The Lincoln Conspiracy

by Timothy L. O'Brien

  “A minié ball tears flesh like a reaper. If we don’t cut, the rot sets in.”

  “We don’t try anything else, Doctor. How do we know?”

  “Inventive, Mrs. McFadden, always inventive. As I said, good that you are toiling here, surrounded by the promise of innovation. You are averse to pus, but some pus is laudable. It means the wound is curing.”

  “Then why do they die? Why did this one die? Pus seeped from his leg four days ago, then stopped; the poor man went into a fever, and now he’s dead.”

  Fiona turned away from the table. Springer’s favorite cures were lined along a shelf on the wall—carbolic acid, bichloride of mercury, quinine, sodium hypochlorite, Dover’s powder—next to bottles of anesthetics such as chloroform, morphine, and laudanum that Springer dispensed generously whenever he felt compelled to slice into soldiers’ limbs.

  “The war is over,” Fiona said softly, still facing the wall. “The only ones we treat now are the occasionals, the ones that Secesh snipers and other holdouts fire on. We could do better than this. They deserve to get home alive now that the war is done.”

  “You and your fellow Sanitary Commission members shouldn’t be overly fond of your own prescriptions on hygiene, Mrs. McFadden. It got General Hammond into trouble, didn’t it?”

  “I believe that Secretary Stanton got General Hammond into trouble. The secretary seems to share your views on medical practices in our military.”

  “I’ll let the secretary of war know your displeasure. I’m sure he’ll find it of utmost importance.”

  Fiona wheeled around. “Dr. Springer—”

  She stopped. They weren’t alone any longer. A Union soldier was standing in the doorway.

  “There is a man downstairs to see Mrs. McFadden,” the soldier said.

  “Do you know him?” Fiona asked.

  “No, ma’am. He is well dressed and says he is a friend. His name is Augustus Spriggs. He said it is urgent.”

  “Please, show him up.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Show him up.”

  “He’s contraband, ma’am.”

  “He most certainly is not.”

  Springer went to the window and gazed down.

  “He’s a nigger, certainly,” said Springer. “In a bowler. A nigger in a bowler, and your lady doctors in pants. Mrs. McFadden, you are inventive. And you choose inventive associates, no doubt.”

  “I’ll be leaving for the day,” said Fiona, picking up her bag and removing her smock. “I found our conversation today enlightening, Dr. Springer. Thank you for indulging me.”

  “My pleasure, Mrs. McFadden.”

  Fiona accompanied the soldier downstairs and pushed through the Patent Office’s doors onto F Street. Augustus was pacing; despite the heat, his bowler was in place and his collar was crisp. Fiona waited for the soldier to go back inside before uttering a word.

  “What’s wrong, Augustus?”

  A coachman sitting atop a carriage across the street was staring at them. His jacket was torn and dusty. Augustus leaned in toward Fiona, his hands trembling.

  “If Pint and I had caught up to Temple at the train station, we might have protected him.”

  “Augustus, is Temple alive?”

  “He’s alive, but he’s been shot. He’s at Pint’s in Foggy Bottom. We’re to go there at once.”

  Fiona stared blankly at Augustus, absorbing what he had told her.

  “Where was he shot? Who shot him?”

  “In the Center Market. We don’t know yet who shot him. We should go.”

  “Who’s tending to him?”

  “Pint is with him.”

  “But who is tending to his wounds?”

  “He told us to wait for you.”

  “Where are the wounds?”

  “I don’t know. He’s lost blood.”

  “Augustus, wait here a moment.”

  “Fiona, we should go.”

  But Fiona had already dashed back into the Patent Office. Augustus watched the door swing closed behind her, thinking of how many times Temple had told him that he prized Fiona’s spirit in much the same way that he prized Augustus’s education (“Tell me about Homer again, Augustus. We’re in a time of war. You have to steer me right, you and Fiona”). Still, the longer it took Fiona, the more exposed all of them were. Whenever he came to the Patent Office before, he had always waited for Fiona with Temple, never alone. They were a threesome, and Augustus took comfort in that, in their dinners, in their small group of friends, in his books and students, in prayer, in his tiny patch of order in a place tilting mad.

