John Miller - The First Assassin

I can’t wait to see your granddaughter . Perhaps there was nothing suspicious behind those words at all. Lucius again looked down the lane where the runaways had slipped off the night before. He knew he would eventually have to cover for Portia. He had not expected that moment to come so soon, though. He would have preferred for a day or two to go by before Bennett or Tate started asking a lot of questions. But Lucius knew that he could not avoid a reckoning. Every hour between now and then counted. Lucius determined he would try to keep Bennett’s curiosity about Portia to a minimum. It would be a real accomplishment, he now believed, if he got through the entire day without anybody realizing she was gone.

Big Joe was another matter. There were probably a few people wondering about him already. He was the sort of worker whose presence would be missed soon. Lucius still believed it was a mistake for Joe to have joined Portia on her flight, but he felt that the two of them had forced his hand the night before. What else could he have done, call the whole thing off and recruit another runaway? That would take a few days to arrange at a minimum, and Lucius was not sure how much time he had to spare. It had been more than a week since he had seen Lincoln’s would-be killer in Charleston. It might already be too late to stop him. Besides, Portia really was the best choice-she was smart, she had been to Charleston before, and she knew Nelly. It made sense for her to be the one. Joe might even come in handy on the road. Unfortunately, his absence on the plantation probably would cause a search party to begin a hunt sooner than if Portia had gone by herself.

There was still no sign of Bennett in the manor. Lucius looked at the fields. Normally they would be full of slaves at this time of day. Now they were empty. He spotted Tate in the distance making his way toward the slave cabins. The overseer had spent the last half hour telling the field hands to pause in their work and assemble for Bennett’s visit. Lucius wondered if Tate supposed that Joe was missing. With so many slaves on the plantation, it was not likely he would notice on his own, at least not right away. A slave might have reported it to him, though. Tate had plenty of informants on the plantation, and reporting a runaway was an easy way to keep in the good graces of the overseer. Another one of the overseers-there were four besides Tate-might have noticed Joe’s absence too.

Lucius thought that if he could somehow prevent the news of Joe’s disappearance from making the rounds until later in the day, or perhaps into the evening, then he might buy the runaways another night before a group of slave catchers went out after them. He just was not sure how to do it.

“Hello!” said Bennett as he emerged from the house. He sounded cheerful. The master of the plantation loved these gift-giving excursions to the slave quarters. Perhaps twice a year, he handed out blankets, clothes, shoes, and other items to the slaves. These were not gifts, actually. They were necessities, and somebody would have to supply them if Bennett did not. But Bennett took great pleasure in handing out these items personally. It allowed him to play the patriarch. He also believed it made him more popular among the slaves. He wanted them to think he was a good master.

“Let’s go,” said Bennett, heading in the direction of the slave quarters. He descended onto the gravel driveway with the cautious steps of a man owning a wooden leg, yet it might have been said that there was a spring in his step. Lucius walked beside him. The cart with the boxes followed. A few minutes later, when the slave cabins came into view, they saw a big gathering of men, women, and children. The group let out a few whistles and claps. Tate was standing to the side. He immediately approached. It was clear that he had something on his mind.

“Mr. Bennett,” he said. “May I have a quick word with you?”

“Certainly.”

“Big Joe isn’t here,” Tate said in a low voice.

Bennett stopped in his tracks, about fifty or sixty feet away from the cabins and the assembly of slaves. Lucius ordered the cart to halt. “Really?”

“That’s right. I heard this morning that he hadn’t shown up where he was expected. I didn’t think too much on it-this is Big Joe, after all, and he’s never given us any trouble. I figured on seeing him here with the others. Well, he’s not here. I’ve asked around, and nobody seems to know where he is.”

“That’s odd. You don’t suppose…” Bennett’s voice trailed off.

“It’s not like him,” said Tate. “But you just never know who’s going to get the notion in his head.”

Lucius knew that if he was going to intervene at all, this was the time. He hardly knew what he was going to say when he spoke up. “Excuse me,” he said. Bennett and Tate snapped their heads in his direction. They were not accustomed to being interrupted by a slave, even if it was Lucius.

“I woke up early,” he continued, speaking slowly and choosing his words with care. He was making this up as he went along. “I saw Big Joe walk by the house and waved to him. He came up to me and said a tool had broken and he needed to borrow one from the Wilson farm. So I suppose that’s where he is. He’s probably on his way back now. I guess I assumed he’d gotten a pass from you, Mr. Tate.”

Lucius could not tell whether he had convinced them. He worried that he was not a very good liar.

“He definitely didn’t speak to me,” Tate said, “and he knows the rules. If he wants to leave the plantation for any reason-even if it’s to fetch a tool from down the way-he needs to talk to me first. He didn’t do that and he certainly didn’t get a pass. He knows better than this. Besides, we can fix tools here.”

Tate spoke as if he were accusing Lucius. The old slave shrugged his shoulders.

“What tool did he say was broken?”

“I don’t think he said which one. He just said a tool. That’s what I remember. We talked about other things.”

“What other things?”

“The weather. His family. Things like that.”

Tate looked at Bennett. “I’m not so sure about this.”

“Well, if Lucius says he saw him, then he must have seen him. Don’t worry about it now, Mr. Tate. Give him a little while longer. He’ll probably be back soon,” said Bennett, starting to walk again toward the slaves. “You can speak to him then about the rules and handle this situation however you please.”

“Oh, I’ll handle it,” said Tate, casting a look at Lucius and tapping his whip. “I’ll definitely handle it.”

Rook studied the exterior of Violet Grenier’s home. He wanted to be inside listening to these men who called themselves Davis and Stephens as they talked to a lady about whom he felt he needed to know much more as soon as possible.

“Why would a couple of fellows who seem to be up to no good want to meet Grenier?” It was a rhetorical question. Neither Clark nor Springfield tried to answer it.

They backed away from H Street to a place in the park where they could keep an eye on Grenier’s front door without making themselves obvious.

“The first step in figuring out why they would want to see Grenier is to figure out why they’re in Washington in the first place,” said Rook. He briefed Springfield on how he and Clark had followed the men from Brown’s to the Capitol and then to here.

“The most peculiar thing is their interest in the Capitol’s basement,” said Springfield.

“Yes, and it worries me,” said Rook. He was silent for a moment. “Have either of you heard of Guy Fawkes?”

The two men looked at each other. They did not know the name.

“Let me give you a little history lesson,” said Rook. He described the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which Fawkes tried to pack explosives into the cellar of the British Parliament and blow it up on a date when the king was scheduled to visit. Before Fawkes could commit his crime, however, he was betrayed: the authorities arrested, tortured, and killed him.