return to Washington, a hard rain set in. Falling in sheets against her room’s single window, oozing through the caulking and dripping to the floor, the deluge mirrored her spirits. The missing message changed everything. She should never have bothered with decoding it in the first place. She should have left that to the experts and prayed no one connected her with the traitorous Logans of Indiana. Neither should she have let down her guard with Lucy who, judging from the neat stitching that now attached her petticoat’s hem, had pilfered the paper while Hattie was sleeping.
Now Hattie could do nothing but pace her tiny attic room as she waited for the inevitable summons from Miss Warne. She should have confronted Lucy on their journey back to Washington. But at the time, the shock of her betrayal had only begun to set in, and Hattie’s main thought was that she didn’t want to give Lucy the satisfaction of acknowledging she’d been bested. Better to let her think she hadn’t yet discovered the missing paper, Hattie decided. So she wouldn’t be forced to converse with Lucy, she’d feigned a headache, and soon enough, her excuse became a reality.
Three restless days passed before the skies finally cleared. That’s when the summons came, delivered by a messenger boy. Miss Warne wanted Hattie to report to her at two o’clock that afternoon. The address given was one Hattie didn’t recognize, on Capitol Hill.
After being cooped up in the boardinghouse, it felt good to get out and walk. Cool and brisk, the air smelled fresh. Water ran in gullies along the boardwalk, and frost glistened in the grass. Hattie stepped carefully, avoiding patches of ice that had frozen last night. But despite the clear skies, a sinking feeling plagued Hattie. Her days in Washington were surely numbered. She had no real skills, no way to support herself other than what she’d learned with Pinkerton’s. She’d be forced to leave, and she had nowhere to go.
Hattie was surprised at how much affection she’d developed for Washington City during the months she’d spent there. Even with the continual threat of the Rebels closing in, the city hummed with activity that heightened her sense that whatever she’d been doing—even the mundane work of the mailroom—was making a difference for the Union.
The address Miss Warne had given led Hattie to a small, nondescript frame house in a modest neighborhood. With Pinkerton’s retreat from the War Department, Miss Warne had mentioned that the agency’s operations in Washington would be coordinated out of another facility, but Hattie hadn’t expected that to be a house.
Hattie approached the front door and used the knocker to wrap on it twice. She expected a hireling to come to the door, but to her surprise, Miss Warne herself answered the knock. As usual, she was plainly clothed in a gray morning dress, her hair pulled tightly back from her face.
“Do come in,” she said. Her cool tone was Miss Warne’s usual way of speaking, Hattie reminded herself, but still it increased her feeling that nothing about this meeting boded well.
She followed Miss Warne to a sparsely furnished parlor. At Miss Warne’s bidding, she seated herself on a red horsehair sofa. Miss Warne closed the door, then sat in a blue wing-backed chair across from the sofa. “How was Richmond?” she asked.
Hattie swallowed hard. “I believe we accomplished all we set out to.”
“I trust Lucy was a satisfactory guide.”
“She seemed well-versed in the route and the tasks at hand,” Hattie said, matching Miss Warne’s cool tone.
Miss Warne’s gaze was intense, and it was all Hattie could manage not to look away. “Lucy has her flaws, as do we all,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Hattie said. It would do her no good, she knew, to unleash the mental list she kept of those flaws.
“Yet Lucy has proven up to most of the tasks we’ve assigned. And when necessary, she takes initiative. That’s an admirable quality, wouldn’t you say, Miss Logan?”
Hattie nodded, though she had a strong sense of where this was going. From her dress pocket, Miss Warne extracted a square of paper. She unfolded it, smoothing it on her lap. Hattie glanced at the columns of code, the words “Logan” and “Indiana” seeming more prominent than ever.
“I trust this looks familiar,” Miss Warne said.
Hattie had rehearsed in her head all the ways she might explain herself. She could insist she had no allegiance to her father, only a desire that his treasonous activities not reflect poorly on her. This was entirely true, but she greatly doubted Miss Warne would believe her. Families stuck together, supported one another. Most families, anyhow.
She’d also thought of telling Miss Warne she’d had every intention of delivering the message to Thom so he could pass it along as he saw fit. This also was true. But it would also raise questions about why Hattie trusted Thom Welton over Miss Warne.
Having no viable defense, Hattie stood. “I’m sorry, Miss Warne. Perhaps I’m not cut out for spy work.”
Before her supervisor could respond, Hattie left the parlor, let herself out the front door, and walked briskly away without looking back. Reaching the corner, she turned toward the Capitol. Her pace slowed, tears welling in her eyes.
So many poor choices she’d made, destroying her best hopes for venturing out on her own. She’d been wrong to keep the message, wrong to think she could escape association with parents who cared more about wealth and prestige than preserving the Union and acknowledging the horrors of slavery.
And much as she wanted to blame Lucy for her current predicament, she had to admit she’d likely have done the same if their positions had been reversed. Spy work required a wariness even of one’s closest associates. Recognizing this, Hattie realized that what she’d taken as affection from Thom Welton might only have been his attempt to get close enough to Hattie to determine whether she, with her aptitude for decoding and desire to do more than open letters, posed a threat to the agency and the Union.
