Assassin (15 page)

Smiling, I slipped the note into my pocket. Wilkes was my admirer. I had done the right thing to agree to his plan. I pushed down the pain I had been feeling over Steven. I would think only of Wilkes. I had an opportunity to be his friend, to spend time with him, an opportunity that hundreds of women would love to have.

Several days passed. I watched Mr. Lincoln as closely as possible. His personal office was just across the hall from our sewing room. Often our door was ajar, and I moved about, keeping my eyes open. Mrs. Lincoln sometimes came into the sewing room after her evening meal. She would take off her shoes, stretch herself on the fainting couch, and talk to Mrs. Keckley. I kept to my work, listening.

On the fourth evening, my waiting was over. Mrs. Lincoln
came in, and with a sigh, she headed for her couch. “It’s been a hard day for Mr. Lincoln,” she said. “Lizzie, I sometimes think he will just fall dead of exhaustion. Thank God for the Soldiers’ Home.” My eyes were up, but Mrs. Lincoln put her head against the back of the couch and closed her eyes before she went on. “He’s riding out this evening. Dear Heaven, I hope he is able to rest there.”

I fought the urge to gasp. Mrs. Keckley put down her work and went to Mrs. Lincoln. “Does your head ache?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, Lizzie, would you massage my temples?”

I studied the button I had just attached. My plan had been to pretend sickness when I heard what I had waited for, but I changed my mind. I rose and went to Mrs. Keckley. “Mrs. Lincoln’s headache makes me think of my grandmother. She was unwell when I left her, and I suddenly feel I should go home to check on her,” I said softly.

Mrs. Keckley nodded. “No need to come back this evening,” she whispered, and she continued to stroke Mrs. Lincoln’s head.

I left the room quickly. In the hall I met the president. “Evening, Bella,” he said to me.

Wishing for all the world that I had not had to see that weary face, I nodded a greeting and hurried down the stairs.

HIS STORY

Oh, I knew full well that the girl would do her part. It is my gift. I have a wonderful ability to persuade others. Few men and no women can resist me. The girl, Arabella, was a puppet in my skillful hands. I can imagine how proud she felt rushing to the Surratt house, her dark hair flying behind her. Five men waited there. I had added to the conspirators, and I gave them all money so that they did not need to work, only to wait. To wait with horses and a carriage rented at the livery stable and with the supplies—guns, ropes, handcuffs. I paid for it all. It was, after all,
my
scheme,
my
grand plan to save my beloved South!

As soon as the notice came, four of them rode out toward the Soldiers’ Home, taking the back roads, so as not
to be noticed. The fourth man came for me at the National Hotel.

My heart raced as fast as the horses’ hooves as we rode out of Washington City. I looked back only once over my shoulder and saw the outline of the Capitol Building rising above the other buildings like a mountain. I hoped to never see the city again. After the war finally ended, I would resume my acting, but only in the South. I would be a hero, more adored than Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee. Crowds would shout my name and wave flags when they saw me. If my brothers or even my dear mother ever wanted to see me again, they would need to travel into the Confederate States of America. Even Asia would have to come to me.

I felt a pain as I thought of Lucy. She knew of my love for the South, but how would she take it when she learned I had kidnapped Lincoln? Her father would never agree now that we should be wed. She was the strongest woman I had ever known. Perhaps she would have the courage to defy him? I hoped so, but as I looked back over my shoulder, I knew I might be saying good-bye to Lucy. Well, had I not pledged my life to this cause?

“Faster,” I urged my horse on. He tried, but I did not feel one with him. I thought of my dear pony, Cola. If he had been with me, the race toward my destiny would have been even sweeter.

We met our band at the designated spot in the woods,
just out of sight of the Soldiers’ Home. The plan was already being carried out. Arnold had moved closer to the house, where he would watch from behind a tree. When the president left the house, he would run to tell us. The horses were kept ready. We would ride around the back roads and surprise Mr. Lincoln’s horse on the curve.

Hours passed. We spread our blankets on the ground. I could not sleep, but I heard snores coming from the other three. After four hours, I woke Michael and told him to take over Sam Arnold’s watch. Dawn came with no movement from the house. Despair washed through me. “He is not in there,” I said, and cursing, I kicked at the earth beneath my shoes. “Obviously the man never came here. Something must have changed his mind.”

