On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  “Didn’t she have a daughter?” someone asked.

  “Safely placed in a convent school in Paris, thank the Lord.” Hanna realized he was speaking about Rose Greenhow. Her death had been reported in the press a few days earlier. Rose had sailed from Greenock, Scotland, to Halifax, then on to Wilmington, North Carolina. A heavy sea pounded the steamer Condor as she ran through the blockade squadron to the Cape Fear River. Rose carried dispatches for Richmond and insisted on being rowed ashore at first light. Crashing waves capsized the open boat; Rose was drowned. The men accompanying her survived. Hanna wondered sadly what Margaret thought about it.

  Hanna came out of Grover’s stage door after a long, tiring rehearsal the next afternoon. Early autumn twilight had fallen. Martial music from the Avenue on the other side of the building signaled a parade in progress. Marchers from the Lincoln-Johnson clubs, she decided. The brass band played “We Are Coming, Father Abraham, Three Hundred Thousand More,” not a selection heard at rallies for George McClellan. The Democrats were presenting the failed general as the nation’s best chance for a swift armistice and a negotiated peace.

  Hanna always stayed alert walking by herself. Thus she noticed a man in a drab suit lounging against the wall where the alley ran into Thirteenth Street. As she approached, he snatched off his cap, as though about to speak. She stepped wide of him, avoiding his eye.

  “Miss Siegel?”

  She gasped. “I don’t believe it. Major Dasher?”

  “Sills is the name at the moment. Duane Sills.”

  Gravely he shook her hand. He looked thinner; haggard.

  Hanna waited until two men from the company passed on their way to supper. After she waved good-bye she whispered, “Did you desert the Army?”

  “Oh, no, but I can’t explain. I’ve looked for you.”

  “You have?” After more than two years, she couldn’t gaze into his eyes without growing weak-kneed. She remembered how he had saved her, and kissed her, that dreadful night in Virginia.

  “Diligently,” he said. “I remembered you spoke about acting, so I’ve read every column about the playhouses. Every advertisement. I saw a piece listing the cast of this show and finally knew where to find you.”

  “That’s very flattering, Maj—Mr. Sills. May I ask where you’re staying?”

  In the cool purple shadow of the alley his eyes had a guarded look. “A boardinghouse.”

  “I was on my way home to fix supper for my father. Would you care to join us?”

  “Yes, Miss Siegel, indeed I would.”

  They rode the horsecar and walked the last few blocks to the house near the Navy Yard. They found the major donning gray gloves and a new top hat. Hanna introduced her friend Mr. Sills. The major shook hands, gave Fred a keen look to fix his face in mind, then said, “I can’t stay to eat. Meeting someone at the Willard bar.” The door banged, leaving them alone.

  He sat with her while she cooked, saying little. Hanna served the stew with a loaf of bread she’d baked the day before, and a dusty bottle of Rhine wine. She apologized for not having claret. The major drank every drop that came into the house.

  They ate by lamplight, in the kitchen, as easy with one another as though they’d known each other for years. Fred Dasher struck her as nervous, though; alert to the slightest sound from outside. He didn’t talk about his business in Washington. She assumed from his reticence and the false name that it was clandestine military work. She didn’t care. Of his recent Army experience he spoke only of the sad death of General Stuart, his former commander. She didn’t ask whom he reported to now.

  At the front door, he settled his cap on his head and said, “I’m not sure how long I’ll be here. I’d like to take every opportunity to see you. I can pretty well arrange my time to suit myself.”

  “Then what about tomorrow? It’s supposed to be a pleasant day, and I’m not rehearsing until evening. We have a dogcart and horse. I could show you the cottage my father bought out near Rockville. I’ll pack a picnic lunch and call for you wherever you say.”

  He thought a moment. “All right. The boardinghouse is on H Street, number five forty-one. Noon?”

  Hanna bubbled with anticipation. “I’m ever so glad to see you again, Dua—oh, I can’t. You’ll always be Frederick Dasher. I assure you I’ll remember Sills when it’s necessary. I’m a good actress.”

  “I’ve no doubt of that. I can’t wait to see you onstage, if not this time, then when the fighting stops. It will end soon. Everyone on our side knows it, I think. Well, Miss Siegel—”

  “Hanna.”

