“Miss . . .” the well-dressed man said. “We need to get to Virginia. Your colored here will know of a safe route . . .”
“I hate to contradict you, sir, but you are mistaken if you believe that any of these people . . .”
“Goddammit.” Reaching into his coat, the man pulled out a pistol. Behind him, the ragged figure did the same.
There was a high shriek from one of the girls behind Cassie, followed by a quick gabble of voices.
“Oh lawd above, he got a gun . . .”
“Momma, Momma, I’s afraid . . .”
“Please mister—put that thing down . . .”
The man gritted his teeth and glared at the women. He made a theatrical gesture with the gun, and immediately Cassie saw an image of him clean-shaven, in a Roman toga, declaiming the words of the great William Shakespeare.
She blinked a moment, feeling as if the entire world had stopped making sense, as if everything she’d ever taken as true had been thrown into doubt by the appearance of this one man. She cast her eyes at Richard Dean, who was taking in the scene with an expression of infinite dullness.
What on earth is Richard doing with John Wilkes Booth?
“You quiet these women down, miss!”
In response, the gabble grew even louder. Cassie turned to shush them but something about their tone and expressions halted her. They were doing this with deliberation, not out of fear at all. They were clearly out to confuse these ruffians. She swung back to Booth. “Put your guns away.”
“To hell with that,” the ragged man shouted. “You get your niggers in hand!”
Booth raised a finger, a gesture she recalled from the stage. The ragged man took a step forward, lifted his gun and fired a single shot in the air.
The shot was immediately echoed by a dozen or more from the bushes to Cassie’s right. She moved back involuntarily, raising her hands to cover her face, an image of the men being struck down burned upon her mind.
When she lowered her hands, they lay scattered before her, Booth, his ragged crony, and the handsome boy. Richard was nowhere to be seen. Beyond them, the injured older man held out a hand to her. She went to him, carefully stepping around the corpses.
She gasped as he drew near to him. She knew this man as well. Her father himself had introduced her to him no more than three months ago. “Mr. Stanton!”
“Yes, my dear . . .” She couldn’t tell if he had actually recognized her, but that didn’t matter.
Several of Hadrian’s men were examining the carriage. Others were searching the bodies behind her. The women, led by Tabitha, had joined Cassie.
“Lord help us,” Tabitha said. “Get this poor man some water.”
“And a blanket,” Cassie said.
One of the younger girls spoke. “He was a captive, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” Stanton whispered. “Booth . . . That Booth is a fiend from Hell.”
Someone handed Tabitha a bowl of water. She carefully gave Stanton a drink, and then the others lowered him onto a blanket.
Cassie got to her feet and turned. Toby and Seph were eying the bodies. “That mustache fella looked like he was set to speechify.”
Seph, a heavy-set younger man, shook his head. “White folk.”
Hadrian stood to one side, a shotgun under his arm. “All right. Load up the wagons and the mules. We got to be a distance from here by sunrise . . . .”
Cassie went to him. “Hadrian . . . what are you talking about?”
He gazed at her as if at a confused child. “Miss Cassandra . . .” he sighed. “We just shot three white men. Do you have any idea what will happen now?”
“Hadrian . . .” She pointed to where Stanton lay, his face being cleaned by Tabitha. “That is Edward Stanton, Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war. These men kidnapped him. They were going to take him down south, to the Confederates . . .” She turned back to him. “Nobody is going to blame you for this. Quite the contrary.”
Hadrian stood gazing at Stanton, a slight frown on his face, as if for the first time in his life he had encountered something that he could not immediately grasp. He licked his lips. The men around him gazed at each other wordlessly.
At last Hadrian spoke. “I see.”
Another moment passed in silence. Hadrian swung toward the men. “Toby, you take one of the mules, ride down the crossroads where the soldiers are at. Tell them Abe Lincoln’s secretary is here and he needs doctoring.”
Toby shook his head. “I don’t know them soldiers gonna listen to me, Hadrian.”
“I’ll go with you,” Cassie told him.
She headed for the buckboard while Toby went for the mule. On her way she collected Lemuel and Scooter and got them saddled up. While she waited for them, she thought again of Richard. There had been no sign of him. Had he been hit? Was he out there now, bleeding in the darkness?
Cassandra, you are such a ninny. She took hold of herself. Look what he had done. Look who he had been involved with.
Toby rode up on the mule and they started out. A group of men was carrying Stanton in the blanket closer to the fire. Tabitha held his hand, praying softly.
They left the firelight behind for the dark country road. Despite herself, she once again thought of Richard. Was he out there now, staring at her as she passed? She shivered and concentrated on the road.
★ CHAPTER 19 ★
“Who goes there?”
Steven Thorne pulled in his reins and raised an arm. The men behind him came to a halt.
“This is Major Thorne and the 6th Indiana Mounted.”
“What’s the password?” The voice had the clear tones of New England.
Thorne growled in his throat. They had been on horseback since late afternoon and now it was past midnight. He was in no mood for this. “How the hell do I know?”
Voices conferred in the darkness up ahead. “Well, he’s certainly no Reb, that much is for sure.”
