An Acquaintance with Darkness

by Ann Rinaldi

  THE MURDERER OF OUR LATE BELOVED PRESIDENT,

  ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

  IS STILL AT LARGE!

  Fifty Thousand Dollars will be paid by this Department

  for his Apprehension!

  Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars' Reward

  for A. Atzerodt, sometimes called "Port Tobacco"!

  Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars' Reward

  for David E. Herold!

  All persons harboring or secreting the said persons,

  or either of them, or aiding or assisting their

  concealment or escape will be treated as accomplices,

  subject to a trial before a military commission,

  and the punishment of death!

  LET THE STAIN OF INNOCENT BLOOD

  BE REMOVED FROM THE LAND!

  At least they aren't offering a reward for Johnny, I thought. That means they can't prove he had anything to do with it.

  "Robert," I said finally, "maybe Annie needs my help. I can't sit here like this."

  "You must. I can't have you charging in there. I promised your uncle I would look out for you today."

  "I should have come this morning, like I wanted to." I moaned.

  "I couldn't make it this morning. You know I worked last night."

  "Why do you have to work at night? You're a medical student."

  "I stay late at the lab. Sometimes it's the only time I can get any work done on my experiments.... Now, just be patient a few moments longer. Nobody in their right mind would go charging in there now."

  Just then a man came tearing down the street, right past our carriage. He paused for a moment in front of it, eyes riveted on the Surratt house, completely unaware of us.

  "I know that man," Robert said.

  I looked. I knew him, too. I gasped. He was wearing a gray coat, black pants, and an old cap. His name was Powell. He'd been to the Surratt house when Johnny was home. And he'd stopped with Booth at the president's box at Ford's Theater the night Johnny took me there.

  It came over me then like a cold sweat. Booth had stopped to visit us in the president's box at Ford's Theater! Where he would come, almost a month later, to shoot the president!

  Why had Johnny taken us there that night? Was it to meet Booth? So Booth could familiarize himself with the president's box? No, no, I must stop going down that road, I told myself. Down that road lies madness.

  "He was hiding in the Congressional Cemetery last night," Robert said of Powell. "I saw him climbing out of a marble vault. Just lifted the slab off and got right out. Pretty as you please. Like he was getting out of bed in the morning."

  "I thought you were working in the laboratory last night."

  "I had to go to a late funeral."

  I had the feeling he was lying to me. But I had other things to think of now.

  Together we watched as Powell crossed the street right in front of us, walked to the Surratt house, went swiftly up the steps, and knocked on the door. It opened. He was admitted.

  "That's the same man," Robert said with certainty. "He was up to no good then, and he's up to no good now."

  Powell's clothing had looked disheveled, as if he'd been hiding somewhere. I said nothing. Why would Powell go rushing into the Surratt house now? Apparently he did not know detectives were inside. We waited some more. After a while a carriage pulled up in front of the Surratts' house and two more men went inside. Then they came out the front door: six detectives, Annie, Mrs. Mary, and Powell.

  Their hands were manacled behind their backs. Even Annie's.

  "No!" Again I started to get down from my seat.

  Again Robert stopped me. "Don't be a fool!"

  "A fool? To care about my friend? They're taking her away!"

  "They have to. Likely to question her. If she and her mother are innocent, they'll let them go. What do you think you can do, anyway? Besides involving yourself?"

  He was right. I could do nothing but watch as four detectives got into the carriage with Annie, Mrs. Mary, and Powell, and the other two walked back across the street to where their own carriage was parked. The two carriages, one following the other, drove right by us, going the other way.

  I saw the detectives, grim faced, staring ahead. I saw Annie. She seemed to be struggling with her hands so manacled. She looked right at me as their carriage passed by.

  "Robert!" I moaned.

  "She'll be all right," he insisted. "If she's innocent, she'll be all right."

  "You believe that? Didn't you just read that proclamation by Stanton in the paper? He's out for blood!"

  "Damn," he said. "I knew that man Powell was up to no good, climbing out of a vault in the cemetery at midnight. Somehow he's connected with all this! Why didn't I stop him when I had the chance?"

