“Good.” The major had to get back to his post. He had remembered an important meeting. He downed his lemonade in a gulp, tossed a coin onto the counter. “Oh, and Hills …”
“Yes, Whit?”
“There are people looking over my shoulder on this thing. People of true influence.” He leaned close. “We never had this conversation. Anybody asks, we were reminiscing about New Haven.”
CHAPTER 11
Invitation
I
THE MOST GLAMOROUS salon in Washington was the modest home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Eames, at the corner of Fourteenth and H, just up the street from the law offices of Dennard & McShane. The Eames home was often open to the great men and women of the Republic, but the main event was generally on Saturday evening, when one would find leaders of both major parties, and usually of a few that were extinct, breaking bread together at that most nonpartisan of venues. Senator Charles Sumner, the most eloquent and famous of the Radicals, was a regular guest, and prominent governors, poets, and generals swept through the Eameses’ parlor if they happened to be in town. John Hay, who now lived in Paris but until two years ago had served as one of Lincoln’s secretaries, had been heard to describe Mrs. Eames as hostess of the most attractive salon in the capital since the time of Dolley Madison. All over New England, the educated classes spoke with reverence of the salon’s charm and wit. So, when, on that same Wednesday, Jonathan returned to the office to find waiting an invitation to a reception on Saturday night at Mrs. Eames’s salon in honor of the president of the New Orleans chess club, he accepted with alacrity. True, he knew next to nothing about chess and had never been to New Orleans; and he had buried his employer and friend on Monday. Nevertheless, one did not say no to Fanny Campbell Eames. And so he put aside his other worries and began instead anticipating an enjoyable evening at the Eames salon.
What he did not expect was the note that came back when he sent Little over with his acceptance. At first Jonathan thought himself the victim of some bizarre jest. But the bold, curving handwriting of Mrs. Eames was known all over Washington City:
It will be lovely to see you. And do please bring Miss Canner.
The request should not have struck him as odd. Abigail was as educated and clever as most of the guests at the salon would be. Moreover, the story of the colored clerk working on the President’s defense had begun to spread through the city, just as McShane had predicted. People were curious.
Jonathan finally decided that what bothered him was not the thought that Abigail would be at the reception, but the wittily crafted language of the note: please bring.
Heavy with implication.
He should, of course, find a witty way to decline. All Washington society knew of his engagement. Ellenborough had handed him a letter from Meg just last night, and, as always, Jonathan had answered at once, assuring his beloved of his affection. It would never do to allow anyone to imagine for a moment that his commitment to his beloved Meg was less than entire. Nevertheless, Jonathan resolved to do exactly as Mrs. Eames instructed, to bring Miss Canner. And not only because Meg was safely back in Philadelphia; or because one did not say no to Fanny Eames. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that, engaged or not, he looked forward to spending time with the fascinating Abigail in a social setting.
And so, having overcome his own scruples, he set about overcoming hers.
Early that evening, Jonathan sat across from her at the conference table, watching as she copied out a page of Coke’s Institutes. He enjoyed watching Abigail at work, long neck curved as she bent over her book, full lips pressed tightly together in concentration. She was writing hard, but now and then, deep in thought, she tapped her finger endearingly against her chin. At last the pencil stopped moving. She had noticed his scrutiny. The gray eyes came up, distracted, inquiring. A couple of hours ago, he had got up the nerve to tell her what Whit Pesky had said about Rebecca Deveaux, and the disappointment in those eyes had stung him. Now he longed to see them alight with energy once more. He made two or three false starts, and in the end simply showed her the note from Fanny Eames.
“So, you see, I have no choice,” he said, shyly but proudly.
“I cannot go,” Abigail said, staring at the invitation in horror. “It would not be appropriate.”
“It would be perfectly appropriate.”
“I cannot,” she said again, and dropped her eyes. He had not seen her so nervous since McShane’s abuse on the day she arrived.