  Now there was disorder, the kind that Temple liked to plunge into when he became restless (“Off to figure it all out, Augustus. See you when I see you”). Disorder only made Augustus anxious, and anxiety, whenever it arose, tugged at him and made him hungry for the dens and calmer, dreamier places.

  He shook off the thought and glanced at the coachman, whose eyes were still fixed on him and the door of the Patent Office. He held the reins firmly with his left hand. His right was slipped inside his jacket, where, Augustus suspected, a gun sat ready.

  When Fiona returned, her bag bulged with bottles. A fine line of sweat crossed the ridge above her eyes, which, even in the sunlight, were a translucent blue.

  “Dr. Springer was surprised to see me back so soon. I think I startled him. I borrowed some of his cures,” she said.

  “And?” Augustus asked.

  “I told him I wanted to bring them home to experiment. He’ll fancy it witchcraft.”

  They looked up at the window above them, which framed Springer’s face as he looked down on them, unamused. Fiona turned toward the carriage.

  “We can’t ride in a carriage together, Fiona,” Augustus said.

  “We are going to ride in a carriage together. It will give Dr. Springer something more to worry about—and that pleases me.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE COMPANY

  “The coachman is not a regular,” Fiona said. “And he looks as if he’s been brawling.”

  The carriage rocked along 9th Street and onto H, headed toward Foggy Bottom. Stoic brick townhouses—three stories high, shuttered, and silent—gave way to shabbier, single-story dwellings as the carriage moved deeper into Foggy Bottom, toward the lime kilns, the icehouses, the plaster, fertilizer, and ammonia factories, the breweries, the shipyards, and Camp Fry.

  “The coachman’s with a group,” Augustus said. “Pint knows some of them.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not sure. As we neared the B&O, Temple was struggling with a strapping ox of a man—an intense, powerful man—who was whipping him.”

  “Temple McFadden doesn’t let people whip him,” Fiona said, shaking her head. “And why were you meeting him at the B&O to start?”

  “Temple didn’t let himself get punished—he nearly trampled him with his horse.”

  “Temple can ride a horse, that he can do, but we don’t own one. Whose horse did he have?”

  “He was on a chestnut stallion, big enough to carry even someone of Temple’s size. He forced the horse into the man who was whipping him and knocked him over. Flattened him right to the ground and then bolted away. As we got closer, Pint studied the man Temple had trampled. He said we had to get out of there right away and catch up to Temple. Then there was shooting.”

  “Temple doesn’t carry a gun.”

  “They were shooting at him. A group of men. They looked like military. Temple turned his horse up E Street. Pint said we couldn’t get through where the shooting was, but we could go back to the station and follow Temple on D. The rain slowed everything down. The streets were muddy and we just fell behind.”

  “But how did you find him?”

  “We passed David Dillon rushing along Louisiana, coming from the Center Market. He said Temple was in trouble there, that he was being chased. So that’s where we went.”

  “Do you know why they were chasing him?”

  “No, but w
hatever it is, Temple’s in a mix. When we got to the Center Market, there were three dead men, Temple on the ground next to them. And there was a group of five surrounding him.”

  “They shot him, the group of them shot him?”

  Fiona unfolded her hands and then knitted them together, pressing her palms inward and then up to her forehead as she collected herself and her thoughts. Pushing panic away, as she had done so many times in the Patent Office when the wounded and the dying had been brought in from the battlefields.

  “No, the group saved him,” Augustus said. “When we arrived they said they would need to get Temple somewhere quiet and safe. They spoke like they owned the ground around them, which I suppose they did in that moment.”

  “And Pint offered them his rooms in Foggy Bottom?”

  “They seemed to find that an excellent idea. They wanted to help.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But they had a ferry there lickety-split. We carried him out of the Center Market and down to the Tiber Creek. There was a small Scottish man waiting there at the dock. He didn’t say much, but all of the men with the rifles took orders from him. They deferred to him. Called him Mr. Allen.”

