25
ROBERT DIDN’T TELL.
He came to breakfast the next morning and bade me a polite hello. He even directed some conversation at me. Though he was careful not to be too nice. I had to give him credit for decency Uncle Valentine wouldn’t be suspicious. And later he told me he’d sworn Marietta to secrecy about my escapade, too.
My escapade. I was happy and unhappy. Uncle Valentine would think Marietta had gotten the cadaver of Johnny Collins for him. He would never know that if I hadn’t gone it would have been lost to him forever. I’d made up to him for the loss of Addie. But I couldn’t let him know it. Isn’t that always the way of things? Sometimes our best deeds need to be kept secret. I wondered if there were a lesson anywhere in the Brothers Grimm about that. Surely there must be.
There seemed some sweet sense of justice, though, in the fact that I couldn’t tell Uncle Valentine what I’d done. Like I was doing additional penance for the loss of Addie. Johnny Surratt had told me all about Catholic penance. You had to do it or you went to hell for your sins. Addie was going to die because she didn’t have her medicine. That was my sin. Certainly additional penance was needed. I’d probably be seeking it out for the rest of my life.
I didn’t have time to think about it that morning, though. Uncle Valentine told us at breakfast that he had failed at the White House. President Johnson had refused to see either him or Annie. “He sent us a message,” Uncle Valentine said. “He said that Mrs. Surratt kept the nest that hatched the eggs.”
A serpent in the breasts of those people, Elizabeth Keckley had said. And what about Ella May? A curse on this street, she’d told me. And even Uncle Valentine had sensed something. Evil is brewing there, he’d told Mama.
“So what will happen now?” I asked him.
“They’re going to hang the woman,” he said. “There is nothing anybody can do about it.”
Robert and I both fell silent. “And Dr. Mudd?” Robert asked.
“He’s been sentenced to life. My dear friend. They are taking him to Fort Jefferson military prison in Dry Tortugas.”
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“It’s a hellhole,” he said. “A sun-fried island a hundred miles off the coast of Florida.”
“Marietta said he won’t serve a life sentence,” I told him. “She told you that he’d be in prison a while and then be released. And she has powers, you know that, Uncle Valentine.”
He looked at me. “Well, we’re all going to need all the powers we have to get through this next week. The hanging is on July seventh. We’re going to have to stand by Annie.”
That afternoon I found myself at loose ends. Maude had the afternoon off. It was Sunday. Uncle Valentine was working in his office on his pamphlet about the need for an Anatomy Act. The house was quiet and cool. Outside, the heat was oppressive and unyielding. I was trying to read, but I had to keep getting up to answer the door clapper.
Messages for Uncle Valentine. Three of them. “Thank you,” he said each time I brought one in to him. Then he went back to work.
“What’s happening, Uncle Valentine?” I finally asked.
“Not enough, I’m afraid.” He smiled bleakly. “Friends informing me that Mrs. Stephen Douglas, wife of the dead senator from Illinois, is going to petition the president this week for Mrs. Surratt’s life. Also Thaddeus Stevens, a radical Republican congressman.”
“Why are they sending notes around to you?”
“I asked Mrs. Douglas and Stevens to help.”
“You never wanted me to live in Mrs. Mary’s house,” I said.
“Don’t let’s dwell on that now, Emily.”
“Do you believe it was the nest that hatched the eggs?”
“Yes. She opened her doors to them. She gave them comfort. But then, Dr. Mudd opened his doors to Booth, too, and treated him. It doesn’t make him guilty.”
I nodded. Uncle Valentine was fair. I went back to my reading.
The next time I answered the door clapper, it was Annie. She seemed not to know me, or care. She was dressed neatly now, her hair done up in a bun. She carried a small portmanteau.
“Is Dr. Bransby in?”
I ushered her into the cool dimness of the house. Uncle Valentine got up from his desk, came forward, and took her in his arms. “There is always hope for a last-minute reprieve,” he told her. “People are telling me that wherever they go, in hotels and on the streets, people are saying they shouldn’t hang your mother.”
“You’ve been kind. I shall not forget it. I came to tell you, I’m going to spend every night from now until the seventh with my mother in her cell in Carroll Prison.”
“Are you sure you want to do that, Annie?” he asked.
“Yes. My mother needs me.”
“What can we do for you?”
