The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (34 page)

“Why are you still here?” said Judith, her voice as exhausted as her posture. She folded her arms on the edge of the settee, laid her head down. “What do you want? And don’t pretend you are here out of a concern for my welfare.”

“I do care about your welfare.”

“Until I interrupted your bath, you had not laid eyes on me in more than two years. And you hadn’t come looking, either.” She squirmed angrily, as if her body could find no comfort. “No more fairy tales, Abby. Tell me what you want.”

A long breath. “I want to know more about Rebecca Deveaux.”

“I thought you might.”

“Do you mind talking about her?”

A derisive squawk. “Do you care if I mind? I can’t get rid of you, can I?”

“Not really,” said Abigail, gently. She moved to the divan, sat, and took her sister’s feet on her lap. The baby had sprawled, snoring, on the blanket. “Anything you can remember.”

“Why is it so important?”

“I am not sure. But she is the key somehow. I do not believe that Mr. McShane was necessarily even the target of the murder. I believe Rebecca was.”

Judith snorted. “Impossible.”

“They found an envelope with the bodies. Addressed to Senator Wade.” She began rubbing her sister’s feet, trying to drive the tension away, even though she herself was the cause. “You told me that Rebecca was giving information to Mr. McShane. It seems obvious that she planned to give him the contents of the envelope. No doubt she delivered other documents as well. Mr. McShane withdrew fifty dollars from the bank the day of the murders. I believe the money was to pay Rebecca for the documents, not her services. A sum that large means that she was taking a significant risk. I suspect that the documents were stolen. She must have met Mr. McShane outside brothels to provide the obvious explanation if anyone ever saw them together. What I don’t know is where Rebecca was stealing the documents from.”

“How would I know?”

“She might have told you.”

“She didn’t.” A yawn. “Sorry.”

“She was your friend,” Abigail persisted. “That’s what you said, Judith. Not just an acquaintance. A friend. She may not have told you where she was getting the documents, but I am sure she supplied some clues, whether she intended to or not. If you tell me what you know about Rebecca, perhaps I can figure it out. And then, by re-establishing the conduit, I can honor her memory.”

“So that’s why you’re here? To honor Rebecca?”

“No. No. I’m here because somebody gave her my name. Her name and mine are in the register at the Metzerott Hotel. In the same handwriting, Judith. I asked myself why anybody would do that. It doesn’t make any sense. There is no reason to hide behind my name when she could meet with anybody in the city, anywhere in the city, and not need any name at all. That means, if Rebecca used my name, it was because she wanted someone to find it. She was leaving a clue behind. I think she wanted me to hear about it if anything happened to her. I think she was trying to lead me to you. Now I’d like to know why.”

For a moment Abigail thought she had lost. Judith let her eyelids drift shut, yawned again, said nothing. Abigail had the sense that she had offended her sister somehow, had pressed too hard, or guessed too much. She prepared herself for the possibility that Judith would throw
her out. Abigail kept massaging. She glanced at the baby, who was still asleep on the blanket. The candles were flickering; the apartment was growing dimmer, and more drafty. Judith gave a sudden snore. Abigail began to compose in her mind an appropriate apology. But in the end, her sister gave her the story, and Abigail knew it to be a parting gift.

V

“Rebecca was born on a tobacco plantation in northern Virginia. When the war broke out, the land up that way was pretty well trampled, and a lot of the slaves ran off. Rebecca lost track of her parents. She made her way to Washington somehow, and got work as a domestic. She’d worked in the house instead of the fields on the plantation, so she had the training. She worked her way up to one of the great houses, then moved on to another. I am not sure exactly why she left the first one. She was about twelve or thirteen, so …”

Judith’s voice trailed off, and her long face took on a pinched look, as if she were battling pain. There was no need to exchange any words. The availability of young colored women for the pleasure of their masters had survived, fully intact, the demise of the slave system that had given it birth.

“She must have worked in four or five houses. She was working in one of them when she … when she died.” Judith looked oddly abashed. “I met her a year and a half ago. We met … well, through church. I started … when I found out I was pregnant.… I thought it would be better for the baby if … Never mind.” Locking treacherous thoughts away. “Well. Rebecca and I met at George Town AME. We got to be friends. She’s about your age. A year or two younger, I guess. Or she was. And I … well … we talked about things. She told me her story. I told her my story. We didn’t pry. We just talked. And she told me about the house where she worked, how the master never touched her or even looked at her. That’s what she still said. Master.”

Judith had her arms over her face, but her shoulders were shaking, and Abigail supposed she was crying.

“The master was a good man. But there had been some sort of tragedy in the house. She never told me what it was. I had the idea that someone had died. And now the master was … well, he was distant. No. Not distant. Obsessed. Rebecca wasn’t sure about what, but she said she
knew an obsession when she saw one. He was an important man, he had a lot of meetings with powerful people, but he also had meetings at his house. Some of those meetings were strange. Rebecca overheard.… You know how it is, Abby. Or maybe you don’t. I’ve worked in service; you haven’t. Nobody guards his tongue around the servants, especially the colored servants. You hear a great deal. And Rebecca told me … she told me that this man … the man she was working for … she said he hated Mr. Lincoln. I said a lot of people hated him. Rebecca said yes, but the master was plotting against him. There were others who came to the house, and she heard them together. Mostly men, but one of them was a young woman. Well bred. A woman who seemed on easy terms with many of the great figures of the city. Still, Rebecca was surprised. Men of her master’s station did not see young women alone. Not at their homes. But this young woman came by a lot. She was giving the master messages. Some of the messages the young woman told him, and some of the messages she handed to him in envelopes. Now and then he gave the young woman messages to take back. Rebecca didn’t know who the messages were coming from. They never called him anything but the crooked man.”

