An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [69]
Because I did not trust happiness. You had to be a fool to do that. I'd never been a fool, and I was not about to start now.
***
On May 15 Robert and I met Annie outside the Arsenal Building at the foot of Four and a Half Street. The eight accused in the Lincoln assassination were to plead this day. Lawyers were taking testimony.
It was a day of bright blue, green, and gold, shot through with the white and pink of tree blossoms. We waited outside the gates for Annie.
When she came out the side door, her feet dragged. Her dress was gray with black trim, her hair bound back in a severe twist. There were dark circles under her eyes. She smiled wanly and came through the gate.
"How did it go?" I asked her.
"Mama pled not-guilty. They all did, even your uncle's friend Dr. Mudd."
She showed us a paper with the charges. It said her mother had received, entertained, harbored, and concealed John Wilkes Booth, David E. Herold, Lewis Payne, who also called himself Powell, John H. Surratt, Michael O'Laughlin, George A. Atzerodt, and Samuel Arnold, with intent to aid, abet, and assist them in the execution of the president of the United States.
The paper looked awful, with all of it written out there in legal language. And the names of people I knew connected with it. Annie's hand shook as she held it.
"Worse, my mother has one of her migraines." She looked at Robert. Then the black bag he held in his hand. "Why have you brought that with you?"
"For you. In case you are in need of anything," he told her.
"You're not a doctor yet."
"I will be, soon. And I've accompanied Dr. Bransby on house calls enough to be able to administer if someone is in need."
"Do you have anything in there for migraines?" Annie asked. "And have you ever made a prison call?"
It took Robert only a heartbeat to say yes, he'd do it.
What surprised me most as we went through the underground corridor of Carroll Prison was the sound of water running. It ran down the stone walls in a constant trickle. Underfoot, everything was wet. I could have sworn I felt something scurrying on the floor beside me. I lifted my skirts.
Within ten minutes I'd forgotten the blue, green, and gold day outside. Here it was winter-cold, dim, and bleak, even with candles in sconces on the walls. Ahead of us the jailer shuffled, his shadow thrown against the wall. So this was a prison, then, not the tower of my fairy tales.
"Suppose it's all right to let you see her. But I should check with my boss," he said.
"Has a doctor been in yet to see her?" Robert asked.
"Prison doctor sees 'em all, regularlike."
"He hasn't helped my mother," Annie told the jailer.
"Don't know as anything could." The man's rough clothing and manner made him seem surly. But he could have turned us away at the door and hadn't.
Thanks to Robert. "Don't say anything," Robert had warned us. "Sometimes when you just act as if you belong, they're so taken by surprise, they don't know what to do. And rather than show their stupidity, they'll go along with you."
Robert was right. The jailer hadn't known what to do. But seeing Robert's black bag and officious manner, he'd agreed to let us in. Our bluff had worked.
"Suppose anythin's better than havin' to hear her puke up her guts in there like she's doin'." The jailer took his huge ring of keys out of his pockets as we approached the last cell.
"Where are the other prisoners?" Robert asked. The cells were all empty.
"This is the women's ward."
There were no other women prisoners. Mrs. Mary was alone at the far end of a dark corridor in a cell with straw on the floor and one small window that admitted a single shaft of sunlight.
She was kneeling on the floor over a bucket, throwing up. The sounds of retching echoed in the emptiness. The place smelled like an outhouse.
"Mrs. Surratt, you got company," the jailer said.
She