The Judges of the Secret Court (12 page)

Somehow life had turned her into a useless old woman. Of them all, only Johnny had ever flattered her enough to remember she had ever been young. So why should she not have indulged Johnny? She had kept him home and let him play the gallant. She found that agreeable. And now he called himself Wilkes, and had done this dreadful thing.

She was a silly woman. She knew that. She had never aspired to anything else. Why should not a woman be loved and silly? She couldn't help that, could she? Silliness was all her safety and all her power. Silliness had kept her snug and warm for years, even though she had had to manage everything and yet find the energy to be silly, or at least to pretend to be.

Of course she had idolized her husband. In her day that had been the proper thing to do. It was certainly not a crime. At the same time she hadn't exactly been sorry when he had gone. He had been a difficult man to deal with. She had preferred to dote on Johnny. He broke her heart, of course. He refused to grow up, he was a devil with the women. But really, having one's heart broken was rather nice. It gave her something to do during the day, which was more than any other member of the family had done.

Besides, he was so dashing. He had such a nice smile. How could he possibly have murdered
anyone?
In some fight over a woman, perhaps, or on the battlefield, though she had stopped that by forbidding him to enter the army, not wanting to have him hurt any more, she had seen, than he had wanted to go. But how could he expose them to this
public
thing?

She knew what her duty was. A mother's duty in time of trouble is to go to her children's family. The only family to go to was Asia's. She shrank from that. Asia was so inhuman. But all the same she made arrangements about the train. She had to do something. Her great hurt she would keep to herself.

Poor Edwin, she thought for a moment, up there alone in Boston, and then thought no more about him. Johnny often left letters with Asia. Perhaps there would be some explanation waiting there.

John T. Ford, the owner of Ford's Theatre, was in Richmond, supervising what could be saved from his properties there, when they brought him the news that Booth had shot the President, and where.

“Impossible,” Ford said. “He's not in Washington.” For like the rest of the world, when he thought of the name Booth, he thought of Edwin first. Then, with a shock, he remembered that John Wilkes had been in Washington City that night. The man was mad as a hatter, but that would make what he had done none the easier for the rest of them. Ford made plans to go to Washington.

Booth woke towards noon. He felt deliciously relaxed. Then the pain began again. What had wakened him was the familiar country noises outside the windows and in the fields beyond. It was raining. The familiar sounds gave him a childhood, soothed, and tucked in feeling. Then he remembered where he was.

He was frightened. He had to get away. He would not be a hero until he reached the South. As he swam up from sleep, his mind caught at various pieces of rhetorical flotsam. “Truly the hearts of men are full of fear: You cannot reason (almost) with a man that looks not heavily and full of dread.” That was the citizens in Richard III, and not what he wanted. He grabbed at another speech.

No, that would not do either. He had almost drowned in that sea of words, but now he was awake. He was reduced once more to the status of a man. Therefore it behooved him to escape.

Before he could turn his head, Mudd was in the room, examining his wound. Mudd was still worried. He had seen something he had no wish to see, and refused to recognize, but it had made him more than ever eager to keep the patient upstairs out of sight, where the servants could not see him. Servants blab, and Negroes have a thousand ways of getting even with their former masters.

Therefore, when Booth demanded a carriage, Mudd temporized. He would do his best, but this was Saturday. Most of the local carriages were reserved for Easter Sunday. It would not be easy to find one.

Booth saw no signs of recognition in the doctor's face. Whether that blankness was real or assumed, he had no way of knowing. He paid the man twenty-five dollars. He hoped that would be enough.

Mudd said he was going into Bryantown. Booth sent Herold with him. Someone had to watch the doctor. Herold could not be trusted, and yet in some measure he was dependable enough. It was the best Booth could do. The two men left, and Booth was left alone. The afternoon wore on.

