Assassin (2 page)

Usually she would say, “I hate to leave you alone all day, child, but we do have to eat, now don’t we? And of course I’m expected at the White House to clean and help the dressmaker who comes to make Miss Lane’s dresses.”

I was interested in pretty dresses. “Who is Miss Lane?” I asked.

“Why, she’s President Buchanan’s niece. She runs all the balls and such, him having no wife. You can see plain that I have to go, can’t you, child?”

I would nod my head. In truth, it was no matter to me whether my grandmother went or stayed. I was just as
lonely with her in the room as I was by myself. As soon as she was gone, I would open the door, settle myself on the threshold, and with my one doll in my arms, watch and wait for my papa’s return.

It was early spring when first I came to Washington City, but I did not notice how the grass turned green or how the leaves came again to the trees. My grandmother warned me each day, “You must not leave the house, Bella. You could be lost and never find your way back home.”

From my waiting spot I could see two cherry trees with white and pink blossoms, and I remembered the story my tutor had told me about George Washington chopping one down. I knew the big river my father had talked about the night he delivered me to this house could not be far away. I should have liked to see the river in the light of day, but I did not consider going out. It was not my grandmother’s warning that kept me from straying. Rather it was the terrible fear that my papa might come while I was gone, find me absent, and leave, never to return.

The scene from my doorway changed. Cherries came to replace the blossoms. I watched as they were picked. I watched as leaves on the trees turned yellow, red, or brown. My father did not return.

Finally there came a letter from my aunt Ruth, Papa’s sister. My grandmother settled herself at the small table, and I took the chair across from her. It was not a thick letter. I held my breath as my grandmother used a knife to slit the envelope, for it was addressed to her, not to me.
Her eyes moved quickly down the sheet. Then she looked up at me. “Your father will not be coming for you, Bella,” she said flatly. “It seems he has taken to drink and card games. Your aunt says your grandfather’s business is in ruin, that your father sleeps all day and will see no one.”

Not a word came from my mouth. Nor did I cry. I swallowed back the tears that might have come, and I looked about me. So this was to be my life. I was to live here in this one room with this woman who showed me no warmth. It was as if my grandmother read my thoughts.

She pushed back her chair, moved around the table, and pulled me into her arms. “Don’t fret, child,” she said, and she swayed her body to rock me in her arms. “Granny will teach you to sew, and she will make you a new dress.” She kissed the top of my head. “It’s not so bad, little Bella. We have each other now, and I am glad that he won’t be coming back to take you away from me.”

Even my childish mind could understand the situation. Thinking my father would come back to claim me, my grandmother had been reluctant to love me and face another loss. After that day, my life changed.

HIS STORY

The girl remembered me, seeing me on the steps and on the stage. Ah, fair Arabella, I regret what happened to you. Truly I do, but I want the world to know that I could not have spared you. No, no, I couldn’t. You were part of a plan, a plan much larger, much more important than a little girl, no matter how sweet.

Looking back, I think perhaps in some way the plan began there in 1859, the year Arabella saw me on the Richmond stage, the year of John Brown’s uprising.

Yes, they said old Brown was crazy, and perhaps he was. Still, he was brave. I remember the day, November 24, 1859. The war had not yet begun on that sweet November morning, but there were movements in that direction. I came out the door of the theater. The bright light after the
dimness stunned my eyes, but I saw that the street was full of soldiers. Two units of city militia were lined up, waiting to board trains to Charleston. They were going to join hundreds who would stand guard at the hanging of John Brown.

In October the old man had led eighteen men in an attempt to take over the state arsenal at Harper’s Ferry . . . abolitionist fool. His plan was to steal guns, run for the mountains, and wait there to be joined by slaves. He believed they would come to him, come running, those darkies.

He killed some soldiers and took a few men prisoner. Some of Brown’s men died too, and he was captured. Such men always are. I wonder if old Brown knew that, knew that he was bound to die. Many simpletons in the North thought he should have been forgiven because he was insane, and there was also talk that some sympathizers might try to save him.

