Fates and Traitors

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  With the sunrise the morning had turned unbearably warm, and the heat and the sounds of construction and of soldiers shouting orders back and forth and spectators arriving early to claim the best vantage points had struck Mary with the force of physical blows. At about half past eleven, Mary had jumped in alarm at a loud snap and thud. “What is it?” she had asked the priests shakily, wringing her hands, pacing the length of the small cell. “What is it?”

  Father Walter had peered out the window and reluctantly told her that the soldiers were testing the gallows platform drops with weights. One had not been opening properly, so it would be tested and modified and tested again, over and over, until both drops opened promptly, evenly, and simultaneously. Horrorstruck, Mary had backed away from the windows, but the cell walls had restrained her before she had been able to go far enough to escape the dreadful noise.

  The tests were still ongoing when Anna returned from the White House, sobbing, utterly wretched. “The president would not see me,” she choked out. Wordlessly Mary embraced her, struggling to maintain her composure for her daughter’s sake as her heartrending cries echoed through the prison corridors.

  Soon thereafter, Mr. Brophy returned, his expression one of bleak despair as he told Mary that his efforts had been no more successful. “I’ve been told that the officials here expect President Johnson to grant you a reprieve,” he said. “General Hancock has ordered cavalry to clear and to guard the roads from the White House to the penitentiary. If the president should do what we all hope and pray he will, the messenger will be able to bring the orders with all speed.”

  Mary nodded, but she despaired of any last-minute pardon being sped to the Arsenal to stay the executioner’s hand. Shortly before dawn, the most malicious of her guards had told her that upon signing her death warrant, President Johnson had declared that Mary had “kept the nest that hatched the egg” of the conspiracy, and that she must be punished accordingly. She knew she could expect no mercy from him.

  Summoning up her last reserves of courage, Mary issued Mr. Brophy instructions for Anna’s care, the disposal of her estate, and other personal matters. She made her last confession to Father Wiggett and Father Walter—she had sins to confess, like anyone else—and again she professed her innocence of the crime for which she was soon to be executed.

  By noon the searing, oppressive heat had soared to a temperature of nearly one hundred degrees, but Mary insisted upon wearing her heavy black dress, black bonnet, and black veil. Anna was escorted from the cell, sobbing, wailing, struggling against the guards, and Mary wept to part from her, no longer praying for herself, but for her precious daughter, her absent sons.

  After Anna’s cries of grief faded, Mary prepared herself, and Father Wiggett and Father Walter administered the Last Rites, the sacrament of the dying.

  Soon thereafter, two officers came for her.

  They led her from the cell and down the dank, dimly lit corridor, the two priests following after, murmuring prayers. Lightheaded, heart pounding, Mary heard other cell doors opening behind her, other footsteps heavy and slow, and she knew the three condemned men had joined the grim procession.

  Her escort halted before the heavy wooden door to the prison yard. Narrow bands of bright light filtered in through the cracks all around it, and from the other side came the clamor of hundreds of voices. “God help me,” Mary whispered, her heart pounding, her breath coming in shallow gasps. “God help me.”

  Shortly after one o’clock, the door swung open. Mary found herself blinded by the sun and overcome by a sudden wave of intense heat. Blinking, squinting, she hesitated on the threshold until the guard urged her forward, and then, aided by the bonnet and veil, her eyes adjusted and she spotted the gallows, fifty feet away along the northeast wall of the prison yard. The sheer size of the scaffold staggered her—twenty feet high, thirty across, with two large, hinged trapdoors cut into the platform and four armchairs arranged behind them. She glimpsed four soldiers positioned beside four large wooden beams supporting the drops, four nooses dangling empty from the crossbar high above, strange mounds of dark-red soil on the ground behind the scaffold, and over to one side, four pine coffins in a disorderly pile.

  A hush fell over the crowd—so many people, hundreds of them. How could there be so many eager to witness this gruesome spectacle? Her legs trembled and buckled, and she would have fallen except one of her escorts held her up, and the other swiftly attended to her other side. Leaning heavily upon them, Mary approached the scaffold stairs—and from there she could see that the mounds of red earth surrounded four gaping, empty graves. Moaning, aghast, she went limp, and the soldiers had to carry her up the fifteen steps to the platform, where she was brought to the armchair on the far right.

  Mr. Payne was led to the chair on Mary’s left, and then came Mr. Herold, and then Mr. Atzerodt. Dazed, sickened, she fixed her gaze straight ahead, but when she saw the nooses swaying back in forth in the hot air before her, she grew so dizzy that she dropped her gaze to the platform, but that was no better, for the dark outline of the trapdoor stood out starkly against the wooden planks. The only way she would leave that platform was through that opening, she thought wildly.

  She murmured prayers, swiftly, desperately. She would not have time to recite them all. Father Wiggett held a crucifix to her lips, and trembling, she kissed it.

  The sunlight was so intense that General John Hartranft ordered soldiers to shield Mary and the three condemned men with umbrellas so that they would not faint. He read the charges and the sentences, his voice carrying across the hushed prison yard.

