The Crescent Spy Page 2

  She told him the same story that she’d given earlier, then added that Josephine was her niece.

  “And why is your niece in this state of undress?”

  Mrs. Lamont tugged the edge of her own dress higher onto Josephine’s lap. “The indignities of war, sir,” she said in a cold voice. “Now be a gentleman and let us past.”

  He shrugged, and they were soon passing onto the Long Bridge. Light slanted in through the slats in the wooden trusses that held up the roadbed.

  “Old men make wars,” Mrs. Lamont said suddenly, as if something had been bothering her. “Yet it’s the boys who suffer and die.”

  Josephine thought of the Confederate soldier pinned beneath the cart. Probably still alive, still suffering. She said nothing as the horses continued in the sluggish procession across the bridge. At last they reached the other side. For the first time in hours, the knot in Josephine’s stomach began to unravel.

  “Thank you for helping me,” she said. “I’m not a spy. I can see that you’re wondering. The papers, and all. They’re not for the government, and not for the secessionists.”

  Mrs. Lamont patted her hand. “There is no need to explain to me, dear. This is a time of divided loyalties. Your secrets are your own.”

  It was early afternoon the next day before Josephine roused herself and made her way back to the offices of the Morning Clarion. She was exhausted from the heat, the flight after the battle, and the work at the paper that had kept her busy late into the night. But she soon found something that lifted her spirits and energy more than the cup of coffee she’d hastily gulped before leaving the boarding house.

  A boy was selling copies of the Clarion at the head of Marble Alley. She was so pleased to see the result of her hard work that she handed him a silver half dime and told the astonished boy to keep the change.

  For a long moment she stared at the headline with a satisfied glow. The city seemed to fade into the background. The marching feet, the whinny of horses, the screech of pump handles, the martial trumpet to the north, the bang of hammers building a new barracks a mile to the east—all faded to a dull buzz as she read the headline over and over.

  BITTER DEFEAT!

  REBS ROUT UNION TROOPS, VOW TO SEIZE WASHINGTON

  That was all true, and yet vowing to seize Washington and accomplishing it were two different things. But the reality—“hungry, battered rebels milling in disorder, unable to move toward the city”—would hardly sell newspapers.

  The newspaper offices lay up Ninth Street, which was clogged with soldiers and wagons. Men on horse—some soldiers, some not—rode this way and that. A vast tent encampment spread below the Capitol Building and was packed to overflowing, so chaotic and disorganized it may as well have been a prisoner-of-war camp.

  The Capitol Building itself frowned over all of this. It had lost its cap before the war, supposedly to doff a new, iron dome that would more majestically represent American power. But for now it looked merely decapitated, a visible reminder of the sad condition of the United States themselves.

  She turned up Ninth and toward the offices of the Morning Clarion, which lay beyond Ford’s Theatre. A group of men loitered in the street outside the newspaper offices. They had a slouchy, sharp-eyed appearance, and she’d have thought them the kind of disreputable merchants recently filling the city to make their fortunes on bloated government contracts if she hadn’t had the sudden hunch they were fellow newspaper reporters. Though from what paper and why they were congregating here, she couldn’t tell.

  Had Barnhart finally plunked down some silver to hire more men for the Clarion? Good, they could use the help. So long as they stayed out of her way.

  Josephine pushed her way through them and came inside to find the staff already hard at work for tomorrow’s edition. Jones was leaning over Finch to watch the man mark up his copy, the cigarette dangling from Jones’s mouth dropping ash on Finch’s shoulder. Finch’s son, a boy of sixteen named Charles, had spread the papers of the competition across a battered desk and was scanning through them, scribbling notes on a pad of lined paper. Wenkle sat atop two stacked crates, his pipe in the corner of his mouth, dictating a telegraph to Miss Lenox. The air was thick with smoke and the oppressive heat of a room with too little ventilation.

