An Acquaintance with Darkness (21 page)

He reached out and touched the side of my face. "You've got yourself tied all in knots. I know you haven't had an easy time of it in life. And all this business with the Surratts has likely made you mistrust everybody. And then from what your uncle tells me, your mother made you suspicious of him even before you came here. Isn't that right?"

"Yes."

"She was jealous of him, Emily. Your mama was an unhappy woman. Look at the things she said about your father. Do you believe them?"

I lowered my eyes. "Would you march into hell for Uncle Valentine?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I'm honored to be able to work for him. It's the chance of a lifetime."

He had the answers. All of them. I had nowhere else to go.

"I can't make you trust me, Emily," he said finally. "But I'm glad I'm the one you took your anger out on and not your uncle. He's a good man. He loves you. I don't want to see him hurt. If you have any more questions or doubts, come to me, will you?"

"I have one more question. If I were to ask you to take me to my uncle's lab at the college now, right now, are you telling me I'd find no burn victims there?"

"That's what I'm telling you," he said.

We faced each other. He smiled. "You want to go to the lab right now? There are not only no dead burn victims there, there are no dead bodies. We're winding up the spring semester and they've all been properly buried. You'd be disappointed. Well? Do you want to go?"

I felt so tawdry, so small. So full of silly feminine scruples. He'd just come home from a long trip with a cat under his arms for me. He was doing important work with Uncle Valentine. And I was acting like a spoiled child. "I don't want to go," I said. "I believe you."

"Good. Because there's someplace else I'd like to take you."

"Where?"

"To Gautier's. For some ice cream. What do you say?" I said yes.

I
WENT EVERYWHERE
with Robert. When he had the time to take me.

We went to ball games on the old Potomac grounds, to hear the Marine band play on the White House lawn, to a hop at Willard's. For the first time in my life, I felt young and pretty.

Uncle Valentine insisted I have some new dresses made. I laughed. "I could make them myself," I told him. But he insisted I go to a dressmaker. I did, a woman recommended by Mrs. McQuade. It turned out the woman knew Elizabeth Keckley.

"What happened to Mrs. Keckley?" I asked.

"Happened?" She was kneeling, pinning a hem on a blue dimity. "She's still in the White House with Mrs. Lincoln."

"Mrs. Lincoln is still in the White House?"

"President Johnson has let her stay until she can gather herself together. Word is, she is half-crazy packing. But she never finishes. Her son Robert is yelling at her that they can't stay forever, they have to get out. Elizabeth won't leave her side."

How terrible,
I thought, walking home. Mrs. Lincoln was sure working hard at her grief. But she wasn't getting on with her life, as she'd told Maude we have to do. I was glad I'd stayed in school and didn't take the job with Mrs. Keckley. I was even glad I'd come to live with Uncle Valentine.

I was happy for the first time in my life. It was a beautiful spring in Washington, the war was over, the city was in a fever pitch of excitement about the upcoming Grand Review. I had a new cat, who'd taken immediately to me. I was at peace with myself. And with Uncle Valentine and Robert. I had the attentions of Robert, a handsome young medical student. So why then did I have this nagging little feeling that something might go wrong?

Because I did not trust happiness. You had to be a fool to do that. I'd never been a fool, and I was not about to start now.

***

On May 15 Robert and I met Annie outside the Arsenal Building at the foot of Four and a Half Street. The eight accused in the Lincoln assassination were to plead this day. Lawyers were taking testimony.

It was a day of bright blue, green, and gold, shot through with the white and pink of tree blossoms. We waited outside the gates for Annie.

When she came out the side door, her feet dragged. Her dress was gray with black trim, her hair bound back in a severe twist. There were dark circles under her eyes. She smiled wanly and came through the gate.

"How did it go?" I asked her.

"Mama pled not-guilty. They all did, even your uncle's friend Dr. Mudd."

She showed us a paper with the charges. It said her mother had received, entertained, harbored, and concealed John Wilkes Booth, David E. Herold, Lewis Payne, who also called himself Powell, John H. Surratt, Michael O'Laughlin, George A. Atzerodt, and Samuel Arnold, with intent to aid, abet, and assist them in the execution of the president of the United States.

