The small square of paper gave no clue as to its contents. I climbed the stairs swiftly but did not want to be seen rushing and forced myself to slow down. It could be anything. Perhaps Tim had found a way to communicate with me without revealing himself. Or perhaps Pinkerton was ready to apologize. Or it could be bad news too—I could be fired, if he were still holding his grudge. And now that I was finally sure Mrs. Greenhow was doing the things she was suspected of doing, that would be a shame. If the telegram showed Pinkerton bowing even slightly, I resolved to give him a full report immediately. Perhaps this meant he had calmed down and remembered to focus on the importance of our mission, not his personal feelings about my relationship with Tim.
Up in my room, with a mixture of hope and dread, I unfolded the telegram with trembling fingers.
TWO FRIENDS TAKEN ASIDE STOP SO SORRY
The dread broke over me in a wave, and my throat closed. There could be only one interpretation.
Hattie and Tim had been captured.
What had happened to them, I could only guess and did not want to.
My dread was washed away by fury. Pinkerton probably thought that being vague would drive me to his doorstep. That would have worked with the woman I was pretending to be, and the woman I had been once upon a time, but not the woman I had now become. Now, I trusted no one, and my heart had been wrenched and twisted. It took me only a moment to decide. I would go to Richmond.
It was a fool’s errand. I knew that and went anyway. Perhaps I would be sacrificed in the rescue, but that was fine. If Pinkerton thought he could do without me, let him find out what it was truly like. If I could save Tim, I would. If I couldn’t, death held no fear for me. For years, I had been sure I would never find a man to love me for the rest of my life. Now that I thought I might have done just that, the length of the life seemed unimportant.
? ? ?
There was so much to do. I needed a horse, I needed a map, and I needed clothes that didn’t give away my identity. Keeping my focus on activity made it easier not to cry, not to think about the fact that the man I had finally realized I loved had been taken from me almost as soon as we’d truly found each other.
I lost myself in the procedure, in the checklist. Horse. Map. Two new dresses in an old suitcase. An old cover identity, one I had ready to hand, with a forged pass to deflect any suspicion if I met Secesh barricades on the road. Brief, vague apologies to the desk clerk at the hotel to make sure no one became too interested in my absence. I badly wanted a gun, but I didn’t have one, and obtaining one in a hurry would raise far too many questions.
I found what I needed, and within hours, I was on the road south.
Unfortunately, as I rode, there was less for my mind to focus on, and it kept inevitably returning to the same questions: What had happened to him? What would happen? What could I even do when I got there to save him? I concocted dozens of positive scenarios to smother the dozens of negative ones that were already at the top of my mind and spilling out like rich milk from a full jug.
I had never ridden this particular road south before, but I knew it had changed a great deal from a few years before. Everywhere I looked, there were signs of war. Some were obvious, like a scorched field or a torn, stained blue uniform jacket hanging from a fence post. Some were more subtle, like a schoolhouse sitting silent and empty at midday.
I hadn’t been able to gather fresh intelligence before I left, for fear someone would realize where I was going and why. I did not stop to rest overnight. My horse put one foot in front of the other, strolling sometimes, cantering sometimes, as the road allowed.
In the beginning, I feared falling asleep in the saddle, but as the journey went on, it became clear that I would not relax into unconsciousness no matter how tired I became. Too much depended on this ride, and I was so consumed by worry, anger, fear. I heard a man’s scream from the west, then another, then half a dozen more, and I took a long loop around to the east to avoid the next town on the road, just in case. But mostly, I went straight south, as fast as I could, to reach my destination.
In the end, I got there almost without delay and still arrived too late.
For all of my thinking on the road, I hadn’t decided exactly how I would go about gathering intelligence when I arrived. Maybe I was trusting my operative’s instincts to carry me through, or maybe my mind was too clouded with thoughts of Tim—what if we’d never admitted our feelings to each other? What if I’d been able to stop him before he told Pinkerton? What would be happening to me at this moment instead of chasing him on a fool’s errand into enemy territory? As it turned out, planning would have been moot in any case.
I stopped on the outskirts of town to rest my horse and gather my strength at a roadside tavern before crossing the line into Richmond proper. I had barely found a seat and begun to read the bill of fare when I heard the whispers all around me. It quickly became clear that the whole place was buzzing with gossip. They were thrilled by something bloody. They had been waiting for something like this to happen, and it finally had. A hanging had taken place that day.
I rose immediately and fled outside. I didn’t run, because drawing attention was the last thing I needed to do in that hornet’s nest, but I went out and forced myself not to collapse. I took the reins off my horse’s neck and mounted. Another man was retrieving his horse at the same time, and in the most offhanded tone I could muster, I told him I’d missed the day’s excitement and asked if he happened to know where the enemies of the state had been hanged.
“Over there a ways,” said the man in a heavy accent, and I followed where he pointed, over a low green hill and a mile down the road beyond.
Had I been on foot, I would have gone slowly, dragging at every step, as I feared the outcome. The horse carried me whether I liked it or not. As soon as I rode over the ridge, I could not look directly at the sight, but the horse kept carrying me forward. I did not have the presence of mind to pull back hard on the reins. The sight was too terrible and too near.
Half a dozen bodies dangled from the makeshift gallows. Six men, no women. Had I not already guessed the identity of one of them, I would have been thrilled to know that Hattie, at least, had escaped.