With a gloved hand, she wiped the tear that had trickled down her cheek. She knew only one thing for certain—she could not return to her parents’ home in Indiana. She could not endure her mother’s belittling, her father’s treasonous grain deals, or their mutual disdain for enslaved people.
But there was still her brother, George, assuming she could find him. Still, the hope that they could cobble together some sort of life for themselves after the war. But even if she had some assurance he was really in Canada, she had no means of getting herself from here to there. She scarcely had enough money saved to cover the next month’s rent at the boardinghouse.
She needed work. But what skills did she have? Snooping at letters and some amateur decoding. That might have been enough to get her a position with the National Detective Police, her best hope of getting to George, but after meeting Lafayette Baker, she had little interest in being under his thumb, even if she could convince him to put a woman other than a prostitute or barmaid on his payroll.
What she needed was some sort of employment that would allow her to work her way north without having to worry about paying room and board. On the sidewalk, she passed an amputee hobbling along on crutches. There was nursing, she thought. The thought of it hadn’t been pleasant when she’d gone with Anne to visit Henry at the Patent Office Hospital, but her circumstances were different now.
She veered east, backtracking toward the Patent Office. As on her previous approach to the facility, army carts filled the nearby streets. Inside the building, there was more activity than when she and Anne had visited, entering after hours. The cries of wounded men pierced her as they had when she’d been there before. As she passed one soldier, he reached for her hand. She stopped, allowing him to hold it as she smoothed his blonde locks from his forehead, which was hot to the touch, murmuring comfort as he called out in feverish delirium for his mother.
Hoping she’d provided the man at least a few moments’ comfort, she let go of his hand and continued along the rows of beds, passing alcove after alcove as she searched for someone in charge.
“Hattie!” a woman called out. “Is that you?”
She turned in the direction of the voice and saw Julia Trent kneeling beside a man propped in a corner near the door.
Hattie hurried toward her, then stopped short when she saw that the man was unconscious, his head covered in blood. The smell of it, metallic and sickly sweet, made her woozy, and she fought an urge to dash outside and gulp fresh air.
Julia dipped a rag in a basin of water red with blood. “Saber cut to the temple,” she said, pressing the rag to the wound. “The surgeon needs it washed before he can dress it. Do me a favor, will you, and get some clean water for the kitchen.” She nodded toward the door.
Hattie complied, lifting the basin and holding it away from herself as she maneuvered toward the door. Though she tried to hold the basin steady, she felt her hands quiver. She’d never liked the sight of blood, and she’d never seen so much of it all at once. Queasiness roiled her stomach as blood-red water sloshed from the basin over her boots. By the time she reached the kitchen, she felt she might be sick. She thrust the basin at a man in a white uniform.
“Fresh water,” she managed to say, then clamped her lips as bile rose in her throat.
The man looked at her curiously but took the basin and replenished the water. Bracing herself, Hattie returned to Julia. Look at her, not at him, she told herself.
Fortunately, a pair of orderlies arrived at the same time Hattie did. Julia rinsed the rag, turning the water an ugly shade of pink, and pressed it to the man’s temple a final time before the orderlies loaded him onto a stretcher and hauled him off.
Julie stood, leaving pink streaks as she wiped her hands on her apron, and greeted Hattie. “Fancy seeing you here.” With the back of her hand, she brushed a loose strand of hair from her forehead, which Hattie saw was perspiring. “Mama has been wondering why we haven’t seen you at the house.”
Mrs. Trent had made Hattie promise that she would pay them regular visits until Anne’s return. But with the mail room’s closing, Anne’s return was less likely than ever, and besides, Hattie felt that Mrs. Trent’s urging had been more from pity than anything else.
“I’ve been away. And Mr. Pinkerton has rearranged operations. I’m now without work.” She would leave Julia to make her own assumptions about cause and effect. “I thought…I understand nurses are paid forty cents a day, plus room and board. And if I could be attached to a regiment, I might eventually be able to connect with my brother. Only…” Her voice trailed off.
Seeming to sense her distress, Julia steered her away from the blood-soaked floor and into the open section of the room, where the air, while not exactly fresh, was at least not heavy with the smell of blood. “You’re too pretty to be a nurse,” she said. “Miss Dix prefers plain-looking women over thirty.”
“But you’re young and pretty,” Hattie said.
Julia laughed. “Thank you. After some days here, I feel as old and ugly as time itself. At any rate, I’m only a volunteer, so Miss Dix’s standards don’t apply to me.”
Of course, Hattie thought. Julia had a loving family. She had no need to support herself in order to stay away from them. “You’re doing good work here. I had no idea it could be so hard.”
“It can be brutal.” Julia blew back another errant curl. “I’ll be glad when this war’s over.”
“As will I. Give my best to your mother,” Hattie said. “And to all your family.”
