The Judges of the Secret Court Page 5

  The guard in the corridor, Lamon, the one member of the Secret Service whom he trusted, because the man fussed over him so, sitting there in the half light, heard that moan night after night. But not many other people heard it, and Mary Todd Lincoln, if she did, paid no attention. Lamon was in Richmond, but Mother was here.

  As though state affairs were not burden enough for him, Mother was worse than ever these days. He had long ago ceased trying to understand her, and she could not be helped. Certainly, in this life, she did little enough to help him, or anyone else she knew well, either, for that matter, though she was kind enough to strangers. It was merely with her intimates that she had not the patience to remain human. No matter how tired he might be, no matter how heavy a schedule he might have, Mother had to have her whims, and his only defence was to give in to them. So tonight they must go to the theatre, which he had no wish to do, and this afternoon, for a drive.

  Mother’s hysterics were the best kept open secret in Washington, but he was grateful to those who helped him keep it. He knew perfectly well why the Grants had left the city rather than come to the theatre. He thought it tactful of them. But one could not explain that to Mother.

  Yet by five o’clock, when he finally arrived, late as usual, but that was not his fault, to escort her to the carriage, her tantrum had passed away. Perhaps they would have a peaceful drive. His only emotion at that was a relieved sigh, which was the most he could summon these days, unless someone told him a funny story.

  If the event had been Armageddon itself, Mother would have insisted upon dressing like a belle of seventeen. No doubt on the day of Resurrection, in which, privately, he did not happen to believe, which would at least spare him one spectacle, she would do the same.

  And yet, in her own way, it was quite true, even though she was harrowing and never gave much thought to behaving any better, he knew she was fond of him, as fond, he supposed, as she could be of anyone not her father. He was wistfully a little tired of doing his best to be the world’s father, when what he wanted, sometimes, was someone to bring him a shawl when he was cold.

  But Lamon did that, not Mother.

  They got into the carriage, which trundled briskly through the White House gates and out into G Street.

  The Presidential carriage was a surprisingly elegant barouche, low slung and gleaming. Despite the mud and ruts of the road, it glided smoothly by. There were few to watch it pass. Mr. Lincoln was not a popular man, either with North or South, for he had defeated the latter and to the former was the advocate of what no man likes for others, which is clemency; and no one thanked him for the new hordes of blacks who wandered everywhere and who, these last few years, had gotten uppity above their station.

  If people looked at all, what made them turn their heads was the sound of Mrs. Lincoln’s laughter. It was whole hearted, but it was not easy. There was a ragged edge of hysteria in it which slashed the silence like a piece of glass, the laugh of a woman who can never be noticed enough, and who is most embarrassing when most spontaneous. She was happy now, but who knew what she would be half an hour from now? Even the cripples turned to watch, and there were a good many cripples in Washington these days. Mrs. Lincoln did not like to see them, outside of a hospital ward, where they belonged. Flat in a bed and grateful for flowers from the White House, they were less disturbing.

  The carriage swerved past the Capitol, past marching troops who no longer had anywhere to march to, past strings of prisoners. Yet the city was gay. Like most capitals, Washington City was irresponsible. And the President was just as bad. He looked like a corpse, and yet he sat there laughing.

  Mrs. Lincoln stirred uneasily. He was not well. And laughter from the ill is apt to be a symptom. Such laughter does not sound spontaneous.

  He was only trying to amuse her.

  “I never felt so happy in my life,” he said. It was agreeable to be out in what was left of the sun, and to have the war over. That was all he meant. He did so want her to be pleased.

  But she was thinking that laughter was unwise. The President had been in such a mood just before their son Willie died, at the beginning of the war. Her own father was dead. Who would she have left to turn to, if anything happened to Mr. Lincoln? He must not laugh this way. It was tempting fate. Her own face became serious. Whatever they did, they must not laugh.

  Seeing the change in her expression, Lincoln gave up. There was nothing to be done with Mother in one of her moods. He blinked and looked at the crowds instead.

