John Miller - The First Assassin

This was the proper course, he decided: save Hughes and let Portia go, at least for now. And so he quit the chase.

Violet Grenier stood on her porch and watched her final guest trudge up Sixteenth Street, turn right on I Street, and disappear from view. It was almost midnight. Clouds obscured the waxing moon. Behind her, inside the house, she could hear Polly straightening the foyer. The girl could be quite efficient late at night, when she knew that only a few chores stood between her and sleep.

Grenier wondered if the senator would turn around and wave as he sometimes did, but she was not surprised when he did not. She knew he was frustrated. He had lingered, waiting for the other guests to leave. When they were finally alone, she had pressed him for information about the president’s meeting with the governor of Maryland and the mayor of Baltimore earlier in the day. She had hoped he would know something about it and what impact it would have on the movement of soldiers as they approached Washington.

The senator was normally a reliable source of information. He was from a Northern state, but he was sympathetic to the Southern cause and certainly had no fondness for Lincoln. His usual talk about committee deliberations would have bored many women, even in Washington. Yet Grenier listened to every word. She never took notes while he was talking, but she often wrote down his observations and comments when he was gone, passing them on to friends in Virginia and points south. Sometimes she was able to do this an hour or two after he first knocked on her door. Occasionally, though, she had to wait until morning before he was gone. The senator was one of her more familiar acquaintances.

On this night, however, Grenier had rebuffed his gentle advances. The day had been long. Although she was often full of energy as the hour grew late, she longed for sleep. Besides, she had already shared her bed today.

Would she see Mazorca again? She knew that she might not. If he actually accomplished his mission, she would be more than content never to lay eyes on him again. Yet she also recognized that she would enjoy more of his company. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to be attracted to a man. The ones she knew nowadays, such as the senator, were merely useful. Mazorca was different. He was satisfying.

Grenier lingered outside her front door, breathing the crisp air. She thought that perhaps she would sit by an open window upstairs as she jotted down a few notes. Then she could sleep and dream.

She had turned around and stepped through her front door when she heard a noise coming from H Street. A group of soldiers shuffled into view, their boots scraping across the dirt-filled street. There were three of them, heading east, and they surrounded four other men who were not in uniform. Grenier could see that these men were prisoners, their hands bound behind their backs. Their mouths appeared to be gagged as well. This detail made her curious. She had seen prisoners marched through the streets before, but they had not been gagged as these were.

As they passed by, about fifty feet from her doorway, none of them appeared to see her. The light from inside her house was weak and apparently did not draw their attention. Besides, they were preoccupied with their prisoners. When one of them glanced up Sixteenth Street, she recognized his face. It was Colonel Rook. She doubted he would involve himself with criminals who had committed petty offenses.

A disturbing thought entered her mind. She looked at the prisoners more carefully, wondering who they might be. Was Mazorca among them? It was difficult to see much in the blackness, and now their backs were turned to her as they crossed Sixteenth Street and continued along H Street. She could not rule it out. As they passed St. John’s Church, Grenier hustled across the street and into the church’s courtyard.

A bush snagged her petticoat. If she had not been trying to move in silence, she might have cursed it. Instead, she quickly pulled it loose, not bothering to inspect the damage, and darted between the columns on the front of the church. Peering around the side, she saw the entourage of soldiers and prisoners about a block ahead of her. As they turned right on Fifteenth Street, she raced into Lafayette Park. If people had seen her running, they might have thought she was fleeing an assailant. Yet the park was empty. Nobody saw her as she flitted through, emerging on the corner by the State Department, a little brick edifice across the street from where she now stood.

From this vantage point, on the short strip of Pennsylvania Avenue that ran between the White House and Lafayette Park, Grenier could see a portion of Fifteenth Street. The soldiers had not yet come around the block, but she could hear their footsteps. She hurried across the Avenue, behind the State Department. Its windows were dark. She sidled along its exterior, turning a corner and moving forward until she came to a spot where she could crouch down and hide as the group came into view.

Rook was in front. She could tell right away that Mazorca was not among the prisoners who followed him. They were too big, too small, or the hair was wrong. She breathed a sigh of relief and scolded herself for embarking on a pointless excursion. Had she really gone this far in order to disprove that Mazorca was captured? If so, it would suggest that she was not thinking straight about him. That was a problem.

She did not budge from her spot because the men were still coming toward her. As they approached, she was able to study their faces-and she recognized Davis. What a fool, she thought. His plans were larger than his abilities. She knew it almost from the moment she had met him. Now he was caught. Stephens was with him as well. She wished that they had not come to her house. It was a shame that they had even come to Washington at all.

In a moment, the men passed by. She kept watching them, expecting a turn to the left, away from the barricaded Treasury Department. But when they turned, they actually went through the barricades and into the building.

For several minutes, Grenier did not move. She had not harbored high hopes for Davis and Stephens. She was disappointed in them as well as for them. Even worse than the disappointment, however, was the confusion: why would Rook take prisoners to any place besides the new prison in the Old Capitol?

She went back to her house, scribbled a few notes, and tried to sleep. But her mind was racing.

SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 1861

Portia stopped at the edge of a field and realized suddenly that the morning had arrived in all its brightness. She had stumbled through the night in a daze of walks, jogs, and mad dashes. The last fifteen hours were a blur. She had fled from a scene of horror and tragedy-the spot where a man she loathed tried to take her by force and where a man she loved gave his life so that her own might go on. For a long while she had simply crashed through the woods, desperate to get away from that place and not concerned about where she was headed.

Shortly before dark, she had found a road. She took it south, plodding onward, step by step. She had no idea how far she had traveled or how near she was to Charleston.

Her feet throbbed. She considered removing her shoes and going barefoot. The penny-sized holes in her soles made her partially barefoot as it was. But she worried about stepping on a sharp stone that she could not see in the dark. As painful as it was to keep pushing forward, she was determined not to give up.

The daylight caught her by surprise because the road had run through a forest for a couple of miles. Now a plantation complex lay before her. In the distance she could see the manor. Behind it were all the outbuildings, including the slave quarters. She wondered why nobody was in the fields. With the sun up, there should have been plenty of activity. Was it abandoned? Then she remembered: this was Sunday morning.