Fates and Traitors (44 page)

The way would be clear. The moment was almost upon him.

A few minutes after ten o'clock, in the second scene of the third act, John climbed the steps to the dress circle, and once upstairs, he strolled along the rear wall toward the State Box on the south side of the theatre. Along the way he passed two acquaintances, but so intent was he on his destination that he did not return their nods. Then, roughly six feet from the outer door to the box, he encountered two army officers whose seats were arranged so that they nearly blocked the aisle. With a pointed glare and an impatient gesture, John indicated that he must be allowed to pass, so with some scowls and sharp looks, they shifted their chairs to make room.

As he made his way toward the box, John glimpsed the president's messenger sitting in a chair outside the door. The blood pounded in his ears, but his hands were steady as he approached the stocky valet, who glanced up at him and nodded in recognition—he was John Wilkes Booth, as recognizable in a theatre as any thespian in the world—and raised his eyebrows in inquiry.

“You crave affection, you do,” he heard Harry Hawk declare from the stage in the role of Asa, the Vermont bumpkin who was wrongly thought to have inherited enormous riches. “Now I've no fortune, but I'm biling over with affections, which I'm ready to pour out to all of you, like apple sass over roast pork.”

The audience laughed. John dug into his pockets, took a small stack of calling cards from his pocket, and selected one that bore a
name he knew would impress the man impeding his progress. His face a mask of genial confidence, John held his breath as the messenger studied the card. If he did not conclude that John had come to see the president on that man's behalf, all would be lost.

“Mr. Trenchard,” said Helen Muzzy in a huff, portraying the haughty, avaricious Englishwoman Mrs. Mountchessington, “you will please recollect you are addressing my daughter, and in my presence.”

“Yes,” Harry Hawk replied, “I'm offering her my heart and hand just as she wants them, with nothing in 'em!”

Another ripple of laughter went up from the audience. Glancing at the stage, smiling faintly, the valet gestured for John to proceed. Nodding graciously, John made to open the door—but it stuck. Heart thudding, he pressed his knee against it, forced it loose, passed through the doorway, and closed the door silently behind him.

He knew the empty corridor well. He had prepared it for this moment, carving a niche into the wall by the door, hiding a pine board nearby. Quietly, he wedged one end of the plank against the door and the other into the crevice he had made, bracing the entryway so firmly that no one would be able to enter without breaking down the door.

Two small doors were on the wall to his left, the nearest with a small peephole he himself had made, the other, astonishingly, left ajar. Both doors, neither of which were ever locked, offered views of the president seated in a large rocking chair, the nearest of the box's four occupants to the place where John stood. Mrs. Lincoln sat beside him, the young lady in a chair to her right, her escort on a sofa beside and slightly behind her. All four had their backs to the doors, their attention riveted by the action onstage. The younger gentleman was clad in military dress, but John could not see if he carried a sidearm. His presence was regrettable, but there was nothing to be done for it now. John drew his dagger with his left hand and stepped silently forward.

Mrs. Lincoln leaned close to her husband, smiling, and murmured something to him. He smiled back and made a quiet reply that seemed to please her.

“I am aware, Mr. Trenchard,” declared the lady onstage, “you are not used to the manners of good society, and that, alone, will excuse the impertinence of which you have been guilty.”

John drew closer and slowly drew the derringer from his pocket
with his right hand, knowing the actress was at that moment storming off stage right.

“Don't know the manners of good society, eh?” said the Vermonter. “Wal, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap!”

The audience burst into shouts of laughter.

Inhaling deeply, John strode into the box, leveled his pistol at the back of President Lincoln's head, and fired.

There was a loud bang and a sharp burst of acrid smoke. The officer bolted from his chair and rushed toward him, a look of wild alarm in his eyes, but he halted at the sight of John's knife. Instinctively John dropped the derringer, switched the knife to his right hand, and lunged at the officer, slashing his arm and sending him staggering backward. Heart pounding, he strode through the chairs to the balustrade, placed one hand on the railing, and leapt over it. The air rushed past his ears as he dropped twelve feet and landed on the stage, crouching to absorb the blow, spurs clanging.

