The Blackest Bird

by Joel Rose

  The grizzled old woman turned back to her son, settled on the cold, dank floor, her arms folded across her chest, defiant, muttering, “They won’t be hanging my last surviving son.”

  “I’m not afraid to be took out,” Tommy told her. “I don’t know how many times I have to say it.”

  Listening to them, the guard simply stared.

  “Yer da’s busy in the ward kitchen, God bless his sodden self,” Mother Coleman murmured in a lowered voice. “Cooking up the scheme that will save yer soul.”

  “My soul don’t need saving. I’m an innocent.”

  Tommy’s da was a Fourth Ward heeler, occasionally in good standing. Heeler was in reference to nothing more than a dog commanded by his master. Da Timo Coleman was a loafer, always on the lookout for shady work. Even as his old wife and condemned son spoke, the old man was making a last-ditch effort to pull in any and all favors owed him on behalf of the ward political organization and the Democratic machine now that he so crucially needed them. He was, in truth, at that very moment (having been approached out of the blue via a local swag) at the Green Turtle’s flash-drum meeting with an emissary of the powerful Colt clan, a bloke claiming to be Brother James.

  Mother Coleman leaned forward toward her boy. But as she did, the truculent guard came forward and laid his truncheon on the bars.

  “We’ll have none of that,” the surly keeper growled. “I told you that.”

  He fixed them with menacing pig eyes, but only momentarily. As he wandered away, Mother Coleman looked after him, she speaking under her breath what she had to say in a hurry.

  “You won’t be swinging,” she assured her boy. “Me and your da, we won’t be letting ya.”

  And she spat on the floor for God to hear her and give her the luck.

  30

  Marriage

  Beneath the Gibbet

  On the morning of November 18, 1842, High Constable Jacob Hays, wearing an appropriately somber black suit and dark gray stock beneath his overcoat, arrived at the Tombs’ gate and waited to be admitted.

  The date is the day of John Colt’s execution. It is also the day of his wedding.

  In the courtyard the carpenters have come at dawn to make last-minute adjustment to the gallows. As Tommy Coleman had said, no one wanted to foul up like the day his brother met his maker.

  Alongside the carpenters, already some journalists from the penny papers and the more legitimate sixpenny sheets were stomping about in the early morning coolness, trying to stay warm, excited at the opportunity to write about Colt’s impending marriage and subsequent demise.

  That the prison authorities were permitting such pomp and ceremony sent the news brotherhood into shrill vindictive, their cry: Injustice! That those in charge were allowing, under any set of circumstance, such a circus—John Colt to marry—only hours before his scheduled execution was already a mind-boggling concession to the Colt family and their power; a statement, as far as Hays was concerned, that emanated from way high up the political ladder.

  Late that October, Samuel Colt had made one last futile run at William Seward, submitting any number of individual and group petitions to the governor, begging pardon for his brother. But word came back via the intercity wire, telegraphed from the state capital in Albany, communicating unequivocally, much to his regret, the governor could in no way in good conscience accommodate such a request. Governor Seward did send, however, final instructions to Tombs warden Monmouth Hart acknowledging that although John C. Colt would die as scheduled early that evening, in the afternoon, if the family truly wished, his marriage to his betrothed, Caroline Henshaw, might be arranged.

  Old Hays accompanied Warden Hart to Colt’s cell to give him the news. Upon hearing the governor’s decree, Colt seemed unfazed.

  “Death hath no terrors for me,” he responded, addressing Hays. “There is a world above this, and I believe a just one. Man, at the worst, can only destroy my body.”

  THE CONDEMNED’S INTENDED, Miss Henshaw, was scheduled to arrive before lunch on the fateful day. Her arrival was anxiously awaited, but by 1:30 p.m. she had not yet appeared. Imminent vows notwithstanding, anticipation ran high amidst the gathered crowd. Newspaper accounts of the gallows nuptials, following the sensational murder and trial, had brought out scores of curiosity seekers. By noon they were jamming Centre Street and spilling into Leonard. To the newspaper publishers’ delight, Caroline had been pregnant at the time of John’s arrest, and unmarried. Subsequently she gave birth to a male child, naming him Samuel Colt Jr., ostensibly in honor of John’s brother, the Colonel, her sole protector, in light of the soon-to-beenacted execution of he who would soon be her husband.