In Washington City, Stanton had decreed one last performance of
Our American Cousin
, to be held behind locked doors. The actors were led out of the Old Capitol Prison, where he had sent them, and into the theatre. They were innocent, all of them, but they had spent a night in prison. That had left them with a guilty look.

It did not improve matters that the play was a comedy. The stage was still set up for Hawk's monologue, but the theatre itself was empty, and so brilliantly lit, as to seem even more than hollow. The brilliant lights were for the photographers, whose shrouded boxes stood everywhere, with nothing to be seen except a white hand reaching out from under the cloth, to remove the lens caps.

Military guards also stood everywhere. Footsteps in the lobby could be heard on the stage. There was no one down in the seats but detectives and military officials. The whole play had to be run through. Stanton was determined to prove some collusion between the actors and what Booth had done. It was difficult to remember lines. As they approached that interrupted scene, they became more and more nervous. The auditorium, without an audience to warm it, was cold. Laura Keene shuddered. They all shuddered.

At last Hawk's scene arrived again. Mrs. Mountchessington left the stage. Harry Hawk stood there alone.

“Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, you sockdologizing, you sockdologizing,” said Harry Hawk, and his voice dried up.

“Go on,” said the assistant from the War Department, speaking from a seat in the third row.

“You sockdologizing old mantrap,” said Hawks. And because he could not help it, looked up at the Presidential Box. Nothing about it had been changed. But it was empty and dark. He heard a rustle behind him, Laura Keene, he supposed, in the wings. He paused, his arm extended.

From the box there was the creak of a rocker. Then somebody appeared at the box rail and jumped.

Laura Keene screamed.

The figure scuttled by Hawk, but it was only a young soldier, standing in for Booth. The performance was over.

Half an hour later they were led back to the Old Capitol Prison. Innocent they might be, and yet somehow their guilt had been proved.

Booth had shaved off his moustache. Without a moustache he looked callow and naked, which was how he felt. No one could hear him, but he could hear every noise in the house. He could not tell what was happening down there. Mrs. Mudd did not come up again. He paced the room. A coloured man brought him improvised crutches. He tried to hobble about. The room was beginning to get on his nerves. It was too much like a cell. The leaves of a tree barred the windows and sent a pattern of moving boughs across the floor, for the sun had come out weakly for a little while.

He heard a horse gallop up, and boots stumbling on the stairs. Herold burst into the room. There were Federal troops in the neighbourhood. They would have to get out of there, because Mudd knew who they were, and was going to turn them in.

He was lying.

Afraid to go into town with Mudd, he had reined off by the side of the road, at the entrance to Zekiah Swamp, waited for a while, and then made up his story. But Booth did not know that. He believed Herold. Putting on his false beard and his shawl, he took up his crutches and hobbled down the stairs.

A figure blocked his path. In the dim light of the stairwell it was hard to make out, but from the rustle of stuff he knew it must be Mrs. Mudd. She seemed bewildered.

He mumbled something to her, went out the front door, and hobbled across the lawn. Herold went ahead, riding one horse and leading the other. It was a long way across the lawn.

The servants watched them go. They had better memories for their own grievances than for facts, but they would remember Dr. Mudd was not a popular employer.

He knew that. He had heard all about the assassination by now, and what he did not know, he could guess. He began to sweat. Booth was tattooed with his initials on his left hand. So had been this man. That was what Mudd had tried not to see. Now, as he rode home, he could see nothing else. It was a coincidence, but he knew what a coincidence like that could lead to. There was only one way to defend himself. He would have to turn them in.

But when he got back to the farm, both men had fled. And so, since he knew he could expect no sympathy from the North, he decided to say nothing. That was what he usually said about things, anyhow.

It was his worst error. The game of hounds and hares demands a purse, and the reward posters were already coming from the printers. There was a hundred thousand dollars at stake. That was writ large. The death penalty for those who aided or abetted their escape, in finer print, assured Stanton of a good trial. Some men might choose one reward, and some another.

