The First Assassin

by John J. Miller

  Portia opened her eyes, and Hughes saw the hatred. He wanted her to want him, but he wanted something else more, and so he just returned the gaze with a blank expression. She broke away from it a moment later, though, and glanced to her right. Hughes heard a commotion nearby and turned his head just in time to see Joe lunging at him with a knife. He must have been hiding behind a tree, Hughes realized—though he barely had time to complete the thought.

  The big slave slammed into Hughes, driving his blade deep into the white man’s shoulder as they both tumbled to the ground. Hughes fell flat on his back and let out a terrible groan. Blood began to soak his shirt immediately. Joe ripped out the knife and jumped to his feet. He was preparing to thrust it again when the dog hurtled toward him. Joe raised his arm to block the animal. Its teeth clenched his forearm with the strength of a vise. Its claws raked Joe’s body. Joe managed to force his arm through this thicket of legs and drive the knife into the dog’s abdomen. It released his arm and howled. On its way down, Joe slashed upward and sliced its jugular. The dog was dead before it even hit the dirt.

  Joe paused long enough to make sure the dog did not move, and then he stepped toward Hughes, still lying on the ground. Just as he was about to lean in and deliver a fatal blow, Hughes rolled to his side and pulled a pistol from his holster. He fired a single shot into Joe’s chest.

  Portia screamed at the blast. The force of the impact knocked Joe backward. He tripped over an exposed root and fell—a sudden drop that caused Hughes’s next shot to miss. Now Joe lay prone on the ground, and Hughes stood up, but with difficulty. His left arm was lame from the wound to his shoulder. He struggled to remain steady and looked down at the large and growing red stain on his shirt. Then Hughes turned his attention to Joe, lying motionless nearby. He hobbled over to the slave and pointed his gun.

  “Don’t shoot! Oh please, don’t shoot him!” cried Portia, who had barely moved since coming down from the tree.

  Hughes looked at her. She could see that he was not all there. His eyes were bleary and his face was pale. His lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but no words came out. Then he collapsed, falling to the ground just a few feet from Joe.

  Portia did not move for a moment. After the earsplitting fury, the ensuing silence was eerie. Not even the birds chirped. She looked at the two bodies in front of her. She saw that the chests of both men rose and fell. They were alive.

  At the thought of Joe breathing his last, she rushed over to him. The wound to his chest was enormous. It appeared fatal. That was obvious even to someone like Portia, who had never seen a deadly gunshot wound before. When she touched his face, though, his eyes opened and the corners of his mouth tried to curl into a smile. “Portia,” he whispered.

  “Joe! Don’t leave me! You can’t leave me!” she wailed, tears dripping down her cheeks. She started to sob.

  “Portia…”

  The effort to speak even these two syllables was an enormous strain. Portia gasped when he closed his eyes. Was this the end? He opened them again and seemed to summon all that was left in his failing body to utter a single word. “Go.”

  Portia moaned and raised her head to the sky. “Why? Why? Why?” she pleaded. She looked back at Joe. He mouthed the word once more. This time he could give it no voice. Go.

  Portia knew there was nothing she could do for him. She kissed his mouth lightly and touched his brow. “I love you,” she said. He closed his eyes. Portia sensed that he would not open them again. A minute later, his breathing stopped. Portia rose to her feet and looked at Joe for a long minute or two. She wanted to imprint his face in her memory forever. Then she checked her pocket for the photograph her grandfather had given her—it was still there—and escaped into the trees.

  “Miners use blasting powder in coal country,” explained Rook. “There’s enough here to blow up something big, and I think we know exactly what they were intending to destroy.”

  Springfield, Clark, and Higginson listened to the colonel describe how a few barrels of blasting powder in the basement of the Capitol—perhaps delivered in boxes labeled as food and later on moved to strategic locations—could turn the building into a pile of rubble.

  “That must be why Davis and Stephens visited there yesterday,” said Springfield. “They were studying the foundations.”

  Davis finally came to his senses during this discussion. “You have no proof of that, Bishop—if that’s even your real name,” he sneered.

  “It’s just as much my name as Davis is yours,” replied Rook.

  “You’ve got no business being here,” yelled Davis. “It’s not against the law to possess blasting powder!”

  “As far as you’re concerned,” snapped Rook, pointing his finger in Davis’s face, “my word is the law.”

  With Clark and Higginson keeping their guns trained on the men in the hold, Rook hopped off the barge. Springfield followed him. “What are we going to do with these fellows?” asked the sergeant. “He’s got a point. Have they actually committed a crime?”

  “Let me worry about that,” said Rook. “Late tonight, when the streets are dark and quiet, we’ll take them to the Treasury and confine them to one of those rooms in the basement, far away from the main corridors. I don’t want anyone who doesn’t need to know about them to hear them or even to suspect that they’re locked away.”

  “Sir?”

  “What, Sergeant?”

  “This seems unusual. Why don’t we take them to the new prison at the Old Capitol?”

  “Let me worry about that. Just go to the Treasury and prepare a place for them. Keep all of this to yourself.”

