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  Advance Praise for The Sixth Conspirator

  “Taking us through the hideaways and haunts of European capitals in the mid-nineteenth century, this intriguing historical mystery—the search for Lincoln’s ‘Sixth Conspirator’—keeps us guessing right up to the last page. As in his highly acclaimed novels, Jefferson, Jackson, and Grant, Max Byrd tells the tale with witty and fast-paced writing that kept me turning pages, eager to know more about the ‘real’ men and women of the era along with the fictional characters of his creation.”

  —Cokie Roberts, Emmy-winning political commentator and author of Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868

  “From its brilliant and devastating opening scene to its surprising and breakneck conclusion, The Sixth Conspirator takes the last tendril of the Lincoln assassination and weaves it into a compelling, erudite, witty, and wise novel that should secure Max Byrd’s place among the premier writers of historical fiction working today. Not to be missed!”

  —John Lescroart, bestselling author of The 13th Juror and Betrayal

  “I absolutely love this novel! I think it’s one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a long time.”

  —Diane Johnson, New York Times

  bestselling author of Le Divorce

  A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK

  ISBN: 978-1-68261-878-3

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-879-0

  The Sixth Conspirator:

  A Novel

  © 2019 by Max Byrd

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover art by Cody Corcoran

  Interior design and layout by Honeylette Pino and Sarah Heneghan

  This book is a work of historical fiction. All incidents, dialogue, and characters aside from the actual historical figures are products of the author’s imagination. While they are based around real people, any incidents or dialogue involving the historical figures are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or commentary. In all other respects, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Permuted Press, LLC

  New York • Nashville

  permutedpress.com

  Published in the United States of America

  For Haley, Abby, Noelle, and Toby, with Love

  “Mr. Lincoln is, I think, the ugliest man I ever put my eyes on; there is also an expression of plebian vulgarity in his face that is offensive (you recognize the recounter of coarse stories). On the other hand, he has the look of sense and wonderful shrewdness, while the heavy eyelids give him a mark, almost, of genius. He strikes me, too, as a very honest and kindly man; and with all his vulgarity, I see no trace of low passions in his face. On the whole, he is such a mixture of all sorts, as only America brings forth. He is as much like a highly intellectual and benevolent Satyr as anything I can think of. I never wish to see him again, but, as humanity runs, I am well content to have him at the head of affairs.”

  —Lt. Colonel Theodore Lyman

  “It may be doubted whether we should be more benefitted by the art of Memory or the art of Forgetfulness.”

  —Samuel Johnson

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  THE YOUNGEST SOLDIERS GOT UP EARLY for the hangings.

  The corporals and sergeants came out into the courtyard later, yawning and blinking at the heat and slowly buttoning their tunics.

  The prison carpenter and three assistants were already there, having worked by torchlight through the night to construct a scaffold and frame. Just after eight o’clock the captain in charge, a former sheriff and hangman, arrived and began to prepare four ropes and nooses from the ninety feet of two-thirds inch-thick Boston hemp that the Navy Yard had supplied the previous evening.

  Close observers up along the penitentiary walls could count seven knots for each noose except the last, which the captain put aside, unfinished. But most eyes were fixed, not on the courtyard where there was only the hangman and scaffold to see, but on the open road that led north from the Old Arsenal Penitentiary gate to the end of Delaware Avenue. All the way up the road, and presumably up Delaware Avenue as far as the distant white dome of the Capitol, soldiers had been posted in loose formation, keeping the crowds of sightseers off to the sides and leaving a clear path through the center in case a messenger would come galloping down from the White House with a pardon in his satchel.

  Because nobody in the prison, nobody in Washington City, nobody in Maryland or Virginia or the Eastern Seaboard or the whole vast green inland space of the thirty-five United States, now growing still and hot under the rising sun, nobody in the civilized world thought that the American government would hang a woman.

  Back down in the courtyard, the carpenter had completed the scaffold and started to hammer rough, unpainted pine into coffins. In the northeast corner of the yard, a detail of soldiers had set about digging four new graves in the hard-baked ground. But it was the scaffold, forty feet away from the high south wall, that dominated the scene, a “great machine of death” according to the single newspaper reporter who was allowed to approach the structure.

  Including its massive oak crossbeam, it stood at least twenty feet high, almost reaching the guards’ walkway on top of the brick walls. The reporter counted and held up his fingers. The prisoners would have to climb thirteen steps from the ground to the platform, the traditional number since the days of Oliver Cromwell. Toward the front of the platform were two wide trapdoors, attached by iron hinges. Each trapdoor was held up by a single, surprisingly thin wooden pole. When the signal was given, someone would have to knock the two poles aside so that the traps would fall open, and the prisoners would drop.

  The executions had been ordered to take place between ten o’clock and two o’clock—though, shockingly, the prisoners themselves had only learned of it the night before, when letters were delivered to their cells along with their suppers. Almost at once their lawyers had begun frantic steps to stay the order, and at midnight a civilian judge had actually issued a writ of habeas corpus for Mrs. Mary Surratt, commanding the government to bring her to his courtroom by ten o’clock that morning. Just as his predecessor had done, President Andrew Johnson had written his own counter-order, suspending habeas corpus, and sent it to the judge.

