Part I

“I wish you knew Ma, I know you would like her.”
— John Surratt, writing to his cousin

“This young woman is a plain unassuming girl.”
— W. P. Wood, superintendent, Old Capitol Prison

Mary Surratt

There were two things for which I could thank my late husband: buying our house in Washington, and dying.

It was in 1862 when my husband left this world, but two years later I still woke sometimes, trembling, before I remembered I was perfectly free. No more drunken rages to endure. No more finding my husband facedown on the floorboards. No cuffs to the head, which to John’s credit did not come that often, but of which I always lived in dread. I could lie in bed and stretch out comfortably, knowing no brute was going to soil the sheets or violate my body.  A drunken man is seldom careful with his money, and John was no exception: though he was fairly prosperous when I married him (it was, I must admit, one of his attractions), he made bad decisions, the worst of which was to build the tavern and bar I continued to run after his death. How I hated the place! It brought John to his ruin, I sincerely believed, because as a naturally taciturn man, he had to drink harder than ever to make himself jovial to his customers. Worst, it left him in debt, which I still owed—his parting gift to me. For two years, my children and I struggled to maintain this folly of his, and with the prospect that Maryland would soon adopt a new constitution that would free our three slaves, we could expect only to struggle harder.

But John made one investment that brought in a steady income: a handsome house on H Street in Washington, about fifteen miles from this sleepy crossroads in southern Maryland. For years, it had been rented to a reliable tenant—until, one sweltering August day, I received a letter. Poor health was obliging my tenant to move to the country, and he would not be renewing the lease. So atop of everything else, we would have to find a new tenant, one who might or might not be dependable. Bad news— until I sat back and pondered the situation more thoroughly.

This was my chance to start a new life.

“The tenant in Washington is not renewing his lease,” I told my son and my daughter as we sat down to our dinner that evening. “After praying about the matter, I have come up with an idea I hope will suit us all. Instead of leasing our house in Washington, we move into it ourselves. If we lease this place, and take in boarders at H Street, we can live much less expensively than we are living now, and we can pay off some of those wretched debts.”

“Boarders?” Anna wrinkled her nose.

“We must, my dear. Even if we did not need the income, it would be foolish to waste all of that space. And what is wrong with taking in a few quiet, well- behaved people in the city when we already take our chances with anyone who passes through here?”

“That is a point. And there will be shops, and concerts, and the theater… I like the idea, Ma.”

“And we can walk to church as well. You, Johnny?”

“Suits me fine. And I might even have a boarder for us: my friend Mr. Weichmann. He’s got a government job now, so he can pay, and I know he’s not happy with his present lodgings. Too far from his job, and too large and lonely, he says.” Johnny looked sidelong at his older sister. “And no pretty girls.”

“Johnny! If he is to come to live with us, you mustn’t encourage that sort of thing. I won’t abide it. But when can we move, Ma? I will need a new dress for the theater. It won’t do to walk around in rags, or we will never attract a good class of boarder.”

“Don’t pack yet, child. We must first lease this place. And we have to get the Washington house fixed up as well.” In truth, I was scarcely less excited than Anna and was already settling in my mind which furniture to take to Washington and which to leave here.

The last of the evening tipplers had weaved away from the bar and Anna had gone to bed when Johnny knocked at my door. “Ma, you’re going to rent the place to someone on our side, aren’t you?”

“Most certainly.”

War is men’s business, I had always believed, but on the day Lincoln was inaugurated, my oldest son, Isaac, rushed off to Texas and later joined the Confederate army, so it drew me in. It drew me in another way as well: my husband—who, like most people in this part of southern Maryland, sympathized with the South—allowed the tavern to become a stop for those making the dangerous journey across the Potomac River into Virginia, running the blockade between North and South with goods, mail, and money. I had no choice in the matter, of course, but had I been consulted, I no doubt would have agreed. How could I do otherwise, with a son fighting for the Confederacy? So after my husband died, I saw no reason to alter the tavern’s status as a safe haven— especially as my Johnny had been aiding the Confederacy too, since he left school after my husband’s death, first by using the post office in our tavern as a drop for those wishing to send mail to the South, then, once the Union took his postmaster position away from him for disloyalty, as a courier himself.