The paper looked awful, with all of it written out there in legal language. And the names of people I knew connected with it. Annie's hand shook as she held it.

"Worse, my mother has one of her migraines." She looked at Robert. Then the black bag he held in his hand. "Why have you brought that with you?"

"For you. In case you are in need of anything," he told her.

"You're not a doctor yet."

"I will be, soon. And I've accompanied Dr. Bransby on house calls enough to be able to administer if someone is in need."

"Do you have anything in there for migraines?" Annie asked. "And have you ever made a prison call?"

It took Robert only a heartbeat to say yes, he'd do it.

What surprised me most as we went through the underground corridor of Carroll Prison was the sound of water running. It ran down the stone walls in a constant trickle. Underfoot, everything was wet. I could have sworn I felt something scurrying on the floor beside me. I lifted my skirts.

Within ten minutes I'd forgotten the blue, green, and gold day outside. Here it was winter-cold, dim, and bleak, even with candles in sconces on the walls. Ahead of us the jailer shuffled, his shadow thrown against the wall. So this was a prison, then, not the tower of my fairy tales.

"Suppose it's all right to let you see her. But I should check with my boss," he said.

"Has a doctor been in yet to see her?" Robert asked.

"Prison doctor sees 'em all, regularlike."

"He hasn't helped my mother," Annie told the jailer.

"Don't know as anything could." The man's rough clothing and manner made him seem surly. But he could have turned us away at the door and hadn't.

Thanks to Robert. "Don't say anything," Robert had warned us. "Sometimes when you just act as if you belong, they're so taken by surprise, they don't know what to do. And rather than show their stupidity, they'll go along with you."

Robert was right. The jailer hadn't known what to do. But seeing Robert's black bag and officious manner, he'd agreed to let us in. Our bluff had worked.

"Suppose anythin's better than havin' to hear her puke up her guts in there like she's doin'." The jailer took his huge ring of keys out of his pockets as we approached the last cell.

"Where are the other prisoners?" Robert asked. The cells were all empty.

"This is the women's ward."

There were no other women prisoners. Mrs. Mary was alone at the far end of a dark corridor in a cell with straw on the floor and one small window that admitted a single shaft of sunlight.

She was kneeling on the floor over a bucket, throwing up. The sounds of retching echoed in the emptiness. The place smelled like an outhouse.

"Mrs. Surratt, you got company," the jailer said.

She looked up. Her hair hung in dank tendrils around her face, which was white and haggard. Straw clung to her black dress as she struggled to her feet. "Annie." She started to cry, then stopped herself, seeing me and Robert.

"Emily! Oh, I'm so ashamed that you should see me like this. But I've been so sick with one of my headaches. And cold." Then she saw Robert. "And who is this? Annie, you haven't brought friends."

"No, Mama, he's a doctor. He's come to attend you."

Robert submitted himself and his doctor's bag to a search by the jailer, then made all of us wait at the end of the corridor. From down the dank hall I heard him making conversation with Mrs. Mary, heard her plaintive replies, though I could not make out the words. After a short time he came out.

"I've given her a powder for the migraine," he said to the jailer, "and I'm leaving some with her daughter in case she needs more." He handed a small vial to Annie. "Are you staying now or leaving?" he asked.

"I usually stay until they make me go home at night," Annie said.

"Then I want hot water and soap brought immediately so the woman can wash," he told the jailer severely. "I want those buckets emptied, a fresh ticking for the mattress, candles in her sconces on the walls, and two warm blankets."

"I don't have the authority," the jailer said.

"Then perhaps you have the authority to tell your superiors that if my instructions are not followed you will be reported to the Sanitation Commission. This place is a disgrace. You're in charge, aren't you?"

The man nodded.

"Well, your head will roll if your superiors get a citation from the Sanitation Commission. Don't think for a minute they won't blame it on you. Or perhaps you'd like the conditions here reported to the
Intelligencer.
Her case is being followed by newspapers all over the country, you know. Do you want to be written up as the jailer of a hellhole?"

The man was terrified. "No, sir. I don't need no trouble."