  At eleven twenty-five a few soldiers came into the courtyard with a pair of cannon balls. They mounted the scaffold, placed a cannon ball on each of the trapdoors, and proceeded to test the mechanism. For some reason the trapdoor nearer the prison, the one that would hold Mary Surratt and Lewis Payne, failed to open when its prop was kicked away. The soldiers tested it six or seven times until it functioned properly. Each time they tested, the door slammed downward with a loud, violent bang that could be heard in the cells and out in the road.

  By noon, although the government had printed only one hundred official tickets of admission, at least a thousand spectators had jammed into the rooms, windows, and walkways of the two adjoining prison buildings. One window in the center was reserved for the photographer Alexander Gardner, whose bulky stereopticon camera poked its glossy black snout into the stifling heat like a miniature cannon.

  At twelve-fifteen three nooses were tied to the crossbeam.

  In the nor
thwest corner of the courtyard, in the shade, two bored soldiers built a miniature gallows out of scrap wood and with mock solemnity took off their caps and hanged a rat.

  Off to one side, watching them and wearing an expression of unreadable blankness, stood Major Mary Edwards Walker, an army surgeon, the first woman ever to hold such a position, an outspoken supporter of women’s rights, and known, when out of uniform, to wear the bloomer costume.

  At twelve-thirty a carriage came rolling down the penitentiary road at high speed and every soldier around the perimeter was shouted to attention, sparking the sudden, excited rumor that a rescue attempt was underway—Confederate soldiers would spring out of the ground, reborn—an escape ship was planning to enter Greenleaf Point with its guns blazing. Some said artillery fire could distinctly be heard across the Potomac.

  In fact, the carriage contained only General Winfield Scott Hancock, who walked quickly through the main gate and disappeared. Soldiers and spectators alike turned back toward Delaware Avenue and the Capitol.

  At twelve forty-five soldiers placed four wooden chairs on the platform, two behind each trapdoor.

  At one o’clock, even as more rumors of an imminent pardon or rescue swept through the crowd, a new detail of soldiers took their places around the base of the scaffold. Then General Hancock pushed open the heavy wooden prison door and ordered them to parade rest. The crowd went silent. Those closest to the prison door heard a brief, almost whispered exchange between Hancock and the captain.

  “You may proceed, captain.”

  “Her too?”

  “Her too.”

  The captain picked up the unfinished fourth noose and hastily tied it.

  A moment later Mary Surratt emerged from the same door, arms supported by two soldiers. She wore a black dress and a black veil and bonnet, and at the sight of the graves and the huge scaffold fifty feet away she staggered and tried to turn back. The soldiers gripped her tightly and half carried, half dragged her up the steps to the platform. Behind her came two Roman Catholic priests with crucifixes, murmuring the Church’s last rites.

  After she was seated in the first chair, the three male prisoners filed out, each guarded by soldiers, and took their chairs. In front of them the four nooses swayed back and forth in what little breeze there was. An officious sergeant brought black silk umbrellas to hold over the prisoners’ heads and ward off the sun while they sat and listened to an officer read the charges and sentences.

  Then the hangman approached the chairs. He looked at Mary Surratt and at Hancock. With visible reluctance, he tied her hands behind her back. After a long pause, he muttered something to the general, and finally, with much fumbling, knelt and wrapped two white cotton ties around her billowing skirt.

  With another, stronger show of reluctance, he removed her veil and bonnet and slipped the noose around her neck.

  In the back of the courtyard one man whirled around to the crowd and threw his hands into the air.

  “Gentlemen, I tell you this is murder! Can you stand and see it done?”

  When no one spoke, he lowered his hands and turned back, breathing rapidly, to the scaffold.

  The hangman pulled the knot of the noose down against the trembling Mary Surratt’s left ear. One of the soldiers on the platform handed him a white cotton hood and he slid it over her head, so that her stark, bone-white face disappeared.

  To her left, the other three prisoners were bound and hooded in the same way. All four were ordered to stand and move forward onto the trapdoors. The huge, powerful Lewis Payne took his place next to Mary Surratt. On his left were the smaller figures of David Herold, formerly a clerk and errand boy for Thompson’s Drug Store on New York Avenue, and the hapless German immigrant, George Atzerodt.

  The hangman came down the steps and stood before the platform. He looked at the four soldiers underneath, holding the props. Then he looked up at Hancock, who nodded.

  He clapped his hands once, twice, and on the third clap the soldiers butted away the poles and the trapdoors dropped with a heavy slam. The cross beam creaked and groaned with the weight, and the crowd of spectators let out a long, soft, collective sigh like the rustle of dry leaves.

  Suspended in mid-air, Mary Surratt slowly drew her knees up until she seemed to be sitting in an imaginary chair. Then she began to shake from head to toe. Lewis Payne kicked once and was still. John Wilkes Booth, shot to death two months ago in a Maryland barn, already lay buried in a secret grave underneath a storage room floor in the prison. When Mary Surratt, sheathed in her black dress, at last stopped twitching, all of the conspirators who had plotted to murder Abraham Lincoln were dead.

