The Courier's Wife

  The Courier's Wife

  Book One | Secrets of the Blue and Gray

  Vanessa Lind

  A heartrending novel of courage and resilience

  based on the true story of a female Civil War spy

  September 1862. Hattie Logan is a restless young woman with a strong will and an effervescent spirit. When war ignites, she escapes her privileged family and prim finishing school to join Allen Pinkerton’s spy agency, burning to make a difference for the Union. As one of Pinkerton’s mailroom girls, she uncovers secrets that could change the course of the war. Still, she longs to do more. Dispatched as the courier’s wife, she ventures behind enemy lines, where her passion for the man posing as her husband deepens. But from the shadows of Hattie’s past, a secret threatens their plans and their lives. A sweeping story of courage and resilience, with rich historical detail and unforgettable characters who will tug at your heart.

  Copyright © 2022 by Vanessa Lind

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  ISBN eBook: 978-1-940320-18-2

  ISBN paperback: 978-1-940320-17-5

  Contents

  1. Chapter One September 2, 1862

  2. Chapter Two

  3. Chapter Three

  4. Chapter Four September 3, 1862

  5. Chapter Five

  6. Chapter Six

  7. Chapter Seven October 10, 1862

  8. Chapter Eight November 28, 1862

  9. Chapter Nine December 24, 1862

  10. Chapter Ten December 28, 1862

  11. Chapter Eleven December 31, 1862

  12. Chapter Twelve January 6, 1863

  13. Chapter Thirteen January 25, 1863

  14. Chapter Fourteen January 26, 1863

  15. Chapter Fifteen February 5, 1863

  16. Chapter Sixteen February 6, 1863

  17. Chapter Seventeen

  18. Chapter Eighteen February 10, 1863

  19. Chapter Nineteen February 10, 1863

  20. Chapter Twenty February 25, 1863

  21. Chapter Twenty-One February 26, 1863

  22. Author’s Note

  23. Enemy Lines BOOK TWO | SECRETS OF THE BLUE AND GRAY

  Chapter One

  September 2, 1862

  Not yet nine in the morning, and the September day already promised sweltering heat. South of the nation’s capital, storm clouds piled along the horizon, teasing the promise of rain that never came. Directly overhead, the Washington sky was brilliant and cloudless, the air still and humid. Hattie Logan felt perspiration beading around her collar. Like a July day back in Indiana, Hattie thought, then immediately banished the idea, wanting nothing more to do with where she’d come from. Forward. That was the only direction for her.

  She and Anne approached the Treasury building, a massive stone structure that towered over the path, casting a welcome shadow. “It’s been three days,” Anne said. “We should check the casualty lists.”

  “Two days,” Hattie corrected. “And if we stop, we’ll be late, and Lucy will run straight to Miss Warne.” Lucy Hamilton was the self-appointed supervisor of Allen Pinkerton’s mailroom girls, who opened letters the courier brought, searching for Rebel secrets that would aid the Union cause.

  “Miss Warne won’t mind,” Anne insisted.

  Of course Anne would say that. She was on good terms with the woman who oversaw their work for Mr. Pinkerton. “Maybe she won’t mind about you,” Hattie said. “But she doesn’t like me.”

  “That’s not true. It’s just that you clam up whenever she’s around.”

  “I’m only being discreet,” Hattie said. It was a nice way of saying that the less she said, the less she’d be asked about who she was and where she came from.

  Anne rolled her eyes, having heard this excuse any number of times. Of all Hattie appreciated about her friend, Anne’s willingness not to pry was at the top of the list.

  Crinolines rustling, they reached the wide marble steps of the Treasury, where the Sanitary Commission posted lists of whichever casualties had happened to filter in, often long after the battles were over.

  “It will only take a few moments to check,” Anne said, worry shining in her gray eyes.

  Reports coming in from Manassas, where a second battle had ended only days ago, suggested casualties in the thousands. As usual, the soldiers’ families would likely be the last to know. Especially in hasty retreats, there was no time to identify who’d been injured or killed. The wounded might or might not get carried off in stretchers. The dead might or might not be buried. A mother might learn of her beloved son’s death, if she learned of it at all, from a letter published in her hometown paper, sent by a surviving soldier in the regiment. Anne longed to spare her mother that shock.

  “All right,” Hattie said, swinging toward the steps. “I know it’ll bother you all day if we don’t look. And hot as it’s going to get, you’ll need to keep your wits about you.”

  Ever gracious—she’d absorbed the finishing school lessons Hattie had decidedly rejected—Anne smiled gently. “There might be word of George too.”

  Hattie had last heard from her brother, George, back in May, a few weeks before she and Anne had come East. At the time, he’d said his regiment was preparing to march to Fredericksburg. Like Anne’s brothers, he’d seen heavy fighting and by all accounts was continually on the move. But Anne’s concern for her mother steeled her in ways Hattie couldn’t comprehend. Besides Hattie’s grandma, George was the only family she cared about. If he lay dead on some forlorn battlefield or bloodied in a makeshift hospital, she’d rather not know. She’d rather remember him as she’d last seen him, freckles dusting either side of his nose, a wide grin hiding whatever fear he must have felt as he went off to fight.

