The First Assassin

THIRTEEN

MONDAY, APRIL 22, 1861

Portia opened her eyes to a small room she did not recognize. Light seeped in from a half-closed doorway, revealing white walls, a low ceiling, and not much else. She was lying on a hard bed. It made her wonder where her own bed was and why she was not in it. The answers did not come quickly to her groggy mind.

She remembered lumbering down a city street in Charleston. The need to rest her aching feet overcame her every block or two. Between her hampered gait and the frequent stops, it had taken half the night.

The street finally ended where the waves lapped against a seawall. When she turned around to look at the way she had come, Portia recognized that she was in the Battery. Water bounded it on two sides. Houses lined the rest of the park. They were big homes with white columns and cast-iron balconies. Packing them together so tightly made them look smaller than they really were, but Portia knew they sprawled on the inside. Most were three stories high. The Bennett home was on the opposite side, its ground floor lit by gaslight and visible through the trees. Nelly lived next door.

It was too late to knock, not that she would have tried it, even in daylight. What if Nelly had left for a plantation? The thought sent a shiver through Portia. Nelly was supposed to spend all her time in Charleston. But things could have changed. If she was gone, Portia did not know what she would do.

No lights shone through the mansion’s windows. Portia entered an alley. There was a single door in the rear of Nelly’s house. She thought about trying the handle. Instead, she sat down and rubbed her feet. The ache receded after a few minutes. Portia was not sure what to do next. It was easy to do nothing at all. She was exhausted. Her eyes began to droop. She fought to keep them open but felt herself losing the battle. Part of her actually wanted to lose it. A comforting blackness washed over her.

That was the last thing she remembered before she woke. Suddenly, a heavyset woman walked through the door. Even from the dim glow from the hallway, Portia recognized Nelly.

“You’re awake,” said Nelly. She reached for a damp rag.

“Lemme wipe this grime off your face, child. It looks like you ain’t been clean in days.” She rubbed lightly at first, then dipped the rag into a bucket by the side of the bed and scrubbed a bit harder.

“You’re a pretty young thing,” she said. “But you’re feelin’ a little cold. I’m gonna get you one more blanket.” She twisted around and called out of the room, “Benjamin! Gimme that green blanket!” Then she turned back to Portia and gave her a warm smile. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”

“Do you remember me?” asked Portia.

“I remember a cute little girl from the winter season eight or nine years ago. I know how you’ve grown because your grandfather keeps tellin’ me about you-or at least he answers all the questions I ask. I’ve known that man for years, and you’re the first and only grandchild of his that I’ve met. Of course, I can’t see people in my own family as much as I’d like. Anyway, I know Lucius has a lotta kin. You’re just the only one who has been this way before.”

“How did I get here?”

“I can’t answer that question, honey,” said Nelly. She put down the washcloth and started to fuss with Portia’s hair. “I found you sleepin’ by the back door, right after sunrise. I spotted you through a window and walked outside to kick you awake. We don’t want no vagrants around here. But somethin’ about you looked familiar. The shape of your face is the same as your grandfather’s. I also knew it was you because years ago I saw the woman inside the girl. So I pulled you in here and set you down on this bed. It’s a good thing Mr. Jenkins ain’t around. He wouldn’t lemme skip all this work and take care of you. He’d insist that you go next door to the Bennett place, even though I would tell him there’s nobody there right now. Of course, the fact that nobody’s next door makes me wonder what you’re doin’ in these parts.”

Benjamin walked into the room just as Nelly quit talking. He was a skinny boy of perhaps eight years. He carried a green blanket folded over both arms and gave it to Nelly. “Thank you, Benjamin,” she said as she took it and began spreading it on top of Portia. “This is my own grandson,” said Nelly. “Mr. Jenkins is lettin’ him stay with me through the summer.”

It took Portia all this time to absorb the question Nelly had asked a moment earlier. What was she doing here? Then the reason why struck her. She bolted upright, tossing off the blanket and shoving her hand into a pocket. Nothing was there. She checked another pocket and found what she was looking for.

