A Night of Horrors: A Historical Thriller about the 24 Hours of Lincoln's Assassination (19 page)

“Murder! Murder!” Her full-throated screams filled the dark room. Powell stabbed again, but he still only cut at Seward’s shoulder, missing his mark. Then Robinson lunged at him again, pulling him from the bed. Powell slashed out with the knife as he spun about. He caught the Sergeant across the chest again, cutting him open, but not deeply. It stunned Robinson though, and Powell slashed him across the shoulder and then struck him in the face with his left fist. The assassin turned back to the bed and reached in the dark, finding Seward. He quickly knelt on the bed and brought the knife down. Once again the blade glanced off the wire frame and cut into Seward’s neck, but missing his jugular.

“Damn it,” Powell cursed. If the wire frame was getting in the way, then he decided he’d simply pull it off. He reached down and grabbed the wire frame and yanked it. Seward cried out in pain and Powell realized that he could not pull it free. His hands were slippery from the blood leaking out of Seward’s face and neck. He used his left hand to push the brace to the side, tilting Seward’s head and exposing his neck. Seward cried out in pain. Powell slashed the knife across and cut the base of Seward’s neck. The Secretary cried out again. Powell was still kneeling too close to Seward to get a good free swinging motion so he quickly repositioned himself on the bed while holding onto the wire frame. Behind him, Powell sensed more movement in the room. He brought the knife down in another slashing motion at Seward’s exposed neck. The assassin was confident that this would be the deathblow. But he suddenly felt himself pulled back and the tip of the knife blade just nicked Seward’s neck sending another warm wet spray onto Powell’s hand, but avoiding the jugular.

Augustus Seward, the eldest son who had been serving as a Major in the Union Army, had heard the commotion and had run into the room. He grabbed the man he saw attacking his father. He was directly behind Powell and the attacker could not see him. Powell waved the knife wildly behind his head, trying to get his assailant to let go. Powell was now confronting and attacking the fifth person in this house. He felt trapped and the adrenaline that was already coursing through his veins suddenly felt energized by an invisible bolt of lightning. His eyes became wide and the whites shone out in the dark room like a bobcat on the prowl. A self-preservation mechanism that had served him so well at Antietam and Chancellorsville and the first day of Gettysburg sprang to life. Powell became like a trapped animal. He spun around, knocking August Seward’s hands away. In the darkened room, Augustus saw those gleaming eyes. He was struck by how they were void of all emotion and the face, that might have seemed handsome to his father, was now stone-like and determined. Augustus knew he had to save his father and his sister who continued her hoarse screams and whimperings through a raw throat.

Seward’s son reached out for the other man’s coat. Powell stabbed the outstretched hand, then brought the knife across the younger Seward’s forehead. Augustus fell to the floor. Powell turned back to the bed and watched as William Seward rolled himself off the far side of the bed in a vain attempt to escape the brutal attack. Powell began to walk around the bed in order to finish the work he’d begun, but Sergeant Robinson was up and grabbed at Powell once more. Behind the Private, Fanny Seward struggled to stand and keep her balance. Robinson caught Powell from behind in a bear hug as the Confederate stepped between the bed and the wall to make one more stab at the Secretary of State. Powell grabbed Robinson’s hands and held them as he lunged backwards slamming Robinson into the wall. At the same time Powell popped his head backwards and caught Robinson in the nose with the back of his head. The Sergeant groaned and went limp. Powell let him drop to the floor.

Fanny Seward, while Robinson attacked her father’s assassin, had opened the window and was screaming “Murder! Murder!” to bring all of Washington City to her father’s aid. Her throat was so inflamed at this point that the word filled the quiet night air with a raw and wild sound.

David Herold, who’d seen William Bell running from the house, now became thoroughly frightened. “Murder! They are murdering the Secretary of State!” Herold heard a woman scream. He looked to the front door, but Powell was not there. He mounted his horse and waited for his partner to emerge. The door remained closed.

“Damn! He’s caught,” Herold muttered and kicked his horse into a gallop and headed out of the city. The pounding of the hooves was muted on the dirt road and grew faint under the hysterical screams of Fanny Seward.

