Copyright © 2014 by J. F. Pennington
FIRST NORTH AMERICAN EDITION BY SKYHORSE PUBLISHING 2015
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First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Pen & Sword Fiction, an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Jacket design by Dominic Allen
Print ISBN: 978-1-63220-660-2
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63220-878-1
Printed in the United States of America
Recollections from the Kentucky wilderness in the 52nd year of my life October 1890
For Viola and Sebastian—Remember me, babies, in your prayers.
***
Why would he risk his own life to claim that of the president? Who were his urgers, and what had they promised?
***
Where did he learn the password that allowed him to cross the Navy Yard Bridge after the shooting at Ford’s Theatre? How had he planned to complete his escape, where did his route lead, and when was it clear everyone had betrayed him? Could he have eluded the men sent to intercept him at Garrett’s Farm, and did his deed earn him the reported
$25,000, enough to keep him quiet—and anonymous—for the rest of his natural life?
***
He was a member of America’s most prestigious theater family—generally held in higher regard than his now-more-famous brother Edwin, and receiving a greater annual salary than the U.S. President, but by the end of the Civil War he had all but abandoned his theatrical career and become strangely obsessed.
***
Introduction
At approximately 10:15 P.M. on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, 26-year-old actor John Wilkes Booth shot and killed President Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre, Washington, D.C. Newly celebrating the close of the American Civil War and the Union victory over the armies of the Confederacy, Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd, with guests Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Ms. Clara Harris, had been attending a performance of Tom Taylor’s Our American Cousin, starring the first diva of the American theater, Laura Keene.
Members of the audience reported the assassin crying, Sic semper tyrannis! (“Thus ever to tyrants,” Virginia state motto), before ironically tripping over American flag bunting as he leaped from the presidential box onto the stage.
Booth escaped swiftly through the rear of the theater and into the night, but government reports claimed he was killed twelve days later in a pre-dawn incident at Garrett’s Farm, Virginia. Yet the body of the man who was shot in the head and burned in a tobacco-shed fire before being covertly transported to Washington was never wholly identified. Family members and friends were barred from viewing the remains, the only photograph taken of the corpse was never printed then subsequently misplaced or lost, and a strangely ceremonious martial court presided over a secret burial. Rumors immediately began to circulate that the real John Wilkes Booth was still alive.
A crudely fashioned barricade inside the presidential box and a back-stage exit pre-arranged with members of that night’s acting company, along with knowledge of that day’s password to access the Navy Yard bridge confirmed many of Booth’s preparations had been secured in advance, and the soldier who was to have stood by and guarded President Lincoln was curiously away from his post.
Lincoln’s assassination was but one part of a daring and intricate plot to completely debilitate the otherwise jubilant North. The same night this plan nearly claimed the lives of the bed-ridden secretary of state, William Seward, and one of his sons, and was allegedly to have also included the subsequently implicated Vice President Andrew Johnson and a conspicuously out-of-town General Ulysses S. Grant, each of whom were initially to have joined the president at the theater.
While his fellow conspirators were neither as successful nor as stout as he, the charismatic Booth’s escape was so artfully designed that his near interception could almost only have been accomplished by those who knew its particulars, who also understood Booth’s southern sympathies, how far he would go to serve them, and have been able to use his infamous dramatic passions to their own ends—before calling out the hounds to ensure the trail could not be traced back to them.
Pursued by Federal troops while another assumed his place—unaware the orders to bring the assassin back to Washington alive were never meant to be obeyed—a tired and crippled Booth managed his way to relative freedom, leaving behind all of his personal belongings except sixteen pages of the diary in which he had begun a romantic stage play.
Twenty-five years later, Booth lives in the primitive Kentucky wilderness cabin where Lincoln himself may have been born. Forced into a life of nameless exile and haunted by the past, Booth is as unable to claim the glory he thought would be his as he is to forget the fatal incident that put the country into mourning and rang the final curtain on the questionable career of the youngest member of the nation’s most prominent theater family.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
PROLOGUE: The Dream
ACT I An End to Exile
Scene I
Scene II
Scene III
Scene IV
Scene V
ENTR’ACTE: The Day
ACT II The Journey Home
Scene I
Scene II
Scene III
Scene IV
Scene V
INTERMEZZO: The Deed
ACT III The Mark of the Man
Scene I
Scene II
Scene III
Scene IV
Scene V
ENTR’ACTE: The Diary
ACT IV Contrition
Scene I
Scene II
Scene III
Scene IV
Scene V
EPILOGUE: The Dawn
CURTAIN
Prologue
The Dream
The bearded tyrant sat grim and still. The makeshift door-brace eased precisely into the knife-cut mortise as a fragile darkness assumed its place with eternal acceptance. No guard had there been at the top of my quick, rose-carpeted steps. No guard except the conscience I had long persuaded to watch me past the carved colonnades of the outer balcony. And from my temporary cloister, these twice theatrical wings of daring which could wax or melt in an instant—my heart speeding as if the deed were done, the labyrinth sprung—I once more studied my final entrance.