  Miss Lenox looked up at Josephine’s approach, her eyes owl-like through thick glasses. She nudged Wenkle, who looked at the newcomer and stopped. The other three spotted Josephine, stopped what they were doing, and all five stared at her for a long moment. Then Wenkle cleared his throat, and they disappeared as one into the back room.

  Josephine was still puzzling out why they’d given her such an odd reception when the door swung open from the back, and she heard the shouts of newsboys, caught a glimpse of mounds of newspapers. Business must be brisk indeed if the boys were returning this late in the morning to refill their carts. Her publisher appeared in the doorway.

  David Barnhart was a slender, smooth-faced man, short enough that when his back was turned, he presented the profile of one of his boys. Angry congressmen would sometimes burst into the offices, take him for a newsboy, and bellow for him to fetch his boss at once. Barnhart would shake his head and say that regrettably the publisher was out, but he would pass along their outrage.

  Before the war, one congressman from South Carolina, a real fire-eater secessionist, had come in waving pistols and demanding a duel. He’d been outraged by insinuations (perfectly true) that he’d fathered several mulatto children by the slaves of his plantation. Barnhart calmly put him off, told him that the man he was looking for had fled to New York to hide from the senator’s wrath. The South Carolinian was now raising regiments in his home state, and had a hand in the shelling of Fort Sumter that had precipitated the outbreak of hostilities.

  Now Barnhart should have been grinning in triumph, but his face was curiously drawn. Newsprint smeared across his cheeks and beneath his eyes, making him look like a petulant raccoon. He clenched a rolled-up newspaper in his blackened fingers. She could only think he was still worried about the threat of General Beauregard’s troops now presumed to be marching on Washington. He’d been fretting about it last night as she finished her story.

  “Don’t worry,” Josephine told him, “the rebs are still at Manassas. A lucky shot or two and Jeff Davis would be panicking in Richmond instead. The other side was so scattered it would take them a week just to muster their forces. By then, Washington will be ready.”

  “Yes, I know. So you said last night. You could scarcely stop talking about it.”

  He sounded so glum, but nothing could penetrate the triumphant feeling in her breast. She smiled and spread the copy of the Clarion she’d bought across the table over the papers Charlie had laid out earlier. Standing proudly on the front page was her eighth lead story in the past month, and her best by far. Every bit of it was true, not a lie or false rumor in the lot.

  Josephine had spoken directly to generals on both sides, had witnessed key moments of the battle. She had correctly assessed the aftermath of the war and was equally confident in her predictions of how the battle would be seen in the weeks to come. By then, this article would make her famous. She was certain of it.

  The article was not just accurate; it was cleverly written. She reread her favorite part with more than a little satisfaction.

  But nobody told Johnny Reb he was licked, and Jackson’s men held firm on the hill. Sooner than spit, a fat column of Confederate reinforcements came slithering up the road as eager and venomous as a hungry rattler. Our boys took one look and turned tail like an army of frightened rabbits.

  No, it wasn’t Shakespeare, or even Walt Whitman, but the words had a certain lurid poetry to them. Wait until the New York press read her story. The offers would come rolling in.

  Ah, so that’s why Barnhart was glum. He was afraid he’d lose her to New York.

  “A shame I couldn’t publish this under my real name,” she said. “It robs the moment of its glory.”

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p; “Yes.”

  “Move aside, Horace Greeley, Joseph Breaux will be the best known writer in the land. If only they knew his true identity, they’d be astonished.”

  She gave Barnhart a smile that let him know she was not serious. But surely he wouldn’t deny her a moment of triumph and yes, even boastfulness.

  “Oh, they’ll know soon enough. They’ll all know.”

  “No,” she sighed. “I can’t have that. It will wreck my ability to move behind the lines. No, Josephine must remain a typesetter, and Joseph the man who gets the good stories. She’ll get her due later, yes. But not yet.”

  Barnhart unclenched the newspaper he’d kept rolled tightly in his hands. He unfolded it and spread it over the top of her own.

  It wasn’t the Morning Clarion; it was the Washington Standard, their chief rival. She looked down at the headline. It was also about the battle. The opening lines of the story were vague and filled with more alarm than substance. She skimmed to the end of the column. Error and pointless speculation all jumbled into an unholy mess.

