Fates and Traitors

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  She understood that the nature of their clandestine activities sometimes required Junior to mix with unsavory characters, but she was careful to shield Anna from them, as she had struggled to protect her from her father’s alcoholic rages and dissipation—but now, as then, she often failed. In early February, much to her chagrin, she was obliged to leave Washington for a few days to visit her estranged, ailing mother at her home in Prince George’s County. Upon her return, she was astonished to discover exactly the sort of undesirable creature she wanted kept away from her daughter making himself at home in the back room of the attic.

  She soon learned that in her absence, Junior had invited the man to board with them. George Atzerodt was a Prussian immigrant of about thirty years, filthy and consumptive. His spine curved so that he stooped when he stood and he walked with his head tilted to the side, and there was a greedy, complacent gleam in his eye that she found unsettling. It offended Mary to see Anna, Olivia, Nora, and Eliza chatting pleasantly with him in the parlor, struggling to pronounce his German surname correctly, and failing that, dubbing him “Port Tobacco” after the town from which he hailed.

  “I don’t want that sort living beneath our roof,” she told Junior flatly.

  “He’s one of Booth’s men,” Junior reminded her. “He’s been running the blockade since the early months of the war, and we’ll need him to transport our captive across the river.”

  Fuming, Mary let the subject drop, but a few days later while cleaning Mr. Atzerodt’s room, she discovered several bottles of liquor concealed beneath his bed, with more empty bottles scattered around the floor. A white-hot fury seized her, flooding her with hateful memories of her late and unlamented husband. She demanded that Junior evict Mr. Atzerodt immediately, though her son insisted that due to his important role in Mr. Booth’s plan, they would have to endure his frequent visits.

  Mary’s displeasure did not go unnoticed, especially by those who shared it. “Why does John bring such men as Atzerodt and Herold into the house?” Louis asked her one afternoon as she swept the sitting room so fiercely that straws snapped off the broom. “Why does he even associate with them?”

  “John wants to make use of them for his dirty work,” she said irritably, adopting the name Louis used. Only Mary, Anna, and Isaac called him Junior, as his father once had.

  Louis’s brow furrowed. “What sort of dirty work?”

  Silently Mary berated herself for speaking without thinking. “Oh, John wants them to take care of his horses boarding at Howard’s Stables on G Street,” she replied airily, and to her relief, Louis nodded and went about his own business. In recent days his questions had taken on the quality of prying, and she resolved to be more circumspect.

  Thankfully, the next of Mr. Booth’s associates to request room and board with them was a lovely dark-eyed young woman, charming and intelligent and ostensibly demure. She also provoked Louis’s curiosity, but of an entirely different kind. When she arrived on an icy February day wearing a veil down to her chin and a stylish fur-trimmed coat that emphasized her exquisite figure, Louis was the first to volunteer to fetch her trunk from the carriage and haul it upstairs to her room, scarcely pausing to pull on his coat to ward off the frigid wind before racing to complete the errand.

  The young woman introduced herself to him as Kate Thompson, come to Washington to seek a preferment for her brother, but in truth she was Sarah Antoinette Slater, a French national residing in North Carolina and an accomplished agent with the Confederate Secret Service. She had learned of the Surratt boardinghouse through a mutual acquaintance, Augustus Howell, a Marylander they had known before the war and a Confederate Army veteran turned blockade-runner and smuggler.

  Miss Slater and Mr. Howell, Mr. Atzerodt and Mr. Herold, as well as another man who had introduced himself as Lewis Payne but later confided to Mary that this was one of several aliases—and of course, Junior and herself—comprised the conspirators Mary knew, all of whom had pledged themselves to Mr. Booth and his daring mission. Whoever else he might have recruited Mary did not know—nor should she, for their sake and her own.