The moment held its breath as next my fingers moved to part, if slightly, the damask curtain that now alone separated our cause from his unbearable will, true victory from an untenable surrender, my haunted night from the all-harkening day.
The tyrant’s gnarled knuckles clawed into the lupine-scrolled arms of his rocking chair perch, and his eyes fixed upon the evening’s play, while he was yet aware that ha
lf the house rather watched him—for a movement, a sign, some memento to take home from the theater; the monograph, perhaps, of a once favorite player. This would my hand supply as never before.
Fine powdered ladies in their veils and bonnets, tall grinless gentlemen with their canes and capes, although forgetful of the solemn night’s duty, forced appreciation of fatuous comedy while surely urged beyond noting the execution of a well-framed speech. Their ancient spirits cried for them to witness the justice done to creation’s two-thousand-year-old ritual, turned westward toward the fractured summit. The fabled robe of old stretched as velvet upon the seats throughout the house, its purple plush full-soaked with scents of perfume or cigars. Again, the dice profaned the cause with play.
Their usurping standard presumed its place in folded drapes out front the box wherein their blasphemous master dreamed. The rifting stripes and impenitent stars signifying only a shroud to cinch his steps from imagined resurrection. And his plump Calpurnia, decked in more finery than her frame or character could support, drunken with her pride and porto, clutched at his side, somehow knowing that next, this dusk of Ides, this modern feast of sacrifice and expurgation, this Good Friday—the Gods of nature would laugh and revel and be appeased, this Gessler would be mine.
Mrs. Mountchessington exited in a flurry and, there, too, a single player stood upon the stage. His cue well met, his lines well-spoken, I crossed and played my business out. Half a stride, then face to face, I cheered the motto of my faith and countrymen. The powder flashed, the bullet rang, those steel-gray eyes last looked on me.
Act I
An End to Exile
War Department, Washington, April 20, 1865,
$100,000 REWARD!
THE MURDERER
Of our late beloved President, Abraham Lincoln,
IS STILL AT LARGE $50,000 REWARD!
Will be paid by this Department for his apprehension, in addition to any reward offered by Municipal Authorities or State Executives.
$25,000 REWARD!
Will be paid for the apprehension of JOHN H SURRATT, one of Booth’s accomplices.
$25,000 REWARD!
Will be paid for the apprehension of DAVID C HAROLD, another of Booth’s accomplices.
LIBERAL REWARDS will be paid for any information that shall conduce to the arrest of either of the above-named criminals, or their accomplices.
EDWIN M STANTON, Secretary of War
April 14, Friday the Ides—Until today nothing was ever thought of sacrificing to our country’s wrongs. For six months we had worked to capture. But, our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done. But its failure was owing to others who did not strike for their country with a heart. I struck boldly, and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on. A colonel was at his side. I shouted sic semper before I fired. In jumping broke my leg. I passed all his pickets, rode sixty miles that night with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump. I can never repent it. Though we hated to kill, our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment. The country is not what it was. This forced union is not what I have loved. I care not what becomes of me. I have no desire to outlive my country. This night (before the deed) I wrote a long article and left it for one of the editors of the “National Intelligencer,” in which I fully set forth our reasons for our proceedings. He or the South.
Friday, April 21—After being hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased by gunboats till I was forced to return wet, cold and starving, with every man’s hand against me, I am here in despair. And why? For doing what Brutus was honored for what made Tell a hero. And yet I, for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as a common cutthroat. My action was purer than either of theirs. One hoped to be great himself. The other had not only his country ground beneath this tyranny, and prayed for this end; and yet behold now the cold hand they extend to me. God cannot pardon me if I have done wrong. Yet I can not see any wrong except in serving a degenerate people. The little—the very little I left behind to clear my name, the Government will not allow to be printed. So ends all. For my country I have given up all that makes life sweet and holy, brought misery upon my family, and am sure there is no pardon in heaven for me since man condemns me so. I have only heard of what has been done (except what I did myself), and it fills me with horror. God! try and forgive me and bless my mother.
