The Judges of the Secret Court

by David Stacton

  He had had enough. He had had enough.

  XXVII

  Edwin had not yet left the house on 19th Street. It was night, and he found the nights worse than the days. During the day he hid from the world. But at night the world was sleeping, he could not, and so it was himself then he had to hide from.

  He thought he should have done something to prevent this. He had known Wilkes was crazy on the subject of Lincoln. He had even heard Wilkes say that awful sentence, that there was a great way for a man to immortalize himself, by shooting the President. But he had thought that only Wilkes’s posturing, and had believed that Wilkes was too concerned to posture ever to take part in real events.

  Now he had. That one shot had shattered the whole family. How could any of them face the world again?

  His only consolation was that he himself had once saved Robert Lincoln’s life. It had happened on a train. Robert Lincoln had missed his footing and started to fall under the wheels. Edwin had hauled him safely up. He told everybody about that, the way an old pensioner shows his certificate of service to strangers who do not even remember the campaign he served in, let alone the man himself. The Booth family madness had come out at last. Against that, nothing weighed on the balanced side.

  Junius had been arrested. Nothing could be done with that optimist. He wrote confident, bubbly letters from prison, telling Edwin that it would be over soon enough and that the world would soon forget. Edwin knew better. It would never be over and the world would never forget. Sleeper Clarke was in the next cell, raging against them all. June did not say that, but Edwin knew it. Sleepy would never forgive Asia for getting him into this, and Asia was under house arrest. It could not be easy for her, though she made it no easier for anyone else, in refusing to condemn Johnny. She spoke out too much. Edwina was still with her, and if Asia’s correspondence was being opened, Edwin shuddered for the safety of his daughter.

  Few of his friends wrote to console him. That did not surprise him. He was only surprised that a few did, which touched him deeply, and he answered as best he could. It was the other mail that disturbed him, the anonymous letters, the signed threats, and the charitable communications from acquaintances who wrote to say they had known how terrible the Booth family was, right from the beginning. John Wilkes was not dead yet, so far as was known, and yet he had received three letters from hysterical women claiming to be his widow, who wrote to ask about the estate. If it had not been for Aldrich, he would have gone mad.

  Sometimes late at night the two men slipped out of the shuttered house, to take a constitutional in the streets. As far as Edwin was concerned, those streets could never now be empty enough. He shrank from everyone. As Asia had written, “Those who have passed through such an ordeal, if there are any such, may be quick to forgive, slow to resent; they never relearn to trust in human nature, they never resume their old place in the world, and they forget only in death.”

  Yet he could not shrink from meeting everyone. As his father had once told him, everybody knows Tom Fool. In this life we knot our own noose. He had always known that. But at least one might be allowed to kick away the box one’s self.

  “ ’Tis a mere matter of time. I feel sure Time will bring all things right,” wrote June. How could June be such a fool?

  XXVIII

  On Monday, the 24th of April, Lincoln’s body arrived in New York, escorted across the water from Newark on the train ferry. To New York it was a procession, and New York loves processions. The window sashes were removed from the windows, so that people might have a better look. But a look was all they wanted.

  Edwin had determined to stay indoors. And yet, though he told nobody, he knew he had to look. He found a place in the crowds which lined the streets.

  As the catafalque entered the street, it seemed to sway down upon him like the cart of juggernaut. Its wobbling motion, behind its horses, was something he would never be able to forget. The crowds seemed unmoved. He did not understand. Perhaps fright had sobered them into their best behaviour, but our best behaviour is often our worst. This did not seem to mean anything to them at all. And yet he had only to open a newspaper to see how they cried for vengeance. Was grief, then, only the pretext for vengeance? Somehow he did not himself find it so. Grief should make one gentle, not venomous.

  The catafalque was hauled out of sight, and he went back to his house. Did these crowds not realize that they were watching something much more terrible than even the worst raree-show? Or was a raree-show all they made out of the real meaning of life?

  Perhaps.