  All but one.

  PART ONE

  ALL BUT JOHN H. SURRATT, JR.

  “The Fifth Conspirator,” as the newspapers, monotonous as sheep, invariably called him.

  The hanged Mary Surratt’s fugitive son was known to have been a secret Confederate courier for the last two years of the war, and a close friend of the assassin Booth. He was the only one of Booth’s coterie who was allegedly not in Washington the night Lincoln was shot. Allegedly. But because nobody saw Surratt that night, it had taken almost forty-eight hours before he was tied to the plot, and by then it was much too late.

  He was last reliably seen, in fact, two days after the assassination, buying clothes in a shabby dry goods store near the train station in Elmira, New York. And after that, though Federal detectives rushed to Elmira and fanned out across the whole northeast, Surratt simply disappeared from view, gone to ground like a burrowing animal.

  It was a full year and a half after Lincoln’s murder—on November 23, 1866—before the War Department could announce that the Fifth Conspirator had finally been captured in, of all the unexpected places in the world, Alexandria, Egypt.

  “And now that we’ve got him, we’ll hang him, just like his mother,” Daniel Keach said with his usual sneer. “Hang him till he shits his pants just like her.”

  “Shut up, Keach.” Quintus Oakes glowered at his former colleague. “Watch your mouth.”

  Nobody else, however, seemed to mind Keach’s language. On Oakes’s left, as if indifferent to boys quarreling, General George H. Sharpe studied a blue cardboard State Department file with his name on it and dated that very day: January 4, 1867. He murmured, “Quint, Quint,” but didn’t look up. Behind an enormous many-paneled desk, lighting what was, by Oakes’s count, the third cigar since they had sat down in his office, Secretary of State William Seward was intently watching Oakes.

  “It says here,” General Sharpe read, “that when the Marines caught him, he was wearing the uniform of the Papal Zouaves. I didn’t know that.’”

  Seward flapped away smoke with his left hand. “He was, indeed. He was wearing a red turban and gray canvas leggings, and he had a long blue sash for a belt, the very picture of a Papal Zouave. He came strutting off the mail boat from Malta and our consul in Alexandria was on the docks and recognized him and clapped him in the brig. I remember that just about the first casualty of the war I ever saw was Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, killed across the river over there, in Alexandria, Virginia, as it happens, and he was dressed in the Zouave uniform, his whole regiment was—a bunch of former New York firemen. They thought it looked martial and distinguished. He was shot trying to haul down a Confederate flag somebody had run up on a hotel roof. Before that he’d been a clerk in the President’s law office.”

  When Seward referred to the President, Oakes thought, pulling his mind away from Keach and his unhealthy nature, there was no need for a name. Vice President Andrew Johnson might have taken the oath of office, but for men like Seward and General Sharpe the only President who counted now lay in his tomb half a continent away, in Springfield, Illinois.

  “Apparently,” Sharpe said, still reading, “Surratt enlisted in the Zouaves last December.”

  Seward nodded. “But we only found o
ut in August, and then we asked the Vatican to arrest him, which they ultimately did around the first of November. Then he somehow escaped—somehow—and got away to Naples, and from there to Malta, and from Malta on, of course, we were looking for him.”

  “Somehow,” Keach repeated with the same sneer. “The Vatican let him go. They knew who he was, they just never liked Lincoln, that’s all. They were glad to see him dead. The Catholic Church favored the South, and they let him go. Plain fact.”

  “Where’s Surratt now?” Sharpe asked.

  “He’s in irons in a locked and guarded cabin on the U.S.S. Swatara,” Seward said. “That’s one of our new sloops. He’s heading home from Egypt. It took almost a month to get all the paperwork done in Cairo or he’d already be here. I had a telegram yesterday that they’ll reach Baltimore on February eighteenth. We’ll put him on trial June first.”

  “Well, if you already have him, Mister Seward,” Keach said, “and the trial date is set, why on earth did you and the General call us here?”

  Seward leaned forward and peered over his cigar. “You don’t say much, do you, Captain Oakes?”

  “Captain Oakes didn’t want to come,” Sharpe said. “I had to drag him down from New York.”

  “A brigadier general can be very persuasive,” Oakes said drily, “even if you’re out of the army.”

  Seward gave a soft, gravelly-voiced chuckle, but he didn’t, Oakes noted, answer Keach’s question. Instead he got up from his smoke-obscured desk and walked over to the big double-framed window beyond their chairs.

  The Secretary of State, it was obvious, dressed with a politician’s flair for capturing attention. He wore yellow pantaloons, a yellow waistcoat, and a contrasting old-fashioned black frock coat. He was about sixty years old, Oakes guessed, ten years older than General Sharpe, with thin white hair that might have been auburn in his youth, and a hooked nose big enough and sharp enough for most people to say he looked like a parrot or a red-beaked macaw. But few people looked at his nose anymore.