Hence the street in front of my theater was filled with militia. Suddenly I was struck with an idea. Why not join them? Why not be part of the men who stood for what I, too, believed? Death to those who try to change things in the South! Death to those who hate slavery!

“Wait,” I called to them, and a group of five or so men stopped to look at me. “I’d like to join you for a bit.”

One of them was younger than the others, but he was the one who spoke first. He peered hard into my face. “Aren’t you that actor fellow, Booth?”

I smiled at him. “I am that same fellow,” I say, “but I’ve a notion to join your noble band for a time if you could get me a uniform.”

“Who would do your part in the show?” He pointed with his gun toward the show card with my name posted outside the theater.

“I don’t know.” I laughed. “Nor do I care if I can but be one of you, and I would gladly pay for a uniform.”

One of the older ones spoke more to his fellow soldier than to me. “We could get one off the sarge, I’d wager.”

The young one nodded his head. “Yes,” he said to me. “Will it be blue or gray for you?”

I did not hesitate. Had I not worn the gray uniform in school? “Gray,” I said with a thrill. “It is always gray for me.”

Strange how those words ring in my ears and rest now in my heart, Gray, gray for me. We traveled to Charleston, a fine city, ruined later because it became the capital of West Virginia, that traitorous state that broke away from the true Virginia when it nobly seceded from the union. How could the people there choose so? How could they desire to stay part of a country run by a man such as Lincoln?

But not knowing what lay ahead for the area, I found it pleasurable. We camped outside the city for eight nights. I lived there with the soldiers and was truly one of them. At night we gathered about the fire, comrades all. We sang “Old Dan Tucker,” and other good old camp
songs. Then a soldier with a beautiful tenor voice sang “Danny Boy,” a song about a father whose son is leaving home. The haunting melody made me think of my own father.

“My beautiful boy,” my father used to call me. He was a man who did not live by rules made by other people. He left his first wife and son in England, brought my mother to America, and had ten children with her. My parents were finally married on my thirteenth birthday, two years before my father’s death. As I listened to the song, I thought that I, like my father, must make my own rules for life. “You are a Booth, boy,” he often told me.

When the song was over, they began to call for me. “Booth, Booth,” they chanted, and of course I did not disappoint them. I stood and did readings for them, playing Henry from
Henry III
, Brutus from
Julius Caesar
, and Lear from
King Lear
. Ah, how they applauded, the sweetest applause, perhaps of my career . . . and cheers too. They cheered me for wanting to be one of them.

A newspaperman recognized me and wrote about me, saying I was not a member of their group, but that when I heard their drum roll, I felt compelled to join. It is true! I did have the feeling that I must be one of them, must express my loyalty to the South.

On the morning of December 2, we lined up around the scaffold. It was a brisk day, but not over cold for the time of year. There must have been well over a thousand
of us uniformed men there. No civilians were allowed to watch, for fear of trouble, and I felt fortunate to be an observer.

John Brown was escorted from the jail to the wagon by a man named Avis who had been his keeper for seven weeks. Avis, they say, had grown to like Brown, and the old man gave the jailer his silver watch in appreciation of the kind care he had received. He also gave him a note all about how it would take blood to wash away the crime of slavery. Poor old soul, he really believed slavery was wrong. Did he not see that the colored man was better off as a slave, that this country was made for the white man?

We could see him come riding up to the field outside of town where the gallows had been prepared. He sat on a long wooden box, his coffin, and jumped from the wagon with more ease than would be expected from one of almost sixty years.

From the gallows he must have had a pleasant view of broad fields with cornstalks and white farmhouses, seen through the leafless trees of winter. Suddenly I felt my eyes fill with tears. I was only a few feet away. How his heart must have broken when his tired old eyes saw that no one had come to rescue him.

They put a white linen hood over his head, and I felt sympathy for him rush through my blood. Not sympathy for his vile desire to free the slaves, not disregard for the
five lives lost on his account, but compassionate regard for the old man himself. He was brave, brave indeed . . . knowing that what he did might result in his own death, but caring for nothing save the advancement of the cause he believed in, however terribly mistaken.

