Fates and Traitors

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  But how had they known to come to her boardinghouse?

  She made a quick toilette and dressed, her head turning this way and that as she traced the detectives’ movement by the sounds seeping through the walls and floorboards—boots tramping through the halls and on the staircases, furniture scraping across floors, voices from the direction of Louis’s bedchamber, then the Holohan family’s rooms. Mary checked her hair in the looking glass, fixed her expression into a serene mask, and went to the formal sitting room, but she had not had time to seat herself before she heard boots on the stairs again. Looking down the hall from the doorway, she saw four grim-faced men in uniform descend, and as they halted at the foot of the stairs, conferring in low voices and throwing occasional glances her way, she recognized two of them as the detectives who had come to the house in February seeking Junior.

  Louis had followed the four men downstairs, his face pale and drawn in shock, and he edged around them and hurried into the parlor to Mary. “What do you think, Mrs. Surratt?” he asked, his voice shaking. “President Lincoln has been murdered by John Wilkes Booth, and the Secretary of State has been assassinated!”

  Mary felt all the blood drain from her face as she stared at him, dumbfounded. Her mouth formed a question, but no sound emerged.

  One of the detectives who had come to the house before broke away from the others and approached her, while two others climbed the stairs again and another headed below. “Mrs. Surratt, I am Detective Clarvoe,” he said, fixing her with a level gaze. “I want to ask you a couple of questions, and be particular how you answer them, for a great deal depends on them. When did you last see John Wilkes Booth?”

  “I—I saw him at two o’clock in the afternoon, yesterday.” It seemed the safest reply.

  “When did you last see your son John, and where is he now?”

  She clasped her hands together at her waist to still their trembling. “I have not seen him for two weeks. I believe he is in Canada.”

  “Why would you think so?”

  “I— Because I received a letter from him on the fourteenth, and it had been postmarked on the twelfth from Montreal.”

  His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “May I see this letter?”

  She nodded. “Certainly. It’s in my bedchamber.” She dared hope that they would not follow her there. Dazed, she went to her room, shut the door, and found Junior’s last letter in the top drawer of her wardrobe. It said nothing of Mr. Booth’s plans, nothing of abduction or murder, but what it did say was enough to condemn Junior as a Confederate courier and spy.

  Swiftly Mary concealed the letter beneath a loose floorboard along the wall, and then she sat down on the edge of her bed, struggling to compose herself. She stood, made the bed, and sat down again, taking deep breaths to still her racing heart.

  Then she rose again and returned to the sitting room, where another detective had joined Detective Clarvoe. “I couldn’t find the letter.”

  The two detectives exchanged skeptical looks. “Are you sure you don’t know where John Surratt is tonight?” the second one asked.

  Their arrogance made her anger flare. “I didn’t know five minutes ago and I still don’t know now. In these troubled times, a great many mothers have no idea where their sons are.” She drew herself up to her full height and looked from one man to the other. “What is all this about? Why have you come here in the middle of the night, rousing us from our beds, disturbing me and my lodgers with your questions and searches?”

  “You know why we’re here, madam,” said Detective Clarvoe.

  “I certainly do not, sir.”

  Frowning, he bent his head to speak in the other detective’s ear, and then, ordering Mary to stay in the parlor, they resumed the search. Soon Anna darted into the room, tearful and trembling, her dress hastily buttoned, her hair loose down her back. “Ma, what is happening?” she asked, flying into her embrace.

  Gently, holding her close, Mary kissed her brow and murmured the little she knew, that the president and secretary of state had been assassinated, that Mr. Booth stood accused of one murder and Junior of the other. “That’s impossible, impossible,” said Anna faintly, sinking into a chair. “Junior is in Canada.”

  “Yes, and thank God for that.” Mary fell silent as another detective appeared in the doorway and gave them a long, speculative glare before turning back down the hall. A moment later, Mary heard the door to her own bedchamber open, followed by the sounds of rummaging, of moving furniture aside.