“My goodness, girl, somethin’ has gotten into you,” said Nelly. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

“It’s nothin’.”

“It’s somethin’, all right. You don’t gotta tell me. I understand secrets. Just lemme peek.”

“Sorry, Nelly. I’m not tryin’ to hide nothin’ from you. In fact, it’s you I been lookin’ for. My grandfather sent me. He said you would help.”

“Helpin’ the granddaughter of Lucius. Now that’s somethin’ I would gladly do. Your grandfather is a good man. There ain’t a thing I wouldn’t do for him.”

“He said you can help me get to the North. He said you knew people here in Charleston who can do that.”

Nelly stood up. She looked at Benjamin as if she were about to dismiss the boy because of the conversation’s direction. Before she could do anything, though, Portia spoke up.

“I’ve run away, Nelly. I left the farm and came here. I gotta get to the North.”

“We all wanna do that, honey, every one of us slaves.”

“This ain’t the same thing. There’s somethin’ I need to take there-somethin’ that will help all the slaves.”

“You gonna tell me what it is?”

“I shouldn’t. It’s somethin’ my grandfather gimme. He says I gotta hand it to Abe Lincoln. He said you could help me do that.”

“You’re in Charleston, child, and Washington is a long way off. We slaves can’t just buy tickets and hop on board the next boat.”

“That’s why I need your help. You know how it can be done, don’t you? You know how I can get to Washington. My grandfather said you did.”

Nelly did not reply. She crossed her arms and stared at her grandson. The boy had been riveted to their conversation, his head flicking back and forth between Portia and Nelly as they spoke.

“Do you really think you’re gonna meet Abe Lincoln?”

“I gotta. Please help me. It’s about our freedom-and his freedom too, Nelly.” She pointed to Benjamin.

“Everybody says he’s gonna free the slaves. But you’re askin’ for a whole lot, maybe even a miracle.”

“There won’t be no miracles if you don’t help me.”

“I can’t promise nothin’. If somethin’ went wrong, I’m not sure I’d ever be able to look at your grandfather again.”

“He sent me to you. He would say it’s better to try and fail than not to try at all.”

Nelly thought it over. “When your grandfather said I knew people, he spoke the truth. I know some people right here in Charleston who hate slavery, who would like to see all the slaves have their liberty-and I’m not talkin’ about no colored folks. There’s some white folks who are real quiet about it. But I know how to get to them. Maybe there’s somethin’ we can do.”

“Thanks, Nelly. That’s what my grandfather wants.”

“If I had known your grandfather was gonna send me one of his favorite grandchildren, I never would have said nothing to him. This ain’t a burden I wanted. There’s a good chance this ain’t gonna work, Portia.”

“It’s gotta work. If I’m gonna be punished for runnin’, I want to be caught goin’ north, not by givin’ up.”

Nelly said nothing for a few moments. She barely even moved. Benjamin’s head swiveled between the two women. Portia wondered how much of this he really understood.

Nelly finally broke her silence. “Benjamin, do you remember that store we been walkin’ by, where they take the pictures of people and put them in the front window?”

The boy nodded.

“I want you to run over there right now. Find the owner. Tell him I have an extra-special package for him. He’ll know what it means. His name is Mr. Leery.”

After visiting Clark in the recesses of the Treasury Department’s basement, Rook actually looked forward to supervising the sandbagging of the building’s exterior. It was a lonely assignment for the corporal. Davis and the others still refused to talk. The good news was that nobody had come near Clark or the prisoners. They were secure, at least for the time being.

Outside, Rook spent a few minutes watching a crew of men pile sandbags along Fifteenth Street. Their wall stood at three feet and was growing, layer by layer. By the end of the day, they would have a rudimentary barricade.

Up the street, Rook spotted Springfield standing by the State Department. He had no idea whether the sergeant had been there for long, but Springfield clearly wanted to talk to him and had the good sense not to approach. The last thing either of them needed was for Springfield to be seen in plain clothes doing something other than piling sandbags.

Rook glanced at his crew of men and decided they could spare him for a few minutes. A wagon loaded with more sandbags had just arrived. It was enough to keep them busy for a little longer.