“All right, come on ahead.”
He rode a few more yards and came to a halt. An officer stood beside the road at the head of a small group of men. To the other side at least a dozen more gazed at him from shallow trenches. Beyond them stood a small-caliber cannon covering the road.
Thorne raised his head at the sound of distant gunfire. They’d been hearing that off and on for the past fifteen minutes.
“You’re who again?”
“6th Indiana, under orders to report to General Wallace.”
“I see. Well, that would be a neat trick, now wouldn’t it?” One of them men beside him chuckled.
“Why is that?”
“Well, General Wallace and everybody else is scattered from here halfway to Baltimore.”
Thorne pulled off his hat and rubbed his scalp. He was tired, aching, hungry, and had no clear idea of what he was doing. The little patience he had remaining was dissipating quickly. “You want to give me an explanation?”
“Sure. We’re out chasing Jubal Early.”
“Early.” The last Thorne had heard, he was still engaged around Washington.
“That’s right,” the second man said. “We found out he was coming up the Baltimore Turnpike and set up an ambuscade north of Germantown.”
“. . . Wallace’s brigade, the Oneida County regiment, and the 10th New Jersey.”
“He came prancing up that road as bold as you please. No flankers or nothing.”
“We opened up and tore them apart. Must have lost a tenth of his men in that first fusillade.”
“The rest of them scattered to the four winds. We’ve been running them down ever since.”
Thorne frowned. A night attack? From a general as cautious as Lew Wallace? That didn’t make any sense. “Wallace ordered this?”
“Ayeh. Orders from U.S. Grant.”
“From here on in, we hit the Rebels every chance we get. No matter how many there may be. Never give them a moment’s peace.”
Now that made sense to Thorne. He’d heard all sorts of things about Grant, som
e of it complimentary, much of it not. But one thing all agreed on: he wasn’t afraid of closing with the Rebs.
“All right. Now who do I report to?’
The officer rubbed his chin. “Now there’s a problem. You can’t go riding around here in the pitch black. You’ll be taken for Rebels.”
Another far-off clatter of gunfire rang out. Wouldn’t that be a grand climax to his military career? Shot down as a Rebel by Bostonians. “Well, what are we supposed to do?” he demanded, perhaps a little sharply.
“Francis, would you care to ride down to the colonel and see if there’s anything for these fellows to do?”
“My pleasure, sir.”
Thorne told the men to dismount and take a break. He and Archie Willis walked around, shaking the stiffness out of their legs. The officer—Thorne still had no idea of his name or rank—followed them around giving a detailed description of Jubal Early’s bad fortune.
He was on the third or fourth distinct version of it when Thorne stopped him. “One minute . . . how could you be with the guns now when you were with the New York infantry a minute ago?”
“I wasn’t there at all,” the officer said huffily. “I’ve been here all the livelong night. I’m just telling you what I heard.”
At that point, the other officer, Francis, rode up. “Major—if you want to follow me . . .”
They got saddled up and headed down the road. After about a mile they turned off into a hilly area. Several bonfires appeared ahead. A number of troops were standing guard. In the middle, between the fires, sat about a hundred men, dressed in butternut or gray.
An officer walked up to meet them and Francis explained the situation.
“All right, Major. This is the prisoner collection point. You’ll be getting new groups the rest of the night. Just keep an eye on them and make sure none of them run off. You’ll be told what do with them in the morning.”
Thorne fought a sinking feeling as he got off his horse. “Very well.”
Willis came up to him. “Is this what we rode forty-odd miles for? To guard prisoners?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
Willis shook his head in disgust. Thorne told him to put some men on the hilltops, put the rest out in a perimeter, and to place the horses at a good long distance from the prisoners with plenty of guards around them.
The troops who had originally been on guard vanished onto the darkened road. The Rebels glared at the 6th Indiana and muttered among themselves. “Fuckin’ Yankees,” one of them said, just loud enough to be heard. Thorne began a slow inspection of the area while he tried to figure out some kind of schedule.
Things hadn’t changed much when the next draft of prisoners showed up. A small number—no more than two dozen, many of them in officer’s gray, the rear being brought up by several enlisted men carrying someone in what appeared to be an officer’s coat.
The prisoners already present got to their feet. A number of them rushed to meet the newcomers.
“Stand fast!” Thorne shouted.
The Union officer in charge rode up to him. “Let them go, Major.” He nodded toward the burdened group. “That’s General Early.”
The soldiers set down the body. It was immediately surrounded by men. One after the other, they doffed their hats. One of them started sobbing aloud.
“Shot dead during an affray on the road,” the Union officer told Thorne. “They refused to leave him.”
“So I see.”
Several of the men walked aimlessly back to where they had been originally sitting. Others immediately took their place. Thorne could hear them speaking.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Oh God, I hate this war.”
Someone else was murmuring a prayer.
Thorne signed a receipt for the officer and watched him and his men ride off. When he turned back, a Confederate captain was standing a few feet away, one of Thorne’s men right behind him.
“Major, may I trouble you for a blanket?”
“Certainly, sir.”
He directed one of the men to get a clean blanket. The officer accepted it with a nod and turned back to where Early lay. Thorne followed him.
