“We’ll just manufacture the evidence ourselves,” she said at last.
He looked at her without comprehending.
“It’ll be easy. You’ll tell me what to say. I’ll copy it out in Lincoln’s handwriting.”
“But—”
“No, really. Piece of cake. I learned forgery and counterfeiting at the CIA.
Even won a citation for producing a memorandum in Saddam Hussein’s handwriting. Something about uranium in Niger. And it’s not like you would be making anything up,” she added, as if anticipating his objections. “Every bit of information we include will be absolutely true, based on what that trapper guy—”
“Slinger.”
“Yeah, Slinger. Based on what Slinger told you.”
Yale Templeton considered his options. Like most historians, he regarded his life’s work—researching and writing about the past—as a sacred trust. To conspire in the manufacture of forged evidence would be, professionally speaking, an act of high treason. Still, the prospect of confessing to Felicia Butterworth that he was unable to provide her with the evidence she wanted literally made him shiver. He stared silently at the floor.
“I have an old friend from the Agency who can get me ink and paper like the kind Lincoln would have used,” Bobbi Jo Jackson continued. “You’ll just have to find me a sample of his handwriting. That shouldn’t be too hard, should it?”
Yale Templeton looked up at her. “No, not too hard.” And he went to his bookshelf, where he removed a slender volume published by the Library of Congress called Long Remembered: Facsimiles of the Five Versions of the Gettysburg Address in the Handwriting of Abraham Lincoln.
“Cool!” exclaimed Bobbi Jo Jackson, flipping through the pages. “Like I said. Piece of cake. Now all you have to do is tell me what to write.”
Men have been known to abandon all caution for the love of a woman (or another man). They have fought duels, scaled mountains, ventured into wrathful seas. Some scholars believe it was love that led Vincent Van Gogh to cut off his ear and present it to a prostitute named Rachel. (Others claim it was a psychological disorder stemming from his relationship with his mother.) Yale Templeton may or may not have shared certain life experiences with Van Gogh, but he was hardly a man inclined to melodramatic gestures. Still, it tells us a great deal about the depth of his feeling for Bobbi Jo Jackson that, in the end and despite profound misgivings, he agreed to do what she proposed. (Although let it be noted here that he eased his conscience by making the following promise to himself: One day he would track down Slinger the Trapper, retrieve Lincoln’s briefs, deliver them to Felicia Butterworth, and recover and destroy the forged evidence.)
LIII
The writing material arrived within hours of Bobbi Jo Jackson contacting her source in Washington: pencils, pens, a penknife, several bottles of ink, two pads of the bluish gray, wide-lined foolscap Lincoln preferred for writing formal documents, a dozen long, yellow government envelopes, and stationery of diverse quality, including the finest linen rag, some sheets even bearing the letterhead of the Executive Mansion. There was also a pasteboard, since Lincoln was known to write on his knees while travelling.
And it was fun, Yale Templeton found, forging evidence. Not as much fun, perhaps, as that first night he spent with Bobbi Jo Jackson at the motel out by the airport, but fun all the same. He had decided the document should be a letter to John Hay written by Lincoln himself just days before he left the town of Chapleau for the community in the northern wilderness where he would spend the last years of his life. He recognized that Lincoln probably would have used stationery purchased in Ontario. “But not necessarily,” Bobbi Jo Jackson observed. “Anyway how likely is it that your President Butterworth will be able to tell the difference between Canadian and American paper?”
“Not very,” Yale Templeton replied. “Not unless we write on a bag of Frito-Lay potato chips.” It was the first time in his life he had ever attempted a joke.