A few minutes later, Rook and Springfield were sitting beside each other on a bench in Lafayette Park.

“I didn’t want to approach you while you were sandbagging,” said Springfield. “I heard what happened at the meeting.”

“I got sandbagged all right.”

“It’s a shame, sir.”

“Don’t worry about it. Technically, as one of my men, you’re supposed to be over here piling bags too. But I don’t care what Scott thinks. I want you to keep doing what you’re doing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you have for me?”

“I started intercepting Grenier’s mail. One letter caught my eye because of who sent it.”

Springfield removed a letter from his pocket and gave it to Rook-it was the April 19 letter describing the loss of Lucius, signed by Langston Bennett. Rook skimmed it.

“I knew Bennett in Mexico,” said Rook. “I didn’t know him personally, but by reputation. He was an officer during the war. He lost a leg and returned home. I haven’t heard his name in ages.”

“It comes from South Carolina.”

“Yes, that’s where I believe he was from. That’s all?”

“He must be a secessionist.”

For a moment Rook thought that perhaps Scott had a point after all. It looked like a harmless piece of mail. Were they spending too much time obsessing over conspiracies?

“I don’t think there’s much to it,” said Rook.

Springfield must have had the same thought. “I’ll let it go through,” he said.

“Anything else, Sergeant?”

“No, sir.”

“What about that visitor she had?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“You will soon. I’ve got a plan to learn more about him.”

It was late afternoon when Mazorca returned to his room at the boardinghouse. He had risen before dawn to examine the bridges leaving Washington, one by one. Originally he had planned to rent a horse for the day, but with so many the people leaving the city following the catastrophe in Baltimore, horses were hard to come by and exorbitantly priced. He had the money for it but did not want to be seen as having the money for it. So he walked. There were four bridges in all, and Mazorca wanted to see how long they were, how well they were guarded, and what the other side of the river looked like. He did not actually cross any of them, because turning around and heading right back would draw notice, especially if the sentries at one bridge were to compare notes with the sentries at another.

First he went all the way to the Chain Bridge, to the west. Then he proceeded eastward, observing the bridge in Georgetown and the Long Bridge south of downtown. The last bridge, spanning the east branch of the Potomac, interested him the most. It was the only one leading into Maryland. The other side of the river was technically a part of the District, but Maryland lay just beyond, across an invisible line in what appeared to be sparsely populated countryside. Soldiers at the other three bridges were on the lookout for military activity in Virginia, and there were enough of them posted at each to hold off an advancing column until reinforcements could arrive. The last bridge, however, was different. An attack from Maryland wouldn’t come from across the bridge. There were few guards. Mazorca liked what he saw.

Back in his room, Mazorca opened his trunk and removed a pile of maps. He searched through the small stack until he found the one he wanted. It was of southern Maryland. He unfolded it on the floor. A few small towns were sprinkled around the region, though for the most part it seemed to be a mixture of rural farmland and swampy wilderness. Coves, creeks, and inlets pockmarked the Potomac. It looked perfect.

Mazorca knew from experience that the information contained on maps often required verification. There was a big difference between studying an area on paper and visiting it in person. Doing it properly, he realized, would require a horse, even at some expense.

But that was a problem for another day, and this one was coming to an end. He was happy with what he had learned. He was one step closer to an escape plan. Now he needed to think about a plan that would make his escape necessary.

He had purchased a copy of the Evening Star on his way back from the bridge. The small type on its front page described the news and other events, but his eye drifted over to the right-hand columns, full of little advertisements. One in particular caught his eye. It was for French amp; Richstein, a bookstore at 278 Pennsylvania Avenue. The proprietors proudly announced the arrival of “the first elegant household edition” of The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens.

Mazorca had heard of the popular British author. He decided to buy a copy of this new book. But he had no intention of reading it.

James Leery had not moved to Charleston specifically because he wanted to free its slaves. He had arrived there from New York in 1859 to open a photography studio. After working as an apprentice for three years in his native city, he wanted to succeed on his own. But the picture business was fierce, and he feared failure. Then his father, an indulgent man who supported his son’s fascination with this newfangled technology, made a vital connection.

