The First Assassin (12 page)

Clark hustled across Pennsylvania Avenue and stood on the same corner, at Tenth Street, where Davis and Stephens had had their quick debate. He spotted them half a block away. Davis removed a wallet from his pocket, opened it, counted his cash, and handed a few notes to Stephens. The two men looked at each other and grinned, then entered an establishment called Madam Russell’s Bake Oven.

With that, Clark knew how Davis and Stephens intended to spend their second night in Washington. He had never been inside Madam Russell’s Bake Oven, but he knew that nobody visited it for the cooking.

Beneath a clear sky full of stars and a moon that was nearly full, Portia slipped into the stables carrying a small sack. She saw nothing out of the ordinary. The only noises she heard came from the horses.

A moment later, another person shuffled into the stables. Portia dropped to a crouch. She rose again when she saw that it was her grandfather. Lucius saw her too. They quickly embraced.

“Thanks for bein’ here,” said Lucius.

“I don’t wanna let you down.”

“I know—and I know you won’t.”

Lucius let go of her and made a quick search of the building. Every individual stall received a short inspection. While this was going on, Portia stuck her head outside. She was disappointed not to see anybody.

“There ain’t much time,” said Lucius when he was done. He reached inside a pocket and pulled out the photograph. “Here it is,” he said, handing it to her. “This is the whole reason for what you’re gonna do.”

Portia strained to see the photograph, but it was too dark. She stuffed it into her bag.

“What else is in there?”

“Just some food.”

“Lemme see.”

Portia opened the sack.

“That’s enough for two people. I don’t want you goin’ hungry, but that’s gonna slow you down. You can find food on the road.”

“I just wanna be prepared.”

“All right,” said the old man, warily. “Let’s make this short so you can get goin’. I’m gonna set you up with a horse. You’ll wanna stay off the main roads and travel at night, and it’ll take a couple of nights.”

Lucius described a route to Charleston that would keep her on some less-traveled roads.

“When I get to Charleston, what do I do?”

“You remember Nelly?”

“Sure I do. She works next door to Mr. Bennett’s.”

“That’s right. She asks about you all the time. She knows someone who can help slaves get to the North. I don’t know who it is or how it works. Nelly’s a talker, but the truth is, she usually knows what she’s talkin’ about.”

Just then they both heard the sound of a foot scraping at the doorway. Lucius froze in place, but Portia jumped up. She ran over to Big Joe and put her arms around him. Then she took him by the hand and led him to her grandfather.

“What’s goin’ on?” asked Lucius.

“Big Joe is comin’ with me.”

“That ain’t a good idea, Portia.”

“I want him to come.”

“This is trouble. There’ll be two horses gone instead of one and twice as many tracks to follow.”

“Grandpa, he’s comin’ with me.”

Lucius shook his head. “I’m hopin’ to get through the whole day tomorrow without anybody thinkin’ too hard about where you’re at, Portia. I can cover for you much longer than I can cover you and him together. Tate will start missin’ Joe early in the mornin’. Bringin’ him is a big mistake.”

“Grandpa, he’s comin’ with me.”

“Joe, have you told your mother about this?”

Joe didn’t say anything right away, and it suddenly occurred to Portia that he had not actually agreed to escape with her. Maybe he was here to tell her that he was staying put.

“Your mother is gonna be a mess. Have you thought of that?”

Portia still held Joe’s hand. She squeezed it.

“Yep,” said the big man. “I’m goin’ with Portia.” He squeezed her hand back.

“Mr. Bennett’s gonna send dogs after you. Chasin’ two people is a whole lot easier than chasin’ one.”

Portia and Joe did not say anything. For the first time, Lucius saw their clasped hands. It occurred to him that if they were caught, their motive could be explained as a crazy elopement. They would still be punished, though perhaps not as severely. The reputation of Joe’s jealous mother would make the story credible. Everybody knew about Sally.

“I’m not gonna change your minds, am I?”

“No,” said Portia and Joe at the same time.

“We could talk about this all night, but that’s only gonna slow you down.” He looked at Portia. “Have you told him why you’re doin’ this?”

“He knows.”

“And Joe, do you understand why that picture needs to get to Abe Lincoln?”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“OK. Let’s send you two off to Charleston. When you get there, find Nelly. She’ll take care of the rest.”