  "Midnight?" I looked at him. "They hold funerals at midnight now?"

  "Sometimes they do," he said.

  "You and Uncle Valentine seem to go to more funerals."

  "Doctors do, when their patients die. And the time isn't always convenient. Don't split hairs, Emily."

  "Don't you sit there all superiorlike and tell me not to split hairs. You just lied to me, Robert deGraaf, telling me you were working last night in the lab. And now it turns out you were in the cemetery at midnight, seeing a man climb out of a marble vault!"

  "I wasn't aware that I had to account to you for my actions. You lied to me. You knew that man. You'd seen him before. Likely at the Surratts'."

  "I think you're despicable to hold me to every thing I say when I've just watched my best friend being taken away by the police! You don't know how that feels!"

  "My best friend was killed at Gettysburg. So don't tell me I don't know, Emily, please."

  "Well, this is different."

  "It sure is." He picked up the reins and clicked to the horse.

  "Where are we going?"

  "Home."

  "No, we can't, please. We must go in the house."

  "The house! What for?"

  "The cat," I said. "Annie has a cat."

  His stare got colder and colder. "Go on."

  "Well, there's no telling how long the police will keep Annie. And Puss-in-Boots has to be fed, doesn't she?"

  "Puss-in-Boots?"

  "The cat. Annie took care of my cat and my bird when we had to leave Surrattsville and couldn't bring them here to Washington. I can't do any less for her, can I?"

  He agreed that I couldn't. But he didn't like it. Reluctantly, he guided the horse up in front of our old house. "Now what?" he asked.

  "The detectives are all gone. And I know how to get in the back door. Please."

  He relented. But only if he could come with me. So we went through the yard of my old house, then through the yard next door and into the Surratts' yard. The last time I'd been here was when Uncle Valentine came to fetch me in the rain. It seemed like years ago, instead of days.

  No one was home in the house next door. Or if they were, they were minding their own business. "I'm indulging you," Robert kept saying as he followed me up the back steps and I fetched the key from under a flower pot on the back porch. "I know I'm going to be sorry for this."

  "Here, kitty-kitty," I called.

  We went in through the kitchen. I kept calling for Puss-in-Boots. Then I heard her meowing. "She's upstairs," I told Robert.

  He gestured that I should go and he would follow. We found Puss-in-Boots in Mrs. Mary's room, on the bed. She blinked at us. I gathered her up, stroked her black fur. "Isn't she pretty?" I asked Robert. "Look. She has white feet and a white vest."

  "Feed her," he growled, "and let's get out of here."

  "I'm not going to feed her. I'm taking her with me. To Uncle Valentine's."

  "You can't."

  "Why can't I?"

  "Because— Look around. This place has been searched. Everything here is evidence."

  "Not Puss-in-Boots, Robert. She isn't evidence. I'm taking her."

  He sighed. He ran his hand through his hair in distraction. We
looked around. He was right. Mrs. Mary's room was a shambles. Pictures had been taken from the walls. The desk in the corner, where she kept her accounts, was in disarray. "One picture had the arms of the state of Virginia," I told Robert. "And it said, 'Sic Semper Tyrannis.'"

  "Wonderful," Robert said dryly, "that's what Booth is supposed to have said when he fled across the stage after shooting Lincoln. Let's get out of here, for God's sake."

  He hurried me downstairs. I clutched Puss-in-Boots in my arms. Robert locked the back door and put the key back under the flower pot, and we went back across the two yards and out into the street to the carriage.

  Only when we were driving off did it all come together for me in my head. "Robert," I said, "if Uncle Valentine had let me come yesterday as I wanted, I would have been able to see Annie. Now she's gone."

  He did not answer.

  "I'm never going to forgive him for that. I may never see her again."

  "You'll see her again."

  I stroked the cat in my lap. "And I'm not going to stay with him," I went on as if Robert hadn't spoken. "I just won't. I'm going to find a way to go and live with Aunt Susie in Richmond."

