The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (31 page)

Abigail considered. Either General Baker was lying about what Virginia McShane had told him, or, more likely, Virginia McShane had lied to General Baker: for some reason, Mrs. McShane did not want the head of the federal Secret Service to know about her husband’s suspicions. And that meant—

“Is this correct, Miss Canner?”

“We had a disagreement, General. Let the matter end at that.”

Baker had his hands on his wide hips. He towered over her. She was
reminded forcefully that this was the man who had seen to it that none of the major conspirators in the plot to assassinate Lincoln two years ago had lived to tell their stories.

“You have been told to leave this matter alone, Miss Canner. Now I am telling you again, for the last time. The murder of Arthur McShane is solved. The case is closed. There will be no further questions about it. Not by you. Not by anybody. Is that clear?”

“Yes, General. It is clear.”

“Good. Because, if I have to tell you again, I’m locking you up.” Grinning savagely. “And believe me, Miss Canner, all those tales you’ve heard of what happens to prisoners in Elmira and Point Lookout? They’re all true.”

One of Baker’s men ushered her back to the lobby. Fielding took one look at her face and offered to drive her home. Abigail shook her head. She insisted on seeing the rest of the revue. After the show, they shared cracked crabs at the late buffet at the National Hotel. Fielding gossiped and made jokes, and a grateful Abigail tried not to think about Baker’s threats. She was pondering instead Mrs. McShane’s lie to him about their conversation. Lafayette Baker spoke for Stanton; and Stanton was these days Lincoln’s closest adviser. If the widow was willing to hide from General Baker what she shared so readily with Abigail, that could only mean—

“I need to speak to Jonathan,” she finally said.

“Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Hills is a delight. When one is down, his sense of humor will fill—Oh.” He saw her expression. “You mean
now
.”

V

For Jonathan Hilliman, the events after his arrival at the Bannerman manse that night would always remain a blur.

The negotiations at the Garfield residence had been long and dispiriting, with Jonathan himself frequently exiled to the kitchen. Dennard, on behalf of the President, had offered several compromises. Stevens and Butler, on behalf of the House Managers, were adamant. Lincoln’s Cabinet had to resign, with the exception of Stanton, to be replaced with a Cabinet more consonant with congressional policy. Lincoln had to agree, in writing, that no major decisions regarding either the disposition of troops in the Southern states or the question of eligibility of Southerners for office would be made without the approval of the
Congressional Joint Committee on Reconstruction. When Dennard finally agreed to take all of this back to his client, Butler added a third condition: the President had to admit, publicly and in writing, that he was guilty of the charges against him.

Dennard said such a course was impossible: Lincoln would lose all ability to govern. Butler refused to back down; and, just like that, the negotiations collapsed.

It was nearly eleven before Jonathan arrived home. He expected to find Fielding drinking in the library as usual, but Ellenborough told him that “young Mr. Bannerman” had not yet returned from the theater. Jonathan poured himself a drink and settled down to wait. Ellenborough freshened the fire. Jonathan tried to get him to go to bed, but the butler explained that his duties did not permit him to turn in just yet. Not until young Mr. Bannerman was home. Surprised to find his glass empty, Jonathan poured himself a refill. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked on toward midnight. Only now did Jonathan admit to himself that he had been brooding, all through the negotiations, on the fact that Fielding and Abigail were out together.

Again.

Absurd, of course. He had no claim on either of them. They were adults and could do as they liked. Another glass. He continued to brood, then had a sudden, brilliant notion to pen a note. He was not sure to whom he was writing, and after a while not sure what he was writing, either, so he tossed the pages into the grate. That would teach her. At some point he decided to shut his eyes for a minute, and in his dream Abigail crouched in front of him, softly calling his name as she pressed a wet cloth to his forehead, and then Fielding and Ellenborough were lifting him by the armpits and dragging him to the stairs. Jonathan found the dream hilarious. Fielding could not possibly be helping him to his room and onto the bed, because Fielding was out with Abigail, who was every bit as engaged as Jonathan himself was. Somebody pulled off his shoes and tugged blankets over him. In the dream he heard Fielding whisper, “You are an idiot, Hills,” and then Abigail’s worried voice on the landing, as though she would ever be upstairs at the Bannerman residence. True, Fielding occasionally brought women home. But Abigail Canner was not that kind of woman. Abigail was—she was—was his—

He slept.

I

“
I HAVE SPOKEN
to Stanton,” said Rufus Dennard. “General Baker will not trouble you again. I am outraged that he bothered you last night. You should have informed me at once.”

“Thank you,” said Abigail, and meant it. She was standing in front of her employer’s desk. Jonathan was in his accustomed place at the table, but the two of them had scarcely exchanged a word. It was Thursday morning, four days until trial, and there was a great deal of work to be done.

“There is something else,” said Dennard. His jowly face was unusually pink today. “The only reason General Baker tracked you down at the theater is that you upset Mrs. McShane. I cannot imagine what possessed you, et cetera. My instructions were perfectly clear. You are not to pursue the question of what happened to Mr. McShane.”

Abigail stood very still. Big soft snowflakes drifted from the darkness to stick briefly against the windowpane before swirling onward.

“Sir, I think—”

Dennard held up a restraining hand. “I know what you think, and I told you to abandon your inquiries. My rules. My firm, my rules.” He had balled soft fists on the desktop. “My goodness, Miss Canner. Do you believe yourself to be the only person in Washington City who cares about the crime? Don’t you think I wish I could press the police to act with more alacrity?
You
are searching for the killer of a stranger.
I
lost a dear friend. But I cannot spare the effort just now. The risk to
our client is too great. If you are going to be a member of the bar, you must learn to temper emotion with duty, et cetera. Is that clear, Miss Canner?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are to drop this matter. Once and for all. I do not want to hear again that you are taking an interest in this terrible crime. Otherwise, I shall dismiss you, no matter what the political consequences. Do you understand, Miss Canner?”