Portia watched Lucius and Joe move to the center of the stable and discuss which horses to take. They picked a pair, saddled them, and led them to the door. Joe held the reins while Lucius stepped outside to make sure the runaways would not be seen.

“Thank you for doin’ this,” whispered Portia. She gave Joe a quick kiss on the cheek.

Lucius came back in. “Looks clear. There’s a light comin’ from the manor, but I don’t think you’ll be seen. Ride quiet till you hit the main road, and then follow my directions. Be careful, too. Don’t travel too fast. It’s easy to go the wrong way in the dark.”

They led the horses from the stables. Lucius helped Portia onto hers and then put his hand on Joe’s shoulder.

“You take good care of her.”

“Don’t worry, Lucius. We’re a team now.”

Lucius looked at his granddaughter. “If you’re caught, destroy the photo. If Mr. Bennett hears about it, he’s gonna get madder than we’ve ever seen. From now on, there’s only one person who should see that picture, and that’s Abe Lincoln.”

FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 1861

The parade of visitors would arrive soon. Faintly through the door, he could hear one of his secretaries lecturing a couple of them in the waiting room. These high-class beggars would march in and out of his office twenty-four hours a day for four whole years, he supposed. Sitting down with each individual petitioner, hearing him describe his important connections in dull detail, reading his reliably flattering letters of introduction, and listening to him grovel for a minor office—some days it made him little more than the national appointment-maker, the commander-in-chief of a vast system of political patronage. The party hacks would have liked nothing better than for the president to devote himself exclusively to this task. They seemed more concerned with pestering him about the postmaster of Marshall, Michigan, than with letting him concentrate on the disaster in Charleston. There might be a crisis of union—but they had friends and relatives who needed jobs!

Sitting in a high-backed chair, with his feet propped on his desk, Abraham Lincoln decided to wait a few minutes before beginning the revue. He gazed across his room in search of a distraction. Maps were good for that, and three hung on the east wall. The one of Charleston Harbor, all the way to the left, would have to come down soon. It had been the first one up, and he had spent many hours studying it. He knew its markings so well he hardly needed to look at it anymore. Little Sumter, surrounded by forts and batteries, never stood a chance. Now the map annoyed him. It was a symbol of his first failure in office, though it was true that he had inherited the problem from the previous administration. Perhaps there was nothing he might have done to prevent Fort Sumter from falling, short of permitting Southern secession. Whatever the circumstances, this was his watch. He would have to take final responsibility for what had happened there. He would order that map removed this very day.

The next map, to its right, displayed all the Southern states, from Virginia to Texas. They were starting to call themselves the Confederate States of America, but Lincoln insisted that nobody in his government use that name. They were still part of the Union because secession was unconstitutional. This was an important legal point, even though it did not conceal the obvious fact that it was a map of enemy territory. Lincoln had it on his wall for a military purpose. In just a few hours, his cabinet would announce a naval blockade of the Southern ports. This was General Scott’s idea, and Lincoln agreed that a successful blockade would put a strangling pressure on the region’s export-dependent economy. Weeks would pass before it took full effect, but the decision to do it would provide a signal to the public that the president now believed the national emergency would last into the summer.

This thought led his eye to the right, where a third and final map was tacked to the wall. Here was northern Virginia, from Harper’s Ferry in the west to the widening of the Potomac in the east, where it flowed into the Chesapeake Bay. Washington sat about midway between these two points, and Lincoln worried about its vulnerability from every direction. If Virginia assembled an army soon, it might seize the capital without much of a fight. The city was almost completely defenseless against a few boats floating up the river for a bombardment too. Fort Washington, on the Maryland shore, was essentially unmanned. Alexandria, the port on the Virginia side, probably would welcome the raiders and supply them. Lincoln believed he needed more soldiers in a hurry.

In one gangly motion, the president grabbed a brass cylinder from his desk, swung his feet to the ground, and rose. There was a window just to his right, stretching almost from the floor to the ceiling. From this second-story vista, he could see for miles to the south. He twisted the brass tube, and the thing expanded to three times its original length. It was a telescope, and Lincoln now raised it to his eye for a long look. He spotted the buildings of Alexandria in the distance. The docks on the waterfront were busy, as usual. The city was a rail terminal for the whole South—travelers destined for Washington by train would end up here, where they could get on another train and cross the Long Bridge or take a ferry to the wharves on Sixth Street. Lincoln could see one of these boats approaching Washington now. He might have watched it come in, except for the knock on his door.