“I have been thinking, Johnny, that a tenant may not be necessary. Should you want to run the place on your own— ”

Johnny shook his head. “I’m tired of peeling drunks off the floor, Ma, and I can serve the Confederacy a lot better if I don’t have this place to worry about. No, as a matter of fact, I was thinking when I was tending bar tonight that I know a man who might be perfect, a Mr. Lloyd. He’s in Washington now, but he stops here whenever business brings him through Prince George’s County, and I know he’s been hankering for a country life, if he can find something to do.”

“And he is a Southern man?”

“Yes— and even better, he’s a man who minds his own business.”

Nora

August 1864 to October 1864

I don’t like my present lodgings, Father.”

My father looked around at my room, which was large and comfortably furnished. It was not cool—no place could be so in Washington City in late August— but a shade tree rendered it at least tolerable. “Why not, child? The Misses Donovan are sweet ladies.”

“They are sweet old ladies. We do nothing besides drink tea and go to Mass. If I go outside, I have to go with their servant, Clarence, and he is almost as old a lady as they are.”

“Child— ”

“Well, it is true. ‘Miss Nora, the misses won’t like you going on this street. There is a saloon here!’ There’s a saloon on every street in Washington, Father. I might as well be a prisoner.”

“Surely you exaggerate, my dear.”

“There’s nothing to read here, either.”

“Why, they have a library full of books.”

“Dreary books. Dull books. Nothing but essays and history and religious works, because the misses consider novels unsuitable reading for impressionable young ladies.” I frowned. “Well, that’s not entirely true; they do have Clarissa, which I have read. Twice. It’s very sad.”

“What about the piano? Don’t they let you play upon it?”

“Yes, but it’s out of tune. They can’t hear it well enough to know the difference. When I asked them if they could engage a tuner, they acted as if I were trying to turn the place into the Canterbury music hall.” I sighed theatrically. “I might as well enter a convent, Father. This dreariness is insupportable.”

My father sighed as well.

My mother had died when I was quite small, and my father, having loved my mother dearly and not caring to remarry, had sent me away for my education. The schools I attended were not the sort of places depicted by Mr. Dickens or Miss Charlotte Brontë (whose novels I devoured), but well- run, quiet establishments where I learned to write an elegant hand, play the piano, and speak tolerable French. In such a manner, I had passed a happy, if somewhat monotonous, existence in tranquil surroundings until this June, when at age nineteen, I had reached the point where there was very little that could be taught to me (or so I thought), and so I came home.

Father was a messenger and a collector for the Metropolitan Bank and had been so for decades. He had once left his position due to ill health, but his superiors missed him so sorely, and he missed them so sorely, that they begged him to resume his duties, which he did, with a rise in salary as his reward. He probably could have afforded to lease a small house, with me keeping it, when I left school. But he worked long hours and sometimes had to go out of town on business, and Washington City was not the quiet town it had been when he came there in the 1830s. The war had brought in people from everywhere and every walk of life, and Father feared that, home alone, I might fall into unsuitable company. So he had placed me to board with the Misses Donovan, just a few blocks away from his own lodgings.

“You are truly unhappy here, child?”

“I do like the ladies, Father,” I replied truthfully. “But they are old maids, and if I stay here much longer, I will turn into one myself. I can just feel myself growing old here.”

“I will consult with Peter, then. Perhaps he will know of a suitable lodging.”

I suppressed a groan. There were two sorts of men my father admired—learned men and men of religion—and my older brother, Peter, an aspiring priest who had taken a teaching job at the soon-tobe-opened Boston College, had the happy distinction of falling into both categories. For the past few years, Father had been in the habit of consulting him about any business involving the family, which, since my older sister, Hannah, was a cloistered nun, generally meant my business. As Peter had often told Father that I was overindulged, I could imagine only with the greatest trepidation what sort of lodging, short of a convent, he would consider suitable. I knew better than to argue, however, although I felt that Father hardly needed Peter’s advice. It was true that he had no more than a charity school education and that he felt this keenly, but he could read anything put in front of him and wrote a beautiful hand. He could add and subtract long figures in his head while others—Peter included—w ere scratching their pens on papers and frowning over their errors.

Weeks passed, and I was resigning myself to staying with the Misses Donovan and getting used to their untuned piano when, in late September, Father came to see me again, this time with Peter— come all the way from Boston to see to my affairs—at his side . “Peter has found an ideal situation for you, Nora. A widow, Mrs. Surratt, is moving to Washington from the country and will be taking in boarders at her house on H Street. She is a very respectable lady.”

A respectable widow sounded to me little better than an old maid, but I nodded politely.

