Assassin
Authors: Anna Myers
TO GRACE ANN MYERS
You were the most beautiful newborn I’d ever seen. Although your birth was a normal one, with the aid of instruments, you had none of the redness or misshapen features of most newborns. Your beautiful, sweet face reminded us of a rosebud, and your papa John accidentally called you “Rose” several times that first day. You are not the only Grace Myers in our family. Your aunt Grace, sister of your grandfather who is in heaven, came before you. I hope you will grow up with the same gentle spirit of Grace Myers Scrivener. I also hope you will have the graceful, poised style of your mother and your grandmother Nelda. There are many strong women in the histories of your family, and I am confident that you will grow to be one of them. Welcome to the world, little rosebud. I thank God for the joy of having a granddaughter. We all love you and thrill to your adorable smiles.
—Nana
FOR MY DAUGHTER
You are small
So too is the breath that
wraps the strongest word.
Nine months you grew upside down
like a potted onion in the womb;
we waited for you like
the tune waits for the word.
Child, when the geese dote upon
some puddle of sky above the
chilling lake, look on them as words.
Your face to your mother’s is as
the leaf to the tree,
her love to yours as
the thought to the word.
I was a beginning once as
you are a beginning now.
Every period leaves behind it
a space for the coming word.
—Ben Myers
It is twilight in Richmond, Virginia. The year is 1859. A woman in a lovely green gown walks toward a theater. She holds the hand of her daughter who is eight years old. The little girl has thick black curls and a round sweet face.
A young actor comes from a different direction and reaches the theater door just as the mother and daughter do. He is in the play and should be already behind the curtain where his makeup will be applied. His impulse is to push in front of the woman and child, to open the door and hurry inside. He does not. He is, after all, a gentleman. The makeup can wait. He holds the door for the mother and daughter. His eyes meet the eyes of the girl. They smile at each other, and he thinks what a beautiful child she is.
The young actor is John Wilkes Booth. At twenty he is not really famous, but he will be. Before he is twenty-five,
he will be called the most handsome man in America. He will be the first performer to have his clothing partially torn off by his female fans. Before he is twenty-seven, he will be dead, his name despised. The actor’s brother, Edwin, who is also an actor, will never speak his name again, but Edwin will die with his brother’s picture beside his bed.
The girl will remember seeing the young actor on the theater steps and in the play. He will not remember her, but she will tell him about their meeting when their paths cross again. He will bring her much pain. Here are their stories.
Bella
HER STORY
I am not evil. I tell this story so that you might understand and perhaps so that I might see more clearly. I was christened Arabella Getchel, but I have always been called Bella. He was the first to say I should be addressed by my full given name. On the lips of John Wilkes Booth, Arabella sounded like a name fit for an angel. I have used his full name as the newspapers do, but I have not forgotten that he liked to leave off John, liked to be called Wilkes. He is dead now, and people everywhere say he was vile. Still, I cannot bring myself to go against his wishes. History will use his full name, but in the rest of my story and in my heart he will be, always, Wilkes.
When I was but little, my mother clothed me in frilly dresses. “You’re a beauty, Bella,” she would say as she
brushed my thick, dark hair, then tied it with bright ribbons to match my dress. She began very early to tell me that I was made for the stage, and she would take me to the Richmond Theatre often. I did not always understand the play, but I did love the velvet chairs and the applause.
My mother had a small stage built into my schoolroom, and there I would recite nursery rhymes and sing little songs for my mother and my tutor. Sometimes my father would be part of my audience. On those occasions, I tried to stand taller and speak more clearly. “Princess Bella,” my father would call as he clapped his hands. Then he would lift me high into the air, and my curls would bounce against my head.
When my mother lay dying from consumption, she called me to her bedside. “The theater, Bella,” she whispered through fever-dried lips. “Don’t forget the theater. I was never able to be on the stage, but you have the looks of a star.” She stroked my hair until someone came and led me away.
My mother met my father in the theater. Mother was only a flower girl, selling her blossoms to gentlemen for their ladies. My father had brought a lady with him. I suppose he did give the rose to her, but when the play was over, he made some excuse to send her home alone in the hansom cab he hired for her. Then my father went back into the theater to find my mother.
Wilkes’s father met his mother the same way. That theater was in London, though, and Wilkes’s father was
an actor, not the son of a cotton merchant, as was my own father.
Still, I found it extraordinary, when first I heard his story, to think that our parents met the same way. He told the story in the costume shop of Ford’s Theatre, where I sat sewing a hem into a coat he would wear that evening. Others were present, the chief mistress of the costume shop, another actor, and the lovely lady who had come into the shop on Wilkes’s arm. I did not remark at that time on the fact that my parents had met under exactly the same circumstances. My speaking at all would have been totally inappropriate, for I was only a poor girl who was allowed, occasionally, to sew in exchange for tickets.
