the Castle Thunder prison out of three buildings on Richmond’s Cary Street—Greaner’s Tobacco Factory, Palmer’s Factory, and Whitlock’s Warehouse. It was in the former Whitlock’s Warehouse that Hattie and Lucy were confined, a space designated for women and colored prisoners.
The prison was a wretched place, the cells filthy and crowded. Rations were paltry, Hattie soon discovered, the bread little more than a mix of water and flour, the peas infested with worms and the rice with vermin. What little meat they were given—bacon, mostly—was usually rotten. The ventilation was poor, and the stench of bodies held in crowded conditions mixed with the lingering odor of tobacco from the warehouse’s past.
They often heard musket shots, some coming from firing squads carrying out executions in the brickyard behind the prison. The notoriously brutal Captain Alexander, who had charge of the prison, made daily patrols with his fierce black boar hound, Nero. It was hard to say which one, man or beast, struck more terror into the prisoners’ hearts.
From the moment Hattie entered the prison, she’d resolved to find out what had become of Thom. General Winder had said he suspected the three of them, giving her reason to think that Thom, too, had been arrested. She believed her best chance of learning where he was being held was by acting to the hilt her role as a true southern lady. Hattie’s decision to comport herself with dignity was in marked contrast to Lucy, who alternately groveled and begged and demanded release.
Thom would want her to be strong, Hattie knew. But at night, alone on the straw pallet that served as her bed in a cell shared with a dozen women, shivering in a thin prison-issued shift, she gave herself over to sorrow, her tears flowing as much for Thom’s uncertain fate as her own.
She vowed not to cry openly, as Lucy did, wailing her discontents. Such displays of sorrow did nothing to move the guards, who seemed a hard lot following Captain Alexander’s harsh example. A woman could be punished as well as a man, one of them warned when Hattie objected to the maggots in her soup. For such an indiscretion, a prisoner might be sent to the dungeon, a six-foot-square cell without windows or heat. Her hands might turn black from being tied behind her back for hours, or she might be forced to wear a barrel shirt, consisting of a flour barrel with armholes cut in the sides.
The guards also warned against prisoners poking their heads out the windows, an offense for which some had been shot. But on Hattie’s second day in prison, she and her fellow prisoners were forced to the windows to watch an execution. One of the guards, swarthy and with a swaggering manner, jeered that any one of them, especially if charged with spying, could be next. “Jeff Davis don’t tolerate no such activity,” he said, “so don’t be thinking your skirts will protect you.”
The man at the gallows had been charged as a spy, though the women whispered that he’d sworn his innocence at a sham trial. Some of the women crowded at the windows laughed and made crude remarks as they watched the proceedings. But Lucy’s face blanched as the executioner placed a hood over the man’s head, so Hattie turned her by the shoulders so neither of them saw as the prisoner met his death. She noticed that a second guard, smaller than the first and with a disquieted look in his hazel eyes, also turned his head.
The execution was botched, Hattie gathered from the women who’d seen it. The rope broke, and when the drop was released, the prisoner fell to the platform. Cursing, the executioner had to be called for a new rope. There seemed few limits, Hattie thought, to the cruelty men would afflict on one another.
Long after the ordeal, Lucy remained shaken. She sat on her pallet, knees pulled to her chest, head bent at the neck.
Hattie knelt beside her. “Lucy, we’ve got to stay strong. You know that’s what Thom would want of us.”
“I don’t care what Thom wants. It’s because of him that I’m facing the gallows.” She began to sob.
Hattie tried to put a hand on her arm, but she pulled away. “You’re not facing the gallows,” Hattie said. “They’ve got no evidence against us.”
“That horrid doctor!” Lucy wailed. “He’s the one who turned us in.”
“I’m sure he is,” Hattie said. “But that doesn’t mean he’ll prevail.”
“And that wicked General Winder,” Lucy said between sobs. “He wouldn’t believe me about my…about my father.”
With this, she dissolved fully into tears, and Hattie could think of nothing more to comfort her. Lucy had grown up getting her way, her confidence vanishing at the first taste of true deprivation she could not talk her way out of.
Hattie stood, becoming aware that a few pallets away, a small group of prisoners had gathered around a dark-eyed woman who gesticulated wildly as she spoke.
“It’s all an error that will soon be corrected,” the woman was saying. “I am a British citizen.”
“She don’t sound like a limey,” one of her audience said.
The woman straightened. “I’ll have you know I was born in the Bahamas, a British colony.”
Hattie approached the group. “Who is she?” she asked one of the prisoners.
“Loreta Williams. Or Loreta Velazquez. Or Lieutenant H. T. Buford. Depends on who’s asking.”
