Hanging Mary: A Novel

by Susan Higginbotham

  • • •

  Now that my life was to be measured in minutes, they moved quickly. Two soldiers, Lieutenant Colonel McCall and Sergeant Kenney, entered the cell and, after apologizing, proceeded to chain my feet and fasten my hands behind my back. “Her bonnet,” prompted Lieutenant Colonel McCall.

  Sergeant Kenney gingerly took my bonnet from the windowsill and held it on a level with my head, then removed my manacles. “Maybe you had best put it on, Mrs. Surratt.”

  I tied the ribbons and arranged my veil with shaking hands before Sergeant Kenney refastened the manacles. Then he and his companion led me to a chair outside my cell, telling me General Hartranft would give the word when we were to start.

  Father Walter knelt beside me, holding a cross to my lips. “Father, may I say something on the—on the scaffold?”

  “What, my child?”

  “That I am innocent of conspiring to kill the president.”

  “No, my child. The world and all that is in it has now receded forever. It would do no good, and it might disturb the serenity of your last moments.”

  From the prison yard, a drum sounded. My escorts gently raised me to my feet, on which I suddenly had trouble standing, and half led, half carried me toward the prison yard. Murmuring prayers, the two priests followed behind.

  As soon as my feet landed outside, I was overwhelmed by the heat, brutal even for Washington in July, and by the smell of the freshly cut wood of the new-made scaffold that loomed in front of me. I came to a halt. Behind me, Father Wiget said, “Pray with us, Mrs. Surratt.”

  I obeyed, keeping my head down to avoid the sight of the scaffold and the crowd of soldiers, newspapermen, and spectators who filled the usually empty prison yard. Only when I saw, not far from the steps of the scaffold, four yawning graves and four crude coffins piled next to them did my knees give way. The soldiers kept me from falling in a heap. “Steady, Mrs. Surratt.”

  With the chains on my feet clinking, the men lifted me, stair by stair, up to the scaffold platform. Four wooden armchairs, against which rested umbrellas, had been placed upon it. The soldiers seated me in the armchair on the far right and gave their places to the priests as I stared at the noose dangling in front of me. “No,” I moaned.

  “Don’t look at it, child,” Father Walter said as Father Wiget snapped open an umbrella and lifted it above my head. “Pray.”

  As I muttered familiar words that no longer made much sense to me, I closed my eyes and slumped against Father Wiget. To the priests’ prayers I added my own petition, the final thing with which I would ever trouble the Lord. Please don’t let my Anna see me die.

  50

  NORA

  JULY 7, 1865

  After our futile trip to the White House, the street leading to the Old Arsenal was so crowded with the curious that only General Hancock’s spotting our carriage and ordering the way to be cleared brought us to the prison gates in time. “Lemonade!” a vendor shouted as we passed through the gates. “Last chance for lem-o-nade!”

  “Cakes! Get your delicious cakes!”

  “Barbarians,” muttered Anna. It was the first word she’d spoken since we left the White House.

  General Hancock’s permission to pass through the gates having enveloped all three of us, I followed Mr. Brophy and Anna into the cell area. Instead of accompanying them into Mrs. Surratt’s cell, I sat in an anteroom, for I had no pass to see her and did not want to take any precious minutes from her last time with Anna. Mr. Brophy, pale and red-eyed, soon joined me, and we sat in silence, listening to the wailings of loved ones parting for good. Mr. Herold’s mother could not bear the strain of coming to see her condemned son, but his sisters were here, dressed in black like Anna. Even Mr. Atzerodt had company, some relations of his and the lady with whom he resided. Only Mr. Payne had no visitors, save for a minister and his lawyer. Later, I would learn that he was actually named Mr. Powell, the son of a Baptist preacher, and that his family in far-off Florida had received the news too late to make the journey to see him.

  At about half past twelve, soldiers came to the cells for the grim task of sending the visitors away—a task scarcely less enviable, I thought as I heard Anna and the Herold sisters sobbing, than that of the hangman himself. As they emerged from the cells, Mr. Brophy having hurried in to support Anna, a clerk stepped forward. “There are places upstairs where the ladies can rest.”

