A Friend of Mr. Lincoln (33 page)

“I would like to meet the man who did that to you,” Ellie said calmly. “I would like to cut off his prick and his balls.”

The remarks did not shock Cage. He knew her, and so in his own limited way did Lincoln. And no words, spoken by either a woman or a man, would have registered as obscene at that moment, where there was a far greater obscenity visible in the marks on Cordelia's flesh.

Before she raised her dress again, Lincoln pointed to another mark on her left shoulder, a reddish elongated blob. “This is the birthmark mentioned in the newspaper advertisement? The one in the shape of Madagascar?”

“Yes sir.”

Lincoln stared at the birthmark for a considerable amount of time.

“Thank you. You may refasten your dress.”

“What if they ask me in court if I—”

“They'll ask you nothing in court, Cordelia, because under the Black Laws Negroes aren't allowed to testify. But be assured I'll do what I can on your behalf.”

They stayed that night at the Franklin House on the courthouse square, Cage and Lincoln sharing a room downstairs, Ellie in the attic room reserved for women guests. They arranged for a decent meal to be sent up to Cordelia in the jail and then the three of them met for their own dinner at a quiet tavern Lincoln knew several blocks away, removed from the hurried lawyer-and-client consultations that were taking place in the center of town before court opened the next day.

“We're on the docket in the morning,” Lincoln said as he shuffled through some papers he had secured that afternoon at the courthouse. “It looks like Mr. Etheridge has sent an agent to retrieve the girl for him. Fellow named Zephaniah Tuttle. I expect he knows his business and will be a good witness. Ed Jones is the lawyer on their side—he drinks hard but he's pretty capable. I'll put you on the stand, Miss…Mrs….”

“Oh, for God's sake, call me Ellie.”

“I'll put you on the stand if that's suitable for you. You know Cordelia the best and the jury appreciates the sight of a handsome woman. Had you ever seen those marks on her back before?”

“No.”

“Did she ever say to you that she'd been whipped?”

“No.”

“So you can truthfully testify that you don't know how she got those scars.”

“I can. For all I know about the matter she might have wandered into a bramble patch.”

“Lot of brambles in Illinois,” Lincoln said. “Reminds me of the story of the old Winnebago Indian whose favorite wife ran off into the woods one night with a rival chieftain from up the river…”

And off he went
,
just like the Lincoln of old, telling the story in a winding, leisurely way, with such delight in his voice that before he reached the end of it three or four of their fellow customers in the tavern drifted over to listen. No sooner was it concluded than it reminded him of another story, and by the time he was through telling that one the quiet little out-of-the-way establishment was the liveliest place in town, everyone refilling their cups and urging Lincoln on.

Cage and Ellie left him to entertain the Tremont taverngoers. Their secret life in Springfield left them unaccustomed to walking together on the street. It was strange to be in a new town, where no one knew them and they had nothing to hide. This sense of license was intoxicating to Cage, though he knew he needed to resist it. Their business in Tazewell County was grave. If they failed in it, if Lincoln failed in presenting their case, a young woman would be enslaved and brutalized for the rest of her life.

“Is this just another case for him?” she asked. “Could he just as easily argue the opposite side?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, we just watched him entertaining everyone in sight while Cordelia rots in that jail cell.”

“His heart isn't cold, Ellie. If that's what you mean. It's the opposite: he feels things too hard.”

“All right, I believe you. I don't know him like you do.”

No, she knew him in a different way. He stood firm against that familiar surge of jealousy—it was unworthy of him. And there were more important things to reckon with tonight. They had almost reached the inn where they were staying and they each instinctively stepped apart, putting a proprietary distance between them.

“I'll go in first,” she said.

“All right.”

But before she walked off toward the inn she turned to face him. “I want my girl back.”

“I know.”

Her eyes were welling in the darkness, though it was hard for Cage to understand exactly what she was feeling. The sight of those scars when Cordelia had lowered her dress had obviously triggered a deep anger, and Ellie was one of those people who was only at risk of expressing other emotions once the door of anger had been breached. Now, swamped with a kind of confused tenderness, she discreetly pressed his hand and walked into the inn.

T
HE COURTHOUSE WAS NEW
but the courtroom on its second floor already had the hard-used feel of public spaces everywhere. Spittoons were plentiful but the aim of the observers who crowded into the courtroom day after day was not impressive, and so the floor was streaked with expectorated tobacco juice. The wooden rail separating the judge's bench and the attorneys' tables from the rest of the room was already in need of paint, and the sconces were blackened and caked with candle wax. In addition there was a bad smell emanating from the unwashed bodies and garments of the citizens pressed into the courtroom, and perhaps from the rank food they carried in their pockets.

