Fates and Traitors (33 page)

“You will be pleased to know that I have welcomed our first tenant,” Anna wrote to Mary in early October. “Honora Fitzpatrick, or Nora, as she charmingly begged me to call her, is a young lady of nineteen years, quite shy, and unkind people might call her plain although I will not. She comes from a devout Catholic family, like ours, and I am certain Nora and I shall become fast friends.”

A few weeks later, Junior informed her that on the first day of November, a second tenant had moved in—Louis Weichmann, Junior's longtime friend and former schoolmate, a cheerful young man with a round face and rosy cheeks, carefully combed hair, and a small, neatly trimmed mustache. Although he was presently employed as a clerk in the Department of War under the Commissary General of Prisoners and proudly served in the War Department Rifles, he had confided to Mary that his most earnest desire was to enter the seminary and become a priest.

The harvest in Surrattsville lasted well into November, and instructing Mr. Lloyd in the proper management of the tavern took much longer than Mary had expected, so it was not until the first day of December that she finally joined Anna in Washington City, accompanied by another new boarder, her eighteen-year-old niece, Olivia Jenkins.

Although it was the capital of the Union, Washington was geographically if not politically of the South, bordered by Maryland to the north and east on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay, and by Virginia to the west and south, with only the Potomac separating them. She might have felt at home there if not for the Union encampments filling every park and public square with rows and rows of white tents, and if
not for all the free colored folk strolling about boldly without showing proper deference. Slavery had thrived in the city until the Yankee president abolished it in April 1862, or Mary could have brought her favorite maid and cook with her from Surrattsville. As it was, she would have to throw away money she could scarcely afford hiring help instead.

By the end of her first week, Mary had hired a suitable colored housemaid, who soon had the boardinghouse well scrubbed and organized. She had also welcomed four new tenants: Eliza Holohan, the sister of one of Mary's dearest friends; her husband, John; and their two young children. Before the war, Mr. Holohan had worked as a stonecutter in Baltimore, but the war had created new professions, and he now worked as a bounty broker, disbursing cash bonuses to entice suitable men into enlisting in the Union Army.

When Mary could spare time from running the household, she explored her new neighborhood, searching out the best markets, hiring a reputable laundress, and finding a church. She felt most at home at St. Patrick's Church on Tenth Street between F and G Streets, which was led by Reverend Jacob Ambrose Walter, a young priest in his middle thirties, fair-haired, bespectacled, and wise for his years, or so it seemed to Mary. He too was a Marylander, a native of Baltimore, and when she introduced herself one morning after Mass, she was compelled to ask, “Father, would you please pray for my eldest son, Isaac, who is off fighting in the war?”

“Of course, Mrs. Surratt,” he said, so kindly and with such warmth that for the first time she felt welcome in the capital. It was a measure of Father Walter's compassion that he did not ask which side her son fought for, even though he knew she hailed from southern Maryland.

It was through Father Walter that the boardinghouse acquired another resident, a nine-year-old girl from Alexandria named Apollonia Dean. She was a student at the Visitation School, a preparatory academy for young ladies affiliated with the parish, and she soon proved to be a sweet and respectful girl, though often wistful and homesick for her family in Virginia, ever more so as the holidays approached.

•   •   •

O
n the morning of Christmas Eve, as Mary and Anna washed the dishes after serving their boarders, Junior came down to the kitchen for a late breakfast alone. “You'll never guess who I ran into
when I was out walking with Weichmann last night,” he greeted them, pulling up a chair at the small kitchen table.

“Santa Claus?” Anna inquired as she poured her brother a cup of coffee.

“No, sis,” he said, grinning up at her, warming Mary's heart. It was not merely a mother's vanity to say that Junior had always been a handsome boy, and he had grown into an even more handsome man. Although he was quite tall, his smooth, fair skin and fine, light brown hair made him seem younger than he was, an asset in his clandestine activities. He had deep-set, thoughtful eyes, a long, elegant nose, and an intellectual brow that Mary loved to kiss when he sat still long enough to endure it.

“Go on, tell us,” Mary urged, using a dish towel to protect her hands as she removed his breakfast plate from the oven, where she had been keeping it warm.

