Hanging Mary: A Novel

by Susan Higginbotham

  “Mother!”

  “Anna, it is best. I need to compose myself for tomorrow, and we are only upsetting each other here. I want you to get some rest and get out of this place.”

  “It is best,” Father Wiget joined in. “Your mother needs some time for prayer and reflection, with which your presence, however welcome, can only interfere.”

  “Your mother is right,” Mr. Brophy said. “Besides, if you wish to visit the White House again tomorrow, you will be better placed to do so if you stay at H Street. Here, you will have a long walk, and half a dozen things could prevent you from going.”

  Anna listened drearily to my counsel and Father Wiget’s, but Mr. Brophy’s words made her nod and accept his proffered hand. She hugged me fiercely and followed Mr. Brophy down the corridor, her shoulders sagging.

  I watched her go, and it was all I could do to keep from calling her back.

  46

  NORA

  JULY 6 TO 7, 1865

  I made it to Washington undetected, with the help of a little veil I’d borrowed from Camilla. Mrs. Slater would have been proud of me, I thought as I boarded the F Street car heading toward the boardinghouse. There was no point in seeing Mrs. Douglas until I got news of Mrs. Surratt, and the Holohans, assuming they were there, would be the best placed to tell me.

  The news wouldn’t be good, I surmised as I approached my old lodgings. There was a crowd surrounding the boardinghouse. “John Wilkes Booth stood on those very stairs,” a man told his family, “and plotted the killing with Mrs. Surratt. In that very parlor.”

  “Where did Payne sleep?” his son asked him.

  “Up there,” the father said confidently. “Or maybe in back.”

  “Well, that narrows it down, darling,” said his wife.

  A lady said to her companion, “You heard that her daughter came here tonight.”

  “No. My word, she’s in there now?”

  “Yes, the poor child got out of a carriage not two hours before, almost prostrate with grief. Whatever you can say about that fiend, she has a lov—”

  I shoved my way through the crowd and to the policeman guarding the place. “You can’t have a souvenir, miss,” he said wearily. “People are living here, and they’d like to be left alone.”

  “I know, sir. I live here. See?” I opened my purse and took out my key. “It fits, you’ll find. Tell them that Miss Nora Fitzpatrick is here.”

  The detective sighed but obliged. After a brief conference with someone inside, he returned. “Go ahead in.”

  I scurried through the door, supplying the crowd with enough fodder to fill a good half hour of conversation.

  Inside, I found Mr. and Mrs. Holohan. “Where is Anna?”

  “Trying to get some sleep.”

  I rushed into the back room where Anna was sprawled on the bed. “Nora?” She began crying. “I heard the knock and thought it might be a reprieve.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m so very sorry.”

  Anna sat up. “I went to Mama, then Father Walter and I went to the White House to beg the president for a pardon,” she said in a flat voice. “He wouldn’t see us. Someone sent us to Judge Holt instead, and he couldn’t do anything either. He said that he pitied me, but it was all in the president’s hands. So I’m going back tomorrow. I should be with Ma, but we only make each other grieve, and it’s such a long way from there to the White House…” She trembled. “I can’t bear to think of her dying, Nora. She’s so good, so kind…”

  “Me neither. Anna, I have one idea. Mrs. Douglas—Senator Douglas’s wife. She’s beautiful, and she’s society. The president can’t exactly throw her out on her ear. If she begs for your mother’s life, he’s bound to listen.”

  “But what makes you think she will?”

  “She asked about your mother when Mrs. Surratt was still at the Old Capitol, and told me to tell her if she could do anything to help. And she’s a devout Catholic. She’ll want to help another Catholic.”

  Anna sniffled. “But is she even in town?”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “There’s only one way to find out,” I said. “I’m going to her house.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.” I kissed her on the cheek, grateful she was too weary and sad to talk some sense into me. “I’ll be back later tonight.”

  • • •

  Although a police officer was still stationed outside the house, the curious gazers had dispersed, a sure sign that it was too late for me to be out. “I’ll be back,” I called.

