Assassin (6 page)

Steven and I liked Mr. Lincoln more and more. We also liked Mrs. Lincoln’s tall, light-skinned Negro dressmaker, and it was plain Lizzie Keckley did more than just make dresses. When Willie and Tad had the measles, it was Mrs. Keckley who helped their mother care for them. “She calms Mama down,” Willie told us. “Papa is mighty glad to have her around.”

My grandmother liked Mrs. Keckley too and enjoyed assisting her. “You look at those eyes, Bella,” she told me once as we walked home together from the White House. “You look at her eyes, and you know she’s seen some things. She was a slave for thirty-seven years, hired out by her owner to make dresses for other women. That’s how
she got her freedom. The women she worked for helped her raise the money so she and her boy could be free.” My grandmother shook her head. “Why, she told me”—she lowered her voice, even though we were alone on the street—“Don’t you go repeating this, but she told me she was so light skinned because the master had his way with her mother. After she was sold away, the same thing happened to her, forced to lie with the white man who owned her.” She shook her head again. “That’s why her son is so light he could join the army.”

“You mean they won’t let Negroes in the army?” I asked.

“No, the president’s afraid the border states would join the Confederacy if we let Negroes fight.”

“My mother and father had slaves,” I said, although I knew my grandmother had that knowledge.

“Your mother was a good person, Bella, and I loved her. Still, that doesn’t make slavery right. Just think of a woman as fine and smart as Elizabeth Keckley treated like that.”

HIS STORY

So the war has begun. There was no other way. I think often of old John Brown’s words about blood. There will be blood aplenty! Some of the blood has been my own. A knot grew on the side of my neck, a tumor they said it was. I went to a doctor to have it removed, and his knife cut deep into my neck. The wound healed badly, leaving a mean scar.

I do not remember exactly how it came about, the story that I had served for a time on the field of battle and been wounded there. Ah, yes, it comes back to me. I was at dinner in a hotel dining room with a woman whom I had just met. She reached across the table and touched my neck gently with her fingertips. “Were you injured in battle, sir?”

What could I say? Maryland had surprisingly not seceded as Virginia did, but many a lad from Maryland crossed her borders to serve with the Confederacy. “I could not but serve where my heart lies, with the boys in gray,” I said. It was a small misspeaking of the truth. Certainly, my spirit was on the battlefield daily!

“Oh,” said the lady softly, “I do not agree with the Southern cause, but I can feel nothing but admiration for a man who fights for what he believes in.”

Of course, there were many who would hear the story and declare it to be untrue. To them I would merely say, “You know how stories circulate about those of us in the public eye, and it does look for all the world like a bullet wound.” I would laugh off the subject. What harm could there be in such a story?

I found it to be something of a challenge to win the hearts of the women of the North even while telling them I had fought for the South. Ah, yes, their lips spoke of their love for the Union, but their hearts could be won easily by Wilkes Booth, who made no secret of his love for the Confederacy. Such a woman was Lucy Hale.

I saw her first in a dining room in Washington City where she dined with a young man I thought I recognized.

“Is that young Lincoln at the next table there?” I asked my companion, a man who knew many people connected with the government.

“It is,” said he. “That’s Robert, the president’s oldest son.”

“Umph!” I made a disgusted sound, and my friend, who knew how I felt about Lincoln, smiled.

Through the first few courses of our meal, I watched the couple. Young Lincoln leaned eagerly toward the lady when she talked, and his face spoke clearly of his admiration for her. She was not a beauty, her features leaning toward thickness. Still, by the time they took their leave, I could see that there was a charm about her.

“Pray tell, who is the lady?” I asked as we watched them walk away.

My friend laughed. “Little difference her name makes to you, Wilkes,” he said. “She would never look your way, not with your known allegiances. That is Lucy Hale. Her father is Robert Hale, a senator from New Hampshire. The man is a total abolitionist and a favorite of Lincoln’s. They say Hale will be appointed as an ambassador when his term is up.”

“Abolitionist, aye?” I raised my eyebrows in question. “And you think the lady would not find me interesting, do you?”

“Forget her, Wilkes,” he said. “She has no need of a complication such as you, I am sure.”

