The First Assassin (15 page)

“I’m also concerned that it’s the wrong approach for right now. Sumter has fallen. Here in Washington, the government is confused and in disarray. What you are planning could create sympathies where none now exist.”

“All of this has been thought through,” said Davis. “We are beyond the point of reconsideration. I was told that you were consulted on these plans.”

“I wouldn’t use the word ‘consulted.’ But I was certainly made familiar with what you are intending to do. Perhaps you will succeed. My concern is that the risks are great and the price of failure is enormous. Events are going our way right now, all across the land. A mistake could change that.”

“We won’t make a mistake.”

Grenier did not respond immediately. She was distracted by the smaller of the two men—Stephens, the one who had not spoken. He was rubbing his fingers on a pale Romanesque bust that decorated a table.

“Please don’t touch that,” said Grenier sharply. “You’re supposed to look at it, not play with it.”

The reprimand jolted Stephens. He moved away from the statue and placed his hands behind his back. He did not even apologize, leading Grenier to believe that he had been sworn to silence. Davis wanted to do all of the talking.

“Please excuse us,” said Davis with a phony smile. “We are not men of great elegance. We have come to Washington with a single purpose. Upon the instructions of our employer, we have come here to seek your blessing and your advice.”

Grenier thought she had already delivered the advice to stop. But apparently this was not an option.

“It is more important that you not fail than that you succeed. There is a difference, you know.”

Davis laughed. “Don’t worry, we won’t fail.” Stephens let out a chuckle as well.

An uncomfortable quiet then filled the room. Grenier wanted the men to leave. She thanked them for coming and politely pushed them toward the door. A moment later, they were gone. This is a clumsy plan and these are clumsy men, she thought. Grenier was perfectly willing to support radical action in Washington, but radical action also had to be intelligent.

The most intelligent man she had ever met was Langston Bennett. She had not heard from him in a few weeks. Yet she knew that he was planning something bold because they had corresponded in the fall about the problem of a Republican president and the lengths to which they might go to prevent him from taking action against the South. Nothing was ruled out of bounds. For such an important assignment, he would not associate himself with low-rent ruffians. He would work only with the most capable of men.

I can’t wait to see your granddaughter
. The words tormented Lucius all morning. Did Bennett know she was gone?

The old slave stood outside the front door of the manor, waiting for Bennett to finish writing a few letters and come out. A couple of younger men had just loaded several boxes of new clothes onto a cart. As soon as Bennett joined them, they would make their way to the slave quarters.

There was no way he could know, Lucius kept telling himself. Bennett had gone to bed before Portia and Joe had even arrived at the stables, and he had just gotten up when he made that troubling comment. It seemed impossible that he could know. And if he did know, would he play this kind of mind game? Lucius doubted that too. That was not like him. Bennett was a blunt man. He did not concern himself too much with runaways either. He generally let Tate handle those details. Yet Bennett had always taken a special interest in Portia. Would he treat her escape differently?

That was probably the real reason Bennett had mentioned Portia on the porch: she was a favorite. Her position had much to do with the fact that she was related to Lucius, but it was more than that, too. Portia had been an adorable girl growing up, with bright eyes and a precocious mind. She loved the company of adults and was a constant source of amusement for them. Since then she had grown into a striking young woman. There was not an unmarried male slave on the plantation who was not attracted to her, thought Lucius, and a few of the married ones must have desired her too. Over the years, Bennett had become quite fond of her, though his attentions were more innocent. He just seemed to like Portia. Everybody did.

I can’t wait to see your granddaughter
. Perhaps there was nothing suspicious behind those words at all. Lucius again looked down the lane where the runaways had slipped off the night before. He knew he would eventually have to cover for Portia. He had not expected that moment to come so soon, though. He would have preferred for a day or two to go by before Bennett or Tate started asking a lot of questions. But Lucius knew that he could not avoid a reckoning. Every hour between now and then counted. Lucius determined he would try to keep Bennett’s curiosity about Portia to a minimum. It would be a real accomplishment, he now believed, if he got through the entire day without anybody realizing she was gone.