The Confederate officer edged through the group surrounding Early’s body, and with a series of soft gestures, as if he was tucking in a small child, lay the blanket over him.
“That’s better,” one of the watching men said.
Thorne found himself removing his hat almost without thinking about it.
A few of the men turned and went back to the main group of prisoners. Several others walked up to where the body lay and stood gazing at it. The captain walked from the group and halted a few feet from Thorne.
“He was not a great commander,” he said after a moment had passed. “He was impetuous, excitable, and wild in the saddle. But he was my commander.”
“I understand,” Thorne said.
The man turned to him. “I think you do.”
Thorne put his hat back on.
“Ever lose a commander yourself?”
“Not yet. We came close though. He lost a leg.”
“Ahh. Well, I hope you don’t.”
“I thank you for that.”
A burst of distant gunfire caught their attention. It went on for some time as they both listened in silence.
“Somebody else is getting cut down out there.”
“Too goddamn many.” The officer turned away and went back to the main group. Thorne didn’t catch sight of him again before dawn.
The army messenger bowed to the President and left the room.
Lincoln looked about him. “Well, Edward’s on his way to the hospital—that’s a burden off our minds.”
Seward nodded. A rumble of agreement went through the group gathered in the Red Room. It consisted of General Heintzelman, House Speaker Schuyler Colfax, Vice President Hamlin, the President, not to forget his wife, and Seward himself. It was well after midnight, but the lights were still burning throughout the White House and the place was alive with messengers, troops, staff, and officials. Outside, the crowd could be heard, a low, unceasing rumble with occasional voices shouting for the President.
Seward considered the report for a moment. Stanton seriously injured—no one knew how badly yet. Three of the kidnappers dead, another on the run. The thing brought to a head by a group of freedmen, no less.
“So it was Booth,” Hamlin said.
“Did you doubt me, Hannibal?” Lincoln sat back with his long legs sprawled before him. His waistcoat was open and his shirtsleeves were rolled back. His upper right arm was bandaged, the cloth lightly speckled with blood.
“No, not at all. It’s just . . .”
Seward leaned forward in his seat. “I think we were all taken aback, Mr. President.”
“He’s been a southern sympathizer for some time,” General Heintzelman said. “We were well aware of that.”
“Then why didn’t you arrest him?”
Seward turned to where Mary Lincoln sat on a couch at the far end of the room. She was glaring at General Heintzelman as if he was her worst enemy. He gazed back at her nonplussed, at a complete loss for words.
She had nearly lost her mind when Lincoln had returned, screaming aloud at the sight of his injured arm. She had been taken upstairs but almost immediately found her way back down again, remaining at Lincoln’s side as he was bandaged and refusing to let him out of her sight. At odd moments, she would begin sobbing quietly to herself, her eyes fixed on the President. He would quiet her with a few words, as he did now.
“Now Mary, we can’t go about arresting everyone.”
“Why not? You’re the President.”
“They’ll be picking them up now, Mrs. Lincoln,” Colfax assured her.
“That’s so,” said Lincoln. “We need to make certain that the Secret Service doesn’t get out of hand. This is not Rome under the Caesars.”
“The Pinkertons are the ones to worry about.”
“Very
true.” Lincoln turned to his secretary, young Adams, who was hovering behind his chair. “Remind me to inquire into that tomorrow.”
The speaker was staring off into space. “I wonder what got into his head. Booth.”
“Oh, he played Macbeth too many times,” Lincoln said.
The group laughed at the President’s words, more than the line merited. Seward glanced at Mrs. Lincoln. Not as much as a smile marked that round little face.
A roar came from outside.
“I wonder if they know yet?” Seward pondered.
“Rumors, at best.”
“And since we’ve bagged the perpetrators,” Lincoln bent over and put a hand on his knee. “They need to be told. And I’m the one to tell them.”
Seward could not but agree. The stories were running wild throughout Washington. He’d heard a half-dozen on his way over to the White House. The President was dead. He was on his deathbed. He’d been crippled. The kidnap plot had succeeded, and Lincoln was halfway to Richmond by now. No doubt they had grown even more baroque and wild eyed in the hours since. They needed to be put to rest for good and all. What better figure to do that than the president himself?
He was opening his mouth to voice his agreement when he was silenced by a sudden shriek from the sofa.
Mary Lincoln was on her feet, her mouth twisted, her small hands clenched as she stepped toward Lincoln. “No, Papa . . . You can’t go out there. There are terrible people waiting for you . . .”
Lincoln got to his feet and went to her. “Now, Mary . . .”
Seward dropped his eyes. Usually there was a hint of the comic in the sight of the two of them together, that extraordinary stork-legged figure towering over his plump, childlike wife, but there was none of that tonight.
“I have to speak to them, Mother. They’re worried. They’ve heard all sorts of wild tales. They need to know what happened. They need to see me, so they know that I’m all right.”
The men glanced uncomfortably at each other as the President spoke soothingly to her. General Heintzelman bent forward. “I doubt you’ll find any Copperheads on the streets tonight.”
The Day After Gettysburg Page 28