Cordelia's case was third on the docket, behind a mortgage foreclosure action and a case in which the father of an unmarried daughter was suing the man who had gotten her with child. Since the girl worked in her father's furniture shop, he was demanding recompense for loss of his daughter's services while she was pregnant. There was little drama in either case, some tedious questioning of witnesses followed by whispered, friendly conversations between Lincoln and his opposing attorneys in front of the judge's bench. As the cases progressed, Cage looked around the courtroom, trying to spot the man who was likely to be testifying against them in their own proceeding. Sitting at the end of their bench was a fifty-year-old man with a patient-seeming face and a powerful frame who looked very much at home, well accustomed to the slow and undramatic pace of life in a courtroom.

Just before the case was called, Cordelia was brought into the courtroom by the sheriff and seated next to Lincoln at the attorneys' table. He poured her a glass of water and she took a series of quick, nervous sips to reinforce her composure. Since this was merely a habeas corpus hearing there was no jury. Samuel Treat, the man who had slept in the bed with Lincoln and Cage the night before, would decide the merits of the case on his own. He moved the proceedings along briskly, listening as the lawyers made their opening remarks, Lincoln arguing his onus probandi and citing a recent case in the Illinois Supreme Court that ruled that it was “repugnant to and subversive of natural right” for a human being to have to prove his freedom, since the very concept of enslavement was conceived and founded on injustice. His courtroom manner was the same as it had been in the Truett trial: casual, direct, sociable, seemingly innocent of legal stagecraft. Edward Jones spoke next, representing the slaveholder who was making the claim that Cordelia was his escaped property. He was compact and barrel-chested. He spoke in paragraphs of symphonic perfection, spinning off into pleasing verbal variations but always returning to his main theme of the sanctity of individual property. He congratulated his learned friend Mr. Lincoln on his logical gyrations but felt it was his duty to remind His Honor that the state constitution of 1818 and law after law enacted since left no doubt as to the status of Negroes in Illinois.

Ellie was called to testify. It intoxicated Cage to see her in the witness chair, to see her in front of the public in a crowded courtroom. He was aware of the other men in the room training their attention on her, staring at her with some measure of his own unappeasable sexual hunger. She sat as naturally upright in the plain wooden chair as if it had been designed for her. Cage thought she was a little cross during Lincoln's examination, self-righteously answering questions she clearly believed were self-evident. Yes, she had employed the woman, known to her as Cordelia, seated at the attorneys' table. No, the woman had never given any indication she was anybody's slave, neither had she comported herself with any sense of wariness or fear of pursuit. She was a conscientious worker, bright-minded and skillful, clearly experienced in the domestic arts.

“Do you know where this experience was acquired?”

“No, I don't.”

“Did you make assumptions about where it might have been acquired?”

“I assumed that she had been a lady's maid or perhaps the mistress of her own household.”

“You did not ask her if that was the case?”

“No.”

“She did not volunteer any information to the contrary?”

“No.”

“During the time Cordelia was in your shop, did you notice any distinguishing scars or marks?”

“She has a scar on her cheek. I did not see any others.”

“Did you ask how she came by this scar on her cheek?”

“I didn't ask her, but she volunteered that it was the result of an accident with a pair of shears.”

When she was cross-examined by Jones, she was as studiously impersonal as she had been with Lincoln: a witness who projected confidence that the evidence spoke for itself and that there was no need for her to attempt to win the favor of the court in any other way.

“When you hired the woman you call Cordelia, did you ask to see her certificate of freedom?”

“No.”

“You weren't aware that it's against the law to hire a Negro who fails to produce such a certificate?”

“She didn't fail to produce it. I didn't ask to see it.”

“As her employer, you were obliged to ask to see it!”

“I see,” Ellie said flatly, conceding the point in a way that gave Jones no other option but to change course. He asked her again where Cordelia had told her she had come from, what she had told her about how she had acquired her sewing skills, how exactly she had injured her cheek.

“You were in the shop with her day after day, week after week. Do you mean to say that you never discussed her background?”

“We have a very busy shop, especially during the legislative session. There's no time for such talk.”

“Were you not curious where this woman came from?”

“No.”

“Were you not curious about how in the world someone could stab herself in the cheek with a pair of shears?”

“I was not curious about that either. I was very busy. I was not her mother, or her sister, or her friend. I was her employer, and her work was very satisfactory to me.”

When she was dismissed she took her seat next to Cage and allowed her arm to brush up against him. Her body was trembling, perhaps from withheld anger, perhaps from the stress of trying to reveal nothing of what she knew, yet still navigate through the narrow straits of perjury. He knew that, if need be, she would have lied as blatantly as the situation demanded. She did not consider herself particularly bound by law, but like many lawless people she had a rigid investment in justice.