  “So what?” she said. “It’s rubbish.”

  “That’s not the problem.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re unhappy. The Clarion is galloping out the door today. The boys are back for more copies to sell, the presses are still running. They may as well be printing banknotes today, so cheer up. And I have half composed a smashing follow-up. Give me two hours to write it up.”

  “Will you stop being so self-absorbed? Look.” Barnhart tapped an ink-stained finger on the second article in the paper.

  And there she saw this chilling headline:

  “JOSEPH” BREAUX UNMASKED AS WOMAN

  SHE CONSORTS WITH TRAITORS AND SLAVES

  Heart pounding, she read the story, penned under the nom de plume “George Patriot, a Concerned Citizen.” But the writing was too sharp, too cunningly gleeful to be anything but one of the best reporters on the staff of the Washington Standard.

  In a discovery that beggars the imagination, even as it shocks with its scandal and lack of dignity, this citizen has uncovered a monstrous deception at the heart of the Morning Clarion. As brazen as a strumpet of the night plying her trade, a New Orleans native and Secess sympathizer by the name of Josephine Breaux has been traveling between Union and Rebel lines under false pretenses.

  This citizen would not suggest that Miss Breaux is responsible for our debacle, but she was spied in the company of that traitor, a fellow Louisianan, General Beauregard, moments before our inglorious flight from the battlefield. Yesterday afternoon, in the darkest moment of our defeat, she was spotted skulking into Washington hiding amongst our injured boys, wearing nothing but her bloomers.

  Propriety blushes, unable to speculate how she found herself in this immodest condition. However, one suggestion, which this author hesitates to repeat, has it that . . .

  Josephine couldn’t read another word. She turned over the paper and stared out the window. Men peered through from the street. The ones she’d spotted earlier, loitering outside. Staring after her, she now knew. Shame rose in her breast, and she turned away and covered her face in her hands. Barnhart hurried to shut the blinds.

  How was this possible? Those fools at the Standard had so little information they’d placed Johnston’s relieving Confederate army riding in on horse from the Shenandoah instead of arriving by rail. Yet somehow they knew that she’d been with Beauregard and had fled to Washington in her bloomers. Who could have been the informant? Private Murdock? Mrs. Lamont in her carriage? No, it was impossible.

  “How much is true?” Barnhart asked in a quiet voice.

  “The part about the bloomers is true enough,” she admitted. “But I’m no spy, you know that. And I would never seduce an enemy general to get better intelligence for a story. That’s a vile insinuation.”

  “Then how did you do it?”

  She glared at him. “You were supposed to say, ‘Of course you wouldn’t, that’s a wretched lie.’”

  “Never mind, I don’t care to know the particulars.”

  She stared at the back page of the Standard and its advertisements for hair tonics and cheap boarding houses. Half of those boarding houses were brothels or gambling dens.

  “Josephine, you know what must be done, of course.”

  “No, I am at a loss.”

  “You’re poison now,” he said. “That’s the real problem.”

  “Your loyalty is quite breathtaking,” she said sarcastically. “What I need is your support, your angry denunciation of this slander. Why aren’t you writing that story right now? An outraged editorial. The attack would collapse faster than a Union picket line.”

  “The jig is up, the secret out. You can’t write for the paper anymore.”

  “Rubbish. I’m a woman, not a leper.” Her shame had vanished, replaced by hot indignation. “Of course this changes everything, I know that. But there’s no law that says I can’t keep writing. If I need to write about society nonsense because I’m a woman, I’ll do it, at least until this blows over. But I have no intention of stopping. You can take that and print it.”

  Barnhart yanked the Standard off the table and opened it to the second page of the article, then began reading aloud. “‘I am only a concerned citizen, and would not presume to speculate—’”

  “Balderdash,” Josephine scoffed. “Speculate is all he’s done.”

