Hanging Mary: A Novel

by Susan Higginbotham

  “It sounds ideal,” said Father. “I knew that you would come up with something.”

  Peter nodded modestly.

  “Of course, I must meet this lady and satisfy myself that Nora will be safe in her care, but I am sure that is merely a formality. Is she living here now?”

  “No, her business necessitates her staying in Surrattsville for a while longer, but her daughter will be moving here to set up the house.”

  “Then if Nora is agreeable”—I nodded—“we will drive over there on Saturday afternoon and introduce ourselves.”

  Two days later, we made our trip to the country. Father, who did not keep his own equipment, had rented a rather smart buggy for the occasion. It was a beautiful September day, neither too hot nor too chilly, and I felt very pleased with myself as, clad in my newest striped gown and the brand-new bonnet I had convinced Father I needed for the occasion, I settled into the buggy. Still, I could not help wishing I had a fine young suitor beside me instead of my father. We drove through the streets of Washington to the Navy Yard Bridge, after which we passed into the countryside. “Let me give you the advice I have always given you, child: speak little about the war in these parts—anywhere, really, but especially in these parts. Feeling is very strong here against the Union.”

  “I know that, Father.”

  “A reminder can’t go amiss.”

  Although the war had been raging for over three years, I had never succeeded in finding out my father’s true sympathies, so diligently did he follow the rule he had set for himself and me. I had come to suspect he, in fact, had no sympathy for either side: that his allegiance lay solely with Washington City, where he arrived over twenty-five years ago as a poor Irishman and where he had married, fathered six children, and buried my mother and my three baby sisters. His work brought him into every street and alleyway of the city; there was simply no address he could not find. If a building had been torn down over the past two decades, he could tell you where it had stood and what had replaced it. Few people in the city did not know him at least by sight, and there had to be a truly raging snowstorm to keep him from performing his duties. His affection for the city extended even to its miserable summer heat, in which he took an almost proprietary pride.

  In good time we arrived at the crossroads of Surrattsville, so named because the Surratts had once operated the local post office out of their tavern, which, along with its outbuildings, was the only habitation I could see in the immediate vicinity. Being accustomed to town life, I understood why the family was so eager to leave this quiet place.

  As a colored servant took charge of our horse and buggy, Mrs. Surratt came outside to greet us. “This is the young lady Father Wiget recommended to me?”

  “Yes, ma’am. This is my daughter, Miss Honora Fitzpatrick. We call her Nora.”

  I stood by silently as my father and Mrs. Surratt eyed each other. It was clear they each approved. Clad in gray half mourning, Mrs. Surratt looked to be in her early forties. She was tall, with dark brown hair, and her figure was of substantial, though not fat, proportions. As for my father, with his gray hair and his erect figure, and with his faint Irish lilt, his presence was a courtly one. Had he not been aghast at the idea of replacing my late mother, he could have remarried six times over.

  Father explained to Mrs. Surratt what a modest and innocent young woman I was, presumably, I suppose, to assure her that I would not be attempting to sneak men into the house or to do any of the other untoward things that more adventurous boarders than I evidently managed. It was all quite true—I was modest and innocent—but he made me sound like such a dull creature, it was disheartening to hear it all. Fortunately, there was not much to say about this subject, and the conversation soon turned to Mrs. Surratt, who assured Father that her boardinghouse would be a perfect repository for my virtue. Only well-behaved young men would be allowed to board, anyone with liquor in his rooms would be turned out immediately, and I would be sharing a room with either Mrs. Surratt herself or her daughter, Anna (an equally respectable and virtuous creature), depending on how many boarders were in residence. It went without saying that I would be expected to attend Mass with the family regularly; as a matter of fact, Mrs. Surratt stated, the ease of walking to church from the H Street house had been one of the chief advantages of removing to the city.