  Those who looked at the barouche as it went by, saw only that Mrs. Lincoln was herself again. She might begin by smiling graciously, she was overweaningly timid, but it seldom took more than a city block for that worried look to come back again.

  The wheels of the carriage went around and around.

  At the Navy Yard Mr. Lincoln got out to stretch his legs, and was induced to walk up the catwalk to the monitor Montauk, which was anchored there. That little disk with steel turrets was already part of the past, victory had made it obsolete, but in early evening light the river was almost touching in its gentle swell and idle current. If they did not go to Europe, perhaps Mother would be satisfied with a farm on the Sangamon. He had always liked the Sangamon. But that was the river at home, and this was the Potomac.

  He got back into the carriage and was returned to the White House. As they pulled into the porte cochère, they saw two men leaving, both friends from home, Oglesby, the new Governor of Illinois, and General Haymes. The President felt so happy to see a familiar face, that he stood up in the shaky carriage and yelled at them to stop. It was so seldom these days that he saw old friends, and they always cheered him up.

  He knew what the world thought of him, though whether it was himself or the office the world hated most, he did not know. An office changes a man, so perhaps it did not greatly matter. But Oglesby and Haymes could remember the day when he was just a man, and seeing old friends was like being able to take one’s shoes off, when they hurt.

  He took them up to his office to swop jokes.

  IV

  Wilkes was in his hotel room at the National. It had been his intention to take a nap, but of course he had not really slept. He lay on the bed, with his spurred boots over the edge of it, so as not to damage the coverlet, which was nubby and had an unpleasant texture.

  His pocket watch told him it was 7:45, but he had no real desire to get up. He had had too much to drink today. The brandy had been too sweet. He felt faintly nauseated and faintly furry. The room had a high ceiling and an unpleasant dado. His mind was made up. And yet some part of it was having second thoughts.

  Perhaps if he stood up he would feel better. He stood up; and it was true, he did feel better. He walked around the room. His recitation to young ladies was a parlour piece called The Driven Snow. He was good at it. When their eyes widened, he could pretty well tell how the little affair would end.

  Bessie Hale’s eyes had not widened at all; they had narrowed. He wondered what she would think of him tomorrow, and if she was thinking of him now.

  When he was by himself, he recited only Shakespeare. Tomorrow he would be a hero and a tyrannicide, but he could never be sure when Bessie was not laughing at him, even when she seemed to take him most seriously. She came from the North. Her blood was cold. But the women of the South never laughed at him, or at any man. They had read their Sir Walter Scott, and they knew a hero when they met one. Tomorrow morning, he would be well into the South.

  Besides, he could not back out now. He had already given that letter, signed with all their names, to Matthews, and if it appeared in the National Intelligencer tomorrow and he had not appeared at Ford’s Theatre tonight, he would be an ignominious laughing stock to the world.

  The aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian Dome Outlives in fame the pious fool that raised it,

  he recited to himself. That was Cibber, bettering Richard III. But what was the name of the aspiring youth that fired it?

  He could not remember.<
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  For some reason that annoyed him. He must hurry. He was already late. Out of the theatrical trunk he took a variety of things he would need, for he planned well. This life is largely a matter of appearances, and though he was impeccably dressed as the booted avenger, in order to reach the South he might have to play other roles along the way. It seemed to him altogether natural, therefore, to pack a false beard, a dark moustache, a wig, a plaid muffler, and a make-up pencil, for wrinkles and lines of anxiety, should those be called for. As a last precaution, he snatched up two revolvers, for though the deringer would do for the theatre, being small, dainty, and formal, for a chase one would need something heavier. To lean out of the saddle to fire a pocket deringer, apart from the difficulty of reloading it, would look silly.

  There remained only the choice of some phrase appropriate to the action. This was a serious matter, and Shakespeare was the source there. Unfortunately he could not think of anything from Julius Caesar, Richard II, Richard III, or King Lear, the only Shakespeare he really knew. The immortal assassination line in Caesar unfortunately belongs to Caesar. Payne’s Apostate, his other good role, though a good role, was certainly not immortal verse. Besides, if the words were to have any dignity, they must be in Latin. They must have a certain imprimatur, if that was the word.

