A Night of Horrors: A Historical Thriller about the 24 Hours of Lincoln's Assassination (20 page)

“Good God,” she said, looking over the railing at the man lying face-down on the floor of her home. “Go and check all of the rooms and make sure there is no one else who is injured.”

“Millie!” she screamed, her frustration breaking through her calm appearance. “Where are the cloths and water I asked for? Bring me cloths and a basin of fresh water immediately!” Mrs. Seward let her eyes roam around her home. The floors were freshly swept, the rugs were aired and beaten just today. The tables and chairs were free of dust. But there were puddles of blood here, and spatters of red on the wall there, and the knobs of the doors were smeared with blood. Even her dress was stained crimson. She kneaded the linen kerchief in her hands over and over. ‘What to do? What to do?’ she frantically thought as the tears spilled over her eyelids.

“I must care for my family,” she said aloud, answering herself. With that, she took some of the clean cloths from Millie, as the maid hurried up the steps with them, and escorted Freddie as he was carried to his room. Millie blinked back tears as she carried the rest of the cloths and water to Secretary Seward’s room and surveyed the carnage. The family and friends, staying at the Sewards’ home, were first awakened by Fanny’s screams of murder, slowly emerged from their rooms. Some lingered at the doorways of William and Freddie and surveyed the wounds for themselves. Others stayed below, not wishing to see any more than the blood on the walls. Eventually, they all would gather below the landing and await word of the condition of father and son.

“Quickly, Millie,” Robinson called. He took a cloth and dipped it into the water and rung it out into the basin. Without a word, he gently lifted the flap of the cheek on William Seward’s face and held it in place with the damp cloth.

“Now, Miss Seward, hold the damp cloth firmly against the wound. We must stop the bleeding.” Fanny pushed the cloth against her father’s face. She had not countered the pressure with her other hand, so his head turned eliciting a low moan from her father.

“You must use your other hand to keep his head stable,” Robinson instructed her. “I have seen men recover from worse than this on the battlefield,” the Sergeant encouraged her. “The doctor will be here soon.” All the while, Sergeant Robinson efficiently pressed damp cloth after damp cloth against Seward’s wounds. He then took out his knife and cut away the blood-drenched shirt. He quickly looked down the Secretary’s chest and stomach and found no further damage. He then leaned forward and pulled each cloth back to inspect the depth of the cuts and punctures. Only two were somewhat worrisome to his mind.

“Miss Seward, let’s switch. These two require more pressure than the others,” he pointed to the slash at the base of the Secretary’s neck and a puncture in his shoulder. Fanny waited for Robinson to take his position on her father’s face wound before switching places.

“Millie, dampen another cloth and then go for more water,” he instructed. He replaced the now blood-soaked cloth and pressed the clean cloth against Seward’s face.

“How much more can he bleed? And live?” Fanny asked, her tears dripping.

“I have seen worse on the battlefield,” he repeated, though he was worried that the Secretary would never survive. He was already pale from the loss of blood and Robinson was having problems getting it to stop. And he knew that Seward hadn’t recovered yet from the carriage accident. Millie returned with fresh cloths and water. “We must keep pressure and clean cloths against his wounds.”

“Allow me to replace you while Millie tends to your cuts, George.” It was Mrs. Seward who had come back into the room to check on her husband. Robinson’s own shirtsleeve was stained red from wiping the blood from the cut on his forehead.

“He requires firm pressure, ma’am,” Robinson resisted. She hesitated and then let her eyes fall on her sweet daughter’s face. The swelling on her cheek was now mottling red and purple.

“Fanny, allow Millie to put a cold press to your cheek, my dear. I will tend to your father.” Mrs. Seward squeezed her daughter’s shoulder and Fanny instinctively tilted her face to it in affection, but the pain from where she’d been struck caused her to stiffen and pull away.

“I am so sorry, Fanny,” her mother said, embracing her daughter from behind.

“Oh, Mother, how is Freddie?” She asked as she stood up and allowed herself to be enfolded in her mother’s arms.

“He is not well, Fanny. The skull has been broken and his brain exposed where he was beaten on the head. I fear he will not live through the night,” she answered candidly.

