Mary shrugged and offered him a plaintive frown. “I’m afraid that I have not. We are so cut off from the outside world in here.”
“Last night John Wilkes Booth was found, and when he refused to surrender, he was shot. He died early this morning.”
“I see.” Mary was careful to keep her face impassive, though she felt an intense pang of grief and loss. “Forgive the question, sir, but what has this to do with me?”
His eyebrows rose. “I understand that you and Mr. Booth were great friends, and your daughter too was very fond of him.”
Mary managed a small, wry smile. “As innocent girls sometimes can be of handsome actors they scarcely know.”
“Indeed.” The warden put his head to one side and regarded her curiously. “Mrs. Surratt, I had been told that you are cold and unwomanly stoic, but I had not believed it until now. I expected you to show more sorrow or regret regarding Booth’s death.”
She hesitated. When Mr. Booth decided to kill the president, he surely had known that it might cost him his life. If he had to die, it was a mercy that he had escaped the hangman’s noose. She could not imagine any worse death than hanging—except to burn as Saint Joan of Arc had done. Of course, she could not tell the warden that—
“Mrs. Surratt?” the warden prompted.
Startled, she quickly composed herself and held his gaze steadily. “Sir, my only regret regarding Mr. Booth’s death is that he died before he could exonerate my son. Then you would be obliged to admit my son’s innocence and release me and my daughter.”
The warden gazed back at her in genuine surprise. “Madam, I hardly know what to say. You seem utterly unaware of the serious nature of the allegations against you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, the barest tremor in her voice.
“I’m astounded that you did not know,” he said. “You are not being held on account of your son’s crimes, but for your own.”
• • •
He cannot be dead.”
Lucy’s voice sounded dull and lifeless in her own ears. The assertion had become mechanical by repetition, and yet they were the only words she could speak.
“Oh, Lucy,” said Lizzie, anxious, stroking her hair, kissing her brow. “Perhaps it’s for the best.”
Lucy pressed a handkerchief to her lips to muffle a sob. Lizzie meant well, but it was not, could not be for the best. As devastated as she had been to learn that her beloved John was a murderer, the thought that he was lost to her forever staggered her.
They sat on the sofa in their suite at the National Hotel, Lucy reclining in her sister’s arms, newspapers scattered on the floor around them. Several of the papers, Lucy knew, had printed the assertions of a correspondent identified only as “one competent to give a correct statement” denying that she and John had been engaged, insisting that there was no foundation to any such claims, and requesting that, in justice to Senator Hale and his family, the editors would give the denial the same publicity they had given to the falsehoods. Two days before, the Daily National Republican had responded in even stronger terms, insisting that not only were the allegations without the slightest shred of truth, but that “Booth attempted to force his attentions upon MISS HALE; but she always manifested a decided aversion to the handsome villain.” Only the Springfield Republican, the first paper to identify Lucy by name, had resisted the pressure to repudiate their original story. “The story that has gained such wide circulation that Booth was engaged to be married to Senator Hale’s daughter is formally denied here,” their Washington correspondent noted archly. “I hear there is positive evidence, however, of its truth; but this evidence is in private letters, which cannot be used.”
Lucy had to give them grudging respect for their defiance, although it infuriated her father.
How many times in how many papers had she insisted through those anonymous proxies that she had not loved John, that she had not agreed to marry him? Even Peter had denied Jesus only three times. She had denied John a thousandfold more, and now he was dead.
“He cannot be dead,” she whispered. Lizzie made no reply except to draw her closer.
Later that afternoon, she overheard her parents talking while they thought she slept, overcome by the medicinal brandy they insisted she drink to help her endure the shock. Among the personal effects taken from John’s corpse was his pocket diary from 1864, in which were discovered the photographs of five women: four actresses and Lucy. “I’ve received assurances from the War Department that Lucy’s name will be omitted from the official reports,” she heard her father say. “They will do all they can to make sure the public never learns that he carried Lucy’s picture.”