  Sic semper tyrannis, out of his little stock of Latin tags, seemed the best. It sounded well, and it was the motto of Virginia, his favourite state. Therefore it was easy to remember.

  Sic semper tyrannis, he said to himself, before the pier glass. He was a little hoarse this evening, but he looked well.

  He went downstairs and left his key at the desk.

  “Are you going to Ford’s Theatre?” he asked the clerk. The clerk said he had not thought of doing so. The clerk, who did not like the theatre much, was accustomed to dealing with actors. He was in particular accustomed to dealing with Mr. Booth, who, though making him uneasy, also amused him.

  “Ah, you should. You will see some fine rare acting,” said Booth, and the randy little man strutted across the lobby and out of the door.

  Did actors have no gestures of their own? wondered the clerk. That finger waggle of Mr. Booth’s came out of the second act of Apostate. No matter who might play Pescara, the finger waggle was always there.

  Booth was annoyed. The clerk had not been properly impressed. He went off to find his little company. The night was fantasticated by mist. Through the mist, the gas lights of the Capitol dome hummed as inimically as a dynamo. A parade was forming. This was Good Friday, an appropriate day, since Lincoln chose to pose as Jesus in Washington City as well as Richmond, but the crowds were still on their first bender after the war.

  What a dreadful thing to celebrate, and yet the mob does not care what it celebrates. Booth, who had fetched his horse, sat above the crowd, like a public statue, and saw nothing.

  The conspirators met on horseback. In the way they held their seat you could see their nature. The horses looked through the misty night larger than they had any right to be. Atzerodt, that miserable scraggly haired dwarf, like a statue of Loki in cheap plaster, almost hung on to his horse’s mane. He was a dreadful Neanderthaler, a drunk given to tugging at the coat-tails of people who would have none of him. Murder, he said, was more than he had bargained for. He wanted out.

  David Herold, with his young and affronted look, had scarcely the wit for conspiracy. Atzerodt might whine to cut and run, but Herold was the type to sidle away instead. Whatever he might be saying to you, you knew he was thinking of his ’coon dog, the one with the twisted curl to the tail, and of duck hunting early of a morning, in the sedges of Maryland. But he would do to hold the horses.

  Arnold, Michael O’Laughlin, and John Surratt were not there. Booth did not care. They were ribbon clerks got up as gentlemen, and so would not be missed.

  Booth cleared his throat and told Atzerodt that he had no way out. He would be hanged in any case. He explained about the letter to the National Intelligencer, that explained the plot in all their names. So Atzerodt would have to shoot Vice-President Johnson. Atzerodt was desperate for friends, and that was the price of friendship.

  Herold he despatched with Payne. Someone had to lead Payne out of the city. One of the horses whinnied and her flank rippled with the cold, with that same motion a pool has, when one casts a pebble into it, a little hurried, but customary. Then she was placid again. She was a good bay mare. Booth cleared his throat.

  It was Payne’s part to murder Secretary Seward while Herold waited with their horses.

  Payne said nothing. He loomed immense there, without a hat, in black trousers and a dirty cast-off white duster, which Booth had once given him, which was why he wore it. His enormous clumsy black Conestoga boots were exposed, by the angle of his leg, to the calf.

  “Yes, Cap,” he said, in that low-pitched, heavy, emotional voice of his. He did not seem to be listening. But he would do it, Booth knew that.

  For an instant he hesitated, he did not quite know why. Payne disturbed him. It was Payne’s suggestion that he come with Cap. Booth could not have that. One had to go to fame alone. Yet as the conspirators broke up, and when Payne was gone, for a moment, as that bulky silhouette nudged its horse down the alley, he felt futile, and perhaps a little lost.

  Then he, too, rode on.

  The time was 9:15.