Now you might suppose that he would find it impossibly challenging to effect the writing style of Abraham Lincoln. After all, Lincoln’s prose was famously lean, economical. Yale Templeton’s publications (if not his letters to his mother) droned on and on and laboriously on. But despite his personal lack of expressiveness—or perhaps as a result of it—he had an untapped talent for mimicry. And so he knew almost instinctively how to go about capturing the voice of the former president. It meant relying, for the most part, on simple and disjunctive sentences and choosing words that had very precise meanings. It meant, in addition, using strong rows of monosyllables to create moments of dramatic tension. Finally it meant exploiting a variety of literary devices that Lincoln liked to draw on: anaphora, alliteration, oxymoron, inversion. He even misspelled the occasional word, just as Lincoln was prone to do. In choosing his text, he followed the advice Bobbi Jo Jackson had given him: He simply paraphrased what Slinger the Trapper had told him. But, feeling a bit mischievous and experiencing a momentary (and quite uncharacteristic) spark of inventiveness, he added a few details of his own. For example, that Lincoln had once seen a white moose. He ended with a sentence eighty-two words long, “exactly the length of the concluding sentence in the Gettysburg Address,” he noted with a satisfied smile.
Once he had a final draft of the letter, he turned it over to Bobbi Jo Jackson. She scanned it quickly to get a sense of the rhythm and tone, then went to her packet of writing materials to select a bottle of ink, several sheets of high quality stationery (though without the Executive Mansion letterhead), and three pens (which she sharpened quickly but adeptly with the penknife). He had assumed that she would want to write at his desk and so had cleared off all his notes, but instead she plunked herself down in the middle of the living room floor, the pasteboard balanced on her knees. She set to writing energetically, employing the powerful strokes, strong t-bars, and flexible and uphill baselines that were distinctive features of Lincoln’s script. She worked in haste but throughout remained attentive to detail. And so each lower-case c ended in a small curl, while the bottom loop of every y swung to the right rather than the left. She also followed Lincoln in making her (by which I mean Lincoln’s) signature slightly larger than the script in the body of the letter itself.
A remarkable job, Yale Templeton acknowledged when she was finished. It looked exactly—and he did mean exactly—like something written in Lincoln’s hand. And she had produced it in a matter of hours.
“Now for the final touch,” she announced. And with that, she went to the kitchen, returning moments later with some candles, oil, and matches. “This should do the trick,” she said with a confident nod. “I mean, along with my eyeshadow and mascara, of course.” Then she disappeared into the bathroom, re-emerging twenty minutes later holding the letter between her thumb and forefinger. The paper was now damp. It looked frayed, stained, and yellowed. It looked at least one hundred years old.
“So what do you think?” she asked. He did not reply, just stared in mute admiration.
All that remained was to deliver the letter. However, Yale Templeton could not bear the thought of meeting Felicia Butterworth face to face. Not again. Especially when the document he would be handing her would be a forgery. “No problemo,” said Bobbi Jo Jackson. And late that night, she led him on a circuitous journey through the darker corners of the campus to the back of Graves Hall. After first making sure that no one was watching, she pulled a small crowbar from her jeans and pried open a basement window. Then, with Yale Templeton nervously leading the way, they slid cautiously along the corridors and up several flights of stairs to Felicia Butterworth’s office. A rapid and artful deployment of the set of CIA-issue keys Bobbi Jo Jackson always carried with her, and they were inside. Together they gently laid the envelope containing the forged letter—it had “for President Butterworth” and “CONFIDENTIAL!” printed neatly across the front—on top of the stack of papers on her desk. Then they helped themselves to one of the many bags of Tostitos and Doritos on the sideboard, be
fore slipping away into the night.
It had been an exhilarating experience for Yale Templeton. So exhilarating that he found it impossible to get to sleep. That night, and the night following as well.
LIV
Many kilometres across the sea, Yale Templeton’s mother had also experienced moments of exhilaration in recent days, a result of her many conversations with the man she knew as Henry Hudson.
At the time of their first meeting, he had promised to return at regular intervals to keep her informed of his progress in mounting an expedition. And he had been as good as his word. Initially Richard Hakluyt the younger had made an effort to accompany him, if only to make sure he said “nothing as might alarme Her Majestie.” But increasingly, with the passage of time, he had come on his own.
So far his attempts to raise a crew had been unsuccessful. Strange to say, none of the men who responded to his advertisements in the London newspapers were familiar with the kind of equipment used on the Half Moon. He hoped a trip to the public houses down by the docks in Southampton would produce better results.
