The Spymistress Read Online Free Page A

his will allowing Mother the use of the slaves for the duration of her life but forbidding her to free or to sell them. Obeying the law if not the spirit of his decree, Mother, Lizzie, and John paid their servants wages and allowed them to come and go as they pleased, as any paid servant would. Some of the Van Lews’ slaves lived elsewhere in the city, and months might pass between occasions when Lizzie saw them, when they were obliged to return to the Van Lew residence for updated passes so they would not be thrown into the Negro jail for vagrancy. They were slaves in name only, but the indignity of it, the profound unfairness, grated at Lizzie. She could only imagine how it made Peter, William, and the others feel.
    Scarcely more than an hour after they departed, the brothers returned, grim-faced and breathless, as if they had been pursued. Taking her mother’s arm, Lizzie ushered them into the library, glancing over her shoulder to be sure that Mary would not observe them. She would no doubt welcome the bitter news, and if she clapped her little hands and cheered, Lizzie could not trust herself to hold her tongue.
    “They gone and done it,” Peter reported after Lizzie shut the door behind them. “They voted, and Virginia’s out of the Union.”
    “Oh, my word,” said Mother, sinking into a chair by the fireplace.
    Lizzie patted her mother’s shoulder absently, her gaze fixed on the brothers. Perhaps there was yet hope. Whatever measure the secession convention had passed that day would still need to be ratified, and if enough reasonable men voted against it— “The ordinance must have passed by a very narrow margin to have passed at all.”
    William shook his head. “Not even close. Eighty-eight to fifty-five.”
    “How can this be?” Lizzie exclaimed. “There were more Unionists than secessionists among the delegates. For all his grave predictions, even Mr. Lewis acknowledged that.”
    “Dozens of ’em must’ve had a change of heart,” said Peter. “They say the old governor Mr. Wise made a fiery speech right before the vote. Maybe that’s what did it.”
    “But there have been countless speeches already.” Dizzy, heartsick, Lizzie grasped the tall back of her mother’s chair to steady herself. “Mr. Wise is a fine orator, I grant you, but how could one more bit of rhetoric cause men to abandon all reason?”
    “It wasn’t just powerful speechifying,” said William, “or the old horse pistol some say Mr. Wise was waving around while he spoke. There’s more to it, something we couldn’t quite figure out. So many rumors flying around, it’s hard to tell what’s real. Something about captured federal fortresses.”
    “You mean Fort Sumter, of course,” said Mother.
    “No, not Sumter, not anything in South Carolina,” said Peter. “Here, right here in Virginia.”
    Lizzie went cold. Mother gasped and pressed her fingertips to her lips. “That’s all you know?” Lizzie’s voice sounded distant to her own ears. “You heard no mention of any specific cities, fortresses, anything?”
    “I’m sorry, Miss Lizzie,” said William. “That’s all we got. Maybe if we went back out—”
    “No, absolutely not. Your mother would never forgive me.” Night had fallen, and it was simply too dangerous to send the Roane brothers out again past curfew, passes or no passes. “You’ve done well. We’re better informed now than we were before, but—” She steeled herself, suddenly glimpsing a dark and uncertain future that had been awaiting her all along, though she had stubbornly refused to see it. “But in the days to come, we must all endeavor to sharpen our ears and our memories.”
    When the brothers nodded, Lizzie forced a smile, thanked them, and sent them off to the kitchen for their supper. Then she began to pace from the fireplace to the door to the window. A glance outside revealed only the faint glow of lights to the west, where bonfires and torches and effigies were surely