  • • •

  In late February, Junior returned to the boardinghouse from a late-night meeting with Mr. Booth shivering from the lingering chill of late winter and looking deeply unsettled. Although the hour was late and their lodgers had retired to their separate rooms, Junior nonetheless insisted that they descend to the ground-floor storage room before he told her what was amiss. Lighting a lamp, she handed it to him without a word and followed him below, where he shut the door, inhaled deeply, and said, “Booth has changed the plan.”

  She studied his expression, steeling herself. “And the change displeases you.”

  “Yes, it certainly does, and I told him so, though he seems not to care.” He shook his head, his jaw set, his eyes narrowing. “The success of his scheme has always depended upon Lincoln traveling alone on an isolated road out in the countryside, but now—”

  “Please, Junior,” she said, placing a hand on his forearm. “Be calm and tell me plainly.”

  “Booth says a change to the plan is necessary because Lincoln no longer travels to the Soldiers’ Home as frequently as he once did.” When Mary began to speak, Junior anticipated her question. “He studies the president’s movements meticulously and I have no reason to doubt him. Lincoln might resume his regular trips to the country when the weather improves, but we can’t delay until summer. All could be lost in the meantime.”

  “Do you mean—” Mary hardly knew what to say. “The plan is aborted?”

  “I could almost wish it were. As you know—as everyone knows—the president is very fond of the theatre. One of his favorite actors, Edwin Forrest, is engaged for several performances at Ford’s Theatre, a place Booth knows well. If Lincoln attends one of Forrest’s shows, which he is very likely to do, Booth believes we could snatch him from the presidential box, fling him over the back of a horse, and whisk him off to Richmond.”

  Mary stared at him, dumbfounded. “But Mr. Lincoln never attends the theatre alone. He always shares the box with at least a few companions, not to mention his bodyguard. How does Mr. Booth expect to subdue him when he’s surrounded by friends?”

  Junior shook his head. “Perhaps he intends to strike when the president’s accompanied by no one but his wife.”

  “He shouldn’t discount Mrs. Lincoln. Her shriek of alarm would bring at least a dozen men in all haste.” Mary clasped her hands together at her waist, steadying herself. “But let’s say that Mr. Booth and his party are able to subdue Mr. Lincoln with the aid of chloroform. How would they wrestle him out of the presidential box, down the stairs, and outside the theatre to the horses without being apprehended? They can’t fold him in half and stuff him in a sack.”

  “We told Booth all this, Ma. It made no impression on him.”

  “We?”

  “I and two other men you haven’t met.”

  Mary knew better than to ask their names. “And you all told Mr. Booth firmly that you think his new scheme is doomed to fail?”

  “We did. We tried. We also pointed out to him that to do as he wishes, we’d essentially have to throw out all the preparations we’ve made so far and start over. He insisted we were mistaken, that only the site of the abduction would change, and everything else would remain the same. To prove his point, he led us off to Ford’s Theatre, took us on a tour of the exterior, and argued that the structure of the building, the exits, the alleys, were perfectly suited for a quick escape.”

  “An escape while carrying an unconscious, very conspicuous, very well-known man who stretches more than six feet in height?”

  “Ma, I like Booth. I admire him, and I wholeheartedly approve of his intentions. But this new scheme—” Junior sank down on the stool and buried his face in his hands. “It’s ridiculous. It’s a farce. It would never work.”

  “I can’t disa
gree with you.” With her son’s revelation, all Mary’s hopes seemed to have been swept from her grasp by a capricious winter wind—the end of the war, the capitulation of the North, Isaac’s safe return home, if he were still among the living. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to wait and hope he changes his mind. In the meantime, I’m going to keep doing my bit for the Confederacy as I have since the beginning—carrying dispatches, smuggling necessities, observing the placement and movement of Yankee troops and seeing that the details get to General Lee.”

  “And if Mr. Booth sets a date to put his new scheme in motion?”

  “In that case you’ll have to inform him that I’m off on a courier mission for Jeff Davis, because if Booth insists on putting this disaster in motion, I intend to be as far from Ford’s Theatre as my horse can carry me.”