John had carried her picture, Lucy thought distantly, a rekindled flame of love and longing warming her heart. And four more of four other women, she thought next, and the small, fragile light extinguished. When she saw John again, she would confront him about the photographs. Why did he carry the portraits of four actresses if he intended to marry Lucy? For that matter, why did he have a prostitute mistress? He had much to explain, not the least of which was whether he had ever truly loved her, or if he had only used her to get closer to President Lincoln.
When next she saw him, she would demand answers.
That evening, as they ate supper in their suite, too weary of curious stares to subject themselves to more in the dining room, her parents talked quietly of her father’s appointment as the minister to Spain, which the new president intended to uphold.
Lucy sat in silence, touching her fork to her food now and then but tasting nothing. “I invited John to visit us in Madrid,” she interrupted suddenly, her voice soft and slow. It seemed as if her words would take a very long time to cross the table to reach her family.
Her parents exchanged a look. “John Hay?”
She thought for a moment, remembering. “Oh, yes. I invited him too, and Robert Lincoln. But I meant John Booth.”
Lizzie watched her, stricken, while her parents exchanged looks of profound dismay. “Lucy, darling,” her father said, reaching across the table to take her hand, “Booth is dead. He died this morning. You know that.”
“He cannot be dead,” she said, puzzled. She picked up her fork again and took a bite of pheasant. It tasted of nothing.
Early the next morning, her father shook her awake, told her to dress and veil herself and to fetch her shawl, and then, while her mother and sister slept, he quietly led her from the suite and outside to a waiting carriage. He did not say where they were going, but she decided it did not matter, so she did not ask. Despite her disinterest, she was mildly surprised when they arrived at the Washington Navy Yard, although upon reflection, her father’s longstanding ties with the navy made their destination no more unusual than any other. Two naval officers met the carriage, and they exchanged a few quiet words with her father before escorting them down the wharf and aboard a dinghy flying the Stars and Stripes. The sun had risen, but the wind was steady and cold as they crossed the water to a ship anchored in the Eastern Branch. She shivered and drew her shawl tightly about her head and shoulders.
“We’re almost there,” her father said, the first words he had spoken to her since they had boarded the carriage. She nodded, her trepidation steadily rising as they approached the ship—the Montauk, she read on the bow. It was no easy matter to climb aboard on her trembling, unsteady legs, but the naval officers assisted her, and her father offered her his arm once they stood on the deck.
“This way, Senator,” said one of the officers. He turned on his heel and strode off, and Lucy was propelled forward on her father’s arm as he followed after. She saw several guards stationed at equidistant points around what seemed to be a carpenter’s bench, upon which lay an oblong form, its nature indistinct beneath a heavy brown horse blanket.
“Papa, no,” Lucy murmured when they were no more than two paces away, but her father relentl
essly guided her forward. Her breath came in soft, shallow gasps as they halted at one end of the bench, and she clung to her father’s arm as the officer folded the blanket down to expose the head of a man—no, of a corpse, with silky dark hair, alabaster skin taking on a grayish cast, and a full, sensuous mouth drawn back in a rictus of pain.
Lucy shrieked and flung herself upon her dearest John, sobbing, pressing her ear to his chest, desperately searching for a heartbeat, but there was no sound but her own cries, and he was cold, so very cold and still and silent.
“Lucy, darling.” Her father grunted from effort as he tore her away from her beloved and gripped her shoulders tightly. “He is gone. John Wilkes Booth is dead. Do you see his lifeless body? Do you understand?”
“Papa, stop,” she choked out. “This is cruel.”
“This is necessary,” he replied, a tremor in his voice. “My darling girl, he is dead. You must accept that.”
“I can’t.”
“You must. You will.” His grip on her shoulders tightened. “He never cared for you. You were nothing to him but a means to an end. He must be dead to you as he is to the rest of the world. You must sever all ties with him in your heart and mind and memory.”
