The Judges of the Secret Court (18 page)

Of course he was not. Somehow, despite Matthews and the lost letter to the
National Intelligencer
, he must explain. He would go to Washington, as a simple ordinary man. He would explain, and he would move the authorities to clemency. His speech would take place in an enormous cool pillared hall. Perhaps the Rotunda of the Capitol, but if so, why were the senators wearing togas and sandals, and what was Stanton doing there? There was no such scene in
Julius Caesar
.

He would explain. He would move them to tears. The misunderstood Great Sinner would be seen for what he was, the Hero. Dressed simply in black he stood there, holding them by his oratory. He was so afraid his voice might give out.

All I want, he would say, is
a grave
.

A little little grave, an obscure grave
.

He had always been adept at pathos. But he remembered now. Those lines were from the wrong play. They are spoken by Richard II, before he is betrayed by the pretended clemency of Bolingbroke into giving himself up, not by Richard III.

He opened his eyes. He was rational again.

Relieved, Herold went off for a walk in the woods. Booth had given him a bad scare.

No, thought Booth, he could not go to Washington. He saw that. But neither could he allow the world to say what it would of him. He must right that misconception. Opening the diary, he began to scribble. The endless work of self-justification went on. “
Friday, the 21st
,” he wrote. He must explain that he had been punished too much. “After being hunted like a dog through swamps and woods, and last night being chased by gunboats until I was forced to return, wet, cold, and starving, with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And for why? For doing what Brutus was honoured for—what made William Tell a Hero. My act was purer than either of theirs. I am abandoned with the Curse of Cain upon me.”

Despite his bitterness and the awful pain, he felt a little like Byron, sitting under that tree. He had always wanted to perform
Cain
. Herold was no Dorsey, of course, but he was better than nothing. Dorsey, to Byron, had been no Patroclus either. But
Cain
was an excellent part. “And for this brave boy Herold, here with me, who often prays (yes, before and since) with a true and sincere heart, was it a crime for him?” he wrote. “I do not wish to shed a drop of blood, but I must fight the course. 'Tis all that's left to me.”

He did not like that last phrase. It sounded too true. Herold he saw was back and watching him. He shut the diary.

It was perhaps a relief to both of them when Jones appeared with a candle, led them down to the shore, and showed them where to row. He recommended Machadoc Creek. A Mrs. Quesenberry lived there, and would help them. He then explained to them the movements of the tides and how to compensate for the current. He even drew a map for them. Whether they understood what he was saying or not, he could not tell and did not dare to ask.

Herold did not understand, but he was eager to get going, lest Booth demand to go back to Washington again. He got into the boat.

Booth was himself again. He appreciated the dramatics of the scene and was grateful to Jones. He gave the man 18 dollars for the boat.

Jones did not want to take the money. He had not protected them for pay. But he was a poor man, and a boat was a boat. Gruffly he told them to watch out for the monitor which was still on the river. Then he left them.

There was a flash of lightning down the sky, which only made the dark seem the darker. The river was very wide. Herold rowed silently and then stopped.

They both heard voices. They both saw the shape on the water downstream. They had almost hit the gunboat.

Herold let the skiff drift. The returning tide caught it and swept it up to safety again, but away from where they were supposed to be going.

They were lost, and the sky was beginning to lighten. They would have to make for shore. Once the skiff was pulled up in the weeds, Booth took out Jones's map and his own compass. The needle pointed the wrong way. All the estuaries of the Virginia shore ran west to east. The needle showed them north. They were still in Maryland. They would never get away.

He sent Herold off to reconnoitre, while he lay in the boat and stared at the clouded sky. There were still a few hours of darkness ahead. Like hope, the dawn had been false.

Herold came back to say that they were in Maryland all right, at the mouth of Nanjemoy Creek, wherever that was, Herold recognized the place because he had gone poaching there. A Colonel Hughes lived up the creek. Colonel Hughes was all right.

Booth was starving. That didn't bother Herold any. He said he'd go ask Hughes for food. Booth told him not to say any more than he had to, but with Davy that was usually too much. The boy suffered from a helpless compulsion to gabble while he ate. It was his way of making friends. Not having shot anybody himself, Herold still didn't quite see where their danger lay.