“Yes?” called out the president, wearily. John Hay, his young secretary, stepped inside.

“Mr. President, perhaps we should get started. The lines will only grow longer today, especially if we don’t get through a few of these people before your other meetings this morning.”

“I guess somebody has to keep me on time, no matter how badly I want to avoid these office seekers,” said Lincoln with a forced smile. “All right, Hay, send one of them in.”

Lincoln returned his spyglass to its place on the desk. If he had continued to look through the window, he would have observed the
George Page
, a ferry steamer that shuttled people between Alexandria and Washington. On this trip, it was moving in Lincoln’s direction. The ship stopped at a dock and unloaded a handful of passengers.

The last person to disembark was a man who had made it to Alexandria only the day before, after spending the night in Richmond. He slipped a bank note to a porter and asked him to look after his trunk—he would send for it in a few hours. Unencumbered, the man now turned his sights to the city spread before him.

Mazorca had arrived.

Lucius awoke before anybody else in the Bennett manor. Truth be told, he had hardly slept after watching Portia and Joe ride away. Nerves had kept him up for long stretches. Even when he dozed fitfully, his head was full of questions and worries: Where were they now? How far had they gone? What if somebody saw them on the roads? It occurred to him that he might never know their fate. If Portia and Joe were caught between here and Charleston, they would be brought back. That would probably happen in the next few days, if it were to happen at all. If they were captured outside of South Carolina, their fate would depend on whether they revealed who owned them. They would be held in prison until they confessed or someone claimed them. If neither came to pass, they would be sold at auction.

If they actually made it all the way to Washington, thought Lucius, he probably would not hear about it. Confirmation simply would not come. They did not know how to write, and he did not know how to read. Even if Portia and Joe had somebody do the writing for them, there was no chance of Bennett letting a note pass through to him. So Lucius figured no news would be good news—or at least it would not be bad news. He would have to learn to cope with the anxiety of not knowing.

A rooster crowed in the distance. Lucius barely noticed as he wandered around the mansion. He moved with the careful silence of a thief, avoiding the squeaky floorboards. The house sometimes seemed empty during the daytime, with no family in it. Now it was desolate. Bennett only occupied a fraction of its rooms—mainly a study, the dining room, and his bedroom. Yet he insisted on having the whole place kept up, as if it were full.

Lucius paused in front of a portrait hanging above the mantle in the dining room. The picture showed Bennett sitting in a chair, with one son on either side. The boys must have been ten or twelve years old when it was painted. Lucius remembered when they sat for the artist, and how hard it had been to keep them still for more than a few minutes at a time. Bennett had a warm look of satisfaction on his face—something Lucius had not seen much since the boys’ death in Kansas.

That was the real reason the Bennett home seemed so lonely. Most plantations had large clans of white folks living on them. There were sometimes three or even four generations’ worth, and lots of visiting relatives besides. Children were almost always around too. Whenever Lucius accompanied Bennett on a social call to another plantation, he never failed to notice how the white kids and slave kids played indiscriminately. It had been that way on the Bennett farm as well, when Bennett’s boys were growing up. But there came an age when the white folks insisted that the play stop, usually around the time the slave children could start performing useful chores. Before that moment, though, these kids were innocent of what separated them. This was one of the things that prevented Lucius from hating white people—he thought they were not born bad, but made bad.

The other thing, of course, was his relationship with Bennett, however much slavery stained it. When he told Portia that he could not do what he was asking her to do, he only told part of the truth. He was certainly too old to attempt any kind of escape. But neither could he envision life away from Bennett. The very idea of it was inconceivable. Where would he go? What would he do? Slavery was not something he enjoyed, but he frankly could not imagine improving his lot. For Portia and his other grandchildren, of course, the matter was entirely different. They had many years to live, and he wanted freedom for them.