  Soon, my father and Mrs. Surratt were discussing terms. The price—thirty-five dollars per month—seemed reasonable to me, although my existence had been too sheltered for me to be much cognizant of such things. After Father expressed his satisfaction with the terms, Mrs. Surratt turned to me with a smile. “The bargain needs only your consent, Miss Fitzpatrick. Would you like to stay in my house?”

  “Yes,” I said without hesitation. Mrs. Surratt and I had barely exchanged two words, but I liked her face, and I liked the fact that she had put the final decision in my hands.

  So two weeks later, after Miss Surratt, who had been visiting friends in Baltimore on the day I met her mother, removed to the Washington house, I walked to my new lodgings, having shamefacedly bade good-bye to the Misses Donovan, who sobbed over me like they would a beloved granddaughter. To heap further guilt upon my shoulders, they would not hear of my paying someone to carry my trunk for me but sent Clarence with me to push it in a wheelbarrow.

  “Them poor old ladies will miss you awfully, Miss Nora,” he said as he puffed along at my side. “They thought the whole world of you.”

  I shifted the cat basket I held from arm to arm as a faint hissing emitted from it. “I will miss them too, Clarence, but I wanted a companion of my own age, and I promised them that I would come over for tea once a week.”

  “I do hope so, Miss Nora. It’ll break their old hearts not to see you again. Old ladies getting up there, they set a lot of store by such things, you know. Why, they was going to buy you a nice little cake for your birthday.”

  My twentieth birthday was a few days away. “I’ll visit next week. I promise.”

  I had issued several such assurances by the time we arrived at our destination, a gray brick house on H Street between Sixth and Seventh. It was tidy and well kept, though not as nice as that of the Misses Donovan, who took boarders more for the company than because of any actual need. Clarence could not resist a derisory sniff as he walked up the steps and knocked at the door leading to the parlor story of the house.

  An auburn-haired young lady, tall like Mrs. Surratt but otherwise not bearing a strong family resemblance to her, answered. “Miss Fitzpatrick, I suppose? Bring your trunk in here. This is where we will be sleeping for now.”

  Clarence carried my trunk down the hall to a large bedroom at the back of the house. It was sparely furnished with a view of the alley, and I could not help but compare it to my comfortable, chintz-filled quarters at the Misses Donovan’s home. “It will be nicer once I buy a few more things,” Miss Surratt assured me. “I have but just come to town and brought only what was absolutely necessary from the country.” She looked ruefully out the window. “Nothing to be done about the alley, I fear.”

  “Of course,” I said. I turned to say my good-bye to Clarence, who clearly shared my misgivings about my new quarters. “Thank you, and I will visit in a few days, I promise.”

  “We’ll all be looking for you, Miss Nora.” He bent close to my ear. “Don’t forget: there’s always a home for you with the ladies.”

  “What did he say?” Miss Surratt asked as Clarence shut the door behind him.

  “Oh, he just wished me well.”

  An indignant mew came from my basket. “I see you’ve brought a cat.”

  “Your mother said he would be fine.” I set the basket down and opened it. Mr. Rochester leaped out, glaring at his new surroundings.

  “Oh yes, we could use a mouser. Come into the parlor.”

  Our bedroom opened into that room, which Mr. Rochester had already found. As he perched by a
window and surveyed H Street, his tail flipping majestically, I asked Miss Surratt, “Are there any other boarders here?”

  “Not yet. Mr. Weichmann—a dreadful friend of my brother’s—will be coming, I think, and Ma wants to put a family with him on the third floor. So there’s no point in us staying up there and then having to move out. There are bedrooms up in the attic where we can sleep once Ma comes, if there’s space.”

  I nodded amicably, for years of boarding, at school and in homes, had made me flexible. “I’m sure it will suit.”

  “You don’t have an accent.”

  “Should I?”

  “Well, you’re Irish. Didn’t your family come here because of the famine? But, of course, you must have been a little child at the time.”

  I shook my head. “I was born right here in Washington City. Father has been in America since the twenties. He helped some of his kinsmen leave during the famine, though.”

  “Where does your father live? Swampoodle?”