  It took Tate nearly an hour to arrive on the scene. His own pursuit had led him in exactly the opposite direction, and there had been plenty of distance to cover. Hearing the gunshots compelled him to give up his own chase immediately. In his experience, slave hunts rarely ended with violence, except perhaps where the dogs were concerned. Slave owners generally wanted their slaves returned alive and without serious injuries, and certainly without gunshot wounds that would make them less productive or harder to sell. Because the shots were unexpected, Tate believed his top priority now was to find his companion and see if he needed help. Besides, his trail was a hard one. His dog seemed to have trouble following the scent, pausing several times or doubling back on a path it already had taken. This was the mark of a slave who knew how to evade capture, Tate thought—and it was a trait he had not believed Portia or Joe to possess.

  His dog found the remains of the bloody encounter before he did. It howled in a plaintive whine Tate had not heard it make before. He soon saw why. Three bodies lay motionless on the ground. The dog was obviously dead. No person or animal could have survived the huge wounds it had suffered. Tate’s dog sniffed at the carcass, let out a few miserable squeals, and sat down with its head resting on its front paws. This must be how dogs grieve, thought Tate.

  The overseer figured the fates of Joe and Hughes were no different than the dog’s. He examined the body of the slave first, and it did not take long to see that it was without life. The big gunshot wound in the chest probably was responsible, even though there was also a gash on the side of the head, a little above and behind an ear. Tate wondered if someone had clobbered the slave there, but then he noticed a small patch of blood on an exposed root a few inches away. Joe must have hit it on the way down.

  Hughes lay a few steps away, and Tate initially assumed that he was a corpse too. But he saw that Hughes was actually breathing, albeit slowly. The blood had congealed around the stab he had taken from the knife. The wound was not a clean one, but Tate thought it might heal in time. It helped that Hughes had gone unconscious on his back. This stroke of luck probably saved him a good amount of blood and perhaps even his life. Tate poured water from a small canister into the injured man’s mouth. Hughes swallowed.

  In the meantime, Tate would have to make a few decisions. Their slave-hunting party had been effectively reduced from two to one—Hughes
would need days or weeks to recover—and now Tate could account for one of the two runaways he sought. A dog was dead too. Tate wondered about Portia. Had he been on her trail earlier? That was possible, though he had his doubts. And if that was not her trail, whose was it? Where was hers? Perhaps she had split off from Joe much earlier. Or maybe she was nearby, looking at him even now from some hidden spot. This thought forced him to examine his surroundings, spinning around like a slow-moving compass as he studied the area. There was nothing. He inspected the trees too, and there was still no sign of Portia. He did notice, however, that the sun lay low in the west. Twilight would come soon, and then darkness.

  Tate determined that he was in no position to continue a pursuit that might very well fail. He did not think it was a good idea to abandon Hughes either. He knew that Bennett appreciated Portia far more than many of his slaves. As an attractive young female, she was a valuable commodity. It occurred to him that much of what he liked about her, though, was her connection to Lucius—and this was a tie that Bennett might now scorn. There was the very real possibility Portia would be caught by somebody else and returned for a bounty, too. Tate knew he was not the only person who could bring her home.

  This was the proper course, he decided: save Hughes and let Portia go, at least for now. And so he quit the chase.

  Violet Grenier stood on her porch and watched her final guest trudge up Sixteenth Street, turn right on I Street, and disappear from view. It was almost midnight. Clouds obscured the waxing moon. Behind her, inside the house, she could hear Polly straightening the foyer. The girl could be quite efficient late at night, when she knew that only a few chores stood between her and sleep.

  Grenier wondered if the senator would turn around and wave as he sometimes did, but she was not surprised when he did not. She knew he was frustrated. He had lingered, waiting for the other guests to leave. When they were finally alone, she had pressed him for information about the president’s meeting with the governor of Maryland and the mayor of Baltimore earlier in the day. She had hoped he would know something about it and what impact it would have on the movement of soldiers as they approached Washington.

  The senator was normally a reliable source of information. He was from a Northern state, but he was sympathetic to the Southern cause and certainly had no fondness for Lincoln. His usual talk about committee deliberations would have bored many women, even in Washington. Yet Grenier listened to every word. She never took notes while he was talking, but she often wrote down his observations and comments when he was gone, passing them on to friends in Virginia and points south. Sometimes she was able to do this an hour or two after he first knocked on her door. Occasionally, though, she had to wait until morning before he was gone. The senator was one of her more familiar acquaintances.

  On this night, however, Grenier had rebuffed his gentle advances. The day had been long. Although she was often full of energy as the hour grew late, she longed for sleep. Besides, she had already shared her bed today.

  Would she see Mazorca again? She knew that she might not. If he actually accomplished his mission, she would be more than content never to lay eyes on him again. Yet she also recognized that she would enjoy more of his company. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to be attracted to a man. The ones she knew nowadays, such as the senator, were merely useful. Mazorca was different. He was satisfying.