  The hangman approached and halted before Mary. It seemed to her that he hesitated before he bound her hands and arms—painfully tight—but when he bent to tie her legs, her long black dress, billowing in the hot wind, seemed to confound him. After pondering a long moment, he quickly wrapped the cotton cords around her skirt, tightening it around her legs.

  Her hands and fingers, once tingling, had grown numb. “My wrists are bound too tightly,” Mary managed to gasp. “They hurt.”

  “They won’t hurt long,” a man retorted.

  The hangman approached again, removed her veil and bonnet, and slipped the noose around her neck. As the rough fibers scraped the tender skin, an agitated murmur rose from the crowd. Suddenly a man standing among the spectators turned his back to the scaffold, threw his hands in the air, and shouted, “Gentlemen, I tell you this is murder. Can you stand and see it done?”

  No one responded. The man’s arms fell to his sides, and without another word he turned back to face the scaffold.

  The hard knot of the noose pressed roughly against Mary’s left ear. Without warning the hangman slid a white muslin hood over her head until all she could see was the weave of the cloth, illuminated from behind.

  The priests and ministers intoned their final prayers. Mary heard some of them thank the soldiers and the general for their courteous behavior, but Father Walter’s and Father Wiggett’s voices were not among them. Instead, nearby, she heard Father Wiggett murmur, “We are right here with you, Mary.”

  “Shall I say anything?” she murmured back, heart beating so rapidly she feared it would burst.

  “What would you like to say?”

  “I wish to say to the people that I am innocent.”

  He sighed softly. “It would be useless to say that now.”

  “I am innocent,” Mary said, forcing the last of her strength into her voice, “but God’s holy will be done.”

  “The prisoners will stand and move forward,” a deep voice commanded.

  With great effort, Mary obeyed, inching forward, constrained by the long skirts bound around her legs. She heard the chairs scrape the platform as they were taken away.

  “A little farther, Mrs. Surratt,” someone said.

  With a sob, Mary took a few more awkward steps forward. “Don’t let me fall,” she cried o
ut as she nearly lost her balance, but no one answered.

  “Gentlemen, take warning,” she heard Mr. Atzerodt call to the crowd. “Goodbye, gentlemen who are before me. May we all meet in the other world.”

  Mary whispered the rosary, quickly, desperately. She heard footsteps on the platform, boots striking the stairs as an officer descended. Beneath the scaffold, a soldier retched.

  Someone clapped three times. Mary fell into space, the wooden crossbeam groaned, and then all was dark and silent.

  EPILOGUE

  LUCY

  1890

  Out, out, brief candle!

  Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

  And then is heard no more:

  —William Shakespeare,

  Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5

  When Malcolm Elsie of the Washington Evening Star wrote to Lucy to inquire if she would permit him to interview her for a feature he was writing about the wives of prominent senators, her first instinct was to decline. Her husband had been involved in quite a few controversial matters during his tenure in the Senate, and she was reluctant to be thrust into the role of his apologist. Then she thought of all the advice her mother had given her through the years regarding the duties of a political wife, and she decided to consult William before sending her regrets.

  As she had expected, William thought it was a wonderful idea. “What feature on Senate wives would be complete without a profile of Lucy Hale Chandler?” he asked, kissing her, scarcely able to contain his pride. “I can imagine the resounding cheer that will shake the editorial offices when they learn you’ve agreed to do it.”

  “You’re a silly old dear,” she teased him. “You’re giving me too much credit. The honor of this request, such as it is, goes to you. Mr. Winchester said the feature will be about the wives of prominent senators, not about the prominent wives of senators. That makes all the difference.”

  Nevertheless, William’s enthusiasm pleased her, and she smiled as she sat down with pen and paper to reply to Mr. Elsie that she would be delighted to meet with him.

  As the appointed day approached, Lucy found herself at unexpected moments lost in thought about what sort of questions Mr. Elsie might ask. She supposed it would be only natural if he asked how she and William had met, but that was a fraught subject to discuss with a stranger, as William had been twenty-one and she but twelve years old when they first became acquainted. It had been love at first sight for William, or so he confessed to her many years later, but if he had known she was so young, he never would have written her those ardent letters and poems. He was aghast when her father had informed him of her age and had requested that he cease courting her, and he immediately complied, with apologies. Lucy had developed quite a crush on William because of those lovely missives, and when she had heard he had married a certain Miss Gilmore, the governor’s daughter, she had been utterly heartbroken for a few days and then had quite forgotten him.

  When her father was appointed Minister to Spain, Lucy had gladly gone to Madrid with her family, escaping scandal and heartbreak and the aftermath of war in her homeland. For five years she had dwelled abroad, forgetting her troubles amid the excitement and wonder of exploring a foreign land and culture, as well as in the delights of what seemed to be an endless array of state dinners and legation parties and dances. She had traveled extensively throughout Europe, adoring Italy, Switzerland, and France most of all, and in Paris she had reunited with her old friend John Hay and former beau Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Unwittingly, she had beguiled many European gentlemen who had courted her charmingly, extravagantly, but in the end had found themselves rejected and sent away, lovelorn.