He was back in an hour, happy, healthy, and well fed. Booth might be driven half mad by this existence, but Herold liked it. To him this desperate flight, except for its cause, was a vacation. He throve on it. Booth's cheeks had fallen in, his skin was grey, and his eyes stared out of deep shadow. Herold had never looked better. He had had a good breakfast and had brought back food for Booth, a bottle of whisky, and the newspapers. Colonel Hughes had told him that if they caught the tide after midnight, it would carry them right to Machadoc Creek. He'd had a nice long talk with Colonel Hughes. He'd told him everything.

Booth opened the package of food. It contained a blue-pink ham, glistening with age. For five days he had eaten nothing but ham. He was sick to death of it. But he ate. He had to eat. And while he ate, he read the papers. Atzerodt had been arrested. “It was with difficulty that the soldiers could be prevented from lynching him,” he read. He knew what that meant. It meant that Atzerodt would talk, and talk, and talk, until he had talked their lives away. The same page of the paper carried a reward notice. His own price was still 50,000, but Herold was worth 25,000 now and had his name in bigger type. When he pointed that out to Davy, the boy's face quavered. He looked like a porcupine. When he was scared, the rattle of his quills was almost audible.

There was also a quotation from the Southern press. It spoke in sorrow, an emotion the South had recently learned to maintain at all times. But it repudiated him. “At the moment he struck down Mr. Lincoln he also struck himself from existence. There can be no more a J. Wilkes Booth in any country. If caught he will be hanged. If he escapes he must dwell in solitude. He has the brand of Cain upon his brow.” That had not the air of an editorial. Rather it seemed the description of something that had already happened, factual because all the world believed it. He believed it himself. “God try and forgive me, and bless my mother,” wrote Booth in his diary, who had not thought of her for days. Then he asked Herold to hand him the whisky.

Space it out as they would, they could not make it last until midnight. Sometime after dark, Herold asked him if he did not smell something. Booth said he did not, and indeed he did not. He smelled only the slimy marsh smells that had surrounded them now for days. Herold let the matter drop.

It was the gangrene. Not only had it bubbled up in his leg, but was spreading into his bloodstream. But how were they to know that? Neither of them had ever seen a wounded man before. They went on drinking.

What was in this wretched Lincoln anyhow, that had made people love him overnight, now he was gone? Booth did not know. He could conceive of a scapegoat, a saint, and a Machiavel, but had not the wit to see them in one body. To him Machiavel was a villain, and not a man who knew that good is only a chestnut we pull from a fire of other men's lighting. His mind wandered. His costumes were in the South. He had shipped them ahead weeks ago. Why was not he? He longed so much to lie in a bed of warm linen once again.

At a little after midnight of the 22nd-23rd, Herold shoved off the skiff and they floated down the river, unmolested, towards Machadoc Creek and Mrs. Quesenberry. From that name Booth derived much comfort. It was a motherly, maiden aunt, no nonsense and gruff kindness sort of name. From it he could legitimately expect lemon butter and lavender scented sheets, a foot warmer, and a small snug room with flower sprigged wallpaper. He held himself in against that promise and refused to look at his leg. When they arrived at the shore, he sent Herold off to find the woman.

While Herold was gone, a straw-footed white wading bird flapped down to peer at him, as he lay at the bottom of the skiff. That startled him, but he had not the strength other than to stare back at it until it went away. When he looked at his once white hands, he saw them mottled with liver spots, like those of an old man. He got out of the skiff, hauled himself ashore, stretched out beneath a tree, and watched the estuary. The tide was moving up over it, sea birds waded in the shallows, and Herold seemed gone a very long time. It was Sunday again, he realized, the 23rd. Who could have thought a week could have been so long? But at least he was in Virginia at last.

His leg was worse, but he did not notice that, for he lay in the midst of flowering shrubs, whose heavy odour muffled all others. He felt drowsy. He did so long for Mrs. Quesenberry's cordials, maternal atmosphere, and bed.

When Herold at last came back, it was to say that Mrs. Quesenberry would have none of them. But her daughter had said that perhaps a farmer called Bryant would help them.

