The Professor's Assassin

by Matthew Pearl

  “What is it, Professor?” Dabney asked, slowing his tired mare and riding her back toward him. They were at a stream. Rogers was taking the water’s temperature to determine its depth and whether they should cross or go around. He held up an elongated shell with a dark hue.

  “Look!” Rogers said.

  “An oyster shell? Looks like the sort we’d have at our hotel table back at the university.” Dabney seemed almost nostalgic at the thought, as though his life at the university was far behind and would never be his again.

  “Exactly. Notice the thick hinge,” Rogers said, his heart pounding as he displayed the object. “This sort of oyster isn’t found in this region, Dabney! It must have been transported here and dropped!”

  Dabney stooped over and examined it. “What do we do, Professor?”

  “The rain is too hard to pick up much of a trail, but we must be on guard. We are close enough to Turk’s Gap that, if that were indeed his destination, he could be anywhere in the vicinity. You have your weapon?”

  Dabney nodded and took the pistol from his satchel.

  “Be ready, Dabney.”

  Further searching for the next hours yielded no traces. Meanwhile, the weather worsened.

  “Blast this rain and sleet!” Dabney cried over the heavy thunder, one of the last of their torches extinguished. “I feel ourselves so close, but how can we progress if we can barely see our hands before our faces except during the flashes of lightning!”

  “Take heart, Dabney,” Rogers said, brightening with an idea. “I know a cave not far from here. We will take shelter, and then tomorrow we should reach the cascades.”

  “How will we find the cave without proper light?”

  “It is a wind cave, producing an almost constant gust from its mouth because of the difference in pressure inside and out due to its orientation and elevation. I can get us close enough. Even if we cannot see the entrance, we will feel it.”

  When Rogers determined they had gone as far as possible on horseback, they secured their horses and began a treacherous climb up the rocky ledges to the cave entrance. “Take care with your step,” Rogers said. But the younger man seemed revitalized and helped the professor several times as they scaled the slippery rocks and ledges.

  “There,” Rogers said. The whistle of the wind became a shriek.

  The two men walked arm in arm to steady themselves. As they approached the cavern, they could feel a powerful burst of wind that might have knocked down a child or a donkey; it seemed to go straight through their wet skin and clothes.

  Suddenly, Rogers stopped. He turned around and stared into the horizon.

  “What is it, Professor?” Dabney asked.

  “Wait,” Rogers said, barely able to speak above a whisper. “Look! Of course!”

  As another bolt of lightning illuminated the sky, they could see across to a double cascade flowing through the opposite mountainside.

  “We shouldn’t have been looking for the cascades that Semmes sketched, but the vantage point he would have observed them from. He knows this cave, Dabney.”

  Chapter 11

  They had to creep backward through the opening one at a time. Then, after descending another twenty-five feet, they reached the first chamber. It was cold, and their sweat ran cold, too. The strange gusts at the mouth of the cavern were not present down below. A disquieting firelight jumped into view that cast the myriad stones and stalactites in brilliant colors and made them appear to move and jump like water. Ahead of them, at the passage to the next chamber of the cavern, their eyes immediately fell on a tall, shrouded figure, one arm raised threateningly at them.

  Rogers and Dabney both drew their weapons, but when the figure seemed to become suddenly transparent, they stopped. Rogers moved closer and reached his hand out to touch the figure. It was a formation of carbonate of lime, shaped uncannily like a man.

  While Rogers studied the object, there was movement ahead of them. A figure crouched in the shadows, its back to them.

  “Semmes!” Rogers called out, with a chill that brought forth images of John Davis’s final moments before being shot. He raised his pistol. “Show yourself!”

  The figure rose from the ground, but at full height was one head shorter than the man they sought.

  “Jack!” Rogers cried.

  “Professor?”

  The slave stepped into a sliver of light coming through the rocks above.

  “Are you safe, Jack?” Rogers asked, taking off his coat and wrapping it around the boy’s neck and shoulders with an embrace.