  “Yes. Hanna. Thank you.” He leaned forward, as though about to kiss her. She raised herself on her toes. He drew back. “Noon tomorrow, then.”

  She hid her disappointment. “It will be just the two of us at the cottage. Papa works all day.”

  “Just the two of us. I’ll look forward to it.”

  Their gazes held. She knew what would happen tomorrow, as surely as if they’d made a silent pact. He said good night and left. Hanna clapped her hands and whirled through the house, dancing and singing.

  At five minutes before noon, she arrived at the brick boardinghouse on H Street. Fred Dasher waved and ran down the steps to the little dogcart. A horseman galloped by, swung around the corner of the house, and tied his fine bay to the post at the foot of an outside stair. He ran up to the second floor without a backward glance.

  “That was John Booth, the actor!”

  Fred tugged the brim of his straw hat lower. “Was it? I’ve never met him. I can’t imagine he’d have business with Mrs. Surratt, or anyone living here.”

  They reached the cottage near the Rockville Road about one. Hanna carried the picnic hamper to the small kitchen. No furniture had been moved in yet. The rooms were empty, hollow, but immaculate, thanks to the former tenant. Slatted shutters laid bars of sunlight on the parlor’s oak floor. Hanna ran to a closet where she’d stored a blanket, red and blue wool. Last Sunday she and the major had sat on the blanket, planning where they’d place their furniture. That is, she planned while the major complained. He wanted to buy all new pieces. “We got the money.”

  “Here, this will be more comfortable.” She shook the blanket to unfold it. Fred helped her spread it. Only faint sounds penetrated from nearby lanes where Early’s artillery had left deep craters.

  They looked at each other with the blanket held taut between them. A kind of tormented sigh preceded his murmur of her name. “Hanna.” He dropped the blanket and stepped on it as he seized her.

  Excited but frightened, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him. Would he find her too slim, too boyish? God, don’t let it be so, she thought as they knelt facing one another. They tore at each other’s clothes like starving children suddenly shown a banquet table.

  Afterward they lay naked on the hard floor with the blanket covering them. Hanna’s yellow hair fanned across his shoulder. His arm was strong beneath her. Never had she felt anything like the ecstatic shudders that had run through her at the climax.

  “I think I fell in love with you the moment I saw you,” he said.

  “I think I did too. I’ve never had many beaux.”

  “We don’t know much about each other.”

  “Even less now that you can’t talk about your work.” He was silent. “Will you come back to Washington?”

  “Don’t know. I would guess not.”

  “When will I see you again?” She rolled over, her right breast pressing his side. She wished she weren’t so small there. “I love you, Frederick. I can’t bear to part.”

  He kissed her gently. “I love you. When the war’s over, I’ll show you my place near Front Royal, in the Shenandoah. A horse farm. Been in the family a long time. I suppose that damned Sheridan’s stolen all the stock by now. Maybe razed the buildings too. But the land still belongs to me, and I’ll rebuild. It’s a beautiful spot.”

  “I’d love to see it.” She caressed his face. “Has the war been awful for you?�
��

  “No worse than for others. A terrible thing did happen to me at a place called Garlick’s Landing, on the Peninsula. It threw me down for a good long time.”

  “Will you tell me about it?”

  “Not yet. Someday.”

  “The war’s so dangerous. So many chances for…” She couldn’t say it.

  “Nothing will happen to me. I won’t allow it.” He lifted her hand, kissed it. “I hadn’t much to live for these past couple of years. Now I do.”

  Uncontrollably, tears came. “Oh, sweetheart, so do I. So do I.”

  62

  October 1864

  The closed carriage creaked down the Avenue in heavy traffic. Lon rode a sorrel mare, staying close to the door on the left side. It was the last Friday night in October; the evening of his first day on White House duty.

  Assignment at the White House demonstrated Baker’s confidence in Lon, but it couldn’t give him the raw satisfaction of his regular job with the Detective Police. He was no longer tormented over arresting people with no warrant except his revolver. When he rounded up suspects without evidence, he told himself that if even half were guilty, it helped the Union. He took pleasure in knocking a suspect’s teeth in if he resisted. He was still paying the secesh for Sledge, and for Zach Chisolm.