He remembered the night Lincoln was elected, and all of Bennett’s bitter cursing. For months he had listened to Bennett lecture on the horror of Lincoln, and he realized during one of these little speeches that this politician from the North represented hope. Lincoln was the subject of much whispered talk in the plantation fields and anywhere else black people gathered away from white ears. Nobody knew very much about him, but many, like Nelly, had come to view him as a savior. Lucius was not comfortable going that far, though he did suspect that if the plantation owners hated Lincoln, then he was probably someone to like. It was this half-formed conviction that inspired Lucius to send Portia on her journey.

He wondered where she was at that very instant. Had she hidden in the woods now that the sun was coming up? Would she try to sleep? What would they do with the horses?

Lucius stepped from the dining room to the foyer, opened the front door, and walked onto the front porch. The sky was clear of clouds. The first slaves were already in the fields, with more on their way. He heard Tate issue instructions to a group of young men in the distance. Hammers clanged in the direction of the blacksmith’s shop. Smoke billowed from the kitchen chimney. Then he looked down the long lane to the main road. This was the path Portia and Joe had traveled just hours before, and the last place he had seen them. They had left at a trot. Lucius recalled his final view of Portia, how she turned around and waved to him just before slipping into the darkness. He closed his eyes and remembered the image.

“Good morning.”

Lucius nearly fell off the porch at the sound of Bennett’s voice.

“I didn’t mean to startle you, Lucius,” said his master.

“Sorry, sir. I didn’t hear you.”

“What are you looking at? I’ve been watching you from behind for a couple of minutes.”

“Oh, nothing. It’s just a nice day.”

“Indeed it is!” said Bennett. He joined Lucius at gazing into the distance. “I was thinking that later this morning you would join me on a little expedition to the slave quarters. We need to distribute the new clothes we brought from Charleston. I haven’t been down there in months. It will be good to do some visiting. I can’t be a stranger on my own plantation, after all.”

“No, sir,” said Lucius.

Bennett tapped him on the shoulder and smiled. “And I can’t wait to see your granddaughter.”

As Rook passed through the front door of Brown’s, he tried to remember the last time he had dressed out of uniform. It had been at least a month, since before the inauguration. It felt awkward. On the walk to the hotel, he had hoped that none of his fellow officers would spot him. He did not want to have to explain himself to Scott.

A lunchtime crowd filled the lobby. Rook moved away from the door and toward a wall, where he would not call attention to himself. He scanned the lobby for Clark. The corporal was seated in a chair by a column and looking straight at him. Rook nodded slightly and then left through the front door. He crossed Sixth Street and stood on the brick pavement outside the National. From this vantage point, he could watch the entrance to Brown’s and try to blend in with the loiterers on the sidewalk. It was harder than he had anticipated. Most of the people standing around him were slaves, waiting for their owners to finish their business inside. But not all of them were, and Rook was glad not to draw any suspicious glances. After about five minutes, Clark emerged from the hotel.

“Any sign of our friends yet?” asked Rook in a low voice.

“Davis is down here right now. Stephens will show up soon.”

After about thirty minutes, the Southerners exited Brown’s. Davis was big and tall, with black hair, dark eyes, and skin tanned from hours in the sun. Stephens was his opposite: short, scrawny, fair-haired, and ruddy. On Pennsylvania Avenue, they headed southeast. Rook and Clark followed about fifty feet behind. The tailing was easy. Davis and Stephens made no attempt to see if anybody was tracking them.

“It looks like they know where they’re going,” said Clark as they approached Second Street.

“Right for the Capitol,” said Rook.

As they left the commercial stretch of the Avenue, Rook and Clark were able to drop back a bit further and still keep Davis and Stephens in sight. The Capitol did not appear much changed since the inauguration. Rook wondered if any work had been done on it at all. As they circled around to the east side of the building, the colonel noticed the grounds were still a mess, littered with piles of coal and wood, marble blocks, and columns in various states of assembly. Several statues stood amid the clutter, waiting for someone to put them inside the unfinished building. One was a big sculpture of George Washington that made the first president look like a Roman general.

When Davis and Stephens reached the wide steps on the eastern front of the building, they paused. A handful of soldiers sat near the top smoking pipes. They did not appear to be on duty. Rook assumed that because they were new to the city, they would not recognize him.

The two Southerners seemed uncertain about what to do. They exchanged a few words and looked around. As Rook and Clark approached the foot of the steps, Davis and Stephens began to climb them. At the summit, they turned around to take in the view.