“I met our old neighbor from Charles County, Dr. Mudd.”

“My goodness, how very nice,” said Mary, setting his plate on the table before him and pulling up a chair at his right hand. “How is Dr. Mudd? What brings him to Washington City?”

“As to your first question, the doctor looked well, if a bit harried. As to your second, like the rest of the teeming masses out last night, he was Christmas shopping. He mentioned wanting to find a cooking stove for his wife.” With a sidelong grin for his sister, he added, “You'll never guess who he was with—and no, it was not a jolly old elf from the North Pole.”

“General Lee,” said Anna promptly.

“Wouldn't that have been a fine surprise? No, he was accompanied by none other than John Wilkes Booth.”

Anna let out a squeal and sat down in the third and last chair. “The actor?”

“No, the dentist. Yes, dear sister, the actor.”

Anna squealed again, covering her mouth with her fingers and drumming her heels against the chair rail.

“Anna, please. Do contain yourself.” Sighing, Mary turned her attention back to Junior. “How astonishing. How is Dr. Mudd acquainted with Mr. Booth?”

“Apparently Mr. Booth hopes to buy some land in Charles County.
He made an offer on Dr. Mudd's farm, but when the doctor said it wasn't for sale, I gather he agreed to help Mr. Booth find another property instead.”

“John Wilkes Booth is going to become a farmer?” asked Anna, dismayed. “Surely he doesn't mean to give up the stage. He's too magnificent an actor to quit.”

“When you say magnificent, I suspect you mean pretty.” Junior laughed when Anna swatted him with the dish towel. “Booth was a perfectly amiable fellow. He invited us all back to his rooms at the National Hotel for drinks. Weichmann was keen to go, but Dr. Mudd was disinclined—he had friends waiting for him elsewhere, or so he said—but when I accepted the invitation, Dr. Mudd decided to join us after all.”

“I wish I had been invited too,” lamented Anna.

Mary gave her a sidelong frown. Over her dead body would her pretty, naïve daughter go for drinks in a hotel room with four gentlemen, even if they were gentlemen in the best sense of the word and one was her brother.

“I have to say . . .” After a moment's hesitation, Junior leaned forward to rest his forearms on the table, and Mary and Anna instinctively drew closer. “I believe Mr. Booth is sympathetic to our cause. That chance meeting on the street was not entirely by chance. While Booth was pouring drinks and chatting with Weismann, Dr. Mudd pulled me into the hall, apologized, and confessed that Booth has been badgering him to introduce us for quite some time. When our paths crossed on Seventh Street, they were actually on their way here.”

“Here?” exclaimed Anna. “Oh, how delightful it would have been if he had come!”

Mary felt more wary than delighted. “Did Dr. Mudd say why Mr. Booth wanted to make your acquaintance?”

“He didn't, but he warned me that he suspects Booth might be a secret agent for the Union.” Junior shook his head. “That was not at all my impression. Booth couldn't speak freely, not with Weichmann there in his War Department Rifles uniform, but he said enough. He told me that he had gotten lost while searching Charles County for a suitable farm to purchase and that he had ridden several miles out of his way. As he spoke, he took an envelope from his pocket, sketched a map of his route, and asked me to help him identify the roads he had traveled
and landmarks he had passed along the way. He spoke of Virginia as his beloved country, and he boasted that he can travel freely because his name and his trunk of costumes serve better than any passport.”

“What do you suppose this means?” Mary lowered her voice and spared a glance for the doorway. “Has he heard rumors that you work for the Confederate underground? Does he wish to join it?”

“I don't know,” Junior replied, “but I'm sure I'll see Mr. Booth again, and I doubt very much that his interest in the Maryland countryside has anything to do with farming.”

The next morning Mary prepared a special Christmas Day breakfast for her lodgers, but even as the enticing aromas of fried sausages and roasted apples and fresh cornbread filled the boardinghouse, her thoughts turned to the poor Confederate soldiers shivering in their tents and entrenchments, missing home desperately, their stomachs growling, their ears aching for the music of the festive season and the laughter of loved ones. Tears filled her eyes as she imagined the brave men in butternut and gray making a feast of small rations of hardtack and salt pork, washing the dry mouthfuls down with ersatz coffee boiled up from chicory and toasted rye.

