Annapolis, page 49
“Lincoln promised Captain Stafford as many tickets as he needed.”
“Probably thinks no one will come otherwise,” snorted Booth.
Alexandra now avoided the actor whenever possible.
He was full of brandy and Confederate opinions, but afraid to fight because he feared scarring his face. He went about with a wild look in his eye, but he let others go to war for him while he bragged about smuggling the kind of drugs that Alexandra had been quietly bringing to the Surratt house for four years.
However, Booth was still one of the world’s best actors, and he now played the charmer, his famous face full of a smile. “Alexandra, have I not done you a great favor, more than once, in getting you tickets to my performances?”
“Well, yes.” She looked at the floor, to avoid the dark beam he aimed at her.
“Then a ticket to the inaugural is a fair exchange.”
“But you detest Lincoln.”
“Wilkes would see how uneasy lies the head that would wear the crown,” explained Surratt.
Booth glanced at his skinny little friend. “Do I dare tell her?”
Alexandra looked up, met Booth’s gaze with her own. “Tell me what?”
But Surratt jumped in. “Tell you how much he admires your family’s commitment to honor and sacrifice.”
Booth nodded, as though some understanding had passed between him and Surratt. Then he took Alexandra’s hand. “If you can bring me close to Lincoln, I will bring you closer to ecstasy in my next performance. I will play my lines only to you.”
“Won’t Juliet be jealous?” she cracked.
“Perhaps it will be Desdemona, if I am Othello.”
“I can’t see you playing a darkie.”
“Nor can I.” Booth raised the back of her hand to his mouth. Then his dark eyes were once more on hers. “I carry your picture in my pocket, dear. You are an intoxication, even when you wear black for a dead fiancé.”
“And you are a windbag, Mr. Wilkes Booth, especially when you woo a lady to get something you want.”
Booth’s smile widened to show his teeth, like a dog offering a small warning. “I woo a woman for her beauty and her loyalty to the South.”
“The South is dead… as dead as my southern sailor.”
Booth let go of her hand. “You seem most cavalier with the memory of your martyred Ethan.”
“I cherish his memory. He knew there had to be smarter ways than war to get what we wanted.”
“So do I,” Booth said seriously.
Alexandra thought for a moment. “On that basis, I will try to get you a ticket.” And perhaps he would leave her alone after that.
“You know where I can be found. At the National Hotel.”
WASHINGTON HAD ALWAYS been a muddy place, even on the hillsides, and the heavy rain on the morning of the inauguration had created a giant, sucking quagmire, as if the swamp that the city had risen from were trying to reclaim it. But the great white dome was now complete. It defied the mud and shone through the miserable gray mist, final proof, as Lincoln had hoped, that the Union would go on.
It would be a much different Union, however, just as the family Captain Jason met at the train station was different, inside and out. They went with a unity of purpose that none of the Staffords could have felt four years before. There was no arguing over slavery or Lincoln now. No happily inebriated chatter from George, no sniping between Margaret and Antonia, no lecture from Jack Browne.
As they reached the crowded square at the East Front, Iris Ezekiel looked up and said, “It sure is fine.”
“Fine that it’s finally finished,” said Antonia.
“It’s just fine to be goin’ the same way as everybody else for once.”
The Old Captain looked over his family and realized that Alexandra was not with them.
“She had to visit a friend at the National Hotel,” said Margaret, shaking the mud from the hem of her black dress.
“Visit a friend?” said Jason. “But Lincoln will be speaking in half an hour.”
“She said she had promised him a ticket,” George explained, “before she found out that you would only get four.”
“She and her friend will just have to watch from down here, with all the younger generation.” Antonia took Eve by the arm. “Except for this mother-to-be. She sits beside me, so long as she promises to name the next boy Abraham.”
“NATIONAL HOTEL!” cried the hack, pulling his horses to a stop.
Alexandra stepped out into the Pennsylvania Avenue mud. All around her umbrellas were glistening and bobbing in the streets, blossoming like black flowers as they emerged from the hotel, rising to be ready as ladies and gentlemen hurried across the lobby and out into the rain.
Alexandra slipped unnoticed past the desk clerk and up the stairs to room 228. She took a deep breath. She feared Booth’s reaction to the news that she had not been able to get him a ticket.
She knocked. No answer.
A second time.
“Can I help you?” The voice came from behind her. The man had a beefy face and whisk-broom mustache, derby firmly in place, cravat nicely knotted and perfectly stained, right where the stickpin should have been: the house detective.
“I’ve come to speak with Mr. Booth,” she said.
“Now ain’t that nice. The second dolly today. Don’t you know it ain’t ladylike to be visitin’ a man in his hotel, miss?”
“I have business with him.”
He grinned, as though he knew what kind of business.
So she pulled a calling card from her purse, then a pencil, and on the back of the card she wrote, “Inaugural ticket not available.”
The detective read it over her shoulder before she shoved it under the door. “He already got himself a ticket, dearie.”
“He did?”
