Only now, with the immediate danger passed, did my eyes find two of the several soldiers now forming a circle around the intruder.
Abe’s heart stopped. They were the same young soldiers who’d been looking after Willie and Tad.
His children were alone.
The boys had been too engrossed to pay any mind to the shouting, or notice their shivering guards running off to investigate it. In this vulnerable moment, they were set upon by a stranger.
He, too, might have escaped their notice, had the heel of his boot not come down on their doll and brought an end to their game. Willie and Tad looked up to see a man of average height and build standing over them, wearing a long black coat, with a scarf and top hat to match. His eyes were obscured by dark glasses, and his lip obscured by a thick brown mustache. “Hello, Willie,” he said. “I have a message for your father. I would very much like you to give it to him.”
Now it was Tad’s screams that brought the guards running.
The vampires were the first to arrive, with Lamon and several soldiers on their heels. I came bounding down the steps of the South Portico next, and found Tad frightened and crying, but seemingly unharmed. Willie, however, was rubbing his tongue with his coat sleeve and spitting repeatedly. I took him in my arms and looked him over—turning his face and neck this way, that way—all the while praying there were no wounds on his body.
“There!” Lamon cried, pointing to a figure running south. He and the trinity gave chase, while the others hastened us into the house. “Alive!” I cried after them. “Alive!”
Lamon and the trinity chased the figure across Pennsylvania Avenue and through the Ellipse. * When it became clear that he couldn’t keep pace, the breathless Lamon drew his revolver and, with no regard for the innocent bystanders he might have hit, fired at the distant figure until his cartridges were spent.
The trinity was gaining on its target. The four vampires ran south toward the unfinished Washington Monument, into the field of grazing cattle that surrounded it. Construction of the massive marble obelisk (at 150 feet, it was only one-third its eventual height) had been halted, and a temporary slaughterhouse erected in its shadow to help meet the needs of a hungry army. It was into this long, wooden building that the stranger now disappeared, desperate to lose the killers who were only fifty yards behind him. Perhaps there would be knives to fight with inside… blood to throw them off his scent… anything.
But there were no carcasses in the slaughterhouse that Sunday afternoon. No workers cutting the throats of cattle. Only dozens of metal hooks hanging from rafters overhead, each reflecting the late-day sun that squeezed through the open doors at both ends of the long building. The stranger ran across the bloodstained wooden floor looking for a place to hide, a weapon to wield. He found neither.
The river… I can lose them in the river…
He sprinted toward an open door at the far end, determined to head south to the Potomac. Once there, he would dive beneath its surface and slip away. But his exit was blocked by the silhouette of a man.
The other door…
The stranger stopped and turned back—there were two more silhouettes behind him.
There would be no escape.
He stood near the center of the long building as his pursuers advanced from either end, slowly, cautiously. They meant to capture him. Torture him. Demand to know who’d sent him, and what he’d done to the boy. And, if captured, chances were that he would tell them everything. This he could not allow.
The stranger smiled as his pursuers neared. “Know this,” he said. “That you are the slaves of slaves.” He took a breath, closed his eyes, and leapt onto one of the hanging hooks, stabbing himself through the heart.
I like to think that in his final moments, as his body convulsed and blood poured from his nose and mouth—joining that of the animals’ below—that he saw the flames of hell beneath his feet, and felt the first of an eternity’s agony. I like to think that he was afraid.
As guards sealed the White House and searched the grounds, Willie sat in his father’s office, calmly relating what had happened, while a doctor looked him over.
The stranger had grabbed his face, he said, pried his mouth open, and poured something “bitter” into it. My thoughts turned at once to my mother’s death from a fool’s dose of vampire blood, and I fell into silent despair at the thought of seeing my beloved little boy suffer her fate. The doctor found no signs of injury or symptoms of poisoning, but made Willie swallow several spoonfuls of powdered charcoal * as a precaution (an experience he found far worse than the assault itself).
That night, as Mary tended to Tad (who had been quite shaken by the day’s events), I sat by Willie’s bedside, watching him sleep; watching him for the slightest sign of sickness. To my great relief, he seemed well the next morning, and I began to entertain the faint hope that it had all been nothing more than a scare.
But as Monday wore on, Willie grew increasingly tired and sore—and by the second night, he was running a fever. All business ground to a halt as Willie grew worse, and the best doctors in Washington were summoned to treat him.
They did all they could to treat his symptoms, but could find no cure for them. For three days and nights, Mary and I kept a vigil at his bedside, praying for his recovery, fervent in our belief that youth and Providence would see him through. I read him passages from his favorite books as he slept; ran my fingers though his soft brown hair and wiped the sweat from his brow. On the fourth day, our prayers seemed answered. Willie began to mend on his own, and my faint hopes returned. It could not be a fool’s dose, I told myself—for he would surely be dead by now.
But after a few hours’ reprieve, Willie’s health began to worsen again. He couldn’t eat or drink without being sick to his stomach. His body withered and weakened, and his fever refused to subside. On the ninth day, he could not be roused from sleep. And on the tenth, despite the best efforts of the best physicians available, it became clear that Willie was going to die.
Mary could not bring herself to hold another of our little boys as he left this earth. It fell to me to cradle our sleeping son against my chest and gently rock him through the night… through the next morning… and through the day that followed. I refused to let him go; refused to let go of that faintest hope that God would not be so cruel.
On Thursday, February 20th, 1862, at five p.m., Willie Lincoln died in his father’s arms.