  “Miss—”

  I ignored him and hurried on my way.

  The path I trod was a familiar one, for this was the way I walked to St. Aloysius Church, only two blocks from Mrs. Douglas’s mansion. It was not a terribly long walk—from H Street between Sixth and Seventh Streets to New Jersey Avenue and I Street—but at this late hour, it began to get lonely very quickly. First I prayed that my father would not somehow spot me and haul me off to Baltimore—and then, when I saw two men ambling down West Fourth Street from the direction of Pennsylvania Avenue, right into my path, I began to pray that he would.

  “Little lady, where are you going? Would you like some company?”

  I shook my head.

  “Little lady, don’t be cruel! Let us walk with you.”

  “Damn it, Jack. Leave her alone.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to be left alone.” The man seized my arm. “Want some company tonight, missy?”

  My scream could have awakened the dead, but their assistance proved entirely unnecessary, for in a matter of seconds, Jack lay in a heap at my feet, dispatched by a single punch from his companion, Mr. Alexander Whelan. “Miss Fitzpatrick? What in the name of God are you doing out at this hour, and alone?”

  “Is he dead?”

  Mr. Whelan snorted, then waved at a couple of householders who had poked their heads out the window. “All’s well,” he called. “Just a fellow getting fresh with this lady here.” As the onlookers disappeared from view, Mr. Whelan said, “No, Miss Fitzpatrick, he’s not dead, although I hope his head will make him wish he was next morning.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I began to walk on.

  Mr. Whelan stayed beside me. “To get back to my question, miss, what are you doing out this late at night?”

  I sniffed. Mr. Whelan, though not obviously drunk, was decidedly redolent of spirits. “I could ask what you are doing out drinking with a wife and children at home.”

  “It’s a man’s constitutional right to drink, I’ll have you know, Miss Fitzpatrick.”

  I mentally reviewed the various provisions of the Constitution and found none that quite fit Mr. Whelan’s claim. But standing here arguing fine points of constitutional law with Mr. Whelan wouldn’t help Mrs. Surratt. “Sir, I must be going.”

  “And I have to ask you again, where are you going this time of night alone?”

  “It’s none of your concern, sir.”

  “It is my concern, miss.” There was an odd catch in his voice when he said that, and I wonder to this day how much of my future was decided with those five short words. He cleared his throat. “It’s my concern because if you wander around the city at night by yourself, you’re going to be robbed or ravished, as you should have figured out from what just happened, and I’m not going to let either happen to you. You can go where you like—but I’m going with you to keep you from harm. Agreed?”

  “Agreed. It’s not far from here.”

  “Then will you tell me where we’re going, miss?”

  “You heard that Mrs. Surratt is going to die tomorrow.”

  “Yes.” Mr. Whelan looked rather sheepish. “We were toasting her over at the Marble Saloon.”

  “For shame, sir!”

  “Well, it’s a hot night, miss. We toasted the other three first.”

  I sighe
d. “In any case, sir, I want to enlist the aid of Mrs. Douglas in begging for Mrs. Surratt’s life. So I am going to her house.”

  Mr. Whelan nodded. “Go straight to the top, that’s my motto. Now, does your father know about this, miss?”

  “No. You won’t take me back to him, will you, sir?”

  “Take you back? Have you run away from him?”

  “No, but I’m supposed to be in Baltimore.”

  Mr. Whelan considered this. “I ran away from my old man, miss. Nothing to be ashamed of. Sometimes I think that everyone should run away from their old man.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Mr. Whelan! I have not run away. I just disobeyed him.”

  “Well, that’s how it starts, you know. First you disobey your old man, then you run away from him.”

  “Why did you run away, sir?”

  “Because he was a right proper bastard—excuse the language. Beat me and took my wages. One payday, I grabbed up my money and left him, and Canada, behind. Haven’t seen either of them since.”

  “That’s sad, sir.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Whelan said reflectively. “Sometimes I miss Canada. Not the old man, though.”

