Around seven-thirty, he meets with Schuyler Colfax, the Speaker of the House. Colfax has plans to travel West. They discuss the rich mineral lodes of the western mountains and Lincoln feels a wild desire to go to California himself. When his term is over, why not? Anything is possible in these wondrous days of peace.
* * *
—
He would rather skip the theater that night, but John T. Ford had invited Mary personally and Lincoln’s attendance has been advertised. Grant, also advertised, has already begged off, Mrs. Grant unwilling to endure a night with Mary. The Stantons have likewise declined. Stanton feels it’s dangerous for Lincoln to go about in public and he won’t condone it by accompanying him. Lincoln’s usual bodyguard is away on business in Richmond. His replacement, John Parker, a large man with enormous whiskers, is famously fond of drink.
Lincoln invites Clara Harris and Major Henry Reed Rathbone. Clara is a particular friend of Mary’s, the daughter of a New York senator. Rathbone is a survivor of Antietam and Clara’s fiancé. Her father is married to his mother so they are also, technically, brother and sister.
Mary is wearing her black and white silk with the embroidered flowers. Lincoln rarely notices her clothes, but Clara is full of compliments he wishes he’d thought to give. They arrive at the theater late by half an hour, enter the hushed and darkened auditorium. The performance stops so the orchestra can play “Hail to the Chief” while the audience claps and cheers. Lincoln is glad he overruled his reluctance and came.
John Parker leads them to a box stage left, decorated especially for them with flags and bunting. He then stays outside it to guard the entrance. Mary takes a seat beside Lincoln, Clara across. Henry sits on a small sofa to Clara’s left. The play resumes.
Mary has caught Lincoln’s happiness. She rests her hand on his knee, moves closer to him. She smells of bergamot and lemon. “What will Miss Harris think,” she whispers, “of me hanging on you so?” and Lincoln assures her Miss Harris will not mind it at all.
* * *
—
The third and final act begins.
Scene 2:
Harry Hawk as Asa Trenchard is alone on the stage. “I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap,” Harry says. He hits hard on the sock in sockdologizing, turning towards the wings where Helen Muzzy, playing Mrs. Montchessington, has just exited. His back is to Lincoln.
This is the evening’s most reliable laugh line and Mary’s pealing laughter can be heard above everyone’s. How wonderful to hear Mary laugh like this! It’s that pleasure, more than the line, that starts Lincoln laughing himself. Then he hears something else, but there is no time to understand what it is.
BOOK SIX
What’s past is prologue.
—W. Shakespeare, The Tempest
April 15th, 1865
i
Edwin is in Boston, where he and Sleeper have been talking of purchasing a third theater. The previous evening, he’d played Sir Edward Mortimer in The Iron Chest. “Where is my honor now?” he’d asked the sold-out house. The city is exuberant, the men in the streets ecstatic to learn they aren’t going to die on some battlefield, after all. Edwin is in love and General Grant’s great task is ended. Edwin feels as happy as he’s ever been since Mary’s death.
When he makes his way home, word is already spreading, the mood turning from joy to disbelief to anguish. But Edwin is tired and will hear nothing until a servant wakes him the following morning.
Edwin’s first thought is not a thought, more like a blow to the head, a sense of falling, the crashing of the sea in his ears. His second thought is that he believes it. He wishes he didn’t. He wishes he could say that this is utterly impossible.
He weeps for his president, bleeding in the lap of Laura Keene. His own life going forward is suddenly unimaginable. He moves from room to room, chair to chair, but there is no escape from this.
Before the morning is over, a message arrives from Henry Jarrett, the manager of the Boston Theatre, to say that he prays what everyone is saying about Wilkes will yet prove untrue. Still, he thinks it best and right to cancel all further performances. Of course it’s best and right. What’s best and right is that Edwin never set foot on a stage again. The rest is silence.
* * *
—
Asia learns what has happened from the newspaper. She opens it and the first things she sees are the paper’s black borders and a sketch of her brother’s face. Sleeper, rushing to her side, tries through her incoherent cries to understand what’s wrong. He can’t. Asia is screaming.
Soon enough she’s in control again, all ice and iron. Yet the hysteria returns and returns, never triumphant, never vanquished. She wishes she were dead.
At the first opportunity, she goes alone to retrieve John’s packet. One letter she burns. One name she feels she must protect. She does this in the cold fireplace, blowing the ashes apart, so no scrap remains to be read. The other letters she takes to Sleeper, who’d never known they were in the house. During her continual breakdowns, he’s been solicitous. The appearance of the letters makes him angry.
A US marshal arrives, forbidding them to go outside. Asia thinks they’re being imprisoned, which they are, but also protected. An angry crowd is gathered in the street. In an excess of innocence, Sleeper gives the letters to the marshal, including the one addressed to Mother. He stresses that only his wife had known of their existence. The house is searched, even the nursery with its crying children, in case John is hiding in a wardrobe or under a bed.
A guard is placed at every door.
* * *
—
June is on tour in Cincinnati. He gives the desk clerk a cheerful wave as he sets off for a morning walk. “So you haven’t heard,” the desk clerk says and then wishes he could bite the words back. He doesn’t want to be the one to tell.
June turns around. “What do you mean by that?”
One of the housekeepers comes into the lobby on the run. “Upstairs,” she says, seizing him by the arm. “Quick. Quick!” A mob of some five hundred people is right behind her. They’ve stripped the lampposts of June’s playbills and come to hang him. June is still on the stairs when he hears them cramming into the lobby, shouting his name. If this were California, he’d be swinging from a lamppost before day’s end.
But the clerk manages to convince them that June left in the night. June spends the day hidden in a stuffy attic room, saved by the hotel staff, every one of whom holds his life in their hands, not one of whom gives him away.
* * *
—
Joe is on the Moses Taylor, headed for Panama. After Australia, he’d worked in San Francisco, in a job June got for him at Wells Fargo & Company. He’s been away three years. The authorities find it suspicious that he chose the date of April 13th to start home.
On arriving in Panama City, he hears of the president’s death and the murderer Booth, but many men are named Booth; he thinks little of it. At the next stop, Aspinwall, he hears the name John Wilkes. By then he’s had more time to think. By the time he hears, he feels he already knew.
From the transcript of his later interrogation:
Q: Have you ever been insane, Mr. Booth?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: For how long a time?