“Then I will go to him,” Fanny said.

“No, sit here and allow Millie to tend to you. We’ve had enough family hurt tonight. I do not need you fainting away as well.” Mrs. Seward was already pressing the cool damp cloths to her husband’s neck and shoulder. She let the tears drop from her nose now, mingling with the bloodstains on his bare chest. She quietly but fervently interceded to God for her family. She prayed that He would spare her husband, her son, and the messenger, whom she did not know. ‘So many have died, Lord Christ, let the dying stop with my men,’ she prayed.

Mrs. Seward took the cloths away from the wounds. For a moment there was pale skin with a purplish gash, just a line or innocent mark on his body, then the blood began to seep and flow from the gash, down the neck and shoulders to the bed beneath him. She pressed the cloth firmly back to stop the effusion. The bed was stained and soaked in a bright splotch of red that spread away from her husband like a halo enlarging in direct proportion to his life’s pulse ebbing away. As she dropped the cloths in one basin, she took fresh ones and dipped them into the other basin. The blood on her hands diffused in the water, trailing and swirling from bright red into a diaphanous swirl of pink. This was repeated until the clean cloths ran out and then Millie repeatedly replaced the water and washed the used cloths over and over.

Dr. Verdi finally arrived and in a dizzying procession went from Secretary Seward to Assistant Secretary Seward to Augustus Seward to the State Department messenger to Fanny Seward to Sergeant Robinson. The last refused to be treated until the doctor had ministered to all of the others.

“What has happened here?” Dr. Verdi asked Mrs. Seward in horrific wonder as she numbly walked him from patient to patient. Mrs. Seward did not know how to respond at first. Then, she said flatly, “We have supped full on horrors tonight.”

Powell ran into the dark night and flung the gate open at the end of the walkway.

“I’m mad!” He yelled up to the night sky once again. The blood pounded in his head like the drums on the battlefield and his wide eyes roamed about Lafayette Park searching for his horse and his guide. He saw his horse standing alone, grazing on some grass. He made it to the one-eyed mare and grabbed the reins. She skittered about and he had to make a couple of tries before he mounted her. He looked around for Herold.

“Where are you? Which way?” He called out, but no one was there. “Damn him!” He spun around searching in the night for his would-be guide. “Where are you?” He called out. His voice sounded puny in the dark night. “Damn him!” He repeated.

He looked back at the house and saw a handful of soldiers arriving at the doorway, brought to the house by William Bell, the doorman, and then looking back at him. He kicked the horse and urged her on, but she didn’t move.

“You there! Stop! Halt!” The soldiers called to him from the house and started to jog in his direction.

“Hyaw! Hyaw! He said to urge the horse on. She stepped forward, but only continued at a slow walk. Powell glanced back at the soldiers heading his way. “Move, damn you!” He sank his heels into her ribs and she lifted her head. He had her attention now. He slapped her with the end of the reins and put his heels to her. She launched forth at an immediate canter.

“Stop! You there, stop!” The soldiers called after him futilely as they ran towards him. Powell quickly got the horse to a full gallop, increasing the distance between him and his pursuers. The soldiers jogged after him, but had to give up as he rode away into the night. He realized his hand was wet and sticky from the blood and he wiped it onto the front of his coat. Herold had abandoned him as he suspected he would. He had no idea which streets to take to get to the Navy Yard Bridge to the rendezvous so he would take the back-up route that he had loosely mapped out in his head. He needed to ride east and north to try to get to Benning Road. More than anything, he simply wanted get the city lights behind him. He took a meandering route, losing his way, and slowed to a walk after several minutes when he was sure no one was following him. Powell worked to get his bearings and pick up the next street he needed, but he hadn’t taken a city map with him and his mind was hazy.

In the darkened night, he kept feeling the clawing hands of the unknown men who tried to repel his attack in the bedroom. He took a breath and looked up. The fog was gone and he could see the stars and moon, but when he closed his eyes, he saw the wide-open eyes of Secretary William Seward staring up at him in frightened recognition as Powell raised the knife the first time. But mostly, Lewis Powell heard echoes of his own voice trailing after him through the streets of Washington City.