  Because of the pressing crowd, Miss Henshaw’s carriage was forced to take the back entrance on Baxter Street, but the rear arteries were every bit as clogged as the front. Time and again the main gates opened and carriages and hacks surged in, but not the scandalized bride’s.

  The incarcerated, especially those in the Bummers’ Cell, watched for her from their barred windows.

  “Thar she is!” they cried excitedly.

  “No she ain’t. That ain’t her!”

  “Is!”

  “Ain’t!”

  Hays saw her arrive nearly at 2 p. m., a tall, healthy young woman in white voile and white lace. While she waited patiently to enter, the crowd caught sight of her and rushed to her carriage. Her alarmed horse snorted and reared slightly in harness as Hays ordered three broad-chested, leather-helmeted assistant constables into action. They hurried from the prison waving their ash batons and helped her inside the open gate.

  A couple of the gentlemen editors and writers took especial notice. The Herald’s Bennett, standing near Old Hays, turned to him and whistled in admiration, cracking wise to the high constable that given the inevitable conclusion to the events of the day, the nubile young widow would certainly soon enough be available for solacing, and volunteering his cross-eyed self for the unctuous duty.

  Standing in the cool November sun, Hays bore witness to Bennett. He liked the editor little before. He liked him less at present, notably after such callous comment. He turned and went back inside the cell block, keeping his disgust to himself.

  In front of him, Miss Henshaw was being escorted gallantly by the warden, Monmouth Hart, to a vacant cell draped with newly hung organdy in deference to the bride. She was a very young woman with cascading ringlets of caramel-shaded hair. No more than twenty-two or twenty-three years, she was of German extraction, still talking English with a pronounced accent. The warden told her she could rest here until the wedding march sounded. At that time she would be led into the courtyard to be reunited with her intended. Colonel Colt would be giving her away. Bride and groom together were to be joined by two hundred of their dearest family, friends, and staunchest allies. It had been arranged for the groom to be outfitted in the finest tailored suit and top hat of blackened water silk. The ankle bracelets were to be kept in place, and his hands would be shackled. The wedding march would be played by a family friend, the actor-composer John Howard Payne, author of the popular “Home, Sweet Home.” He would be seated at a fine rosewood piano bearing the inscription of its maker, Johannes Zumpe, wheeled out into the yellow dust just for the occasion.

  Priest and wedding party, consisting of the Reverend Mr. Anton, who would perform the ceremony, Colt’s two brothers, Samuel and James, and the lawyer Robert Emmet, awaited the couple. John Colt’s friend the poet Poe had been asked by the family to read a suitable poem for the occasion.

  When word reached the crowd that Colt was out of the block and in view, there was much muttering and talk, some of it having to do with the opinion that he was wrongly condemned.

  Out of respect, when the bride entered the yard the crowd became quiet. Mr. Poe had chosen a poem he introduced as “in progress, but assuredly of love.” The lines were inscribed, as was his habit, on a cylinder of tightly rolled blue-tinted foolscap, secured by a red ribbon and carried in his breast pocke
t, close to his heart. He removed the manuscript, unfurled it, and began to read in his somber, melodic singsong:

  “Avaunt! to-night

  My heart is light—

  No dirge will I upraise,

  But waft the angel on his flight

  With a Paean of old days!

  Let no bell toll!

  Lest his sweet soul,

  Amid its hallow’d mirth,

  Should catch the note

  As it doth float

  Up from the damned earth—

  To friends above, from fiends below,

  Th’ indignant ghost is riven—

  From grief and moan

  To a gold throne

  Beside the King of Heaven!”

  As the wedding proceeded, all progress of the affair and its festivity was simultaneously relayed by prison guards to the anxious throng of eager bystanders maintaining their places outside the walls. The keepers’ announcements were shouted in booming voice to be heard above the buzz of the excited crowd:

  “Here comes the bride!”

  “Very lovely rings have been exchanged!”

