An Unlikely Friendship Page 2

  "Someone help us!" she pleaded. "Someone!"

  Major Rathbone and the dark stranger were wrestling now, right in front of her. She saw a knife flash then heard a low moan from Rathbone. Then the stranger jumped from the box onto the stage below, dragging some lace curtain and red, white, and blue bunting with him.

  The audience below was in a panic. The presidential box was full of people. Someone ushered Mary out. Doctors were there now, laying her husband down on the carpet. Laura Keene, the lead actress, was there. Clara Harris was sobbing and begging a doctor to see to her fiancé's arm, which was bleeding profusely.

  Then they carried Abraham out. Strangers were helping, Mary noted. They carried him downstairs, outside, and across the street to the Petersen house. There they set him down on a too-small bed in a too-small bedroom.

  Mary stood dumbly, looking around while people pushed past her. Important people like members of the cabinet. How had they gotten here so suddenly? Wasn't that Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton? She blinked. Gaslight flickered. Long shadows were cast on the wall. People spoke in low tones. Yet she could hear Abraham's labored breathing.

  Able to abide it no more she wedged herself between all the important men and threw herself on Abraham. "Oh husband, husband, don't leave me like this!"

  But Abraham was not responding. Of a sudden his cheeks looked sunken in. His eyes were unseeing, there and not there. Blood stained the pillowcase under his head. "Do something," she scolded the doctors. "Can't you do something?"

  "Someone get that woman out of here!" It was Secretary Stanton's voice. Oh well, she had never liked the man anyway, nor had he liked her. But always he had treated her with the deference of her position.

  Now she had no more position. If Abraham died, no one would treat her with deference; she would be a nobody. The thought seized her, and she felt that fear piled onto the other.

  "Mother, come. Come into the other room with me."

  It was Robert. She turned and he stood there, tall and a boy no longer; he was a man now. If the war hadn't done it to him, this would. She took his hand, and he led her across the hall to a small gaslit parlor. People left them alone there. Robert sat next to her on the sofa. She suddenly saw tears brimming in his eyes and held him close. He needed her as much as she needed him.

  "Who did this thing to your father?" she asked him. "Did they find out?"

  "A man named John Wilkes Booth. The actor."

  She shook her head. "No, no, it couldn't be. We saw him once in a play. Why would he? Why? Is he a Southern sympathizer?"

  "No one knows the why of it yet, Mother."

  "Did they catch him?"

  "Not yet. No. But they will. They're all looking for him."

  "The dream," she told Robert. "It's your father's dream. He told me of it within the last week. Do you want to know what he dreamed?"

  "Becalm yourself, Mother. Here, I'll get you some brandy." He got up and went to a small table where there was a brandy set. He poured some in a glass and brought it to his mother.

  "He told me he dreamed he awoke in his bed to the sound of people crying. He betook himself below stairs and there he saw, in the East Room, a corpse lying on a catafalque, surrounded by soldiers on guard. 'Who is dead in the White House?' he asked one of the soldiers. 'The president,' came the answer. 'He was killed by an assassin.' Then, sweating and shaking, he woke up. And he couldn't sleep the rest of the night."

  "Mother, you must becalm yourself."

  Mary looked around the small room. "Someone is missing, Robert."

  "Who? Everyone is here. Except Tad. I didn't want to wake him."

  "No, Lizzy. I want Lizzy Keckley, Robert. You must send a carriage for her." Mary was becoming agitated. "Please, Robert, send a carriage for her now. I must have Lizzy with me. I cannot endure this without her, Robert."

  ***

  THE NOISE OUTSIDE on Twelfth Street did not waken Lizzy Keckley that night. She slept undisturbed until the knock came on the door at eleven o'clock. She got up, put on her robe, and went to the door before the knocking could wake the Lewises, her landlords.

  It was a neighbor, Mrs. Brown. She looked desperate. "Mr. Lincoln has been shot," she told Lizzy.

  At first she thought Mrs. Brown was drunk. Over her shoulder she saw revelers in the street, still celebrating the end of the war. But wait, they were not celebrating.