"Good," Robert said, "then we understand each other. Is there a place to make coffee?"

"My office down the hall."

"Then let Miss Surratt make her mother fresh coffee. I expect you to supply it." Robert drew some money out of a billfold. "Coffee will help her migraine. I'm going to keep tabs on things here. Remember what I said."

"Yes, sir."

When Annie saw us out the door she looked at Robert as if he were God. "Thank you," she said.

I looked at him with a little less admiration, maybe as an avenging angel. I was so proud of him! But my feelings were warring inside me. The horrors of the prison, the smells, dankness, clanging gates, had shaken me. How terrible to think of Mrs. Mary in a place like that! I shivered in the warm May sun. And then I looked around at the prettiness of the day. How wonderful to be out in the sunshine again, walking with Robert! Was I wrong to feel that way?

"I feel like I've come out of a tomb," I said to Robert.

"You have." His face was grim. "And it makes me wonder how the other prisoners are faring. I'm going to ask your uncle if maybe I can get onto the ironclads in the river to see them."

It was Myra Mott's birthday on the twenty-second. There was to be a big party at school. I did not want to go. But when you live with a doctor you can't very well say you're too sick to go to school. Unless you are sick. So I went. I made fudge to bring, and Uncle Valentine gave me money for a present. I bought Myra a book of poetry,
Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman.

Of course Myra simpered and preened and held sway over all of us that day. Lessons were shortened all morning so that we could have the party in the afternoon. It was a tea. Mrs. McQuade insisted we make a formal tea and mind our manners.

But a tea, presents, and being fawned over weren't enough for Myra. She wanted more. She wanted to be looked up to as the most clever, daring, and exciting girl in the class. And that day, for her fifteenth birthday, she had found a way.

Satisfied that the tea had gone off properlike, Mrs. McQuade left us to ourselves and went down the hall to her office. The minute she left, Myra looked at each of us in turn. "The presents are beautiful, but this is boring the life out of me. Who's for a bit of fun afterward?"

"What have you got planned?" Stephanie Wilson asked.

"You must swear, all of you, that even if you're afraid to be part of it, you won't tell anyone."

The girls exchanged glances and giggled and promised.

"That goes for you, too, Emily," Myra said. "Because it involves a story my father is pursuing. You know what story I mean. Now, if you can't promise to keep it secret, you must leave the room before I say what it is."

"I thought you were finished with all that, Myra. I
showed you everything you wanted to see. I thought I'd satisfied you."

"Something else has come up. My father has a new lead."

"There are no new leads. You'll be dragging everyone on a fool's errand."

"Then that should make you happy."

We locked eyes across the room for a minute.

"What is all this?" Melanie Hawkes asked. "Let the rest of us in on it."

I shrugged. What did I have to lose? Robert had convinced me my uncle had nothing to hide. I had put the matter to rest. Let Myra make a fool of herself.

"Just one thing before you speak," I said. "You're not going to bring everyone into my uncle's yard and poke around that shed again. I can't allow that. It's trespassing." I knew nobody would be home. Uncle Valentine had taken the train to Baltimore this morning to give a speech at the University of Maryland. Maude was off to one of her funerals. But I still couldn't allow it.

"Who cares about the old shed?" she retorted. "We're going somewhere more interesting." Then to the other girls. "What do you say? Want to see some dead bodies?"

***

I'd never been on the grounds of the National Medical College, where Uncle Valentine taught, and I was surprised to find out how easily anyone could just walk around there. Once in the front gates, no one bothered you. "Most of the guards are away helping the police because of all the soldiers in town for the review," Myra told us.

A block from school her older cousin Jason had been waiting for us. He was down from Baltimore with his mother, visiting. He was seventeen, had bright red hair and freckles. His father had served on the North's ironclad
Monitor,
and Jason was soon headed for the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

Myra was so puffed up with herself I thought she would burst. She clung to Jason's arm as we walked across the campus. It was near the end of the semester. Windows of the buildings were open and we could hear the droning voices of professors inside. With Jason leading us, it looked as if we were a passel of girls on a tour. No one paid us mind.