  The body was removed to City Hall, outside of which a chorus of eight hundred chanted the Pilgrims’ Chorus from Tannhäuser. It was the latest music. New York believes in keeping up to date. A little puzzled by the vast world out there, beyond the Hudson, it only feels secure in novelty. That is its only pre-eminence.

  Yet the obsequies, and in particular the decorations, left nothing to be desired. Other cities might place an eagle over the catafalque. New York had a silver eagle whose wings were folded and whose head appropriately drooped. It was a triumph of artistic expression, and yet the mourners, as the papers pointed out, seemed chiefly to be impressionable shop girls. Observers noted that though the respect was beautifully paid, there was less feeling and less sorrow in New York than elsewhere.

  To tell the truth, the mourners found the body exposed and dusty. He was only a man, and a dead man at that, and the parade was more impressive than its occasion, they thought. It had, indeed, a magnificent allegorical float. When the body had been seen off on the train, the city took down the black bunting and went about its usual affairs, which were, after all, of some importance.

  However, it had been a good procession, the citizens of the Fifth Ward of Brooklyn had been particularly impressive, and of course the Negro population had been deeply moved. Everyone had applauded the devotion of the Negroes. As a cheap labour pool, they would be invaluable.

  The Honourable George Bancroft delivered an oration in Union Square. The Rev. Osgood recited an ode, and William Cullen Bryant, who was still alive, though his recovery from tuberculosis had been the death of his muse, had distributed among a few friends a little hymn.

  But at Mount Vernon, near Yonkers, the Sisters of Charity, with veiled heads, stood on the lawn before their convent, surrounded by their two hundred pupils, and watched the slow funeral train go by, until it had vanished around a bend, leaving in the air behind it only a low, dissolving tube of black smoke. The countryside was more devout. Bonfires lit the hills, and sometimes the stations. In Ohio, at Richmond, the bells of the city rang out across the dark, to summon the citizens to the station. People came in from the country, through the hot, sticky night, in their farm wagons, and sat on their buckboards, as the train slowly passed by. Guns fired. And at Urbana, the young ladies of the community, stiff in new frocks, entered the funeral car and dropped flowers on the bier.

  It was incredible: the farther the train got from the urban centres which had processed the most, the deeper into the real country those politicians in Washington City thought they knew so well and knew they ruled, the more, as the train passed on, the real tribute came down to the trackside and flared on the hills, although the train did not stop.

  As the train moved through Ohio into Illinois, the people brought not silver eagles, black velvet, and a gaggle of Bishops; not hymns, odes, and the latest music from Europe, but flowers.

  From everywhere, that late spring, they brought flowers, from the fields, wilting already in the hands of those who held them, from the gardens and nurseries, arranged in set pieces and in vases, white roses, immortelles, amaranth, orange blossoms, and the emblematical justicia, for in those days people knew, what we have forgotten, the ancient language of flowers. They brought evergreen boughs and the flowers of the season, which meant more to them than laurel.

  The eagle, which in New York had so artfully drooped, in the back country was larger and more triumphant. And at Chicago they did him
proud. It surprised everyone. No one had realized that there were so many to care in Chicago. Again, before the coffin departed on its final journey, there were more flowers, that most ancient, prechristian, pagan, and perpetual of Man’s offerings, which he offers in his fist, when it is too late, to he knows not what. Most of these people were of British stock. They might not understand each other or themselves. But they understood the meaning of flowers.

  At 9:30 the cortège left Chicago for Springfield. Along the way it passed through the hamlet of Lincoln, a place named after him, in whose origins he had taken an interest. There, there was an arch over the railroad bed, and a choir in white, but the train did not stop.

  From now on, the name of Lincoln would never stop.

  XXIX

  Booth was approaching Port Conway.

  It was as though that dusty grey curtain behind which he had been skulking for days, had suddenly furled up to the proscenium, to reveal a gorgeous golden world. The sun was out. The play was on again.

