—
Edwin gets a letter from Adam Badeau. Adam is in the middle of his second great heartbreak. His intimate friend, James Wilson, has cut him off, alluding to a single night Wilson now regrets. Adam blames jealous fate for this, “jealous fate which cannot bear that men should be so purely happy, and so happily pure—so nearly good . . . I’d give ten years of my life to annihilate one day and its consequences,” Adam writes to Wilson.
None of this agony is in his letter to Edwin. To Edwin he says that the young man Edwin saved on the train tracks a few weeks back was Robert Lincoln, the president’s son. Robert is also on Grant’s staff and has told them all the whole story. Grant would like to do something to thank Edwin. He may have saved Robert from serious injury.
It takes Edwin a moment to even remember this incident. Still, it is gratifying. He tells Adam that all he needs is for Grant to drive the nail straight into the Southern head.
Edwin tells Asia and Rosalie about the rescue on the train tracks.
He assumes they won’t tell John and they don’t.
* * *
—
In January of 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment passes, abolishing slavery in the United States forever.
* * *
—
In February, while Edwin struggles with exhaustion in the midst of his historic run, June arranges his schedule to spend a day with John in Washington, DC. Rosalie, Edwin, and June have had a tête-à-tête-à-tête about John.
Asia is home in Philadelphia. She is so much better informed on John’s activities than the rest of them. If she’d been there, if she’d been consulted, things might have gone differently. Or not. Asia is John’s most intimate connection to the family. Her instinct is to admire and support him.
The other three are concerned at the way his passion and febrile certitude are erasing every other thing he used to be. They’re not thinking about anything he might do so much as who he is becoming—Father’s madness without Father’s genius to excuse it. And how will he react when his beloved Richmond falls, as it surely will and soon?
June volunteers to go and talk to him, play the big brother. Obviously this task can’t fall to Edwin. John is currently in the capital so June meets him there at the Surratt boardinghouse. They sit together in the overstuffed parlor, full of geegaws, vases and candlesticks and figurines. June feels oddly spied on by Mrs. Surratt and her daughter, oddly unsettled by the ticking of multiple clocks. He suggests going out.
Twilight is just falling and they walk together along the darkening streets. They follow the lamplighter for a block or so, seeing the lamps flare, yellow and haloed in the misty evening. June’s trying to find a place to begin when John suddenly provides it. “Virginia! My Virginia!” he cries out tragically. He turns south, his face wet with tears.
Obviously, sober sense is in short supply here. “John,” June says. He grabs John’s shoulders, looks him in the eyes. “The North will win and there’s nothing to be done about it. You would do best to concentrate on your profession.”
He can see the condemnation in John’s face. “I’m not so bloodless as you,” John says.
June’s second attempt goes better. They find a bar and over whiskies, June learns two things he didn’t know. One: John’s been boasting for months of big profits from his oil wells. The truth is that he’s lost nearly everything. June scolds him affectionately for pretending otherwise. Time for him to recommit to the stage.
Two: John, like Edwin, is in love. He’s secretly pledged to a senator’s daughter, the beautiful Lucy Hale. Senator Hale is a committed abolitionist, recently appointed ambassador to Spain. He’ll be taking Lucy with him when he goes. Rough waters ahead—Romeo and Juliet to be sure—but June is reassured. He encourages John to wax on about Lucy’s many perfections, until he can see the old John coming clear again.
He returns to New York with a favorable report. John is making plans for the future. He’s determined to deserve Lucy and he understands, he agrees with June, that to do so requires steadiness and industry. John doesn’t come right out and say that he loves Lucy more than his dear old Virginia, but surely he must. They are so eager to be reassured, they ignore the revelation that John has been lying to them for months.
* * *
—
Mother writes John a letter, complaining that he’s not been to visit, telling him that she’s miserable and lonely in Edwin’s house without him. “I always gave you praise,” she writes, “for being the fondest of all my boys, but since you leave me to grief I must doubt it. I am no Roman mother. I love my dear ones before country or anything else.”
xiii
So there they all are: Edwin is engaged to be married. Asia is pregnant. June is touring. John appears, disappears, reappears. He seems to have been frequenting Montreal, a hub of Confederate scheming, but is also, often, in Washington. They assume that he keeps returning to the capital because Lucy Hale is there. They find these repeated visits encouraging. A good woman will soon put John right.
He still comes often to Philadelphia. Asia might see him at any hour. He arrives, sleeps on the sofa in his clothes, and leaves before dawn. When he goes, Asia removes all evidence of his visit. Sleeper is none the wiser.
Men stand at the sill in the darkness, and whisper for him to come to the window. They keep their faces hidden. Some of their voices she knows—little Michael O’Laughlen, who used to live on the other side of Exeter Street and trailed after John wherever he went. Sam Arnold, John’s old mate from school. But when she greets them, they tell her, No, no, that’s not my name. You’ve mistaken me for someone else.
Most of the voices are strange to her.
One night John takes her hand. “I need to show you a cipher,” he says. His plans are changing, the kidnapping of Lincoln replaced with something more dreadful.
She pulls her hand away. “I want no knowledge of it.”
He waits in silence for her to change her mind. She doesn’t.
He then takes a packet of letters from his vest, gives them to her. “Keep these until I return,” he says. “Lock them in the safe.” He kisses her on the cheek, on the forehead, on the hand. He leaves. She sits staring at an envelope labeled Mother. Before she’s risen, he’s back. “Let me see you lock them up.”
The safe is in a cold, stone, windowless room. Asia keeps the keys; Sleeper never goes inside it. The room has two doors. She opens the first, the heavy door. She opens the second, the iron door. When the packet is secure, they return to the couch. She sits. He kneels.