The Lincoln Conspiracy

by Timothy L. O'Brien

  Dr. McFadden pulled a bucket to the side of the bed to catch the vomit that erupted from Temple’s mouth.

  “There’s a young man from Germany in the cabin next to ours. He comes from good stock, and his parents say he fences with proficiency. They said they’d be happy for him to tutor you. And there’s a teenager in steerage who is a tough; he fights for pay in Dublin. He needs money, and I’ve hired him to school you as well.”

  “I don’t have a sword, and both of those boys are older.”

  “You have your cane. You’ll learn to use it for something more than a crutch. The two of them will give you a start, so bullies can’t get after you anymore, like they did at the orphanage. We have weeks on this ship—we’ll find ways for you to progress.”

  Again Temple vomited.

  The Germans were the only other family on the Washington with the means to secure a cabin. It cost £50 per person to book first-class passage, and with the famine spreading across Ireland, only those with estates, inheritances, or a profession could manage that sum. Most paid the £19 for steerage and shared space with animals—and disease. Four children who had died of typhus were dropped over the Washington’s sides during the fourth week out.

  Dr. McFadden had gone down to steerage in the second week to try to treat some of the passengers there, but he was grim when he returned to the cabin. He said the planks that the folk slept on were crawling with abominations and that he was hard pressed to remain below very long because the belly of the ship breathed up a rank, wet stench. Families broke up the biscuits they were rationed because weevils were laced throughout. They tried making a porridge out of water and the biscuit powder, but some slowly starved.

  “Temple, remember the wharves in Liverpool?” Dr. McFadden asked him. “How you loved the huge stone piers and the granite that laced the docks? And the view across the Mersey to Birkenhead?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am told that the wharves in New York are horrid by comparison. They are flimsy wood things, and poorly kept.”

  “So we should have stayed in Liverpool?”

  “No, because beyond the docks in Liverpool are muck and misery and beyond the wharves in New York are opportunity and promise. We travel for the latter.”

  Bridget McFadden never pushed Temple as hard as her husband did, but from the day that they plucked him from the orphanage and took him to their home she insisted he read as much as he possibly could. She corrected his grammar, worked with him on his writing, and sang to him when he was sick. She had long, lovely fingers and wide green eyes, and on the slowest days aboard the Washington she taught Temple how to braid her red hair and help her clip it into a bun, promising Temple that they would find their way through the water and the foam and the wind to the other side.

  During the fifth week out from Liverpool, she became ill. During the sixth week out, she died.

  After that, Temple could never remember any of his conversations with her, though there were many occasions later in his life when he would sit by himself and try, unsuccessfully, to recall and recapture even a few words.

  For several days Dr. McFadden barely spoke to him, often burying himself in a blanket in their cabin. As the weather calmed, Temple spent hours on the deck, working with his cane and his fists as the boys hired by the doctor trained him. Initially they were patient and turned all of the lessons into games. As Temple improved, they made it harder.

  He was better with his cane than with his fists because the boys were both taller than he, so he fended them off by holding his cane in front of himself with two hands, waggling it back and forth and looping it in arcs and jabs. He also began to learn how to support most of his weight on his left leg when he couldn’t lean on his cane. The German boy had found a length of wood in a small supply shed amidships and replaced his épée with it; whenever he and Temple dueled, it was accompanied by repeated cracks of wood upon wood.

  When they practiced with fists, Temple was still too young and too small to gain an advantage on the fighter from steerage. If he landed a blow, the older boy would smack him back quickly, raising a small pink welt on his cheek. As he had with his fencing tutor, however, Temple stayed the course, learning to balance his weight on one leg as he protected his face with his hands and made quick jabs at the older boy’s body.

  During the ninth week out the storms came again, and Temple took to his bunk. One morning he found the doctor sitting on a stool, sobbing. Temple approached him and put his hand on the doctor’s.

  “I could call you Father now,” Temple said.

