Fates and Traitors

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “May I kneel and pray?” Mary asked Major Smith shakily.

  He considered for a moment. “Go ahead, but don’t leave this room.”

  As Mary got up from her chair to kneel on the floor, she froze at the sound of boots on the outside staircase. Major Smith gestured sharply and two officers crept down the hallway toward the door with their pistols drawn. Through the open doorway Mary heard a knock, heard the door quickly swinging open, and men’s voices, low and demanding, and the door banging shut. The women exchanged apprehensive glances as the interrogation went on, until Major Smith suddenly appeared in the parlor doorway.

  “Mrs. Surratt,” he ordered. “Come here.”

  She rose and followed him into the hallway, where she discovered a tall, strapping man with a pickax on his shoulder standing in front of the closed door. He wore a dark gray coat, dark pants soiled with mud up to the knees, and a strange skullcap fashioned out of what appeared to be a shirtsleeve.

  Mary muffled a gasp. The man was Mr. Powell, or Mr. Payne, as he was better known to her tenants.

  Major Smith beckoned her closer, and she reluctantly obeyed. “Do you know this man,” Major Smith demanded, “and did you hire him to come and dig a gutter for you?”

  Raising her right hand, she said, “Before God, sir, I do not know this man, and have never seen him, and I did not hire him to dig a gutter for me.”

  “Lewis Payne,” said the major, “you are under arrest.”

  A slight smile played on Mr. Payne’s face, but he did not so much as glance at Mary as Lieutenant Dempsey escorted her back to the parlor.

  Soon thereafter, the carriage arrived and the ladies were shown aboard, some quietly sobbing, others murmuring prayers as they were driven to police headquarters. Mary was immediately taken in for questioning—and such bewildering questions they were, coming at such a pace and from so many directions that she felt as if she were surrounded by a flock of wild, panicking birds, scraping her with their wings and beaks and talons as she struggled in vain to fend them off. Colonel Henry Wells asked her repeatedly about Junior, and about Mr. Booth, and Mr. Atzerodt, and three men who the colonel seemed to believe had called at the boardinghouse late Saturday night although Mary had no idea whom he meant, and bizarrely, about how long it would take to cross the Potomac or travel to Fredericksburg and Richmond. Eventually she realized that someone must have informed on her, but the details had become garbled and jumbled and misunderstood. She tried to answer as simply and as honestly as she could without harming Junior, but the questions were so convoluted and confusing and the colonel so harshly insistent that Mary was seized by the dreadful fear that she was doing her son and herself more harm than good.

  The interrogation finally ended at three o’clock, rendering Mary exhausted, afraid, and despondent. Eventually she was escorted to another room, where the other women were being held while they awaited their turns to be questioned by other members of Colonel Wells’s staff. The young ladies were tearful and frightened, and Anna nearly hysterical, and it was all Mary could do to calm and comfort them.

  Fighting to keep her own terror constrained, Mary was struck by sharp, unexpected misgivings that she had ever welcomed Mr. Booth into her parlor. It was his fault she and the young ladies were suffering and afraid, that Junior was in grave danger. After Richmond had fallen, she had tried to persuade Mr. Booth that it was futile to persist in his plan to abduct Mr. Lincoln. What on earth had possessed him to resort to such drastic, irrevocable measures instead? What had compelled him to murder? What good had he thought could possibly come of it?

  As the hours passed, Mary felt a small flame of anger and indignation flare up deep within her. She and Junior had agreed to abduction, not assassination, but now they were mired up to their necks in Mr. Booth’s crime, and if she were not very, very careful, she might find herself unable to extricate them from it. She would never deliberately betray Mr. Booth, but neither would she sacrifice herself or her children to save him.

  They were held at headquarters throughout the long, harrowing night, and early the next morning, they were put into a carriage and driven to the Carroll Annex at the Old Capitol Prison. There three officers read the charges against them as Mary stood stoically, squeezing Anna’s hand tightly, and the younger women wept and pleaded. The officers brusquely queried them—names, ages, addresses, occupations—and filled out forms, and led them off to separate rooms on the second floor.