  It seemed an age before the four detectives, having found neither Mr. Booth nor Junior nor anything incriminating within the boardinghouse, departed with a stern warning for Mary to tell them immediately if Junior returned. She made no answer, but locked the door behind them and returned to the parlor, heart pounding, head spinning.

  “Oh, Ma,” exclaimed Anna, her breath coming in quick, short gasps of hysteria. “Just think of it—that dreadful Mr. Booth having been at this house before the assassination! I’m afraid that it will bring suspicion upon us!”

  Mary knew it already had. “Anna, come what will,” she said, with all the reassuring calm she could summon up, “I am resigned. I think John Wilkes Booth was an instrument in the hands of the Almighty to punish this proud and licentious people.”

  A sudden movement from the corner of her eye startled her, and she turned to discover Louis Weichmann standing in the doorway, staring at her in dismay.

  • • •

  After Lucy had been revived with smelling salts and escorted upstairs, her father bearing nearly all her weight on his strong arm, her mother had undressed her while she stood staring into space—distressed, insensible, disbelieving—and had put her to bed with a glass of brandy.

  “They must be wrong,” she had said when Lizzie had put out the lamp, had lain down beside her, and had beckoned her to snuggle up close for comfort. “I just came from the Executive Mansion. Nothing was amiss there. No one said a word about an assassination. Robert was happy—”

  Oh, God help him. Robert, her poor, dear friend, how he must be suffering, if the rumors were true. God grant that they were not.

  “Sleep, Lucy,” Lizzie had said soothingly. “We’ll know more in the morning.”

  The brandy had sent her head spinning, and she had been too exhausted to argue, so with her sister’s arm around her she had fallen into the restless sleep of the brokenhearted.

  Morning came, gray and somber, and Lucy woke to the sound of a steady downpour to find herself alone. Just before half past seven, a distant church bell began to toll, and then another joined it, and another, until all the bells in Washington resounded with the terrible pealing. At once Lucy understood the dire news they proclaimed.

  The president was dead.

  She lay in bed, listening to the bells, paralyzed by grief and worry. Then a sob escaped from her throat, and she rolled over onto her side, squeezing her eyes shut, weeping. She covered her ears with clenched fists, but nothing would block out the mournful sound.

  Distantly she heard the door open, and swift footsteps, and then her mother was sitting on the bed beside her, stroking her hair, kissing her brow, murmuring soothingly, urging her to calm herself.

  “John could not have done this terrible thing,” said Lucy, anguished. “He could not have done it.”

  “Calm yourself, my darling,” said her mother tenderly, but Lucy heard the confirmation of her worst fears in all that her mother did not say.

  • • •

  Asia lay in bed with her fingers interlaced over her amply rounded abdomen, eyes closed, murmuring perfunctory replies to Clarke, who liked to tell her his plans for the day while he shaved and dressed. Distantly she thought she heard the nurse bustling about the nursery with little Dottie, Edwin, and Adrienne, her “little trotters,” as she affectionately called them.

  This pregnancy—five months under way, she w
as certain, although by the look of things she seemed much further along—had been more difficult than the others. She had scarcely been able to keep down a morsel of food in the first three months, and although the fourth month had brought some relief from headache and nausea, for the past fortnight she had been alarmed to find occasional spotting of blood in her undergarments. Her physician ordered bed rest and attended her regularly, and Clarke had hired extra help around the house so that she could have lain about all day if it would not have driven her utterly mad. She endured it as much as she could to appease Clarke, who was endearingly concerned for her health, and for her unborn child, whose steady growth and strong activity assured her of its vigor.

  “I thought I might take the children walking in the park today,” Asia said, just as the maid brought in her tray and the newspapers. Clarke insisted that she take her breakfast in bed, the one restriction upon her activities that she actually enjoyed.

  Clarke frowned as he ran the razor along his jawline. “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “I think the fresh spring air would do us all good.”

  “Well, perhaps you should, then, if Nurse goes with you.”

