The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (26 page)

IV

That same night, up in Philadelphia, Jonathan dined with Margaret and her father. The Lion now was singing a different tune: he had decided that the Radicals were all traitors and should be hanged. He did not know why the President had not yet closed down the Congress, but he wanted it clear that the army stood ready to do its duty. There was, however, the small matter of the many loyal Union soldiers who had been unable to find work since being discharged and were now destitute. Just a few months ago, a convention of former military men had demanded payment of a bounty in gratitude for their service. Mr. Lincoln had promised to look into finding the funds, but nothing else had
been heard. Surely there must be some way Jonathan could mention the problem the next time he and the President—Yes, yes, of course, and yes again.

Afterward, he stood with Margaret on the sweeping porch. The air off the Delaware River was frigid, but she had always liked the cold. Dark gray clouds scudded across inky sky.

“And what was that about?” Margaret asked, brown eyes steady and accusing, because demureness was an attitude she assumed only around the General. “You and Father. You weren’t arguing about money for veterans. There’s something else. Something the two of you know and I don’t.”

Jonathan smiled and touched a knuckle gently to her cheek. She blushed, as always, at the contact, for he was breaking one of her rules, and she was letting him do it.

“It’s nothing,” he lied.

Meg stepped away and turned her back. She stood straight and determined. She was clad in blue, her favorite color. In the skittering light of the gas lamps, she might have been wearing the uniform of a soldier.

“Father is proud of you.” Her voice was flat. A tired horse whinnied somewhere. Otherwise, the estate had the sudden quiet that sometimes comes just before a battle. A part of him waited for the cannonade. “Father says you are doing your duty, and nobody can ask for anything more.”

Jonathan was surprised. It had never occurred to him that the Lion was capable of pride in someone else, least of all his prospective son-in-law. “Your father is kind,” he finally said.

“No,” Margaret said. “He isn’t kind at all. He is one of the unkindest men I have ever known. But he is still proud of you. He believes that a special integrity is required to do one’s duty when one is facing certain defeat.”

“We don’t believe defeat is certain at all—”

“We.”
She picked up on the word, played with it. She seemed very angry. “We. We?
We
. We.”

“Meg—”

“The word means you and another. You are telling me what you and another believe. Why don’t you ever tell me what Jonathan Hilliman the Third believes? Why do you always hide behind the opinion of others?” She glanced at him, then gave him her back once more. “Tell
me, Jonathan. Tell me whether you, you yourself, believe that Abraham Lincoln deserves to remain in the Executive Mansion.”

“Of course I believe it,” he said, much too quickly. In truth, he was not sure of his motives. He was defending Lincoln because McShane had decided to take the matter on, and then Dennard had decided to continue. Had he spent his two-year apprenticeship in Washington doing corporation law, he would likely have had no strong feeling one way or the other about the trial.

And the others? Sickles and Speed were representing Lincoln with great fervor, but each was a longtime friend; their willingness to fight hard for him was entirely independent of any question of guilt or innocence. If Dennard had a cause at all, it was lost in his affection for legal abstraction. Perhaps the best word to describe his motive was
fascination
—but with the issues raised, not with the personalities or the politics. The only one of them who was acting out of a belief in Lincoln was Abigail.

About whom he dared not think just now.

“Of course I believe it,” he repeated, putting passion into his voice.

A mirthless laugh. “Well, I shan’t tell Father. He believes that the highest form of duty is carrying out your assigned tasks when you think your commander is a madman.”

This time Jonathan had the wit to wait. He knew that Margaret was working around to her point.

“I don’t think I care much for Washington City,” she said. “It is a cheerless place. A place of ambition. And dreary, Jonathan. So dreary.”

She was hugging herself, rubbing her upper arms in a way that reminded him, unfortunately, of Abigail, who had struck the same pose the other night, while making a similar complaint.

“Washington has its pleasures,” he said, trying to lighten the mood.

“Pleasures,” she echoed, and a knifelike quality in her voice made something deep inside him twist painfully. “Yes. I suppose so.”

He was suddenly out of his depth. “What’s wrong?” he said, stupidly.

Margaret would not face him. She had a strong fist at her mouth. He would have thought she was crying, had she been a crier. “I understand, Jonathan. I do.” She seemed to be resuming a conversation he did not remember. “But, please, whatever else you do—please don’t embarrass Father.” A pause. “Or me. And don’t pretend you have no idea what I’m talking about.”

He spread his hands, even though she could not see them. “I’m sorry, Meg. Please. Tell me what’s upset you.”

She continued showing him her back. The shoulders might have drooped a smidgen. Margaret had to say the words twice before he heard. “Bessie Hale,” she whispered, to Jonathan’s astonishment. Precisely the rumor he had most feared had evidently made its way northward.

“Meg, I assure you—”

“And then, of course”—a small pause—“the colored woman.”

Jonathan went very still. Probably Margaret felt it. “All that’s going on—”

“I have no need of the details. Men are what men are. I understand that, Jonathan. And, goodness knows, I have been my father’s daughter long enough to understand what marriage is. There is a public role a woman plays, and a … a private role a man plays. I accept that entirely.” In the half-light she half turned. The Lion’s heavy, furious glare burned in her eyes. “But, Jonathan, my goodness. You could be more discreet. If not for my sake, then for Father’s.”

She went into the house.

I

OCTAVIUS
ADDISON HAD
come courting again. They sat together in the parlor as he read aloud from Shakespeare’s sonnets, because he knew that Abigail appreciated them. It was Saturday afternoon, and Nanny Pork was out for once, shopping at Center Market with Old Ellie, another former slave, who lived on the farm across the way. The two young people were not of course alone in the house; that would have been improper. Louisa was in the kitchen, learning from her sister how to be a hostess. As a practical matter, she was hovering in the wings, hoping for a glimpse of something untoward.

