Mrs. Lincoln's Rival (52 page)

She straightened her dress and hair and hurried downstairs to meet them. “What did Mr. Lincoln think of your ideas?” she asked Father after welcoming them home.

“He didn’t call on Mr. Lincoln after all,” Nettie said, untying her bonnet. “As we approached the White House, he told the driver to keep going.”

“I thought an unannounced visit might annoy the president and do more harm than good,” said Father, a trifle sheepishly. “I’ve written him two lengthy letters on Reconstruction and suffrage in recent days, and I’ve made my views known to him on countless other occasions over the last two years. I’m not in the cabinet anymore, and I forget that I’m no longer welcome as one of his official advisors.”

“But your ideas are sound,” Kate protested. “I’ve never known you to be shy about sharing them.”

Father took her hand and patted it. “I am not shy now, and my confidence in my ideas is unshaken, but they will still be good ideas tomorrow. I’ll call on him then.”

His mind seemed made up, so Kate said no more. Instead they spent a quiet evening at home together, reading, chatting, playing chess. Kate retired early, but she woke around ten o’clock to the sound of her father climbing the stairs on his way to bed.

She drifted off to sleep, her hands resting on her abdomen, where her child gently rocked, as if sensing the protective presence of the great man he, or she, would call Grandfather.

• • •

An hour later the doorbell rang.

Kate woke immediately, listening in the darkness to a curious and worrisome tread of feet on the stairs—Will ascending to report the caller’s identity to Father, Will descending, Will going up again accompanied by another man, and at last, all three men returning downstairs. Puzzled, Kate rose and used the necessary, listening all the while, curious and increasingly worried. She heard men’s voices rumbling from the direction of Father’s study, and after a time, when the sound of the front door closing was not followed by that of Father returning upstairs, she drew on her dressing gown and carefully made her way downstairs to his study.

She found her father alone, standing at the window, gazing outside through his own reflection. The sound of her footsteps pulled him from his reverie, and when he turned and she glimpsed his stricken expression, her heart plummeted and her thoughts flew to William and her far-flung family. “Who called at such an hour?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Katie, dear,” he said, his voice shaking, “perhaps you should sit.”

Obediently, she sank into a chair, one hand clutching the arm rest, the other resting on her belly. “Is it William?”

“No, my dear.” Steadily, but with evident worry, he said, “The man who called is a former clerk of mine from the Treasury Department. He brought grievous news, terrible news.”

“Tell me.”

“He had just come from Ford’s Theatre. The president was in attendance, seated in the State Box with his wife and another couple. The president—” He paused to gulp air. “A man stole into the president’s private box and shot him.”

A sudden chill of horror froze Kate to the marrow. “Does Mr. Lincoln yet live?”

“I don’t know.” Father sank heavily into the chair beside her and clasped one strong hand to his brow. “The clerk could give no particulars. I hope—I pray—he is mistaken altogether.”

He reached out his other hand to her, and she took it, but almost immediately thereafter, a knock sounded upon the front door. “Wait here,” Father instructed, and he quickly rose to answer.

She followed him as far as the study doorway, clutching her dressing gown closed at the neck; but although she heard him conversing with two or more gentlemen, she could not make out their words. When Father returned to her, his eyes were full of such grim horror that she knew the clerk had spoken true.

The new callers were Mr. Mellon, Mr. Plantz, and Mr. Walker, Treasury Department employees Father trusted implicitly. They reported that President Lincoln had been shot but was expected to survive, but Secretary Seward had been assassinated in his sickbed, where he had been recovering from a terrible carriage accident, and his son had been seriously wounded. “Guards are being stationed at the houses of all prominent officials,” Father said. “It is suspected that the plot may have a wider range.” Suddenly his face drained of all color. “My God. Seward, dead. I cannot believe it.” He shook his head as if to clear it, and a look of anguished determination came into his eye. “I must go to the president at once, and see how I might be of service.”

“Father, no.” Kate seized the sleeve of his dressing gown. “The assassins have already struck twice. You too could be one of their intended victims. You must not go out.”

“If I can help the president, I must try, even at risk to myself.”