  It had been a wonderful, restorative, exhilarating time for Lucy, but a change in presidential administrations back home had meant many changes in government appointments. Lucy’s father had found himself caught up in an ugly feud, which had culminated in Secretary of State Hamilton Fish requesting his resignation. In early August 1869, the family had left Madrid for Paris, where Lizzie and her husband had recently taken up residence, and from there Lucy and her parents had traveled on to Rome to spend the winter. In the spring of 1870 crowds of cheering citizens had welcomed them home to New Hampshire with a thunderous cannon salute and the glorious ringing of all the bells in Dover. Lucy’s father had been pleased and deeply touched, but his health had been declining over the past year, and he did not resume his former public life. Lucy, twenty-eight, had resolved to devote the rest of her life to caring for her beloved father at home.

  In 1871, he had suffered a stroke that had rendered him paralyzed on his right side, but with the tender ministrations of his wife and youngest daughter, he had recovered sufficiently to visit with friends, to read and write, to putter in his garden, to play backgammon with his wife, to go for carriage rides with Lucy, and even to travel to Washington City, where he had reunited with aging former colleagues and had reminisced about their days as young lions waging the antislavery crusade. But in July 1873, he had broken his right hip in a fall from his chair, and his ailing body had been unable to recover from the blow. He had died peacefully at home at nine o’clock on the evening of November 19, 1873, with his wife and daughters around him.

  William, who by then had been a widower three years, had read the mournful announcement of Senator Hale’s death in the papers. Astonished to discover that Miss Lucy Hale, the girl he had admired so many years before, was yet unmarried, he began writing to her, first to express his condolences for her loss, and later, as their correspondence continued, to express his love. They married on December 23, 1874, in Dover, at the home of Lucy’s mother.

  William had become a prominent lawyer, and he had previously served as solicitor and judge advocate general of the Navy Department and as the First Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, so when he decided to resume a career in politics, Lucy had dedicated herself to helping him achieve his ambitions. He entered the New Hampshire State House of Representatives in 1881, and was appointed Secretary of the Navy the following year. In 1886 he was elected to the United States Senate to fill a vacancy caused by the death of his predecessor, and in 1888, he had been elected to another term.

  Lucy assumed that Mr. Elsie would have discovered the facts of her husband’s storied career on his own, from numerous other sources, so she presumed he hoped to learn from her those interesting details only a wife would know—what Senator William Chandler was like at home as a devoted husband to her and a loving father to their five-year-old son.

  On the appointed day, Lucy arranged for tea to be served in the parlor of their I Street residence, entrusted her son to his nanny, and distracted herself with letter writing as she awaited Mr. Elsie’s arrival. He knocked on the front door promptly at three o’clock, as agreed, which earned him her approval, but when he was shown into the parlor, she was somewhat dismayed to discover that he was very young, perhaps only twenty-one, a slim dandy of a man, with short, neatly combed and oiled dark hair; a walrus mustache; a smart Derby hat; a high stand collar and four-in-hand tie; and a high-buttoned coat that opened to reveal a brocade waistcoat. She had expected someone older, more experienced, more familiar in the ways of Washington. As long as he wrote well and honestly, she decided, she could forgive him his youth and inexperience.

  They passed swiftly through the usual perfunctory rituals of greetings, small talk, and the pouring of tea. Mr. Elsie had brought a briefcase, and from it he took a stack of assorted papers, blank sheets to write upon, and a pencil, which he arranged on the table before him.

  He began with precisely the sort of questions she had expected him to disregard—where William had been educated, what his first political appointment had been, when he had first come to the Senate. Then he offered her a winning smile and said, “You’ve been a part of Washington society and politics since long before your marriage, haven’t you, Mrs. Chandler? Yo
u first came to the capital when your father served in the Senate?”

  “I suppose you could say I did,” Lucy replied, “although I didn’t reside here continuously. My father often lived here alone while my mother and sister and I remained at home in Dover. At other times, I was away at boarding school.”

  “I wondered—” He leafed through the stack of assorted papers, withdrew a newspaper clipping, and set it on top of the pile. “In all of your time in Washington, were you ever acquainted with a woman named Louise Worcester?”

  Lucy quickly searched her memory, but she could not remember a senator, congressman, cabinet secretary, or military officer with that surname. “I don’t believe so. Should I have been? Who is her husband?”

  “I don’t know that, or even whether she’s married at all,” said Mr. Elsie. “She claims to be the former confidante of John Wilkes Booth.”

  Lucy’s heart thumped once, painfully hard, but she had been in Washington City long enough to learn the fine art of concealing her emotions. “Oh, Mr. Elsie,” she scolded lightly. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, coming to me on false pretenses.”

  “I am somewhat abashed,” he admitted, but his grin told her that the feeling would not trouble him long.

  “I do not know any Louise Worcester,” she said evenly. “There is no feature on Senate wives forthcoming, is there, Mr. Elsie?”