Hattie studied the woman, who was addressing her fellow prisoners with a flourish and an air of independence. She wore the same prison shift as the rest of the women, but with her high cheekbones and spirited eyes, she managed to look elegant
“I dressed as a man and fought for the South,” Loreta said. “I fought at the First Battle of Manassas. I was wounded at Shiloh. And for this heroism I’m imprisoned?”
Murmurs of objection at this injustice sounded all around.
“I thought the South was short on soldiers,” Hattie said to the prisoner beside her. “I should think they’d welcome anyone willing to fight, even a woman dressed as a man.”
“There’s some that say she ain’t all she claims,” the prisoner said as Loretta bellowed on about her heroics when she’d assumed the guise of Confederate Lieutenant H. T. Buford.
“How’s that?” Hattie asked.
The woman smiled, showing a gap where a bottom tooth should have been. “Might have got herself in trouble same as I did, distracting the soldiers, as they say.”
Hattie nodded, thinking how it would shock Miss Whitcomb to know her former pupil was using her conversation skills to chat with a common prostitute. “So you’re saying that’s the real reason Loreta was arrested.”
The gap-toothed woman shrugged. “Like I said, depends who you ask. This ain’t her first dog and pony show, that’s for sure. Got herself arrested for parading around Lynchburg dressed like a soldier. Nabbed some jewels in New Orleans, and that got her more attention in the papers, which she don’t seem to mind one whit. The Yanks don’t seem to want her around, and neither does Winder, I reckon.”
Hattie nodded, then retreated to her pallet. Lucy had quit sobbing and was now staring at the ceiling in what seemed a near-catatonic state. Hattie lay back, then turned toward the wall. She couldn’t worry about Lucy. She needed to find Thom.
That night, as the guards made their rounds, Hattie approached the hazel-eyed one who, like her, had refused to watch the gruesome scene in the courtyard that afternoon.
“Something eating at you, lass?” he asked in a thick Scottish brogue.
“My husband, Thom Welton. I believe he’s been arrested.” She reached discreetly into her sleeve, where she’d moved two dollar bills from her bodice, taken from the roll of money Miss Warne had pressed upon her at the train station.
Without looking away, the guard deftly palmed the bills, sliding them into his pocket, quick as you please. “You want to know where he is.”
She nodded. “And if possible, I want to see him. Or the British consulate. He’s a British citizen, so he shouldn’t be held here at all.” Whatever stories she’d spun, Loreta Velazquez had at least raised the idea that a British citizen might have protections others lacked.
The guard cocked his eyebrow. “Ain’t asking much, are you?”
~ ~ ~
Two days later, the hazel-eyed guard with the Scottish brogue came for her. “Follow me,” he said.
Thinking she might have been called in for questioning, Hattie glided with as much dignity as she could muster over the filthy floors, ignoring the stench of excrement as she followed the guard past the next large cell. Her heart sank as they approached the warden’s office.
But to her relief, the guard led her past the warden’s office and out the front door. The day was dreary, the skies gray and cold, but Hattie reveled in the fresh air, breathing in great gulps.
The guard grabbed her by the wrist. “Don’t you go getting ideas about running off, or I’ll have to clamp on the cuffs.”
She fell in step beside him. “Where are you taking me?”
“You asked for your husband, didn’t you?”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He raised a finger to his lips. “Enough.”
Her step felt light. Thom was alive. And he wasn’t in Castle Thunder, for they were headed away from those three buildings. They walked two blocks, then turned north. In front of a four-story, flat-roofed brick building, the guard turned and led her inside.
As at Castle Thunder, the smell of tobacco permeated the building. There was also the stench of unwashed bodies that she’d grown accustomed to at the prison, along with a sickly-sweet smell that reminded her of the Patent Office wards.
“Is this a hospital?” she asked.
The guard nodded. “For prisoners and the deranged.”
As the guard led her through a maze of cots and pallets, a man cried out with a banshee-like wail, and she shuddered to think that this was where Thom was confined. But at least he was safe. She hoped he was getting much-needed medical attention, though she saw few attendants and only one man who might have been a doctor. One of the attendants wore prison garb, and when she asked her escort, he informed her that prisoners might, on good behavior, volunteer to tend the sick and in doing so, be allotted extra rations.
“There’s ones that get themselves to the hospital other ways too.” The guard chuckled under his breath as he led Hattie up the stairs. “Had us a smallpox outbreak last year. Turns out the men been smearing their faces with croton oil. I dunno where they got such an idea, but it did give them a passing resemblance to the pox.”