After Ellie's testimony
,
Jones called his sole witness, the man Mr. Etheridge had hired to retrieve his human property. Zephaniah Tuttle was indeed the imposing individual Cage had noticed earlier. He brought his confident bearing to the witness chair, where he sat with excellent posture and a friendly look on his face. He had been, he testified, a drayman, a steamboatman, an overseer on several substantial properties in Crittenden and neighboring counties in Kentucky, and was presently in the business of reclaiming stolen or absconded property for a number of clients in that same area. Only a few weeks after Mr. Etheridge had placed an advertisement in a number of newspapers in central Illinois—the presumed destination of his runaway slave Louisa—he had learned that she was incarcerated in the county jail of Tazewell County and had engaged Mr. Tuttle to travel there and reclaim her.

“Did Mr. Etheridge describe Louisa to you so that you could be sure the Negress in the Tazewell County jail was indeed the same woman?”

“He did.”

“What was the description he gave you?”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Lincoln called out in his squeaky voice. “Hearsay. If the—”

“This is a bench trial, Mr. Lincoln,” the judge interrupted. “And since I believe I have enough sense to decide about the evidence myself I will overrule your objection.”

Lincoln gave a little head bow of good-natured defeat, and the testimony resumed, with the slave catcher precisely describing not just Cordelia's height and build and shade of coloration, not just the scar on her cheek but the marks that were hidden by her dress.

“Does Louisa have a birthmark?”

“Yes, a prominent one on her left shoulder.”

“Will you describe the birthmark to the court?”

“It is of a livid brownish-reddish color and is in the shape of the island of Madagascar.”

“And there are scars on her back?”

“There are a multitude of scars. Owing to her intransigence, Mr. Etheridge was obliged to use the whip.”

“Will you point these various marks out to the court?”

“The girl would have to stand and lower her dress a bit.”

The judge ordered her to do so and Lincoln, to Cage's surprise, did not object. Perhaps he thought it was useless, perhaps he thought the spectacle of a young woman being ordered to halfway undress in a crowded courtroom would offer a stronger argument than any legal objection. Cordelia was escorted by the bailiff to the judge's bench, where she turned her back to the judge, slipped down one shoulder of her dress to display the birthmark there, then did her best to reveal the scars on her back while holding the dress up in front to cover her breasts. The courtroom was full, trials being one of the main forms of entertainment in any county seat. Tazewell County was by no means an abolitionist stronghold, but it was located far enough into the northern sphere of influence for scattered cries of “Shame!” to arise from the back of the gallery as Judge Treat dispassionately examined Cordelia's exposed back. He rapped his gavel distractedly with one hand while he signaled for Cordelia to raise her dress and sit down.

Lincoln had caught the tone of the witness's genial manner, and he engaged Mr. Tuttle during his cross-examination with a neighborly ease.

“Mr. Tuttle, you seem to know all about this Louisa and her various distinguishing marks.”

“Yes sir, I do.”

“Have you known her long?”

“I have studied up on her.”

“That is evident, but have you had the pleasure of meeting her?”

“Before today?”

“Before today.”

“I suppose not.”

“Have you laid eyes on her before today?”

“No, but I've just shared a description of her with the court.”

“And you got that description from Mr. Etheridge in a hearsay sort of way?”

Jones muttered an objection, Treat muttered, “Mr. Lincoln, you know better…” in a mildly chastening tone, and Lincoln changed course.

“Now
,
just to make sure we all understand why we're here today. Your position is that this woman is the slave property of this Mr. Etheridge.”

“That is my position.”

“Well, we should be able to dispense with the matter pretty quick then. Will you please show the court the bill of sale?”

“I don't have a bill of sale.”

Lincoln pretended great surprise.

“Mr. Etheridge didn't provide you with one before sending you off all the way to Illinois?”

“That particular document has been lost, I'm afraid, Mr. Lincoln.”

“Then how do you intend to prove that the slave Louisa and the woman named Cordelia are one and the same person?”

“By her marks, sir, as I have already testified.”

“By the marks on her back where you say she was savagely whipped?”

“I did not say ‘savagely.' ”

“By the birthmark which you say is in the shape of Madagascar?”

“Yes.”

“Madagascar is an island in the Indian Ocean?”

“Where it is located on the globe I don't know precisely.”

Lincoln nodded in an understanding way, then—as if an idea had just come to him—he turned around and picked up a thick book from the attorneys' table.

“Well, I expect between the two of us you had more of schooling, Mr. Tuttle, so it's no wonder I didn't know where it was either. I had to consult my atlas to find out.”