An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [47]
He was looking at me with those warm brown eyes. "Is there anything else, Emily?" He used his voice like a surgical instrument. He could cut you with it or heal you with it. I had felt both, and I much preferred to be healed. Now that voice was indulgent, with a hint of amusement and a touch of caution.
"Did you get the lawyer for Annie?"
"I got two, Frederick Aiken and John W. Clampitt. They are the best."
I nodded and picked up my schoolbooks.
"Well, Emily," he said as I took my leave of the room, "what about it? Don't you think you would have come to live with me by choice?"
I let him think it. It was a small price to pay for Mr. Aiken and Mr. Clampitt. Another difficult arrangement entered into, I thought. Another moment saved. How many times now had I gone against Daddy's instructions? How many moments had I saved? And what would I do with them?
Uncle Valentine was right. It was a circus out on the streets.
"Quiet, girls. And stay together," Mrs. McQuade told us. "Abraham Lincoln's trip into American folklore is beginning."
She was right, too. We stood across the street from the White House in the press of people who were straining to catch a glimpse of the coffin as it was brought out the front doors by the pallbearers. All the church bells of Washington were tolling. Guns began to boom from the many fortresses that had sprung up around the city during the war. For as far as my eye could see, all up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, there was an ocean of people.
Young men were climbing trees. Young boys who had somehow staked a claim on those trees were selling places in them for twenty-five cents. A man up front was hawking places on the curb for ten dollars.
Above us, the rooftops were crowded with people. On Pennsylvania Avenue itself, policemen on horseback were trying desperately to organize the hook-and-ladder companies, men from lodges, clubs, churches, and military regiments, into some kind of procession to follow the hearse. I saw a whole contingent of Negro soldiers ready to march.
Mrs. McQuade wore a bright red bonnet. Most people around us wore black. There were several remarks about her bonnet being unseemly, but she didn't care.
"Look for my bonnet above the heads, girls," she'd told us, "if you lose sight of me. I will be there, like a beacon in the night."
"More like one of General Hooker's ladies," Myra hissed. Myra was angry because six hundred tickets had been given out for people to file past the catafalque in the White House and she was supposed to go with her father. But at the last minute, his editor had asked him to give the ticket to a reporter from France. To assuage that unhappiness, she kept us informed about what she knew.
"General Grant is to be at the head of the catafalque. He is supposed to be wearing a white sash across his breast to show he's the head pallbearer. Well, he'll be dressed properly, for a change—not like Appomattox, when he had to borrow a clean shirt to attend the surrender."
She spoke in a very loud voice. Several people around our small group were listening. So Myra took on an air of importance.
"Robert Lincoln is to be right up there with Grant, too, of course. Likely he'll be wearing his army captain's uniform. And with him will be the only other remaining Lincoln son, Tad, who's only twelve."
"What are they doing now?" a young man asked Myra. He was done up in showy attire. Annie would have called him a hustler. Or worse.
Myra preened. "It looks like they're putting the coffin in the glass hearse."
"How come you know so much, little missy?" The hustler grinned. His two young friends nudged each other and winked and raked their eyes over Myra, whose black silk dress emanated anything but mourning.
"My father's a reporter for the Intelligencer."
"Is he, now? And you're out here alone? Couldn't you use an escort? And perhaps, at the same time, educate us as to what's going on? My friends and I are from Baltimore."