Her father’s words resonated with truth, and the sharpness of John’s betrayal cut through her grief. “Oh, Papa.” She threw herself into his embrace, weeping, her legs giving out beneath her.
He held her tightly, kissing her brow and promising her over and over again that she would be all right, that she was not alone, that she was loved, that she would always be loved.
• • •
In the evenings, as a reward for good behavior, the female inmates were permitted to socialize in a large room on the second floor. Mary had made one good friend among the prisoners, Nora’s cellmate, a woman in her mid-thirties named Virginia Lomax. Handsome and self-possessed, Virginia was an alleged Confederate spy who had been arrested as a suspect in the assassination conspiracy, although privately she had confided to Mary that she had not been involved, but only wished she had been.
For Anna’s sake, Mary never missed a social hour, and the last Sunday evening in April found her near the window chatting quietly with Virginia while Anna played a memory game with Nora and several other younger ladies in the center of the room. Pale and peaked, Anna was smiling wanly at something Nora had said and was just about to take her turn in the game when suddenly they heard racing footsteps and several soldiers burst into the room.
Instinctively, the women recoiled from the door, some seizing the hand of a friend, others uttering quick shrieks of alarm before fear silenced them. “Mrs. Mary Surratt,” the officer in front bellowed. “Step forward.”
Steeling herself, emboldened by Virginia’s reassuring touch on her shoulder, Mary emerged from the crowd. “I am Mrs. Surratt.”
“Gather your personal effects and put on your cloak and bonnet,” he ordered. “You’re being transferred to the Arsenal Penitentiary immediately.”
A chorus of gasps went up from the room. Mary’s heart thudded, but she slammed her mask of serenity in place and nodded to the officer. Turning, she embraced a horror-stricken Virginia, kissed her cheek, and murmured, “Please look after Anna.”
As Virginia mutely nodded, Mary heard quick, light footsteps, and suddenly Anna’s arms were around her. “No,” Anna cried, clinging to her with all her strength. “Don’t go! Don’t leave me here alone!”
“Anna, my darling,” she said, low and steady, glancing over her daughter’s head to the stern-faced guards quickly approaching, “you’re going to have to be very brave.”
“Mama, oh, Mama!”
The guards seized Anna and demanded that she release her grasp, but Anna refused, sobbing hysterically, tightening her embrace until Mary almost could not draw breath. Before long the guards wrenched Anna away, and while two of them held the frantic girl by the arms and shoulders, thrashing and wailing, another propelled Mary to her cell, where she collected her shawl, bonnet, and Bible, then followed him back down the hall past the room where she heard her daughter desperately weeping. A few of the inmates emerged to bid her farewell in passing, tears in their eyes, sympathy in their touch. “Pray for me,” she asked each woman, hugging her Bible to her chest. “Pray for me.”
The guard who rode with Mary in the carriage closed the windows and drew the curtains to deny her a glimpse of the world outside, but she could imagine the route, and she dreaded every turn of the wheels that brought her closer to her foreboding destination. The Arsenal Penitentiary lay about two miles south of the Capitol on the northern tip of the Greenleaf Peninsula, the Washington Channel of the Potomac River on its western side, the Anacostia River curving along the south and east. Numbly, she cooperated mechanically as she was processed and escorted to a private cell on the third floor, Number 200. “You’re among friends,” the guard told her nastily as he unlocked the door, shoved it open, and waved her into the small, dark, cramped room.
“Who?” Mary asked, bewildered. The cell reeked of urine and terror.
“Seven of your fellow conspirators are locked up here too, all those who yet live and have been captured.” He jerked his head in the direction they had come. “Payne and Atzerodt are down the hall, Herold’s on the third floor.” Grinning, he gestured above and behind himself, the direction so vague he could have meant anywhere in the building. “Arnold, O’Laughlen, Mudd, and Spangler are here too, but you won’t see them, nor will you speak to them.”