  “How do you know he was Scottish?”

  “He has a heavy tongue, heavier than Gardner’s.”

  “Some keep those tongues their entire lives,” Fiona said. “Temple’s all but lost his. It’s just an echo.”

  “Well, Allen’s brogue is everlasting, I think,” Augustus said. “It came out of him in barks: ‘Move it, lads, time’s a-wastin’; tend to Mr. McFadden with care.’ And they all snapped to: ‘Yes, Mr. Allen,’ ‘No, Mr. Allen.’ While Allen was directing them this way and that, Temple snapped up, very chirky, as if he hadn’t been shot. He asked us where he was, and Allen said we were taking him to a doctor. Temple said that his wife was the only one he wanted giving him medical attention. Then he passed out again. I told them that Pint and I knew you. They told me to find you and that they would take Temple on the ferry—to the landing off the Potomac and the canal, at Godey’s Kiln, and then up to Pint’s.”

  “You still haven’t told me: why were all of you at the B&O this morning?”

  “Pint had a shipment of silk, bed linens, and silverware coming in on one of the trains. He said he bought it from two Union officers in Baltimore; the soldiers took all of it from a plantation in Mississippi, and Pint plans to resell it to the vendors on Pennsylvania Avenue. He asked me and Temple to meet him there to help him receive the shipment and get it loaded onto a wagon. Pint was late to meet me, and Temple got there ahead of us.”

  “Helping a friend receive, transport, and sell stolen goods. Temple’s a member of the police force, and you’re an educator,” Fiona said, shaking her head. “The things he doesn’t tell me.”

  Augustus erupted in a full, throaty laugh that raised a vein on the side of his neck.

  “Augustus?”

  “Selling goods that our soldiers have rightfully confiscated from defeated slave owners isn’t stealing.”

  “It most certainly is. It was their property.”

  “They said slaves were their property, too.”

  “Human beings aren’t candlesticks. And how dare you laugh at me.”

  “I’m only laughing at what you said about Temple. He tells you everything, Fiona, and hides nothing from you. You’re the only thing he fears, so please, don’t whisper such foolishness to me again. I know Temple and I know you.”

  “Temple was there to help Pint sell all of that silk and silver, wasn’t he?”

  Augustus didn’t respond.

  “He wanted to help sell it so he could have cash in his pocket, didn’t he?”

  She turned toward him, placing her hands on his shoulders.

  “Temple’s gone through our cash again and he was trying to sell stolen goods to raise more, wasn’t he?”

  She shook Augustus and he sighed, letting his head drop into his chest.

  “Temple and I both wanted money,” he said.

  “And for what sin were you in need of funds?”

  “I’m not your husband and I don’t have to reveal my wanderings to you.”

  They looked away from each other and sat in silence as the carriage rocked along.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t get to the station sooner, Fiona.”

  “Temple has grit,” Fiona said, her hands settling into her lap. “We need to remember that.”

  After passing the Washington Gas Light Company at Pennsylvania and 19th Street, the carriage rattled along H to 24th and turned south on Virginia. Pint’s boardinghouse stood there, run-down and defiant, like most of the German and Irish immigrants scattered around Foggy Bottom’s streets. Fiona and Augustus stepped down from the carriage, the coachman behind them.

  “They’re all upstairs,” the coachman said, lifting his chin toward the house.

  “I assumed so,” Fiona replied as she navigated through the mud and slop in the street.

  Even with the humidity, the smell of lime wafted over from Godey’s. Limestone was fed into the chimneys of the five kilns at night; lime was raked from the towers during daylight, then mixed into the mortar that was fueling the District’s building boom. Several youngsters passed in front of Pint’s boardinghouse wearing Emerald Athletic Club shirts, on their way to play baseball.

  The front door of the boardinghouse was warped and swung inside to murk, even in the early afternoon. Augustus and the coachman climbed a narrow and steep set of stairs ahead of Fiona, to a landing that smelled musty and creaked beneath their feet. Two men were standing outside the door leading into the small set of rooms Pint kept on the second floor. Fiona reached out and put her hand on Augustus’s shoulder, holding him back so she could enter first.