He rose steady and sure, the blood surging through his veins.

He faced the audience, squared his shoulders, and raised his dagger overhead. “
Sic semper tyrannis
,” he proclaimed, and then, as the audience murmured and stared and a woman screamed, he turned and fled.

He raced toward the back of the stage and into the wings, past dumbstruck actors and stagehands paralyzed with shock, down a darkened passageway to the back door. Flinging it open, he dashed into the alley, seized the reins from the hand of the boy holding the mare—Spangler was gone—and the mare spooked and tried to pull away, but John threw himself over her back and into the saddle and brought her under control. Turning her about, he glimpsed Joseph Stewart bursting out the door and racing after him, shouting his name, reaching for the reins—

His fingertips barely brushed them; his fist closed on empty air.

John spurred the mare into a gallop and fled for the Navy Yard Bridge.

And pity, like a naked newborn babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears shall drown the wind.

—William Shakespeare,
Macbeth
, Act 1, Scene 7

L
ucy had already accepted John Hay's invitation to join him and Robert Lincoln at the White House to study Spanish that evening, so she was relieved when, after the subject came up at supper, John did not ask if she intended to accompany her mother and Mrs. Temple to the theatre. She had not told John that ever since her father had been confirmed as Minister to Spain, she and John Hay had met occasionally to study, or that Robert joined them whenever he was in the city. Lucy would prefer to tell John the truth, but she knew it would only provoke his jealousy.

John Hay called for her at half past eight o'clock, and they conversed in Spanish as they walked down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, she haltingly and laughing at her mistakes, John Hay fluently but generous with encouragement and praise she did not entirely
merit. Robert Lincoln welcomed them in the Red Room, where books and notes, as well as tea and cakes, were arranged on a lovely antique table his mother had purchased during her infamous refurbishments. Diligent students, they devoted an hour to memorizing vocabulary and conjugating verbs before turning to the more pleasant exercise of conversation.

“
España no está lejos de Francia
,” John Hay said to Lucy, smiling as she poured him another cup of tea.

She paused, thinking, and set down the teapot. “Spain is not something of France.”

“
Lejos de
,” prompted Robert. “Come now, Lucy. You knew it a half hour ago.”

“Far from,” she declared, suddenly remembering. “Oh, yes, that's it. Spain is not far from France.”

“You're right, and so am I,” said John Hay. “You could come and visit me in Paris.”

Lucy smiled fondly. “I think I should like that very much. And you could visit me in Madrid.”

At the inaugural ball, John Hay had confided to her that he intended to submit his resignation now that President Lincoln had been safely reelected. Although he loved and respected the president, his duties had become overwhelming and exhausting, for he and John Nicolay were not only secretaries, but also gatekeepers, companions, emissaries, and surrogate sons, living and working in the Executive Mansion, with very little time for any other life of their own.

When John Hay had first accepted the position on Mr. Lincoln's staff, he had regarded the new president with condescension and a cocksure college man's intellectual superiority, but over time, he had entirely revised his opinion. Soon after John and Lucy met, he had told her that he believed that God himself had put Mr. Lincoln in the White House. In the summer months before the election when it seemed unlikely that the president would win a second term, John had declared that if the snobbish elites of Washington and New York could not recognize Mr. Lincoln's genius, it was because they knew “no more of him than an owl does of a comet, blazing into its blinking eyes.” Lucy knew he was devoted to the president, and that it pained him to leave the president's service, which he had vowed not to do until Mr. Lincoln had
found a satisfactory replacement. But recently he had been appointed secretary of legation of the United States in Paris, and he would likely sail for France in June.

They were all parting company, she thought wistfully. The end of the war, imminent and inevitable, would bring peace and reunion, but also changes—some welcome, some less so.

“You must come and visit me too,” she said, turning to Robert.

