On Secret Service (28 page)

Lon started down Franklin Street at Capitol Square, where a mammoth George Washington, now “the Father of the Confederacy,” heroically bestrode his bronze horse. He walked with his head up, confidently, trying not to draw attention to himself. Under his arm he carried a half-pound tin of English tea for which he'd paid five dollars of Lieutenant Turner's money. The prison commandant had a taste for terrapin, fresh oysters, and other delicacies not offered by the Confederate commissary department. A grocer sold the tea out the back door, for an inflated price, telling his regular customers that tea from London was no longer available due to the blockade.

The October air was bracing, the hilly street busy with pedestrians and conveyances of all sorts. Lon found the butcher shop of Siegfried Retz five blocks east of the square. From the shop's doorway he scanned the sunlit sidewalks. He saw no one suspicious. He pulled the frayed cuff of his cadet gray shirt to the base of his left thumb, covering the single two-inch manacle on his left wrist.

“Gentleman Lon” no longer existed. Lon's beard had grown to the second button below his collar. His skin fit his bones like a drumhead; all the fat had been starved off him in the weeks since Colonel Mars had delivered him to his jailers. The charming old city of hills and waterways had plenty of jails for war prisoners, along with plenty of crippled veterans begging in Capitol Square, plenty of speculators, cardsharps, and pickpockets at the hotels, plenty of lonely soldiers' wives glancing at strangers on the street. Above all, Richmond had plenty of hatred for any of “Lincoln's hirelings.”

The shop smelled of meat and sawdust. A handsome colored boy in a clean white shirt and trousers sat on a box by the open display case, waving a whisk over a few sad cuts of gray meat afloat in puddles of melted ice. Startled by Lon's appearance, the butcher dropped his cleaver on the block. He was perhaps thirty, wiry, with mournful brown eyes and a russet mustache with waxed points.

“Siegfried Retz?”

“Yah, sure, that's me.” He spoke English with a heavy accent.

“Do you have cutlets for sale?”

Retz squinted at his visitor. “Pork cutlets or veal cutlets?”

“The lady of the house hates pork.”

“Veal's all we got anyway.” With the exchange of recognition phrases out of the way, Retz tapped the boy. “Hiram, take a stroll. Buy an apple if you can find one.” He gave the boy a coin. The boy left, skipping. “I wondered when somebody would show up.”

“I've been here since August. Major Allen sent two of us, posing as deserters.”

“I hope you're luckier than the one they hanged, Webster.”

“We didn't start out with very good luck. A reb caught us and killed my partner. He took me to what he called the depot prison.”

“Libby. It's an old chandler's warehouse.”

“It's a hellhole.”

“There's worse. What's your name?”

“Lon Price.”

“Sig Retz. That's a little joke in English, huh?” He pantomimed a few puffs. He had an abrupt, breathless way of speaking. Lon liked him.

“Come on in back. I got no customers, as you can see. When I stepped off the boat in Boston five years ago, I thought I'd make my fortune in America. I picked the wrong town.”

Retz lifted a curtain so Lon could pass. The back room, lit by gas, contained a single bed, a chair and cushion, a stove, a small desk piled with ledgers, a lacquered ice cabinet, a tall stack of newspapers. For all its poverty, the room was immaculate.

Greedy for news, Lon scanned an
Enquirer
from the top of the stack. The largest article inveighed against Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation of slaves in “all states in rebellion,” to take effect January 1. He'd heard rumors of such a plan for months. Evidently the titanic battle in Maryland in September had given Lincoln the confidence to announce it. McClellan had partially redeemed himself at Antietam by turning back Lee's invasion of the north. The
Enquirer
piece brimmed with purple wrath: phrases like
egalitarian madness
and
mongrelization of the pure blood of our forefathers.

“What do you think of that, huh?” Retz asked.

“The proclamation? I'm for it.”

“Yah, sure, just don't say it too loud around here, they'll hang you from a lamppost.” Retz wiped his hands on his stained apron. “You got anything for me?”

