Her own marriage is perfect, her husband loyal and true. She thanks God for him every day. And yet, everyone, including Sleeper himself, knows she only married him to please Edwin. If Edwin had changed his mind, raised the slightest objection, she would have canceled the wedding instantly. She’s astonished that he won’t do the same for her.
She feels that the dark days of Father’s bigamy are returning, despite all her efforts to keep herself free of taint, to protect and burnish the great name Father left them. It’s as if she met a wild beast in the forest and ran and ran and ran only to arrive home at last and find it waiting there. Her usual tempestuous moods are alarmingly amplified by the hormones of pregnancy. She drowns her pillow in storms of tears.
She writes Edwin to make it clear that when he brings Miss Devlin back to her family in Philadelphia, there will be no welcome in the house of Sleeper and Asia Clarke.
She writes to Jean:
. . . Oh Jean—you don’t know the trials I bear, little annoyances, rising merely from the fact that I cannot adore Miss Devlin, a quiet ladylike reception would be as Ned terms it—a wet blanket. He has written some sharp letters inferring that I am not a lady—At any rate I am not a fool . . .
In the midst of all this family tumult, down in Virginia, John Brown and twenty-one men under his command—sixteen white, five black—take control of the Harpers Ferry armory.
Caution, Sir! I am eternally tired of hearing that word caution.
It is nothing but the word of cowardice!
—John Brown
* * *
—
October 16th, 1859.
The five black men who accompany Brown are Osborne Anderson, John Copeland, Shields Green, Lewis Leary, and Dangerfield Newby. Brown’s plan is to distribute the guns to slaves throughout Virginia and then to lead a slave rebellion. God has commanded this.
But His ways are mysterious. Brown holds the armory only a short time before it’s retaken by Colonel Robert E. Lee’s marines. Most of the insurrectionists are killed, including Brown’s sons. Brown himself is wounded and captured.
The magnitude of this event temporarily shocks the Booths out of their private concerns. They are all, despite their differences, despite their general aversion to politics, passionate about the preservation of the Union.
Off in Richmond, where John is, people talk of nothing else. John’s become a frequent and popular guest at Richmond’s balls, shooting ranges, whorehouses, saloons, and salons. Everywhere he’s assessed approvingly, despite his connections to the theater and his Maryland upbringing, as a real Southern gentleman.
* * *
—
Weeks pass and the rest of the family return one by one to personal issues and grievances. Rosalie is finding the move to Asia’s house every bit as bad as she’d feared. Sleeper kisses Asia’s shoes, her gloves, her shawls—anything that’s touched her body finds its way to his lips. It’s an appalling thing to witness.
Edwin works to stay sober. He’s focused on his career, on his intended, and on his health. He’s never been political.
Asia returns to her terrible pregnancy and her search for new adjectives to hurl in the direction of Mary Devlin.
Only John remains obsessed with the John Brown affair. Asia is, as always, the one he confides in. Once again, he’s remembering Christiana, the Gorsuch family, his happy nights spent at Retreat Farm. Mostly he remembers how no one was held accountable. But Virginia is not Pennsylvania, praise the Lord. This time will be different, he tells Asia. This time blood will pay for blood.
Sure enough, John Brown is condemned to the hangman’s noose. Rosalie was quite wrong to think no white man would die to bring about the end of slavery.
* * *
—
On November 19th, at about six p.m., Virginia governor Henry Wise receives an urgent telegram from the colonel tasked with guarding Brown. Five hundred soldiers must be sent immediately to Charlestown as an armed force of abolitionists is marching to Brown’s rescue. It seems the North admires the man. Several Northern states have petitioned for mercy.
Wise has been smarting for weeks over the fact that he and his state militia were not the ones to retake the armory. He blames President Buchanan for not informing him immediately of the attack. He plans on being the next Democratic nominee for the presidency. That battle would have been just the thing.
But now he has this second chance. Within the hour, the bells in Capitol Square have rung the muster and the militias are gathering. So is the rest of the city. Crowds line the streets, cluster at the telegraph offices and the train depot. Another three hundred abolitionists are added to the rumored army. All is confusion and chaos, marching bands and waving handkerchiefs. One thing is clear. The theaters will be mostly empty this evening. All of Richmond is out to see the militias off. And this is the moment when John enters the story.
* * *
—
He tells Asia all about it when next he visits. It’s been a long time since she’s seen him so excited and also so serious about anything. Mostly he’s just her brother, but occasionally Asia really looks at him. How can Jean resist? He’s so handsome, his bright eyes, his animated face. “It’s a wonderful thing,” he says, “to be right in the middle of something so momentous. To feel that you’ve touched history and history has touched you.” Asia can see what he’s feeling though she’s never felt it herself. When has she ever touched history?
Outside, it’s dark and the wind is loud. Sleeper is at the theater, Rosalie and Mother have gone to bed. Asia had also retired, but then risen again as she’s being kicked and punched from the inside and can’t sleep. She finds John downstairs, sitting in the lamplight of the parlor, his hands cupped behind his head. His face is a harlequin mask, half lit, half dark.
She and John haven’t had a moment alone together so she doesn’t begrudge her lack of sleep. She lies on the sofa, stretching out to give the baby more room. The thought of her as a mother makes John laugh—she can’t imagine why nor can she say exactly why she likes his amusement. Maybe it’s his insistence on seeing her as the same person she’s always been.
John finds a shawl and lays it over her. He sits on the end of the sofa, swinging her feet into his lap. “Poor Asia,” he says. “You’ve been invaded.” And then, as she closes her eyes, he tells her what he’s been doing with himself.
* * *
—
The night of November 19th, he was out walking with other members of the company. They were about to perform The Last of the Mohicans, the curtain only an hour away. But the excitement on the street was intoxicating. One minute he was going to the theater to paint his face and shout his lines. The next, he’d spun on his heel and walked in the opposite direction. His companions called to him, but he waved them away. “I’m off, boys,” he told them.
He hurried to the depot, where a special troop train had been commandeered for the civilian soldiers and was just about to depart. They’d had to wait for the governor. Without that, he’d have been too late. But he managed, with only minutes to spare, to talk his way onto the train. Several other men were trying to do the same. He was the only man to get through.
“I know people,” he says to Asia vaguely, and then shows her a calling card with the signature of O. Jennings Wise, the governor’s son, on the back. He retrieves the card from Asia, returns it to his breast pocket. He’d spent the next eighteen days as a soldier in the Richmond Grays, he says.