“I'd like that very much,” he said, “but after my commission in the army is finished, it's back to Harvard Law for me.”

“Harvard Law
and
the cozy parlor of a certain Miss Harlan,” teased John Hay, and Robert grinned back.

It was about eleven o'clock when they decided to close their books for the night. “I shall dream in Spanish tonight,” Lucy predicted as her friends saw her to her carriage, where an army lieutenant stood at attention, waiting to escort her home.

“
Buenas noches
,” John Hay called to her through the window as the carriage pulled away. She waved and smiled as John said something to Robert that made him throw back his head and laugh. It was good to spend time with friends who shared her thankfulness and joy that the Union had emerged victorious from the dreadful war, that the fractured nation would soon be made whole. Their optimistic company provided a respite from John Wilkes's erratic flashes of temper, his dire predictions about restoration, his endless lamentations about his beloved Virginia—although of course she would not tell him that.

The streets were busier than she expected for so late on a Good Friday evening. Men strode rapidly along the sidewalks, while others clustered outside hotels and telegraph offices as if waiting for news. Perhaps Mr. Davis had been captured, she thought, her hopes rising, or perhaps General Johnston had at last surrendered. When the carriage halted in front of the National Hotel, she accepted the lieutenant's hand, swiftly alighted, and hurried inside, breathless from excitement and eager for news.

She found the lobby teeming with people, ladies and gentlemen in all manner of dress, some recently come from the theatre, others who had evidently returned downstairs after retiring for the evening. After her expectation of glad tidings, she needed a moment to realize that
their expressions were frightened, anxious, and angry, and her heart plummeted.

“Lucy,” Lizzie cried, hurrying toward her, tears in her eyes. “Oh, Lucy, you're safe.”

“Of course I am.” Lucy spotted her parents making their way through the crowd toward them, their expressions stricken. “What has happened? What's going on?”

Lizzie put her arm around her shoulders, but before she could speak, a man behind her turned and bellowed, “The president was shot at Ford's Theatre tonight, and they say a guest of this hotel is the murderer. The detectives are tearing his room apart right now.”

Lucy could not breathe. “Lizzie?” she managed to say, clutching her sister's arm.

“The president is dead,” a woman shrieked. Lucy whirled about to find two gentlemen easing a white-faced matron into the chair by the window where Lucy had so often met John. “Shot in the State Box. It was John Wilkes Booth. The actor. I saw him. We all saw him. Oh, God help us! God preserve us!”

“John?” Lucy whispered as her vision went gray and her head rang and spun and all went dark.

•   •   •

H
ours before dawn, Mary woke to an insistent rapping upon her door. “Mrs. Surratt?” It was Louis Weichmann, his voice strangely shrill. “Mrs. Surratt? Do wake up.”

“What is it?” she replied groggily.

“Detectives have come looking for your son and Mr. Booth.”

Her heart thudded. “They aren't here.”

“I told them so, but they want to search the house.”

“For God's sake.” Inhaling deeply, Mary sat up. “Let them come in.”

He had done it, she thought wildly as she threw back the covers and climbed out of bed. Mr. Booth had captured President Lincoln—and he and his comrades must have escaped the city with their prisoner, or the detectives would not be searching for him.

But how had they known to come to her boardinghouse?

She made a quick toilette and dressed, her head turning this way and that as she traced the detectives' movement by the sounds seeping
through the walls and floorboards—boots tramping through the halls and on the staircases, furniture scraping across floors, voices from the direction of Louis's bedchamber, then the Holohan family's rooms. Mary checked her hair in the looking glass, fixed her expression into a serene mask, and went to the formal sitting room, but she had not had time to seat herself before she heard boots on the stairs again. Looking down the hall from the doorway, she saw four grim-faced men in uniform descend, and as they halted at the foot of the stairs, conferring in low voices and throwing occasional glances her way, she recognized two of them as the detectives who had come to the house in February seeking Junior.