  She pushed past Augustus, the coachman, and the two men guarding the door. When she entered, a smallish bearded man sitting in the little parlor rose to meet her. He put out his hand.

  “Mrs. McFadden, I take it? E. J. Allen, at your service.”

  “How did you know my husband’s name?” she asked.

  “Whaddaya mean, ma’am?” he asked, his voice thick with the brogue Augustus had mentioned.

  “Augustus told me you knew my husband’s name almost as soon as you were putting him on the ferry to take him here. How did you learn his name?”

  “Augustus would be …?”

  “The Negro gentleman. You sent him to fetch me.”

  Fiona left off the conversation and turned down the hallway. A dollop of light fell from a doorway to her right, where she found Temple lying on Pint’s bed. His legs were too long for the frame, so they had laid him diagonally across the mattress. Pint sat at Temple’s side, his fingers lacing in and out of one another as they kept pace with his distress.

  “We put him at an angle so he would fit,” Pint said to Fiona. “They say they had to do this for Lincoln at Petersen’s the night he was shot because he stretched beyond the bed, too.”

  “Except Temple’s not going to die,” said Fiona.

  She bent over Temple, laying her palm against his cheek. She stroked his forehead and loosened his shirt. There were clotted whip marks across his thigh, but those didn’t concern her. The stripes could heal safely later, after she cleaned them.

  “I’ll need you to help me roll him onto his stomach, Pint, so I can see his wound.”

  A wad of white cotton was pressed against a bloody burrow at the top of Temple’s shoulder, not far from his shoulder blade. The bullet hadn’t penetrated very deeply—indeed, it had almost only grazed him. But it had gone in deeply enough to cause Temple to bleed profusely.

  “The white gob on his shoulder is mine, Fiona,” said Pint. “I tore up a shirt so we could blot the wound.”

  “And good that you did. Thank you. But will you bring a bottle of whiskey, please?”

  “Fiona?”

  “Doctors who travel with the army in the field, and my inimitable Dr. Springer, like to clean wounds with arsenic acid or
sulfuric acid. Some of them even use turpentine. They are an artful lot. However, I’m going to wash this wound with alcohol, Pint, so bring a bottle, please. You, of all people, have to have whiskey in your rooms. Hurry now.”

  “I keep it here under the bed,” Pint said. He reached beneath the bed and pulled out a heavy glass bottle of whiskey.

  “Put it to the side of the bed, please,” Fiona said.

  She opened her bag and took out needle and thread, a long pair of slender metal forceps, and two syringes attached to a tube.

  “Hello, Fi.”

  Temple, stomach still flat against the sheets, had turned his head sideways on the pillow so that he could see his wife. Fiona looked up from her bag and a warm rush filled her cheeks as she looked into his face. She stroked his hair.

  “I came for you, Temple.”

  “You always do,” he said, before he passed out again.

  She considered him a moment longer, then set her tools beside the whiskey bottle on the nightstand, next to the bed. She pulled some linen from her bag and poured the whiskey on it. She set about scrubbing the wound and then poured some of the whiskey directly into the bullet hole.

  “That’s expensive whiskey,” said Pint.

  “And you’re far too full of palaver. If you leave the room, you won’t notice a drop of it disappearing.”

  Temple shifted slightly on the bed but remained unconscious as Fiona went about her work. Augustus entered just as Fiona was preparing to extract the bullet from Temple’s shoulder. He winced.

  “I’ve already told Pint that if any of this unnerves him, he can leave the room. I’ll say the same to you, Augustus—don’t stay in here if it makes you queasy.”

  Fiona lit a small candle on the nightstand and held the forceps and her needle in the flame. She pushed the forceps into Temple’s wound and extracted the husk of a bullet, dropping it onto the nightstand. She used Pint’s shirt to sop up the blood that began to trickle out, and cleaned the wound again. Then she began sewing the wound closed. Augustus and Pint left the room.