter. Or sir, if we were worried.

“Don't you think it's peculiar that your accountant's last name is
laughter
?” asked Calvin. “Have you ever heard him actually laugh?”

“Nope. Consistency is his middle name. And his last name, by the way, is
not
laughter, it's pronounced ‘lofter.'”

“Whatev,” said Calvin. “Hey, you said you had some pix I could look at — where are they? I'll see if the grand master of the lens —”

“That would be you, I'm assuming?”

“None other. I'll see if I can get some more info from the photos.”

“Calvin, wait a minute,” I said. “There's something I didn't talk about.”

“Okay — spill the beans.”

“Victoria killed a man.”

“Whoa. Who? Why?”

“Don't know his name. He stumbled upon Victoria and Gabriel together in the woods. She managed to get the guy's rifle and threatened to shoot him.”

“She made good on that threat?”

“Yes,” I said. “And saved Gabriel's life and probably her own.”

Calvin shook his head and put his arm around me. “You come from tough stock. Out in the woods it must have been do or die.”