  Jack nodded, his teeth shivering. “I tried to.… I couldn’t.…”

  “Where is he? Where is Semmes?” Dabney demanded, taking Jack’s arm.

  “Let him speak, for heaven’s sake!” Rogers said. “Jack, tell us what happened.”

  “I was out on errands for mother when I saw him—Semmes—running across the lawn behind the hotels with a carpetbag over his shoulder. I knew he was the one they said shot Master Davis. He stopped when he noticed me, and ordered me to accompany him. He said he was going on a ride far away and needed a slave’s assistance.”

  “Did he not recognize you as belonging to the Davis family?” Dabney asked. “And from your meeting in the hotel?”

  “From the meeting at the hotel with Professor Rogers, yes,” Jack said. “But I don’t know he remembered I belonged to Professor Davis. I don’t think he ever knew one Negro from another, to say sooth.”

  “So he did not take you because of our meeting but to have someone serve him. Did he threaten you?” Rogers asked. When Jack indicated he had not, Rogers continued, “Then why did you not run?”

  “I wanted to go with him,” said Jack.

  “What?” Rogers asked. “Why?”

  “I wanted to go with him so I could kill him, Professor. I wanted to do it with my own hands. To avenge my master. We rode along for days when I got the best chance I had. It rained and snowed. He became more and more sickly. He relied on me to nurse him. Finally, when I prepared myself to smother the villain in his sleep, I could not. I could only see my master’s face, disappointed in me for forsaking all he had taught me by example and instruction. To be good. To be Christian. If I only did not see his face before me, I might have done it! We have been in this cave for two days, first to shelter from the cold, then from the rain.”

  “Where is Semmes now?” Rogers asked.

  “Come with me.”

  Jack led them to the small encampment inside the cave that consisted of the fire and a few supplies. There he was—Semmes, prostrate on a few rags spread out over the rough floor. His left hand was wrapped loosely around the grip of his pistol. He stirred awake.

  “Jack, did you find any food, boy?” Then his eyes adjusted and made out the newcomers. His voice had become creaky and uneven. “Why, Old Bill Rogers. And Bob Dabney, what are you doing here? Did you bring them, boy?”

  Dabney moved for his weapon, which he had put in his coat pocket, but Rogers stayed the student’s hand.

  “You’re to come back with us, Mr. Semmes. We are authorized by the sheriff of the county to make your arrest,” Rogers said.

  “I’m afraid not, Professor,” Semmes said, his face contorting into a smile. His head had lifted only briefly from its craggy resting place. “You will have to shoot me, or suffer if you don’t.” Semmes slowly raised the pistol.

  “Professor!” Dabney warned.

  “No,” Rogers said, still holding on to Dabney’s wrist.

  Semmes watched this with surprise. “You forgive me for what I did, then?” he asked, his tone bright with hope.

  “Nothing of the sort, Mr. Semmes,” said Rogers. “Professor Davis may have. Not me. I take no pity on a murderer. But there has been enough violence, and the law must have its way with you. I won’t see you killed without cause.”

  “He hasn’t the strength even to pull the trigger,” Jack whispered behind them.

  “Cause? Shoot me! You haven’t any choice!” Semmes
cried out, his voice breaking down into sobs. “There is an armed fugitive before you, a murderer of men, a slave stealer, threatening your lives with a weapon. Now, fire, as I know you wish to!”

  Illumined by the dim flicker of the dying fire, their faces like stone, Rogers and Dabney remained with their weapons down as Semmes’s hand trembled until his arm and pistol dropped limply to his side. “I forgive you, boy,” he groaned to Jack before he fainted.

  Chapter 12

  The coming of another autumn had brought a thick mist over the lawn, where the world seemed windless and calm, as though peace was a state of nature.

  “The last order of business for today,” said Gessner Harrison, “pertains to the death of our beloved colleague and former chairman, John Davis, last year.”

  Around the table in the Rotunda library, each faculty member held in his breath, or shook his head, or offered a generically funereal expression. Rogers leaned forward with anticipation and interest.

