Fates and Traitors
Page 36
“Oh, you needn’t worry about that. Johnson will be taken care of.”
She peered at him quizzically, but she knew better than to ask questions. “Well, then, that leaves Mr. Seward to lead, though not officially, and I don’t imagine he would be much better than Johnson.”
“We’ll see to Mr. Seward too.” Smiling, John rose. “And now, madam, I must bid you good night and goodbye.”
She inclined her head in farewell, and escorted him to the door, but just as he stepped outside and put on his hat, she gave a little start. “Oh, Mr. Booth. I just remembered. When Mr. Weichmann and I were traveling to Surrattsville, we passed some Yankee pickets just off the road. I asked one of the soldiers if they would be out there all night, and he told me no, they were being pulled in after eight o’clock.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Surratt,” he said, pleased. “It’s good to know that.”
“Good evening, Mr. Booth, and good luck to you,” she said quietly, and closed the door.
• • •
It was about half past nine o’clock when John rode down Baptist Alley again and brought the lively mare to a stop at the back door to Ford’s Theatre. Dismounting, he peered through the open doorway, through which the faint sounds of the audience’s laughter drifted. “Spangler,” he called softly, but although he glimpsed figures moving in the shadows, no one replied. “Spangler,” he called again, projecting his voice. “Ned, come here.”
Spangler neither answered nor appeared, which probably meant he was working the far side of the stage. Just then John saw a stagehand passing nearby. “You there,” he said. “It’s John Wilkes Booth. Tell Ned Spangler I need him right away.”
The stagehand nodded and hurried off, and soon Spangler appeared in the doorway. “What is it, Booth?” he asked, joining him in the alley. “What do you need?”
When Spangler was close enough, John tossed him the reins. “Hold my horse for a few minutes, would you? Don’t let go or tie her. She’ll run off.”
“Say, Booth,” Spangler protested as John headed for the back door. “I can’t stay out here. I’m working the show.”
“I won’t be long,” John called over his shoulder as he entered the theatre, quickening his pace.
As he walked along the back passageway, he listened to the dialogue, noting the act and scene. It was not yet his time. He knew the play well, knew the moment when a particularly amusing line would provoke uproarious laughter from the audience—enough, he hoped, to mask the sound of the derringer firing. Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt ought to be taking their places soon.
He paced in the lobby, walking in and out, chatting with the doorman, asking the time. Restless, he checked the progress of the play again and wandered outside the theatre and next door to the Star Saloon, where he ordered whiskey and water. He rehearsed the plan in his mind as he drank, checked the time, and returned to the theatre, where he paced some more until a particular line of dialogue caught his ear and sent an electric jolt of anticipation running through him.
Stealing quietly into the theatre, he surveyed the house, not entirely sold out as Ford had boastfully predicted, yet satisfactorily full at that, especially for Good Friday. A handful of actors, all of whom he knew, performed on a stage set as the interior of a drawing room in an English country house, with double doors at the center. John glanced upward, stage left, and his heart thudded when he spied the president seated with his wife and a younger couple in the State Box, which was adorned with four large Stars and Stripes—two standing on either side of the box and two more gracefully draped over the balustrade—with luxurious gold and ivory draperies hanging above. A portrait of George Washington was affixed to the center of the railing, beneath a tall staff bearing the blue standard of the Treasury Guards. Although Lincoln had viewed performances from those same seats many times before, John had never seen the State Box so impressively decorated.
While the audience smiled and laughed at the clever exchanges between the players, John eyed the distance from the proscenium, where the president sat, to the stage floor, and judged it to be roughly twelve feet—a substantial drop, to be sure, but he was athletic and fit, and on several occasions in performances past he had leapt from similar heights to the same stage. Fortunately, the orchestra chairs were empty, as he had known they would be, for the musicians had departed at the end of the second intermission and were not meant to return until the final scenes. The set was clear of furniture there, and soon the other players would exit and only Harry Hawk would remain onstage to utter the most amusing line of the entire play.
The way would be clear. The moment was almost upon him.
A few minutes after ten o’clock, in the second scene of the third act, John climbed the steps to the dress circle, and once upstairs, he strolled along the rear wall toward the State Box on the south side of the theatre. Along the way he passed two acquaintances, but so intent was he on his destination that he did not return their nods. Then, roughly six feet from the outer door to the box, he encountered two army officers whose seats were arranged so that they nearly blocked the aisle. With a pointed glare and an impatient gesture, John indicated that he must be allowed to pass, so with some scowls and sharp looks, they shifted their chairs to make room.
As he made his way toward the box, John glimpsed the president’s messenger sitting in a chair outside the door. The blood pounded in his ears, but his hands were steady as he approached the stocky valet, who glanced up at him and nodded in recognition—he was John Wilkes Booth, as recognizable in a theatre as any thespian in the world—and raised his eyebrows in inquiry.