  We followed him, Mr. Brophy half carrying poor Anna, to the second floor, where he guided each dismal little group to a different room, sending Mr. Brophy, Anna, and I to a little chamber with a cot and a chair—his room, he volunteered with some pride. Anna collapsed by the cot, sobbing wildly, while I stroked her hair helplessly, powerless to do anything to ease her grief. To my relief, she soon fell into an exhausted sleep—aided, I suspected, by something in the restorative Dr. Porter, the prison physician, sent upstairs.

  Once Anna was asleep, Mr. Brophy raised the window shade, revealing a view of the scaffold that made me gasp. With four nooses hanging still on the windless, scorching day, it stood in perfect readiness for its awful task, the armchairs and umbrellas on its platform giving it a bizarrely homey look. On the wall overlooking it stood a line of soldiers, clearly prepared for any trouble. “Miss Fitzpatrick, perhaps you should go to another room.”

  “No. Anna might need me.” As Mr. Brophy seemed disinclined to accept this rather feeble excuse, I added, “I’m here, sir. I want to see this to the end.”

  Mr. Brophy sighed but did not protest further.

  “How will they fall, sir?”

  Even at a moment of deepest sorrow, a man can derive some comfort by explaining something, especially if the party in need of the explanation is a woman. In a voice barely above a whisper, Mr. Brophy said, “There are two traps on which the prisoners will stand that are held up by props. Those soldiers you see standing underneath the gallows will knock the props out when they are given a signal. And then…”

  I did not ask him to elaborate.

  At a distance, I heard a clock strike one, and Mrs. Surratt, flanked by two soldiers and followed by Father Wiget and Father Walter, tottered out of the building toward the scaffold. She was dressed as I’d seen her at the trial, except that her gown, bereft of its usual crinoline, dragged along wearily behind her. “She can barely walk,” I whispered. “Why have they bothered to tie her hands?”

  Mr. Brophy looked down grimly as Mrs. Surratt made her painful progress. “They’re not only hanging an innocent woman; they’re hanging a sick one as well.”

  Behind Mrs. Surratt came Mr. Atzerodt, Mr. Herold, and Mr. Payne, who, like Mrs. Surratt, had their hands bound behind their backs and their feet shackled. All—except Mrs. Surratt, who wore the old shoes I’d often seen her work in around the house—were in stocking feet or slippers. No one had thought to provide Mr. Atzerodt with a hat, but Mr. Payne looked incongruously jaunty in a sailor hat I later learned had been procured by his minister. Only his shackled feet impeded his cool march to the scaffold.

  Anna slept on beside us, mercifully unaware of her mother’s painful progress up the stairs of the scaffold and into a seat at its far right, where the two priests quietly prayed with her, Father Wiget holding the cross and Father Walter holding a prayer book. As the three men settled into their seats—Mr. Payne to the left of Mrs. Surratt, Mr. Atzerodt on the far left, and Mr. Herold to his right—I took out my rosary.

  But I could not keep my eyes off the scaffold. As I cautiously poked my head out (a holdover from my stay at Old Capitol) to get a better view, I saw something else poking out from a nearby building: the nose of Alexander Gardner’s camera, here to capture the execution for generations to come. It occurred to me that I was seeing history in the making, although it was far from a pretty process.

  General Hartranft, shielded by an umbrella, came to the center of the scaffold and read the death warrants, with the two pri
ests continuing to minister quietly to Mrs. Surratt. I turned my eye to the men. Mr. Atzerodt, his head shielded from the blazing sun by a handkerchief provided by a sympathetic soldier, listened quietly and attentively to the general, while poor Mr. Herold squirmed in his chair and looked desperately around him—whether in search of an escape or of someone to speak to him, I could not say. At last, his minister bent over him and murmured a few words, which seemed to calm him.

  Mr. Payne stared impassively at the sky, a puff of wind blowing his hat away. Someone caught it and began to replace it but was met with a slight smile and a shrug. He wouldn’t be needing it much longer.

  General Hartranft finished reading and stepped back. Now would have been the perfect time for a horseman to gallop into the yard, waving Mrs. Surratt’s pardon, but no one obliged. Instead, Mr. Payne’s minister, Mr. Herold’s minister, and Mr. Atzerodt’s minister each stood and offered prayers on his prisoner’s behalf. Mrs. Surratt, seemingly oblivious to the speeches, murmured prayers while the priests stood over her. Only once, during the prayer for Mr. Atzerodt, did she let out a faint groan.