“The crooked man?” Abigail echoed, speaking for the first time in a while.

A brisk nod. “Just like in the fairy tale.”

“What about the young woman who came by? What was her name?”

“Rebecca never said. I didn’t … I tried not to press her. She told me this toward … toward the end. She was frightened. She said her mistress had caught her in the master’s study, going through his things. She wanted to see what was in the messages, you see. She wanted to find out who was trying to hurt Mr. Lincoln, and why. The mistress had caught her and thought she was stealing. She said she was just cleaning, but the mistress didn’t believe her. She thought she was going to be discharged yet again. That was when she came to me. She turned out to have taken a few of the documents.”

“The documents outlining the plot,” said Abigail excitedly.

Judith looked away. “I didn’t ask her what exactly the documents showed. She said she wasn’t sure what to do with them, and I … I sent her to Mr. McShane.”

“Why?”

Judith’s smooth face split in a surprisingly gentle smile. Her eyes were half closed in reminiscence. “He was the President’s lawyer. That
was perhaps the most obvious reason. And, of course, I had heard good things about him.” A pause. “Once my sister began her employ.”

Michael again, Abigail realized. Judith might have given Nanny Pork a wide berth, and avoided Abigail and Louisa, too, but she had evidently stayed in close touch with Michael. Michael made a point of staying in touch with everyone.

“What happened then?”

“I am not sure. Rebecca did not confide the details to me.” Again that hesitation, as a look very near guilt passed over Judith’s countenance. “But I formed the impression that she met Mr. McShane a number of times.”

“And gave him documents.”

“Yes.”

“Documents she … removed … from the house where she was in service.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

Judith had an awesome way with sarcasm. “They do love our people so, don’t they?”

Abigail considered. It all seemed to fit, and yet she sensed an omission. She could not quite work out where it was. Her sister’s presentation was too fluent. She was too eager to divulge confidences, the eagerness suggesting that there was more, withheld. At the same time, Abigail knew from the set of her sister’s mouth that this was all she was going to get for now, that Judith already worried that she had said too much. And so, just to wind the conversation down, she asked: “And you have no idea what family she was working for? Who her master was?”

Judith shook her head.

“I told you. I don’t know who the family was. Rebecca never stayed with one family too long. She was studying in littles, saving what she could, going to school between jobs.”

“She must have given you a clue.”

“Must she?” For a moment Judith wore her old mocking smile, and her eyes were bright and young and flirtatious. Then she sagged, and the light went out of her face. She shook her head. The baby had awakened and was screaming again. “I think she might have called the lady of the house ‘Mrs. Ellen.’ But I’m not sure about that.”

They were standing now. Judith, robe flapping loosely, was moving her sister toward the door. The baby was on her shoulder.

“Mrs. Ellen,” Abigail repeated.

“Yes.”

“And you don’t remember anything else?”

“Not about Rebecca. But …”

“Please tell me.”

Judith caressed her cheek. “I don’t want you to get in trouble, Abby.”

“I am not in trouble.”

“Aren’t you? Because it is my understanding that a number of powerful men are worried about you. The fear seems to be that, unchecked, you will be the cause of considerable mischief.” The hand was on Abigail’s shoulder now. Lydia’s squeal had subsided to a whimper. “There is no need to give me that look, Abby. I am only telling you what I have heard. And I heard it, let us say, under circumstances in which a man is unlikely to lie.” A tired laugh. “Even a gentleman.”

Somehow the door was open. Jonathan was in the hallway, alert, but at a respectful distance.

“I don’t think you should come back,” said Judith.

“Of course I will.”

“No, dear. You have your career to think about. And … well, there are other reasons. Shush. I have told you as much as I can. For us to meet again would be dangerous.” She leaned forward suddenly, took Abigail’s head between her palms, kissed her on the forehead. “Goodbye, dear. God go with you.”

“And with you,” said Abigail, very shaken.

They never spoke again.

I

“
I SUPPOSE WE
have to believe it,” said Dan Sickles, toying with his moustache. The usual glimmer in his eye seemed dull in the gray morning light. They stood alone in the common room. It was Friday, March 15, and the trial would begin in three days, but Dennard and Speed were up at the Capitol, still negotiating the rules of procedure. Rellman was along to take notes. Little was at Woodward’s Hardware, buying supplies; Abigail, to the surprise of everyone but Jonathan, had decided to join him.

You should talk to Sickles alone
, she had said the night before.
He doesn’t like me, and he isn’t the sort of man who wants to hear bad news from a woman
.

“We have to believe it,” said Sickles a second time. “It makes sense.” He paused. “And because I don’t think Judith Canner would lie about something like this.”

Jonathan’s eyes widened. “You know Judith?”

“Never met. But I know
of
her.”

“How?”

“By reputation.” That roguish smile. “But a gentleman can say no more.”

Jonathan wondered, briefly, what sort of reputation Judith Canner must have, given her circumstances, but he walled off further speculation. What mattered was that Sickles had not, as Jonathan had worried he would, dismissed the entire conversation as fantasy. It was Abigail
who had insisted that Sickles, and only Sickles, be told. Once more, her judgment had been vindicated.

“You do see the larger significance, don’t you?” mused Sickles. “A wheel in the middle of a wheel. Isn’t that what Ezekiel says? A wheel in the middle of a wheel, getting ready to lift us up to the sky. We don’t know how many wheels are out there spinning, but at last we get to take a good look at one of them and see where it leads.” Dragging himself to his feet. “Speed, Dennard, men like that. They don’t see the wheel of conspiracy when it’s spinning right in front of their noses. To them the world is clear rules, amenable to sweet reason. Whereas Stanton—McShane, even—well, they see the conspiracy everywhere.”