  There were soldiers all about, with drawn bayonets, and the people—men, women, and children—were in nightclothes, some of them, and seemed to be wandering around aimlessly. They were wailing, sobbing. Some men were putting the flags at half-mast.

  "Where?" she asked Mrs. Brown. "Who shot him?"

  "I heard an actor by the name of John Wilkes Booth. The army is out looking for him now."

  She drew in her breath sharply. Mrs. Lincoln! She must go to her. But go where? The play must be over by now. To the White House! "I must dress," she told herself. The night had grown chilly and there would be rain. "I must go now."

  Within ten minutes she was out on Twelfth Street, pushing her way through the crowds of milling people. "Who shot him?" someone said. Then, "There's a reward of twenty thousand dollars for the murderers."

  And, "Excuse me, ma'am, but you're colored, aren't you? All the colored people are assembling in front of the White House."

  "Thank you," Lizzy said, and made her way toward the familiar mansion, walking briskly. Already soldiers were marching to the barking of orders; men were tearing down the flowers from light poles and putting up draped black bunting.

  But oh, the crowd in front of the White House! She would never get through! She would go the back way, a way familiar to her, through alleys and shanties of the colored people. But it was dangerous going alone this time of night. She would go back to the house and get her landlords, the Lewises, to accompany her. Mr. Lewis was a big, brawny man and had a gun.

  They were awake when she got back, throwing questions at her as they pulled on rain clothes, and she told them what it was like outside. "I can get us to the White House the way I know, but I can't go it alone," she told them.

  They agreed to come with her. Mr. Lewis put his gun inside his oilcloth slicker and picked up and lighted a lantern. And once again she ventured out, this time feeling confident that she would get there.

  By now it was quarter of one in the morning but it was like daylight in the streets, what with torchlight and bells tolling and army wagons rushing along and people gathering in bunches to console one another. All the windows of the houses were lighted, and there was an angry murmuring in the crowds.

  Lizzy led the Lewises the back way, away from the crowds, through the alleyways, and along the paths that she knew. She could smell the Potomac River as they rushed along past hovels and huts of the poor, with the rain beating down on them now. Milk wagons and mail carts rushed past them, only to be turned back at the first corner by soldiers.

  Finally they came to a great open space and saw the back of the White House looming up before them, like a giant birthday cake about to melt in the rain. Lights shone from all the windows. Lizzy opened a gate on the far end of the grounds and led the Lewises past the carriage house, the horse stables, the pen where Tad's pet goats were housed.

  But there was another gate to go through now. And, as she feared, armed soldiers were guarding it. Oh well, they would know her. All the guards did.

  "Halt there, identify yourselves."

  Rifles with bayonets attached to the ends were pointed at them. A large lantern cast its light in their eyes, blinding them.

  "I'm Elizabeth Keckley, Mrs. Lincoln's dressmaker. I'm here to help her. She'll need me."

  One of the guards, a tall soldier with a Yankee twang, approached her. She didn't know him, didn't recognize any of them. Oh, this was bad.

  "Who are these other people?" he asked.

  "My landlords. The Lewises. Responsible people. We live on Twelfth Street."

  "I don't care where you live, lady," another one o
f them said as he stepped forward. "The president's been shot this night and is near death. We're letting nobody in. And one thing's certain: Mrs. Lincoln isn't going to need any dressmaker tonight. No sir. So you just take yourself and your responsible friends and go home and stitch a fine seam."

  They were treating her like a nobody! How could she make them understand? Inside her heart was breaking. Mary would be looking for her, expecting her. How could she explain? She couldn't. She was just another of hundreds of colored women to these war-weary soldiers. Just another threat on a nightmare of a night.

  "Come on, let's go," she told her friends. And the three of them turned and left.

  MEANWHILE, THE CARRIAGE and driver Robert had dispatched to fetch Elizabeth Keckley in her house on Twelfth Street was searching and searching for her, but the driver got lost, what with the crowds, the armed soldiers, and the stopping and searching of each carriage on the streets.

  So Mary Lincoln had to go back to the White House alone that terrible rainy morning after they pronounced her husband dead.