  “Rice thrown!”…

  Et cetera.

  The plebeian throng happily partook in the spectacle, cheering their delight at each minute progression in the afternoon’s entertainment.

  Following the fractious matrimonial rite, the new Mr. and Mrs. Colt shook hands and bussed cheeks all around. More than a few fat tears streaked down the powdered faces of Gotham’s society grandes dames, some, admitted, hopeless romantics.

  A sumptuous meal was soon spread for the gathered guests (once again catered by Delmonico’s and kept warm in the prison kitchen). Dancing to Mr. Payne’s piano was scheduled to follow.

  Hays watched Poe accept congratulations, watched him meticulously reroll his blue foolscap scroll and retie the red ribbon, before making point to approach him and ask, “Mr. Poe, I have read with interest the first installments of your ‘Marie Rogêt’ story. I beg to inquire, sir, what is to follow?”

  But then the two newspaper publishers, Bennett from the Herald, Greeley from the Trib, hurried over. Standing over Poe in front of Hays, they loudly argued and jousted for the rights to his poem performed, vying could they publish the verse, Bennett offering a few cents in recompense more than his notoriously cheap other, and Hays, in sheer dismay, retreated to his office.

  Within a few minutes the newlywed couple followed him inside, to spend their honeymoon (of sorts) in John’s cell.

  From where he sat, the shadow watched silently as they drew the curtain before retiring, calling through the fabric to the manservant, Dillback, for crystal flutes and French champagne.

  31

  The Marriage Banquet

  In the courtyard Edgar Poe stands over the much-praised thespian and songster John Howard Payne.

  As a young man Payne had acted onstage, both in Boston and New York, with Poe’s mother in Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Voltaire’s Mahomet the Imposter, in which she played Palmyra to Payne’s Zaphne.

  Sitting at his Zumpe piano sipping a glass of claret, after Poe reminds him who he is and who was his mother. Payne coughs, shakes his head in disbelief, squeezes his eyes shut, flutters them open, regales Poe with how he remembers him as a three-month-old as if it were yesterday. The showman wobbles his head again, either in dismay or to clear his jumble.

  “Pity your poor mater,” he laughs. “As I remember, your old man was away—I beg your pardon, but as a thespian the man wasn’t fit to play a footman onstage—and the lovely Eliza had all she could do to keep up with her new baby and what’s his name, your brother?”

  “William Henry Leonard.”

  Poe’s older sibling, who was at the time aged two years, and the new baby, Poe.

  “He’s in the grave,” Poe says.

  “What?”

  “He passed away. Six years ago or more.”

  “My condolences.”

  “Tubercular consumption. The same as my mother. And acute alcoholism.”

  Payne stares. His fingers never leave the keyboard. He plays on with the music.

  “Your mother, poor dear, thanks to you, dear sir, rarely slept through the night,” Payne laments, “and our rehearsal schedule for the three plays, not to mention the afterpiece, was enormous.” He smiles, and again shakes his head in wonder. “A glass of claret, my good man?”

  Poe reaches. Payne pours.

  Then, behind them so they both turn, a minor commotion. The warden has arrived, escorting by the arm Caroline Henshaw back into the yard, signaling the end of her honeymoon with her new husband, to join with the celebrants and spend time, most especially, it seems, with her brothers-in-law Colt, Samuel and James, who, as Poe looks on, link their arms with hers, she so feminine, so delicate, so wellshapen, having embraced with their new sister-in-law to dance and spin to the music beneath the gibbet.

  At the upright with Payne, Poe remains on the bench, their impressive heads together. A small army of colored waiters are laying the repast.

  Poe sees Samuel Colt has taken over exclusively from his brother James and is dancing alone now with Caroline. Something so familiar between them, Poe senses, in a time of jubilation, in spite of the impending execution, no introspection, no mourning, no sorrow, only to dance and dance, Mrs. Caroline Colt, née Henshaw, Mr. Samuel Colt, the Colonel, inventor of the Colt patent repeating revolver, to spin her this last time before her husband’s execution, through the Tombs’ yard dust.