Louis had followed the four men downstairs, his face pale and drawn in shock, and he edged around them and hurried into the parlor to Mary. “What do you think, Mrs. Surratt?” he asked, his voice shaking. “President Lincoln has been murdered by John Wilkes Booth, and the Secretary of State has been assassinated!”

Mary felt all the blood drain from her face as she stared at him, dumbfounded. Her mouth formed a question, but no sound emerged.

One of the detectives who had come to the house before broke away from the others and approached her, while two others climbed the stairs again and another headed below. “Mrs. Surratt, I am Detective Clarvoe,” he said, fixing her with a level gaze. “I want to ask you a couple of questions, and be particular how you answer them, for a great deal depends on them. When did you last see John Wilkes Booth?”

“I—I saw him at two o'clock in the afternoon, yesterday.” It seemed the safest reply.

“When did you last see your son John, and where is he now?”

She clasped her hands together at her waist to still their trembling. “I have not seen him for two weeks. I believe he is in Canada.”

“Why would you think so?”

“I— Because I received a letter from him on the fourteenth, and it had been postmarked on the twelfth from Montreal.”

His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “May I see this letter?”

She nodded. “Certainly. It's in my bedchamber.” She dared hope that they would not follow her there. Dazed, she went to her room, shut the door, and found Junior's last letter in the top drawer of her wardrobe. It said nothing of Mr. Booth's plans, nothing of abduction or
murder, but what it did say was enough to condemn Junior as a Confederate courier and spy.

Swiftly Mary concealed the letter beneath a loose floorboard along the wall, and then she sat down on the edge of her bed, struggling to compose herself. She stood, made the bed, and sat down again, taking deep breaths to still her racing heart.

Then she rose again and returned to the sitting room, where another detective had joined Detective Clarvoe. “I couldn't find the letter.”

The two detectives exchanged skeptical looks. “Are you sure you don't know where John Surratt is tonight?” the second one asked.

Their arrogance made her anger flare. “I didn't know five minutes ago and I still don't know now. In these troubled times, a great many mothers have no idea where their sons are.” She drew herself up to her full height and looked from one man to the other. “What is all this about? Why have you come here in the middle of the night, rousing us from our beds, disturbing me and my lodgers with your questions and searches?”

“You know why we're here, madam,” said Detective Clarvoe.

“I certainly do not, sir.”

Frowning, he bent his head to speak in the other detective's ear, and then, ordering Mary to stay in the parlor, they resumed the search. Soon Anna darted into the room, tearful and trembling, her dress hastily buttoned, her hair loose down her back. “Ma, what is happening?” she asked, flying into her embrace.

Gently, holding her close, Mary kissed her brow and murmured the little she knew, that the president and secretary of state had been assassinated, that Mr. Booth stood accused of one murder and Junior of the other. “That's impossible, impossible,” said Anna faintly, sinking into a chair. “Junior is in Canada.”

“Yes, and thank God for that.” Mary fell silent as another detective appeared in the doorway and gave them a long, speculative glare before turning back down the hall. A moment later, Mary heard the door to her own bedchamber open, followed by the sounds of rummaging, of moving furniture aside.

It seemed an age before the four detectives, having found neither Mr. Booth nor Junior nor anything incriminating within the
boardinghouse, departed with a stern warning for Mary to tell them immediately if Junior returned. She made no answer, but locked the door behind them and returned to the parlor, heart pounding, head spinning.

“Oh, Ma,” exclaimed Anna, her breath coming in quick, short gasps of hysteria. “Just think of it—that dreadful Mr. Booth having been at this house before the assassination! I'm afraid that it will bring suspicion upon us!”

Mary knew it already had. “Anna, come what will,” she said, with all the reassuring calm she could summon up, “I am resigned. I think John Wilkes Booth was an instrument in the hands of the Almighty to punish this proud and licentious people.”

A sudden movement from the corner of her eye startled her, and she turned to discover Louis Weichmann standing in the doorway, staring at her in dismay.