“What could you do?” protested Kate, tightening her hold on his sleeve. “Are you a physician or a Pinkerton agent? You’re far more likely to get in the way than to help, and in the meantime, you would recklessly expose yourself to danger.”

Father hesitated, and in that moment three loud knocks sounded on the front door. Will soon appeared in the study doorway, haggard and grief-stricken, to report that soldiers had taken up positions around the house and would stand guard throughout the night. His sorrow was so palpable that Kate’s heart went out to him. Mr. Lincoln was revered in the colored community as their Great Emancipator, as their Moses. If he perished, their lamentations would be heart-wrenching.

“So it seems I will remain at home,” said Father wearily after Will left them. “Go back to bed, daughter. I will sit up and wait for more news.”

“How could I possibly sleep?”

“Katie—” He cleared his throat, dropped back into his chair, and covered his face with his hands. “I would rest easier knowing you and my grandchild are safe upstairs in bed.”

She hadn’t the heart to argue, but as she turned to go, she said, “You should try to sleep too. You’ll be needed in the morning, whatever else happens tonight.”

He nodded, but she did not hear him come upstairs until much later.

Throughout the long night, grief and worry and the sound of soldiers’ boots on the pavement below her window precluded restful sleep. Morning came at last, gray and somber, with a steady downpour as if the heavens wept. At half past seven, a distant church bell began to toll, and then another joined it, and another, until all the bells in Washington resounded with the terrible pealing. Kate knew at once the dire news they proclaimed.

The president was dead.

She lay in bed, listening to the bells, paralyzed by grief and worry. Then she heard stirring downstairs, and a cry of shock and grief from Nettie. Reminded of her responsibilities, she roused herself from bed, numb and dazed and disbelieving, to wash and dress.

Downstairs, she found Nettie curled up on the sofa in the front parlor, sobbing as if her heart had irreparably broken, while Mrs. Vaudry stroked her back and murmured words of consolation, her own face streaked with tears. Nettie had always liked Mr. Lincoln more than anyone else in the family, Kate reflected, and suddenly a memory sprang to mind—Mr. Lincoln bending from his great height to confess to a concerned young girl that he had freed the terrapins intended for his supper table. The Great Emancipator indeed, she thought giddily, and suddenly the room spun around her, and she grabbed on to the back of a chair to steady herself. “Where’s Father?” Kate asked when she had recovered enough to speak.

“He went to see Mr. Lincoln,” Nettie choked out, sitting up and wiping her eyes. “He was gone before I woke.”

Kate felt a tremor of worry. She wished Father had stayed safely home behind locked, well-guarded doors. “Is there any news?”

While Nettie fought back sobs, Mrs. Vaudry shared the few details she had acquired from the soldiers who had relieved the nighttime guards at dawn. With his wife sitting beside him in their private box at Ford’s Theatre, Mr. Lincoln had been shot in the back of the head at close range by the actor John Wilkes Booth, who had leapt down to the stage, apparently injuring himself upon landing, and made his escape through a rear exit. Mortally wounded, the president had been carried across the street to the Peterson boardinghouse, which was where Father had gone to see him, and where he had apparently breathed his last.

The sound of their voices must have alerted Will, for he came to the parlor, took Kate aside, and informed her in a quiet, hollow voice that he had learned from a servant in the Seward household that the secretary of state had been grievously injured, but yet lived. At nearly the same time Mr. Lincoln had been shot, a tall, powerfully built man had appeared at Mr. Seward’s front door, where he informed a servant that Mr. Seward’s physician had sent him with medicine. Suspicious, the servant told him to leave the medicine and instructions so he could tell Mr. Seward how to take it, but the stranger pushed his way into the house, insisting that he had been ordered to deliver it in person. Mr. Seward’s son Fred stopped him on the staircase, demanded the medicine, and refused to grant the stranger admittance to the sickroom. The man turned as if to descend, but suddenly he whirled around, leveled a revolver at Fred Seward’s head, and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired. Muttering an oath, the intruder struck him with the revolver with such force that his skull was fractured in two places, exposing his fragile brain matter and rendering him unconscious. The vicious attacker then forced his way into Secretary Seward’s bedchamber, where a soldier and Mr. Seward’s daughter Fanny kept vigil. Slashing the soldier across the forehead with the knife, the intruder turned upon Mr. Seward, and while Fanny bravely pleaded for him to spare her father’s life, he plunged a bowie knife into the invalid’s neck and face, again and again. Fanny’s screams had brought another brother running, and with the soldier’s help he managed to pull the intruder away, taking a knife wound to the face in the struggle. Before they could stop him, the intruder fled down the stairs, stabbing a young State Department messenger in the back in his urgency to escape.