  32

  Preparation

  for a Hanging

  For the occasion of marriage it had been John Colt’s manservant, Dillback, who had come up with the idea to drape elegant new silk curtains around the honeymooners’ cell, a shade of peach that made the heart sing.

  The groom, enjoying his lady fair, could not have but helped to hear the clatter of dishes from the prison kitchen and note the enticing smells of grilling meat and roasting fowl emanating through the cell block.

  The piano, maudlin, played by John Howard Payne, continued tinkling from without, the newly married Mrs. Colt, moaning softly in her clutcher’s ear, in perfect harmony to the melody.

  Until, after forty-five minutes, the warden comes for her, delivers his apologies, and escorts her out.

  How does a cove act knowing he is about to hang?

  After his newly conjoined wife has left him, John Colt, the condemned, gives every indication of being perversely unnerved.

  His last time on this earth, he means to spend at his writing desk.

  He rises. Sits. Rises again.

  He sits again, dips pen in ink, scratches at the paper laid out in front of him.

  When finished, he shuffles the pages, picks them up, is about to fold them, then instead rolls them in a tight cylinder as he has seen Edgar Poe do, ties them with a length of black ribbon (he cannot find in his cell red), slips the scroll in his breast pocket, pats it. Then thinks better of it.

  He wipes his brow with a black silk handkerchief, looks at the fine cloth, studies it. Refolds it. Puts it down, but not in his pocket, at the edge of the desk.

  He stretches, mounts his cot, stares through the high window bars into the yard, catches a glimpse of the death apparatus.

  It is soon after that Warden Hart arrives, flanked by two blue-clad keepers. Hart stands silent for a moment, staring through the grille into Colt’s cell at the man soon to meet his maker, the condemned’s chest rising and falling.

  “Ready, Mr. Colt?”

  A smile plays at Colt’s mouth, incongruous, troubling for a man so situated in harm’s way.

  He says, “So soon?” but gets to his feet.

  “I am taking you to a holding cell,” Warden Hart announces to him loudly. “From there you will be escorted to the gallows in two hours’ time.”

  Hearing the warden, Dillback rushes to his ward’s side. He helps his young charge, brushing invisible lint from his elegant, well-tailored sleeves and shoulders.

  Colt has cha
nged into a rich velvet dark navy blue soft coat, extremely handsome of its style, a white stock at the neck.

  The warden unlocks the cell with a broad key, swinging the door open.

  “If you’ll follow me, Mr. Colt.”

  At his desk Old Hays stands.

  Colt pivots to see him.

  The two guards clasp Colt underneath the arms, propping him up, one on either side.

  Tommy Coleman looks on from his own cell.

  “We’re moving you to a more private cell, sir, where you can be alone in your final moments,” Hart proclaims. Adding softly, almost plaintively, “At your brother’s request.”

  Colt nods his understanding. His gratitude. The meaning of the words uttered by Hart—At your brother’s request—has not been lost on him, nearly makes him laugh with relief, although he manages to suppress the grin working the corners of his mouth.

  He does stand tall.

  “Manacle him,” one keeper orders the other. “We live by procedure here, man,” an acknowledgment to Old Hays, who has moved into the corridor. “We don’t want nothing happening.”

  “What could happen?” Tommy Coleman smiles.

  For that one moment everything stops. Tommy is not much interested in an answer, only the devil about him. Warden Hart swings his attention around angrily.

  “Watch out, you little swabbler,” he snaps venomously, glaring at Tommy Coleman’s evil twisted kisser. “I’ll be coming for you soon enough. Just you wait and see how smart you are then.”

  “I’m shaking in my boots, boss.”

  Warden Hart glowers murderously. “I’ll gladly do two for the price of one this very evening, Mr. Coleman. So don’t be tempting me!”

  “Me tempt you? Ha, that’s a laugh!” Tommy keeps his gaze riveted on the eyes of Hart.

  “You really think you’re a sharp blossom, don’t you, Tommy?” the warden says, glancing momentarily at John Colt. “But you are no sharpie, I can assure you that. I can take you down, young man, and I will take you down. You’re nothing, you hear me? Nothing! I’ll eat you up.”