And so Jonathan began extolling the virtues of the Eames salon: the glitter, the wit, the conversation. The great men and women she would meet.
“And what makes you think,” she demanded, “that it is my ambition to meet these great men and women?”
“You mistake my intention,” he said, smoothly. “I believe that they are the ones who should have the opportunity to meet you.”
Unable to find an answer to this sally, Abigail fell back on her central argument: she was engaged, and he was engaged, and there were things that were simply not proper. Nanny Pork said so. Jonathan was not sure who Nanny Pork was, and at a fitter time he would ask; for now, however, he kept his focus. They fenced a bit longer, but this time, for once, it was Jonathan who did the conversational cornering. If a gentleman should happen to escort a lady to an event—so he explained to both their uneasy consciences—there was no scandal. That each was engaged to marry another made no difference. The lady and gentleman in question were by no means a couple. They were simply taking pleasure in each other’s company. Washington society understood these things. Just last week, he himself had escorted Miss Bessie Hale to the theater, and—
“Fine,” Abigail blurted.
“Fine, what?”
“I shall go with you.”
“Not with me, precisely—”
“In your company, Mr. Hilliman. With your escort. Presumably, in your carriage. Hence, with you.”
And that was that.
II
Except that it wasn’t.
Abigail arrived home around eight: courtesy on this occasion of Mr. Little, who sometimes drove her in his wagon when Michael had failed to show up to collect her. That was his way, Abigail reflected as she climbed down onto the carriage block. There were moments when her brother would never leave her side, and moments when he vanished so completely that she all but forgot he existed.
She thanked Mr. Little for the ride, then hurried up the front walk. Stepping into the house, she was astonished to find Nanny Pork, with her preternatural sense of timing, in the kitchen, smoking her pipe. Usually, she went to bed with the sun, the same way she rose: her body, Nanny often said, would live on the plantation until the day she died.
Abigail asked why she was up so late.
“Because I knowed there was trouble.”
What kind of trouble?
“With you, girl. With you.”
Arguing with Nanny Pork was like arguing with a bullet: she came straight at you, and if you stood your ground you were going to get shot. So Abigail carefully stepped aside, avoiding the slightest word that might aggravate her aunt. Or thought she did. Abigail made tea for them both, took two sugar biscuits from the bin, and put them on doilies, because sugar biscuits were what Nanny liked best. Nanny called them snickerdoodles.
“I’m not in any trouble, Nanny,” said Abigail gently while her great-aunt munched away on a snickerdoodle. “There’s no reason for you to sit up worrying.”
“I has the second sight,” said Nanny Pork, unpersuasively. “I can tell when one of my family is in trouble.” She shut her eyes briefly, coughed. “Not tonight. Saturday. What is you up to Saturday night?”
Hesitation would be fatal. So would a lie. All these years with Nanny had taught her that much. “Some people I know have asked me to drop by. They’re having a sort of party.”
The old woman snorted. “Some people. Some white people.”
“Yes, Nanny. They’re white. But—”
“White folks ain
’t any better than your own. You knows that, Abby.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“War’s over. We’s free.”
“Yes, but—”
“I don’t know why you spends all this time with the white folks.” She stood, the ancient body seeming to creak as it unfolded. Yet Abigail did not dare offer to help. “You works with them all day. Why would you want to dance with them all night?”
Sometimes Nanny Pork backed you into a conversational corner so absurd that you had no choice but to follow her lead. “It’s not a dancing party, Nanny.”
“And what kinda party is this?”
“Just people having conversation. That’s all.”
“A talkin party.” Another snort, this one not only derisive but somehow condemnatory. “And who’s takin you to this talkin party? Some white man?”
Abigail felt about twelve years old. “Nobody’s taking me—”
“Well, you ain’t gonna be out there wandering the streets by your own self. You get your brother to take you, Abby, do you hear me? A lady don’t wander the streets, and a lady don’t show up at no talkin party unattended. Do you hear me?”