Back in the room, Powell stepped away from Robinson and commanded Fanny Seward to “Shut up!” Augustus rushed across the room, and caught Powell in a crushing bear hug. Powell’s arms were pinned down at this side but he squirmed and threw his head back trying to catch Gus Seward in the face with the back of his head. Robinson struggled to his feet and also grabbed Powell and together, the two men forced him toward the door. As they moved him, Powell broke his left arm free and punched at Robinson. The Sergeant buried his face into Powell’s chest. The two men, both cut and injured, were tiring quickly. Powell was able to turn about and began to break free, but Gus Seward kept his arms wrapped around the assailant. As he turned, Powell was face-to-face with the eldest Seward. The assassin’s eyes were wide and fierce with determination and glinting with fury.

“I’m mad,” Powell said to Seward. His voice wasn’t wild when he said this. He didn’t scream the words, he simply said them like a statement of fact, though there was an edge and fierce energy to his voice that sent a chill down Seward’s back.

“I’m mad!” This time Powell shouted into Seward’s face with a rising voice. He had a burst of strength and wrenched himself free of the men. He shot his elbow back and knocked Robinson, who was still behind him, to the floor. He slashed forward with the knife, but Seward had already jumped back and through the door. He called back to Powell that he’d return with a gun. The assassin looked from the half-opened door to the room where Augustus Seward had disappeared, to Fanny looking at him over her shoulder at the window, to the empty bed from which William Seward had rolled into a pile between the bed and the wall. The voice in his head that he’d developed from his raids with Mosby in the war told him it was time to skedaddle. The electrified adrenaline lit him up once again and he looked about the room wildly for a new attacker. He bolted through the door with the knife poised in case somebody else was there. The brightly lit foyer caused him to blink as he quickly fled to the stairs and stepped over Frederick Seward, unconscious and bleeding on the floor.

Outside, Emerick Hansell, a young messenger for the State Department was walking quickly up to the front door of the Seward home. He was a messenger on duty for the State Department and arrived to deliver a message to the Secretary or Assistant Secretary if the older Seward was asleep. As he approached the house he thought he’d heard someone screaming bloody murder, but then Lafayette Park had gone eerily still. As he rushed into the open door of the house, he saw a large man approach him from the stairs. The man had wide and wild eyes. He carried a gleaming knife and was spattered with blood. Hansell stopped in his tracks on the rug in the foyer, paralyzed with fear.

“I am mad!” Powell yelled as he approached Hansell. The messenger turned to run and the mad man sank the knife into his back. Hansell cried out and fell to the floor. Powell didn’t break his stride, but ran into the night and cried, “I am mad! I am mad!” As he ran across Lafayette Park, he dropped the knife in the street. Powell’s vicious visit to the Seward’s house had lasted but ten minutes.

In Seward’s bedroom, Fanny Seward was leaning on the windowsill. She was still regaining her strength from being knocked unconscious. Her face was beginning to swell and her skin was crimson, as if with a high fever, from the rising bruise where Powell had struck her. Sergeant Robinson, ignoring the gashes on his forehead, chest, and shoulders, was already turning the gas up to view the horror of the Secretary of the State lying in a bloody heap on the floor between the bed and the wall. He had seen many scenes of blood and mayhem on the battlefield, but the sight of so much garnet on the sheets and floors of a quiet home unnerved the war veteran.

Major Augustus Seward, hand and chest bleeding, returned with his revolver and glanced down at his prone brother. Frederick Seward, the Assistant Secretary of State, lay at the top of the stairs as still as a dead man. In the light of the gas lamps that burned dimly inside the Seward home, the stairway glistened with shimmering drops of blood clinging to the wall. The blood from Freddie Seward flowed from his head to the stairway, creating a small fall of blood that was making its way down to the steps below. And in the bedroom, droplets of blood formed and clung to the sheet hanging askew from the bed and then fell to the rug below. Soldiers, responding to the butler’s alarm, were pushing through the front door. Gus Seward ordered them to retrieve Dr. Verdi and Surgeon General Barnes at once

Fanny Seward turned from the window as her brother Augustus ran back into the room with his loaded revolver.

