"Privileged communication with a client?"
"Something like that, yes. In return for assistance from your department, I'm prepared to make a generous contribution to the political candidate of your choice. On the Republican side, I would hope."
"Naturally," Stanley said, not even raising a brow to question the probity of the offer. "Let's see whether we have anything." He summoned an assistant, who was gone for ten minutes, leaving the two men to uneasy conversation punctuated by long silences.
The clerk returned, whispered in Stanley's ear, departed. Stanley sighed.
"Absolutely nothing, I'm afraid. I'm very sorry. I trust the outcome won't affect your pledge, since I accepted your offer in good faith." Dills glimpsed the threat behind the fulsome smile. He reeled when Stanley added, "A thousand would be most generous."
"A thousand! I was thinking of much —" Hastily, Dills swallowed. How could such a puffy, pale creature carry an aura of power? But he did. "Certainly. I'll send my draft in the morning."
Stanley wrote and blotted a slip of paper. "Payable to that account."
"Very good. Thank you for your time, Mr. Hazard." About to close the door from the anteroom side, he observed Stanley bent over a lower drawer of his desk, as if hunting something. Stanley glanced up, scowled, and Dills quickly closed the door.
Bent was gone — and the information had cost him a thousand dollars. Beyond that, unless he could think of some other avenue where he might search for Starkwether's boy, the handsome stipend would disappear. He was in a foul mood as he left the building and crossed the park toward his waiting carriage.
Children at the picnic scampered round and round him, dark leaves whirling. He ran them off with a shout and wave of his cane. Though still angry, he was also bemused by the performance of the nimble Mr. Hazard. Dills had definitely smelled whiskey behind the incense. What a miraculous balancing act.
Ah, but there were many such balancing acts in Washington. It was, as experience had taught him, a city of carnival performers wearing the costumes of patriots.
In Lehigh Station, the cemetery workers dug new graves, arriving freight trains discharged new coffins, arriving cars delivered one or two of the newly injured or permanently maimed. About town there could also be seen the occasional able-bodied male who shouldn't be at home just now. Brett had been a resident long enough to recognize such men.
She chose not to attend the local July fourth celebration — there was little patriotic fervor these days — and instead spent nine hours with Scipio Brown's children, teaching ciphering. It was a time of stifling weather, sinking morale, sudden alarms. Jubal Early's army had encircled Washington and cut rail and telegraph lines to Baltimore. Jubal Early's army had reached Silver Spring, within sight of Union fortifications along Rock Creek. Jubal Early's army had almost pocketed Washington before being driven away toward Pennsylvania. And how far into the state might the rebs come this time?
It was a season of steadily mounting mistrust and hatred of Lincoln. Did he dare do what he said he might — call for another half-million volunteers to feed Grant's red machine before the month was out? It was a season of war-weariness and cynicism. Lute Fessenden's cousin had built up a handsome trade as a substitute broker. Conscription substitutes simply couldn't be found unless one dealt with him; he had cornered all those available in the valley by promising them higher rewards than anyone else. He charged eight hundred to one thousand dollars per substitute, depending on the applicant. The potential draftees raged. But they paid.
All this was a real but somehow immaterial backdrop to the central fact of Brett's life. With the help of Charles Main, Billy had escaped from Libby Prison, dashed through enemy country, and reached the Union lines during the titanic battle at Spotsylvania. A bullet had given him a light leg wound, but his letters said he was completely recovered and back on duty at Petersburg.
The joyous turnabout filled her days with cheer. To a lesser extent, so did the visits of Scipio Brown, who arrived with a new youngster every second or third week. The facility was by now hopelessly overcrowded. But Brown kept bringing more amber or blue-coal or cafe-au-lait children, and she fell in love with every single one.
Brown himself displayed a growing impatience to join a military unit before the South surrendered. "A commission in a Negro cavalry regiment. It's all I want. I must get it. I'm trying."
"I hope you do get it, Scipio. You're a splendid horseman. How can they not take you?"
Brett had been away from South Carolina three years. It no longer gave her pause to consider that when Brown joined the army, he would have the same status as any white man. She found the fact unremarkable — perfectly natural — because she now saw Brown solely as a man with a singular combination of traits, most of them likable. She knew he was a Negro, but color no longer played a part in how she felt about him.
Constance was a frequently amused and surprised observer of all this. "I declare, Brett, you're ever so much happier the day before Scipio arrives than you are the day he leaves."
"Am I?" A smile, a lifted shoulder. "I suppose. I like him." Constance nodded; both women understood it was the only explanation required. But in letters to George, Constance wrote of a marked sea change in the making.
Then came a stunning surprise. A plea by telegraph from Madeline Main. She was in Washington.
"Orry didn't want her trying to reach South Carolina," Constance said after reading the message again to be sure of the contents. "With the help of a black man from Fredericksburg, she reached Fort Du Pont, one of the fortifications along the East Branch, and crossed the lines. She was detained a day for questioning, then released. She wants permission to come here."
At once, Brett said, "I think someone should go to Washington to help her make the journey. I'm willing." "I won't have you do it alone. We'll both go." So, while the siege seemed to stall at Petersburg and Sherman seemed to stall before Atlanta, the two women made the long, dirty train trip to the capital, gazing anxiously out the window of the rattling car now and then. Half the passengers did the same thing. There were still wild tales of old Jube Early's men running amok on the lower border.
But they saw no sign of rebs between Lehigh Station and Washington. In a small, dark room on the island, Madeline greeted them from the middle of a pile of ripped clothing she was sorting. With her dark hair bunned and her hot bombazine dress rustling, she looked quite matronly. But still a beauty, Brett saw before they hugged.
"How good to see you," Constance said after she and Madeline embraced. "I'm glad Orry sent you this way instead of down South where there's so much danger."
"We'll take good care of you," Brett promised. "You do look worn out." "I'm much better now that you two are here." "Was it an ordeal?" Brett asked.
"Yes, but I'll spare you the details. There you see a few." She pointed to the torn dresses and undergarments. "It took a destructive search to convince one Union officer that I wasn't a smuggler or a spy. I'll have everything repacked in ten minutes. I can't wait to leave. We have big palmetto bugs in South Carolina, but the ones infesting this place make ours look like dwarfs."
Constance laughed, genuinely glad Orry had entrusted his wife to the care of Northerners. It meant that the ties of friendship between the families, though stretched and tenuous, were still intact. Sometimes, she knew, George feared the war would sunder those ties.
All at once Constance noticed a change in Madeline's expression. She was pensive, even pained. She sat down on the bed, hands in her lap, and looked from Brett to Constance. "Before we go, I want to explain why I had to leave Richmond. Other people learned what Orry's known since I ran away from Resolute. I —"