  “You will recall that Joseph Semmes, the young assassin, had been ordered released on bail by the highest court of the state, owing to his feeble state of health while he awaited trial. Well, he has absconded.”

  “The bail was twenty-five thousand dollars!” Professor Tucker cried.

  “It was his family’s money,” said Harrison. “Now it belongs to the court. Perhaps it is best for all involved not to have to bear the spectacle of a trial.”

  “How can you say that, Professor Harrison?” Rogers spoke above the other mutterings around the table. “What about the need for justice? Your voice was among the loudest to capture the culprit when Davis was shot.”

  “Indeed, Professor Rogers,” agreed Harrison. “But now poor Professor Davis is dead. The only thing a trial would accomplish is to embarrass the university. We have only the university to protect now.”

  When the meeting was adjourned, Rogers hurried out of the building. He slowed his steps as he crossed the lawn, realizing he simply had wanted to get out of that room as quickly as he could.

  “Professor Rogers!”

  It was George Tucker, in a wobbly, slow chase after him.

  “George.” Rogers nodded.

  “You seem contemplative. Are you very knocked over by the news of Semmes’s flight?”

  Rogers realized that old Tucker had followed him out of kindness, sensing correctly he needed a sympathetic ear after the meeting. “All of it, all of it came to naught, George. The name of Semmes shall enter the annals of this and every university as proof that any man can do as he wishes without a shred of consequence as long as he boasts wealth.”

  Tucker clucked disapprovingly. “Rogers, did I tell you I spent three years in a prison?”

  Rogers waited to respond, expecting this to be an instance of Tucker’s queer humor. When there was no indication of it, Rogers asked, “Do you speak seriously, George?”

  “Indeed! Oh, nothing too grave. A lottery scheme I should have never agreed to assist in. Shortly after I moved here from Bermuda, a young man eager to find my own way. Before the authorities came upon us, I could hardly sleep, so plagued I was by guilt and shame. But once we were imprisoned, not a minute passed that I did not resent and blame someone, anyone, everyone but myself. It is like the abolitionists. The more they try to interfere with us, the more the South will resist ever ending slavery. Whereas, left on our own, the moral evils of the thing would eventually come into clearer view.”

  “You mean to say justice will work its way inside Semmes’s mind more as a fugitive than as a prisoner,” Rogers said.

  “Mr. Semmes’s family may wish him to be free, but from your description of what happened in those mountains, I am not convinced that is what Semmes himself really wants.”

  “This is why you are a philosopher,” Rogers said, grateful for the confidence and the measure of comfort.

  “As are you! A philosopher of nature instead of morals, yes, but perhaps there is not as much a difference as people who print up college catalogs imagine.”

  “Tell me, George. Do you ever think there could be a different sort of college?”

  “How do you mean?”

  Rogers paused, testing his companion with a glance before offering his confession. “I have been writing out plans—preliminary, of course—for a new college.”

  “Barely twenty years have passed since Jefferson founded the university in which we stand. Do you need a newer one than that?” Tucker asked.

  “A new kind of college, I mean, Tucker. One that accommodates students based on merit alone in practical arts—I mean the pragmatic sciences, engineering, geology, chemistry, even architecture.”

  “A college filled with scientists and technologists!” Tucker exclaimed. “A college of laboratories instead of classrooms!”

  “Yes! The laboratory would be at the very center of things. A place where young men—women, perhaps, too—thrive because of their aspirations to changing the world, not in keeping it how it is. Not in protecting wealth and power. Embracing the new and the industrial, not isolated in bucolic encampments away from the cities and railroads that serve our modern lives.”

  “You are serious, then!” Tucker laughed amiably.

  “You have not been like the others,” Rogers said, hurt coming through his words. “You always supported my endeavors.”

  “Indeed! I do not mean to laugh, but the very notion of starting a college. Here?”

  “New England,” Rogers said defiantly. “Boston. That is a city of notions, after all.”

  “Do you really think you could manage it?”

  Rogers paused to think about it. “Jefferson did.”