“I am mad! I am mad! I am mad!”

A Night of Horrors

John Wilkes Booth stood behind the President and held the Deringer just six inches behind Abraham Lincoln’s head. The blood pounded in Booth’s ears and perspiration beaded up on his forehead. Booth’s heart lifted with the realization that he was about to achieve his great dream and deliver his beloved South from the hand of this tyrant. The audience burst into laughter at the best line in the play. Booth did not hesitate and squeezed his eyes shut as he pulled back on the trigger and let loose all of the pain and frustration and misery and hatred and despair of his defeated country.

The hammer slammed down and ignited the powder he had so carefully tamped into the short barrel earlier, causing the round lead bullet to fly the short distance from barrel to brain. The gun jumped in Booth’s hand. Since Lincoln had turned to the left to look at someone familiar to him, the bullet slammed through his skull just behind his left ear and plowed a path of wreckage diagonally through his brain and came to rest behind his right eye. Lincoln’s arms jerked up and fell limp, and his head snapped forward from the blast of the gun. Mary jumped in her seat from the loud discharge and let out a small scream. She instinctively reached out and grabbed her husband to keep him from falling out of the rocking chair. She screamed aloud and looked to her husband with frantic eyes, but the box was full of smoke and her eyes now began to sting.

“Freedom for the South!” Wilkes called out. He imagined that he had yelled it at the top of his lungs, but it was barely audible beyond the inhabitants of the private box. Booth saw Lincoln’s head fall forward and knew he’d hit his mark. He dropped the gun and transferred the knife to his right hand. He now had to get past the officer guarding Lincoln and then head towards the railing to make his escape across the stage and consummate the greatest scene performed in any playhouse.

Major Rathbone, enjoying the play with his fiancé, jerked at the sound of gunfire so close to him and in the President’s Box. The smoke from the gunpowder filled the small box almost instantly and Rathbone tasted the metallic flavor he was used to from battles in the war. It was a surreal sensation tasting it here in Ford’s Theatre. He leapt to his feet, wild with the thought that someone had crept into the box and shot the President. He saw a man in a dark slouch hat, dressed in black drop something small but heavy and move through the smoke towards him. The world seemed to move in the slower motions of true horror. Rathbone’s mind was racing to make sense of the situation, but one thought clarified in his mind: that man mustn’t pass. As the assassin tried to rush past, Rathbone reached out to grab him. But Booth, who was a stranger to the Major, pushed him away with his left hand and raised the Bowie knife high into the air. Rathbone just noticed the glint of a bare blade in the lights from the stage. As the knife came down, aiming for the Major’s chest, Rathbone parried the blow with his left arm. The blade skimmed across his forearm, striking home above Rathbone’s elbow. With his hand raised up, the blade pierced his upper arm and the knife slid into the muscle down the full length of his upper arm, slicing through flesh, nerves, tendons, and arteries. Rathbone cried out in pain from the vicious wound. He looked directly into Booth’s gleaming eyes. ‘This man has shot the President of the United States,’ he thought. But no matter how badly he wanted to put the man down on the ground, the pain of the knife thrust staggered Rathbone. When Booth pulled the knife from his body, blood gushed out filling the void where the blade had been. As the Major turned and stumbled after the fleeing attacker, the blood sprayed from his arm and Clara Harris felt an odd warm mist on her face and neck in the midst of the strange commotion.

As Rathbone staggered, Wilkes Booth rushed to the railing at the front of the box. Booth placed his left hand on top of the railing and began to vault over. As he came over the railing, the spur of his right boot caught in one of the flags draping the outside of the box. The flag ripped and a piece of the blue stripe tore and snagged on the spur, fluttering behind Booth. The Major, desperate to catch the assassin, lunged after him and grabbed at his coat, trailing after him as he was going over the railing. Rathbone closed his fingers on the cloth and felt the tug of the coat, but the man who had just shot the President of the United States continued over. Though Rathbone did not slow Booth down, he pulled him off balance. Booth landed awkwardly on the stage with all of his weight on his left leg. He heard a snap and felt a sharp pain shoot up from his ankle. His head whipped forward and the black slouch hat fell to the stage. He winced and paused, just so slightly, on all fours. Then he pushed himself upright. Instead of quickly moving to the rear of the stage and out through the wings, Booth angled towards the center of the stage walking awkwardly but with dramatic strides. The torn piece of the flag dragged behind him for a few steps and then came loose and lay on the floor of the stage. He watched Harry Hawk, the lone actor on the stage, back away from him with a fearful and confused look on his face. Once he was situated at center stage, Booth dramatically posed by raising the Bowie knife above his head and looking back over his shoulder at the audience.