  “May my daughter and I stay together?” Mary asked as Anna was pulled from her side.

  “No,” came the officer’s curt reply as he took Anna by the elbow, put her into a room, and shut the door.

  “How long will we be held here?” Mary demanded shakily as he seized her by the upper arm and put her into the room next door.

  “Indefinitely,” he said, and slammed the door shut and turned the key.

  • • •

  On Tuesday evening after supper, while Asia rested in bed upstairs and the nurse tidied the children’s rooms, Mary Ann was in the parlor reading fairy tales to the youngsters when she heard footsteps in the hall and glanced up to discover Clarke putting on his coat and striding to the door. He did not pause to bid them farewell, and as he passed she glimpsed two envelopes jutting out of his pocket.

  “Clarke, wait,” she called, scooping up baby Adrienne, settling toddler Edwin more securely on the sofa, and giving Dottie’s head one quick pat before she hurried after her son-in-law. “Where are you going?”

  He paused with his hand on the door. “I’m going out to meet a friend.”

  “What friend?” Shifting the baby to her shoulder, she freed one hand and gestured to his pocket. “Is that my letter? Where are you taking it?”

  Heaving a sigh, he turned away from the door to face her squarely. “I’m meeting my friend John Stockton, an editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He’s going to introduce me to William Millward, the United States marshal for the eastern district of Pennsylvania. I’m going to submit these letters to him to prove our innocence.”

  “You mustn’t,” she exclaimed. “No one is questioning our innocence. You’ll only stir up trouble and make things worse for John Wilkes!”

  “Things are already as bad for him as they could possibly be,” he retorted. “Even so, I’d sacrifice him a thousand times before I’d let the rest of us go down with him. This letter proves that he knew none of us sympathized with the rebels, that he couldn’t trust us with his plot. It must be made public before it’s too late.”

  “That letter is mine,” Mary Ann said tightly. “You mustn’t take it from this house or show it to anyone. I forbid it.”

  He gave her one long, wordless, incredulous look before he tore the door open and strode from the house, carrying the incriminating papers beyond her reach.

  • • •

  Furious, Asia flung the quilt aside, climbed unsteadily from the divan, and made her way downstairs to send Clarke’s valet running after her husband, knowing even as she did that Clarke was unlikely to heed her demands.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t prevent him from going out,” her mother apologized, patting little Adrienne and kissing her brow soothingly, though she seemed more in need of comfort than the babe in her arms. “I tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “You’re not to blame,” said Asia. “You couldn’t have restrained him. Let’s hope he comes to his senses before the marshal sees him.”

  Her anger smoldered as the evening passed, and she spent the time alternately pacing and resting with her feet up. She watched the door, composing diatribes in her mind she intended to hurl at Clarke the moment he crossed the threshold. How could he have done this? Was he so frightened for himself that he would tie the hangman’s noose for Wilkes to prove his loyalty to the Union?

  The valet returned an hour later, abashed, to report that he had found Mr. Clarke at Mr. Stockton’s
office, and Mr. Clarke had ordered him to go home. “Did Mr. Clarke say when he might return?” Asia queried.

  “He didn’t, ma’am.”

  “Was any other gentleman with them?”

  “Only Mr. Stockton’s secretary, ma’am.”

  Then there was still a chance Mr. Stockton would advise Clarke not to take Wilkes’s letters to the marshal. She dismissed the valet and resigned herself to an anxious vigil.

  The children had long been asleep and even her mother had retired for the night by the time Clarke finally crept in. “What did you do?” Asia demanded, rising awkwardly from her chair, crossing into the foyer and turning up the gaslight.

  He jumped at the sound of her voice. “Asia. You should be resting.”

  “How could I rest after what you told my mother? I ask again, what did you do?”