“Just be there on the seventh. Stand with me, if she doesn’t get a reprieve.”
“We’ll be there,” he said.
She picked up her portmanteau and turned to me. “Puss-in-Boots is with a neighbor until I can return home again.”
I nodded mutely.
She started to leave. I wanted to put my arms around her, too, before she left, but she walked right by me, head held high, shoulders straight. She had a carriage waiting, she said.
I couldn’t let her go like that. I must do something for her, but what? Then it came to me.
“Annie, wait,” I begged.
She turned. “I haven’t time.”
“Just a minute. Wait right there in the hall. There’s something I must give you.” I ran through the kitchen, took a knife off the counter, and ran out into Marietta’s garden. The heat was beating down unmercifully. Where were they? Oh yes, there. The night-blooming cereus. I bent to cut two on long stems and brought them back into the kitchen. There I wrapped them quickly in wet paper and brought them into the hall where Annie was waiting.
“What are they?” she asked.
“Night-blooming cereus. They are nightflowers. Bring them into your mother’s cell.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Tell your mother hello.”
She nodded, thanked me again, and went out the door.
That was Sunday, July 2. Somehow we got through the next few days without losing our senses. On the Fourth, Robert took me sailing on the Potomac. We were not as friendly as before. We were wary of one another, yet at the same time bound by secrets, shared experiences, and concerns. And he had a newfound respect for me. I could not ask for more.
He was a very good sailor. Maude had a supper of cold chicken, hot biscuits, jellied shrimp, and ice cream when we got home. There were fireworks afterward, down by the Sixth Street wharves. Robert took me, but when I looked up to see those colorful bombs bursting over the water I took no joy from them. And a couple of times when an especially loud one went off I saw Robert wince.
We walked home in silence. Robert left me at the gate and walked home. When I got inside, Annie was there, in the parlor with Uncle Valentine. Neither of them looked up as I came in. I took a chair and listened.
Annie was begging. “I need you to use your influence with Dr. Porter, the jail physician, to get them to release my mother’s body to me. They don’t want to let me have her.”
“Why don’t we wait and see what happens on the seventh before we talk about this?” Uncle Valentine said.
“I know what’s going to happen on the seventh. They’re going to hang her. Neither Mrs. Douglas nor Thaddeus Stevens could get anywhere with the president. She’s going to hang.”
“There is always hope for a last-minute reprieve, Annie. I heard that the president’s secretary is going to keep a fast horse outside the White House door, in case Johnson changes his mind at the last minute.”
Then of a sudden Annie stood up. “Dr. Bransby,” she said in a clear firm voice, “I’m going to be standing outside the prison gates on the seventh. Stanton has told all the relatives of the condemned that he will not release the bodies. He wants them buried in pine boxes by the jailhouse wall. If you use your influence with Dr. Porter, if you get my mother’s body released, I’ll give it to you. For medical research. My mother gets migraine headaches, you know.”
Uncle Valentine looked up at her, disbelief on his face.
“I mean it, Dr. Bransby. You can have my mother’s body. I know you use the bodies of executed criminals. It’s legal. I know that, too. My mother is no criminal, but I’d rather give her to you than have her buried on the penitentiary grounds.”
My uncle nodded and sighed, got up, and walked across the hall to his office. I got up, too. I saw him penning a note. Then he gave it to Annie. “For Dr. Porter,” he said.
“Thank you, Dr. Bransby,” Annie said. Then she looked at me. “Mama liked the flowers,” she told me. Then she went out.
“Uncle Valentine, are you going to take the body?”
He was on his way into the kitchen. He stopped. “What do you think, Emily?”
“I think of what you told me. That you would put nothing and no one before medical science. So then, if they give Annie her mother’s body, are you going to take it? Is that why you wrote the note to Dr. Porter?”
He smiled at me, a slow sad smile. “No, Emily,” he said.
“No?”
“This may be the first time in my life that I let someone come before medical science. But no, Emily, I am not going to take the body. I wrote the note to Dr. Porter to appeal to his humanity. To try to get Annie’s mother’s body released to her for a proper burial. Now I’m on my way to the kitchen to see if there’s any chicken left. I need something to eat.”
I thought I heard firecrackers. It was still the Fourth, wasn’t it? I felt them exploding inside me. “I’ll get you some chicken,” I said. “You go and finish your work.”