But nothing untoward occurred. Abigail, hands folded, perched at one end of the sofa; Octavius sat at the other, the heavy green volume of Shakespeare open on his lap. He wore a suit of the finest wool. He had spent two and a half years being tutored at the College of New Jersey, studying mathematics and biology, but mainly reading theology, in preparation for his work as a Presbyterian minister. The war had changed his mind, and he had left school to begin a mortuary business. The bodies, Octavius had explained to Abigail once, were just lying on the battlefields. Picking them up, identifying them, and writing to their families for shipping instructions had proved lucrative. She had nodded politely, listening to his proudly morbid tale without commenting. Octavius was brilliant and earnest and sweet, as well as painfully shy, and the last thing Abigail wanted was to wound him. She would rather not be spending this time with him, but as he was here, she saw
no reason to be rude. Besides, the smallest argument would have infuriated Nanny Pork, who considered Octavius a catch. The young man’s father edited one of the capital’s colored newspapers. His grandfather was supposed to have been one of the slaves Thomas Jefferson freed on his deathbed, but half the colored families in Washington City claimed that their ancestors had been owned by one of the nation’s Founders, and, the way Abigail saw it, at least a few had to be lying. Meanwhile, Octavius was still reading:

“Very lovely indeed, Mr. Addison,” said Abigail, relieved that her suitor had finished yet another sonnet, and hoping earnestly that he would soon stop.

Octavius beamed. “I am not sure I have told you, Miss Abigail, how much I admire the work you are doing.”

“Oh?”

“For Mr. Lincoln,” he explained. “You may not be aware of this, Miss Abigail, but all our people are proud of you.”

Embarrassed by the praise, not sure how to respond, she made to rise. “Let me refresh your lemonade.”

“Let
me
,” said Louisa, who had been listening in the doorway. She scurried in and removed the tray before Abigail could stop her. “You just sit.”

So sit Abigail did, exchanging pleasantries, even listening to another two sonnets, all the while seething deep inside that Nanny was forcing her through this exercise again. For although Abigail herself kept alive in her heart the hope that her Aaron would return, no one else in the household believed it for an instant; and, at sour moments, even Abigail accepted that she might indeed have to make a different choice, because, with each passing month, the odds of her fiancé’s safe return were declining.

She went still.

The odds—

“Is something wrong, Miss Abigail?” said Octavius softly, squinting behind his glasses. “Have I said something to offend? I apologize if—”

“No, Mr. Addison. Not at all.” She actually smiled, and put a hand on his arm. “You studied mathematics at college, didn’t you?”

A confused nod. “Mathematics is pure and beautiful, God’s creation in pristine unsullied form. I had a mathematics tutor, of course, but I also traveled to England to hear Professor Cayley’s lectures on pure mathematics on the occasion of his ascension to the Sadlerian Chair at Cambridge—”

Abigail was not listening. She was on her feet, suddenly excited, bidding her guest wait while she flew with unladylike haste up the stairs. In the room she shared with Louisa, she opened the cabinet and pulled out one of her notebooks. Ignoring the clear signs that her younger sister’s fingers had been on every page, she flipped past quotations painstakingly copied out from Coke and Blackstone, until she found what she was looking for. She hurried back down to the parlor, where Octavius stood near the window, and Louisa was seated in an armchair, laughing at a joke, leaning forward daringly, even as she hid her face behind an entirely inappropriate fan.

Abigail’s face reddened. There was a hard tone she could assume when she wanted to, inherited in equal measures from her mother and Nanny Pork—a tone even the mischievous Louisa dared not disobey.

She put it on now. “Go upstairs, young lady. Now.” Her sister shot to her feet and, inclining her head toward their guest, drifted from the room. “Stay up there until I call you,” Abigail snapped.

Louisa’s answering mumble was inaudible.

“I apologize for my sister, Mr. Addison.”

Octavius smiled nervously. “I am not offended, Miss Abigail.”

Abigail crossed to the sofa. “Please. Sit with me. I should like to show you something.”

He sat, round face expectant and alive. She opened the notebook. “Can you tell me what this might be?”

“It is simply a number, Miss Abigail,” said Octavius, puzzled. “Surely you know that. Thirteen quadrillion, one hundred and sixty-three trillion—”

He stopped. She had intended to explain, but knew at once she would not have to.

“Ah. I see. I see.” Nodding, muttering to himself. “The highest digit is six. Did you notice that? And no other numbers above four.”

“I noticed,” she said, but Octavius was in his own world.

“No numbers above four. That’s not very clever of them.” He glanced up at her. “A cipher. It’s a cipher, isn’t it?”

II

“I believe so,” said Abigail.

“A cipher,” Octavius repeated. He frowned. “Yes. Yes. One would have to know where the groups begin and end. Either the recipient already knows where to break the lines, or part of the message tells him. Seventeen figures. Well, that could mean anything, or nothing at all. The numbers are low, so the method does not involve either displacement or substitution.” His face seemed mesmerized, eyes flicking back and forth as he studied the page. “Do you know what it says?”

“I am afraid not, Mr. Addison. I was hoping you might be able to help.”

“Possibly. Possibly. My tutor showed us some of the ciphers used over the years to protect military and diplomatic secrets.” His fingers ran lightly along the figures. “That’s what this is. Not a code. A cipher. Not a very sophisticated one. There is pagination in here. That much must be obvious to you. Pagination, lines, and so forth. Still, you cannot break it without the code book.”