The Crescent Spy (24 page)

“Oh, you’re a spy, all right,” Francesca said. “But not for ‘the cause,’ as you put it.”

Josephine started to push away. “I won’t sit and listen to this slander.”

“Sit down or I will go at once to General Lovell and tell him who destroyed the arsenal.”

Josephine stopped and pulled herself in to the table again. “You’re more wrong than you can imagine.”

It wasn’t a very effective lie, and they both knew it. Nevertheless, she was forced to commit to her position, like a gambler on a bad run of luck who throws down all his money on a single hand.

“But my work is important enough that I’m willing to listen,” Josephine continued. “I can’t risk the Yankees learning what I’m doing. What do you want? Money?”

“The Colonel wants to see you. That’s the first thing. He wants to meet you at Jackson Square in front of the Cabildo and talk.”

“That’s all?”

“He’d also be mighty grateful if you’d loan him a hundred dollars so he can get back in the game. But frankly, he has lost his touch. We earned a thousand dollars blockade-running, and he lost it in two nights of faro. A bit of silver falls into his hand and he’ll be off to ride the tiger again.”

“Done. A hundred dollars. One meeting with the Colonel.”

“You misheard me,” Francesca said. “I said that would satisfy the Colonel, but I’m not so forgiving. Those gems didn’t belong to you—”

“If there
were
gems, they wouldn’t have belonged to you, either.”

“But I am his wife now. So yes, they did.” The woman waved her hand. “But never mind the gems, or the ill-gotten money you received from selling them. You are a spy and a traitor. A woman like that should pay for her crimes.”

“And by ‘pay’ you mean money in your palm. How much?”

“Six thousand dollars.”

Josephine drew her breath. So much. She’d been thinking a few hundred, maybe a thousand. “I don’t have it.”

This much was true. She had a little less than four thousand remaining. But it was true that she’d received nearly six from the sale of the gemstones, after her donation to the Sanitarium for the Burned and Indigent. She had spent a fair bit of it getting established in Washington: taking courses in etiquette, buying books on grammar and rhetoric to perfect her writing skills, and a wardrobe befitting her assumed station. And then there was the money she’d spent to move back and forth between Union and Confederate lines, and the supplies she’d donated to General Beauregard’s camp to convince him she was a secessionist from Maryland. Since arriving in New Orleans, her expenses and her income had more closely matched.

“Then get it,” Francesca said. “I’ll give you three days.”

“That’s impossible. How do you propose I do that?”

“You’ll find a way,” Francesca said firmly. “We’ll meet again on Wednesday. Same time, same restaurant. When you’ve paid me, you can go to the square, where the Colonel will be waiting.”

“This is preposterous. I most certainly cannot do what you suggest.”

“No? Then I’ll go to General Lovell and tell him the truth. Miss Josephine Breaux was seen fleeing the arsenal after the fire in the company of a wounded man recently arrived from the North. Here is the description of the wound to his head. If you look, you will no doubt find him hiding in or near the home of Mrs. Nellie Gill, whose husband serves with the army in Tennessee.”

“Don’t do this,” Josephine begged.

“Six thousand dollars. You have three days.”

The waiter appeared with their food. He put down Francesca’s lobster and filet first, then slid in Josephine’s plate with a flourish.

“Good news, mademoiselle. The chef found a final piece of haddock in the icebox.”

O
n Monday morning, Josephine returned to her room with two hardboiled eggs taken from Nellie’s kitchen, some hard cheese, part of a bun, and a jar of fig preserves she’d swiped from the pantry. She served them to Franklin on a copy of yesterday’s
Crescent
, while she retreated to her desk to compose a telegram.

Urgent.

F.G. injured in blast.

Enemy knows where hiding.

Must evacuate by Wednesday.

C.S.

It gave her a small thrill to sign it thus.
C.S.—
the Crescent Spy.

When Josephine finished, she folded it in an envelope, retrieved the curious pocket watch from the Oriental box, and stuck both envelope and watch into her satchel. When she looked up, Franklin was watching with a scowl. He’d taken a bite from one of the eggs, but set the rest of it aside.

“I don’t want you sending that,” he said. “It’s an unnecessary risk.”

“You don’t even know what it says.”

“Something about bringing me a doctor, am I right? I’ll be fine. By Friday when your landlady comes, I’ll be able to get out of here on my own.”

“That’s not what it says, and you won’t be up and about by then anyway.”

He swung out of bed, wincing when he tried to put weight on his injured leg. “Let me see that.”

“Get back in bed,” she said. “That’s an order.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“I have new information—don’t give me that look, I’m not telling you what—and you need to trust me. You’re injured, so for now, I’m in charge, and I’ll make the decisions.”

She set the satchel by the door and returned to push him back into bed. He didn’t resist, but called to her again as she opened the door, still sounding uncertain. She ignored him and went downstairs and into the street to hail a cab.