  Tonight he felt like an undertaker. Everything he wore, his single-breasted black wool suit, waistcoat, cravat, and wide-brimmed felt hat, was black. In a sling under his left arm he carried a fine Deane & Adams .36-caliber, a five-shot, double-action piece less bulky than his Navy Colt. Baker insisted he buy it. “Ward Lamon is spitting nails over threats on the President’s life, real or imaginary. He’d tie Lincoln to a chair to keep him out of theaters if he could.” Lon remembered Lamon all too well. The man who had called Pinkerton an opportunist and self-promoter was marshal of the District of Columbia.

  The thin and sickly-looking President had handed his stout wife into the carriage at the north portico. He didn’t so much as glance at Lon. He was too busy ordering the four horsemen of the Union Light Guard to stay behind.

  An electrical storm muttered in the west. Wind swirled dust clouds through the streets, together with debris and scraps of newspaper and the usual stew of city stenches. Seldom had Lon seen so many uniforms on the Avenue. Every train from the north and west disgorged hundreds of men furloughed to vote. The effort to save Lincoln’s presidency pervaded the government. Baker said that for months, Stanton had routinely misfiled promotion orders for any officer suspected of favoring the Democratic candidate.

  Lon heard music. He smelled the smoky torches before he saw the marchers. They spilled into the Avenue ten abreast, kept in cadence by a band. He tapped the carriage door. “We’re running into an election parade, Mr. President. I suggest we turn off.”

  “Are they for me or against me?”

  Lon squinted to read inscriptions on large boxy transparencies carried in the front ranks. “Definitely for. I see an Elephant Club illumination, and a picture of General McClellan with a slogan, ‘Enemy of freedom.’ We can turn up Eleventh Street if you wish.”

  “All right, but stop around the corner so I can watch. I don’t have all that many admirers in this town, you know.”

  Lon understood Lincoln’s weary humor. Well before the nominating convention, some Republicans wanted him to step aside for a candidate deemed more acceptable. Grant, or Ben Butler. Lincoln’s pocket veto of a Reconstruction bill infuriated its authors, Senator Wade of Ohio and Representative Davis of Maryland. In August they aired their grievances in Greeley’s Tribune. The Wade-Davis manifesto accused Lincoln of usurping congressional powers; making laws instead of obeying and executing them.

  Lon told the driver to park so those inside could see the parade. Few on Eleventh Street noticed the man leaning out the carriage window. Hundreds of torches, lanterns, and transparencies passed the intersection, followed by the band, then wagons carrying VETERANS FOR LINCOLN, another band, more marchers. Lon opened his pocket watch.

  “Begging your pardon, sir, the curtain’s already up.”

  “Yes, I’m sick of this. It’s cold.” That was Mary Lincoln, still as shrewish as Lon remembered from the terrible passage through Baltimore.

  “All right, Mother, we’ll go.” A tap on the carriage roof started them forward. At the corner of Eleventh and F, a street boy yelled at passersby, “This way to Ford’s, one block to Ford’s, seats still available at Ford’s.”

  The carriage turned right from F into Tenth, parking on the wrong side so Lincoln could alight on the curb. Gaslights shone on gaudy posters flanking the doors. Ford’s was showing THE LAVISH REVIVAL OF THE HEARTRENDING DRAMA BY MR. DION BOUCICAULT—“STREETS OF NEW YORK.” Lon dismounted. He handed the reins and a coin to a Negro boy.

  “She be right here minute the show’s over,” the boy said.

  “No, fifteen minutes before.”

  A sheet of lightning flamed across the dome of the sky but the thunder remained far away. The carriage door opened. Lincoln hit his silk hat on the door, grabbed it before it tumbled off. He laughed, and his eye fixed on Lon. “Say, I’ve seen you before. First time in Harrisburg, wasn’t it?”

  “You have a wonderful memory, Mr. President. Price is my name. I worked for Pinkerton’s then.”

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Price. Welcome to the dullest job in town.”

  Lincoln helped his wife alight. She too remembered Lon. She wrinkled her nose in what amounted to a sneer. Life among the mighty had its penalties.

  John Ford and an assistant manager ran out to greet the Lincolns and escort them up the carpeted stairs. Lon followed. They passed behind rows of turning heads in the darkened dress circle. Someone exclaimed, “There he is.” People applauded. Lincoln waved his top hat, pulled along by his angry and impatient wife.