“Gus, is he gone? Has he left?” She began to weep.

“Yes. I believe he’s gone. You must be brave, Fanny. You woke Mother, and the rest of the house, with your cries for help and she is already on the landing with poor Frederick. You and Robinson tend to Father while Mother and I look after Freddie.” She looked at him mutely with tears streaming down her face.

“What is wrong with Freddie?” she pleaded.

“The man beat him on the landing before attacking Father in the room. He is very badly hurt, but we must be quick, Fanny, there’s no time. I’ll help get Father to the bed.” Robinson slowly made his way over to the far side of the bed. He had been slashed on the forehead, chest, and shoulders in five places in his encounters with Powell.

“I will help you with the Secretary,” he said as he straightened the blouse to his uniform.

“But you are hurt yourself, George,” Augustus replied.

“As are you, Major Seward. Let’s get your father to the bed and tend to his wounds first.”

Augustus carefully stepped over his father and took him by the shoulders. Robinson took his knees and they carefully laid him back onto the bed. Fanny gasped as she saw her father in the light of the lamps. The cheek on the right side of his face had been sliced open and hung down from his face, creating a gruesome grimace. His silk blue pajama shirt was a deep purplish color across his collar and shoulders as it soaked in the blood from his wounds. The chest also started out as a purplish color around the neck, but leached from deep purple to lighter shades of purple or deep blue, and back to the natural blue of the silk about the second button down from the neck. There were puncture wounds and cuts evident where the cloth of the pajamas had been cut and ripped by the flashing blade of the assassin.

“Is he alive?” Fanny’s voice cracked and was barely a whisper.

“Just barely,” was Robinson’s assessment as he held his head close to the Secretary’s face and chest, listening for any sign of life.

“My God,” they heard from behind them. They turned to see Mrs. Seward, who had come to check on her husband, standing with her eyes and mouth open as she looked in amazed horror at the scene before her. She suddenly rushed to the bed, but she had to right herself as she slipped on a small puddle of blood on the hardwood floor. Once she had gained her balance, she stopped and looked from her husband, to Augustus, to Sergeant Robinson—all cut and bleeding.

“Fanny, not you as well!” She exclaimed and gently touched her daughter’s swollen cheek, where Powell had backhanded her so viciously. “Dear God,” Mrs. Seward choked, and the tears now came. She leaned over and took her husband’s hand in hers.

“William, be brave, dear one. The doctor is coming. I am here. Be brave, dear one. Be brave.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say to her husband. She could barely bring herself to look at him. His face was a horror of rent flesh, exposed teeth, and oozing blood that pulsed from his face with each beat of his heart.

“Mrs. Seward, you must send for the doctor and bring me cloths and water,” Sergeant Robinson said.

“I have already sent some soldiers for Dr. Verdi and the Surgeon General,” Gus Seward replied.

“Mrs. Seward, please go for the water and cloths. Quickly, ma’am!” Robinson repeated himself, this time with a more peremptory tone. Robinson had served in battle and knew how to field dress wounds, and he also knew that the longer it took to get a wounded soldier to a doctor, the more likely he was to perish. Mrs. Seward remained hovering over her husband.

“I asked the maid for clean cloths and water to be brought up before coming in here, George,” she replied without looking up.

“I will go and look after Freddie now,” Augustus said and walked from around the bed. He cradled his right hand against his chest, pressing the palm against his body to staunch the flow of blood. Mrs. Seward followed her son from the room and pulled the door closed.

“Gus, I am not sure Freddie will live,” she whispered. “Go and get someone to help you carry him to his bed. I cannot bear to lose both a son and a husband in one night, Gus.” Her eyes sparkled with tears, but she fought them back so she could remain focused.

“Mrs. Seward, ma’am, there’s a messenger here,” William Bell, who first answered the door to Powell, called from the foyer. He had returned with the soldiers.

“Tell him to come back later! We can’t take messages now!” She barked, impatient at the thought of receiving a message at such a time.

“No, ma’am. I mean he’s hurt. He’s bleeding,” came the response from below.