Franklin’s instructions had been to enter the Cabildo in the afternoon, so she couldn’t send the telegram for several hours. Instead, she went to the offices of the
Crescent
. There, she found the newsroom racing ahead under full steam. Editors and writers hunched over desks, scribbling, while typesetters assembled copy, their hands flying across the mold, arranging letters.

Solomon Fein was berating Harold Keller in loud terms and slapping him with a rolled up sheaf of papers. “You know how many more copies the
Picayune
sells because of this? The
Bee
, the
True Delta
—they’ll all make us look like fools.

“Thank God you’re here,” Fein said, spotting Josephine. He shoved
Keller’s pages at her. “Please tell me you can make something of this.”

“Keller’s story of the arsenal explosion?”

“Presumably. You tell me. Might be a story of Caesar’s invasion of Gaul from all I can make of it.”

She skim-read the story. Keller had buried the most important information at the bottom of the story, had placed the hospital on the wrong side of town, and claimed that it had been guarded by fifty men of the Tenth Louisiana Infantry, a company that had shipped to Virginia last summer. Apart from that, the writing was dull, uninspired. He didn’t have a single description of the explosion or the fire. The story’s only redeeming value was a quote from Keller’s cousin, General Lovell. Assuming that was accurate. The rest he’d apparently invented whole cloth.

“It’s a mess,” she said.

“That’s what he said,” Keller burst out. “But nobody has explained to me
what
is wrong with it.”

“You!” Fein said, pointing to the door with a scowl, as if Keller were a naughty puppy that had piddled on the rug. “Out!”

When Keller had slunk away, Fein turned back to Josephine. “Please tell me you can fix this mess.”

“How long do I have?”

Fein consulted a pocket watch. “Seventy-two minutes.”

“It won’t be pretty. Workmanlike, at best.”

He gave a sigh of relief. “That will do. I’ll run your Otz story on the front page and push this piece of garbage to the back.”

“About that,” she began. She’d felt a little smug to see Fein’s poor decision about the arsenal play out as expected, but now her satisfaction faded. “I don’t have a story.”

Fein’s eyes widened. “You don’t? Oh, God.” He slapped a hand to his forehead. For all his theatrics, she’d have thought he’d entered the offices to discover an angry mob smashing the presses.

“This Otz woman is a glory-seeking liar,” Josephine said. “She didn’t see anything. She doesn’t know anything. Trust me, I’m good at sniffing out such sorts.”

“What does that matter?” he said desperately. “Take what you have and wrap it in equivocating language. Throw in your own speculation. We’re trying to move papers, not testifying in court.”

“I don’t have anything. Not a word.”

“Josephine, why? You didn’t write me anything at all?”

She reached into her satchel. “I have this.”

She handed him one of the spare articles that she’d stockpiled in the past week, written during one of her feverish writing sessions. It was about the sale of Confederate war bonds in the grog houses and brothels, full of amusing anecdotes, like a redheaded whore nicknamed Molly Bricktop, who had been freely offering her company to any man who purchased a hundred-dollar bond. Molly Bricktop proudly claimed that more than forty patriotic gentleman had already purchased the requisite bonds.

Fein skim-read it. He grunted. “Hmm. Not bad. But not front page, either. Maybe I could move Upton’s piece to the lead and put this in its place. You can hack something out of Keller’s dreck, and we’ll put that below. When did you write this?”

“As soon as I had endured Mrs. Otz’s fanciful tales, I spent a couple of hours trying to make something of it before I gave up. There was just enough time left in the day to go around to the Irish Channel, where I was sure I could dredge up something. I got up early this morning and wrote the story.”

He grabbed her right hand and turned it over. A skeptical look passed over his face. “You have barely any ink on your fingers and none on the edge of your palm. You haven’t been writing this morning.”

“All right, I admit. I never even tried. I knew Otz was nuttier than a Vermont squirrel, and I threw out everything she said. I was sitting on this bond story already.” That was somewhat closer to the truth.

“Never sit on a story. Whatever you have, whenever you have it, I want it. I’ll never have too much. I could fill the whole blasted paper with your work.” He pointed to Keller’s article, still in her left hand. “Now sit down and make something of these chicken scratches. Then go out to the hospital and see if you can get anything more.”

“Should have sent me in the first place.”

Fein only grumbled at this and hurried off.

Keller’s story really was a mess, and it was closer to ninety minutes before she came up with something satisfactory. By the end, Fein was pacing back and forth behind her, looking over her shoulder and asking if she was finished if she so much as stopped to compose a sentence in her head. She finally told him that if he didn’t leave her alone she was liable to smash a bottle of ink over his head. Her final version was still weak, and she refused to let her name appear next to the story, but Fein seemed satisfied.