Lon took a folded paper from under his shirt. “For Major Allen. I believe he's back in Washington now.”

Retz nodded, studying the penciled foolscap sheets. Lon had spent days gathering information, stealing a little extra time from each errand for the prison commandant. His several hundred words spoke of everything from the miserable state of the Confederate economy to the number and size of cannon defending the riverfront. He'd encoded the message using the Vigenère tableau and the keyword
preacher
. The first line read “EIMCGYIGDIX”; deciphered, it said “Price Report.”

“How will this get to Washington?”

“I pass it up the line. You don't need to know any more.” Retz folded the sheets and hid them in a slit in the chair cushion. He tapped Lon's manacle. “The warden give you the prison jewelry?”

“Right, Lieutenant Turner. Mean bastard.”

“Not half so mean as the one they shoved out last fall. Captain Todd. Half brother of Lincoln's wife. A drunken hound and torture specialist. Papers said the Congress wanted to investigate him. Instead they transferred him. You want some beer?”

“Thanks. I haven't tasted beer in months.”

Retz took a tin growler from the ice cabinet, filled a small stein. Lon savored the smell and taste of the brew, tepid though it was. “I like to hear about that bracelet.”

“It's a long story.”

“I got no more ice. I got no good meat to sell. You see how many customers are storming my door. Time, now—that I got plenty of.”

 

Colonel Mars had delivered Lon to the authorities on a sweltering August afternoon. For his trouble he would receive a bounty of one Confederate dollar. His greater reward came from parading Lon along Main Street. Lon's uniform attracted a crowd of urchins, invalid soldiers, and well-dressed civilians. A one-legged veteran on a crutch threw stones. One gashed Lon's forehead.

The language of the crowd was amazingly foul. “Blue-belly prick!” “Lincoln whoreson!” The women were as obscene as the men. Mars let them have their way until they wearied of it and Lon's face was dripping with their spit. Ever since Sledge's murder, rage had built up in him, with no outlet. The gauntlet of hate turned the screw tighter.

Their destination was Richmond's receiving prison, situated in a district of warehouses, shanties, stables, and vacant lots. Three floors overlooked Cary Street, one block from Main. Nineteenth Street sloped downward from Cary to Canal Street; the Canal side had an additional floor. It was a fine old brick building, with
LIBBY PRISON
painted large on the outside.

They passed a street corner sentry box and entered through a heavily barred door. Armed guards patrolled the hall. Lon looked into a communal kitchen with several stoves. A frail bald man came out of the commandant's office a few steps farther on. “Thank you for your time, sir. If you suspect any prisoner of being more than he seems, turn him over to us.”

The man put on a brown felt bowler. His left leg was crippled, making him tilt as he walked. A thick-soled shoe scraped the floor. The man stared at Lon as he passed by.

The commandant, Lieutenant Turner, was a severe young soldier of twenty or twenty-one. Clean-shaven, he wore his hair short. “Name and rank?” he said in a rumbling bass voice.

“Private Albion Rogers.” Lon gave the numbers of his regiment, division, and corps. Turner's clerk wrote them in a large book.

“We'll process you as soon as we can. Yankee deserters are sent to Palmer's Factory at Castle Thunder. The prisoners named the place. Something about the wrath of the gods falling on every man there. They're right; compared to Castle Thunder, this is a ladies' academy. We have one paramount rule at Libby. Stay three feet from windows at all times or you'll be shot. Our capacity is four hundred prisoners. We are warehousing three times that. If you die, you do us a favor. Orderly!”

A stripling in uniform sauntered in. “Hand this man over to the sergeant of the second floor.” Turner said to Lon, “He isn't really a sergeant. We call him that because we put him in charge.”

“Second floor, yes, sir.” The orderly whacked Lon's elbow with his truncheon. “Step lively, Mr. Abolitionist.”