  The day their parents disowned George, the day they sent Hattie off to finishing school to stop her wailing after him—that was the day Hattie had decided the big house on Cherry Street, the finest in La Conner, Indiana, was no home of hers. At least as a girl, her mother had sniffed, there would be no worries about Hattie joining the fight against the good people of the South who only wanted to preserve their way of life. But Hattie had found a way, even if it wasn’t as meaningful as she’d like

  George was out there somewhere, she told herself, stuck on some distant battlefield without mail service, or wounded and unable to write. Or he was here, in Washington, and she’d run into him one day. Only yesterday, she’d spotted a Federal soldier with George’s square shoulders and broad back. She’d run to him, heart thumping. But when he turned to face her, she’d had to mumble an apology about mistaking him for someone else. Whisky on his breath, he’d tried to grab her by the arm, and she’d fled from his reach.

  The sun beat down as Hattie and Anne neared the top of the steps. Beneath the tight bun Hattie wore at the base of her neck, she felt a trickle of perspiration. Under the bodice of her navy dress—a poor choice in the heat, but her other two work dresses needed washing—her chemise stuck to her skin. Though the day had only just begun, she already felt exhausted, and she suspected Anne did too. They’d both lain awake half the night in the attic room they shared at Mrs. Sullivan’s boarding house, listening for the booms of mortar and cannons. Yesterday, the streets had teemed with bloodied Union soldiers. All around the city, there was talk that General Lee’s Rebel army was closing in on the capital.

  Hattie brushed a damp curl from her forehead. At least the Treasury’s broad colonnade shaded the portico at the top of the steps, offering welcome relief from the September sun. As in most parts of Washington City, persons of all different types were coming and going from the buil
ding. Some, like Hattie and Anne, had flocked to the city to help with the war effort or to search for loved ones. Others were formerly enslaved Negroes who’d fled north over the Confederate border to freedom. Still others were government officials helping to orchestrate the massive war effort. The rest were soldiers assigned to defend the capital from Rebel troops. General Lee’s forces, headquartered only ninety-five miles to the south in Virginia, were a constant threat.

  By September 1862, the War of the Rebellion had already dragged on months longer than most anyone, Reb or Federal, had expected. Every week, it seemed, a contingent of bedraggled Federal soldiers staggered into Washington, stunned by yet another defeat. The lucky ones flocked to the saloons, though no amount of drink could erase the shell-shocked gazes of the battle-weary. The unlucky ones were carted off to provisional hospitals where they would breathe the fetid smell of death and wince at the screams as doctors sawed off arms and legs.

  Standing half a head taller than Hattie, Anne was first to spot the new casualty lists, tacked to a strip of wood. Skirts rustling against their petticoats, she and Hattie crossed the portico to the west side of the building, near the president’s mansion.

  Six lists were posted in two columns. Written in a hurried hand, the ink—already fading in the sun—detailed names and regiments, most from the recent fighting at Manassas. Hattie ran her finger along the names in one column while Anne scanned the other. Wounded. Deceased. Missing. It felt disrespectful to look so quickly. Every name represented a family forever changed.

  Anne’s finger reached the end of the names. “No Richard. No Henry.”

  Hattie shook her head. “No George either.”

  They turned, heading back across the portico to the stairs. “They’re still alive,” Anne said.

  “Still fighting,” Hattie said.

  It had become a ritual, reciting these words, an invocation of good fortune, as if by speaking them, they could make them so. Still alive, still fighting, though they both knew their brothers might well be among the thousands of unnamed soldiers whose names never made any lists, the ones who just never came home.

  They descended the steps, Hattie moving twice as fast as Anne, as if the sun couldn’t catch her. “A descent unbefitting a lady,” Anne said when she’d caught up with her, mimicking the prim tone of Miss Whitcomb, Ladygrace’s headmistress. “Back up you go, dearie, and try again.”

  “Back up your arse,” Hattie said under her breath, and they both laughed.

  “I wonder what Miss Whitcomb would have to say about us opening other people’s mail,” Anne said as they started for the War Department building.

  Hattie dipped her chin, pretending to look down her glasses as Miss Whitcomb did. “Wartime or no, one’s curiosity must be restrained.”

  “But it’s for the Union cause,” Anne said.

  “You always did think you could reason with her,” Hattie said. “Even when everyone else knew it was hopeless.”

  “You can always reason with anyone,” Anne said. “Or at least you should try.”

  Spoken like someone who’s been raised among reasonable people, Hattie thought. But this wasn’t the sort of thing she’d say aloud. Even with Anne, her best friend in the world, Hattie was careful not to say anything that revealed the past she was determined to forget.

  Ahead, a carriage pulled up in front of the War Department building as it did every morning at nine o’clock. “Told you,” Hattie said. “We’re late.”

  Secretary of War Edwin Stanton got out, prompt as usual with his nine o’clock arrival and wearing his usual frock coat despite the heat. Hattie had heard him described as having a piggish face, and from the time she’d spent around hogs, the assessment didn’t seem far afield. A retinue closed in around him. Several were young assistants Hattie recognized from the War Department’s hallways, but an equal number, she knew, were people haranguing Stanton about government jobs.

