The Judges of the Secret Court (20 page)

From now on, the name of Lincoln would never stop.

Booth was approaching Port Conway.

It was as though that dusty grey curtain behind which he had been skulking for days, had suddenly furled up to the proscenium, to reveal a gorgeous golden world. The sun was out. The play was on again.

He had been lying at the bottom of William Lucas's commandeered spring wagon. It was the sort of broken down vehicle a Negro would have, creaking, and without springs. Herold was on the seat with the driver, Lucas's son. Mile after agonizing mile, Booth had lain on his back, staring at the pendulous sky which sagged over him like the dingy sateen lining of a cheap coffin lid. Now, marvellously, a pale sun was out. It was a resurrection. After this death, he would come into his own again. Booth sat up.

Port Conway was a small enough town. Beyond it lay the Rappahannock, sparkling sedately in the April light, with Port Royal on the farther bank. Though small, Port Royal had once been a tobacco port. Scattered across that stretch of rural equanimity were a few stately houses. He was enormously cheered. Once on the farther side, and he would be himself again. The ferry was moored on the opposite bank.

Herold told him to lie down. He lay down. He felt light-hearted and happy. The sunlight was so good, so dry, so warm. Like a man in surgery, who is injected against despair, he gave way drowsily to that anaesthetic, and put his arm over his eyes. Whatever misery he was in, the sun would heal. He had had Herold shave him and put his clothes to rights. Since he had no mirror, he could not know how little that had helped. For the first time in days he felt the return of self-esteem.

The wagon stopped. They must be at the riverside, from the odour of fish, tidal flats, and slime. Herold jumped to the ground and went to parley with the boatman. Though this closeness to freedom made Booth calm, Herold had turned shrill. That guileless child's voice was babbling too freely to the boatman. Booth lay there, listening to the soothing noises of a quiet countryside. So had he lain upstairs, as a child, at Tudor Hall, the Booth home, sure that if anything was wrong, or if he had been caught out and was due for punishment, for some prank, his mother would take care of him. He had that feeling now.

Behind him he heard the approaching clatter of hoofs and harness. It was a sound too dilatory to be pursuit, but it did not have the sound of farmers, either. He hauled himself up and peered over the edge of the wagon. What he saw was a posse of Confederate cavalry, three officers, no more than boys, slim, fresh faced, and natty in clean and polished uniforms. They looked at rights with the world. One of them swung down from his saddle with that physical, self-contented and accomplished grace which Booth, who had so much enjoyed innocently to swagger so, envied now, whereas ten days ago he would have had it himself.

Herold, who had gotten nowhere wrangling across the water at the boatman, ran shrieking to them. His rattled treble voice was too froward. Booth winced and lay down again, but he could hear the jabber well enough. How young the lads sounded. Younger than he had sounded, even when young.

Herold had chosen a new pseudonym this time. He was announcing that their name was Boyd. He came back to Booth and asked him to get out of the wagon.

“They're from Mosby's command,” he whispered, as though that made everything all right. “They must be headed south somewhere. Maybe they can get us across the river.”

Booth climbed out of the wagon and got his crutches under his arms. The sunshine made him blink, but he felt affable. He was with Southern gentlemen again. He could see that. And then, they were so very young, scarcely more than boys dressed up in soldier suits. They stood about so easily in their well-cut uniforms, elegant, with their weight on one hip, and maybe even a little shy. They would not refuse the simple demands of a fellow veteran since, by the looks of them, they had not seen much service. Embarrassed by someone who had so clearly been through more than they had, they would be kind. He introduced himself as John William Boyd, of A. P. Hill's corps. It was the first combination of the initials on his tattooed hand that he could think of.

They said they were on their way to pay a private visit. But they would arrange about the crossing. The ferry rested so tantalizingly on the opposite bank. Booth looked at the ripple of water against that bank, and the beaten track leading down to the slight wash on this one. Once over the river, and there would be nothing between him and Richmond. He would be in the heart of the South.