“She has been keeping a tavern and bar in Surrattsville, in Prince George’s County in Maryland,” my brother informed my father. I noticed Peter was prematurely balding— unlike Father, who at age sixty-four still had a full head of gray hair.

“A bar?” Father, who had never been a drinking man, frowned.

“Her husband ran the bar, and it was necessary for her to continue with that line of business in order to live. She has long wished to give it up, she told Father Wiget, and move to Washington, but it was not until recently, when the tenant here failed to renew his lease, that this became a realistic possibility.”

My father’s expression lightened. “She knows Father Wiget, then?” As well as being the priest at St. Aloysius, he was the president of Gonzaga College, where Peter had been both a pupil and a teacher.

“Yes. She has known him for many years, and her sons were at his school of St. Thomas Manor before it closed.”

I perked up. Mrs. Surratt had sons?

“She has had a difficult life, Father Wiget tells me. Her husband was adopted by a family of substance and inherited a handsome estate, but he was a poor businessman and a heavy drinker and squandered much of his holdings, and the war did the rest. They have only the tavern and the house in Washington.” My brother glanced at me. “Nora, I have spoken rather freely. I hope that if you do go to live with Mrs. Surratt, you will treat what I have said as matters of confidence.”

“Yes,” I said. In truth, I had been too busy wondering about Mrs. Surratt’s sons— Two? Three? More? Handsome?— to care about her difficult life.

“Are her sons much about the house?” Father asked.

“The elder is serving with the Confederate army—coming from where they do, that is to be expected, though— and the younger helps his mother with her affairs. Father Wiget sees the younger one occasionally when business takes him to Washington and knows him to be of good character. But what makes this situation ideal— and, I believe, more congenial for Nora than her present one—is that Mrs. Surratt has a daughter, an accomplished young lady of twenty-one. She will therefore have a suitable companion.”

“It sounds ideal,” said Father. “I knew that you would come up with something.” Peter nodded modestly.

“Of course, I must meet this lady and satisfy myself that Nora will be safe in her care, but I am sure that is merely a formality. Is she living here now?”

“No, her business necessitates her staying in Surrattsville for a while longer, but her daughter will be moving here to set up the house.”

“Then if Nora is agreeable”—I nodded— “we will drive over there on Saturday afternoon and introduce ourselves.”

Two days later, we made our trip to the country. Father, who did not keep his own equipment, had rented a rather smart buggy for the occasion. It was a beautiful September day, neither too hot nor too chilly, and I felt very pleased with myself as, clad in my newest striped gown and the brand- new bonnet I had convinced Father I needed for the occasion, I settled into the buggy. Still, I could not help wishing I had a fine young suitor beside me instead of my father. We drove through the streets of Washington to the Navy Yard Bridge, after which we passed into the countryside. “Let me give you the advice I have always given you, child: speak little about the war in these parts—anywhere, really, but especially in these parts. Feeling is very strong here against the Union.”

“I know that, Father.”

“A reminder can’t go amiss.”

Although the war had been raging for over three years, I had never succeeded in finding out my father’s true sympathies, so diligently did he follow the rule he had set for himself and me. I had come to suspect he, in fact, had no sympathy for either side: that his allegiance lay solely with Washington City, where he arrived over twenty-five years ago as a poor Irishman and where he had married, fathered six children, and buried my mother and my three baby sisters. His work brought him into every street and alleyway of the city; there was simply no address he could not find. If a building had been torn down over the past two decades, he could tell you where it had stood and what had replaced it. Few people in the city did not know him at least by sight, and there had to be a truly raging snowstorm to keep him from performing his duties. His affection for the city extended even to its miserable summer heat, in which he took an almost proprietary pride.

In good time we arrived at the crossroads of Surrattsville, so named because the Surratts had once operated the local post office out of their tavern, which, along with its outbuildings, was the only habitation I could see in the immediate vicinity. Being accustomed to town life, I understood why the family was so eager to leave this quiet place.

As a colored servant took charge of our horse and buggy, Mrs. Surratt came outside to greet us. “This is the young lady Father Wiget recommended to me?”

“Yes, ma’am. This is my daughter, Miss Honora Fitzpatrick. We call her Nora.”

I stood by silently as my father and Mrs. Surratt eyed each other. It was clear they each approved. Clad in gray half mourning, Mrs. Surratt looked to be in her early forties. She was tall, with dark brown hair, and her figure was of substantial, though not fat, proportions. As for my father, with his gray hair and his erect figure, and with his faint Irish lilt, his presence was a courtly one. Had he not been aghast at the idea of replacing my late mother, he could have remarried six times over.