  As we made our way down the street, Mr. Whelan taking my arm to guide me, it occurred to me that I was traipsing around close to midnight arm-in-arm with a married man I barely knew, who was perhaps not entirely sober, in a city where I wasn’t supposed to be. It was an impressive list of accomplishments in one evening for a girl who had spent most of her life in convent schools. I cleared my throat. “Mr. Whelan, I hope your wife won’t be worried about you.”

  “No, miss. She understands me.” Mr. Whelan pointed at a wall emblazed with an advertisement for soda crackers. “See that, miss? My work.”

  “Very nice.”

  “Did you get a book in prison called The Trapper’s Bride, miss?”

  I stared up at him. “Why, yes, I did. How did you know that?”

  “Because I sent it.”

  “You?”

  “Yes. A friend of mine passed it on to me. I’m not much of a reader, but I remembered what you had said about not having anything to read the first time you were in prison, so I gave one of the guards there a chaw of tobacco and asked him to pass it and a Harper’s Weekly on to you. The book, I mean, not the chaw. Probably not your type of book, though.”

  “It kept me very well entertained, sir, and I thank you.”

  “Well, here we are, miss.”

  I stared at the Douglas mansion. I had passed by it before, but seeing it shut up for the night, and having business there, made it a daunting sight.

  “Aren’t you going to knock, miss?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it is too late after all—”

  Mr. Whelan banged on the door. “Police!”

  In no time at all, a colored servant appeared at the door as Mr. Whelan disappeared into the shadows. “Where’s the police, missy?”

  “There are no police. My companion thought—” I opened my purse. “Is Mrs. Douglas home?”

  “She’s long in bed, missy.”

  “I must see her. Or at least give her this letter.”

  The servant looked at me kindly. “Are you in a family way, miss? Mrs. Douglas gets a lot of girls in a family way coming here. Young cads promise them all the world, then leave them high and dry. Happens all the time. It does. Nice girls too.”

  “I am not in a family way. This is a matter of life and death. Please, may I see her? It will take only a few minutes. Tell her that I am Miss Nora Fitzpatrick, from church. And from Georgetown Visitation as well.” I handed him the letter I had composed on the train. “And give her this.”

  “I’ll ask, missy. But it sure is late, if you ask me.”

  “Family way.” Mr. Whelan chuckled from his hiding place.

  “Why are you hiding, sir?”

  “Thought after what happened to Mr. Seward, they might be a little reluctant to open the door to a man.”

  “Well, that makes sense,” I said grudgingly.

  To my immense relief, the stately figure of Mrs. Douglas soon appeared in the hall, lit by gaslight. “Miss Fitzpatrick, surely you are not alone this time of night.”

  “No, ma’am. I have a companion. For heaven’s sake, come out, Mr. Whelan.”

  Mrs. Douglas lifted her eyebrows, then said in her usual serene tone, “I have read your letter, Miss Fitzpatrick, and I will gladly go on the errand you urged of me, but I do not want to give you false hope. My friends tell me that the president is adamant that Mrs. Surratt must die.”

  My heart sank, but I said, “False hope is better than none at all. Thank you, Mrs. Douglas.”

  “I will be there early tomorrow. Now let me have my driver take you home.”

  “That’s not necessary, ma’am.”

  “I rather think it is,” Mrs. Douglas said dryly and went to give the orders.

  I turned to Mr. Whelan. “Thank you, sir, for helping me.”

  “Any time, miss. I hope they save her.”

  I watched him disappear down New Jersey Avenue. As I settled into Mrs. Douglas’s fine carriage a little while later, I found myself wishing he was still with me.

  Just a little.

  47

  MARY

  JULY 6 TO 7, 1865

  Much as I hated to send Anna away, I was soon grateful that she was gone, for I was seized by cramps and congestive chills, necessitating a visit by the physician. It was not in this condition, groaning and crying out, that I wanted my daughter to remember me. Indeed, I was so ill at one point that it occurred to me that if the government waited a few days, it would not have to hang me at all.