Heads down, we made our way back into the city, and there we learned what had caused the president to abandon his plans. “Richmond falls!” I heard a newspaper boy shout in front of my hotel. I jumped from my horse, unmindful of the reins. It had started away when Michael caught it, but I cared not what became of the rented horse. My only interest was the paperboy.

He was a small boy with a thin face. Grabbing his arm, I yelled, “What are you talking about? Why are you shouting about Richmond?”

The boy wrenched his arm free. “It’s true, mister.” He held up the paper and pointed to the headlines. “The rebs done been chased out of Richmond. I reckon the war is most near over.”

“What makes you an authority on war?” I demanded. I jerked a paper from his hand and gave him a handful of coins, more than the cost of the paper.

“Thank you, mister,” he called after me, but I was already going through the hotel door.

Michael followed me. “What are we going to do now, Billy?” he asked. “Are we going to try again?”

“Go get some sleep,” I said without looking at him. “I will come to you later.”

In my room, I did not have the strength to walk even to a chair or the bed, falling instead onto the floor. I spread the paper on the purple carpet before me, and read, tears streaming down my face. Richmond had indeed fallen to the Union troops. The brave people of Richmond, though, had not given in easily, burning much of their beautiful city so that the Union would capture mostly damaged property.

The new capital of the Confederacy was moved to Danville, Virginia. I stared at the paper. “Danville,” I said aloud. “I have never even been to Danville.” I did not go to the Surratt house, having no wish to face the others, having no wish to answer their “What now?”

I went instead to an establishment that I frequented. I did not speak to the proprietor or smile at the other customers as usual. I settled myself on a stool and ordered one drink after another, never looking up or around me. I drank until I began to forget. Then I stumbled out, went back to the hotel, and fell fully clothed onto my bed. When
next I woke, it was late morning. I washed myself and was going out for a meal when I saw the same paperboy at the edge of the street. No doubt remembering my generosity of the day before, he came toward me.

“What’s the news today?” I asked.

“Mr. Lincoln’s gone to Richmond,” he said, and he held out a paper to me, his eyes bright.

“That’s not a subject I’d care to read about,” said I, but I reached into my pocket to find coins for him anyway.

“He will be back,” I told my friends later at the Surratt house. “He will have to come back, and we will be ready.” I looked from one doubtful face to the other. “Don’t be downhearted, boys,” I said a good deal more cheerfully than I actually felt. “We are a long way from being beaten. We’ll get the fiend yet!”

We didn’t, though, not as we had planned. Details had to be worked out all over again, and my men were hesitant, especially Sam. “Why not wait, Billy?” he argued. “Let’s see what happens for a few days.”

I looked at them, one face after the other, I looked at them there in that room, sitting on the edge of a bed or on the floor, leaning against the wall, and I knew the terrible truth. They had been relieved when we had failed to capture him. They had lost heart. I would find a way to rouse their patriotic blood again, a way to give them courage.

I took money from my purse and passed it out among them. “Relax a bit, boys,” I said. “But do your drinking only here among your brothers. Drinking might loosen
your tongues.” I stopped and looked at each face again. “He whose tongue gets loose will die,” I said, and I put my hand inside my coat where they knew I kept my revolver. I did not speak harshly, only evenly and with conviction. They knew I did not make idle threats.

The next morning, April 10, I, like the rest of Washington City, woke to the ringing of bells. The sound shook me from sleep. I ran to the window to confirm what I thought was true; only a pink glow could be seen to the east. It was not yet dawn. “What in blazes has happened at the churches?” I asked aloud, and then suddenly I knew. A sound, the saddest, I think, that has ever come from me, rose in my throat and mixed with the wild ringing of the terrible bells.

Pulling on my pants but not bothering with a shirt or coat, I stumbled out onto the street. People poured from every door, women still in nightgowns, men half dressed. “The war is over, friend,” a man near my hotel door said to me, and he reached as if to embrace me. I shoved him away. My legs seemed as dead as my heart felt, but I staggered into the street.