The elder Leery was a trader who dealt extensively with commodities from the South. He came into frequent contact with men from the region and learned much about life in a part of the country he had never seen with his own eyes. It gave him tremendous sympathy for the Southern cause. One day a conversation with a visitor from Charleston turned to photography-and it did not conclude until after they had walked to the shop where the young Leery coordinated sittings for customers and took photographs that were ultimately credited to the owner of the studio. Within a week, the three men had settled on a plan: the father and his friend would invest in the son, who would start a new studio in Charleston, which had not yet embraced photography with the enthusiasm of Northern cities.

At first, James did not want to go. Unlike his father, whose livelihood depended on a thriving Southern economy, James detested the South and its culture of forced servitude. He believed slavery was immoral, corrupting both the lives of those in bondage and the souls of the men who kept them there. He attended abolitionist meetings and subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper, The Liberator. He felt a strong sense of guilt over the fact that his prosperous upbringing-which included a good home, an expensive education, and the ability to shirk his father’s profession in favor of the photographic arts-had been made possible, in part, by the product of slave labor. The idea of living in the South to provide a service to the people who cracked the whips did not appeal to him.

Yet his love of photography was strong, and the opportunity to run his own studio proved too tempting to resist. He resolved that he would indeed go to Charleston and take pictures of planters and their families-but that he would also work against the slave system. His business thrived from the start. Leery resolved to use the money the planting class threw at him to purchase the freedom of young slaves whose whole lives lay in front of them. This was how he came to know Marcus, his studio assistant. He bought him at auction, took him back to the shop, announced to the startled boy that he was free-and offered him a job.

Leery’s reputation for charity spread quickly through Charleston’s large community of free blacks. It later became known to many of the city’s slaves that he was a friend. When a runaway knocked on his door late one summer night, he consented to give the man some money. A few weeks later, another runaway showed up and Leery agreed to harbor him for a few days. To the whites who ruled Charleston, Leery was an eccentric Northerner who provided a unique service. They had no idea of what else he did-and he was always cautious about doing too much.

Through the grapevine of slave gossip, Nelly heard a story about Leery buying a one-way boat ticket to Boston for a light-skinned runaway who was able to pass as a white person. She did not know whether to believe any of it. She wondered whether Leery really worked in cooperation with local slave catchers with the aim of spreading rumors among the slaves and drawing out the fugitives. Yet such a trick would work only once or twice before Leery was exposed as a fraud. So far, that had not happened.

Then something incredible took place. One day, Leery was standing at the doorway to his studio as she walked by with Benjamin. The photographer called her over and struck up a conversation. Nelly was shocked because outside the immediate circle of people she served, no white person had ever done this before. Leery brought her in his shop and showed her his equipment and samples of his work. She was suspicious but interested-and then astonished when he asked her whether Benjamin might be purchased for the purpose of setting him free. Would she inquire with Mr. Jenkins and let him know?

That would have been about three weeks ago-and Mr. Jenkins was still out of town, probably not returning except for a brief visit in May or June. In the meantime, her view of Leery clarified. There must be something to the stories about him, she realized. Nelly had known that there really were white people who opposed slavery. Abraham Lincoln was one of them. She had heard that some white Southerners wanted to see the slaves let go-mainly small farmers who resented the power of the large plantation owners. She had even heard how a handful of white people actually helped slaves escape to the North through something called the Underground Railroad. But she had never actually met any of these people-or at least, did not think she had met any. Until she met Leery, that is.

And so she took Portia to Leery. They arrived in the afternoon. Leery was busiest in the autumn and winter, when Charleston’s social season was in full swing. He had a few jobs now, but not many. Much of his current income came from selling small reproductions of South Carolina’s secessionist heroes, such as P. G. T. Beauregard, the man who had opened fire on Fort Sumter earlier in the month. Images of Jefferson Davis were popular as well.

