The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (20 page)

He stopped, aware that Lincoln was smiling at him. Dennard touched his elbow gently. “Don’t worry, Hilliman. I shall go.”

Speed had a concern. “Fessenden is a friend of this Administration. He served you and the nation very ably as Secretary of the Treasury. Perhaps we should not be so indirect as to communicate via an attorney.”

“Oh, I think that’s exactly the way to do it,” Lincoln assured him. “If Fessenden wanted you or me or Mars here to come calling, he’d have brought the offer to the Mansion in the first place. But he didn’t. That means he wants to open negotiations, but he can’t afford to see one of us at his door. And it can’t be you, either, Rufus. I’m afraid it has to be Jonathan. Sickles feels the same.”

Stanton nodded his agreement. “Anyone else would be recognized.”

Speed said, “Going to see Fessenden, even young Hilliman would probably be recognized. We need an envoy who will be invisible.”

Again all eyes were on Jonathan. And, very suddenly, he knew what they wanted him to do—what they had planned all along.

II

Abigail Canner lived in a two-story brick house overlooking one of the city’s remaining farms, near where Tenth Street crossed Virginia Avenue and continued on a southward course to the Potomac River. The Island was bordered by the two rivers and two canals. Dwellings and businesses and factories. The air was heavy and wet, as befitted the marshland where the nation had built its capital city. The smells were atrocious, made worse by the scraggly remnants of the canal to the northwest. Jonathan all but held his nose as he climbed down onto a muddy boulder on the west side of Tenth Street. Across the road, a gaggle of negro boys in knickers paused their ball game to watch. Jonathan smiled tentatively. The boys stared. Probably they wondered why some white stranger was smiling at them. Jonathan wondered, too.

The house was surrounded by a low wooden fence. As he pushed the gate, he noticed that his palms were sweaty, despite the chill. He was more nervous visiting Abigail’s home than he was meeting the President of the United States.

He hesitated, feeling watched. He looked around. The boys had returned to their match. To the north, the vista was dominated by the brooding redbrick spire of the Smithsonian Castle on B Street, where mad Mary Henry sat and watched the world. To the south, the river was a gray smear. Beyond lay Virginia: to most Yankees, still enemy territory.

Certainly the negroes must feel that way.

A trio of scrawny chickens hopped about the muddy yard. Half-sunken stones made an uneven path to the porch. The door flew open at his knock. Standing there was a woman he nearly but not quite recognized: a younger version of Abigail, in flowing dress severely buttoned.

Jonathan removed his hat. “You would be Miss Louisa,” he murmured.

Louisa Canner had most of her older sister’s willowy beauty, and all of her charm, and added to it a mature flirtatiousness all her own. Her skin was perhaps a shade lighter than Abigail’s, more café au lait than cacao, and she glowed with an energy both delicate and dangerous.

“And you would be Mr. Hilliman,” she said. “The white man my sister has been keeping company with.”

One minute behind the gate and already Jonathan was unsure of himself. What, he wondered, would Meg say? Or her father, the Lion of Louisiana? “That is not precisely as I would put it.”

“Everybody else puts it that way, Mr. Hilliman.” Those huge eyes, larger even than her sister’s, took his measure. “And may I take it that you have come to call on her now?”

Jonathan chose his words with care. “I have come to see your sister in the course of business.”

Louisa inclined her head toward the boys playing ball across the street. “I am not sure the neighborhood will look at it exactly that way, Mr. Hilliman.”

Before he could respond, a heavy growl erupted from within: the voice of authority lumbering angrily toward death.

“Leave him be, Lou. Let him in.”

“He shouldn’t be here,” she said, not turning.

“I said let him in.” A cough, wet and rattling, and the sound of something heavy dragging along the floor. “Might as well find out what kinda white man he is.”

“The usual kind,” said Louisa with a toothsome grin.

“Courtin?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, let’s have a look at him, then.”