The rest of what he had to report was much more promising. “Thanks to your generous benefactions,” he told Yale Templeton’s mother, “I have begun to acquire the necessary materials for constructing the ship: sturdy oak for the keels, lightweight pine for the topside planking, hemp for the rigging, and flax for the sails. Like all Dutch vessels it will be built according to the principles of the tangent arc system.”
His reference to the Dutch, a nation she regarded with great suspicion, made her uneasy. She had assumed the ship would be in every respect English.
“But the Dutch ships were—I mean are—considerably faster,” he explained. “Much better suited for travel on the open seas.” Therefore better suited for getting him expeditiously across the ocean to the intrepid Y, he assumed he did not need to add. “Indeed, the design I am using has a variety of noteworthy features. If you will permit me …” And unpacking a series of blueprints and spreading them out before her, he entered into a rather long-winded monologue on the particulars of the boat:
It would be seventy feet long with a beam of sixteen-and-a-half feet and the hold to the depth of eight feet; it would have a flat bottom with a shallow keel; the decks would be level, which meant they could be flooded in time of emergency, reducing the risk of explosion and fire, and meant, in addition, that all the gun ports would be in line, “allowing easy interchange of arms during battles”; the foremast, the fore-topmast, the mainmast and topmast would all be outfitted with square sails, the mizzenmast with a lateen sail, “that wondrous invention of the Arabs”; the bowsprit would carry a spritsail; the average speed would approach three-and-a-half knots.
He only once, swept up in a reverie of mizzenmasts and gunports, forgot himself and let slip an observation that threatened to betray his identity as a computer systems analyst from the twenty-first century. It was while describing his plans for the mainmast. It would be set at right angles to the keel, he had observed, close to the midsection of the ship. “Computer analysis indicates that the midsection was the centre of buoyancy and centre of gravity on all ocean-going Dutch vessels of the late sixteenth century.” However, since Her Majesty had fallen asleep in the middle of his presentation, the remark went unnoticed.
No, it was not Henry Hudson’s plans for constructing a replica of the Half Moon that left Yale Templeton’s mother exhilarated. And it was not—not above all, anyway—his cheerful readiness to serenade her with madrigals. It was, rather, his unparalleled knowledge of English history. He had discovered early on that she was much more interested in the glorious past of the nation over which she imagined she ruled than in descriptions of zeniths, gunwales, orlop decks, and rabbets. In particular she was fascinated by stories about the monarchs who had, as she put it, “preceded her.”
He had first told her about Boudicca, queen of the Iceni. (Better known to many as Boadicea). A fearless ruler, Boudicca organized massive resistance to the tyrannical Roman authorities, “and not far from this very spot.” Moving her army at lightning speed across the countryside, she destroyed one Roman settlement after another, finally arriving at the city of Colchester, where the Emperor Claudius had, just years before, made a triumphal entry on an elephant.
(“An elephant! How extraordinary!” exclaimed Yale Templeton’s mother.)
Colchester stood as the preeminent symbol of Roman domination, with its forbidding temple and grandiose monuments sheltered behind massive stone walls. Yet Boudicca was undaunted. And inspired by her courage, her warriors took courage of their own. They battered the head off the statue of the emperor and hurled it into the river. Then they put torches to the buildings and burned the city to the ground.
Yale Templeton’s mother was transfixed. And each time Henry Hudson came for a visit, she would ask him to tell her about some other royal personage. And so he did:
Arthur: The greatest of all English kings, whose coming had been foretold by the Welsh wizard Merlin. Arthur, who expelled the Saxons and subdued the Picts and the Irish. Who created a vast northern empire stretching from Scandinavia to Gaul and westward as far as Iceland. Who attracted the bravest and most gallant of knights to his castle at Caerleon-at-Usk. And who, with the lovely Guinevere at his side, presided over a court where one thousand ermine-clad noblemen assembled for spectacular pageants and tournaments, and for sumptuous feasting.