  Hattie and Anne slowed their steps. Late as they were, they’d have to wait until Stanton’s entourage shuffled into the building before they could enter.

  “Lucy must be squealing with delight, now that we’re truly tardy,” Hattie said.

  Anne laughed. “And run off to tell Miss Warne.”

  “Oh, but I’m so concerned about Anne and Hattie,” Hattie said, imitating Lucy’s affected British accent. “They clearly haven’t grappled with the fact that in our most valuable work, every moment counts.” Lucy Hamilton had a high opinion of herself. Her father was a prominent New Hampshire politician who’d brought his family to Washington so they could all be well positioned for any wartime advantages that might come their way. Lucy was forever reminding the mailroom girls of how important her father was, and how she did her work not for money but for the cause.

  From near the top of the War Department building, hammers rang out, a cacophony of pounding as carpenters framed in the third and fourth stories, which were being hastily constructed to accommodate the hive of activity under Stanton’s purview. Hattie shielded her eyes, looking up at the scaffolding. That was where George should be, overseeing a big building project instead of risking his life in the battlefield. From his earliest years, he’d dreamed of becoming an architect, sketching plans and piecing together models of projects he envisioned.

  “Those workers will bake out here in the sun,” she said.

  “No worse than in the Little Oven,” Anne said, referring to the tiny, windowless storeroom behind Stanton’s suite of offices. “At least those men have fresh air to breathe.”

  Hattie wrinkled her nose at the swampy odor that had hung over Washington City all summer. “Not what I’d call fresh.”

  The reply came not from Anne but from a man’s reedy voice. “Not by a long shot.”

  Hattie turned. The first thing she noticed was that the people who’d been milling around the path had drawn back, making way for the tall, gangly man who’d spoken as he strode firmly in Hattie and Anne’s direction. The long face with high cheekbones, upturned chin, large nose, and a rather woeful looking beard brought instant recognition, as did the black stovepipe hat.

  Anne clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “Mr. Lincoln!” Hattie had seen the president once before, from a distance as she passed the Executive Mansion. He’d stood on the balcony, gazing over the city. His boys had run to him, one on either side, and he’d smiled broadly, circling a long arm around each of them. Hattie had smiled, seeing a father who genuinely loved his children. She’d never imagined the president might speak to her. Not being one to let an opportunity pass, she held out her hand.

  “A pleasure to meet you,” she said with propriety that even Miss Whitcomb could not fault. “I admire you so for leading our country through these dark times.”

  He shook his head, and a gloomy look overcame him, his face darkening. “I did not think these times would be near so dark or last so long.”

  Hattie glanced at Anne, wanting to allow her a chance to speak. Her hand had dropped from her mouth, but she only stared, dumbfounded, so Hattie went on. “Our sacrifice will be validated when the Union is restored and the slaves emancipated.”

  The president’s hands, clasped behind his back, fell to his side, and his face relaxed into a smile. “Well, there are two of us, then, who believe both results can be accomplished.”

  “Oh, but of course they can,” Hattie enthused. “If we all do our part.” She straightened, shoulders back in the posture Miss Whitcomb had taught. “My friend and I assist in Mr. Pinkerton’s efforts. With the mail.”

  As soon as she’d spoken, she realized how foolish this sounded. What did the president know of their labors in the mailroom, or for that matter, care?

  But his grin widened, and he said, “Spies, are you? I take heart in knowing that such lovely ladies are about such important work on the Union’s behalf. And now, I must be about mine.” He dipped his head slightly, first at Hattie and then at Anne. “Good day.”

  They stood, dumbfounded, as Mr. Lin
coln strode ahead of them, entering the War Building through a side entrance. Heart thumping, Hattie took in the scene, wanting to impress it forever in her memory, the bright blue sky, the clatter of carriage wheels, even the stench and the stifling heat

  “He goes every day to the Telegraph Office,” Anne said as they began walking again. “To read the telegrams that come in from the battlefronts. But it’s usually at night.” She turned to Hattie. “I can’t believe you chatted with him like an old friend, telling him what we do with Pinkerton’s.”

  “He said it was important work,” Hattie said. And it was, she told herself. Still, she wanted more.

  Chapter Two

  Entering the War Building brought temporary relief from both the odor and the heat. The marble floors and stone walls would be chilly in winter, Hattie knew, but for now, they lent a delightful coolness to the air. Above the grand staircase, a big clock overhead read a quarter past nine. After stopping to check the casualty lists, their encounter with Mr. Lincoln had slowed them even more. Lucy was sure to make a fuss.

  Hattie and Anne edged along a far wall, headed for the mailroom where the Pinkerton girls opened letters brought by the agency’s couriers, searching for information that would prove useful to General McClellan and his troops. When Anne’s father had arranged for the two of them to work for Pinkerton in Washington, Hattie had thought they’d be doing real detective work. That’s what the Pinkerton Agency was known for, after all—sleuthing out criminals.