  As she left the lodging house on Tenth Street, a doctor was putting silver dollars on Lincoln's eyelids. "Oh, that dreadful, dreadful place," she was saying of Ford's Theater. "That horrible place."

  Apparently others felt the same, for crowds gathering on Tenth Street were already shouting "Burn it down, burn it," at Ford's Theater.

  As she climbed into the carriage, a group of people were carrying a long coffin down the steps of the Petersen house. A group of army officers followed the coffin, bareheaded, back to the White House. Robert Lincoln followed on his horse.

  In the White House Mary Lincoln wandered around upstairs aimlessly. She could not bring herself to go into any of the familiar bedrooms. She wrung her hands and cried. Her head pounded. She needed Lizzy Keckley. Oh, where was Lizzy? Mammy Sally had always been around when she needed her. Where was Lizzy?

  Finally she allowed two friends, Elizabeth Dixon and Mary Jane Welles, to put her to bed in a small, unused room.

  She cried all through the early rainy morning, hearing the crowds outside on Pennsylvania Avenue, listening to the church bells toll, seeing lights and shadows cast on the flowered wallpaper. Robert came and went, gave her a powder and some water. She finally dozed, and when she awoke on that Saturday morning, she gave the order again.

  "Go and get my friend Elizabeth Keckley. She is the only one who understands me."

  Mary Todd

  Lexington, Kentucky

  I HAVE LONG SINCE learned not to believe idle stories. Heaven knows I grew up on them. For years as a child I was terrorized by family stories of great Uncle John being killed at Blue Licks by Indians. Or how Uncle John escaped from Indians after running a gauntlet and his brother Sam was captured and Uncle John ransomed him for a barrel of whiskey.

  Not to mention Mammy Sally's stories about Jaybird reporting once a week to the Almighty about our misdoings for which, somehow, we'd be punished. Jaybird reported only to God, she said.

  But for some reason I did believe the rumor told to me by my sisters Frances and Elizabeth of how, only weeks after our mother's burial, our father was courting another woman.

  I believe it because my older sisters were friends with Dr. Warfield's daughter, Claire. And he'd been in attendance at my mother's death and was a friend of my father.

  They tell me this woman is from Frankfort, the state capital where my father goes frequently because he is a state senator. They say she has a seventy-three-year-old mother who is the head of society there. That she herself wants to be called Betsy, and that she hopes to lift our family to new standards of elegance.

  Grandmother Parker, who lives just up the hill from us here in Lexington and is my own mother's ma, says it is an indecently short time after Ma's death for Pa to go courting.

  My sister Frances says Pa sent his new lady a miniature of himself painted by Lexington's own Matthew Jouett.

  Elizabeth Humphreys she is called. I made it my business to find out everything I could about her. She is no stranger to Lexington. Two of her uncles taught here at our Transylvania college.

  She is going to bring her own black servants with her when she comes. I wonder how that will sit with Mammy Sally.

  Jaybird can tell God all he wants about me. I know already that I do not like her.

  IT WAS IN THE AIR a long time, this silent courtship of Pa's. Auntie Ann, his sister, who ran the household since Ma died, warned us not to ask him about it. So we didn't. But we watched him closely at the dinner table to see if he was changing toward us.

  For all we could see, he wasn't.

  He still asked Levi if he'd been a good boy that day and ruffled his hair when he asked it. He still told my spoiled sister Ann how pretty she was. He still discussed social matters with Elizabeth and Frances. And he still promised me a pony if I was a good girl. He'd been promising me a pony for ages. As long as he kept promising, I figured my hope for a pony was still alive. Though I did wonder if a pony would fit in with Betsy's idea of a new standard of elegance.

  No, he wasn't changing toward us. He was still Pa, who loved us and wouldn't let anything come between us.

  SOMETIME AROUND CHRISTMAS in 1825 my father called us all into the front parlor after dinner and cleared up the rumors. I was seven years old.