  "Well, that would be going from the frying pan into the fire. Richmond is the only place in America probably in a worse state than Washington right now."

  "I don't care. I'm not staying with him." Nothing could be worse than Washington right now, I thought. The president was dead. The whole town was in an uproar. People were running through the streets, forming mobs. Detectives were arresting anybody who looked suspicious. Cavalrymen were riding in groups with drawn swords. My best friend had been taken by the police. And Robert had just told me he'd been in the cemetery at midnight and seen a man I knew, a man who'd been a guest at the Surratts', climbing out of a marble vault.

  "I thought you told me a person doesn't desert a friend in time of need? What about Annie?" he asked. "You going to run to Richmond when she needs you now?"

  "That's why I hate you, Robert," I said.

  He sighed. "I know, because I'm not Johnny."

  "No," I said, "because you're always right."

  "Well, I hope I'm not right about this."

  "What?"

  "I'm not so sure your uncle is going to let you keep that cat."

  12. Miss Winefred Martin's Young Ladies

  UNCLE VALENTINE let me keep the cat.

  But he made me go back to school. And so it was that I stood in the large carpeted hall outside my classroom in Miss Winefred Martin's School for Young Ladies the very next day, knowing that I had seen too much in these last two weeks to ever feel like one of Miss Winefred Martin's young ladies again.

  Mrs. McQuade smiled at me. Her large blue eyes, usually so open to the possibilities of the world around her, looked bleary this day. Black did not become her. She usually wore lavender or yellow. Clothing was her one passion. "Life can be a costume party or a wake, girls," she'd once told us. "I prefer to think of it as a costume party."

  "I am so glad you are back, Emily," she whispered. "The girls are very unsettled, what with the assassination. And I must confess, I am myself. This is a most dreadful thing, most dreadful. I never expected to find such chaos in America."

  The last four years have been chaos, I thought. Haven't you noticed? Of course, nobody is cutting off anybody's head and the blood isn't running in the streets like it did in France during your revolution. Leastways not in any way you can see yet. In all the time I had known her, Mrs. McQuade had refused to let anything shock her out of the ordered certainty of her existence.

  Now this had. The assassination. She was plainly shaken.

  "We are having our Wednesday Morning Discussion Group," she said. "Your calming influence is needed."

  I had always thought of myself as the hand-wringer type. I muddled through, trying to get things right, while everyone else knew what they were doing. "It's Tuesday," I reminded her.

  "I know it's Tuesday. But I thought the girls needed it this morning."

  "I don't know, Mrs. McQuade. I don't know if I can even go in there. I just know they're all whispering about me because my mother died."

  "Mr. Lincoln's dying is all that's on their minds. I am afraid they have quite forgotten your mother's passing, Emily. I shall remind them."

  "Don't, please. If I have to come back to school, I'd just as soon slip in and take a seat and have nothing said of the matter."

  "'If'?" She scowled. "Certainly you aren't thinking of leaving school, Emily."

  "It isn't school, Mrs. McQuade. It's that I just don't know if I can come back and be one of Miss Winefred Martin's girls again after all that's happened."

  And then there was Myra Mott, my archenemy. I just knew she'd have something vengeful to say to me. She never let me forget that I did not have the social standing of the other girls. I did not think I could abide Myra Mott this morning, but I didn't say it. Mrs. McQuade did not allow rivalries in her classroom.

  "You never were one of them, child," she whispered now. "You always had a bucketful of common sense that the others don't have."

  "Thank you. But sometimes I wish I didn't. And now I feel so old. And all they do is talk about parties and boys."

  "Not this morning. So come right on in. I'm sure you can contribute something, can't you?"

  In the Wednesday Morning Discussion Group everyone was expected to have an opinion. Sometimes the discussion would be about food prices, especially with all the inflation with the war. Sometimes it was the freedmen problem. Sometimes it was fashions. We were graded on our comments. Mrs. McQuade did not hold with the notion that women should speak of nothing but children and matters of the home. New times were coming, and we must be ready for them.