Herold was desperate. He was afraid of pursuit, and if he could not beg for help, then he could force it. Besides, had not Booth told him how gratified the South would be? What could be more Southern than three fine young gentlemen fresh from Mosby's Rangers?

“We are the assassinators of Lincoln,” Booth heard him tell the sandy haired young man, whose name seemed to be Bainbridge. It was a loud and unmistakeable word on that bucolic air. The jig was up. He hobbled over to Herold, who gave him a fatuous, shame-faced grin and introduced him to Lieutenant Ruggles.

Ruggles stared hard at both of them. “If you are what the man says you are, you must be John Wilkes Booth,” he said.

Booth admitted the name.

None of the three cavalrymen said anything. Instead they looked at him and they looked swiftly away. There was a price on his head. If they helped him, there would be a price on theirs. He thought it his duty to point that out. Why should they help him? No one else had.

Ruggles was the first to speak. “I guess we can't exactly turn you in for blood money,” he said. “So we'll help you, I reckon.”

Jett, the youngest one, hesitated and then agreed. But Bainbridge, who was their leader, had had the time to find out that this world is full of traps for the unwary.

“We were told that the person who killed the President had already been apprehended,” he said, and waited, staring at Booth.

Booth understood. He too had learned to be wary of traps these last few days. He held out his wrist with its tattooed initials. He handed over a bill he still had in his pocket, a draft against a Canadian bank.

The three men did not like it. A man should have some preparation, before having to thread his way through so many conflicting loyalties, particularly at a time like this, when they could all see where loyalty had got them. But they couldn't leave him alone, they'd met him, it was too late to remain unimplicated, they couldn't turn him in, the best thing to do would be to pass him along. He didn't look as though he could last long, by the looks of him. Poor devil, he'd had a hard time.

There was only one way they could go through with it, and that was to treat it as a lark. They looked at each other, and then Jett went down to the water's edge and cursed the barge nigger into bringing the ferry over. Action is what the young are good at. Ideas merely confuse them. Once Jett had started things in motion, Bainbridge and Ruggles fell in soon enough.

It was a poled ferry. It took the devil's time to get across. Booth gave Lucas's son ten bucks to keep his mouth shut, to be rid of him, and opened up to the lieutenants. He appealed to their spirit of adventure, he said. They were willing enough to have that appealed to. They had been defeated, and no man likes defeat. They said they were on their way to join Johnston, who had not yet surrendered his army.

The ferry touched the bank. Bainbridge and Jett rode on to it. Booth was boosted on to Ruggles' horse and followed. The nigger began to pole. The ferry approached Port Royal. Now everything would be all right. Booth managed a smile.

But at Port Royal, Jett could not find anyone to put up a wounded Confederate soldier. One woman agreed, but changed her mind. Now the war was over, she saw no patriotism in running the risk. Jett remembered Garrett. Garrett owned a farm off the road to Bowling Green, which was where Jett and his friends were going. It was as simple as that. Jett and Ruggles led the way up to the house. They would drop Booth off there, while Herold went into Bowling Green with them. Herold needed some new shoes. Booth gave him the money. He was in a good mood. He rode up to the farm. There he met the Garretts. They were a populous, well meaning clan, and besides, he could see at a glance, they had the instinct to be kind.

He told them he was John William Boyd and that he had been wounded near Petersburg. He was planning to work his way south, he said, in order to join Johnston.

They said Johnston had surrendered. That set him back for a minute, but he was too tired to think about it. They gave him dinner and a cot upstairs, with the two Garrett boys. Bill had been discharged from the Confederate Armies only three days before, and was still in uniform. He had no wish to hear about the battle of Petersburg. Unfortunately, Bob, the younger brother, did.

When the stranger wouldn't talk, they thought maybe he was a little peculiar, but they didn't think any more than that. If Jett had brought him, he must be all right. The Garretts had known Jett all their lives. They trusted him not to saddle them with anyone who wasn't all right.

The next morning, which was Tuesday, the 25th, the Garretts had to admit that Mr. Boyd looked better.