I could see him stiffen just before the fall, but he did not cry out. Then his body was hanging there in the Virginia breeze. A colonel shouted, “So perish all such enemies of Virginia! All such enemies of the Union! All such foes of the human race!”

Hearing his words, I wondered. Did he not know that enemies of Virginia and enemies of the Union could not be the same, not for long anyway? Did he not know that old Brown was right about the blood, but wrong in thinking it would be only the blood of Southerners? Did the colonel not realize we were on the edge of war?

When I was about to leave with the soldiers, an officer who had been a hostage of Brown’s at the arsenal came to speak to me. Because he had been among my father’s many fans and appreciated my desire to join the troops, he gave me the spear old Brown had carried. On the handle was written, “Major Lewis Washington to J. Wilkes Booth.” It became one of my most treasured possessions.

I went back to Richmond with the soldiers, and they were with me when I learned that I had been dismissed by
the theater manager for leaving without word. Several of my fellow soldiers prevailed upon the man to change his mind, and he did so.

Yes, I think that seeing old John Brown being brave enough to strike against that which he hated may well have been the beginning of my plan to strike against the tyrant called Abraham Lincoln.

HER STORY

I would no longer spend my days alone. “We must get you to a school,” my grandmother said after my aunt’s letter arrived. Just two days later she came home with news of a school run by Mistress Newby, a kind Quaker lady who would let me attend in exchange for the sewing Grandmother would do for her family.

I was excited as we walked to the school. There had been little chance for me to see much of Washington City, and I enjoyed looking about. Compared to Richmond, where I had always lived, Washington City seemed to have an almost unfinished feel about it. One street, I learned later, had a paved surface, but mostly they were dusty or muddy, depending on the weather.

The street Grandmother and I walked down had a
board sidewalk for a time, but then the boards ended, and we had to walk in mud. “Hold up your skirts,” my grandmother called.

Having been taught only at home, I had never been in a school. I imagined a large brick building with children playing games in the yard. My grandmother turned down an alley and stopped in front of a low building made of white clapboard. There was not even a sign.

“Is this the school?” I looked about for a larger building, but Grandmother knocked at the door.

The teacher came, and as she and my grandmother spoke, I leaned around her, trying to see if there were indeed other children inside. “I’ll show thee to a desk,” said Mistress Newby, and I followed her inside.

Boys sat on one side, girls on the other. On each side of the room, four pieces of lumber made narrow desktops, and students sat behind them. There was room for three students at each desk. One spot on the girl’s side was empty, and I knew that I would sit there.

I walked beside the teacher to the desk she had chosen for me. It was before I took my place that I first saw Steven Browning. He sat, of course, on the boys’ side. I looked up to see blue eyes staring at me from across the aisle. I do not recall anything about the girl I sat beside that first day, but were I to close my eyes now, I could picture Steven exactly as he was, hunched over his book, but gazing in my direction.

For a moment, I was aware only of those penetrating,
icy eyes. The ice melted, however, when he smiled. I was too shy to smile back at him. Instead I looked down and ran my hand over the wooden desk in front of me.

“You will be shown how to walk to the White House when your schooling is over, Bella,” Grandmother had said just before she left me. I had been too interested in seeing the inside of the school to ask who would be my guide.

“Steven Browning’s mother serves with your grandmother, and he will walk with thee, Bella Getchel.”

Dear, gentle, Mistress Newby, with her gray hair, soft voice, and simple dress. She treated me with special tenderness, due, I believe, to my shyness and my being away from my home. There was always an extra pat for my shoulder, an extra smile when I recited. I cannot bear to imagine how great would be the distress to that teacher of my childhood were she ever to learn what path my feet would travel when I was ten and four.

But that day when I was but eight I knew nothing of the future as I walked beside Steven on the dirt road that led us to the north door of the White House. He was the perfect companion for a shy child. I had already observed on that first day in our small schoolroom that the boy loved to talk. Often Mistress Newby would stop a lesson, look at Steven, shake her head slightly, and lay her finger to her lips.