I did not forget Lucy Hale. Rather I made it my business to learn about her, and by asking about, I discovered that she lived with her parents in the National Hotel. Immediately, I changed my own place of residence to that same hotel. On the first day, I sat for a time in the lobby, as if waiting for a visitor.

It was not long before Miss Hale appeared. She was expecting a friend to come by, I heard her tell a clerk. She took a chair across from me. I pretended to read a newspaper that I had with me, but I watched her. Then I put the newspaper down on the chair beside me and looked directly at her. She smiled.

“Excuse me, dear lady, but I believe you and I have met. Are you not Elizabeth Jenkins of New York?” I said.

“I am not.” She spoke somewhat shortly, but something on her face made me certain she was interested in pursuing the conversation.

“I beg your pardon,” I said humbly. I dropped my eyes and held my tongue. It was not a long wait.

“I know who you are,” she spoke rather peevishly, but I was certain it was a pretense. “I’ve seen you on the stage, and I saw you recently when I dined with a gentleman friend.”

I stood and bowed slightly. “I am J. Wilkes Booth, a fact you seem to know. Won’t you give me the honor of knowing your name?”

“A lady never engages herself in conversation with a gentleman unless they have been properly introduced,” she said, but a smile had crept onto her lips.

“I am sorry, dearly sorry, to hear that.” I looked around me wildly. “Surely there is someone about who can perform such an introduction?” I clapped my hands. “Ah, yes, there is Herbert, the desk clerk. Shall I bid him come to my aid?”

“No,” she said. “I’ve never considered myself to be a lady.” She laughed and held her hand out to me. “My name is Lucy Hale, Mr. Booth.”

And so began an acquaintance, one that quickly grew into a true friendship. I found Lucy to be fascinating, far more interesting than any other woman who had held my attention in the past.

She did not adore me blindly as so many others had. Rather, she knew me with all my faults, but liked me anyway. I found myself more and more drawn to her. I remember one day as we picnicked in a park. We sat eating and watching some children, a boy of about three and his sister, who was only a toddler. Their mother and father sat on a nearby bench, and the children played about them, often coming close to our blanket.

“Would you like a strawberry?” Lucy asked. The little boy shook his head no, but his sister held out her chubby hand. Lucy gave the child the berry, and we watched the surprised look that came over her face as she tasted the somewhat tart fruit. “Children are a delight,” said Lucy.

I told her about Asia’s boys and the joy I found in them. She looked at me, her brows raised. “So,” she said, “do you plan to be a father yourself one day, Wilkes?”

Suddenly, my heart seemed to stop. I reached for her hand. “It would be a joy,” I said, “if my babies could have a mother like you.”

She studied my face for a second, then shook her
head. “Oh, no, Wilkes, not I. It would never work. I could not turn my head while you played with other women.”

“Why would I want other women if I had you?” I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Why indeed, Wilkes, but you would, that I know. I know too that I would not put up with your roving eye. Besides, my father would hate my being married to an actor, especially an actor with Southern sympathies. We could never be married.”

“Don’t speak so,” I pleaded.

“For all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: It might have been,” Lucy quoted “Maud Muller,” a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier.

“Save your sad poems, Lucy,” I declared. “I will not accept a sad ending to our love.”

Lucy was a bright spot during those first years of Lincoln’s presidency, but still I counted the days until another election. For a time it seemed very likely that he would not be reelected. Many people, even in the North, called Grant the cigar-smoking butcher and condemned Lincoln for supporting the general. Besides, Grant had difficulty winning, and thousands of men were killed or wounded.

All that summer of 1864 there was a spring in my step. When I was in Washington City, Lucy and I spent time together, keeping our meetings secret from her father. I fell more and more in love with the only woman I had ever known who did not beg me to marry her.

Then in August word came of a Union victory at the
Battle of Mobile Bay, cutting the city of Mobile off from supplies. On September 2, Sherman’s hard-marching troops took Atlanta. I hated the Northern victories, but felt even more miserable because those victories seemed to make Lincoln more popular.