“I won’t be alone—”
“You said nobody’s takin you.”
“Not taking me exactly. But I will be in the company of a—a friend.”
“A male friend,” Nanny Pork pronounced, with malicious satisfaction.
Abigail surrendered. “Yes, Nanny.”
“A white man?”
“Yes.”
Nanny made a sound somewhere between a snort and a sneer: what Abigail’s mother used to call “snupping.”
“You won’t go with any of those nice colored mens who courts you, but you’ll go with the first white man who comes along.”
“This is not courting—”
“What about that nice Octavius? He’s a sweet man. Why won’t you go with him?”
Abigail took a moment, because if she spoke too soon she would scream. Like Dinah, Nanny considered Octavius Addison perfectly suited to Abigail. Whenever he visited, Nanny, who considered the young man a catch, made her niece sit with him for hours.
“I am engaged,” Abigail said finally. “You know that, Nanny.”
“Right. Too engaged to go with a nice colored boy, but you’ll go with a white man anyway.”
“That is not—”
“Better watch out, child, you’re gettin as bad as your big sister.”
This was a reference to Judith, whom Nanny had banished. Abigail, although she disapproved of her older sister’s style of life, nevertheless admired her pluck. On the other hand, Nanny Pork doted on Louisa, whom she called the baby even though she was sixteen, and had suitors; whereas Abigail saw her younger sister as a charming shirker, always trying to escape her chores.
Abigail stood by the kitchen table. “Good night, Nanny,” she said.
“Good night,” the old woman said, and dragged herself achingly up the stairs. Watching her go, Abigail remembered when Nanny had come to live with them. Abigail had been a child of perhaps twelve. Her mother had explained gently that Nanny needed a place to die. But it was Abigail’s own parents who had died instead, first her mother, then her father. The Canners had tried hard to protect their children from full knowledge of the reality of the life of people of their color, because they did not want them to grow up with a sense of limits. They were a free black family, and made sure their children knew it. Even when the newly emancipated Nanny Pork arrived, bringing with her undeniable evidence of the plantation South, the Canners had insisted that the children let nothing hold them back: they were, said her parents, the best of the race. Now her parents were gone, her older sister was banished, and her brother spent his nights running with men so scary that Abigail did not even want to know their names. It was just her and Nanny Pork and Louisa now. Other than the dormitories of the Female Department at the Oberlin Collegiate Institute, this house in what Washingtonians called the Island was the only home Abigail Canner had ever known.
Until this moment, she had not understood how much of her ambition was fed by a desire to escape it forever.
CHAPTER 12
Preparation
I
ABIGAIL WAS LATE the next morning: the streetcar was delayed by a company of cavalry riding by. Actually, it was illegal for troops to cross the city limits without congressional permission, but some of the bolder commanders were ignoring those rules in what the newspapers interpreted as a calculated reminder to the Senate of the esteem in which the military held Lincoln. The other day, in a bar down near the wharf, a couple of soldiers had beaten a local tobacco merchant half to death after he had ventured an injudicious remark about “Emperor Lincoln the First,” as the European essayists had taken to calling him. Those same writers were growing more gleeful by the week, predicting that the American democratic experiment they so despised would continue its tragic but inevitable descent: from revolution to civil war to coup d’état.
When, at last, Abigail arrived at the office, Jonathan greeted her with a smile so engaging that she was tempted to smile warmly back, before she remembered herself; as she hung her coat and scarf on the peg, she wondered whether she was allowing the young man to become overfamiliar, whether she had erred in accepting the invitation to the Eameses’. But of course there was no way to take it back; and, in truth, she did not want to. Surreptitiously, she drew from her bag the volume of Coke’s Institutes she had removed the night before without ever quite receiving permission. Jonathan alone knew that she was reading on her own; not even he knew that she was taking books home. Abigail slipped the Coke onto the shelf. Then, with a quick glance around the anteroom, she began her chores.