Mary found consolation in the beauty of Mass, in the wonder that unfolded anew with every retelling of the birth of the Christ Child in the Gospel of Luke, but the love and hope and peace that filled her heart as she sat among the worshippers at St. Patrick's Church vanished later that night, when news raced through the city that General Sherman had captured Savannah.

“What will become of our beloved country?” she lamented to Junior as they mulled over the dreadful news alone in the kitchen while their lodgers made merry in the sitting room overhead.

“We'll fight to the last man,” he said, his voice low and tight, his expression bleak. “But, Ma, the Confederacy can't go on as it has been and still win this war. General Lee must stun the Yankees with an enormous victory. Great Britain has to enter the war on our behalf. Something must turn the tide or the Cause will be swept out to sea.”

“But what could this something significant be?” Mary asked. “From what you've seen beyond the lines, our resources and morale are at their lowest ebb of the war. What can we possibly muster up now that we couldn't do before?”

“Better minds than mine are pondering that question even as we speak, even as the Yankees—” Junior glanced at the ceiling. “Even as they make merry and sing carols. But I swear to you, Ma, whatever Jeff Davis or General Lee need from me, I will give, whether it's my liberty, my blood, or my life.”

Not your life
, Mary almost blurted, but somehow she managed to hold back the shameful confession that there was only so much she was willing to sacrifice to the Cause.

•   •   •

O
n the penultimate day of the year, Junior was hired as a courier by the Adams Express Company, one of the most successful cargo and freight transport companies in the nation. Not only would his new job grant Junior greater freedom to travel unimpeded and provide an irrefutable alibi for his illegal activities, but as the majority of the company's business came from parcels shipped to soldiers in the field, their couriers were required to know the location of the Union troops down to the regiment and company.

Junior had every reason to celebrate his good fortune that frosty New Year's Eve, and so Mary made no complaint when he headed out for a night of carousing with friends. Too anxious to sleep, she lay awake in her bedroom saying the rosary and praying for the Blessed Mother to preserve him, body and soul, and was able to sleep only after she heard him return home very late. She did not rebuke him when he staggered down to breakfast the next morning, gray-faced and bleary-eyed, his haggard slump over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table painfully reminiscent of his father's.

Junior was too unwell to attend Mass, so Mary bundled up in her warmest wraps and set out for St. Patrick's Church with Anna, Louis Weichmann, and Nora Fitzpatrick. “Do you know,” she told Junior afterward, as she prepared him tea and toast, for his stomach would tolerate nothing more substantial, “when I was leaving church, Mr. Brewster, one of the ushers, asked me if I planned to take Anna to shake hands with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln at the White House reception tomorrow. Honestly, can you imagine? Anna and I, shaking hands with that Illinois ape and the dreadful creature who turned her back on her own Southern kin to marry an abolitionist?”

Junior's eyebrows rose, and for a moment a new alertness broke
through his lethargy. “Could you attend, if you wished? Wouldn't you need an invitation?”

“Not at all. The Lincolns are so taken with the notion of equality that anyone may attend, and hundreds if not thousands do.”

He peered at her, his eyes bloodshot and bleary. “Anyone can simply stand in line and get close enough to the president to shake his hand?”

“Indeed, if one is disposed to do so, and if one considers the dubious honor worth waiting in line several hours.”

“Astonishing,” said Junior, shaking his head, wincing from the pain the motion induced, and slumping back in his chair again. “These Yankees must think him invulnerable. They ought to watch out. The Fates always punish such hubris.”

“Junior,” she admonished him, crossing herself. “No pagan blasphemy under this roof, not even in jest.”

He mumbled an apology, glanced at the tea and toast she had placed before him, and closed his eyes, his weak appetite apparently fled.

By early evening Junior had recovered from his indisposition enough to come to the table for supper with the family and several of the lodgers. Afterward, Olivia, Nora, and Louis joined the Surratts in the formal parlor to enjoy the warm fire and share an apple cake Mary had baked in honor of Anna's birthday. Mary had just finished clearing away the dishes and was settling back into her chair when the doorbell rang.