Dearest Abraham,
Received your letter of 18th December. Please accept my heartiest congratulations on your engagement. Miss Todd seems to be possessed of many fine qualities, and judging by your lengthy description of each, you have clearly been possessed by them.
However, I must caution you, Abraham, and I do so only after much deliberation—for I know that this letter will not come as welcome news. The woman to whom you are engaged is the daughter of a Mr. Robert Smith Todd, known to all of Lexington as a gentleman of means and might. But know the truth: that his power is built on treacherous ground. That he is more a friend to my kind than yours. That his allies are the very worst of us—the sort whose names I have sent you these many years. He has been their champion in the statehouse. Their private bank in matters of business. He has even profited from the sale of Negroes intended for that cruelest of fates.
It is not my intention to discourage you from the match, for the daughter cannot be held to account for the sins of the father. However, being so intimately connected with such a man could prove dangerous. I ask only that you give the matter serious consideration, and keep your wits about you—whatever your decision may be.
Yours ever,
—H
History would remember the next day as Lincoln’s “fatal first” of January.
Well, it is done. I have destroyed the woman I love without so much as an explanation. I have destroyed her happiness and my own. I am the most miserable creature that ever lived, and I deserve whatever sorrows are in store. I expect—nay, I hope there will be many.
Abe had called on Mary that morning and broken off the engagement, muttering through his tears (“I recall not a word of it”) before running out into the cold.
I knew that I would never be able to shake her father’s hand again, nor look him in the eye without betraying my rage. To think that my children would share his blood! A man who conspired against his own kind! A man who profited from the deaths of innocents, their color be damned! I could not bear it. And what was I to do? Tell Mary the truth? Impossible. I had but one choice.
For the second time in five years, his thoughts turned to suicide. And for the second time in five years, it was his mother’s dying wish that kept him from following through.
John T. Stuart was visiting with relatives. All but a few of his fellow legislators had left to welcome the New Year in their respective districts. There was only one person in all of Springfield whom Abe could turn to.
“But you are in love with her!” said Speed. “Why in the devil would you go and do such a stupid thing?”
Abe sat on his bed in the tiny room above A. Y. Ellis & Co.—the bed he shared with the half-mad “pestering fly” buzzing about the room.
“I ache to be with her, Speed… but I cannot.”
“On account of her father? The same man who gave you his blessing not—not six or eight days ago?”
“The same.”
“You ache to be with her… her father has given his blessing. You must explain how courtship works here in Illinois, for I have clearly misunderstood some part of it.”
“I have since learned that her father is a party to wickedness. That he keeps the worst kind of company. I can have none of it.”
“If I loved a woman as you love Mary, her father could dine with the devil himself and it would not alter my affections.”
“You do not understand….”
“Then make me understand! How can I be of any use if all you do is speak in riddles?”
Abe could feel it on the tip of his tongue.
“You can trust me to keep any secret, Lincoln.”
“When you say ‘dine with the devil,’ well… you are closer to the truth than you know. I say he keeps company of the worst kind. What I mean to say is… he is a friend of evil, Speed. A friend of creatures who care not for human life. Creatures who would kill you or me and feel all the remorse of an elephant who stepped on an ant.”
“Ah… you mean he is a friend of vampires.”
Abe felt the blood leave his fingertips.
III
Joshua Speed had never felt at home with the other “well-bred boys” of St. Joseph’s Academy. He liked to play pranks. Tell jokes. He liked to dream of life on the wild frontier, “where men were few and arrows flew.” He couldn’t stand the thought of suffering his father’s quiet life of privilege. He yearned for something more—to strike out on his own and see the world. When he was nineteen, this yearning led him to Springfield, where he bought a stake in A. Y. Ellis. But filling orders and keeping inventory hadn’t proved the “wild frontier” he was looking for.
In early 1841, not long after Abe’s fatal first of January, Speed sold his interests and returned to Kentucky, leaving Lincoln to enjoy the room above the store by himself.
Arrived at Farmington. Must sleep.
It was August, and Abe had come to the Speed family’s Kentucky estate, Farmington, for some much-needed time away from his troubles. He hadn’t ventured out in months for fear of running into Mary or her friends, and his name was “treated as a profanity in every parlor in Springfield.” Speed had written his old roommate and insisted he come for “as long as is necessary to heal your troubles.”
Abe was more relaxed than he had been in years, or ever would be again. He took leisurely rides around the estate on horseback. Ventured into Lexington. Lazed afternoons away on the porch of the giant plantation house (the first he had actually set foot inside, his nightmares notwithstanding). If there was one drawback to life at Farmington, it was the inescapable sight of slaves. They were everywhere—in the house; in the fields.
Riding on the road to town today, I saw a dozen Negroes chained together like so many fish upon a trotline. It causes me no small discomfort to be among them. To be surrounded by them. Not only because I think their servitude a sin, but because they remind me of all that I wish to forget.
Abe and Joshua Speed talked the days away. They spoke of Britain’s might; of the steam engine. And they spoke of vampires.
“My own father dealt with the devils, I am ashamed to say,” said Speed. “They were hardly a secret among men of his stature, and a poorly kept one in our home, my older brothers having been enlisted in his efforts to win their favor.”
“So he sold Negroes to them?”
“The old and the lame, as a rule. He believed it a double blessing—a way to be rid of a useless slave and make a profit doing so. Once or twice he sold off a healthy buck, or a wench with child. Those fetched a higher price as they had more bl—”
“Enough! How can you speak of them so? Speak of men as cattle led to slaughter?”
“If I have given the impression that I take their murders lightly, I apologize. I do not, Abe. Nor have I ever. To the contrary, vampires are chief among the reasons that I never sought the warmth of my father’s esteem, or mourned his passing with more than a few tears. How could I accept it, when I have heard the screams of men and women feasted upon to line his pockets? When I have seen the faces of those demons through the spaces between wooden planks? If I could banish it from my memory… if I could atone for what was done here, I would do so.”
“Then atone for it.”
Speed needed little convincing. He needed only be told that hunting vampires was both dangerous and thrilling, much like the wild frontier of his imagination. As I had with Jack, * I shared the whole of my knowledge—teaching him how and when to strike; sparring with him to build his poise. Like Jack, he was impatient, too eager to run headlong into the fight. But where Jack could rely on his strength to carry the day, the slender Speed could not. I tried to impress upon him the immense force and quickness possessed by vampires; how very close he would be to death. I feared he did not fully understand. Yet such was his eager spirit that I found myself once again excited at the prospect of hunting.