“I have to go over to the Library of Congress,” said Jonathan. “Rellman is carrying memoranda over to Mr. Speed.”
“And what is my assignment?” Abigail asked.
“Mr. Dennard asks that you wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“I am not exactly sure.”
Puzzled, Abigail remained at the table. Rellman was gone. Jonathan was gone. Even Little was gone. Dennard’s door remained shut. After a moment, she went to get the feather duster. The longer she dusted, the angrier she got. The embarrassment of the Mellison party began to haunt her, and she wondered whether she should expect further humiliation tonight at the Eameses’.
The door swung wide. As Abigail turned, Dan Sickles came in, shaking snow from his coat. “Where’s Dennard?”
“Mr. Dennard is in his office.”
“Have the Managers sent over the witness list?”
“Not yet, Mr. Sickles.”
He watched her cleaning the shelves. “Where are the other clerks?”
“They have assignments.”
That roguish smile. “And you don’t.”
“Mr. Dennard has asked me to wait.”
“And, meanwhile, you thought you’d dust the books and clean the stove.”
Abigail nodded. His eyes ran over her body a bit too freely and hungrily, but she refused for once to drop her gaze. “Was there anything else, Mr. Sickles?” she asked.
Sickles crossed his arms. He tottered slightly on the wooden leg. “You studied under Finney. Dennard tells me that Finney thinks the world of you.”
At the praise, she did indeed turn away. “Dr. Finney is kind—”
Sickles waved her silent, glanced at Dennard’s door. “Mr. Lincoln asked me if he should keep Dennard on. After what happened to McShane, I mean. I said yes. He said good, because McShane admired your brain. Not Dennard’s. Not Hilliman’s. Yours.”
Again Abigail was stunned. Arthur McShane, in the two weeks she had known him, had scarcely exchanged ten words with her. “I—I am sure he meant—um—”
“He meant that you’re the smart one. Like I told you the other day.” He grinned. “And now I understand that you are becoming quite the society lady.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Is my information incorrect
, or are you and Mr. Hilliman not going to the Eames salon tonight?”
“Why, yes,” she said, and this time could not help blushing. “We are.”
“Well, remember that half the Republicans in town will be there. And most likely not our half.” Sickles, as it happened, was a Democrat; specifically, a pro-war Democrat, the kind Lincoln liked best. “So be careful what you say. It’s probably best to mainly listen. Then let us know what people are saying. A party means champagne, and, well, you never know who might let slip some remark that turns out to be helpful to us.”
“Mr. Sickles, are you asking me to spy at the reception?”
“Why, no, Miss Canner. I would never do such a thing. That is more General Baker’s style than mine.” That grin again, but she could not tell whether she was being mocked. He grew serious. “Now, listen. Senator Sumner may well be in attendance. He rarely misses an evening at the Eameses’. You remember, of course, that he controls the key votes we need.” He waited; and so she nodded. “If Sumner is present, make an effort to talk to him. That is most important. He has little to say these days to those who are on the President’s side. We have to know what he is thinking. Do you understand?”
She swallowed, hard. Spying after all. “Yes, Mr. Sickles.”
“Sumner doesn’t much care for the ladies, but in your case”—again that flicker of his eyes—“well, maybe he’ll make an exception.”
As Abigail stared, he crossed to Dennard’s door. Then a thought seemed to strike him. He hobbled to the shelf and pulled down a book of federal-court decisions. “Somewhere in here is a case about the admissibility of documentary evidence when the person who wrote the document is dead. Find it, and write me a summary memorandum.”
No words came.
Sickles gave her that roguish smile. “The work you have done so far has been pointless. Surely you realize that. This work has a purpose. Nobody will duplicate your effort. You have to get the answer right.” He extended the volume. “One page, Miss Canner. No more.”
The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln Page 12