  "My situation has become irksome," he said. "People of ill will are saying bad things about me and my intended, Elizabeth Humphreys. So I have become engaged to this dear lady and hope soon to wed. I need to complete my domestic circle so I can enjoy the repose and happiness which the world can never give."

  Pa talked high words sometimes. But we understood. Frances and Elizabeth kissed him. I hugged him because I wasn't going to be left out of any part of his domestic circle.

  THAT'S HOW WE LEARNED we were to get a stepmother. But I didn't see the need for one. As far as I was concerned, the domestic circle we had was complete enough. Mammy Sally ran the kitchen and the other servants. And I didn't see anything wrong with Auntie Ann running the house. She even did the male chores when Pa was away, oversaw the carriage, disciplined the servants, and bought the staples. Only bone I had to pick with her was that she favored my little sister Ann too much. Ann was the darling of her eye. I was almost eight the year Pa wed and Ann was going on two, and Ann took all the attention from me. Same as she'd taken my name when she was born. I was Mary Ann up until then, until they gave the second part of my name to her, and now I'm only Mary.

  It's a lonely name, I can tell you. It needs a second part. Anybody can see that.

  Elizabeth and Frances have their own set of fine-feathered girlfriends who can't talk about anything but dresses and boys. Levi, a year older than me, and George, only one at the time, had the full attention and love of Pa. All I had was Grandma Parker to stand up for me. And she was fifty-two.

  I HAVE HAD A LOT of afflictions in my life, don't think that getting a stepmother was the first of them. Now that I am nineteen and about to leave Lexington, Kentucky, to live with my sister Elizabeth and her husband in Springfield, Illinois, I can write of them without hurting too much.

  Before I was three years old I lost my place as the youngest in the family to brother Robert when he was born. When I was four I lost my baby brother. Robert died at fourteen months. I was uncommonly fond of Robert and his death affected me terribly. Then when I was five I lost part of my name. At seven I lost my mother when my next brother, George Rogers Clark Todd, was born.

  At almost eight I got a new stepmother.

  ***

  WE WERE TO CALL her "Ma" Pa told us in one of the most stern moments I ever recollect seeing him in. "Not Betsy, but Ma."

  We all said yes.

  "And if you have any concerns about the household, bring them to her. She wants to be in charge."

  Concerns about the household? I'd had nothing but concerns since Auntie Ann had left us, as soon as Pa and Betsy came home from their wedding trip.

  Concerns about the household? That phrase w
ent through my mind as I stood in the kitchen and watched, transfixed, as Judy, one of Betsy's slaves, stood grim-faced, her two hands holding a large bowl of soup. I could smell the soup from where I stood. I loved that soup, all made with preserves from our garden.

  Across the kitchen stood Mammy Sally, who had made the soup. She'd caught Judy sampling it from the serving bowl and scolded her.

  "Here, take your ol' soup," Judy said and threw the bowl on the floor.

  The smash of the china bowl sounded throughout the house. The soup splashed all over the place. I even got some on the hem of my dress. Mammy Sally backed away, held her hands to her face, and cried.

  "Who wants your ol' soup." Judy stamped out of the kitchen.

  Just then Pa appeared at the kitchen doorway. "What is this? What's going on here?"

  "Judy threw the soup on the floor," I told him.

  He looked shocked. I felt sorry for him. So much for repose and happiness, I thought. And, as if he could read my thoughts, he looked at me. "Mary, go and get your mother," he said quietly. Then he turned and went back into his study.

  For a moment I thought that he really meant my mother. The look on his face was so confused that for all I knew he could have been wanting her then, just like I was. But I ran upstairs to get Betsy.

  She was seated at her dressing table, making up her hair. "What's all the noise?" she asked.

  I just stood there like a jackass in the rain. "Ma," my voice cracked when I said it. "The servants are fighting. There won't be any soup for supper."

  "And why is that?"

  "Judy threw it on the floor."

  "Well, she must have had provocation."

  So that was the way it was to be. Her servants could do no wrong. "Pa needs you," I said.

  She stood up. "Is there no order in this house?"

  I shrugged. "Your Judy threw the soup when Mammy Sally found her eating out of the serving bowl."