He ordered her off to the hospital to get the eyewitness accounts that Keller had failed to deliver, but she didn’t go. For one thing, she didn’t want to risk running into the nurse who’d given her and Franklin a bed in the officers’ ward. Not now, less than two days from the blast, when the woman’s memory would be sharpest. For another, it was already early afternoon, and she didn’t know if she could make it to the hospital and then back down to Jackson Square before it would be too late to send the telegram. Today was Monday, and she only had two more days to get Franklin out of Nellie’s house before Francesca made good on her threat.

Instead, Josephine traveled to the Quarter, where she sat in the square, writing her article about the destruction of General Lovell’s arsenal. No need to go back out; she’d witnessed it. She’d
caused
it. She described the boom, the column of fire. She told about the mad flight from the hospital, explained how windows had shattered blocks away and how the explosion had shaken buildings all the way to the levee. She also inserted misdirections fabricated from her own imagination. A nurse claimed she’d spotted two soldiers sitting on a barrel of powder, smoking. Someone else thought it was boys from the Alley who’d broken in to steal supplies and somehow set off the detonation. But of course one couldn’t discount Union spies. Two men with Boston accents had been sniffing around the hospital two days earlier.

When she finished, she took out the pocket watch with its curious design of crescent and star. It was after three. She crossed the square to the Cabildo, the mansard-roofed building constructed by the Spanish as their government offices and still used by the city. Inside, she sat on a bench next to an overly talkative old woman who was knitting socks. The woman claimed that she’d already delivered sixteen pairs, the wool purchased with her own pin money, and the socks knitted with her own hands. Josephine kept up a pleasant conversation, while checking her watch every time a black man passed.

The old woman left. A young soldier took her place, and confound it if he wasn’t also talkative. Josephine gave him a false name when he got too friendly. She’d brought a copy of
Ivanhoe
in her satchel and tried to read the book to show she was disinterested in conversation, but he was persistent. She was relieved when the clerk finally called him in to see the magistrate.

A mulatto girl of eleven or twelve in a calico dress and with a bright-yellow
tignon
tied about her hair took the soldier’s place. To Josephine’s relief, the girl sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap. Josephine read in peace for some time, but when she looked up, the girl was peering over her shoulder to steal a read. When Josephine met her gaze, the girl looked away with a guilty expression.

Josephine smiled encouragement. “It’s a good book—I don’t blame you.”

The girl wouldn’t meet Josephine’s gaze. She needed prodding.

“Can you read?”

“Yes, miss,” the girl said in a shy voice. She looked like she wanted to say something else, but closed her mouth and looked away again.

“What is your name?”

“Diana, but Ma and Pa call me Di.”

“I like Diana better,” Josephine said. “It’s like the goddess of the hunt from the old Greek stories. Where did you learn to read, Diana?”

“My mama taught me. Is that book . . . ?”

“Is it what?”

“What’s it about?”

Josephine smiled and showed the title. “It’s a silly story of knights and fair ladies, but it’s good fun. Would you like it?”

“Oh, no, miss! I couldn’t.”

“I’ve read
Ivanhoe
at least ten times. I’ve been meaning to buy some new novels, and this will give me an excuse. Please, you’ll be doing me a favor.”

Diana took the book and clutched it in her hands, eyes wide. That shining look in her eyes reminded Josephine so much of her own eagerness at getting a new book that she couldn’t help but smile. That smile was infectious, and soon the two were grinning at each other as if they were sharing some delicious secret.

A black man came in from the square, carrying a wood crate over his shoulder. He spotted the girl and the woman smiling at each other and veered over.

“Hey there, Di,” he said. “You ain’t botherin’ this fine lady none, you hear. Apologies miss, this child—”

The man stopped, his eyes dropping to the pocket watch that Josephine had set on her lap upon spotting him. His gaze flickered to her eyes, and his tongue darted to his lips.

“No trouble at all,” Josephine said coolly. “We were only talking about books. It so happens I have a spare copy of this one.” She put the watch in her satchel and stood up. “I hope you enjoy
Ivanhoe
, Diana.”

The girl glanced back and forth between the man and Josephine, seeming to recognize that something had passed between them, but confused as to what.

Josephine wanted to ask more, curious about the child, who was evidently of mixed parentage. Yet unlike most such situations, her father appeared to be the black one, which meant her mother must be white. Spanish or French, perhaps? They were less fussy about such things than Americans. Yet even in New Orleans it was an unusual situation.

And one that would remain a mystery. She remembered Franklin’s
warning and had no intention of putting either father or child at risk.

Josephine went outside and took a pass through Jackson Square, looking for suspicious sorts who might be watching. A dozen old men near the cathedral played martial music with trumpets and drums. Children bought roasted nuts and lemon cakes from men with carts. Up near the levee, men unloaded barrels of molasses and crates of coffee from a flatboat.

Josephine saw nothing amiss but no longer trusted her ability to see if she were being spied on. She and Franklin had taken reasonable precautions the other night when approaching the hospital, yet Francesca had spied on them anyway. And so Josephine lingered near the brass message box, trying to figure out how to wedge her envelope behind it without being spotted.