The Lincoln Conspiracy

by Timothy L. O'Brien

  Temple moved a step closer to Nail.

  “You’re with me, yes, Nail?”

  “I have a deep debt with you, Temple. I’m with you. Tho’ I would greatly like to know what exactly it is that I’m committing to.”

  “I would like to know that as well.”

  Temple looked back at Augustus and paused. He was seated near the table of plates, holding two pieces of paper in one hand and one of the diaries in the other. He was staring blankly ahead. And there was a tear running down one of his cheeks.

  “Augustus?” Temple asked.

  No response. Temple limped to the back of the warehouse.

  “Augustus?”

  Temple reached him, and Augustus handed over the sheets of paper to him. It was a letter, pulled from the back of the black leather diary.

  “Read it,” Augustus said.

  Temple tipped the letter into a shaft of light and began reading. “August 24, 1855. Dear Speed: You know what a poor correspondent I am …” He continued reading, placing the second page atop the first as he moved along.

  “When you reach the last portion, read it aloud,” Augustus said.

  A moment later, Temple started reciting: “ ‘I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of Negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except Negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.” When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.’ ”

  Temple stopped, collecting himself.

  “Keep reading,” Augustus said.

  “ ‘Mary will probably pass a day or two in Louisville in October. My kindest regards to Mrs. Speed. On the leading subject of this letter, I have more of her sympathy than I have of yours. And yet let me say I am, your friend forever, A. Lincoln.’ ”

  Temple looked up at Augustus.

  “The letter was neatly folded in the back of the diary,” Augustus said. “The diary’s owner put it there. And if you read some of these other pages, it all becomes obvious.”

  “I imagine it does,” Temple said.

  “This diary belongs to Mary Todd Lincoln.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE SHOOTER

  Nail walked slowly to the back of his warehouse toward Augustus and Temple, who stared silently at the pages in their laps. The cogniacs fluttered and Temple began tapping his cane on the floor. Tat, tat, tat, tat.

  “This half of my find from the B&O appears to be from Mrs. Lincoln,” Temple said. “Her initials, M.T.L., are embossed at the bottom of the diary’s pages.”

  “Well, you weren’t born in the woods to be scared by an owl,” Nail replied.

  “Joshua Speed was once the president’s best friend.”

  “What else do you have there besides letters?” Nail asked.

  “The diary goes back for four or five months, but the recent entries are of great interest. Mrs. Lincoln was fearful of the men who surrounded her,” Augustus said. “She was fearful of what it meant for Mr. Lincoln, I would think.” He began reading aloud from the diary’s pages.

  March 12, 1865: My Dear Husband is strained. He says that Northern greed will be as hard to balance as Southern bile when this great war ends. And the end comes. Mr. Stanton is with him day and night and of late all the talk is of Council Bluffs and another railway line; rebuilding the South and its railway lines; of opening the West with still more railways. Railroads to corset the country. Bankers from New York were here today and there was loud debate near his office at supper. He will not share these details with me. But he says it pains him to be at odds with Mr. Stanton, upon whom he relies so. Our Robert sides with Mr. Stanton and Father says that to be in opposition to his eldest son on any matter is a struggle. “Molly, he is our son,” he says. “And our son’s ambitions run deep.” Mr. Stanton, of course, despises me. I despise the group he brings to father’s office now, including Mr. Scott and Mr. Durant. They are all schemers. Father sees through them, but hasn’t the energy to wrestle them while still wrestling with General Lee.

  Augustus continued reading.

  March 25, 1865: Father didn’t sleep last night and he complains again of the nightmares. He has had many of a casket, surrounded by mourners, in the Executive Mansion. The casket is in the Green Room, where little Willie once lay dead. Father approaches the mourners in his dream and they tell him they are mourning for him! For him!! He is haunted. And his days remain haunted, too. My fears consume me. He and Mr. Stanton met with the bankers again today. I took it upon myself to warn Mr. Stanton that he was straining my Husband with continued talk of railroads and war and rebuilding the South. He responded with frost—withering frost! His look frightened me. I reminded Mr. Stanton that it was I who convinced my Darling Husband that General McClellan must be replaced and that he should mind his standing and his manners or share a similar fate. And no sooner had I left the room than my Dear Husband came out and warned me not to interfere—and to avoid threatening Mr. Stanton. I was taken completely aback. Three very grim-faced bankers poured out after, trailed by Mr. Stanton, who nervously pleaded with them. “This can be arranged, Sirs,” Mr. Stanton, said. “Patience, please.” Father raised his hand and told them all to be quiet in the presence of his wife. One of the bankers ignored him. Ignored my Darling Husband! The President! The banker told Father that even in New York women know when to silence themselves, and if the President could not keep his wife quiet, then he saw no reason to be quiet, either. Father, ever slow to anger, rippled in rage and ordered the men out. “Arrangements are not the province of my War Secretary, gentlemen. And I see to arrangements as they align with the Union’s needs. Do not press me beyond that,” he said. “I remind all of you that our city remains defended by almost 70 fortifications and more than 800 cannon. And we still have boys dying in the fields, boys at war. Mind them—mind this war—before your purses.” The bankers slinked away, but their faces remained chiseled in stone. I apologized this evening for stirring things such and my Dear Husband told me that these affairs stirred long before I became involved. I ask him to share more of this with me. “Father, I am your wife and I am here to fortify you and to support you.” But he falls silent, as he has done so often in recent days.