Big Joe was another matter. There were probably a few people wondering about him already. He was the sort of worker whose presence would be missed soon. Lucius still believed it was a mistake for Joe to have joined Portia on her flight, but he felt that the two of them had forced his hand the night before. What else could he have done, call the whole thing off and recruit another runaway? That would take a few days to arrange at a minimum, and Lucius was not sure how much time he had to spare. It had been more than a week since he had seen Lincoln’s would-be killer in Charleston. It might already be too late to stop him. Besides, Portia really was the best choice—she was smart, she had been to Charleston before, and she knew Nelly. It made sense for her to be the one. Joe might even come in handy on the road. Unfortunately, his absence on the plantation probably would cause a search party to begin a hunt sooner than if Portia had gone by herself.

There was still no sign of Bennett in the manor. Lucius looked at the fields. Normally they would be full of slaves at this time of day. Now they were empty. He spotted Tate in the distance making his way toward the slave cabins. The overseer had spent the last half hour telling the field hands to pause in their work and assemble for Bennett’s visit. Lucius wondered if Tate supposed that Joe was missing. With so many slaves on the plantation, it was not likely he would notice on his own, at least not right away. A slave might have reported it to him, though. Tate had plenty of informants on the plantation, and reporting a runaway was an easy way to keep in the good graces of the overseer. Another one of the overseers—there were four besides Tate—might have noticed Joe’s absence too.

Lucius thought that if he could somehow prevent the news of Joe’s disappearance from making the rounds until later in the day, or perhaps into the evening, then he might buy the runaways another night before a group of slave catchers went out after them. He just was not sure how to do it.

“Hello!” said Bennett as he emerged from the house. He sounded cheerful. The master of the plantation loved these gift-giving excursions to the slave quarters. Perhaps twice a year, he handed out blankets, clothes, shoes, and other items to the slaves. These were not gifts, actually. They were necessities, and somebody would have to supply them if Bennett did not. But Bennett took great pleasure in handing out these items personally. It allowed him to play the patriarch. He also believed it made him more popular among the slaves. He wanted them to think he was a good master.

“Let’s go,” said Bennett, heading in the direction of the slave quarters. He descended onto the gravel driveway with the cautious steps of a man owning a wooden leg, yet it might have been said that there was a spring in his step. Lucius walked beside him. The cart with the boxes followed. A few minutes later, when the slave cabins came into view, they saw a big gathering of men, women, and children. The group let out a few whistles and claps. Tate was standing to the side. He immediately approached. It was clear that he had something on his mind.

“Mr. Bennett,” he said. “May I have a quick word with you?”

“Certainly.”

“Big Joe isn’t here,” Tate said in a low voice.

Bennett stopped in his tracks, about fifty or sixty feet away from the cabins and the assembly of slaves. Lucius ordered the cart to halt. “Really?”

“That’s right. I heard this morning that he hadn’t shown up where he was expected. I didn’t think too much on it—this is Big Joe, after all, and he’s never given us any trouble. I figured on seeing him here with the others. Well, he’s not here. I’ve asked around, and nobody seems to know where he is.”

“That’s odd. You don’t suppose…” Bennett’s voice trailed off.

“It’s not like him,” said Tate. “But you just never know who’s going to get the notion in his head.”

Lucius knew that if he was going to intervene at all, this was the time. He hardly knew what he was going to say when he spoke up. “Excuse me,” he said. Bennett and Tate snapped their heads in his direction. They were not accustomed to being interrupted by a slave, even if it was Lucius.

“I woke up early,” he continued, speaking slowly and choosing his words with care. He was making this up as he went along. “I saw Big Joe walk by the house and waved to him. He came up to me and said a tool had broken and he needed to borrow one from the Wilson farm. So I suppose that’s where he is. He’s probably on his way back now. I guess I assumed he’d gotten a pass from you, Mr. Tate.”

Lucius could not tell whether he had convinced them. He worried that he was not a very good liar.