  A passage led from the dress circle to the presidential box. Actually it was two boxes with a middle partition removed. The rich wallpaper was the color of red wine. Lincoln held a chair for his wife, then leaned over the rail to bow and acknowledge applause while the actors waited onstage. The President gathered up his coattails and sat in a rocking chair. He saw Lon step out to his assigned post in the passage. “No, no, Mr. Price, stay. Enjoy the play.”

  Lon thanked him, came back into the box, and stood with his back against the door. Mrs. Lincoln took a Japanese fan from her beaded bag, shook it open noisily. Her ostentatious fanning drew stares from the opposite side of the dress circle.

  The evening’s melodrama had a complicated plot involving a wronged man, one Captain Fairweather, a treacherous bank clerk named Badger, and a stalwart hero, Mark something-or-other. Lon paid little attention. He kept watch on sections of the theater visible to him.

  Management lowered the curtain after the second of five acts. Lon asked if the President or his wife wanted to step out. Mary Lincoln snapped, “No.” Across the dress circle, people rose, chatting and moving to the aisle. Lon saw Margaret Miller, seated by herself.

  “May I go outside a moment, Mr. President?”

  “Certainly, Price. Anything wrong?”

  Lon lied. “No, sir.”

  He stood in the passageway, overwhelmed by guilt and renewed longing. Margaret’s face shimmered in his thoughts like a lantern projection. He’d worked hard to purge her from his heart and mind after deciding in New York that he could do nothing else. Over the months the pain had eased, although it would never go away.

  When he returned to the box, Margaret was studying the President and his wife. She saw him. She dropped her playbill and sat rigid, ignoring a gentleman trying to return to his seat. Her eyes seemed to burn like black opals. He couldn’t look away.

  The fire curtain rose; the gas mantles dimmed. Mr. Ford appeared from behind the proscenium. “Ladies and gentlemen, to honor our distinguished guests, the President and First Lady, we have arranged a special presentation. Mr. Sothern, whom you are enjoying in tonight’s performance, will favor us with a recitation of the popular celebratory balla
d by Mr. T. Buchanan Read, ‘Sheridan’s Ride.’”

  “Well, it’s election time,” Lincoln whispered to Lon. “Can’t hurt.”

  The audience whistled and cheered in response to the announcement. A week before, in the Shenandoah, General Philip Sheridan had galloped his great black horse, Rienzi, from Winchester to Cedar Creek to lead a counterattack against Jubal Early. Following Sheridan’s victory, poets rushed their laudatory verses to the public. Read’s caught on instantly.

  Mr. Sothern, a transplanted British actor, stepped to the footlights and declaimed, “‘Hurrah, hurrah for Sheridan! Hurrah, hurrah, for horse and man!’” Lon’s eye kept straying to Margaret.

  The second interval came before act five, advertised as THE SPECTACULAR FINALE! INFERNO IN THE SLUMS! Lon doubted a stage effect could duplicate what he’d experienced. He stepped into the passage again and there she was, a strange, pensive expression on her face.

  “Hello, Lon. I nearly fainted when I saw you.”

  “I could say the same. You look beautiful, Margaret.” And she did, wearing emerald green silk, a black shawl, her hair knotted high on the back of her head in a cadogan with ringlets and a decoration of little white roses.

  The box door opened. Margaret caught her breath as Lincoln came out. He smiled with a warmth that relieved the ugliness of his mole-speckled face. “Hello there. Mr. Price, who’s this charming visitor?”

  “An old friend, sir. Mrs.—”

  “McKee,” she said. “Good evening, Mr. Lincoln.”

  “Good evening, my dear. We’ve not met before. Are you a Washingtonian?”

  “Transplanted from Baltimore. To be candid, sir, I suppose you’d call me Maryland secesh.”

  “Well, Mrs. McKee, that can be forgiven. I’m in a devil of a lot of trouble with some of my friends because I don’t believe we should flog Southerners unmercifully when we have peace again. I propose to hold out a hand to our brethren who strayed. Let ’em up easy.”

  “Who’s that you’re speaking to, Father?” Mrs. Lincoln exclaimed.