People danced and shouted. Grown men cried, tears of joy rolling down their pitiful faces as if they were babies. “Let us thank God,” one man shouted, and a dozen or more people knelt there in the middle of the street.

Saloon owners threw open their doors, and men entered, making toasts as the dawn came, toasts to General Grant, toasts to Abraham Lincoln, toasts to the United
States of America. For once I did not want to drink. At first I wanted to die. I moved among the celebrating people, and I wanted to die. My revolver was back in my room. Perhaps, I thought, I should get it. Perhaps I should kill myself before the day fully came, the first full day of defeat. Only thoughts of my mother, Lucy, and Asia stopped me.

Numbly, I made my way back to my room. Falling on my bed, I began to cry. If only, I thought, if only I could be in the South now to mourn with my people. I cried far more than I had when my father died. This loss was bigger than my father, bigger than my own little life.

When I had no more tears to shed, I went to my bureau and rummaged until my fingers found the small envelope of sleeping powders I had been given by a doctor when troubled with insomnia a few months earlier. Thankfully, I downed them, and fell into a wonderful, dreamless sleep.

I did not go out of my room until April 11. I went to a good tavern and ate a large meal of beef and vegetables, my first food since the day before yesterday. Then I went to the Surratt house to see how my companions fared. No one was to be found except David Herold and Lewis Powell.

“Well, boys,” I said to them, “I will confess to you that I was brought low by the news of Lee’s surrender. I let myself fall into deep despair, but I am back now.” I slapped the gloves I held in one hand against the palm of the other. “All may not be lost.”

“Not lost?” said Herold, and he looked up at me with such admiration, I had to glance away. Herold was young, not yet twenty, and to him my twenty-six years were to be admired.

Powell admired me too, saw me as a wise and widely successful man. The adoration in their eyes cheered me. “Up with you, men,” I said. “They say Mr. Lincoln is about to speak from a White House balcony. Let us go hear what the man has to say.”

Candles burned in every window of a government building, bands played, crowds cheered. Lincoln stood reading a speech by the light of a candle held for him. He talked of letting the Southern states back into the Union if 10 percent of the voters would take a pledge of allegiance to it. “Allegiance to the Union,” I whispered, and the words left a sour, sickening taste in my mouth.

Lincoln’s son sat on the balcony floor at his father’s feet, catching the sheets that were dropped as the president finished with them. “What is the child doing here?” I said to my companions. “The man does not even know how to give a speech in a serious manner!”

Lincoln began to talk about the possibility of giving some of the former slaves the vote. The thought enraged me. “That does it,” I said. “He is picking up where old John Brown left off. Brown was a criminal. What does that make Lincoln?” I raised my fist in the air and shook it.

People were looking at me, and my companions tried to hush me. They began to lead me away. “Let this be the
last speech the man ever makes,” I shouted, too blinded by fury to care who heard me.

When we were well away from the crowd, Powell spoke. “You could have put us into a real mess, talking so where people could hear.”

I only looked at him and said nothing. “What do you mean, it is the last speech he will ever give?” he asked.

“You two go back to the Surratt house,” I snapped, “and wait for me. I don’t pay you to tell me to be quiet. I pay you to be ready when I need you.” I saw defiance in their faces, and immediately I knew I had gone too far. I need to use charm with these two, just as I used it onstage. I wiped my hand over my face. “Forgive me, friends,” I uttered. “I have had too much to drink, and I have had too much sorrow, far too much sorrow. My brain is fuzzy. I need rest. When I have refreshed my spirit, we will talk more.”

For two days, the twelfth and thirteenth of April, the images are blurred in my mind, blurred with whiskey and despair, but on the fourteenth day of April I awoke with a clear head. I had not received any mail for some time, so I dressed and walked to Ford’s Theatre, where all my mail was sent while I stayed in Washington City.

As soon as I entered the big building, I knew something was going on. James and Harry Ford, brothers of the owner, scurried about giving orders to workmen who worked to separate boxes seven and eight, the best seats in the house. “Why all this?” I asked Harry.

“The president and Mrs. Lincoln are coming tonight,” he told me over his shoulder, “and bringing guests, maybe General Grant and his wife.”