Lon balked. “Look here, Lieutenant. I had to swallow their damn oath when I enlisted, but I deserted because I sure God don't want to fight so niggers can strut around pretending they're good as white men. When do I get a chance to serve the right side?”

“In the future. Perhaps. Take him out.”

On the way to the stairs the orderly jabbed Lon with his truncheon. Then again. And a third time. Lon wheeled around, red-faced.

“Something griping you, blue belly?” The orderly hit Lon's ear with his truncheon. Lon reeled to the stairs, grappling for a hold on the sticky rail. “You piece of Yankee shit. Will you stand up or do I knock your head off right here?”

Lon stood up.

 

According to Mathias Price and his fellow clergymen, Satan's domain lay somewhere below the surface of the earth. Lon found hell a different way that day; he ascended to it.

The staircase wall was a tapestry of squashed insects, scribbled oaths, obscene drawings of sex organs. Starting upstairs, the smell of human excrement was noticeable. At the first landing it was strong. Going farther up, it was sickening.

A crowd of prisoners waited on the second floor, whistling and shouting, “Fresh fish, fresh fish!” The prisoners were cadavers; filthy, shrunken shells of men. They poked and squeezed Lon. One whispered, “Got any money? You can have me for a dime.”

“Shut your fucking traps, ladies,” said someone at the rear. The inmates fell back like the Red Sea, revealing a stout soldier. On his blue blouse he wore a medal cut out of tin. A red bandanna tied around his forehead gave him a piratical air. His right eye had a disconcerting tendency to wander toward his ear. Lon was nearly sick from the smell of an inner room where prisoners had relieved themselves on the floor. He saw a soldier lying with his head in some of it. The stout man pointed this out to the orderly.

“Sonny died last night. Most likely the nostalgia got him. Been staring at the ceiling and crying for near a week.”

“Form a detail and move him downstairs,” the orderly said. He poked Lon. “This here's your floor sergeant, Private Griff.”

The orderly went down the stairs. Lon and Griff stared at one another. The other prisoners looked on. Griff's eye wandered again. He extended his hand, twitching his fingers.

“Shoes. Take 'em off and hand 'em over. Think of it as paying your second-floor membership dues.”

Lon had an urge to attack the bastard. He didn't want to be put in irons his first day, so he sat on the steps and pulled off his broken shoes. Mars had warned him that most personal property was confiscated, either stolen by guards or by inmates. Once he knew the ropes, Mars said, he could steal what he needed from others.

“Swell. Now turn out your pockets.”

“I don't have anything but this.” Lon showed his ivory-handled jackknife, which Mars had allowed him to keep, calling it “the prisoner's essential.”

Griff said, “Fine, I'll take it.”

“The man who captured me said prisoners always keep their knives.”

“I don't give a rat's tit what he told you, mister. I can trade a nice blade like that.”

Lon shook his head. “Sorry, no.”

Griff sighed as if dealing with a witless child. “Now listen, fish.” He stepped in close. He raised his knee up suddenly, ramming Lon's privates. Lon doubled over.

Griff yanked him up by the hair. “I said let me have—” Lon closed his fist around the jackknife and swung a roundhouse right at Griff's head.

Griff windmilled into the wall. The other prisoners scrambled away. One yelled, “Hot damn, Paddy, here's a donnybrook.”

Griff lumbered at Lon like a maddened bear. Lon was half blind with sweat and rage. He remembered leaping in with both fists up, but he remembered nothing else until he came out of a fog, hearing applause and whistling. Guards hauled him up by his shoulders. Griff lay on the landing, his crotch stained, his nose flattened, blood bubbling on his lips. His right leg was bent beneath his left. Lon looked wonderingly at his own bleeding knuckles.

A guard held him against the wall at pistol point. Another tried to straighten Griff's bent leg. Griff screamed. Lieutenant Turner ran up the stairs to investigate the commotion. The astonished reb kneeling over Griff said, “I think his leg's broke, sir. I think this one did it with his bare hands.”