“Miss Clay, senator’s daughter, from New Hampshire. Guess she’s sweeter on Romeo than you.”
“Good,” announced Alexandra, and she hurried off to hear what Lincoln would say, now that Grant had Lee pinned at Petersburg.
IT WAS TAKEN as a sign of God’s favor that the sun burst from the clouds at exactly the moment that Lincoln stepped to the podium.
Jason Stafford shivered at the glory of it, and perhaps at the damp wool sea cape, soaked by the morning rain.
“Both parties deprecated war,” Lincoln was saying, “but one would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.”
Jason and Margaret, Antonia and Eve, sat several rows behind Lincoln, on the rough plank stands constructed for members of Congress and other important ticket holders. The rest of Jason’s entourage stood below, to Lincoln’s right, about halfway up the Capitol steps, except for Gabriel Shank. He sat on a camp stool at the back of the crowd, probably well out of earshot. And beside him was Alexandra.
Jason could tell by the black coat and bonnet and the red hair.
“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”
ALEXANDRA STRAINED TO hear Lincoln’s words, but the low murmur of the crowd made it nearly impossible. While Gabriel sketched, she scanned the crowd.
And there he was, in the crush of ticket holders on the pediment above Lincoln’s left shoulder. She first noticed him because of a familiar little boy, the son of theater owner John Ford, pressed up against the wrought-iron railing. Behind the boy was the rotund bearded figure of Ford himself. And behind Ford, in a fine top hat, fit for an inaugeral—as Lincoln pronounced the word—was Booth.
Lincoln was reaching the climax of his speech. His voice was rising. He was looking out over the crowd.
And Booth seemed to be pushing the little Ford boy aside so that he could get closer, peer more intently, almost read the speech over Lincoln’s shoulder. And now Booth’s hand went to his pocket. What was he doing?
JASON WAS SHIVERING. He could not help it. Wet wool and mighty words would make any man shiver.
“With malice toward none, with charity for all…”
Jason thought of Ethan, of Alexandra and Dan’l Parrish.
“… with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right…”
He thought of Tom.
“… let us strive to finish the work we are in…”
He thought now of George, standing out there, resolute and sober, a staff officer with all the respect that any line officer commanded.
“… to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle…”
He thought of Gabriel and the women of the Fine Folly.
“… and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
After a moment of silence in the clear spring air, the cheer burst forth.
Jason began to cry. He could not control it. He cried that he no longer had his son Tom to comfort him. He cried that he did not have his son Ethan to comfort. He cried, he supposed, because he was old. He sensed a shuddering beside him. His wife was sobbing, too. So he quickly blew his nose and wiped his eyes, for her.
As he took the handkerchief from his eyes, an envelope appeared on his lap, and the face of Antonia, the face he had known longer than any other, was smiling through her own tears. “Jack said to give it to you now.”
“What is it?” he asked above the sound of the cheering.
“From the Hero’s insurance payment. Money to pay off Dan’l Parrish. It’s Jack’s gift to you, in Ethan’s honor. He says you taught your sons well.”
Jason looked at Lincoln as he placed his hand on the Bible. “I tried.”
NOW BOOTH WAS moving away, and Alexandra was feeling better, because she never knew what to expect from the crazy actor, who had grown so much crazier as the South slipped closer toward defeat.
xvii Mourning
Five weeks later the Fine Folly was draped in black.
All America was in mourning, and Alexandra Parrish wore a blanket of guilt that would have smothered her except for the fear poking holes in it.
Secretary of War Stanton, who had tearfully consigned Lincoln to the ages on the morning that he died, was now intent on consigning anyone who had been involved in his murder to one of the lower rungs of hell.
Booth was dead. But detectives and soldiers had swept through Washington and the surrounding counties, arresting dozens of people who had known him or allegedly had known of his conspiracy. The prime suspects—a collection of ne’er-do-wells, half-wits, and stagehands—were imprisoned on the monitors Montauk and Saugus. People on the periphery, like John Ford and Mary Surratt, had been thrown into Old Capitol Prison. Mary’s son, John, on Confederate business in Canada at the time of the assassination, had disappeared.
As Lincoln’s funeral train made its way across New York, the train of evidence led at last to the Fine Folly.
A burly captain named Lonergan and a skinny civilian detective named Swett appeared one May morning in the company of eight soldiers. Captain and detective were admitted to the front parlor, offered tea, which they declined, and invited to sit on the settee under an engraving of the Constitution. This was the only downstairs room that had not housed wounded soldiers, but the sun pouring through the front window still found plenty of cracks on the ceiling and walls. After all its hard use, the Fine Folly was falling apart.
“What can we do for you, gentlemen?” Antonia wore a black dress, very plain, that emphasized her white hair and alabaster skin.
“We would like to speak with Miss Alexandra Parrish,” said the captain. “We were told she resides with you.”
“She has volunteered loyal help here at the division since—”
“We have no interest in her nursing history,” said Mr. Swett testily.
“I am at your service, gentlemen.” Alexandra glided into the room, nothing more than a red-haired shadow in a black dress. She held her hands clasped carefully in front of her so that no one would see how much they were shaking.
