The Secrets of Mary Bowser (52 page)

These last years, I’d played the role of the ignorant darky well. So ignorant as to be thought incapable of literacy, of treachery. So dark as to seem nearly invisible to Jeff Davis and the men who came to see him. I took faint comfort as McNiven brought a boot against his horse and Bet flicked the reins on hers, with nothing for me to do but ride quiescent through the hot night.

On the twelfth July, a messenger to the Gray House interrupted Jeff Davis’s supper with a telegram reporting that Union troops had turned out to oppose Early’s force at Frederick, Maryland. Though the Confederates had won the battle, the delay gave Grant time to move his Sixth Corps to Washington, where any assault by Early would now be handily defeated.

“So much for your miracle,” Davis told Harrison. “Some infernal scouting expedition from Martinsburg must have seen our men and telegraphed to Grant. It is as though the Federals stand among us, for all they know of our strategies.”

He threw his napkin onto the table, and the supposedly ignorant serving girl stepped forward to clear his place.

Twenty-five

Y
ou gonna do something ’bout that Sophronia.”

I was on all fours in the basement of the Gray House, the late September chill seeping from the bare floor through my frayed linsey-woolsey as I scrubbed what mess the children had made of their dinner. All the day before, cannonades sounded, auditory evidence of the Federal troops skirmishing a mere half a dozen miles away. With Jeff Davis gone south to confer with his field commanders over how to stop General Sherman’s string of victories in Georgia, there was little for me to gather for my daily reports. So I was glad enough to find myself laboring in this empty room that seemed the only quiet corner in all of Richmond, with time to wonder over whether the latest fighting would come to anything or no. Or so I thought, until Hortense hunted me up with some new complaint.

I eased to a kneel, anticipating a report of some disaster in the parlor or the nursery. “What Sophronia done?”

“Ain’t you got eyes in your head? Once the turkey’s tail feathers begin to spread, it mean laying time coming soon.”

All those years of private schooling in Philadelphia, even my time in Richmond, didn’t leave me the least bit able to understand Hortense’s countrified way of speaking.

She shook her head, not so much at my ignorance as at the burdens she bore as housekeeper. “I told her watch herself sneaking round with that Tobias. Now she in the family way.”

By 1864 we were all so hungry, white Richmond along with colored Richmond, it was hard to believe anyone could grow thick around the middle. But Hortense ran her eyes over me and Sophronia all day long. She’d probably noted Sophronia’s pregnancy before the poor slow child knew herself.

“She must be scared half to death.”

Hortense rolled her eyes. “Scared a her own shadow, most the time. She so muddle-brained, she think just cause Queen Varina coo over her own brat she gonna coo over a pickaninny, too.” She snorted. “Anyone with a spit of sense see Queen Varina gonna sell that pickaninny away faster’n Sophronia say ‘please Missy don’t.’ Not even bat a eye worrying over what fiddle-faddle she spend the money on.”

She was right. Queen Varina would sell a newborn slave just to feed her carriage horses another month. And that could kill a woman stronger than Sophronia would ever be.

“What you want me to do ’bout it?”

“Get her away from here, ’fore anyone know ’bout the baby.” Hortense said it just as though she were directing me to dust the library mantel.

“You think I got some way to get a slave out a Richmond, I wouldn’t be long gone myself?”

“Maybe you done stuck around, looking for something you dropped.” She reached into her apron, drew out a wadded-up sheet of paper, and let it fall onto the floor between us, casual as you please. Without even reaching to smooth it flat, I knew what it was–the letter from Wilson that, months before, slipped out from where I carried it. Though Hortense couldn’t read a single word on that page, she’d had sense enough to snatch it up and keep it, just to have something to hold against me.

“I don’t know what you up to,” she said, “the way you sneak round this house. But I know you up to something, and you like to keep it quiet. So you gonna see to it Sophronia get took away, or I gonna get real noisy to Queen Varina ’bout your sneaking ways. Or maybe to Marse Davis hisself, when he get back from carrying on down in Georgy.”

I studied her inquisitorial eyes and that hard-set mouth, just as surely as I’d ever studied Miss Douglass’s Latin lessons or Miss Mapps’s geometry. What I saw was as certain an answer as I ever found in any schoolbook. I might have lied and denied about that letter, at least enough to connive Queen Varina or Jeff Davis. But Hortense wasn’t about to be fooled. And not just about my misplaced missive.

