Chapter 6
An Unjust Arrest
(Saturday, January 19, 1861)
Jude Royer had never seen anyone as beautiful as the woman in the carriage. Her dark brown, almost black, hair framed by a purple bonnet and white veil, wreathed a face initially defying description.
When he thought about it, pushing up the courthouse steps to look for Matthew Swann but blocked by throngs of clerks streaming out to watch the riot, he couldn’t remember much of her face other than the impression of being in the presence of beauty.
A pure, unadulterated beauty of a perfect symmetry he’d never seen before.
He squinted, trying to recollect their few minutes together.
Who was she?
He’d been rude in bolting from the carriage, but her beauty had intimidated him. And now the lady was already fading into the blurry illusion of an experience so bizarre as to almost be a figment of his imagination.
Clerks roughly elbowed Jude aside for a better view of the police cavalry pouring down the slope of Lexington Street past the courthouse, led by a stallion carrying Marshal George Kane, head of the Baltimore police. The courthouse spectators were lively, cheering on both rioters and the police.
Confident that Matthew was now safe, Jude shut his eyes, trying to block out the noises.
He pushed aside the stroking fingers of his headache to prod his brain, and found bottomless layers of memories, no, not layers he could sift through, but brief recollections and sensations swirling in his mind, and he had to reach in and fish around and hope he’d find the right one. Flashes of images appeared, like these new carte de viste cards, brief scenes in gray and white rather than anything live.
What did the Catholics call her? Like in those lithographs of Renaissance Italian paintings he’d seen at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts? The Madonna?
The renderings of Jesus’s mother, a carpenter’s wife, as an aristocratic woman who’d never seen a day’s work in her life had amused him. His childhood Lutheran church contained no graven images of the Holy Family, let alone angels of the Lord, and farmers knew mangers didn’t look like castles.
Now, for the first time, he began to understand why these artists wanted to glorify the Virgin Mary.
*****
Inside the courthouse, Jude found Matthew waiting in the vestibule.
“The riot is what happens when the North destroys the country by electing Abraham Lincoln!” Matthew hissed to Jude. “Shame on Mr. Lincoln!”
His eyes shone, fighting to hold back tears. The Palmettos hadn’t delivered their promise, or he’d been mistaken about them.
Probably the latter, Jude surmised. Despite the colored woman’s warnings, it had ended well, relatively speaking, even if he’d sacrificed his papers and nearly died in the process. If the headache was the price to pay to be absolved of past sins, so be it.
Matthew peered at Jude. “You smell as if you’d fallen into a cattle feeding trough .”
Jude looked down. And saw that manure smeared the bottom of his his coat.
Appalled, he gripped Matthew. “Loan me your coat. I can’t go up in front of a judge looking like this. You’re only filing a will and you need to go to the Egyptian temple next door,” he said, referring to the records office built at the height of fashion for Egyptian columns.
Matthew protested before reluctantly conceding. His frock coat reached to Jude’s knees where it ended with an angular box cut, and a furry cloth lined the wide lapel. A dandy item, the coat hung light on Jude’s shoulders yet felt warmer than expected. “What’s this made of? Wool?” he asked.
“Wool and cashmere,” Matthew said while holding Jude’s ruined coat at a safe distance.
Jude hadn’t heard of cashmere. “Take good care of my coat,” he told Matthew. “I know you’d think nothing of throwing it away.”
Matthew started to protest when the courthouse doors burst open and uniformed constables swarmed into the building, their pounding footsteps jarring Jude’s headache and leaving him agape when they suddenly elbowed him aside and surrounded Matthew.
“Matthew Carroll Swann?”
A constable retrieved a folded document. “I have a warrant for your arrest, issued by Captain Turner, chief clerk of the city courts.”
Matthew stared at the officers.
Then he shrieked.
“Pray excuse me!” he cried, backing into a spittoon and knocking it over. “If this is what the Palmettos consider a joke, then I have no desire to join your organization!”
“Matthew Carroll Swann, you are under arrest for instigating a riot in Monument Square,” the constable dully said. “Furthermore, you are also under arrest for conspiring to kidnap and assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln.”
….kidnap and assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln….
The gaslights flickered within their frosted globes, rendering the officers in their blue uniforms ghostly figures. The circle of stars on an old American flag above Matthew’s head started to spin as the invisible gray fingers of Jude’s headache seized control again.
….kidnap and assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln….
Matthew stared back in horror.
He pulled away from the officers. “Save me!” he screeched, fumbling in all directions and the overturned spittoon swirled around his feet, brown juices streaming onto the black and white flagstones. He turned to Jude, grabbing at him and his eyes shining with terror as the police closed in on him. “Jude, save me!”
****
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