  Dr. McFadden wiped his sleeve across his face and pulled Temple into his arms. It was warm there. Temple wobbled back to his bunk, his stomach churning again as waves pounded the ship, and he became aware of other voices and sounds. One, familiar and clear, wasn’t from the Washington. It came from beyond the ship and beyond Temple’s dream.

  “We cannot keep these. It is a violation.”

  He knew this voice. Fiona.

  “They are not ours. They are hers.”

  Fiona rarely raised her voice, but now she was almost shouting. Temple slid up into a sitting position in the bed and listened more closely as his head cleared. Fiona was arguing with Augustus, who barely protested. Temple climbed out of bed, put his bloodstained shirt back on, and tucked it into the waist of his pants. He was hungry and thirsty.

  When he walked into the parlor, he found Augustus and Fiona seated at a candlelit table, with the diaries open in front of them. There was a generous spread of food on the table, and a shirt was hanging off the back of one of the chairs. Augustus stared silently at a wall while Fiona looked up at Temple in anger, her face visibly flushed even in the candlelight.

  “She is the president’s widow, Temple McFadden, and you have no right to her particulars.”

  “Fiona.”

  “No right. They are her private thoughts.”

  Temple reached out and held her hands in his.

  “Do you know who wrote the other journal that we have?”

  “I do.”

  “We have the diary of an assassin and the diary of the president’s wife and—”

  “The president’s widow,” Fiona said, interrupting him.

  “Yes. The president’s widow. To whom might we return her diary?”

  “Mrs. Lincoln.”

  Temple began laughing but stopped when he glanced at Augustus, who was still silent. When he looked back at Fiona, her arms were across her chest.

  “Temple, these are Mrs. Lincoln’s thoughts. She has been deprived of enough already.”

  “We’ll be killed trying to return this to her.”

  “And why?”

  Temple sat down. “Fiona, I have a hole in my shoulder. We have strangers following us. You understand why.”

  “I understand we have something they want. I understand that,” she said. “But I don’t understand why there is murder or death associated with any of this. That I don’t. Do you?”

  “Some things have become clearer to me, and some things are a mystery still. I intend to use part of tomorrow to clarify things. But whoever wanted these writings spirited from the Capitol—and whoever else was of the opposite persuasion and wanted to prevent Mr. Tigani’s departure—all of them were willing to kill to achieve their goals.”

  “Your Mr. Pinkerton?”

  “Perhaps. Or others.”

  “Well, then, read Mrs. Lincoln’s papers and return them to her,” Fiona said. “But you can’t keep them.”

  “How would you get them to her?” Temple asked.

  “Lizzy Keckly. She and Augustus are acquainted.”

  Now Temple understood why Augustus was so silent. Elizabeth Keckly, a former slave, was Mrs. Lincoln’s modiste, and Fiona intended to reach the widow through her. Temple sat down and looked up at the shadows from the candles as they swam across the ceiling. Augustus was looking at him, still silent.

  “You’ll be putting yourself at risk,” Temple said.

  “
I am capable,” Fiona replied.

  The three of them gazed at the candles and at one another without saying a word.

  Temple surveyed the table as he pulled a loaf of bread toward him: there was a wedge of cheese, a bowl of peaches, pickles on a bed of lettuce, molasses, a bottle of walnut catsup, a portion of pigeon, a pitcher of water, a pitcher of switchel, and three delicacies that Augustus had gone to great expense to have for them—a tin of deviled ham and two Havana cigars. Temple avoided the bottle of nectar whiskey sitting on the corner of the table but indulged heartily in all of the food.

  Save for an occasional dog barking in the woods, Augustus’s home was quiet. Nearly half an hour passed before anyone spoke.

  “May Augustus and I share these Havanas, Fiona?” Temple asked.

  “Outside, please.”

  “You’re angry with me.”

  “All I wish is that we resolve our debate over Mrs. Lincoln.”

  Temple pondered this, staring again at the candles. Augustus poured a glass of switchel and slowly drank it.

  “I suspect all of us are a mite bit afraid right now,” Temple said.