  She spoke of Washington’s crowded and poor Irish neighborhood. I stiffened. “Certainly not,” I said. “Father boards on Twelfth Street. I don’t know anyone who lives in Swampoodle, nor would I care to.”

  “Well, you needn’t get your Ir—get annoyed, I mean. I am sorry.”

  As this sounded sincere enough, and I was going to have to share a bed with her, I nodded and began to put my things away in the drawer Miss Surratt indicated. I noticed with pleasure that my clothing was as good a quality as hers, if not better. As Father had always lived well within his means and was no longer charged with the keep of my brother or my sister, he gave me a generous allowance. To change the subject, I said, “Your mother mentioned your brothers. Will they be living here?”

  “My younger brother, John, comes and goes from our house in Surrattsville. You’ll meet him soon, I imagine.” She gave me a look. “My older brother, Isaac, is fighting for the Confederacy.”

  “God keep him safe,” I said politely.

  “Which side are you on?”

  Though I inclined toward the North, I remembered my father’s advice. “I have friends and family caught up on both sides,” I said vaguely. “I just hope it ends soon.”

  “Do you have a sweetheart?”

  This was ostensibly a safer topic than Swampoodle or the war, but it was a rather irritating one. “No,” I admitted. The truth was, like Jane Eyre, I was plain and little, and Washington City was woefully short of Mr. Rochesters in human form. I’d never had a beau, nor had I even had a young man give me more than a passing glance. “And you?”

  “I thought I had one, but he is serving as a doctor in Richmond. You can imagine, with all the young ladies acting as nurses, and all of them and their mothers inviting him to dine, there’s not much time for me.”

  “You’re very pretty. I’m sure you’re well rid of the faithless wretch.”

  “Why, thank you.” Miss Surratt held out her hand. “Call me Anna, Miss Fitzpatrick.”

  “And you may call me Nora. Not Honora. Only the nuns at school called me Honora.”

  “It’s good to have someone else in the house, Nora. We have some distant relations—Mr. and Mrs. Kirby, living just a few blocks from here—but he’s busy with his work, and she’s busy with her children, so they’re not very diverting. I’ve hardly had a chance to see the city.”

  “I’ll show it to you. We’re close to everything. The shops, the theaters—we’re just blocks from Ford’s Theatre. I’ve been there several times.”

  “I’ve never been there,” Anna admitted.

  “It’s a lovely theater. We must go together.” I could not resist what I said next. “Why, I saw John Wilkes Booth play there.”

  Anna stared at me. “Him?”

  If you had put a young lady from New Orleans, a young lady from Boston, a young lady from Richmond, a young lady from Cleveland, a young lady from Baltimore, and a young lady from Washington together, the one thing they would have agreed upon, before they scratched one another’s eyes out, was that John Wilkes Booth was one of the handsomest men in America. Any woman worthy of her sex, and I was no exception, could rhapsodize for hours upon his curling black hair, his soulful black eyes, his beautiful skin, and his fine physique—even those women who hadn’t actually had the privilege of seeing him in person. I was indeed among the lucky ones, for the previous year, he had played at Ford’s Theatre, and since I had been at school in Georgetown at the time, I had plagued my father until he agreed to take me. As the play had been Richard III, Mr. Booth’s looks had not shone to their best advantage, since he was forced by the role to assume a hunchback and to scowl a great deal. Even so, I had had to repress a smile when Lady Anne informed Richard that he was a foul toad. I had gone to bed that night thoroughly convinced such a lovely man could not possibly have killed his nephews, although of course the play said he did.

  Just the memory made me sigh. “I did see him, and he was wonderful. Did you know that he now spends much of his time in Washington? We might get to glimpse him in the street sometime.”

  Anna’s eyes widened. “That,” she breathed, “would be absolutely divine.”