  Through all, Father Wiget prayed with me and endeavored to comfort me, but I was still base enough to wish there was another priest at my side—Father Finotti, who could always cheer me. He could be in no doubt I was the same person as his congregant of old: the press had seen to that. Once I even thought of writing to him, but enough people had suffered through their association with me, and I would not drag another unwitting soul into this web.

  Yet for all that, I had hoped he might write to me anyway—a simple letter of solace—but nothing had come. Perhaps he had forgotten me. Perhaps he was never the man I thought he was. I could hear the mocking voice of my husband, telling me it was about time I realized that.

  I had not judged men well. Mr. Booth, hiding his murderous plan under the kindest of facades. Mr. Weichmann, testifying against me and Johnny. Senator Johnson, offering high-flown words and little practical help at my trial. My Johnny—yes, even my Johnny, who had not come to stand trial with me. It was those I had barely known— Mr. Brophy and this patient man whose voice was getting hoarse, General Hartranft and his unfailing kindness to Anna and me—who in their different ways had proven to be the best of friends to me.

  And here I was, ignoring the gospel because it was not being read by a man I had not seen in years. “Father Wiget? If I do not remember to say so tomorrow, thank you for your kind care of me.”

  Father Wiget smiled and, in a firm voice, resumed his reading. “‘My Father,’ he said, ‘if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it.’”

  • • •

  Deep in the night, I told Father Wiget I would try to sleep, more for his benefit than for mine. I stretched out on my mattress and shut my eyes.

  It had grown very quiet. The commotion of the scaffold being built had ceased hours ago, but throughout the evening I had heard the sounds from the other cells—Mr. Payne’s stoic murmur of conversation with his minister, Mr. Herold’s bevy of sisters, some weeping and some calmly reading aloud, Mr. Atzerodt’s deep sighs. Now, only the footsteps of the guards broke the silence of this place.

  Somewhere in this prison, I heard from Anna, who saw it in the newspapers, lay
the body of Mr. Booth, safe from those who might desecrate it and hidden from those who might make its burial place a sort of shrine. His poor mother!

  “Does she have a favorite, Mr. Booth?”

  “Anna! No mother admits to such things.”

  “No, she does not mention it, as you say, Mrs. Surratt, but I believe my brothers and sisters, if pressed, would say that I was the favorite.”

  I struggled to a sitting position. “Father Wiget?” I said in a low voice.

  Evidently, my priest had been no more successful at finding sleep than I had, for he raised his head and answered immediately, “Yes, Mrs. Surratt?”

  “Would you say a prayer for the repose of a soul?”

  “Certainly. Whose?”

  “Mr. Booth’s.”

  Father Wiget looked surprised, but in a very low tone, dutifully prayed for the soul of Mr. Booth.

  • • •

  Morning. The prison was awake, and my life was now measured in hours.

  I asked for pencil and paper and managed to compose a short letter to each of my absent sons, giving them my love and asking them to take good care of their sister. As I wrote Isaac’s, I considered the irony that my farewell to him should be by letter, for that was how he had bid me farewell one spring day in 1861: leaving a letter on the mantelpiece and making the impossible request that I should not worry about him. As the war ground on, and especially during the last few months, he had been pushed to the back of my mind, but I had never ceased to love him or to remember him in my prayers. As I folded the letter, I silently pleaded for the Lord to bring him home safely, both for his own sake and Anna’s.

  Just after I wrote the letters, someone brought me breakfast, which I could not touch, even though I had scarcely eaten the previous day. No sooner did I push it away when Father Walter came bearing the Holy Communion, which I was able to take. As I lifted the wafer to my mouth, I saw my hands were shaking.

  Then Mr. Brophy hastened in. “There is good news, Mrs. Surratt! Overnight, Mr. Clampitt and Mr. Aiken got Judge Wylie from the Washington Supreme Court to issue a writ of habeas corpus, directed to General Hancock.”