Abigail frowned. “Not entirely. Why would there be political consequences to my being dismissed?”

“You do not know? No one has told you?”

“Told me what?”

The countenance softened. The anger was gone. “Well, never mind. I don’t suppose it is important just now.” He considered. “When I took you on, I was simply doing a favor for Charles Finney, who is a dear friend, and to whom I owe a great deal. I had no particular expectations. I frankly assumed that Finney was simply trying to make a very public statement in that way that he has. Something to do with equality, et cetera. Well, I see that I was wrong. You are indeed going to be a lawyer, Miss Canner. Oh, you will have problems. As I am sure you are aware, there are yet a fair number of states that, by rule, do not admit negroes to the bar, and many that maintain rules, either formal or informal, against the admission of women. How you deal with that is your own concern.” He pulled a letter from his desk. “When the trial is over, you shall begin to study formally, assignments and so forth. The work will be difficult. You will have two years to master all of the law of the Anglo-Saxon people. I have engaged Judge Davis as your tutor. You will have to make some sort of financial arrangement with him. That is your business. I assume that you can afford it.”

“Yes,” she said, because any other answer would be embarrassing. She would work it out somehow.

“Good. Now. Second. Third, I suppose. You are my apprentice, but you remain the junior clerk. We are going to the Mansion this afternoon, Hilliman and Speed and myself, to discuss what happened last night. No, Miss Canner. Nothing to do with General Baker. Last night, I fear, the settlement negotiations collapsed, just as Sickles predicted. So we must meet the President and take a view. You will remain here and hold the fort. If this arrangement discommodes you in any way, I assume you will keep it to yourself. We haven’t the time for more distraction.
We have a client to defend and a trial to win, and the time for personal pique is behind us.” The pouchy eyes seemed to bore into hers. “Do you understand me, Miss Canner?”

“I do, sir.”

“Do you have any complaint?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Now, go away and send in young Mr. Hilliman.”

II

“I warned you,” thundered Stanton. His eyes were red-rimmed and watery, either from anger or from illness, although there were those who said that he took opium. “They were never serious about these negotiations. They were testing us for weaknesses, and we stepped into their trap. We showed them how weak we believe our own case to be!”

They were at the Executive Mansion once more, in the Cabinet Room, Stanton on his feet, Dennard and Speed and Lincoln seated, Sickles on the divan. Jonathan was in the corner, taking notes. Abigail and Rellman were back at the firm, watching the office. Perhaps by leaving Rellman behind Dennard intended to soften Abigail’s exclusion.

But Jonathan turned his thoughts away from her, certain that the whole room was aware of his embarrassed flush. This morning over breakfast, Fielding had called Jonathan several varieties of fool.
Just tell her
, Fielding kept saying. But when Jonathan asked what precisely he should be telling her, Fielding cited the question as more evidence that he was a fool.

“Well, now, Mars,” the President was saying, chair tilted back as usual. “I’m not all that sure we showed we were any weaker than they were. Maybe their effort to negotiate was just a feint, but, for all they know, maybe ours was, too.”

Stanton, a man of action, did not believe in bluffing, any more than he believed in negotiating or apologizing. He shook his head, but sat down, his face fierce.

Lincoln, meanwhile, was telling a story. “You know, back when I lived in Kentucky, there was a family where every member fell ill after a meal. When the doctor came, he attributed the sickness to the greens that had been served. Now, it happened that the family had a son named Jake, a ne’er-do-well whom nobody particularly liked. And so, the
next time the mother announced greens for dinner, the father decided nobody would eat until the greens had been tasted by Jake.” He laughed hard, his chair rocking back so that it now balanced precariously on rickety hind legs. “That’s why we tried negotiating, Mars. We had to test the greens on the Managers before we feed them to the Senate.”

“Very prudent,” said Speed, ever the sycophant.

Dennard looked up from his notebook. “Mr. President, I think we should now assume that there will be no further negotiations, whether here or in New York.” A hard look at Jonathan. “It is time that we discussed strategy for the trial.”

Lincoln had a way of letting his left eyelid droop lower than his right, making him seem sleepy and alert at once. “I am wondering,” he said, “about Greeley.”

“He is sticking to his story,” said Dan Sickles. He was hunched at one end of the divan, the bad leg stretched across the faded cushions. From the way Sickles was rubbing his thigh, Jonathan decided that the pain must be terrible today.

The President nodded. His eyes were shut. His head was resting against the bookshelf. “Mr. Greeley,” he said, “possesses that peculiar consistency granted to the man who is always wrong.”

Horace Greeley was the well-known editor of the
New York Tribune
, the most widely read newspaper in the country. He had been in his day an early Abolitionist and a great supporter of the war, but by 1864, when the conflict seemed destined for a bloody stalemate, he had called urgently for peace. When Lincoln chose instead to press for victory, Greeley told the Administration that he had made contact with a representative of the rebels, who wanted to find a compromise. Lincoln had sent his secretary, John Hay, to Niagara to meet with Greeley and the rebel commissioners. Nothing had come of the meeting, and Greeley insisted that Lincoln himself had sabotaged the meeting, missing the chance to end the war and save thousands of lives. Lincoln’s supporters considered this nonsense. The negotiations failed because the commissioners had no real authority to compromise, and in any case would never have agreed to Lincoln’s terms. But Greeley stuck to his story, and was sticking to it still.

“Will they call him to testify?” asked Dennard, anxiously.