  He stood up and stripped off his bloodied shirt, replacing it with the fresh shirt hanging on the chair. Then he slid his chair closer to Fiona’s and put his arm around her.

  “Fiona, if you return the diary to Mrs. Lincoln, it would be valuable if you did something more than merely hand it over,” he said.

  “And that would be?”

  “Speak with her. Spend time with her. We can consider opportunities that may allow you to visit with her more than once. You can ask her what her thoughts are. You can ask her why she believes her husband was murdered.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE SÉANCE

  Fiona left early the next morning, before Temple or Augustus awoke. When Temple arose he found Augustus at the table, bent once more over the diary.

  Temple sat beside him, placing the Vigenère table next to the pages with the telegrams. He also tossed a billfold onto the table. It was tan leather with two pouches inside and a strap holding it closed. One pouch contained greenbacks, and the other held several documents.

  “Whose is that?” Augustus asked.

  “His name is Lafayette Baker. He’s the man I traded blows with in front of the B&O. I borrowed this from him at Mary Ann Hall’s after he popped my stitches.”

  Temple took ten dollars from the billfold and dropped it in front of Augustus.

  “This should pay for the food last night and some of your other fixings,” Temple said. “Mr. Baker owes us that courtesy, I believe.”

  “Do you have a path into this code and these telegrams?” Augustus asked.

  “I think we can both try to get a start, and then we shall show some of our work to Pint, as he is the expert in these matters.”

  The telegrams were in front of them on the table, one encrypted and three decrypted:

  March 4, 1865

  From: BAKBWTV

  To: MVVXUJT

  FHVBS NU A ZBAM WYF DQU IG ZAKSCSCL. Q NY FFB SQOIZN MNU WCSURMNX. HFBGJU TW EUCYWCSF WPRZ YFE VFXE BLDAED.

  April 5, 1865

  From: Patriot

  To: Avenger

  Maestro sends funds. Goliath and others will join you. Wise Man and Drinker should be taken with Tyrant.

  April 11, 1865

  From: Patriot

  To: Avenger

  You will be allowed to pass at Navy Yard Bridge. Refuge at Tavern.

  April 14, 1865

  From: Patriot

  To: Avenger

  It is Ford’s. Praetorians send a Parker to guard Tyrant. He will abandon the door or let you pass.

  “As you told me when you first showed these to me, the first part of our challenge will be easy, thanks to Booth,” Augustus said. “If we presume that the encrypted message is from Patriot and to Avenger—like the others that Booth decrypted—then we can work backward and learn how it might fit with the Vigenère table.”

  “You’ve done some of this already this morning?” Temple asked.

  “I have.”

  Augustus placed a sheet of paper on the table with two of the decrypted and encrypted words lined above each other in columns:

  P A T R I O T A V E N G E R

  B A K B W T V M V V X U J T

  Augustus pulled the Vigenère table closer to them both and pointed out on the table where the matching letters intersected. The P in PATRIOT, from the table’s vertical axis, and the B in BAKBWTV, from the middle of the table, traced upward to M on the horizontal axis. He repeated this with each of the letters in each of the words, mating the vertical letters with its partner inside the table and then finding a link to a letter above on the horizontal axis.

  When Augustus was done, he had a sheet of paper in front of him with six words on it:

  P A T R I O T A V E N G E R

  B A K B W T V M V V X U J T

  M A R K O F C M A R K O F C

  “Now our challenge takes on a different shade,” Temple said. “We no longer have any simple words to pair together from the decrypted and encrypted messages.”

  “But we do have some portion of the code,” Augustus said brightly. “We have MARKOFC, and we could apply that to the beginning of the first encrypted message we have.”

  “To the point!” Temple said, squeezing Augustus’s shoulder. “Do some more of your handiwork.”