As the door clanged shut and the key turned in the lock, Mary sank down heavily upon the musty bed, tears springing to her eyes—of despair and loneliness, yes, but also of overwhelming relief. They did not have Junior—at least, they did not have him at the Arsenal.
A pounding on the door woke her early the next morning, groggy, her face damp as if she had wept in her sleep. Hastily she tried to clean her face with the edge of the bedsheet, tried to finger-comb her hair and braid it without the benefit of brush or looking glass, and smoothed the plain muslin dress she had been issued at the Carroll Annex. She was fed a scant breakfast alone in her cell, and afterward, guards took her to a small room where a stone-faced colonel informed her that she had been accused of conspiring to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. He read aloud a statement that made her dizzy and sick as it informed her that she and a man called Dr. Mudd had been indicted for sheltering the conspirators and helping to plan the killing. President Johnson had decreed that the eight accused individuals would be tried not in a civilian court but before a military commission.
“I don’t understand,” Mary said shakily. “I don’t understand what this means.”
“You murdered President Lincoln,” said the officer, while the guards looked on impassively. “You were involved in the attempted assassination of Secretary Seward, and you intended to assassinate other officers of the federal government at Washington City in wartime. That makes you subject to the jurisdiction of and lawfully triable before a military commission.”
“But I wasn’t,” Mary protested. “I didn’t. I never intended a murder.”
His eyebrows rose as he leaned toward her. “Then what did you intend, Mrs. Surratt?”
Suddenly she remembered Junior, and she pressed her lips together and shook her head, blinking away her tears. She would give them nothing, she resolved, silently vehement. They had her, but they would not get her boy.
• • •
A prisoner in her own home, Asia mourned her beloved brother alone, unwilling to burden her young children with her grief. They would not remember their uncle Wilkes, which would perhaps prove to be a mercy in the years to come. She resolved to shield them as long as she could from the knowledge of how and why he had died, and she dreaded the day the truth would come out—in a jeering taunt from a bully at school, in a headline on the anniversary of Mr. Lincoln’s death.
It was a torment to be denied
Wilkes’s remains so they might give him a proper funeral. Of all the family only Edwin and their mother were in a position to appeal to the government, and their mother had been too distraught to address them, and Edwin had firmly resolved not to. He seemed to think that whatever ignominious disposal Wilkes received was better than he deserved.
If Edwin should have a sudden change of heart, it would come too late. No one in the government had informed the family what had become of Wilkes’s remains, so they relied upon the newspapers for information, but they presented two contradictory stories. The first, drawing upon the observations of witnesses gathered along the riverbank near the Montauk, stated that a large covered object resembling a coffin had been transferred from the ironclad to a steam tug, which had then headed down the Potomac. Soon thereafter the crowd watching from the shore had observed a large rowboat cast off from the tug and meander out into deeper waters, where the mysterious object had been dumped into the river. “Last night, the 27th of April, a small row boat received the carcass of the murderer,” reported the New York World, among many others. “Two men were in it; they carried the body out into the darkness, and out of that darkness, it will never return. In the darkness, like his great crime, may it remain forever, impalpable, invisible, nondescript, condemned to that worse than damnation, annihilation.”
Most of the papers Asia saw ran that story, but a scant few told another tale: “The navy-yard in Washington was yesterday closed against visitors, by order of the Department,” a minority report began. “The body of Booth was quietly conveyed, last evening, to an ignominious burial place. The head and heart were removed prior to its burial.”
Asia wept when she read the last—it was unnecessary to desecrate Wilkes’s corpse, despite the severity of his crime—but she could not say whether one interment was preferable to the other, only that it would be better for his loved ones to know. The uncertainty was agonizing, infuriating, and Asia worried for her mother, knowing how she had found comfort through the years visiting the graves of her other lost children. In its righteous rage, the vindictive government would needlessly deny an innocent, grieving mother that small measure of comfort.
Fates and Traitors Page 43
