An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [30]
I got back into bed. Annie would know. She knew all the gossip. She'd tell me in the morning.
Again I dozed. And woke to more door pounding.
This time it was my door.
"Emily, Emily, are you home?" A hoarse voice, a voice filled with ominous urgency. Uncle Valentine's voice. I leaped out of bed, grabbed a robe, and went stumbling down the stairs. Thoughts raced through my mind like scurrying mice, tripping over one another. Someone had robbed Mama's grave! Aunt Susie was dead in Richmond! Johnny had been killed and the police had been pounding at the Surratts' door last night to tell his mother. Oh, God, not Johnny!
But then why would Uncle Valentine be here? Why not Annie?
"I'm coming!" I said, racing through the front hall. I opened the door. As I did the hall clock struck nine. Nine! Had I slept so late, then? I was supposed to be at the Surratts' for breakfast.
"Thank God I caught up with you before you went to the Surratts'. You must come with me to my house, Emily. Now." Uncle Valentine stood there, without his cape or shawl or tall hat. He was unshaven and bleary-eyed.
My distress turned into anger. "Uncle Valentine, I told you, I am not coming to live with you. And to wake me up and frighten me like this! Well, I think it's selfish and mean!"
"There is need to be frightened, child." He had pushed his way into the hall. It was raining out and he was wet. "I never should have allowed you to come back here last night. Thank God you're safe. I have failed in my duty toward you. No girl your age should be without a protector. And I intend to be that, starting now. Where are your things? Are you packed?"
Something was very wrong. "What's happened? You look terrible."
"I've been up all night. I was in attendance at Peterson's lodginghouse with some other doctors."
"Then go home and sleep."
"I was the first doctor to respond when they called for physicians from the audience last night. But we could do nothing, Dr. Leale and I. Nothing. Leale tried to breathe air into his lungs, pour a little brandy down his throat. Laura Keane, the actress, held his head in her lap. Nothing."
A cold chill came over me. "Uncle Valentine, tell me who it was you could do nothing for."
He looked at me. I saw such pain in his eyes I knew that whatever had happened could never be fixed. Never.
"You haven't heard, then. Oh, child. The president. The president's been shot." He sank down on a bench, rested his elbows on his knees, put his head in his hands, and wept.
I did not know what to do. A grown man weeping. The sound of it was unnatural and echoed through the empty rooms. I leaned against the wall. It couldn't be true. Was Uncle Valentine deranged? The president? Shot?
"How can this be?" I asked weakly.
"Oh, child, forgive me." He wiped his face. He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. He spoke. "I saw him at the theater last night. He and Mrs. Lincoln came in a little after eight. The play was started already, but the dialogue stopped, the crowd roared, and the orchestra played 'Hail to the Chief.' The play went on. Then, in the third act, it happened."
"What happened?"
"The noise. The shot. A man leaped from the president's box onto the stage. Confusion, screaming, cries for help came from that box. Then calls for physicians. People yelling, 'Catch that man!' It was terrible. And when I got to the box, there he lay, his head on Laura Keane's lap. A head wound. Shot in the head. What could we do? Oh, I must study head wounds. I must do heads."
"Uncle Valentine."
"We know nothing about heads. We know nothing at all yet. And people criticize our work. The do-gooders would stop us. If we knew about heads we could have saved him!"
My voice was hoarse. "Is he dead, then?"
"Leale, I, and another doctor carried him out of the theater, through the crowds, and into