The Gray House sure wasn’t
we in the house
—but still and all, Hortense lived by the same code Mama taught me. She knew slaves saw things, heard things, did things without master and mistress ever suspecting. Knew I was doing something I needed to conceal.

“Federals real close,” I said. “Hear them guns most every day. Likely they be here ’fore that baby.”

“Them Federals been sniffing round Richmond since Marse Davis first drug us here from Alabam. Don’t set much store by them one way or the other. But a bright gal like Molly, why I know she gonna take care a Sophronia, just like I tole her to.” She plucked the letter up and tucked it into her bodice. “Queen Varina going to one a them starvating parties tonight, she gonna lie in bed all day tomorrow moaning over she so tired, she got a sick headache, and all that. That’s Saturday, and no one spect you be here Sunday. You leave tonight, no one miss Sophronia ’fore Monday.”

Leave tonight—even Moses himself had more time to lay plans for leading the slaves to freedom. Still, with Jeff Davis away, my being gone a day from the Gray House wouldn’t hurt the Union any. “Why you fretting and fussing so much over Sophronia, all of a sudden?”

She puckered her face into a frown. “Last thing I need be some hysterical nigger gal about the house, carrying on over her sold away pickaninny.”

Hortense put up a good bluff. But Queen Varina would be plenty hysterical herself when she discovered another of her slaves disappeared across the Union lines. So Hortense wasn’t angling for more peace in the Gray House, whatever she said.

Maybe it was a desire to defy Queen Varina. Maybe revenge for some long ago hurt of her own. Maybe another hint of a child Hortense had, or more than one, that were taken from her and sold away. Whatever it was, I could sense it, even if all the details weren’t for me to know for sure. Just as Hortense sensed enough about me to know I’d find a way to get Sophronia to Federal territory safe and sound.

I didn’t know whether it was more sympathy or self-preservation welling inside me as I told her I’d see to it, no need for us to talk on it further.

Being in the family way must have exhausted Sophronia, because she drifted off to sleep just as soon as we passed Rocketts Landing, despite all the jostling of Wilson’s cart. I wasn’t sorry for the lack of company. While she was awake, she kept asking “Where Tobias at?” or “Tobias come soon?”—questions I didn’t care to answer. How could I tell her I didn’t know if she’d ever see her man again, didn’t even know if I’d see mine?

Wilson had driven many a slave to freedom in this very cart. Those slaves had curled up small, a sack of flour or a cord of wood covering them. Knowing that if some white Southerner discovered them, all their hope of freedom would end in whipping, maiming, sale—or who knows what combination of the three.

Sophronia and I didn’t ride like that. I sat and she lay right out in the open, our only cover the velvet black sky, and the propinquity of the white lady who drove us along the Osborne Turnpike and then down New Market Road.

Bet perched ramrod straight on the driver’s seat of the rough-hewn cart, acting for all the world like that’s where she ought to be. She was obliging enough when I appealed for her aid, eager to help transport a runaway slave. Glad to flash her pass at the Confederate picket outside Richmond, who warned her to be careful of the Yankee varmints who might be sneaking about.

For all her bold and brash, still I caught Bet frowning in consternation over how to fix upon a route to ride Sophronia to the Federals. With the constant skirmishing, even the Union troops pressing forward and the Confederates trying to regain lost ground couldn’t know just where one side’s territory gave off and the other’s began. Bet and I both had our brows well furrowed over how we’d make our way, when a gunshot rang out a dozen yards away.

Everything happened so fast after that, I could barely mark it all.

Frances Burney whinnying and rearing up with fright.

Bet shouting and struggling to calm the horse.

Virginia air thick with the smell of gunpowder and fear.

And then on the road in front of us, the silhouette of a soldier, aiming his pistol right at Bet and ordering, “Hold there.”

Bet grappled desperate at the reins, but that mare wouldn’t stay still.

I saw a flash and heard the crack of a bullet. Frances Burney, the last of the Van Lews’ grand team of six white carriage horses, fell to the ground.

