Fates and Traitors (52 page)

“You cannot travel to Philadelphia alone,” said Edwin tiredly. He had resigned himself to accepting the hatred of the people. He
understood that they were compelled to pour out their vitriol upon someone, and John was beyond their reach. Edwin had confided to Mary Ann that he believed he would never again be able to take to the stage. His brilliant career was over.

“I will escort you, Mrs. Booth,” offered Launt Thompson, the celebrated sculptor and Edwin's loyal friend. He and Mr. Aldrich had hardly left Edwin alone for a moment since he had returned to New York.

Edwin thanked him sincerely, and Mary Ann swiftly packed a bag, and after swathing herself in a heavy black veil, she embraced Edwin and Rosalie and set out on Mr. Thompson's arm. He stowed her luggage in the carriage, helped her aboard, and settled himself in the seat facing her, and soon they were off, heading toward the Hudson River and the ferry. A train leaving from Jersey City would have them in Philadelphia before nightfall.

As they drove through Manhattan, over the sounds of the horses' hooves Mary Ann heard what sounded like scores of newsboys hawking extra editions, their voices shrill with excitement. “What are they shouting about?” Mary Ann wondered aloud.

“Heaven knows.” Mr. Thompson leaned over to shut the windows and close the curtains. “With so many of them yelling at once, it's difficult to make out, isn't it?”

At last they reached the ferry dock. Mr. Thompson urged her to wait in the carriage while he attended to her luggage, and when he returned to help her descend, he hurried her down the pier, aboard the ship, and into a seat in a secluded corner of the deck so quickly that she hardly had time to catch her breath. “If you'll excuse me for a moment, madam,” he said, and darted off. She watched, bemused, as he left the ship, ran down the pier, vanished inside a news shop, and returned with a newspaper folded beneath his arm, mere moments before the ferry set out.

He said very little as they crossed the water, and he did not glance at his paper even once. An intense sensation of dread stole over her, but she willed herself to remain calm, determined to extend this last little time before the unknown blow fell.

The crossing completed, they collected her luggage, disembarked, walked to the railroad platform, and boarded the train. There Mr. Thompson regarded her solemnly and gave her the newspaper. “You
will need all your courage now,” he said. “The paper in your hand will tell what, unhappily, we must all wish to hear.”

Over the sudden roaring in her ears, she became aware of the passengers all around them, talking in varying shades of excitement, anger, gladness, and shock about the assassin John Wilkes Booth. She shut out the clamor of voices and unfolded the paper and read of how only yesterday her darling boy had taken shelter for the night in a tobacco barn on a farm in Virginia, how Union officers had surrounded him and had demanded that he come out, how his companion had obeyed but he had not, how the officers had set the barn ablaze, how John had emerged rather than burn, how a zealous officer had shot him through the neck, how he had fallen where he stood.

How he had died in the early morning hours, calling for her.

She was thankful for the heavy veil that hid her anguish from the world.

•   •   •

F
or five days Mary, Anna, and Nora had endured especially grueling interrogations, questions that twisted and turned back upon themselves so that Mary found herself dizzier, more bewildered, the more she tried to hold her ground. She loathed the officers who tormented her, despised them for how they treated Anna, humiliating the poor girl by laying out on the table before her items they had found beneath her bed—sketches of Mr. Booth costumed as Shakespeare's Romeo, illustrations of her initials and his intertwined within wreaths of rosebuds, pages upon which she had written “Elizabeth Susanna Booth” over and over again in her finest hand, and of course, the photograph of Mr. Booth she had been unable to bring herself to discard. Mary was grimly satisfied when she learned that Anna's profound embarrassment had rendered her even more reluctant to speak to the officers than before, not that she had much to tell them. Mary had been careful to divulge as little as possible to her tenderhearted, innocent girl.

On a Wednesday afternoon, more than a week after her arrest, Mary was again brought into the interrogation room, where she was startled to discover the warden himself awaiting her. “Be seated,” he instructed her, and by recently acquired habit, she promptly obeyed. “Perhaps you have already heard the news out of Virginia this morning.”

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.”

•   •   •

H
e 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 relentlessly 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.