  “Stand here, please,” General Hartranft said softly.

  Mr. Payne rose immediately and walked to the edge of the scaffold, followed by Mr. Herold and Mr. Atzerodt, both of whom trembled so badly it was impossible to say which of the pair was more unnerved. Father Walter and Father Wiget helped Mrs. Surratt to a standing position and relinquished her to her two escorts, who gently guided her to the hinged area of the drop. Quickly, the soldiers bound the men’s arms, knees, and ankles with strips of white cloth.

  Mrs. Surratt stood with her head drooping, half shielded from the gaze of the crowd by the soldier who supported her. My eyes filled with tears when a second soldier bent to deal with her bindings. She was a modest woman. Surely he wouldn’t yank her skirt up and reveal her legs, would he? I sighed as he settled for tying a large strip around her skirts near the knees.

  Next to Mrs. Surratt, Mr. Payne stood pinioned. He gazed forward expressionlessly as his attendant placed the noose behind his left ear, adjusted it, and fastened a white hood atop his head. I got my last look at the face of the man who had sat beside me at Ford’s Theatre and had asked me about Jane Shore.

  Mr. Herold, plainly batting back tears, received his noose and hood, then Mr. Atzerodt. There was a long pause before Colonel McCall carefully untied Mrs. Surratt’s bonnet and took it off her head. As she blinked in the sunlight, he murmured something only she could hear and slipped the noose over her head.

  “Gentlemen!” A man standing in the yard threw up his hands and turned to face the crowd. “I tell you this is murder. Can you stand and see it done?”

  51

  MARY

  JULY 7, 1865

  Fathers Wiget and Walter kept me so securely in a protective cocoon of prayer that I hardly noticed the arrival of my fellow prisoners on the scaffold until Mr. Payne took his seat in the chair next to mine and said despairingly to his minister, “Can’t anyone save her?”

  The minister murmured some reply, and Mr. Payne sighed.

  What if he had not come to my house that night? What if I had not made those trips to Surrattsville? What if I had sold my tavern instead of leasing it to Mr. Lloyd? What if that mad scheme to kidnap the president in March had succeeded? So many what-ifs I could not help but wonder about, even as I tried to heed the priests’ words that it was God’s will that I die on the scaffold instead of as an old woman in a bed surrounded by my grandchildren.

  I hoped it was also God’s will that death come quickly to me.

  • • •

  There were rituals to be gone through at a hanging, I learned—the reading of the death warrant, the prayers offered on behalf of the condemned. The priests ministered to me throughout them, preparing me for the moment to which all this ritual tended. “Lord Jesus,” I whispered with them. “Into thy hands I commit my spirit.”

  At the other end of the scaffold, Mr. Atzerodt’s priest ended his own prayer with a fervent amen. There was a long silence, broken by General Hartranft’s solemn voice ordering us to stand.

  Slowly, Fathers Wiget and Walter lifted me to my feet. “God bless you,” I managed to say before they relinquished their hold on me to those who would prepare me in another way for execution. “Look after my poor girl.”

  Colonel McCall, who had always been kind to me during my imprisonment, gently took over. “A couple of necessary preparations,” he said as Sergeant Kenney bound me with white strips of cloth. The sergeant was clearly ill at ease in trussing a lady in this manner and, in his eagerness to be done, tied my arms much too tight. “It hurts,” I complained weakly.

  “It won’t hurt for long,” he snapped, and I could tell before he finished the words that he regretted them. Gently, he loosened my bonds. “Is this better?” he asked softly.

  “Yes.”

  With a sigh, Sergeant Kenney stooped to bind me below the knees as I bent my head, grateful for the veil hiding my flush of humiliation as he drew my heavy woolen skirts tight with his ribbon. When they balked at being constricted, I remembered the Bloomerite at my trial, and it occurred to me that in her odd style of dress she just might have had a point.

  My trussing was over. Gently Colonel McCall guided me forward, just beyond the hinge of the platform from which we would plunge to eternity. “I think you would prefer me to do the next myself. Would you, madam?”