  He sighed heavily and shrugged out of his coat. “I gave the letters to Stockton. He read them and agreed I should take them to the marshal. You’ll be pleased to know that Marshal Millward decreed that it would be improper to publish John’s letter to your mother, because despite everything else your brother wrote, his affectionate words for her would create undue and false sympathy for him.”

  “Oh, thank God,” said Asia, placing a hand upon her heart, faint with relief. “May I have the letters, please, to return to my mother?”

  “I left them with Stockton for safekeeping.”

  Asia fixed him with a level glare. “You left them with a newspaper editor for safekeeping?”

  “I did, and what of it?”

  “A newspaper editor, Clarke!”

  “I know what Stockton does for a living. What of it? He heard Millward’s order to suppress your mother’s letter. He won’t disobey.”

  “And what of the second letter, the one you called a Confederate screed?”

  For a moment Clarke looked taken aback. “I assumed Millward’s prohibition applied to both.”

  “Why should it? The marshal objected to publishing my mother’s letter because he thought it would provoke sympathy for Wilkes. He would have no objection to publishing a letter that would do the opposite.”

  Clarke ran a hand over his jaw. “I’ll call on Stockton in the morning and take the letters back.”

  “You should call on him now.”

  “Asia, it’s late. I’m sure he’s retired for the night and that’s what I intend to do myself.”

  She pleaded with him at least to send word, but he refused to wake one of the servants to carry a message that he insisted was not urgent. Asia prayed he was right.

  In the morning, she resolved to be patient with Clarke, to put him in a good mood so that he would be willing to call on Mr. Stockton immediately after breakfast. And so while he shaved, she sat up in bed and replied cheerfully when he told her about his plans for the day, holding back a rebuke when he mentioned accounts to review and scripts to read but said nothing of visiting his editor friend.

  Clarke was nearly finished when the maid brought in Asia’s breakfast tray with the newspaper neatly folded next to her plate. She sipped tea, and finding that her appetite had returned, she nibbled at a piece of buttered toast while she unfolded the paper and scanned the front page. The news was almost too horrid to bear. The man accused of assaulting Secretary Seward had been arrested at a Washington boardinghouse, and theatre owner John Ford, a loyal friend of the Booth family since the era of Junius Brutus Booth Senior, had been confined to the Old Capitol Prison, along with his two brothers. Wilkes’s childhood friend Samuel Arnold had been arrested at home and was expected to turn state’s evidence against him. Wilkes and several accomplices were believed to be in St. Mary’s County, heavily armed and struggling to find a way through the Union pickets across the Potomac. The city councils of Baltimore were offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward for Wilkes’s arrest, in part because “The feeling here against Booth is greatly intensified by the fact that he is a Baltimorean and our loyal people are anxious that one who so dishonored the fair name of Baltimore should meet with speedy justice.”

  “How now,” Asia murmured to herself, disgusted. “Rebellious Baltimore is suddenly rife with Unionists.”

  There was some good news amid the bad. “Clarke,” she said, raising her voice, “General Sherman has captured Raleigh. General Johnston has surrendered.”

  “Well, thank God for that,” he called from the washbasin, drying his clean-shaven face with a towel. “It was only a matter of time.”

  Nodding, she finished her breakfast and turned the page, glancing at the headlines, unable to bear the lengthy descriptions of Mr. Lincoln’s funeral and the arrangements to carry his remains to Springfield by a special railcar, skimming past financial news and announcements of club meetings and amusements and—

  And then her glance fell upon her brother’s name again and she went as cold as death.

  “Letter of John Wilkes Booth,” the first bold headline on the fourth page screamed. “Proof that He Meditated His Crime Months Ago. Confesses that He Was Engaged in a Plot to Capture and Carry Off the President. His Excuses for the Contemplated Act. His Participation in the Execution of John Brown. A SECESSION RHAPSODY.”