  “Thomas Jefferson!” Tucker said. “How many men like Jefferson are there today? Besides, look how many of his ideals for the university died with him.” Tucker placed a hand gently on Rogers’s arm. “William, I wanted to speak to you because Gessner’s term as temporary faculty chairman is nearly finished. Several of the faculty are speaking about selecting you as the new chair.”

  “Me?”

  Tucker seemed to enjoy his colleague’s surprise and humility. “Some of them may not be very interested in the topics of your courses, but they have been most impressed by your direct and decisive manner of approach in the Semmes affair.”

  “Chair?” was all Rogers could respond at first, then, he offered, “You are our most experienced member.”

  “Old, you mean! No, I am not going to be at the university very much longer, I expect. To be a professor requires a young man’s health and appetite.”

  With a touch of melancholy, Rogers said, “Accepting the position of chair would mean remaining here. Probably for several more years.”

  “Your dreams of a polytechnic college will wait, I promise,” Tucker said with warm good humor. “There is much you can accomplish right here. This is not a mere dream; this is an opportunity. Think of it, you will be chairman of the faculty!”

  “Yes,” said Rogers. “So was Davis.”

  Rogers walked the grassy path, thinking of Jefferson’s ideals as though they were physically there, buried alive, ripe for the right leader to awaken. In the coming years, as chairman of the University of Virginia, he would often remember that crisp November day when Tucker first urged him in that direction. It was that day that would also come to mind when he first learned in a newspaper of the demise of Joseph Semmes in Georgia, some said by suicide, others by illness.

  But back in the moment, that fateful exchange between Rogers and Tucker was interrupted by a fourteen-year-old boy’s best attempt at a professional voice. “Professor! These letters were left at your door.”

  “Thank you,” said Rogers, accepting the bundle.

  “Anything else?” asked Jack, whose legs had grown bonier but his torso and chest fuller, his eyes sharper since the professor had found him huddled in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  Rogers thought of telling Jack about Semmes’s latest escape but did not want to cause him any distress. “I thank you, no, Jack. I will s
ee you back at the house.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s the Cottrell boy, isn’t it?” asked Tucker after Jack ducked his head and started toward Rogers’s pavilion. “Is he yours now?”

  Rogers nodded slightly, then stopped. “Not ‘mine,’ no. I hire him out from the Davises. Mrs. Davis said she didn’t need him after John’s death, and needed the income he could afford them by being sold or hired out. I thought to give him some work, otherwise he likely would have been split from his family. She says they could not afford to emancipate the Cottrells as John had wished, not until the youngest of the Davis children are of mature age.”

  “Sensible! Well, I think it a wise choice, my friend. I know your liberal views on slavery, but remember that few of us are truly free in life. We all have our despots. Why, my five Negroes have been such a blessing to my family. I haven’t a doubt that young man will serve you well.”

  “It seemed to me there was no choice, after all,” Rogers said. “I begin to believe, George, that there are never quite as many choices as there seem to be.”

  He was still watching Jack, who cautiously avoided walking in the way of any of the whites on the lawn. Rogers tried—and failed—to determine whether he walked more buoyantly or as a defeated young man.

  Jack would not be so limited forever. Nor would Rogers. More choices would come—they must.

  Afterword

  This novella presents a dramatized version of the death of Professor John A. G. Davis, who was shot outside his residence on the campus of the University of Virginia on November 12, 1840. Whenever possible, I incorporate the real details about the shooting, the condition and death of the victim, and the search for the perpetrator. The Davis family did in fact refuse to identify the shooter, and the civil authorities deputized members of the university community to find and arrest Joseph Semmes, who fled into the woods.

  No completely thorough or definitive account has been written about the assassination of Davis, the closest being a chapter in Jefferson, Cabell and the University of Virginia by John Shelton Patton; my research into the university was bolstered by Professor Jim Cocola of Worcester Polytechnic Institute—in particular, his hypermedia essay “The Ideological Spaces of the Academical Village: A Reading of the Central Grounds of the University of Virginia,” as well as the generous help of Julie Meloni at the University of Virginia in unearthing unpublished contemporary letters detailing the events of the Davis murder.