The novel is based loosely on the life of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union spy living in the South.
Excerpt
But Lizzie continued to stare out the window, and the men fell silent. After an awkward pause, she spoke, but the words were spoken not to the men but as if they were welling up of their own volition from a dark place she hid from all around her.
“That day is burned into my soul, the day Virginia seceded. April 17th, the year of our Lord 1861. It was no godly year. There was a torchlight procession that night. I went to the bottom of the garden to view it. Such a sight! The painted hags, the wicked and the blasphemous the multitude, the mob, the whooping.”
She broke off and forced back a sob.
“Miss Van Lew” But she silenced Howard him with an irritated wave of her hand.
“I remember the tin-pan music. And the fierceness of a surging, swelling revolution. This I witnessed. I fell on my knees under the angry heavens, she wheeled around to the men and fixed them with her rapier eyes, and I clasped my hands and prayed, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”!
“You weren’t here, she turned to Howard and McCullough, a look of ineffable sadness filling her eyes, but mobs went to houses to hang, to hang! the true of heart. Loyalty now was called treason, and cursed.”
She turned and made her way feebly back to the window, peering out as though she were witnessing the events anew, and her voice broke. “If you spoke in your parlor or chamber to your next of kin, you whispered. You looked under the lounges and beds. The threats, the scowls, of an infuriated community. Who can speak of them?”
McNiven came forward with a glass of water, but again she waved him away, and her voice crackled with intensity.
“I have had men shake their fingers in my face and say terrible things. We had threats of being driven away, threats of fire, threats of death! Surely madness was, is, upon the people. Some wished all Union people driven into the street and slaughtered. Some proposed the hanging of all persons of Northern birth. . . . A community with such sins as ours unatoned for, unsheathing the sword of treason. Who shall pay? How much blood will atone? How much of the blood will flow across our paths.”
Lizzie sighed deeply and shook her head as though to cast off the memories, then swiped at her cheeks and turned to the men as though she had not spoken. “You are all of course correct. Still, it sticks in my throat. Oh, well,” she added with resignation, “if a spy I needs must be, a spy I shall be. Who, though, shall die because of me? Whose boys, whom I’ve watched grow into fine young men, will die because of me, because of us? Can you tell me, gentlemen? Please tell me that none will, for by the light of the sun I can live with some assurance of righteousness, and the words of the prophet Daniel ring in my ears: “They shall fall down slain. That is the fulfillment of prophecy. But by candlelight . . . by candlelight . . . Her head shook as though palsied, and she cast her eyes to the ground.
She looked up and added simply, “I will take no money.”
Copyright 2008 Michael J. O’Neal. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Post a Comment