Father explained to Mrs. Surratt what a modest and innocent young woman I was, presumably, I suppose, to assure her that I would not be attempting to sneak men into the house or to do any of the other untoward things that more adventurous boarders than I evidently managed. It was all quite true—I was modest and innocent— but he made me sound like such a dull creature, it was disheartening to hear it all. Fortunately, there was not much to say about this subject, and the conversation soon turned to Mrs. Surratt, who assured Father that her boardinghouse would be a perfect repository for my virtue. Only well- behaved young men would be allowed to board, anyone with liquor in his rooms would be turned out immediately, and I would be sharing a room with either Mrs. Surratt herself or her daughter, Anna (an equally respectable and virtuous creature), depending on how many boarders were in residence. It went without saying that I would be expected to attend Mass with the family regularly; as a matter of fact, Mrs. Surratt stated, the ease of walking to church from the H Street house had been one of the chief advantages of removing to the city.

Soon, my father and Mrs. Surratt were discussing terms. The price—thirty-five dollars per month— seemed reasonable to me, although my existence had been too sheltered for me to be much cognizant of such things. After Father expressed his satisfaction with the terms, Mrs. Surratt turned to me with a smile. “The bargain needs only your consent, Miss Fitzpatrick. Would you like to stay in my house?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation. Mrs. Surratt and I had barely exchanged two words, but I liked her face, and I liked the fact that she had put the final decision in my hands.

So two weeks later, after Miss Surratt, who had been visiting friends in Baltimore on the day I met her mother, removed to the Washington house, I walked to my new lodgings, having shamefacedly bade good-bye to the Misses Donovan, who sobbed over me like they would a beloved granddaughter. To heap further guilt upon my shoulders, they would not hear of my paying someone to carry my trunk for me but sent Clarence with me to push it in a wheelbarrow.

“Them poor old ladies will miss you awfully, Miss Nora,” he said as he puffed along at my side. “They thought the whole world of you.”

I shifted the cat basket I held from arm to arm as a faint hissing emitted from it. “I will miss them too, Clarence, but I wanted a companion of my own age, and I promised them that I would come over for tea once a week.”

“I do hope so, Miss Nora. It’ll break their old hearts not to see you again. Old ladies getting up there, they set a lot of store by such things, you know. Why, they was going to buy you a nice little cake for your birthday.”

My twentieth birthday was a few days away. “I’ll visit next week. I promise.”

I had issued several such assurances by the time we arrived at our destination, a gray brick house on H Street between Sixth and Seventh. It was tidy and well kept, though not as nice as that of the Misses Donovan, who took boarders more for the company than because of any actual need. Clarence could not resist a derisory sniff as he walked up the steps and knocked at the door leading to the parlor story of the house.

An auburn-haired young lady, tall like Mrs. Surratt but otherwise not bearing a strong family resemblance to her, answered. “Miss Fitzpatrick, I suppose? Bring your trunk in here. This is where we will be sleeping for now.”

Clarence carried my trunk down the hall to a large bedroom at the back of the house. It was sparely furnished with a view of the alley, and I could not help but compare it to my comfortable, chintz-filled quarters at the Misses Donovan’s home. “It will be nicer once I buy a few more things,” Miss Surratt assured me. “I have but just come to town and brought only what was absolutely necessary from the country.” She looked ruefully out the window. “Nothing to be done about the alley, I fear.”

“Of course,” I said. I turned to say my good-bye to Clarence, who clearly shared my misgivings about my new quarters. “Thank you, and I will visit in a few days, I promise.”

“We’ll all be looking for you, Miss Nora.” He bent close to my ear. “Don’t forget: there’s always a home for you with the ladies.”

“What did he say?” Miss Surratt asked as Clarence shut the door behind him.

“Oh, he just wished me well.”

An indignant mew came from my basket. “I see you’ve brought a cat.”

“Your mother said he would be fine.” I set the basket down and opened it. Mr. Rochester leaped out, glaring at his new surroundings.

“Oh yes, we could use a mouser. Come into the parlor.”

Our bedroom opened into that room, which Mr. Rochester had already found. As he perched by a window and surveyed H Street, his tail flipping majestically, I asked Miss Surratt, “Are there any other boarders here?”