At first it was believed Mr. Seward could not survive, but according to Will’s friend, all of the injured, even Fred with his terrible head wound, were considered out of immediate danger. Only the neck brace Secretary Seward wore due to the injuries he had sustained in the carriage accident saved him from being stabbed to death.

Kate and Nettie waited anxiously for word from Father, and finally, shortly before noon, he returned home, his eyes bloodshot, his face distorted. Embracing his daughters tightly, he allowed Kate to lead him to the parlor, where she begged him to explain where he had been and what he had learned.

He had left the house at dawn and walked with Mr. Mellon through the rain to Ford’s Theatre and the Peterson boardinghouse facing it across Tenth Street. A crowd of grieving civilians had gathered there, kept at bay by grim-faced soldiers. Father had spotted Assistant Treasury Secretary Maunsell Field among the throng, and from him Father learned that he had arrived too late. The president was dead, and those who had been with him in his final moments—his cabinet save Mr. Seward, his wife and son Robert, a few others—had dispersed.

Stunned, uncertain what to do, Father and Mr. Mellon had walked to Secretary Steward’s residence. Recognizing the chief justice, the guards had allowed them to enter the lower hall. “There the doctors told me that Mr. Seward has partially recovered, and although he is in critical condition, he might live,” Father said. “His son Frederick’s case, however, is considered hopeless.”

“We must pray nonetheless that they both survive,” said Kate, her voice shaking, and Nettie’s tears began anew.

“From there I went to the Kirkwood House, Mr. Johnson’s residence in Washington,” said Father, his voice thick with grief. “I found him calm, but very grave. Stanton had already told him that Mr. Lincoln had perished. We met in the small parlor, and before long a few others joined us—the new Secretary of the Treasury McCulloch and Attorney General Speed. After conferring briefly, we agreed to meet again there at ten o’clock, at which time I would administer the oath of office to Mr. Johnson.”

“Oh, my goodness,” said Nettie, startled. “I had not thought—I mean, of course I knew, but—we have a new president now.”

And a new First Lady, Kate realized. Ashamed that she had not thought of her before, she asked, “How is Mrs. Lincoln?”

Father shook his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her, or heard from anyone who has. She was with Mr. Lincoln when he was shot, so I must imagine she is extremely distraught.”

Kate nodded, her thoughts flying to little Tad, who had so recently suffered the loss of a cherished brother, and to Robert, who had suddenly become the head of a grieving family, and John Hay, her dear friend, who had loved Mr. Lincoln with steadfast but clear-eyed devotion—how they all must be suffering at that moment.

After the gentlemen agreed to reconvene at ten o’clock, Father and Mr. Speed had gone to the attorney general’s office to examine the Constitution, the precedents of vice-presidents Tyler and Fillmore, and the law regarding the succession. “On our way back to the Kirkwood House, Mr. Speed recounted for me their last cabinet meeting. He told me that he had never—” Father paused to compose himself. “He said he had never seen the president in better spirits. The principal subject was Reconstruction, and Mr. Lincoln showed Mr. Speed the letter I had sent him from Baltimore the day of my departure. Mr. Speed said the president complimented it highly.” The last words dissolved into a mournful sob.

Kate reached out to take his hand and clasped it in both of her own.

Father cleared his throat. “We returned to the Kirkwood House, and just inside the entrance, I encountered Montgomery Blair and his father.”

“Oh, dear,” murmured Kate without thinking. What an inopportune moment for Father to cross paths with his longtime enemies.

“I was determined to bury old resentments, so I took the elder Blair’s hand and said that I hoped that from this day forward all anger and bitterness between us would cease.” He managed a small, forlorn smile. “The old gentleman replied with equal warmth and kindness.”