So he would for a price. He would have done anything for a price.

Mr. Bryant was a cracker. He had been one all his life, and had a white beard to show for it. His jeans were old, soft, and faded, and fitted him like a second skin. His eyes were on the small side. He had a tight face and a cantankerous manner. Poverty and pellagra had made him an animal. He had an animal's ambitions, an animal's cunning, and far less than an animal's self-respect. For self-respect the baffled farmer's poor white trash substitute did him just as well: he was touchy.

The truth would never sway a man like that. What he would want was a bargain. Booth passed himself off as a wounded Confederate soldier trying to avoid the Federal patrol.

Bryant accepted the explanation. “It'll cost ya,” he said. “Your brother here said you could pay. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered none.”

Booth had trouble holding in his temper.

As usual with his sort of man, the hope of some advantage made Bryant tight-fingered and sullen.

Booth took out some greenbacks. “I can't walk. I need a conveyance. A carriage of some kind, and a horse.”

Bryant spat. They didn't look like Confederate soldiers to him. They were in worse trouble than that. If that were so, he could get more for even less than he would normally have offered. He asked them where they wanted to go and how much they'd pay to get there. The beat-up one said he wanted a doctor to dress his foot. The nearest doctor was Doc Stewart. Stewart probably wouldn't lift a finger to help, but that wasn't any of Bryant's business. His only job was to get Booth there.

Booth said Stewart would do and told Bryant to hitch up his horses.

Bryant had been waiting for that. He didn't have any carriage, he said. Just horses. Booth almost sobbed when he heard him. Bryant decided he could hope to get ten dollars in gold, waited until Booth paid it over, and then said the two men would have to walk up to his place by themselves. He didn't have the time to bring any horses down to meet them. He walked away ahead of them, chinking his gold. Ten dollars wouldn't go far. Maybe he could get more out of them.

The more desperate of the two men seemed to have trouble hobbling up the dirt lane. Bryant grinned and led the way to his shack, a tumbledown shanty whose housekeeper was a slovenly Negress. Booth sat down on a ricketty chair and closed his eyes. Herold asked for something to eat. Bryant said that would cost them, and sold them some soggy biscuits and three cold slices of bacon for a dollar. Herold ate them. Herold wasn't choosy about what he ate. But Booth was in a hurry to move on.

Bryant was enjoying himself. Out of sheer cussedness, he said they couldn't have the horses until the day's chores were done, which wouldn't be until evening. Having gotten his money in advance, he wasn't in any hurry to go out of his way to earn it. But he did allow as how Booth could lay down on the bed for free, if he wanted. Then he went out.

The bed was filthy, but the rest did Booth good. He wasn't too worried about Bryant's turning him in. He knew the type. It was too cunning to plan for anything but immediate advantage. Ten or twenty dollars was the limit of Bryant's experience; 25,000 or 50,000 wouldn't mean anything to him at all.

Nor was he wrong. By late afternoon Bryant was back with his spavined horse, Herold boosted Booth up to the saddle, and by the time darkness fell they had reached Dr. Stewart's house.

It was a good while since Booth had seen a real house, and Dr. Stewart lived well. The building was two stories high, with a wide porch along the front of it, and faced ten acres of lawns and pasture, backed by trees. The glow of lamps at the windows was heartbreakingly cheerful. He would present himself as a Confederate soldier and, if Dr. Stewart seemed sympathetic, would tell him the truth later. A little forlorn on his horse, he sent Bryant inside to fetch the doctor.

Stewart came out and asked him what he wanted and who he was. His voice was curt. Booth said he wanted help. Looking down, he saw he would not get it. There was something hostile about Dr. Stewart.

“I'm a physician, not a surgeon. I doubt whether I can be of much assistance,” said Stewart, though his voice betrayed no doubt of any kind. “But come into the house, if you wish. I suppose you want something to eat. Every soldier who comes by here seems hungry. I can't feed them all.”

Too much call upon his good will had drained off Stewart's southern sympathies. He had been arrested several times during the war, and now the war was over, he did not propose to be arrested again. People think that because a man is a doctor, they may ask anything of him.