And a sharper voice, Abigail’s: “Lou, you have chores. Go. Now.” She materialized from the darkness to stand beside Jonathan on the porch, watching her sister scurry down the walk and out the gate. Louisa crossed the street and threaded past the clutch of boys. “Why, Jonathan Hilliman,” said Abigail, as prettily as any belle. “How good of you to call.”

Following her inside, he suspected that she would shortly be a good deal less happy to see him.

III

Nanny Pork turned out to be a broad, dark woman, with hair tightly braided and a way of looking at you that said she could see into your head. She walked poorly, but kept circling Jonathan anyway as he stood in the parlor, unwilling to sit, despite having been bidden, until his hostess did. But his hostess was not even in the room: she had gone to make tea.

“You’re kinda scrawny,” Nanny said at last.

“I suppose I am,” he conceded, actually lifting an arm to look.

“You a lawyer, Mr. Jonathan?”

Mr. Jonathan
. What the servants called him at Newport. His skin prickled with unexpected embarrassment.

“A law clerk. I—I am studying to be a lawyer.”

She was behind him now, and he half turned. Her palms were on the wide hips, rubbing them as if they ached. “Abby says you’re rich.”

Abby.
Abby
. He had never heard Abigail mention a nickname, or dreamed that she might answer to one. He had swiveled completely now, and was facing the old woman. “My family owns a couple of mills.”

The clever yellow eyes tracked him. “I knowed a man in Clarendon County who owned a mill. A colored man. Free. This was before the war. But they burned it down anyway. When he complained about it, they locked him up.”

“Then it is well,” he said carefully, “that the Union won the war.”

She made a spitting sound. “The war ain’t over. For you, maybe. Not for us.”

Nanny Pork cut her gaze to the side. Following, he noticed first a piano, and then a shotgun resting beneath the window beside it: an odd place to leave a firearm. And he wondered, for a mad moment, whether this old woman, or even young Louisa, had kept a bead on him all the way up the walk. As a white man, he was uneasy in colored neighborhoods; it had not occurred to him until now that a white stranger might worry the colored folk even more than they worried him, or that they lived in a world in which a knock at the door might portend cruel, swift violence.

His eyes met Nanny Pork’s again, and he knew that she knew where he had been looking. The shapeless dress was wrinkled and dark.

“I just wants you to understand,” she said, “that my Abby is gonna be married. She’s waitin on her fiancé to come back from the war. And no girl livin under my roof is gonna mess around like a lowlife. Is that clear?”

Jonathan had expected this, and even had a little speech ready. He did not expect to botch it quite so badly. “I assure you, my intentions are entirely—Ah, what I mean is, we have only a—a professional relationship.”

“Yeah, well, a lot of mens has professional relationships with a lot of girls, and that better not be the kind of business you means.”

“No, of course not. Of course not. I am sorry if I—”

“Leave him alone, Nanny,” said Abigail from the doorway. She was carrying a tray, and resting on it were, pointedly, two teacups, not three.

Nanny Pork crossed her arms. She grinned suddenly, showing yellowy but even teeth. “We’s just gettin to know each other, isn’t that right, Mr. Jonathan?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t you
ma’am
me, boy. I’se been Nanny Pork since before your mama was borned. You just call me Nanny.”

“Yes, Nanny.”

Her eyes darted toward Abigail. “You behave yourselfs,” she said, and dragged from the room.

“You must forgive her,” said Abigail, gesturing him toward the sofa, draped with an obviously expensive but very worn golden fabric. All of the furniture was a little too big, a little too fancy, and a little too old. Jonathan had seen similar efforts during his childhood, gleefully pointed out by his mother: families that struggled from generation to generation to keep up the appearance of prosperity after the money was gone.

“There is nothing to forgive,” he said, sitting uneasily beside her. “She is rather … fascinating.”

“She is rather irritating.”

“She strikes me as a wise woman.”