But Mudd, who being cautious, preferred not to face any choice in this world, had not seen the reward posters yet. All he knew was that there were two thousand cavalrymen searching the county. He had not realized before, being a man of property, secure in the midst of his own extensive family, that the world we feel so secure in has such thin walls. He found the sound of the cavalry deafening, as it galloped by. Yet a doctor has defences of his own. He took a sleeping draught.

Herold pointed out a wagon track leading into the woods. The trees were slim and the cover far from dense. Booth turned down that way. The crutches bit into his armpits. The rocker mare rocked before him. Herold bent down from his horse.

Booth did not care for that. It was he who should be mounted, not this wretched underling. The ground was soft and muddy underfoot. His crutches sank into it, and when he pulled them free, he did not care for the sucking sound the effort cost him. Herold tempted him to ride, but he could not ride. It would be torture and he was in enough pain as it was.

They entered the Zekiah Swamp.

It was not impressive. Booth was used to better scenery. A swamp in a play has tall blue-grey trees, Spanish moss, will o' the wisps, willis, and dugout canoes, a mossy bank, and between the speeches and the Bengal lights, a nip of brandy in the Green Room, with someone to talk to. Here there was no one to talk to, except stupid Herold. The air was oppressive. He did not like this place. It had nothing in common with even that phosphorescent grandeur Gustave Doré produced to decorate Chateaubriand's Bernardin de St. Pierre America. Neither René nor Atala would have lasted a moment here, nor was there any kindly hermit to take them in. In one moment Booth had puffed all the kindness out of the world, as though he had been blowing an egg. He was left with the shell.

This swamp was low, muddy, uninviting, and treacherous. Booth looked at it and felt as though he were leaving the world forever. But Herold had cheered up. He felt sure footed. This was where he came when the world became too much for him, to hunt ducks.

Where was Payne? Herold was too weak even to support him while he hobbled. Payne was his courage. Payne made him feel himself again. He did not trust Herold. Herold was shifty and intractable. Near the open water the mud became viscous. Booth's crutches stuck fast and so did he. He shouted for Herold.

Herold was incapable of feeling pity and terror at the same time, and terror filled him up. They were not safe yet. “Either get mounted, or you'll stay here till the turkey buzzards get you,” he said. Even the horses were mired. Booth was almost hysterical. Herold paid no attention. Hysterical himself, he knew hysteria was only another kind of drunkenness, and could be dealt with in the same way. He boosted Booth up on the rocker mare and then washed his hands in a patch of water, for Booth was covered with slime.

Irritated, Booth ripped off his
crêpe
beard and threw it away.

They had left the stream, neither man knew where. It was dusk already. All colours had faded, except those of the redbud. Frogs began to croak and peep. They rode on. Booth looked at his pocket compass, but could make no sense of it. The night was damp. Tree limbs and low bushes ripped at his exposed and wounded foot. Surely by now it must be Sunday morning?

Whether it was or not, a church loomed up before them, standing by itself at the intersection of several roads. It was a landmark of some kind, but Herold was lost. He could equate it with nothing. But if they were in the middle of nothing, at least they were safe there until it became something, and Booth could ride no more. He dismounted to wait on the church steps while Herold went off to find out where they were. He had decided to make for the house of a Southern sympathizer named Cox, which must be somewhere round here. Herold disappeared and he was alone.

All Maryland was being ransacked. He had to get to Virginia. The problem was how to get there. He no longer trusted Herold, for there was nothing to prevent the boy's running off. The cross roads before him were shadowy and the church behind him empty. He could feel the pressure of that emptiness. But he was weak and tired. He could not remain alert.

Herold came back, with a darky walking down the road behind him.

The darky seemed scared, but he was obedient. He had brought ham and bread. That was the way with darkies. They did as they were told until they could get away from you. It was ten miles to Cox's house. He would lead the way. When they arrived there, Booth told him to wait and faced the house.