  April 9, 1865: It is a day of glory and Abraham shines! General Lee surrendered to General Grant in the court house at Appomattox. I have not seen Father so lifted in years. The railways have fled his mind. At the very least, they have fled his attention along with the New York merchants. Abraham told me that today beams celebration and redemption. Would that Willie were here with us for this day. Still, we have our Tad, our son who loves us true. And further still—the Union triumphant!

  April 11, 1865: Robert has taken a stand with the bankers and Mr. Stanton in whatever dispute and with whatever forces exist against my Dear Husband. I advised him to pay it no mind. But he replies that a “mighty web” is spun. His silences are back. I ask him to elaborate. “Father, what web?” And he stares away. I need him to lighten his burdens, cast off the worries of these past four years. We may see a play soon at Ford’s and he will enjoy a proper night away from the Executive Mansion.

  Augustus paused and caught his breath. A few dogs barked outside the warehouse. The cogniacs fluttered. He pressed his hand to the side of his head, closed his eyes briefly, and read again.

  April 19, 1865: They took my Murdered Husband’s body from the Mansion to the Capitol. They are taking him from me and giving him back to the people. Life is all darkness. The sun is a mockery to me.

  “She doesn’t write very much after this,” Augustus said. “Most of the entries a
re brief, except for the last, and it’s barely a week old.”

  May 11, 1865: Robert wants funds for furniture and real estate and tells me I’m not to be disconsolate with our loss. I have given him $1,000 this year alone and he wants more. And he assails me for my gloves and my curtains and my other purchases! I loathe my eldest son! My boy! He says he has the Pinkertons looking after me for my protection but they drive me to raving distraction. He says I am lunatic and unfit!! I found some of Robert’s telegrams from New York. I know of Mars. He wants my papers. Robert wants my papers and he wants my money. Yet nothing is worse than my Darling Husband’s absence. That is my daily crucifixion. My Gethsemane.

  “It ends there,” Augustus said. “It stops.”

  Several minutes passed before Temple stood up. Nail moved closer, bending over to examine the diary.

  “You can read!” he said to Augustus.

  “Negroes read,” Augustus replied. “A self-taught mathematician and Negro—Benjamin Banneker—surveyed and helped design Pennsylvania Avenue here seventy years ago. We can read and we can add.”

  “You mistake me,” Nail said. “I mean, you read beautifully. All I can read are banknotes. I cannot read as you read. I can’t read books.”

  “Augustus is the son of free Negroes who fled Texas after the Alamo,” Temple offered. “He is educated and he is a teacher.”

  Nail nodded, smiled, and extended his hand to Augustus. But Nail pulled back his hand when a fury of howling and scratching erupted around the warehouse’s entry, interrupting him. Then a fist pounded against the door.

  “In!” Nail shouted.

  One of Nail’s men opened the door a crack. The tip of a rifle peeked through the gap and the snouts of two dogs pushed through, snarling, around the man’s legs. He bent his head farther inside and looked across the warehouse to where Nail and the others were standing.

  “ ’Sall right!” Nail hollered.

  The door closed again.

  “There’s still the other,” Augustus said.

  The three men looked down at the two diaries stacked on the floor.

  “You’ve done it once before, Temple. Open it again,” said Nail.

  Mary Todd Lincoln’s diary was almost perfectly square, appearing as new and fresh as it was the day it was bought, and it was heavy with thick pages and a sturdy binding. The second diary, like the first, was bound in leather, but it was distinct in every other way. It was long and slender, and its red cover was faded and spotted. Some of the pages hung loosely, close to falling out. The script inside was a man’s, and the writing was tight and small, with none of the looping curves that marked Mrs. Lincoln’s notes. But the language, while not as florid as Mrs. Lincoln’s, was just as self-absorbed.

  Temple sat down and began reading aloud:

  For six months we had worked to capture, but our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done. But its failure was owing to others, who did not strike for their country with a heart. I struck boldly, and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on. A colonel was at his side. I shouted Sic semper before I fired. In jumping broke my leg. I passed all his pickets, rode sixty miles that night with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump. I can never repent it, though we hated to kill. Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment. The country is not what it was. This forced Union is not what I have loved. I care not what becomes of me. I have no desire to outlive my country.

  Temple looked up at Augustus and Nail. Augustus didn’t say a word. Nail’s eyes met Temple’s and Nail grimaced, shaking his head. Temple read on:

  For my country I have given up all that makes life sweet and holy, brought misery upon my family, and am sure there is no pardon in the Heaven for me, since man condemns me so. I have only heard of what has been done (except what I did myself), and it fills me with horror. God, try and forgive me, and bless my mother. Tonight I will once more try the river with the intent to cross. Though I have a greater desire and almost a mind to return to Washington and in a measure clear my name—which I feel I can do. I do not repent the blow I struck. I may before my God, but not to man. I think I have done well. Though I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me, when, if the world knew my heart, that one blow would have made me great, though I did desire no greatness.