“
Sic semper tyrannis!
” He called out in his full fluid bass stage voice. The words hung in the air and the bloody knife gleamed in the stage light. The actor-turned-assassin scanned his eyes across the audience. He let his gaze pause and rest on a few faces that he knew. Booth, his exit almost complete, limped dramatically towards the rear of the stage. His stride was overblown and awkward from the pain in his leg, but he pressed on.

Rathbone sank to his knees in the box, already feeling weak from the wound. As if waking from a dream, he blinked his eyes, watering from the gun smoke. His arm pulsed in excruciating pain and he felt hot liquid drip from his fingertips. He spun around to confirm that Lincoln was actually shot and saw him slumped in the rocking chair. Mary Lincoln looked at Rathbone with a pitiful and mournful face and then he heard her emit a wail that shifted to a scream as if her very soul was being sent forth from her lungs.

“They have shot the President! They have shot the President!” She yelled in a tormented voice.

Rathbone spun back and stepped to the railing and yelled, “Stop that man! Stop that man!” But John Wilkes Booth had already made his dramatic pronouncement in the middle of the stage and was now fleeing through the flats for the door and out to safety.

Major Joseph Stewart was in uniform in the Orchestra section right up front. He was an avid theatergoer and was looking forward to this benefit performance of
Our American Cousin
for Laura Keene. He was in the midst of laughing when his breath left him because he was startled at the discharge of a gun behind him. Instinctively, Stewart knew it had come from the President’s box and meant trouble. As he was standing and looking back and up to the box behind him, he saw a man leap to the stage over the railing from the box. ‘Good God, he’s shot the President,’ was his immediate thought. As the black-suited man made his way to center stage, Stewart attempted to step from the balustrade and cross the orchestra pit to catch the villain. As he put his second foot on the balustrade, though, he lost his balance and fell back to the orchestra seats. So he climbed down into the orchestra pit and stepped across a few chairs and then pulled himself onto the stage.

The director of the orchestra, who had come backstage to talk with the stage director, saw Booth approaching him from the stage and thought his face was familiar. Not knowing why John Wilkes Booth would be onstage, and hearing a commotion brewing in the audience, the director stepped towards Booth whose eyes were now wild. Wilkes was muttering to himself. When Booth saw the orchestra director approaching, he slashed at him and cut his coat and shirt. Booth made his way to the door that led to the alley and his horse. He pushed the door open and thought he heard movement and voices behind him.

As Major Stewart stood on the stage he called out, “Stop that man!” He pointed at Booth but none of the actors or stagehands made a move towards Booth. They just stared in confusion. Stewart bolted after Booth and closed the distance. His mind was racing, wondering who had shot the President of the United States and why there were no soldiers in pursuit of this man. Stewart lost sight of Booth as he made his way backstage and through the flats standing in ready for the next scene. He caught a glimpse of him going through a door to his left and ran as quickly as he could. The door slammed closed. Stewart was now just a step behind the assassin, but he knew he would be able to catch him. In his haste, he reached for the knob on the wrong side of the door and lost precious moments in panic and confusion. ‘Where was the damned doorknob?’ He looked up and down the door in confusion until he realized his mistake.

“Damn!” He cursed as he threw the door open and pounded his feet in hot pursuit.

Booth had just burst through the back door of the theater. The night was dark, but he moved on painfully while his eyes adjusted. He just made out Peanuts John holding his horse rather than that fool Spangler.