  I nodded. Delicately, the colonel removed my bonnet, which he handed to someone near him as I blinked in the blaze of sunlight revealed by the absence of my veil. He took the noose dangling in front of me and slipped it around my neck, nudging it against my left ear. Someone on the ground shouted something about murder, but I could not look down to see the commotion even if I dared. Instead, I stared ahead as Colonel McCall adjusted the noose. “You will most likely lose consciousness very quickly,” he told me. “Perhaps as soon as the trap is sprung, given your weak condition.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  I turned my head slightly to see Captain Rath make a final adjustment to Mr. Payne’s noose. “I want you to die quick,” he explained.

  “You know best, Captain,” Mr. Payne said matter-of-factly.

  My noose in place, Colonel McCall said, “Don’t be frightened by this. It is only to hide your face,” as he slipped a white hood over my head, blotting out all earthly sights. “Courage, madam,” he said as he fastened it. “God be with you.”

  In the darkness, I felt him step back a little. “Please don’t let me fall!” I begged.

  A hand—earthly or heavenly—steadied me. Then a muffled clap, like that of a weary playgoer, sounded from the ground below.

  A second clap.

  And then a third.

  52

  NORA

  JULY 7, 1865

  The man who had shouted, failing to gain any response, turned his back to the crowd and, weeping, pressed his palm to his bowed head. Beneath the scaffold, one of the four men detailed to knock out the props wearily leaned against a support. Atop the scaffold, Mr. Payne, Mr. Herold, and Mr. Atzerodt stood noosed and hooded as Colonel McCall carefully slipped a hood over Mrs. Surratt’s head.

  And in our room, Anna slept on, and I thanked God for this one small mercy.

  Captain Rath, who had been overseeing the final preparations on the scaffold, descended the stairs, his face set. As the weary prop knocker pulled himself upright, the captain looked toward the building as if expecting a signal. Receiving it, he looked up at the gallows. Everyone but the prisoners had stepped back. Only Colonel McCall’s outstretched arm kept Mrs. Surratt upright.

  Slowly, Captain Rath brought his hands together three times as Mr. Atzerodt cried out, “Good-bye, gentlemen who are before me now. May we all meet in the other world! God help me now!” Then the props crashed to the ground, and four human beings plummeted to their deaths.

/>   Mrs. Surratt, who had pitched forward when she fell, wildly swung back and forth like a ghastly pendulum, one hand making a slight clenching motion, before the rope subsided to a gentle spin. Mr. Atzerodt hung motionless, save for a heaving of his belly. Mr. Herold writhed as urine stained his pants, his body finally going limp after five minutes. And Mr. Payne—poor Mr. Payne! Even after Mr. Herold had ceased to fight for life, Mr. Payne struggled on, even pulling himself into a sitting position before death finally claimed him.

  All this time, the crowd had remained frozen and silent. Even Mr. Brophy, who had made toward the window shade as if to shield me from watching Mr. Payne’s grisly exertions, had paused, rooted to the spot. The bodies growing still, however, was the crowd’s cue to come to life. The men of the press resumed scribbling in their notebooks, while some spectators, clearly shaken, left the yard, probably in search of something stronger than the lemonade waiting outside the gates. Others began to debate who had given up life the hardest, Mr. Payne or Mr. Herold, while a few began a furtive search for relics.

  The clergymen gathered up their Bibles and crosses and slowly walked down the gallows stairs, followed by soldiers carrying the seats in which the four condemned had sat. At last, nothing remained on the gallows but the dead, hanging there listlessly while a young boy—surely too young to be watching a scene like this—stared at them in awe.

  Anna stirred, and Mr. Brophy quickly drew down the window shade. Unwilling to wake Anna and numb with what we had just witnessed, Mr. Brophy and I sat there in utter silence until Father Walter, holding a bonnet, entered the room. “I’ll take Miss Surratt home. I have a carriage here somewhere.”

  Anna blinked and rubbed her head. “Is Mama—?”

  “Yes, child. It is all over.” To Mr. Brophy, he said, “The doctor has pronounced them dead.”

  When Anna—still too groggy to grieve—had finally been roused enough to walk, the men supported her out of the room. I started to follow, then said, “Excuse me. I forgot something.”