When Nelly and Portia arrived, Leery rose from behind a desk where he had been cleaning lenses.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? Benjamin mentioned a package, but I wasn’t sure what he meant. Have you had a chance to speak with Mr. Jenkins?”

“No, and I don’t expect to see him for a few weeks.”

“If you prefer, Nelly, just let me know when he’s back and I’ll approach him myself.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Leery. Thank you very much.”

“So what brings you here?” he asked, looking at Portia.

“This is my friend, Portia,” said Nelly. “She’s in a bit of trouble.”

Leery glanced out his storefront window. Nobody was there. “What kind of trouble?”

“I’ve run away,” said Portia.

“I see,” said Leery, rubbing his chin. Nelly could see he was trying to decide how much he could reveal about himself.

Portia spoke up. “I can’t stay here in Charleston. I gotta get to Washington, and I gotta get there fast.”

Leery raised his eyebrows in surprise. It was an extraordinary request.

“Something like that takes time and planning-and it’s a long way to go and very hard to get from here to there without being caught. Washington isn’t the best destination either. They allow slavery there, you know. It would make more sense to get you on a boat to New York or Boston. You could try to settle in one of those cities or even go to Canada.”

“No, Mr. Leery, Washington is where I gotta go. I have a message to deliver to somebody there, and getting it there quickly will help all the slaves.”

“Well, this is a first,” said Leery. “I’ve done a few small things to help slaves here and there. I know there are a few stories about me going around. Many of them are nothing more than fairy tales, though a few of them approach the truth. I’m sure Nelly has told you what I’m about. They are modest measures, Portia, and they’re the only things that help me tolerate the sale of these obnoxious little mementos.” He pointed at a display holding the pictures of Beauregard, Davis, and the others. “There is a kind of poetic justice in thinking that the sale of these images will help me free people kept in bondage.”

Leery snickered at the thought of this. “But you are not asking me to purchase your freedom,” he continued. “You present a different type of problem. I wish I could just give you a horse and tell you to be on your way. The boats are fast, but I wouldn’t recommend stowing away right now-certainly not a woman on a ship full of men. But even if that were a risk worth taking, I don’t think it would work. With all this talk of a naval blockade, the ships heading out of port are crammed full of goods-there probably isn’t a nook or cranny anywhere in their holds for a person like you.”

“Ain’t there somethin’ we can do?” asked Nelly.

“I’m thinking,” said Leery, staring at Portia. “You’re not very big, are you?”

“What do you mean?” said Portia.

“You’re not a big person. Have you ever heard the story of Box Brown?”

“Who?”

“Henry ‘Box’ Brown, a slave who lived in Richmond, Virginia, about ten or twelve years ago.”

“No.”

Leery looked at Nelly. “I haven’t either,” she said.

“His story hasn’t been told very much down here. That’s because the white people don’t want word of it leaking out. Box Brown is pretty well known in the North, though. He lived with a cruel master who sold Brown’s wife and children to another owner far away-Brown had to watch them march off in chains with the knowledge that he would never see them again. That experience convinced him to escape. He didn’t think he could evade the slave hunters, so he came up with an ingenious plan. He met with a carpenter that he knew he could trust and they manufactured a special box, two feet by two and a half feet by three feet. They lined the inside with a thick cloth, punched a few small holes in the sides, and loaded some provisions. Then ‘Box’ climbed into his box. The carpenter nailed it shut, wrapped it with a few hickory hoops, and shipped his human cargo to Philadelphia. One day later, Brown emerged from his container in the offices of an antislavery society.”

“He was alive?”

“He was worn out and sore-but definitely alive. I think he lives in England now.”

“You tryin’ to say somethin’, James?” asked Nelly.

“A package leaving here by train this evening probably would need until Wednesday morning to make it to Washington. You can never tell for sure how long it will take. This is only worth doing, Portia, if you’re absolutely certain that you want to go through with it. I would estimate that the risks are quite high and failure a very real possibility. But I’ve actually got a box in the back room here that might do the trick…”

Portia watched him go through a doorway on the back wall, chattering without stop. For the first time in days, she smiled. She knew her blisters were not going to get any worse.