  As February drew to a close, Mary could hardly bear to leave the boardinghouse as the preparations for Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration spread through the capital like the pervasive stench from the ubiquitous military hospitals. The Stars and Stripes hung from every flagpole; shop windows were transformed into a tangle of red, white, and blue ribbons; balconies fairly dripped with bunting; and offensive slogans blared from every wall big enough to post a sign upon. Offended, Mary drew the curtains and refused to look at the newspaper, but Louis, thinking himself useful, read aloud excerpts as she went about her chores.

  “Listen to this,” he exclaimed, after subjecting her to lengthy descriptions of the order of the parade and of the elaborate menu for the inauguration ball. “The editors of the Louisville Journal, speaking of Lee’s army, boast, ‘We have reason to say that the rebels are expecting very soon to startle the whole country and astonish the world. No matter what our reason may be, it is a good one.’ What do you suppose they mean? Have the rebels developed some new weapon? Is this merely a bluff?”

  “I assure you, it is no bluff,” snapped Mary, her head throbbing, her patience spent. “Very soon something will happen to prevent Old Abe from swearing his presidential oath again, and soon thereafter General Lee will take action that will startle the whole world.”

  Louis gaped at her. “Mrs. Surratt, what do you mean?”

  Mary felt the blood drain from her face. She clasped a hand to her forehead and looked about the sitting room, distressed. “I—” She took a deep, shaky breath. What had she done? “I don’t know what I’m saying. Forgive me. I let my fears get the better of me. The threats on the president’s life, this endless war, and Isaac—you know I haven’t heard from Isaac in more than two years—”

  “Oh, my dear Mrs. Surratt.” Louis shoved the paper aside, rose from his chair, and strode across the room to take her hand in both of his. “Forgive me. Here I am prattling along, insensitive and unfeeling, entirely forgetting that your son may be— I’ll say no more of it. I’ve upset you enough. Pray, forgive me.”

  She extracted her hand from Louis’s grasp, managed a tremulous smile, and fled the room. Let him think her overcome by womanly distress and delicacy of nerves. Far better he believe that than suspect the truth.

  • • •

  When March 4 dawned, gray and sodden, Mr. Lincoln was still at liberty, and he was still about to embark upon his second term, and it seemed that nothing could prevent it. Late that morning, Mr. Herold and Mr. Atzerodt called for Junior and sat with him in the formal parlor, speaking in hushed voices and falling silent at every creak of a floorboard signaling a lodger’s approach. It was nearly eleven o’clock when Mr. Booth arrived, but he stayed only long enough to offer Mary a polite greeting before the men departed for the Capitol to witness Mr. Lincoln’s oath and hear his address. A lady of Mr. Booth’s acquaintance had given him a ticket granting admission to the Capitol rotunda, but Junior and the others would be obliged to stand on the grounds, which surely had been churned into a field of mud courtesy of the previous night’s heavy rainfall and the trampling of many feet. “If one of us carried a pistol . . .” Mary overheard Mr. Herold say as the door swung shut behind them. She shivered, wondering who else might have heard him.

  Junior returned home in time for dinner, visibly weary, and with little to contribute to the conversation around the table. His reticence passed unnoticed, as the other lodgers who had joined the throng outside the East Portico had plenty to say about the shaft of light that had broken through the clouds to illuminate Mr. Lincoln’s haggard but kindly face, about the profound beauty of his speech, about the thunderous applause he had received, the roars of approval, the tears shed, the hats flung into the air, this and that and every other thing. Mary thought Junior might give her his own, more cynical, review of the spectacle when they found a moment alone, but all he did was shake his head and say that Mr. Lincoln was a fool to walk about so openly when so many people despised him. “We never caught up with Booth afterward,” he added. “We lost him in the crowd. He said he expected to come so close to the president that he might snatch a button off his coat. Perhaps he’ll bring you one as a trophy.”

  “I’ll display it proudly on the mantel,” she said dryly.