  He had been lying at the bottom of William Lucas’s commandeered spring wagon. It was the sort of broken down vehicle a Negro would have, creaking, and without springs. Herold was on the seat with the driver, Lucas’s son. Mile after agonizing mile, Booth had lain on his back, staring at the pendulous sky which sagged over him like the dingy sateen lining of a cheap coffin lid. Now, marvellously, a pale sun was out. It was a resurrection. After this death, he would come into his own again. Booth sat up.

  Port Conway was a small enough town. Beyond it lay the Rappahannock, sparkling sedately in the April light, with Port Royal on the farther bank. Though small, Port Royal had once been a tobacco port. Scattered across that stretch of rural equanimity were a few stately houses. He was enormously cheered. Once on the farther side, and he would be himself again. The ferry was moored on the opposite bank.

  Herold told him to lie down. He lay down. He felt light-hearted and happy. The sunlight was so good, so dry, so warm. Like a man in surgery, who is injected against despair, he gave way drowsily to that anaesthetic, and put his arm over his eyes. Whatever misery he was in, the sun would heal. He had had Herold shave him and put his clothes to rights. Since he had no mirror, he could not know how little that had helped. For the first time in days he felt the return of self-esteem.

  The wagon stopped. They must be at the riverside, from the odour of fish, tidal flats, and slime. Herold jumped to the ground and went to parley with the boatman. Though this closeness to freedom made Booth calm, Herold had turned shrill. That guileless child’s voice was babbling too freely to the boatman. Booth lay there, listening to the soothing noises of a quiet countryside. So had he lain upstairs, as a child, at Tudor Hall, the Booth home, sure that if anything was wrong, or if he had been caught out and was due for punishment, for some prank, his mother would take care of him. He had that feeling now.

  Behind him he heard the approaching clatter of hoofs and harness. It was a sound too dilatory to be pursuit, but it did not have the sound of farmers, either. He hauled himself up and peered over the edge of the wagon. What he saw was a posse of Confederate cavalry, three officers, no more than boys, slim, fresh faced, and natty in clean and polished uniforms. They looked at rights with the world. One of them swung down from his saddle with that physical, self-contented and accomplished grace which Booth, who had so much enjoyed innocently to swagger so, envied now, whereas ten days ago he would have had it himself.

  Herold, who had gotten nowhere wrangling across the water at the boatman, ran shrieking to them. His rattled treble voice was too froward. Booth winced and lay down again, but he could hear the jabber well enough. How young the lads sounded. Younger than he had sounded, even when young.

  Herold had chosen a new pseudonym this time. He was announcing that their name was Boyd. He came back to Booth and asked him to get out of the wagon.

  “They’re from Mosby’s command,” he whispered, as though that made everything all right. “They must be headed south somewhere. Maybe they can get us across the river.”

  Booth climbed out of the wagon and got his crutches under his arms. The sunshine made him blink, but he felt affable. He was with Southern gentlemen again. He could see that. And then, they were so very young, scarcely more than boys dressed up in soldier suits. They stood about so easily in their well-cut uniforms, elegant, with their weight on one hip, and maybe even a little shy. They would not refuse the simple demands of a fellow veteran since, by the looks of them, they had not seen much service. Embarrassed by someone who had so clearly been through more than they had, they would be kind. He introduced himself as John William Boyd, of A. P. Hill’s corps. It was the first combination of the initials on his tattooed hand that he could think of.

  They said they were on their way to pay a private visit. But they would arrange about the crossing. The ferry rested so tantalizingly on the opposite bank. Booth looked at the ripple of water against that bank, and the beaten track leading down to the slight wash on this one. Once over the river, and there would be nothing between him and Richmond. He would be in the heart of the South.

  Herold was desperate. He was afraid of pursuit, and if he could not beg for help, then he could force it. Besides, had not Booth told him how gratified the South would be? What could be more Southern than three fine young gentlemen fresh from Mosby’s Rangers?