  3

  MARY

  OCTOBER TO NOVEMBER 1864

  “Anna writes that she and Miss Fitzpatrick are having a splendid time furnishing the house,” I told my son, waving a letter on top of a stack handed to me by Mr. Robey, our pro-Union neighbor who replaced Johnny when he was removed as postmaster and who seemed perpetually disappointed he had not yet detected any suspicious correspondence coming to our house. “I do hope that she is being prudent. Miss Fitzpatrick seems a sweet young woman, but it’s plain that she’s her old father’s darling, and she didn’t look the sort to economize.”

  “Is she pretty, Miss Fitzpatrick?”

  “She’s pleasant looking.”

  “That faint praise says volumes, Ma.”

  “She has a pretty figure, a great quantity of dark brown hair, and nice brown eyes.”

  Johnny shrugged and wrapped his blanket more tightly around him. The previous month he’d fallen deathly ill with influenza, and for a while I feared I would lose him, the son who had always been the closest to me. He was delirious for two terrible long days, and I sat beside him and mopped his forehead and listened to him rave. Touchingly, he ranted not about the war or about his courier activities, but about a young lady from the neighborhood on whom, completely unbeknownst to me, he had set his heart before she went off to stay with relatives elsewhere. It broke my heart to see my boy’s own heart broken, but when he came to himself, he would say nothing about the young lady, save to grudgingly admit she might have done well enough for him. Just a few days later, before he should have, he set off for Washington on one of the journeys about which he said so little, and when he returned, he promptly had a relapse and had to take to his bed again. But he was well enough now for us to discuss things that needed to be discussed, which did not happen to be Miss Fitzpatrick’s looks.

  “Johnny, when you are well, you must find some sort of work. You barely escaped the draft this time.”

  “Don’t I know it. But I could still get drafted, even if I had work.”

  “Yes, but you could buy yourself out of it. But it is more than that. You need something steady.”

  “I’m hardly idling, Ma. Were it not for this illness, I would not be sitting here. I’d be carrying messages.”

  “And not earning a cent from it.”

  “Only perhaps the thanks of a grateful nation someday.”

  “That’s commendable, but it’s not putting bread on the table. And it’s putting your very life in danger.” I touched him on the shoulder. Johnny had never carried any extra weight on him, and now he felt painfully bony. “Isaac could be dead for all I know, and last month I feared I had lost you as well.”

  “They’ve never come close to catching me, Ma, and
if they did, it’d be a spell of imprisonment, that’s all. Most likely.”

  This addendum did not fill me with confidence.

  “It’s important work, Ma. I can’t just walk away from it. And if I did, I would fall under suspicion from the people I’ve been helping. Then where would I be?”

  There was enough sense in this to make me sigh.

  “Anyway, maybe the election will make this all moot.”

  “You know full well there’s not much hope of that. McClellan doesn’t stand a chance since Atlanta fell.”

  “A man can dream.” My son shook the blanket off his shoulders and rose. “I’m going out.”

  “Where? You are in no fit state to travel.”

  “I’ll not go far. I just need to get out of here.”

  And away from my nagging, I thought guiltily. But Johnny, with his naturally kind temperament, would never dream of saying so.

  • • •

  Johnny went only to Washington and returned in two days, looking healthier and bearing good news: Mr. Weichmann had decided to board with us and would be moving in on the first of November. The girls, with the house to themselves, had been acting like a pair of society ladies, looking up all of their old schoolmates in the area (of which Miss Fitzpatrick in particular seemed to have an abundance) and inviting a different set over for afternoon tea each day. They had found a used pianoforte at a reasonable price, and it now graced the front parlor. Johnny assured me they had not beggared us, however, and Mr. Weichmann, who came by to look at his prospective lodgings, found them very homey and appealing. Johnny had made a few inquiries about employment—preferably a job where he could combine the commercial and the clandestine, as he put it. I did not know how easy it would be to come by such a situation, but at least he was making an effort, and as we had a small farm, along with the tavern, and had to attend to the crop there, it was just as well he had no regular employment at present.

  In the meantime, as it would not do to have Mr. Weichmann living with Anna and Miss Fitzpatrick without my presence, I packed my things.