  She longed for the dreaded day to speed to an end, but before it was quite over, a knock sounded on the ground-level door, a soft rapping that she and Junior might have missed except they had sought solace in the relative quiet of the kitchen, away from their happy lodgers.

  Mr. Booth stood before them, as handsome as ever, though he was dressed for the muddy streets and not for the theatre. “May I commiserate with you?” he inquired, holding up a bottle of port.

  Mary rarely indulged, having learned to associate the sensation of tipsiness with her husband’s revolting drunkenness, but she knew from her years working at the tavern that the bottle Mr. Booth carried was a very fine vintage indeed. The day had been so wretched that it demanded something stronger than tea.

  Somewhat abashed to receive such an illustrious guest in her humble kitchen, Mary tentatively suggested that they go upstairs to the formal parlor, but Mr. Booth shook his head and said wearily that if he had wanted to drink with their lodgers he would have called at the formal entrance as usual. So Mary took the small port glasses from the cupboard while Junior offered Mr. Booth a chair at the kitchen table, and soon they were seated together with wine in their glasses and woe in their hearts.

  After a long, brooding moment, Mr. Booth raised his glass in a toast. “Today, many of our neighbors celebrated a beginning, but nothing lasts forever. Let us drink to the end of Mr. Lincoln’s second term in office, and to anything and anyone that will speed that day.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Junior, and they all drank. Then Junior raised his glass again. “To General Robert E. Lee, the greatest military mind of our century.”

  They all drank again.

  “To Jefferson Davis,” Mary said, because if she did not speak up for him, no one else would. “And to Mrs. Davis.”

  They drank. Mary’s head buzzed pleasantly, and she did not protest when Mr. Booth refilled their glasses.

  “I was so close to him tonight,” Mr. Booth said mournfully. “So close. I stood in the rotunda, and I had worked my way through the crowd until I reached the double line of police standing to create a clear path for Lincoln to pass from the Senate chamber to the east door to the portico. The dignitaries were supposed to proceed according to rank, but the press of the crowd banished all protocol. Then Lincoln passed by me, and in the chaos, I was able to push my way through the line until I joined the procession only a few feet behind the president.”

  “Goodness,” exclaimed Mary.

  “I doubt he ever knew I was there,” said Mr. Booth. “A police officer seized my arm, but I pressed onward, hoping to escape his grasp but only pulling him from the line. He shouted for help, and some fellow officers came to his aid, and they detained me just long enough for the doors to swing shut, cutting me off from Lincoln.”

  Junior leaned forward, intrigued. “What
would you have done if you’d been able to reach him?”

  “I don’t know.” Mr. Booth took a deep drink. “Improvised a performance beyond anything ever before witnessed on the stage, I suppose.”

  “Were you arrested?” asked Mary.

  “No. I got into a bit of a shouting match with the officers, but they eventually shoved me behind the lines and ordered me away. I lost myself in the crowd and took the place to which my ticket entitled me.” He patted his breast pocket absently, and for a fleeting moment his expression turned ineffably sad. “I’ll say this much for Old Abe: He certainly knows how to deliver a speech.”

  Junior shook his head and muttered something caustic under his breath, but Mary conceded, “You’re right, from what I hear, but I for one am enormously thankful that I’ve never been obliged to sit through one of his speeches.” She drank, savoring the rich flavor of the wine, knowing she mustn’t have too much. “I pray I never will.”

  They sat and talked quietly awhile more, and when bottle and glasses alike were empty, Mr. Booth sighed and said, “I must bid you both good night.”

  “Don’t go, Booth,” said Junior. “Stay the night.”

  “Yes, do stay,” said Mary, her words slurring just a bit. “This is a boardinghouse, after all. We have plenty of beds.”

  “You’re very kind, but an acquaintance is expecting me at half past ten, and if I leave now, I should still make it.” He planted his palms on the table and pushed himself to his feet, but his natural grace failed him for a moment, and as he kept his hands on the table to steady himself, his gaze fell on a silver ring he wore on the smallest finger of his right hand.