My grandmother did not believe in the theater. She thought all actors were drunkards, and all actresses were loose women. Even though I, at fourteen, earned our living by helping the woman who was dressmaker for Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of the president, I was not allowed to spend a cent without my grandmother’s permission.
Lest I be unfair to my grandmother, Cora Witherspoon, let me say that she fed and housed me from the time I was eight until I went to work at fourteen. I even owed my job to my grandmother, since she taught me the art of sewing and because she passed her White House position to me when her fingers became too stiff with rheumatism to work.
My father, Samuel Getchel, left me with my grandmother temporarily. Looking back on it now, I realize he
began to forget about me even before my mother was buried. I stood beside him as the casket was lowered into the grave and squeezed his hand for reassurance. He did not squeeze back. He did not pull my body, shaking with sobs, to him. He only stood and stared.
As soon as my mother was in the ground, he loaded me, with only a small valise of my things, into our carriage and drove with me from Richmond to Washington City. “It isn’t so far away,” he said when I begged not to go. “Around a hundred miles, only a three days’ drive.”
No doubt we stopped at inns at night, but only after the hour had become very late. I had fallen asleep by then, and though I am sure my father woke me, my memory of that trip is only of the carriage. I did not mind so much by day and spent my time gazing out at the places we passed. But I do not remember what I saw. I remember only the night, the sound of carriage wheels on black road. Our coachman drove. Father sat beside me, but still I felt alone in the darkness.
It was late when we reached Washington City. My father, briefly aware of my presence, roused me from sleep when we crossed the great waters of the Potomac River. “Wake up, Bella,” he said. “We are crossing the Potomac. It is an important river.”
Eager to engage my father in conversation, I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and stared out at what I could see of the water. “Is this the biggest river in the world?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” said my father, and he made a sort of bitter-
sounding laugh. “It is a vital one, however.” He leaned around me to peer out the window. “This is the Potomac. It forms the border between our own state of Virginia and Washington City, where men try to make laws that govern people, justly or unjustly.”
I did not grasp the meaning of my father’s words, but I was hungry for the sound of his voice. “Tell me about the laws, Papa.” My eyes were heavy, but I did not close them.
My father sighed. “Not now,” he said, “but I fear you will grow to understand them. I daresay even children will comprehend and tremble.”
His tone was harsh, and I, unwilling to agitate him more, drew away from him to lean close to the window. I did not go back to sleep. Instead I stared out at the dark city, and soon the coach stopped in front of a small cottage. “Your grandmother lives here,” said my father.
As Papa climbed down from the carriage, I thought I finally understood the reason for our journey. We had, I believed, come to visit my grandmother. I remembered then that my mother and I had made the journey maybe three years ago, when I was five. We had stayed in a fine inn, but we had come to visit my grandmother’s small cottage. I remembered that she had made a beautiful dress for my favorite doll.
“Wait here for me, Bella,” Papa said. In the moonlight, I could see him as he knocked upon the wooden door. I could not see my grandmother when she opened the door. But I heard her scream, and I knew my father
must have told her of my mother’s death. Very shortly, he came back to the carriage, took my valise, and helped me down.
Inside the one-room cottage, I looked around. In one corner was an iron stove for cooking. A cupboard stood against the wall near the stove, and a small wooden table with two chairs sat in front of it. There was a fireplace with a rocking chair pulled close, and against one wall I saw a small bed. Papa and I cannot sleep here, I thought.
Then Papa said, “Be a good girl, Bella,” and I understood suddenly that he meant to leave me.
“I do not have all of my dolls, Papa,” I sobbed when he moved toward the door. “I cannot stay here without all of my dolls.”
My handsome father bent his dark head to kiss me on my cheek. “It is only for a brief time, Bella,” he said. “I will be back to get you soon.”
Again he turned toward the door. His gold ring shone in the lamplight, and I grabbed at his hand in an effort to keep him with me. “How long, Papa?” I asked. “How many days before you come back for me?”
“Soon, my pet,” he said. He pulled himself loose from me and went out into the night. I rushed to open the door again, rushed to seize one last glimpse of him; but strangely, the moonlight was gone.
I stood in the doorway of my grandmother’s house, straining for sight of him, and I listened to the familiar, lonely sound of the wheels of his carriage. Finally my
grandmother came and shepherded me back into her dark little home. She hardly knew what to do with me. My arrival had been totally unexpected, and she had just been informed of her only child’s death.
That first night my grandmother put me into her own narrow bed. I lay there and watched as she pulled her small rocker close to the fire. She rocked and rocked, her body bent slightly forward, her arms wrapped around herself. The rocker made a steady sound against the wooden floor, and that sound mixed with the soft sobs that came from my grandmother’s thin body.
I do not remember when or how my grandmother acquired the cot that became my bed. I recall only the despair we both felt. Despite her pain, she provided for me as best she could. Each morning after our breakfast, she would prepare a simple snack for my noon meal. Then she would leave for her job at the White House.