“Give me the horse, boy!” Booth called reaching for the reins. Wilkes went to step up into the stirrup and onto the horse as he’d done hundreds of times before, but his left leg did not have the strength to hold him. The horse skittered and danced around as Booth reoriented himself. Peanuts John was asking if he could help. Booth heard the door open and Major Stewart yelled, “Stop!” He looked at Peanuts and hissed, “Help me you idiot!” Peanuts quickly stooped down and cupped his hands together and Booth placed the shin of his broken leg into them and grimaced as he pushed up and swung his right leg over the saddle. He had mounted the horse, but she was spinning in a circle as he gathered the reins.

“Now outta the way, boy!” Booth snarled at Peanuts John and kicked him in the chest with the boot of his right foot. Suddenly, as Booth began to urge the horse forward, Major Stewart appeared at his side grabbing for the reins. Booth righted himself in the saddle and kicked the horse and easily guided her to the right and out of the grasping reach of the soldier.

“Stop! Stop!” The Major yelled from behind him.

Booth put his spurs to the horse, each kick sending pain up his left leg and into his spine. He rode out of Baptist Alley and turned right, galloping east down F Street. ‘I have done it. I have done it.’ The words kept repeating in his mind. The many months and years of frustration and anger had been spent in one brief moment. ‘I have done it,’ he exulted again. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that the soldier wasn’t following him and no one else was in pursuit. He was the only one flying from the alley.

“Stop! You there! Stop!” Stewart yelled as the attacker rode out of the alley. Stewart stood with empty hands and watched the man who shot Abraham Lincoln ride off into the night. The horse’s hooves sounded hollow on the packed dirt of the street. The moon was rising above Washington City and the fog and mists were clearing away.

Army Surgeon Charles Leale had joined in with the crowd and laughed heartily when Asa Trenchard called Mrs. Mountchessington a “sockdologizing old mantrap.” The loud sound of a gunshot brought his laughter up short. He sat up straight, blinking his eyes in surprise. He realized that the entire audience was quiet as well as the lone actor on the stage. It was an odd silence. A small puff of gray smoke drifted out of the President’s Box and hung over the stage. There was the sound of a brief struggle and a man dressed in black jumped from the box through the smoke and onto the stage, landing on all fours. Leale grew more confused with what was happening, trying to figure out how this action fit into the play and growing concerned about the smoke that came from the President’s Box. The man in black now hopped across the stage as if he was hurt and flourished a dagger, clearing the stage before him.

Suddenly, another man stood at the railing of the box and pointed at the stage.

“Stop that man!” He commanded. Leale, along with the rest of the audience, was still in a state of confusion and looked from the box to the stage and at the audience members standing and sitting around him. Then came a piercing scream from the President’s Box.

“They have shot the President!” It was the unmistakable voice of the First Lady, her voice ladened with pain and heartbreak.

“What is that you say?” People in the audience called.

“The President has been shot!” Others called out. Suddenly, men rose to their feet and pointed to the stage, growing angry. Leale looked to where they were pointing.

“Catch that man!” But there was no one on the stage at all. Just the footlights shining on an empty set.

“Hang that man!” Another growled out and flung his arms in empty anger.

“Catch him! Kill him!” The audience began milling about and pressing towards the stage and the orchestra pit. In the dressing circle, Charles Leale and the rest were looking here and there hoping to see something that would instantly clarify the situation or explain what was happening. But no one had the answers. Down in the orchestra section, a man jumped onto the stage and chased after the assassin in vain. The voices rose in a cacophony of confusion. Leale felt himself jostled back and forth. He was standing, but not sure how he could help. Then, over the crowd, he heard another woman calling from the President’s Box.

“Is there a surgeon in the house? Is there a surgeon in the house?” A woman called down from the railing of the President’s Box. Leale’s head instantly cleared of any confusion. He rushed across the aisle and vaulted over seats, making a direct line to the President’s Box. Leale elbowed his way through the crowd pressing around the entrance to the President’s box, explaining that he was an Army Surgeon and needed to get in to help President Lincoln. Men were pounding on the door and pushing against it with all of their strength, demanding entrance. The door did not open nor even move in the slightest.