  Asia sipped her tea and picked up the newspaper. “I wouldn’t dream of going without—”

  She fell abruptly silent. Her gaze had fallen upon the largest headline, and her brother’s name leapt out at her, and she dropped the teacup and screamed. She was still screaming when Clarke came running and grasped her by the shoulders, asking her over and over what was wrong until he saw the headlines and then he knew.

  • • •

  Newsboys shouting the horrifying headlines up and down East Nineteenth Street had summoned Mary Ann to the windows. She had stood frozen in horror, listening to the treble voices calling out her precious son’s name, accusing him of murdering the president.

  “It cannot be true,” she had murmured aloud, first to herself and then to Rosalie, who had eventually persuaded her to come away from the window, away from stares of gawkers gathering on the sidewalks below, gazing up at her and pointing. There is the mother of the man who killed the president, Mary Ann imagined them saying to one another, and she felt so desperately ill that she was obliged to dash for the water closet. Rosalie quickly followed and knelt beside her, holding her hair and stroking her back gently.

  Thank goodness Rosalie was there, Mary Ann thought afterward as she sat on the sofa brooding over the cup of tea her eldest daughter had prepared for her. Edwin was in Boston, performing to packed houses and rave reviews at the Boston Museum. June was in Cincinnati for a lengthy engagement at Wood’s Theatre. Joseph . . . she did not know where Joseph was, it had been so long since he had written from San Francisco, but suddenly she missed her youngest, most sensitive, and often troubled child so desperately that her arms ached to hold him.

  “Is Edwin coming home?” she asked Rosalie.

  “I don’t know,” came her daughter’s soft reply. “He hasn’t sent a telegram.”

  “Asia,” Mary Ann said, her heart leaping. “Oh, dear me, I hope she was not alone when she heard this dreadful news, not in her delicate condition.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine. She has Clarke and the children.”

  “Still, we should go to her. We should all be together at this dreadful time.” Mary Ann set the teacup aside, rose, and began pacing and wringing her hands. “It is wrong for us always to be so scattered. Why must we live so far apart?”

  The doorbell rang then, and she and Rosalie froze, staring at each other. The maid came in and announced Thomas Bailey Aldrich and wife, friends of Edwin’s, a kindhearted, generous couple. There was little else to do but to allow them to enter, and call for tea, and tell them that Edwin was not at home. The Aldriches promised not to stay long; they had come only to offer their condolences and help, if there was anything they could do. Mary Ann thanked them, tears filling her eyes. She doubted very much that the Booth family would meet with much kindness elsewhere in the days ahead, in the years to come.

  Just as the Aldriches rose to depart, another newsboy outside the window bellowed the horrid news that John Wilkes Booth had killed President Lincoln. “Oh, God,” Mary Ann moaned, “if this be true, let him disappear into the South, let him not be hanged! Spare him, spare us, spare the name that dreadful disgrace!”

  “My poor, dear Mrs. Booth,” exclaimed Mrs. Aldrich, putting her arms around Mary Ann, who trembled from the effort of holding back her sobs. “I’m sure he hasn’t done it. The authorities must have made a dreadful mistake. I’m sure your son is innocent.”

  Mary Ann thanked her, wishing with all her heart that she could be as sure. John Wilkes had made no secret of his hatred of the president and the Union, nor of his deep and abiding affection for the South. He had always been a good boy, optimistic and joyful, boundlessly enthusiastic, but somehow, the events of the war had twisted all that was good in him. His adamant and vocal defense of the Confederacy had led to many a furious argument between John Wilkes and his elder brothers, and to Mary Ann’s distress, John Wilkes and Edwin had become estranged. She had hoped that the end of the war would eventually lead to their reconciliation, but now—

  The doorbell rang again, and the maid announced members of the Century Club, more friends of Edwin come to express their sympathy and offer their assistance.

  “They act as if John Wilkes is dead,” said Rosalie flatly after they departed.

  He might as well be, Mary Ann thought, but could not bring herself to say.