  It was not the letter Wilkes had written to Mother, but the second, more condemning document, transformed into a column and a half of rambling, vitriolic apologia for all the world to see.

  “Clarke!” she shrilled, scrambling backward until her shoulders pressed against the headboard, staring in terror at the paper as if it were a venomous insect. “Clarke!”

  In a moment he was at her side. “What is it? Is something wrong with the baby?”

  Unable to speak, she gestured frantically to the paper. He bent over it, and as he read, his face went slack with confusion, then red with fury. “That bastard.” Suddenly he lunged and with one swipe of his arm sent the newspaper flying off the bed and onto the floor. Cursing under his breath, he threw on his clothes and strode from the room. She called him back, but he did not reply.

  When Asia had composed herself, she rose, washed, and dressed, and went downstairs to confirm that Clarke had quit the house—to see Mr. Stockton, she assumed, although what good that would do now, she could not say. She hoped Clarke would not kill him.

  She sought out her mother, and when she found her in the parlor staring into space, tears in her eyes, seeming scarcely aware of baby Adrienne on her lap or little Dottie and Edwin playing at her feet, she knew her mother had seen the newspaper too.

  Overcome with shock and trepidation, Asia, Rosalie, and their mother said little to one another while they waited for Clarke to return home, afraid to go to the windows, dreading a pounding on the door. When a knock did come, Asia boldly answered it herself, only to discover June on the doorstep, haggard, red-eyed, unshaven, his luggage set haphazardly at his feet as if he had dropped it. “Can it be true?” he asked hoarsely. “Has John killed the president?”

  “Come inside and see Mother,” Asia said, taking his arm and guiding him across the threshold. Mother and Rosalie had come to the foyer, summoned by the sound of his voice, and with Adrienne on her grandmother’s hip and the other children toddling alongside, they embraced one another, their tears falling freely, their fears easing even though nothing about their dire circumstances had changed except that they were together.

  Clarke’s arrival interrupted the reunion, and though he greeted his brother-in-law courteously, his gaze was wary. “At such a time, yet another Booth taking refuge in my house might stir up talk,” he said, managing a smile, though no one believed he spoke in jest.

  “I’m no fugitive,” said June. “I’m willing to report my whereabouts to any authority you choose.”

  “As it happens, I’m acquainted with a United States marshal.”

  June gestured sharply to the door. “Lead on, then.”

  “June, no,” their mother protested, clutching his a
rm. “You’ve only just arrived.”

  June kissed her cheek. “I’m sure it won’t take long.”

  Clarke helped him bring in his luggage, and then the two men set out. Asia instructed the staff to prepare a room for her brother and sent word to the cook to set an extra place for lunch, but their preparations were still under way when Clarke and June returned. “Marshal Millward was out,” Clarke explained. “We’ll call again tomorrow.”

  But early the next morning, a knock sounded upon the front door while the family was at breakfast. It was the marshal, accompanied by a large complement of officers. He asked to meet June, and as Clarke introduced them, the other officers strode past them into the house.

  They searched every room, leaving no door unopened, no closet unexamined. Asia overheard some of the officers talking, and she was astonished and yet not to discover that they were searching for Wilkes, that they had expected to find him taking his ease there, attended by his devoted sister in a comfortable mansion in the North while legions of soldiers and detectives frantically searched for him in the South. The unexpected presence of his mother and eldest sister only strengthened their certainty.

  “It’s dangerous to have your family here,” Clarke said to Asia in a rare moment alone. “They’ve brought suspicion down upon us.”

  “The publication of Wilkes’s manifesto brought suspicion down on us,” retorted Asia, incredulous, “and that is your doing.”

  “Your mother and sister should return home. Your brother should go with them.”

  Her heart plummeting, Asia rested her hands on her belly and took a deep breath. “Please, Clarke. For the love you bear me and our children, for the love you bear Edwin, please don’t send my family away.”

  “I’m not casting them out,” he retorted, “but for their sake and for ours, it would be better if they returned to New York.”