FIG. 19-1. - MARY TODD LINCOLN POSES WITH TWO OF THE THREE SONS OF SHE WOULD LIVE TO BURY - WILLIE (LEFT) AND TAD (RIGHT).
Elizabeth Keckley was a freed slave who worked mainly as Mary Lincoln’s dressmaker. Years later, she recalled the sight of Lincoln weeping openly, his tall frame convulsing with emotion. “Genius and greatness,” she said, “weeping over love’s idol lost.” John Nicolay remembered the tough, towering president walking to his office door “as if in some trance.” “Well, Nicolay,” he said, staring off into space, “my boy is gone… he is actually gone.” Abe barely made it into his office before bursting into tears.
For the next four days, Abe conducted little government business. He did, however, fill nearly two dozen pages in his journal. Some of them with lamentations…
[Willie] will never know the tender touch of a woman, or experience those particular joys of a first love. He will never know the complete peace of holding his own tiny son in his arms. He will never read the great works of literature, or see the great cities of the world. He will never see another sunrise, or feel another drop of rain against his sweet face…
Others with thoughts of suicide…
I have come to believe that the only peace in this life is the end of it. Let me wake at last from this nightmare… this brief, meaningless nightmare of loss and struggle. Of endless sacrifice. All that I love waits on the other side of death. Let me find the courage to open my eyes at last.
And sometimes, with blind rage…
I wish to see the face of the cowardly God who delights in these miseries! Who delights in striking down children! In stealing innocent sons from their mothers and fathers! Oh, let me see his face and rip out his black heart! Let me strike him down as I have so many of his demons!
Arrangements were made to transport Willie’s body to Springfield, where it would be buried near the Lincolns’ permanent home. But Abe couldn’t bear the idea of having his little boy so far away, and at the last minute it was decided that Willie would lie in a Washington crypt until the end of his father’s presidency. Two days after the funeral (which Mary, overcome with grief, could not attend), Abe returned to the crypt and ordered his son’s casket opened.
I sat beside him, as I had on so many nights during his brief life; half expecting him to wake and embrace me—for such was the skill of his embalmer, that he seemed merely asleep. I stayed with him an hour or more, speaking to him tenderly. Laughing as I told him stories of his earliest mischief… his first steps… his peculiar laugh. Telling him how very loved he would always be. When our time was through, and the lid again affixed to his coffin, I began to weep. I could not bear the thought of his being alone in that cold, dark box. Alone where I could not comfort him.
With Mary confined to bed, Abe sought refuge behind his closed office door in the week after Willie’s death. Fearing for his health, Nicolay and Hay canceled all of his meetings indefinitely, and Lamon and the trinity guarded his door at all hours. Dozens of well-wishers came to offer the president their sympathies that week. All were thanked and politely turned away—until the night of February 28th, when one man was ushered directly into his office.
He’d given the name that could never be refused.
IV
“I cannot imagine the burden you bear,” said Henry. “The weight of a nation on your shoulders… of a war. And now, the weight of another son buried.”
Abe sat in the light of the fireplace, his old ax hanging above its mantle. “Is this why you come, Henry? To remind me of my miseries? If that be the case, then I assure you—I am too aware of them already.”
“I come to offer my sympathies to an old friend… and to offer you a choi—”
“No!” Abe choked up at once. “I will not hear it! I will not be tormented with this again!”
“It is not my wish to torment.”
“Then what is it, Henry? Tell me—what is your wish? To see me suffer? To see the tears run freely down my cheeks? Here—does this face satisfy you?”
“Abraham…”
Abe rose from his chair. “The whole of my life has been spent on your errands, Henry! The whole of my life! And to what end? To what happiness of my own? All that I have ever loved has fallen prey to your kind! I have given you everything. What have you given me in return?”
“I have given you my everlasting loyalty; my protection from the—”
“Death!” said Abe. “You have given me death!”
Abe looked at the ax over his mantle.
All that I have ever loved…
“Abraham… do not give in to this despair. Remember your mother—remember what she whispered with her dying breath.”
“Do not try to manipulate me, Henry! And do not pretend to care that I suffer! You care only for your own gains! For your war! You know nothing of loss!”
Now Henry rose to his feet. “I have spent these three hundred years mourning a wife and child, Abraham! Mourning the life that was stolen from me; a thousand loves lost to time! You know nothing of the lengths I have gone to protect you! Nothing of that which I have suff—”
Henry composed himself.
“No,” he said. “No… it mustn’t be this way. We have come too far for this.” He grabbed his coat and hat. “You have my respects, and you have my offer. If you choose to leave Willie buried, so be it.”
The sound of Willie’s name roused such wildness in me—Henry’s callous tone such rage that I grabbed the ax from its perch and swung at his head with a scream, missing him by less than an inch, and shattering the clock on the mantle. I recovered and swung again, but Henry leapt over my blade. The office door now flew open behind us, and two of the trinity rushed in. On seeing us, they froze—unsure of where their loyalties lay. Lamon, however, was plagued by no such uncertainty. On entering, he drew his revolver and aimed it at Henry—only to have it taken by one of the vampires before he could fire.
Henry stood in the center of the room, arms at his sides. I charged again—raising my ax as I ran. Henry didn’t so much as blink as I came. Rather, he grabbed the handle as I brought it down on his head, took it from me, and snapped it in two, throwing the pieces on the floor. I came at him with my fists, but these he caught as well, twisting them around and forcing me to my knees. Holding me thus, he knelt behind me and brought his fangs to my neck. “No!” cried Lamon, rushing forward. The others held him back. I felt the tips of those twin razors against my flesh.