  Grenier lingered outside her front door, breathing the crisp air. She thought that perhaps she would sit by an open window upstairs as she jotted down a few notes. Then she could sleep and dream.

  She had turned around and stepped through her front door when she heard a noise coming from H Street. A group of soldiers shuffled into view, their boots scraping across the dirt-filled street. There were three of them, heading east, and they surrounded four other men who were not in uniform. Grenier could see that these men were prisoners, their hands bound behind their backs. Their mouths appeared to be gagged as well. This detail made her curious. She had seen prisoners marched through the streets before, but they had not been gagged as these were.

  As they passed by, about fifty feet from her doorway, none of them appeared to see her. The light from inside her house was weak and apparently did not draw their attention. Besides, they were preoccupied with their prisoners. When one of them glanced up Sixteenth Street, she recognized his face. It was Colonel Rook. She doubted he would involve himself with criminals who had committed petty offenses.

  A disturbing thought entered her mind. She looked at the prisoners more carefully, wondering who they might be. Was Mazorca among them? It was difficult to see much in the blackness, and now their backs were turned to her as they crossed Sixteenth Street and continued along H Street. She could not rule it out. As they passed St. John’s Church, Grenier hustled across the street and into the church’s courtyard.

  A bush snagged her petticoat. If she had not been trying to move in silence, she might have cursed it. Instead, she quickly pulled it loose, not bothering to inspect the damage, and darted between the columns on the front of the church. Peering around the side, she saw the entourage of soldiers and prisoners about a block ahead of her. As they turned right on Fifteenth Street, she raced into Lafayette Park. If people had seen her running, they might have thought she was fleeing an assailant. Yet the park was empty. Nobody saw her as she flitted through, emerging on the corner by the State Department, a little brick edifice across the street from where she now stood.

  From this vantage point, on the short strip of Pennsylvania Avenue that ran between the White House and Lafayette Park, Grenier could see a portion of Fifteenth Street. The soldiers had not yet come around the block, but she could hear their footsteps. She hurried across the Avenue, behind the State Department. Its windows were dark. She sidled along its exterior, turning a corner and moving forward until she came to a spot where she could crouch down and hide as the group came into view.

  Rook was in front. She could tell right away that Mazorca was not among the prisoners who followed him. They were too big, too small, or the hair was wrong. She breathed a sigh of relief and scolded herself for embarking on a pointless excursion. Had she really gone this far in order to disprove that Mazorca was captured? If so, it would suggest that she was not thinking straight about him. That was a problem.

  She did not budge from her spot because the men were still coming toward her. As they approached, she was able to study their faces—and she recognized Davis. What a fool, she thought. His plans were larger than his abilities. She knew it almost from the moment she had met him. Now he was caught. Stephens was with him as well. She wished that they had not come to her house. It was a shame that they had even come to Washington at all.

  In a moment, the men passed by. She kept watching them, expecting a turn to the left, away from the barricaded Treasury Department. But when they turned, they actually went through the barricades and into the building.

  For several minutes, Grenier did not move. She had not harbored high hopes for Davis and Stephens. She was disappointed in them as well as for them. Even worse than the disappointment, however, was the confusion: why would Rook take prisoners to any place besides the new prison in the Old Capitol?

  She went back to her house, scribbled a few notes, and tried to sleep. But her mind was racing.

  TWELVE

  SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 1861

  Portia stopped at the edge of a field and realized suddenly that the morning had arrived in all its brightness. She had stumbled through the night in a daze of walks, jogs, and mad dashes. The last fifteen hours were a blur. She had fled from a scene of horror and tragedy—the spot where a man she loathed tried to take her by force and where a man she loved gave his life so that her own might go on. For a long while she had simply crashed through the woods, desperate to get away from that place and not concerned about where she was headed.

  Shortly before dark, she had found a road. She took it south, plodding onward, step by step. She had no idea how far she had t
raveled or how near she was to Charleston.

  Her feet throbbed. She considered removing her shoes and going barefoot. The penny-sized holes in her soles made her partially barefoot as it was. But she worried about stepping on a sharp stone that she could not see in the dark. As painful as it was to keep pushing forward, she was determined not to give up.

  The daylight caught her by surprise because the road had run through a forest for a couple of miles. Now a plantation complex lay before her. In the distance she could see the manor. Behind it were all the outbuildings, including the slave quarters. She wondered why nobody was in the fields. With the sun up, there should have been plenty of activity. Was it abandoned? Then she remembered: this was Sunday morning.

  This realization filled Portia with a powerful sense of relief. Slaves often left their plantations on Sunday to visit friends and relatives who lived nearby. She thought she might pass as one of these innocent travelers. Of course, slaves who left their plantations even on a Sunday carried passes signed by their masters or overseers, and Portia had no pass. Just about any white person could demand that she present one. For the first time in many hours, Portia tried to make a plan. She did not know what lay ahead, and she feared that pursuers were somewhere behind her with their hounds. The possibility of curling into a bed of leaves and sleeping through the day tempted her. Yet this was not necessarily the safest course.