The captain asked Antonia if she would excuse them.
“I’d like her to stay,” said Alexandra. “Miz Antonia has been a mother to me, and considerin’ how… official you gents look, I think I’d like to have my mother sittin’ here, helpin’ me answer your questions.”
“Why would you think you need help?” asked Swett, leaning forward, bouncing on the balls of his feet, as though he could barely control himself.
The burly captain said, “You have nothing to fear from us, dear.”
Alexandra knew that was untrue.
“What do you know of John Surratt?” asked Mr. Swett.
“That… that he’s wanted as one of the conspirators against the president.”
“A boarder at his house puts you there many times, bringing packages.”
Alexandra glanced down at her hands, then shot a glance at Antonia, who sat serenely, as though she were not in the least surprised at this revelation.
“Well… I’ve been there, but—”
Swett pulled a notebook out and began to write. “Yes, go on.”
“Miss Alexandra is a fine seamstress, gentlemen,” said Antonia calmly. “And she has been doing work in Washington for many years.”
“Are you saying that her visits to the Surratt house were completely innocent?” asked Swett.
“What else would they be?”
Swett pulled out a carte de visite. “Are you familiar with this person?”
Antonia glanced at the image, as though she were Pandora peeking into the box. “It’s Alexandra.”
“Well, this carte was found in Booth’s pocket.”
Alexandra felt the collar of her dress suddenly tighten around her throat.
But old Antonia barely blinked. “I read in the papers that he was carrying pictures of several women, along with a compass, a whistle, and a map. Are you investigating all of the women? What about the mapmakers?”
That gave Alexandra time to fashion an excuse. “I was a great admirer of his acting. I’m not the only woman who ever offered him a carte de visite.”
“No. Certainly not,” said Antonia brusquely. “Now, as you gentlemen have declined a cup of tea…” She began to stand.
Swett pulled a calling card from his pocket and held it before them. On one side was printed “Miss Alexandra Parrish.” On the other was written, “Inauguration ticket not available.”
Antonia gave Alexandra the slightest of sidelong glances.
And Alexandra felt her stomach drop like a gallows door. “I… I had to tell him. I expected him to be angry, but I did not give him the ticket.”
“Yet he was there,” said Captain Lonergan with an ingratiating smile. “At the inauguration, probably planning to do his deed that very day, before the whole nation. Surely you must have some idea as to how he got there.”
“Did you question the house detective at the National Hotel?” asked Alexandra, her voice quavering. “He said a senator’s daughter had come earlier that day and had given Booth a ticket.”
“A senator’s daughter?” asked Antonia.
“Yes,” said Alexandra. “A senator from New Hampshire. Booth once showed me a carte de visite from her.”
And Antonia, who never backed away from a fight, charged ahead. “Was that carte in Booth’s pocket, too, gentlemen?”
“Never mind about Miss Clay,” said Swett. “We’re here to interrogate—”
“You do not suspect the daughter of a New England senator, but the daughter of a Patuxent River planter is fair game?” said Antonia in her highest dudgeon. “Well, do you know whose house this is?”
Captain Lonergan withdrew a slip of paper from his pocket and read it. “The home of a Captain Stafford?”
“Come with me,” commanded Antonia haughtily.
And Alexandra felt a little better. Antonia was a force against which slavery had not prevailed. How could these two?
Almost meekly, the men stood and followed her down the hallway.
Through the French doors at the back, old Zeke could be seen tending his rhododendron, but Antonia turned sharply to the right and into the library. “Here, gentlemen, is Captain Jason Stafford.”
The library, as always, was dark, leather-brown, embracing. Held in its caress was a simple pine coffin, in which lay an old man wearing a gold-trimmed blue uniform. His widow sat beside him. His only surviving son stood by the window.
“Captain Jason Stafford, of the Philadelphia, the Essex, the anti-pirate patrols, the Steamship Board, the Navy Department, and father of two navy men who gave their lives in the recent conflict.”
“What is this?” asked George, looking up.
“These gentlemen,” said Antonia, “do not seem to believe that Captain Stafford is quite as important as some pissant senator from New Hampshire.”
Swett began to turn crimson. Lonergan simply stood at parade rest.
“They believe Alexandra was part of the conspiracy to kill the president. They have not, however, accused the daughter of this senator, who got Booth a goddamn ticket to the inauguration.”
“Killing the president was like killing the captain. He collapsed an hour after he heard the news,” said Margaret. “This girl has been treated like a daughter in this home. She would never have done what you are suggesting.”
Swett answered, “Her own brother was a blockade-runner. She—”
Eve Stafford appeared in the doorway. Her hair was down, a silk dressing robe wrapped around her, and an infant wailed in her arms. “George, what—”
“Allow me,” said Antonia, “to introduce Abraham Jason Stafford.”
The government men looked at each other, then at Alexandra, who was looking at the baby, because she could barely make eye contact with any of the good people who, at this moment, trusted her more than she deserved.