Bet jumped down to kneel over the beast. She rubbed a hand ever so gently along its muzzle, as though coaxing it through its last pain spasms. Three and a half bloody years of war, all that death and mauling, and she could still mourn for a horse.

The soldier came toward us. As I made out his raggedy butternut uniform, Bet rose to a stand. “I shall report this act of wanton cruelty to your commanding officer, young man. You may be sure of that.”

The soldier howled a maniac’s laugh. “Tell the devil howdy-do when you do. ’Cause the captain’s in hell sure as I’m standing here. Though mebbe like he said I’m headed there myself. Reckon I am, but I don’t care.”

He jerked his head a half-turn and nodded as though he were listening to a voice behind him, then darted his eyes back around. “Only, Sam and Becky and the baby is in Heaven by now. Never got to see em one last time like Becky wanted. If I go to hell ain’t never get to see ’em agin.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” Bet said. I hoped she had sense enough to see the soldier wasn’t in his right mind. He’d probably run off from his company after hearing tidings of sickness and death at home.

“I ain’t much lost,” he said, though he peered about as if he wasn’t sure how he came to be talking to her. He waved his revolver toward me and Sophronia. “Who’s that?”

“Those are my servants. I brought them to the city to tend Mother, and now I must take them back to our farm.”

“We ain’t got no slaves. No fancy city house neither. Paw said it was a fool shame to go off and get kilt for them that did.”

He stepped to the cart, holding his sidearm steady on us. “Jethro says you can milk a nigger, same as a cow. Paw says nah. They ain’t neither of them ever saw one, though.” With his free hand, he pinched at where the fabric of Sophronia’s bodice pulled tight across her bosom.

Bet was on him fast, whirling him around as Sophronia squealed in pain.

“Young man, in the name of decency, do not behave this way.”

He rubbed the back of his hand against the stubble on his cheek, like an animal pawing its matted fur. “You awful careful a them niggers. You one a them abolesh started this damn war, maybe.” With two quick clicks, that deranged Confederate cocked his gun, training it on Bet.

The only thing in the cart besides me and Sophronia was the basket of food Bet had packed along. I reached into it, then crept quick to the edge of the cart.

The water jug was heavy, still nearly full. I felt the heft as I swung it up in both my hands, then brought it down hard on the back of that man’s head.

I thought I heard bone crack. Or maybe I felt it. Maybe I just mistook the breaking of the pottery jug for the smashing of that man’s skull. But the next thing I knew, he was lying on the ground.

I jumped out of the cart, the earth hitting stiff again my soles. I raised my foot and brought it down hard against the same bloodied spot where the jug had smashed apart like an egg cracked against a skillet. I stomped his head over and over, until at last I made out Sophronia sobbing in terror, and then Bet’s voice.

“My God, Mary! What have you done?”

Without even bothering to answer, I bent and took up the unconscious soldier’s revolver, checked the hammer, and put a bullet right into his head.

Twenty-six

A
t least Bet was willing to forgo her notions about proper burial when it came to carriage horses and crazed Confederate soldiers.

Heavy as Frances Burney was, there wasn’t much chance we could move her carcass. Wilson’s cart would have to be left behind, too, no use to us without an animal to draw it. As for the Confederate, I slid a hand beneath each of his armpits, his arms dead weight against my knuckles as I dragged him off the road and a little ways into the woods, so whoever came across the horse and cart wouldn’t find him as well.

Sophronia was still whimpering with fear by the time the three of us set off on foot. “He can’t hurt you anymore,” I told her. “Let’s forget all about it, like a bad dream. Keep a lookout for sun-up and your first day of freedom.”

But even as we walked along, I knew sun-up might bring still more trouble. I could make out spots of blood and who knows what all pulpy else on my skirt and shoes, thought I even felt it dried across my face and hair. We were without so much as a jug of water to wash me clean, and likely to chance upon more strangers come daylight.

“Is there a creek anywhere near here?” I asked Bet. We didn’t dare make for the James, guarded as it was by Confederate troops.

“I believe Four Mile Creek is somewhere farther down the road,” she said. “I’ve never had cause to travel there.” When I’d gotten the soldier into the woods, I stepped away from the corpse and vomited so hard I shook from head to toe. Bet was just the opposite, her speech and movements mechanical with shock at what I’d done.