  “We are the assassinators of Lincoln,” Booth heard him tell the sandy haired young man, whose name seemed to be Bainbridge. It was a loud and unmistakeable word on that bucolic air. The jig was up. He hobbled over to Herold, who gave him a fatuous, shame-faced grin and introduced him to Lieutenant Ruggles.

  Ruggles stared hard at both of them. “If you are what the man says you are, you must be John Wilkes Booth,” he said.

  Booth admitted the name.

  None of the three cavalrymen said anything. Instead they looked at him and they looked swiftly away. There was a price on his head. If they helped him, there would be a price on theirs. He thought it his duty to point that out. Why should they help him? No one else had.

  Ruggles was the first to speak. “I guess we can’t exactly turn you in for blood money,” he said. “So we’ll help you, I reckon.”

  Jett, the youngest one, hesitated and then agreed. But Bainbridge, who was their leader, had had the time to find out that this world is full of traps for the unwary.

  “We were told that the person who killed the President had already been apprehended,” he said, and waited, staring at Booth.

  Booth understood. He too had learned to be wary of traps these last few days. He held out his wrist with its tattooed initials. He handed over a bill he still had in his pocket, a draft against a Canadian bank.

  The three men did not like it. A man should have some preparation, before having to thread his way through so many conflicting loyalties, particularly at a time like this, when they could all see where loyalty had got them. But they couldn’t leave him alone, they’d met him, it was too late to remain unimplicated, they couldn’t turn him in, the best thing to do would be to pass him along. He didn’t look as though he could last long, by the looks of him. Poor devil, he’d had a hard time.

  There was only one way they could go through with it, and that was to treat it as a lark. They looked at each other, and then Jett went down to the water’s edge and cursed the barge nigger into bringing the ferry over. Action is what the young are good at. Ideas merely confuse them. Once Jett had started things in motion, Bainbridge and Ruggles fell in soon enough.

  It was a poled ferry. It took the devil’s time to get across. Booth gave Lucas’s son ten bucks to keep his mouth shut, to be rid of him, and opened up to the lieutenants. He appealed to their spirit of adventure, he said. They were willing enough to have that appealed to. They had been defeated, and no man likes defeat. They said they were on their way to join Johnston, who had not yet surrendered his army.

  The ferry touched the bank. Bainbridge and Jett rode on to it. Booth was boosted on to Ruggles’ horse a
nd followed. The nigger began to pole. The ferry approached Port Royal. Now everything would be all right. Booth managed a smile.

  But at Port Royal, Jett could not find anyone to put up a wounded Confederate soldier. One woman agreed, but changed her mind. Now the war was over, she saw no patriotism in running the risk. Jett remembered Garrett. Garrett owned a farm off the road to Bowling Green, which was where Jett and his friends were going. It was as simple as that. Jett and Ruggles led the way up to the house. They would drop Booth off there, while Herold went into Bowling Green with them. Herold needed some new shoes. Booth gave him the money. He was in a good mood. He rode up to the farm. There he met the Garretts. They were a populous, well meaning clan, and besides, he could see at a glance, they had the instinct to be kind.

  He told them he was John William Boyd and that he had been wounded near Petersburg. He was planning to work his way south, he said, in order to join Johnston.

  They said Johnston had surrendered. That set him back for a minute, but he was too tired to think about it. They gave him dinner and a cot upstairs, with the two Garrett boys. Bill had been discharged from the Confederate Armies only three days before, and was still in uniform. He had no wish to hear about the battle of Petersburg. Unfortunately, Bob, the younger brother, did.

  When the stranger wouldn’t talk, they thought maybe he was a little peculiar, but they didn’t think any more than that. If Jett had brought him, he must be all right. The Garretts had known Jett all their lives. They trusted him not to saddle them with anyone who wasn’t all right.

  XXX

  The next morning, which was Tuesday, the 25th, the Garretts had to admit that Mr. Boyd looked better.

  He also felt better. The world pleased him. He had spent so much time in the theatre and on trains, that he had never had much occasion to look at it before. He found it delightful.