“They wanted to come here because conditions are better?” Hattie asked hopefully.
He shook his head. “Nay, lass. They figured they’d get sent over ta the pox hospital, and along the way, they’d jump from the cart. Us guards won’t go risking our lives chasin’ after men with the pox. Aye, but the warden caught onto their scheme soon enough, and he put a quick stop to them shenanigans.”
On the second floor, the guard stopped, shielding his eyes with his hand as he surveyed the patients lying about. “I’m told your man’s here somewhere.”
Hattie wasted no time, moving past cots and pallets that were crowded together without any semblance of order. For the most part, there weren’t many bloody wounds among these men, and Hattie was glad for it, recalling how her stomach had roiled as Julia tended a bleeding man. But the vacant stares here reminded her of the Patent Office patients, though the despair felt even thicker here.
Finally, she spotted Thom in a far corner. She hurried to him, pulling the guard along with her. When they arrived at his cot, Thom’s face lit up. “A sight for sore eyes,” he said. “For sore everything.”
The guard let go of her wrist, warning her to mind herself if she ever wanted to see Thom again. Then he stepped back, hovering nearby but giving them some privacy.
Hattie crouched beside Thom and took his hand, which felt warm—too warm, she thought, but she held it tightly anyhow. “Are they treating you well?”
He shrugged, and she saw how even that small movement pained him. “The men around here have warned that admission to Castle Thunder Hospital is more or less a death sentence. I’m still alive, so that’s something. You and Lucy—Winder said he’d sent you to the women’s facility. How are you faring?”
“Well enough.” She didn’t want to trouble him with Lucy’s despondency. “We’re treated better than the men, I hear.” She pressed her hand to his cheek, glad at least that he was protected here from the sorts of punishments Captain Alexander meted out. But there seemed no good outcome for him. If his condition improved, he’d be transferred to the prison proper, and then what would become of him? And if he got worse—well, from the looks of him, gaunt and haggard, she couldn’t see how he could get much worse and continue to live.
He clasped her hand, searching her face with a gaze so intense she felt as if she were melting. “Hattie, you’ve got to make sure Mr. Pinkerton knows what’s happened to us. He’ll do everything in his power to get us out of here. There are prisoner exchanges. He just needs to grease the wheels. Others have been freed, even known spies. Plus they’ve got no proof against us.”
None save the testimony of Dr. Luke Blackstone, she thought, despising the doctor for passing himself as a Union sympathizer when she knew him to be so clearly of the Secesh persuasion, and for doing it with the charm and smile that led folks to trust him, a genial doctor who should have had only the best interests of the afflicted in mind.
“I’ll find a way to get a message to Mr. Pinkerton,” she assured Thom. She had no idea how, but she still had some of the bills Miss Warne had given her, and now she knew a cooperative guard.
“How did you convince the guard to bring you here?” Thom asked.
She smiled. “I have my ways.” His eyes widened, and she added, “Nothing untoward, I promise. Just a little old-fashioned bribery.”
“Have they brought you for questioning yet?”
She shook her head.
“When they do, deny everything.”
“Everything?”
He smiled weakly. “Not that you’re my wife. Because you are, you know. In all but the ceremony. But you must tell them that you know precious little about my work, only that I run letters for the South.”
“What about what I told Blackstone, concerning my father?”
“Stick with that, too. Emphasize his grain smuggling for the Confederates, his organizing with the Knights, anything you can think of to convince them they’d lose his services if any harm came to you.”
“But that won’t help you get out.”
“You can’t help me much, can you, if you’re locked up? So worry about yourself first. And Hattie, you’ve got to talk with Lucy. Make sure she knows what you’ll be saying so your stories align. At this point, her best chance is leaning on her father’s influence. He may be a Union man, but if he’s as well-thought-of as she claims, they won’t want to risk antagonizing him. Back her up on that when they bring you for questioning.”
The guard approached, his gaze darting nervously toward the stairs. “Time to say your goodbyes, lass.”
Thom reached beneath the bedclothes and brought out the gold pocket watch he carried with him everywhere. He pressed it into her hand. “This belonged to my grandfather. I want you to have it. It’s not much, but if you get in a jam, you might be able to trade it for—”
“I can’t take this,” she said.
“No arguments.” He kept his hand pressed to hers, the disc of the watch warming under their touch. “Know always that no matter what anyone says, you are my one true wife. Do whatever you need with this to get to safety. Be strong, Hattie. For all of us.”
She pressed her lips to his, willing herself to remember the warmth of them, not embarrassed in the least to bestow as passionate a kiss as she could manage with a host of strangers looking on.