The Democrats had nominated General George B. McClellan, and at first I had hopes that he might win. My hatred for the man Lincoln had grown as big as my love for the South, bigger perhaps. Lincoln won reelection by an electoral vote of 212 to 21, and a popular majority of more than 400,000 votes.

The North was filled with fools! I drank for two days, not leaving my hotel room.

HER STORY

The day I dreaded came, August 30, 1861. Steven was going away to school. His mother too was leaving on the same train, going back to Pennsylvania to live with her sister. “Just can’t work for that woman,” she had said about Mrs. Lincoln.

I walked with them to the train. Each of them had one small bag, and I volunteered to carry Mrs. Browning’s for her. Soldiers were everywhere, even drilling on the White House lawn.

The train station too was full of soldiers, a sea of blue from their uniforms with some gold mixed in from the braids of the officers. We waited outside. Two army men sat leaning against the wall. One of them, a thin young man with red hair, played a harmonica while his dark-
haired friend sang: “Just before the battle, Mother, I am thinking most of you. While upon the field we’re waiting with the enemy in view.”

Steven’s mother shook her head, her eyes closed. “Their poor mothers,” she whispered. “I am terrible afraid Joe will be in the war soon.”

When they had finished their song, the red-haired man motioned to Steven. “Say, boy, would you like to see how playing a harmonica kept Johnny Reb from killing me?”

“Yes,” Steven stepped toward them. The man reached into his pocket and took out another harmonica. A bullet was lodged in it.

“Wow!” said Steven.

Mrs. Browning took his arm. “We’d better get on now,” she said. They both turned to look at me.

I looked back, too choked up with tears to speak. “I’ll write you letters,” Steven said, “and you’ve got to write back. Tell me what you’re doing, and what’s going on, you know, at the White House and in the city.”

“Good-bye, Bella,” said Mrs. Browning, and she hugged me.

They moved away and started up the steps to board the train. Suddenly Steven turned back, jumped from the steps, ran back to me, and kissed me once quickly on the cheek. He whirled to dart toward the train again and bumped into a soldier.

The soldier laughed. “That’s right, son,” he called to Steven’s moving back. “You have to kiss the ladies goodbye, all right.”

The men who sat against the wall applauded. Steven found a seat beside a window, but dumbfounded, I could not even wave as the train pulled away.

During the months ahead, I wrote many letters. There was no more school for me, Mistress Newby having turned her building into a hospital, and so I filled my empty days by wandering around Washington City, looking for scenes that might interest Steven.

I wrote about how low wooden hospitals went up on every empty lot, and about how the government Patent Building became a hospital too.

Information about the White House came from my grandmother, who told me about how for a few weeks there were actually soldiers camped on the first floor of the mansion. I wrote too what Grandmother told me about how Mr. Lincoln aged more each day, his face becoming more lined, his bones almost sticking through his skin.

I could not tell Steven about what I actually saw at the White House because I did not go there without him. It had been Steven, so much more than I, who had been friends with the Lincoln boys, Steven who laughed easily when little Tad found and moved the control wheel that made all the bells in the great house sound at once, sending the staff into a state of utter confusion.

It had been Steven who did not hesitate to stop important men and ask, “Please, sir, would you explain what news there is of the war?” Sometimes he would be brushed aside, but more often than not something in Steven’s earnest face made the gentleman stop to explain.

From the day when Steven first guided me to the White House, he had been my passport, the thing that made me feel my being there was right. After he went away, I too would have lost contact with the great house had it not been for Mrs. Keckley, Mrs. Lincoln’s dressmaker.

My grandmother came home much excited one day in October. “Bella,” she said even before she had her bonnet removed. “I’ve a bit of real news.”

I sat at the table reading. My heart skipped forward. Always, the mention of news made me think of my father, but Grandmother’s news concerned my samplers. Grandmother had, she informed me, taken them to show Mrs. Keckley. “‘These are remarkable.’ That’s what she said, ‘remarkable.’” Grandmother dropped the bag containing my samplers on the table. “She wants you to sit in on the times I help her with Mrs. Lincoln’s dresses. She wants to teach you herself. Can you believe it child, such a wonderful chance to learn!”