“You crave affection, you do,” he heard Harry Hawk declare from the stage in the role of Asa, the Vermont bumpkin who was wrongly thought to have inherited enormous riches. “Now I’ve no fortune, but I’m biling over with affections, which I’m ready to pour out to all of you, like apple sass over roast pork.”
The audience laughed. John dug into his pockets, took a small stack of calling cards from his pocket, and selected one that bore a name he knew would impress the man impeding his progress. His face a mask of genial confidence, John held his breath as the messenger studied the card. If he did not conclude that John had come to see the president on that man’s behalf, all would be lost.
“Mr. Trenchard,” said Helen Muzzy in a huff, portraying the haughty, avaricious Englishwoman Mrs. Mountchessington, “you will please recollect you are addressing my daughter, and in my presence.”
“Yes,” Harry Hawk replied, “I’m offering her my heart and hand just as she wants them, with nothing in ’em!”
Another ripple of laughter went up from the audience. Glancing at the stage, smiling faintly, the valet gestured for John to proceed. Nodding graciously, John made to open the door—but it stuck. Heart thudding, he pressed his knee against it, forced it loose, passed through the doorway, and closed the door silently behind him.
He knew the empty corridor well. He had prepared it for this moment, carving a niche into the wall by the door, hiding a pine board nearby. Quietly, he wedged one end of the plank against the door and the other into the crevice he had made, bracing the entryway so firmly that no one would be able to enter without breaking down the door.
Two small doors were on the wall to his left, the nearest with a small peephole he himself had made, the other, astonishingly, left ajar. Both doors, neither of which were ever locked, offered views of the president seated in a large rocking chair, the nearest of the box’s four occupants to the place where John stood. Mrs. Lincoln sat beside him, the young lady in a chair to her right, her escort on a sofa beside and slightly behind her. All four had their backs to the doors, their attention riveted by the action onstage. The younger gentleman was clad in military dress, but John could not see if he carried a sidearm. His presence was regrettable, but there was nothing to be done for it now. John drew his dagger with his left hand and stepped silently forward.
“I am aware, Mr. Trenchard,” declared the lady onstage, “you are not used to the manners of good society, and that, alone, will excuse the impertinence of which you have been guilty.”
John drew closer and slowly drew the derringer from his pocket with his right hand, knowing the actress was at that moment storming off stage right.
“Don’t know the manners of good society, eh?” said the Vermonter. “Wal, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap!”
The audience burst into shouts of laughter.
Inhaling deeply, John strode into the box, leveled his pistol at the back of President Lincoln’s head, and fired.
There was a loud bang and a sharp burst of acrid smoke. The officer bolted from his chair and rushed toward him, a look of wild alarm in his eyes, but he halted at the sight of John’s knife. Instinctively John dropped the derringer, switched the knife to his right hand, and lunged at the officer, slashing his arm and sending him staggering backward. Heart pounding, he strode through the chairs to the balustrade, placed one hand on the railing, and leapt over it. The air rushed past his ears as he dropped twelve feet and landed on the stage, crouching to absorb the blow, spurs clanging.
He rose steady and sure, the blood surging through his veins.
He faced the audience, squared his shoulders, and raised his dagger overhead. “Sic semper tyrannis,” he proclaimed, and then, as the audience murmured and stared and a woman screamed, he turned and fled.
He raced toward the back of the stage and into the wings, past dumbstruck actors and stagehands paralyzed with shock, down a darkened passageway to the back door. Flinging it open, he dashed into the alley, seized the reins from the hand of the boy holding the mare—Spangler was gone—and the mare spooked and tried to pull away, but John threw himself over her back and into the saddle and brought her under control. Turning her about, he glimpsed Joseph Stewart bursting out the door and racing after him, shouting his name, reaching for the reins—
His fingertips barely brushed them; his fist closed on empty air.
John spurred the mare into a gallop and fled for the Navy Yard Bridge.
CHAPTER SIX
ENSEMBLE
1865
And pity, like a naked newborn babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.
—William Shakespeare,
Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7
Lucy had already accepted John Hay’s invitation to join him and Robert Lincoln at the White House to study Spanish that evening, so she was relieved when, after the subject came up at supper, John did not ask if she intended to accompany her mother and Mrs. Temple to the theatre. She had not told John that ever since her father had been confirmed as Minister to Spain, she and John Hay had met occasionally to study, or that Robert joined them whenever he was in the city. Lucy would prefer to tell John the truth, but she knew it would only provoke his jealousy.
John Hay called for her at half past eight o’clock, and they conversed in Spanish as they walked down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, she haltingly and laughing at her mistakes, John Hay fluently but generous with encouragement and praise she did not entirely merit. Robert Lincoln welcomed them in the Red Room, where books and notes, as well as tea and cakes, were arranged on a lovely antique table his mother had purchased during her infamous refurbishments. Diligent students, they devoted an hour to memorizing vocabulary and conjugating verbs before turning to the more pleasant exercise of conversation.
“España no está lejos de Francia,” John Hay said to Lucy, smiling as she poured him another cup of tea.