  She wondered where he was, if he had committed suicide in Washington City as one newspaper claimed, if he had fled to Canada as another insisted, or if he was escaping into the Deep South or Texas, which was what Mary Ann and Rosalie agreed was most likely. Was it wrong, she wondered, to hope that he was unharmed, that he would elude capture and escape overseas? She did not care if it was wrong. Who would condemn a mother for hoping and praying for her son to live, regardless of his wrongdoing?

  The morning post brought two letters, one of such importance that the other was immediately forgotten. Mary Ann’s heart nearly stopped when she beheld the Washington postmark, and her hands trembled so violently as she held the page that she could scarcely make out John Wilkes’s handwriting.

  “April fourteen, two a.m.,” she read aloud, her throat constricting around her voice. “Dearest Mother: I know you expect a letter from me, and am sure you will hardly forgive me. But indeed I have nothing to write about. Everything is dull; that is, has been till last night.”

  The letter slipped from her fingers and fell lightly upon the floor.

  • • •

  After the detectives had finally left the Surratt boardinghouse a few hours before dawn, Mary had urged Anna back to bed, but she had found it impossible to sleep herself. Instead she had lain upon the bedcovers fully dressed, every nerve strained, expecting at any moment to hear fists pounding upon the door, detectives demanding entry.

  When the bells of St. Patrick’s had begun to toll at about half past seven, joining the funereal pealing of what must have been every bell in Washington City, Mary had dragged herself from bed, splashed water on her face, and set herself to the task of preparing breakfast. She had known then that President Lincoln was dead.

  Anna joined her soon thereafter, looking wan and exhausted, and they worked in silence, setting the table, brewing coffee, preparing the meal, though the smell of food turned Mary’s stomach.

  She had not realized that Louis Weichmann and James Holohan had gone out until she heard the front door open and close overhead, and soon thereafter, the sound of their boots descending the stairs, their voices low and hushed, the rustle of newsprint as they settled in at the dining-room table. Of course they had gone out to get the papers. Everyone in Washington would be desperate for news.

  An open doorway connected the kitchen and dining room, so as Mary and Anna worked, they could not avoid o
verhearing the two men read aloud to each other the most sensational headlines and stunning paragraphs. President Lincoln had died at 7:22 a.m. that morning, they learned, but Secretary Seward yet lived and his physicians believed he had sufficient vitality to recover from his wounds. His son Frederick, however, had been even more seriously injured in defending his father, and his condition was considered extremely precarious.

  “Weichmann, listen to this,” Mary overheard Holohan say. “‘From all the facts obtained this morning it seems perfectly evident the murder was committed by John Wilkes Booth. He, in company with another man, passed over the Eastern Branch Bridge before half past eleven o’clock. His companion gave his name as Smith but undoubtedly his name is Surratt, from Prince George’s County, Maryland.’”

  Anna pressed a hand to her mouth, muffling a sob.

  “Don’t worry,” Mary ordered in a whisper. “You know that isn’t true. Junior is in Montreal. Whoever Mr. Booth’s companion may be, he cannot be your brother.”

  Anna nodded and resumed slicing a loaf of bread, her hands shaking so badly that the slices were of erratic, widely varying thicknesses. Mary took the knife from her and nodded to a chair to indicate that she should sit.

  “Nonsense,” replied Louis. “Surratt was in Montreal on the twelfth. He could not have returned to the capital so quickly.”

  “You’re referring to his letter,” said Holohan, lowering his voice. “The one Mrs. Surratt could not produce.”

  “She may have misplaced it, but I know it exists. I saw the postmark on the envelope myself when it first arrived.”

  Mary went cold. What else had Louis observed? Too much, she knew, far too much, and without understanding half of it.

  She heard more footsteps on the stairs as the others came down to breakfast, and, gesturing for Anna to help her, she quickly began carrying platters and bowls into the dining room and setting food on the table, nodding in reply to her lodgers’ tentative greetings. As they all took their seats and Louis, the aspiring priest, led them in the blessing, it occurred to Mary that perhaps she ought to apologize for the disruption of their sleep. Then anger and indignation flared, and she decided that if anyone owed the household an apology, it was the detectives—but she did not expect anything so courteous from them.