  I went into the bright, sunny classroom and slipped into my seat. The discussion was already in progress.

  "The newspaper says his body is in the East Room of the White House," Lydia Rath was whispering, "and that he's wearing the suit he wore at the inauguration, just five weeks ago!"

  "The doors of the White House are to be thrown open today!" Carol Johnson put in. "And the public is going to be allowed to file by and see him!"

  "Remember, girls"—Mrs. McQuade rapped the desk with her pencil—"this discussion must remain on an intelligent level. Where should Mr. Lincoln be buried? Here in Washington? Or back in Springfield? And are the fortunes of the Republican Party, and not the needs of the people, on Mr. Stanton's mind?"

  "I think he should be buried right here in Washington," Lucy Cameron said firmly, "under the Capitol's dome, the space originally made for George Washington." Lucy wore glasses and always made intelligent comments.

  "Do you consider Mr. Lincoln on a par, as president, with Washington, then?" Mrs. McQuade probed.

  Everyone agreed he was.

  "I think the funeral should be long," Lydia Rath said wistfully, "and stately. I think all the cities that want to see him should be allowed to see him."

  "Well, I'll tell you what I think," Marcia Wilson put in, "I don't think all those Southern relatives of Mrs. Lincoln's should be allowed in the White House. Not until they find out if this was a Southern conspiracy or not."

  Everyone murmured their approval.

  "My daddy said that the Todds are already here." Myra Mott knew they regarded her as someone to be reckoned with. Her father was a reporter for the Intelligencer. And she always knew more than anybody. She smirked. "My daddy tells the story that Mr. Lincoln once said the Todds spell their name with two d's. And one d is enough for God."

  "Gossip," Mrs. McQuade said. "We do not want gossip, Myra. We want to speak of issues."

  Myra flushed, then recovered. "All right then, issues. For everybody's information, it's all true about a man named Powell stabbing Secretary of State Seward. He broke into Seward's house the night Lincoln was shot. And tried to stab him in the throat. Only thing that saved Seward was a steel brace he was wearing to hold his broken jaw in place."

  "Thank you for that information, My
ra," Mrs. McQuade said.

  "And, I'm going to the White House to see Mr. Lincoln's remains this afternoon with my father," she said imperiously. "He said it's an historic moment, and I mustn't miss it."

  The others oohed and aahed.

  "Is she getting out of school early, then?" Lucy Cameron asked.

  "You all are," Mrs. McQuade said. "But I advise you not to go near the White House. The crowds will be crushing. The papers say that tomorrow there will be a grand procession along Pennsylvania Avenue. Certainly you can catch a glimpse of the hearse there. We'll be going together as a class."

  "People are charging twenty-five cents to sit in a window along Pennsylvania Avenue," little Elizabeth Townsend piped in. "Isn't that exploitation, Mrs. McQuade?"

  "It is. But I imagine we'll be seeing a lot of that, human nature being what it is. What other signs of exploitation do we see in all this ceremony, girls?"

  "I think dragging poor Mr. Lincoln's body around for fourteen days is exploitation," Elizabeth said. "How can a dead body last fourteen days?"

  That's when I spoke and shouldn't have. "My uncle Valentine was called to the White House yesterday," I said.

  They all stared at me. And of a sudden, I wanted to get up and run out of the room.

  "Emily is living with her uncle, Dr. Bransby, now, girls," Mrs. McQuade said softly. "Since her mother's untimely death. Tell us, Emily, why was your uncle called to the White House?"

  Myra was glaring at me. I had no real friends in my class, though I got along with everyone after a fashion. The girls respected me, though outside school we did not mix. But with Myra Mott my relationship was clearly defined.

  She considered me something that had been sneaked in the back door. Someone not worthy of my place in the school. And I had the nerve to get better marks than she did, too.

  Her marks were respectable; she was prettier and popular. Her mother had social standing. But the enmity had come to a head when I won the midwinter essay contest, hands-down, over her. The prize had been a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin, signed by the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Mrs. McQuade knew her.