She paused, thinking, and set down the teapot. “Spain is not something of France.”
“Lejos de,” prompted Robert. “Come now, Lucy. You knew it a half hour ago.”
“Far from,” she declared, suddenly remembering. “Oh, yes, that’s it. Spain is not far from France.”
“You’re right, and so am I,” said John Hay. “You could come and visit me in Paris.”
Lucy smiled fondly. “I think I should like that very much. And you could visit me in Madrid.”
At the inaugural ball, John Hay had confided to her that he intended to submit his resignation now that President Lincoln had been safely reelected. Although he loved and respected the president, his duties had become overwhelming and exhausting, for he and John Nicolay were not only secretaries, but also gatekeepers, companions, emissaries, and surrogate sons, living and working in the Executive Mansion, with very little time for any other life of their own.
When John Hay had first accepted the position on Mr. Lincoln’s staff, he had regarded the new president with condescension and a cocksure college man’s intellectual superiority, but over time, he had entirely revised his opinion. Soon after John and Lucy met, he had told her that he believed that God himself had put Mr. Lincoln in the White House. In the summer months before the election when it seemed unlikely that the president would win a second term, John had declared that if the snobbish elites of Washington and New York could not recognize Mr. Lincoln’s genius, it was because they knew “no more of him than an owl does of a comet, blazing into its blinking eyes.” Lucy knew he was devoted to the president, and that it pained him to leave the president’s service, which he had vowed not to do until Mr. Lincoln had found a satisfactory replacement. But recently he had been appointed secretary of legation of the United States in Paris, and he would likely sail for France in June.
They were all parting company, she thought wistfully. The end of the war, imminent and inevitable, would bring peace and reunion, but also changes—some welcome, some less so.
“You must come and visit me too,” she said, turning to Robert.
“I’d like that very much,” he said, “but after my commission in the army is finished, it’s back to Harvard Law for me.”
“Harvard Law and the cozy parlor of a certain Miss Harlan,” teased John Hay, and Robert grinned back.
It was about eleven o’clock when they decided to close their books for the night. “I shall dream in Spanish tonight,” Lucy predicted as her friends saw her to her carriage, where an army lieutenant stood at attention, waiting to escort her home.
“Buenas noches,” John Hay called to her through the window as the carriage pulled away. She waved and smiled as John said something to Robert that made him throw back his head and laugh. It was good to spend time with friends who shared her thankfulness and joy that the Union had emerged victorious from the dreadful war, that the fractured nation would soon be made whole. Their optimistic company provided a respite from John Wilkes’s erratic flashes of temper, his dire predictions about restoration, his endless lamentations about his beloved Virginia—although of course she would not tell him that.
The streets were busier than she expected for so late on a Good Friday evening. Men strode rapidly along the sidewalks, while others clustered outside hotels and telegraph offices as if waiting for news. Perhaps Mr. Davis had been captured, she thought, her hopes rising, or perhaps General Johnston had at last surrendered. When the carriage halted in front of the National Hotel, she accepted the lieutenant’s hand, swiftly alighted, and hurried inside, breathless from excitement and eager for news.
She found the lobby teeming with people, ladies and gentlemen in all manner of dress, some recently come from the theatre, others who had evidently returned downstairs after retiring for the evening. After her expectation of glad tidings, she needed a moment to realize that their expressions were frightened, anxious, and angry, and her heart plummeted.
“Lucy,�
�� Lizzie cried, hurrying toward her, tears in her eyes. “Oh, Lucy, you’re safe.”
“Of course I am.” Lucy spotted her parents making their way through the crowd toward them, their expressions stricken. “What has happened? What’s going on?”
Lizzie put her arm around her shoulders, but before she could speak, a man behind her turned and bellowed, “The president was shot at Ford’s Theatre tonight, and they say a guest of this hotel is the murderer. The detectives are tearing his room apart right now.”
Lucy could not breathe. “Lizzie?” she managed to say, clutching her sister’s arm.
“The president is dead,” a woman shrieked. Lucy whirled about to find two gentlemen easing a white-faced matron into the chair by the window where Lucy had so often met John. “Shot in the State Box. It was John Wilkes Booth. The actor. I saw him. We all saw him. Oh, God help us! God preserve us!”
“John?” Lucy whispered as her vision went gray and her head rang and spun and all went dark.
• • •
Hours before dawn, Mary woke to an insistent rapping upon her door. “Mrs. Surratt?” It was Louis Weichmann, his voice strangely shrill. “Mrs. Surratt? Do wake up.”
“What is it?” she replied groggily.
“Detectives have come looking for your son and Mr. Booth.”
Her heart thudded. “They aren’t here.”
“I told them so, but they want to search the house.”
“For God’s sake.” Inhaling deeply, Mary sat up. “Let them come in.”
He had done it, she thought wildly as she threw back the covers and climbed out of bed. Mr. Booth had captured President Lincoln—and he and his comrades must have escaped the city with their prisoner, or the detectives would not be searching for him.