Richard the Lionheart: Intense blue eyes and a mane of golden hair. Invested at his coronation with golden sword and golden spurs as he stood beneath a golden canopy. A crusader for the Lord, and valiant and true. He captured Acre and crushed the fearsome Saladin at the battle of Arsuf. Taken prisoner on his journey back to England, he was held for ransom in Austria. In his absence his perfidious brother John declared him dead and laid claim to the throne. But thanks to the gallant efforts of Robin Hood and his band of merry men, Richard soon regained his freedom.
(“I always loved that story,” sighed Yale Templeton’s mother.)
There was no limit to the vengeance Richard might have enacted on his return home, but instead he displayed that spirit of Christian charity for which he will ever be remembered. Grasping his trembling brother by the shoulders, he gave him the kiss of peace and said gently, “Think no more of it, John, you are only a child who has been led astray by evil councillors.”
Eleanor of Castile: The beautiful wife of Edward I. So completely devoted to Edward that she accompanied him on his military campaigns. Once, when a would-be assassin stabbed him with a dagger dipped in venom, she sucked the poison from his wound. Their marriage was blessed with sixteen children. On Eleanor’s death, Edward, in loving memory, arranged for a dozen majestic stone crosses to be erected along the route of her funeral procession from Lincolnshire to Westminster Abbey.
Edward III: Victor over the French at Crécy, but, like his grandfather Edward I, a man of most tender sensibilities. The tragic passing of his daughter Joan—who fell victim to the Black Death only weeks before she was to marry the Infante Pedro of Castile—was as a sword thrust to his heart. She has been “sent ahead to heaven,” he said, “to reign among the choirs of virgins where she can intercede for our own offences before God.” When Edward himself died, there was an outpouring of sorrow across the nation. Of his funeral, in which he was carried aloft on a bier borne by twenty-four knights dressed in black, the chronicler Froissart wrote, “To witness and hear the grief of the people, their sobs and lamentations on that day, would have rent anyone’s heart.”
Henry VII: Grandfather of Elizabeth. Founder of the Tudor dynasty upon his victory over the treacherous Richard III at Bosworth Field. Henry brought peace to the realm, imposed monarchical control over the nobility, reclaimed the Crown’s feudal rights, and established financial stability. The grandeur of his vision was reflected in the magnificent chapel he built at Westminster Abbey, and in the tomb of gold (designed by the renowned Italian sculptor Pietro Torrigiano) in which his body now lies next to that of
his beloved wife, the fair Elizabeth of York, angels at their heads, lions at their feet.
Henry Hudson recounted all this and much more on his visits to Yale Templeton’s mother. She already knew the history of the English monarchy from books she had read as a young woman. But he had that rare capacity to make events of the distant past seem as if they had happened only yesterday. “One might almost believe that you were there yourself,” she complimented him on one occasion.
On his most recent visit she had asked him, with some trepidation (not to mention great delicacy), to share what he knew about her mother, Anne Boleyn. “The things they told me when I was a child, they made her seem so horrible. But I think she must have been very beautiful.”
“Very beautiful, yes. Very beautiful, indeed. With long dark hair and brown eyes. The King—your father—he loved her dearly. ‘In heart, body, and will,’ he once wrote. But she was more to him than a mere ornament. She helped him find the strength to save the kingdom from the perfidious clutches of the Pope and his minions. And so today the Church of England, with Your Majesty at its head, stands as a beacon of divine light to all peoples of the world.”
She sighed. The weight of English history rested heavy on her shoulders. But it was inspiring to revisit the glorious past, no less inspiring than listening to the promise of the glorious future laid out for her by Richard Hakluyt the younger. In the vast northern wilderness where the brave Y. had chosen to cast his lot, England would realize its providential destiny. She sped Henry Hudson on his way with renewed urgency.
LV
It was several weeks before the Director of the CIA could begin to piece together how he had ended up in the wicker basket. Months later there were still large gaps in his memory.
It started shortly after his plane from Dallas touched down at Pearson airport in Toronto. Like most Americans he was shocked when Canadian immigration officials confiscated his assault rifle. Of course there was still his beloved Beretta packed away in his suitcase. But to avoid suspicion he had chosen to fly Air Canada, meaning his luggage had ended up in Moncton.
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