“He definitely didn’t speak to me,” Tate said, “and he knows the rules. If he wants to leave the plantation for any reason—even if it’s to fetch a tool from down the way—he needs to talk to me first. He didn’t do that and he certainly didn’t get a pass. He knows better than this. Besides, we can fix tools here.”

Tate spoke as if he were accusing Lucius. The old slave shrugged his shoulders.

“What tool did he say was broken?”

“I don’t think he said which one. He just said a tool. That’s what I remember. We talked about other things.”

“What other things?”

“The weather. His family. Things like that.”

Tate looked at Bennett. “I’m not so sure about this.”

“Well, if Lucius says he saw him, then he must have seen him. Don’t worry about it now, Mr. Tate. Give him a little while longer. He’ll probably be back soon,” said Bennett, starting to walk again toward the slaves. “You can speak to him then about the rules and handle this situation however you please.”

“Oh, I’ll handle it,” said Tate, casting a look at Lucius and tapping his whip. “I’ll definitely handle it.”

Rook studied the exterior of Violet Grenier’s home. He wanted to be inside listening to these men who called themselves Davis and Stephens as they talked to a lady about whom he felt he needed to know much more as soon as possible.

“Why would a couple of fellows who seem to be up to no good want to meet Grenier?” It was a rhetorical question. Neither Clark nor Springfield tried to answer it.

They backed away from H Street to a place in the park where they could keep an eye on Grenier’s front door without making themselves obvious.

“The first step in figuring out why they would want to see Grenier is to figure out why they’re in Washington in the first place,” said Rook. He briefed Springfield on how he and Clark had followed the men from Brown’s to the Capitol and then to here.

“The most peculiar thing is their interest in the Capitol’s basement,” said Springfield.

“Yes, and it worries me,” said Rook. He was silent for a moment. “Have either of you heard of Guy Fawkes?”

The two men looked at each other. They did not know the name.

“Let me give you a little history lesson,” said Rook. He described the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which Fawkes tried to pack explosives into the cellar of the British Parliament and blow it up on a date when the king was scheduled to visit. Before Fawkes could commit his crime, however, he was betrayed: the authorities arrested, tortured, and killed him.

“Do you really think these guys want to destroy the Capitol?” asked Springfield.

“I have no idea what to think,” said Rook. “But I don’t want to rule out anything either. Davis and Stephens concern me. They have come to Washington with assumed names, we have overheard them say provocative things, and they’ve traveled through a part of the Capitol that would have interested Guy Fawkes if he were a secessionist today. Now they’re meeting with Violet Grenier, whose antipathy toward the Union is well known. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to suspect that trouble may be afoot.”

They discussed the possibility that Davis and Stephens were targeting the Capitol. How many explosives would it take? Where would they have to be placed? What could they possibly hope to achieve?

“If they actually bombed the Capitol,” said Clark, “it would wipe out any sympathy there is in the North for the South.”

Rook considered this. It seemed plausible. “They would probably ignite a war,” he said. “But maybe a war is what they want, for whatever foolish reason.”

The door to Grenier’s home opened. Davis and Stephens emerged and walked in the direction of Brown’s and the Capitol.

The soldiers had discussed what they would do when Davis and Stephens reappeared. Springfield stayed put. His job was to monitor Grenier’s home for further activity. Clark walked briskly to Brown’s, ahead of Davis and Stephens, on the assumption that this was where they were going. Rook waited for them to pass. When they were a couple hundred feet ahead of him, he followed.

Davis and Stephens walked down Fifteenth Street and turned left on Pennsylvania Avenue. They seemed unaware of the fact that anybody might be tracking their movements, which made Rook think that they were possibly overconfident. Or perhaps, he thought, they really are not plotting anything at all. They could be visitors from out of town who wanted to see the Capitol and an old friend. Rook knew that he lacked any real evidence against them. All he had were a few vague suspicions and wild speculations. Was he too rash to think of Guy Fawkes? He could hear General Scott berating him for wasting his time in this pursuit and Locke snickering in the background.