He also felt better. The world pleased him. He had spent so much time in the theatre and on trains, that he had never had much occasion to look at it before. He found it delightful.

The men were already out working the farm, but Mrs. Garrett was in the kitchen. She nodded, smiled, wished him good morning, and went on telling the coloured help what to cook for supper. She was not the sort of woman he found it easiest to charm. She had neither the faded vanity of a Mrs. Surratt, nor the bewildered indulgence of his mother. She was brisk, cheery, and did not mince her words. He was best pleasing the unhappy, but Mrs. Garrett was so clearly satisfied with what she was, that there was no crack in her anywhere.

He went out on the porch and tried his charm on the smaller children, instead. They were on the lawn. He went down there and told them stories until about noon. They were well brought up children, scrubbed, rambunctious, and mannerly. He sat on the prickly grass and told them about his own childhood at Tudor Hall. He had not been happy as a child, but as he talked, he could see that the Garrett children thought he must have had a wonderful time. Perhaps he had. While he talked, he looked around him.

The farmhouse was smaller than its outbuildings. Instead of Corinthian pillars, it had plain square posts to hold up its porch. But it was painted white and had a gracious look to it, all the same. The barns were prosperous. The Garretts seemed exactly to fit where they were. The yard was planted with slim trees. He did not know what kind of trees. He would very much have liked to know. Behind the barns the woods rose up to rolling hills. The yard had an agreeable, pungent smell. He leaned back to savour it and closed his eyes. If only he could stay here he would be well again.

The children asked if his wound hurt him.

He opened his eyes and said no. He had forgotten his wound.

At about noon the gate in the fence opened and Miss Holloway came in. She was Mrs. Garrett's younger sister, a schoolteacher who boarded at the farm. She had returned for lunch. She was the first gentlewoman he had met since last he had seen Bessie Hale. She thought him wistful, and felt sorry for him. She asked about his leg and then told him Lincoln had been shot. It was the latest news.

Booth was surprised. “Why, he's been dead for ten days,” he said.

“We lead a secluded life here,” she told him, and sat down on the bench beside him.

So that explained why the Garretts had been so charming: they lived outside events. He wished she would not tell them the news. He did not want this dream to end.

“What did you hear about it?” he asked cautiously.

“Not much. He was shot by some maniac. I suppose the man must have been a maniac, to kill him at a time like this. Besides, you probably know more about it than I do. Why don't you tell me how it happened?”

A maniac. He stared after the children, who having lost him to a grown-up, were straggling up to the house.

“I heard that the man who shot him was a Southern patriot. He did it for reasons that were purely patriotic.”

“He must have curious notions of patriotism. What was his name?”

“He was an actor called John Wilkes Booth.”

“Oh, an actor,” she said, and examined her parasol.

That nettled him. “What do you suppose an actor would be like?”

“Always acting, I guess. You know. Always strutting around speech making.”

His last speech had been three words, and those not even in his own language.
Sic semper tyrannis
. “Why should he not be a patriot?” he asked. She made him curious. Young girls sometimes know more than we do. It is because they do less.

“Patriotism isn't the same as loyalty,” said Miss Holloway, looking up at the house. “I mean, actors don't have any home or anything, do they? So they just act.” She bid him good day and wandered up to the house, took off her bonnet, and joined Mrs. Garrett in the kitchen. Mrs. Garrett had been looking out the window.

“What's he moaning about down there?” she asked.

“I don't know. I think he's just lonely and wants someone to talk to. At least he looks lonely.”

Mrs. Garrett gave her a sharp look. “You don't know anything about him,” she said.

Miss Holloway blushed. “Don't you like him?”

Mrs. Garrett looked out the window again. “No, I don't. He's too smooth and there's something wrong about him.”

“He's just wounded.” Miss Holloway had found him puzzling, but charming.

“That's not what I mean,” said her sister. “You'd better call him in to dinner.”

They sat at the round table in the kitchen, eating and talking while the coloured help served them. Booth found his hosts somehow changed. The news of the assassination, perhaps. But he didn't like the look on Mrs. Garrett's face.