  Augustus wrote down the first sentence of the encrypted message, with as much of the code beneath it as he could:

  F H V B S N U A Z B A M W Y F D Q U I G Z A K S C S C L

  M A R K O F C

  With the code in hand, Augustus then reversed his earlier method; he dropped down from M on the horizontal axis to mate it with F in the middle of the table, and looked across at the vertical axis to see what letter linked to it. That gave him this much:

  F H V B S N U A Z B A M W Y F D Q U I G Z A K S C S C L

  M A R K O F C

  T H E R E I S

  “I think the single letter A after ‘There is’ is likely to be, in fact, A,” Temple said. “So it would read ‘There is a …’ Though I am in a conundrum over what the rest of this will say.”

  “But we also know more of our code now,” said Augustus. “The A in the sentence would match with A in the table. So our code is now MARKOFCA.”

  Temple stared at the code, nodding his head as he studied it.

  “Damn.”

  Temple picked up Booth’s diary and thumbed quickly through the pages. When he found the page he was looking for, he slapped the diary down on the table.

  “Damn.”

  “What?” asked Augustus.

  “I have it. It’s right here.”

  FIONA WAITED IN Lafayette Park, across the street from the President’s House, where Augustus had told her that Lizzy Keckly would pass in the morning. Union soldiers were still encamped in the square, and enough people were about on this Saturday morning that Fiona would have to watch sharply not to miss Lizzy. But she had an advantage: there would be few Negro women able to enter or leave the mansion freely, much less one who would be, as Augustus was quick to tell Fiona, one of the best-dressed women on Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Lizzy was Mrs. Lincoln’s dressmaker, and the pair sometimes shopped together, with Lizzy often forced to wait outside stores that barred her entry. While Lizzy’s clothes scarcely matched the cost or elegance of those her mistress wore—few women in the District, of any means or background, could match Mrs. Lincoln’s spending, after all—she took pride in the cut and quality of her garments.

  “Lizzy’s owner beat her and another man raped her when she was a teenager,” Augustus had told Fiona. “She has scars on her back from the beatings and had a son from the violation.”

  “And you know of this how?” Fiona had asked.

  Augustus had stepped back from the table and looked away. She’d wondered if he and Lizzy had once been involved, and she coaxed more from him about her.

  Lizzy became
free in 1860 when residents of St. Louis raised $1,200 so she could purchase her liberty from her owner; she made her own way thereafter as a gifted seamstress who taught classes and crafted dresses for the finer folk. Those earnings paid her way to Baltimore and then to Washington, where, through a chance introduction, she began making gowns for Mrs. Jefferson Davis, wife of the Mississippi senator, before war made Mrs. Davis’s husband the leader of the Confederacy.

  Lizzy’s next benefactor, Mrs. McClean, arranged a meeting with Mrs. Lincoln, who quickly grew enthralled with Lizzy’s handiwork. The seamstress also became Mrs. Lincoln’s confidante and traveling companion. Now, with the president dead, people said that Lizzy was the only person Mrs. Lincoln trusted.

  “I am not sure of her schedule,” Augustus had said. “But I can say for certain that she’ll be the only handsomely dressed, female Negro that the guards usher in and out without hesitation.” As the morning wore on, Fiona watched the sentries posted at the heavy gates fronting the President’s House. They stood by loosely, rifles hanging from their shoulders, and occasionally took off their hats to fan themselves as the day grew warmer. She could see beyond the gates to a semicircular drive that wound around a statue of Thomas Jefferson and bore carriages to the mansion’s north portico.

  And out of the corner of her eye, Fiona caught sight of a singular woman preparing to cross Pennsylvania from the park. She wore an elaborate silk hat with a long, dark ostrich feather perched on the front of the brim. She also carried a fashionable tasseled parasol, and was quite clearly a Negro. Fiona sprang up from her bench.

  “Mrs. Keckly!” she shouted.

  The woman turned and looked at Fiona for a moment. She then turned back to the street and began to cross. Fiona bustled after her, catching up as the woman reached the mansion’s gates.

  “Mrs. Keckly?”

  The woman stopped and turned toward her. She was much older than Fiona had expected, perhaps in her late forties; too old for Augustus. Fiona had been wrong about the reasons for Augustus’s reticence about Lizzy.