She turned to leave, but Julia trotted after her. “Wait, Hattie. I’ve just thought of something. That night at the theatre, you said how there was no place you’d rather be. And you said how you’d once played Hamlet.”
“In a school production,” Hattie said. “No money in that.”
“Yes, but only last night, Papa said over dinner how Mr. Grover is in an awful fix. You know Grover’s Theatre, don’t you?”
Hattie nodded. “On Pennsylvania Avenue. You said the Lincolns have a box there.”
“That’s right. As I think I told you, Papa is a good friend of Leonard Grover. His box office manager slipped on the ice right after Christmas. She hurt her hip and won’t be able to return to work for weeks. He’s desperate for someone to fill in.”
“I don’t know that I’m qualified. I know nothing about running a box office.”
“It’s only taking tickets and counting up the nightly receipts, Papa said. It’s just that the person has to be trustworthy. Papa can vouch for you on that.”
Only because he doesn’t know what happened with Pinkerton’s, Hattie thought. “That would be kind of him, but—”
“No objections.” Julia spoke as her mother often did, with assurance of a fait accompli, as she shooed Hattie toward the exit. “Go see him. Now. He’s a good man, and you’ll be doing him a favor.”
Hattie said she’d consider it. Clearly, she wasn’t cut out for nursing, at least not the sort she’d have to do here. As she left the Patent Office Hospital, she fairly gulped in the fresh air. It wouldn’t hurt, she supposed, to speak with Mr. Grover. At the very least, a few weeks’ work would buy her time to consider what to do next. And maybe—she hesitated to entertain the possibility—maybe she could acquaint herself with a traveling troupe of actors. She’d never heard of a female stagehand, but she might show herself worthy of handling costumes or helping with props. Acting troupes must cross over into Canada now, and if she got lucky, she might be able to track down George.
She hugged her arms to her chest, warming herself against a sudden wind blowing along the avenue. She turned down E Street, her toes prickled by cold that infiltrated her boots, and hurried toward the stately wooden structure that housed the theatre. The front doors were latched, but she went around to the back alley and found a door propped open. A slender lad, likely a stagehand, was wrestling a large armchair inside. A prop, she suspected, being carried in for the evening performance.
She waited until the stagehand cleared the door with the chair, then she slipped inside. Backstage it was dark, and she felt her way along the curtain, away from where a single spotlight lit the stage. She heard the sounds of furniture being dragged across the floor, a stagehand yelling to mind the tablecloth.
Her feet reached the stairs that led down the side of the stage. Staying close to the wall, she went softly but swiftly up the aisle toward the front of the theatre, hoping the stagehands were too preoccupied to notice her. Though the auditorium was dark, she felt the thrill that always came when she entered a theatre, the anticipation of being transported to a realm where anything was possible.
Cracking one of the exit doors only a little, she stepped into the lobby, where she blinked back light streaming in from the windows. Overhead, wide-eyed cherubs perched atop fluffy clouds on the high ceiling’s painted frescoes.
A door along one side of the lobby was open. Thinking this must be the office, she approached. Behind a desk sat a round-faced, silver-haired man, engrossed in a tally of figures.
She rapped on the door, and he startled. “Good God,” he said. “I thought you were a ghost.”
“Mr. Grover?” she asked.
He pushed aside the ledger. “That’s me.”
“Julia Trent suggested I speak with you. She says you’re in need of temporary help at the box office.” She hesitated to say “manager,” not wanting to oversell her capabilities.
He leaned back in his chair, hands locked behind his head. “That,” he said, “would be an understatement. If there’s a way to make last night’s receipts balance, I surely can’t see it. What sort of experience do you have?”
“None directly. But—”
“This is a large operation, Miss…what was your name?”
“Logan. Hattie Logan. I understand that, sir. But I’ve been told I’m a quick study,” she said, though this assurance had only gotten her so far with Miss Warne. “And I’m familiar with the workings of the theatre.” This last was an exaggeration, to be sure.
Mr. Grover leaned forward, rubbing his chin. “You say you’re a friend of Julia’s?”
“Yes. The judge will vouch for my trustworthiness. And my father owns a business.” An untoward one, she thought, but a business nonetheless. “He insisted I learn to keep accounts.” Which she’d hated, but the circumstances had been different. She nodded at the ledger. “May I?”
He pushed it across the desk. “Be my guest.”
She scanned the columns. Ledger work was a lot like ciphering. Look for patterns, then look for aberrations. “There,” she said, pointing at an entry midway down the page. “I believe you’ve transposed those two numbers.”
He pulled the ledger back and studied the entry. “By Jove, I have.” He looked her up and down. “It would only be a month or two until my manager gets back. And I’m afraid there are better-paying jobs out there.”
She smiled. “The arrangement sounds perfect. Thank you, Mr. Grover.”
He rose from his chair, brushing his hands together as if to fully distance himself from the distasteful work of tallying numbers. He set a hand on her shoulder. “Welcome to Grover’s,” he said. “Your duties begin tonight.”