“Not yet. Mr. Weichmann—a dreadful friend of my brother’s—will be coming, I think, and Ma wants to put a family with him on the third floor. So there’s no point in us staying up there and then having to move out. There are bedrooms up in the attic where we can sleep once Ma comes, if there’s space.”

I nodded amicably, for years of boarding, at school and in homes, had made me flexible. “I’m sure it will suit.”

“You don’t have an accent.”

“Should I?”

“Well, you’re Irish. Didn’t your family come here because of the famine? But, of course, you must have been a little child at the time.”

I shook my head. “I was born right here in Washington City. Father has been in America since the twenties. He helped some of his kinsmen leave during the famine, though.”

“Where does your father live? Swampoodle?”

She spoke of Washington’s crowded and poor Irish neighborhood. I stiffened. “Certainly not,” I said. “Father boards on Twelfth Street. I don’t know anyone who lives in Swampoodle, nor would I care to.”

“Well, you needn’t get your Ir— get annoyed, I mean. I am sorry.”

As this sounded sincere enough, and I was going to have to share a bed with her, I nodded and began to put my things away in the drawer Miss Surratt indicated. I noticed with pleasure that my clothing was as good a quality as hers, if not better. As Father had always lived well within his means and was no longer charged with the keep of my brother or my sister, he gave me a generous allowance. To change the subject, I said, “Your mother mentioned your brothers. Will they be living here?”

“My younger brother, John, comes and goes from our house in Surrattsville. You’ll meet him soon, I imagine.” She gave me a look.

“My older brother, Isaac, is fighting for the Confederacy.”

“God keep him safe,” I said politely.

“Which side are you on?”

Though I inclined toward the North, I remembered my father’s advice. “I have friends and family caught up on both sides,” I said vaguely. “I just hope it ends soon.”

“Do you have a sweetheart?”

This was ostensibly a safer topic than Swampoodle or the war, but it was a rather irritating one. “No,” I admitted. The truth was, like Jane Eyre, I was plain and little, and Washington City was woefully short of Mr. Rochesters in human form. I’d never had a beau, nor had I even had a young man give me more than a passing glance. “And you?”

“I thought I had one, but he is serving as a doctor in Richmond. You can imagine, with all the young ladies acting as nurses, and all of them and their mothers inviting him to dine, there’s not much time for me.”

“You’re very pretty. I’m sure you’re well rid of the faithless wretch.”

“Why, thank you.” Miss Surratt held out her hand. “Call me Anna, Miss Fitzpatrick.”

“And you may call me Nora. Not Honora. Only the nuns at school called me Honora.”

“It’s good to have someone else in the house, Nora. We have some distant relations—Mr. and Mrs. Kirby, living just a few blocks from here—but he’s busy with his work, and she’s busy with her children, so they’re not very diverting. I’ve hardly had a chance to see the city.”

“I’ll show it to you. We’re close to everything. The shops, the theaters— we’re just blocks from Ford’s Theatre. I’ve been there several times.”

“I’ve never been there,” Anna admitted.

“It’s a lovely theater. We must go together.” I could not resist what I said next. “Why, I saw John Wilkes Booth play there.”

Anna stared at me. “Him?”

If you had put a young lady from New Orleans, a young lady from Boston, a young lady from Richmond, a young lady from Cleveland, a young lady from Baltimore, and a young lady from Washington together, the one thing they would have agreed upon, before they scratched one another’s eyes out, was that John Wilkes Booth was one of the handsomest men in America. Any woman worthy of her sex, and I was no exception, could rhapsodize for hours upon his curling black hair, his soulful black eyes, his beautiful skin, and his fine physique— even those women who hadn’t actually had the privilege of seeing him in person. I was indeed among the lucky ones, for the previous year, he had played at Ford’s Theatre, and since I had been at school in Georgetown at the time, I had plagued my father until he agreed to take me. As the play had been Richard III, Mr. Booth’s looks had not shone to their best advantage, since he was forced by the role to assume a hunchback and to scowl a great deal. Even so, I had had to repress a smile when Lady Anne informed Richard that he was a foul toad. I had gone to bed that night thoroughly convinced such a lovely man could not possibly have killed his nephews, although of course the play said he did.

Just the memory made me sigh. “I did see him, and he was wonderful. Did you know that he now spends much of his time in Washington? We might get to glimpse him in the street sometime.”

Anna’s eyes widened. “That,” she breathed, “would be absolutely divine.”