Tonight I will once more try the river with the intent to cross, although I have a greater desire and almost a mind to return to Washington, and in a measure clear my name, which I feel I can do. I do not repent the blow I struck. I may before my God, but not to men. I think I have done well, though I am abandoned with the curse of Cain upon me, when, if the world knew my heart, that one blow would have made me great, though I did desire no greatness. Tonight I try to escape these blood hounds once more. Who, who can read his fate? God’s will be done. I have too great a soul to die like a criminal. Oh may He, may He spare me that, and let me die bravely! I bless the entire world. Have never hated or wronged anyone. This last was not a wrong unless God deems it so. And it’s with Him to damn or bless me. And for this brave boy with me, who often prays (yes, before and since) with a true and sincere heart, was it crime in him? If so, why can he pray the same? I do not wish to shed a drop of blood, but “I must fight the course.” ’Tis all that’s left me.
Scene I
Oh! The snow, the beautiful snow,
Filling the sky and the earth below;
Over the house tops, over the street,
Over the heads of the people you meet;
Dancing,
Flirting,
Skimming along,
Beautiful snow! it can do nothing wrong.
– J. W. Watson’s Beautiful Snow, or Remorse of the Fallen One
Strophe
I
There is no beauty in these woods. No hope, no thought of reconciliation or forgiveness. These ancient oaks and bearded hickory house their nests from year to year, shelter numerous cardinals, tufted titmice and warblers of senseless songs and ceaseless flights to be, awaken my sleepless nights each day before dawn, block the sun. The four-coursed brook that winds and sinks and echoes cyan past my cabin’s only window, soothing the silent deer and slinking yellow cat, mutters only jumbled syllables of forgotten claims and oaths. And every boot or broken twig sends me running that I might not face the intrepid hunter or happy traveler from Hickman or Union City who would exploit or explore the half-cleared knoll where I broodless roost. Or was it but some white-faced Hereford strayed too far from Ainsley’s farm?
I would not have expected to see swamp sparrows here amid the thickets of willow and alder. It is as if they followed me up from those days of my pursuit, their streaked-gray breasts constantly beating with the sound of my own shadow-fearing heart, their striped crowns masking intent. The sweet and gurgling song of this harlequin, poised and practiced to play the executioner with a skulking smile, his throat somehow mimicking mine, as I am cast headlong, head lost, into the depths. And still the black-capped chickadee calls for light, “Phoebe, phoebe!”
I know my neighbors, all of them. Have watched them drink or dance or sup from where I sneaked beneath their sills; laugh in the hours after dusk, the lamplights tinting the magenta roses of their cheeks and wants. And seen them, too—long after, from my place of hiding, when my own head ached for want of company, my heart for her—turn those lanterns down and guide their shadows beneath the legacy quilts where solemnly they shared their trusts. I know them well, but they know not me.
And how many years later do I still think of her love? Surely I felt something. What, if not that one thing? But if by day I confidently mount the hill where dreams have seen my death, felt fully the truth that otherwise seeks shelter and disguise in night, which valley do I look upon? What age is this that finds me fettered here, the pinioned de
liverer, silhouetted by the flame I thought to bestow? On what parade of political peccadilloes do I spy, that I may say, or must admit to having written the prologue and introduced the stumbling understudies from the corps of stock characters? Or, if I recognize my place, allow the current to upsweep me as it wills, perhaps it is not the motion of myth or past experience, but a haunting wind of future events that lifts my fears.
These woods have called me here to die or dream that I am better dead, that I should have taken one of theirs. And in the shadows of these trees, the broodings of this restless night and howling forest, the passages of time and doorless fate; in the candlelight of these confessions, while a schoolboy named electricity illumines half a stormless hemisphere, I stumbling stalk the shadow that has followed me forever, and watch and hear and fear the purposed sands that drain and spill to fill my tomb and catacombs.
II
There is no beauty in these woods. No scent of myrtle, myrrh or hyacinth, violet or jasmine—nor amity in the squawking jay, who every morning seeks not my company, but some seed or kernel only by my path. The several songs of woodthrush, veery, field sparrow, scarlet tanager and whip-poor-will are threnody to the thoughts that steal my hours.
I sit alone by the fire in my silent, shuttered hutch, underneath a still and starry sky in a still more silent, hibernating wood, while moths strike at the window of my will. One, two, three—and after a time, another, another, a pause, and then a third; vainly try to rap the beat of the knock, gain admission to the secrets that are only theirs already. And just as this last series rings familiar, there comes a fourth.
My thoughts are rusty moths seeking entrance to the harbor of some more sensible, truer light. I feel its warmth, sense its flames that might teach or melt or burn, hope beyond desperation that there will be relief of either outcome.
Last night my grating recollections finally sang my mind to peace, pitched their whirring, swirling colors faster and more loudly than my conscious eyes though closed could trace. But when I woke in the hours before dawn, unsteadied by that haunting dream wherein my soul may not be mine, my body fairly chilled and soaked in fevered sweat, I could not trust to sleep again, that he would yet be there. Then, at the moment I fell back again, gave the hands of chance their grip, I heard a plaintive cry and wondered, wondered into the light. That scream was mine.
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