“I suppose.” Abigail’s tone was skeptical. She had placed the tea set on a small wooden table. As she poured out, Jonathan felt more than ever like a gentleman caller. Music sheets lay across the piano: Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat; the overture from
Der Freischütz
. Jonathan wondered whether Abigail had been to see Jenny Lind when she performed in the city. He had never before wondered such a thing about a negro, but with Abigail Canner everything seemed possible.

“So,” she said, eyes aglow, “what brings you to my home on this lovely winter afternoon?”

“I have just come from the Executive Mansion.”

“I see.” Her brow furrowed, and he wondered whether she was thinking, as he was, that, although Jonathan now attended nearly every meeting of the President and his lawyers, Abigail had yet to be invited. “Then perhaps we should get to the point. I fear that I am expecting another caller shortly.”

Puzzled by her sudden coldness, Jonathan complied. “You will remember that last night I told you that Senator Fessenden had conveyed the outlines of a deal to end the impeachment proceedings.”

“I do.”

“The President,” Jonathan continued, “is not inclined to accept the deal in its current form. He would, however, be willing to consider alternatives.” Those huge eyes were so full and trusting that he found it difficult to say the rest. “The trouble is, he cannot be seen to negotiate openly, any more than the Radicals can.”

Abigail caught the theme. “He requires an emissary to negotiate.”

Jonathan nodded. “The emissary will not be negotiating. The emissary will be carrying messages.”

For the first time in their acquaintance, she seemed uneasy—fearing, perhaps, where the conversation was headed. “And the President, I take it, has chosen you.” Even her smile was tentative. “That is a great honor, Mr. Hilliman. You will be carrying the messages that may save Mr. Lincoln’s presidency. I congratulate you.” She laughed. Harshly. “I imagine that you and Miss Hale will be celebrating.”

So that was it. Jonathan wondered what Abigail thought she knew; and scarcely dared wonder why she would care. He longed to explain himself, to drive that look of severe disappointment from the smooth brown face; but duty was duty, and this was not the moment to discuss the matter.

“I fear that I am not the chosen emissary. It is you, not I, who shall save Mr. Lincoln’s presidency.”

And Abigail’s eyes grew wide indeed.

I

ON MONDAY MORNING
, a windswept winter rain froze the capital. Abigail was delayed when the horsecars jumped the icy track near Tenth Street. The events of the past few days and nights had left her on edge, and by the time she reached the office, she was shivering, only partly from cold. She sat in McShane’s office with Dan Sickles, who rehearsed her carefully on the mission she was to undertake. She had never known him to be so serious. Fessenden liked things tidy, Sickles told her. As Treasury secretary, he had cleaned up the mess left behind by his predecessor, who had pretty much bankrupted the federal government trying to pay for the war. Fessenden hadn’t fixed things out of loyalty to Lincoln or even to country; he had fixed things because he hated untidiness.

“What are you trying to tell me, Mr. Sickles?”

“Don’t add to the message. Don’t subtract from it. You are there as an emissary from whom?”

“This office. Not the President.”

“And are you bringing a response to the proposal?”

“Only a request for more details.”

“And if he asks you which details in particular need to be clarified?”

Abigail had her hands in her lap. She had to fight the urge to squeeze them nervously together. Yesterday, after services at the Baptist church on the wharf, she had been embarrassed to find herself the center of fluttery female attention, everyone wanting to know what Lincoln was really like; and Abigail had wished desperately to wake up and find herself
truly a member of the inner circle. Now, on the verge of becoming exactly that, she found her hands were shaking.

“That is not for me to say,” she said. “But I believe that our client might be open to alternatives.”

“Good.” He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Try to relax, Miss Canner. You’ll be surprised at how well things will go.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sickles.”

“Call me Dan. And remember. Fessenden is a stern man, and he has that prim look of disapproval all the time. But he isn’t actually unkind. If you have any trouble getting in to see him, give his man the note from Speed. Otherwise, keep it in your bag. And one other thing.” At last, a tiny smile. “I’m afraid we cannot let you have a driver. If you are to be unnoticed, you will have to take the horsecars.”