  “Will you shut your mouth and listen?” Barnhart gave her a hard look, and she fell silent. He continued, “‘But word of this woman’s outrageous behavior has been forwarded to the War Department, to Generals Scott and McDowell, and to the desk of President Lincoln himself. I would never give the publisher of the Morning Clarion advice, but if I were Mr. Barnhart, I would send this treasonous snake across the river, and a good riddance. Soon enough, she’ll resurface at the Daily Richmond Examiner, or even in Jeff Davis’s cabinet.’”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Let me get this straight. Your jealous rival suggests you fire your best writer, and you entertain the notion?”

  “I have no choice, don’t you see?” To his credit, Barnhart sounded anguished, and she almost forgot that he was playing the part of a weasel in this little drama. “We were a Democrat paper before the war. I urged reconciliation before Fort Sumter, and people remember that. Our enemies already call us disunionists. Copperheads.”

  “I know that. The beast just called me a treasonous snake. I’m a copperhead, that’s what he means. But you’ll only embolden our enemies if you send me off.”

  “Your article is a scathing indictment of the prosecution of the battle. Some might call it defeatist, and expect the next piece you write to call for peaceful separation.”

  “You know that’s a lie.”

  “Of course, of course,” he said. “And I’m as pro-Union as the publisher of that rag attacking you. But it doesn’t look that way. Not at all, not with this.”

  “So that’s your decision? I am off the paper?”

  Barnhart licked his lips. “For now, yes. Perhaps in a few months . . . but I would never leave you destitute. Heavens! Let me pay you your wages, send you off with a little extra.”

  “I don’t need your charity, Mr. Barnhart. This was never about money.”

  “Still,” he said. “Please, allow me.” He turned toward the bookshelf with its copies of Webster’s Dictionary and The Old Farmer’s Almanac and pulled out a few books. He had a safe behind them where he kept the working funds of the paper in the form of several hundred dollars of banknotes.

  But Josephine wasn’t about to give him satisfaction. She grabbed her bonnet and was out the door before he could get the safe open, and into the hot Washington sun. Let him run her off. She’d collect her things from the boarding house and catch the next train to New York. They wouldn’t be so fussy at the Herald or the Tribune.

  She’d forgotten about the men slouching at the front door, and now they gathered around her, staring. Yes, that one with the yellow-toothed grin was one of the s
leazy fellows at the National Republican, specialists in stories about runaway slaves and poxied whores whose bodies turned up dead in the Washington Canal. If he’d been with the Washington Standard she’d have punched him in the nose.

  “Josephine, wait!” Barnhart called from behind her.

  She ignored him and stomped down the street, one eye on horse droppings as she tied on her bonnet. Two of the men fell in beside her.

  “Have you no shame?” she asked without looking at them. “Following a lady down the street. The lowest field hand in South Carolina has better manners.”

  “You’re no lady,” one of them said in a gravelly voice with a Scottish burr. “You’re a strumpet and a traitor.”

  Josephine turned, fuming. “If I were a man, sir, I would demand satisfaction for that insult.” She pointed to the soldiers drilling on the opposite side of the street. “There are a dozen hot-blooded men who will happily put a ball in your head when they hear of your insult to my honor.”

  She was only warming up, and intended to let loose a scathing barrage to atone for all the things she wished she’d said to Barnhart for his craven failure to defend her against slander. Instead, she stopped with her mouth open as she recognized the speaker.

  It was the fellow with the bushy beard who had been questioning people last night as they entered the Virginia side of the Long Bridge. Josephine prided herself on her ability to identify accents and should have recognized him from his voice alone. But she’d been distracted.

  The second man had slick, neatly parted hair and a thick mustache. With a strong chin and broad shoulders, he managed to seem both cultured and yet have the look of a man who could crack the skulls of street toughs or clear out an opium den by showing his fists. Both men carried Colt revolvers in holsters.

  “Who are you?” she asked in a quiet voice, her heart thumping.

  As she spoke, some of the other men who’d been waiting outside the newspaper offices now caught up with them. They whispered back and forth.