  V

  The first member of the Presidential party to arrive at Ford’s Theatre was Parker, the Secret Service guard. He came to his post highly recommended, if only because that was the only way his employers could pass him along to the next poor devil to be saddled with him. He had that capon look of any policeman who has been in the force longer than a year, slow, servile to his betters, and insolent when he could be, much given to feeling the slights of this world, very lazy, and addicted to prostitutes and drink. He had been selected for duty tonight by chance, and he was bored. Nothing would happen anyway, and who cared whether the President was shot or not? He had no intention of losing his life for another man; he did not relish being reduced to the status of an usher of the great, when he loomed in his own world quite large himself; and he badly wanted a drink. When at last the Presidential party arrived, he ushered them into the theatre. As the President was on his way to his box, Laura Keene, from the stage, improvised a patriotic joke; the patrons in the dress circle stood up and began to applaud; the rest of the theatre did the same; and Professor Withers, in the orchestra pit, lurched into yet one more performance of Hail to the Chief.

  Mrs. Lincoln, for once, did not seem to be wearing white, though there was something white about her, the lining of her bonnet, perhaps. Both she, and the President in his rocker, sat well back out of view.

  Whenever the stage action paused, those in the front seats of the theatre could hear the creak of the rocker. But it was a very faint sound. If it disturbed anyone, it was only to make him smile. It had to be admitted, whatever his vices, and they were many, that at least the President was picturesque and quaint.

  The performance continued. Though she was no actress, Laura Keene could play herself to perfection, and the part suited her. The audience settled down to watch.

  Parker was bored silly. He left the theatre and went round to a pot house to cadge a drink.

  Atzerodt was also drinking. That was because he was terrified.

  He knew he could not do it, but it took as much courage not to do it, and courage, as time had taught him, came only out of bottles for such men as he. No matter what he might look like, Atzerodt had had the usual shanty backwoods education. He had read the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress, but they had given him no place in the human parable. He felt displaced and lonely.

  Usually, at least in a bar, he could strike up some sort of acquaintance. He would stop at nothing to have at least the illusion of friendship. But he stopped at murder. Booth, he saw now, had not been his friend, but only Asmodeus, leading Christian astray.

  All this talk of tyrannicide and the nobility of democra
cy, which is what his displaced liberal German relatives talked about in the old country, but never mentioned here, meant nothing. Murder was murder, no matter how praiseworthy the cause. It was a hanging offence.

  By the time he left the Kirkwood House bar he was a little crazy. They had given him all these knives and guns. What did he know about knives and guns? He had not served in the war. He had killed no one. He was a coach painter by trade. He did not want to hang.

  He staggered out into the nightmare streets, got caught up in the crowd, was carried along he knew not where, and threw his knife down furtively in the street. He did not want to be caught with these weapons.

  The crowd carried him well beyond the place where he had discarded the knife. He wanted to cut and run. He wanted to cry. But he was already too drunk to run, though tears came easily enough. He watched the clock on the wall. The hands stood at ten to ten. He had no friends in this country. He knew no one. Where could he hide?

  He went on drinking.

  Booth was also watching the hands of a clock. Somehow this evening, his habitual gestures did not satisfy him as they usually did. The bar was Taltavul’s. Of the two bars which flanked the theatre, this was the one he preferred, for the other got mostly actors, who did not pay him as much deference as workmen did.

  Brandy was not quite what he needed now. He ordered a set up of whisky and water instead. Taltavul thought that unusual and would remember it.

  Booth had the eerie feeling that he was doing everything for the last time. He could not shake it. No doubt it was because an assassination, unlike a performance, is a unique act. It cannot be repeated.

  There were too many drunks in the bar tonight. One of them lurched against him, lifted a glass, and said, “You’ll never be the actor your father was.”

  That jolted him. It was ages since he had thought of his father, that benevolent madman with the sagging calves and flopping belly. Junius Brutus the Elder may have played country squire like Farmer George, but it was he the Booths had to thank for their illegitimacy, hushed up though that matter was. One could only be a gentleman by forgetting all about him.