  Across the top of a following page, in bold, printed letters that departed from the tight script elsewhere, was the lone word that Temple had spotted at the railroad station: “assassination.”

  Patriot has told Maestro that I am no traitor, I am sure. Patriot says that Maestro owns Lord War. Davey, George, and Lewis are all heroes also, even if they, too, share the mark of Cain. Those that find this, those that chase me, know the cipher, and the cipher is true. I do not care that I am made a villain among those who honor the Tyrant. He wanted nigger citizenship and I ran him through.

  Temple stopped.

  “Temple, you’ve gone pale,” Augustus said. “Is that all there is?”

  “No, there’s more,” Temple said, quietly.

  “Tha’s the shooter,” Nail said. “Johnny Booth.”

  Temple closed the journal and slipped it inside his breast pocket, where it sat comfortably, he thought, in exactly the same place John Wilkes Booth had probably kept it the night he shot Mr. Lincoln.

  “I think Augustus and I need to move on before the morning wears long here, Nail,” Temple said. “For now we best go where we don’t complicate your day any further and where I can find Fiona.”

  “You walk through that door, Temple, you and Augustus, hanging on to those diaries, and you both walk out into a world of pain. You can’t walk away from it after that.”

  “You told me I wasn’t born in the woods to be scared of owls.”

  “That was before all of this reading. Those diaries are desired. They speak of a slain president. Leave them with whoever is after them and go on your way. It all smells of blood, and you’ll bleed, too. You already have. More will follow.”

  Nail looked down at the floor in front of him. A vein pulsed on his neck, and he wrung his hands, the muscles in his forearms twitching like banjo wire.

  “World of pain,” he said.

  “You’re still with me?” Temple asked.

  “I am,” Nail replied. “Pinkerton and Baker hate one another, you know.”

  “And why?”

  “Because of Stanton. Dueling allegiances.”

  “I want to move these diaries to a different place, and I want to set about learning more about something that’s here in the second. I’ll be back to you tomorrow.”

  “And you’re off to where?”

  “To a place that would be as much a mystery to them as Swampdoodle.”

  “Neither of you should come back here at night, if you need to come back at all, and Augustus should never come alone,” Nail said. “Those men and dogs out there recognize neighbors and nobody else. None of them will tolerate a nig … none of them will tolerate a Negro on his own, day or night.”

  Temple shoved the Lincoln diary into the satchel.

  “Ta for all you’ve done, Nail.”

  “Nothing of it, Temp.”

  Nail turned to Augustus and paused. Then he shook his hand.

  When they got to the warehouse door and flung it open, a blast of ripening heat rushed in. The dogs barked wildly outside, straining at their leashes. Temple limped down the stairs at an angle, favoring his bad leg. As he and Augustus moved past the dogs, Temple turned to look back. Nail was watching them depart, hands on his hips, the ink stains that Augustus had mistaken for tattoos now a cobalt blue in the late morning sun.

  Temple closed his eyes for a moment, thinking about the queen of spades and a faro game at Mary Ann Hall’s. He needn’t worry about any bet he made in a card game at Mary Ann’s, not when he’d have the queen of spades. No coppers in his game, no betting the turn. Just smart flat bets
. Winners.

  LAFAYETTE BAKER WAITED outside the tents at Camp Fry, watching the teenager tie up the back of his rucksack. Good soldier. Neat, responsible. Follows orders. Even listened to the Met at the B&O when he told him to charge my boys. Neat, disciplined, and a little bastard.

  “Son, come here,” Baker said.

  The soldier slung his rifle over his shoulder and walked over.

  “Recognize me?”

  “No,” the boy replied.

  “I recognize you.”

  “From where, sir?”

  “The dustup at the B&O a few days ago.”

  “It was a mess there, sir.”

  “Your name?”

  “Priston, sir. Damien Priston.”

  “Damien, I’ve been authorized to bring a reward here to you in Foggy Bottom this morning, for your bravery at the B&O, but I can’t be handing out banknotes in front of other soldiers.”

  “The street’s naked here at this time of day, sir, not a soul about.”

  “I know, I know, but you never can tell. Everybody is always watching somebody in the District. Follow me.”

  Baker walked into a nearby alley and pulled a wad of notes from his belt.

  “So you don’t know me, correct?”

  “That’s right, sir, other than you have officer’s decorations on your uniform.”

  “Did you know the man who ordered you to draw down on some of the gentlemen at the B&O that day?”

  “No, didn’t know him either, sir.”

  “But you chose to get involved anyway—to interfere?”

  “Sir?”

  “You chose to get in the way, to intrude, didn’t you, you little rat bastard?”

  “I’ll be going now, sir.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  Baker slammed his elbow into the soldier’s throat. As the boy gagged, Baker brought a knee up into his crotch and shoved him into a wall. He pulled a blade out from his belt and sliced it across the boy’s throat. Then he kicked his feet out from under him. The boy collapsed, gurgling through a pink mass of bubbles foaming around his mouth. Baker pressed the heel of his boot into the boy’s face, silencing him until his eyes rolled back and his breathing stopped.