The Lincoln Conspiracy (16 page)

“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.

“Augustus Spriggs asked me to look for you, Mrs. Keckly. I am sorely regretful if you consider this an intrusion upon your time.”

The woman stared at her, then nodded at the guards, who let her pass through the gates. Fiona stepped forward, but the guards crossed their rifles in front of her. She watched Lizzy walk briskly up the drive, then asked one of the guards for the time. Shortly before noon. She crossed back to her bench in Lafayette Park.

After sitting for hours, Fiona considered departing. But after arguing with Temple about the wisdom of involving herself more deeply by trying to reach Mrs. Lincoln, she wasn’t about to give up their best hope for achieving that goal. So she sat.

At around four-thirty, she saw Lizzy returning down the mansion’s carriageway, her parasol swaying on her wrist. The guards opened the gates for her, and she walked directly across Pennsylvania to Fiona’s bench.

“Mrs. Keckly?” Fiona asked again.

“Ma’am. It has been some time since I heard Augustus’s name, and I would have preferred to hear him speak it himself.”

“He has been delayed by a pressing matter, otherwise he would have come to you himself.”

“I doubt that,” Lizzy replied.

“Why?”

“Because I think Augustus is ashamed.”

“Of what?”

“That is not for me to say, ma’am. Not for me to say.”

“You are Mrs. Lincoln’s seamstress?”

“I am her modiste, yes.”

“Of course, her modiste.”

“Why are you here?” Lizzy asked. “And why is a white woman a confidante of Augustus’s?”

“Why is a Negro modiste a confidante of a white First Lady?”

Lizzy sat down beside Fiona, settling her parasol across her lap. She adjusted her cap, pulling a long pin from the back that secured it to her hair and repositioning it. Then she cleared her throat and looked directly into Fiona’s eyes.

“Mrs. Lincoln and I have both lost sons,” Lizzy said. “My George
died as a soldier in the war. But George was grown, a young man of twenty-one years. Eddie Lincoln died in Springfield just a month before his fourth birthday, and Willie Lincoln died here in the President’s House still shy of his twelfth. Those little boys died when they were just hints of what they would become one day. Mothers shorn of their children by the angel of death have much to share with one another—much more than dresses.”

“I am sorry for both of your losses.”

“Do you have children?”

“No, but I fancy motherhood.”

“And you know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Fiona McFadden.”

Fiona stood and offered her hand to Lizzy, who remained seated. Lizzy took Fiona’s hand, smiling at her for the first time that day.

“Will you accompany me on a stroll?” Lizzy asked.

T
EMPLE STOPPED BY
Alexander’s studio to look for Pint, but the doors were locked and there was no answer when he knocked. His next stop was Scanlon’s.

Jimmy Scanlon’s saloon occupied a generous corner at 25th and H streets, a refuge for Pint that was just a short walk from his boardinghouse. A brightly painted signboard featuring two foamy mugs and a handsome townhouse hung over Scanlon’s entrance, announcing to the world the good fortune Jimmy had reaped peddling beer and whiskey before becoming an active and influential developer in and around Foggy Bottom. Large troughs of water sat out front for teamsters to cool their horses.

Inside, Jimmy gave his guests dollops of refinement as well: a piano standing firm in a corner, which was played occasionally in the day and always after ten o’clock, when four plump and diseased women—the only women allowed in the saloon—kicked up a forlorn burleycue for rowdies still at the bar; more than two dozen tables scattered throughout, surrounded by rickety wooden armchairs; large brass spittoons that absorbed cannonballs of hickory-hued
treacle launched from patrons’ mouths; walls adorned with random depictions, ranging from drawings of the Emerald Athletics striving on the baseball diamond to portraits of Mr. Lincoln, draped in black bunting; long gas ceiling lamps, fitted with frosted glass; and, filling a wall at each end of the saloon, a pair of haphazard reproductions of two classic nudes, “Andromache Tied to the Rock” and “Venus at Her Mirror.”

The saloon’s four broad windows offered views down to the Potomac, where flat-bottomed houseboats doubling as brothels plied the waters alongside steamers and schooners carrying tobacco, oysters, shad, herring, flour, sugar, and molasses. Negroes who worked as stevedores and caulkers on the docks weren’t welcomed at Scanlon’s; the saloon had even turned Augustus away when Temple, in a moment of delusion, accompanied him there to celebrate General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

To reach the bar inside Scanlon’s, patrons navigated a floor littered with crushed cigar butts and sticky pools of spilled liquor buzzing with flies. And there, his foot firmly planted atop the brass foot rail that spanned the bottom length of the bar, was Declan “Pint” Ramsey, jotting down notes with a stubby pencil on a piece of paper. Pint was also deep in conversation with Mark McAuliffe, who served multiple roles as Scanlon’s bartender, keeper of the peace, and resident sage.

Mark decided who in Foggy Bottom got loans from Scanlon’s when times were tight. Within reason, he would take any legitimate currency for a drink, including shinplasters issued by nearby store owners or by sutlers working with the army.

Whenever Mark circulated a stack of free newspapers around the
saloon, he first announced with unshakeable confidence what he considered the most important stories of the day. At mealtime, and that could be almost any time of day, he made sure that teamsters, Georgetown dockworkers, and coal captains and muleskinners off the C&O canal had food (salty and spicy to keep them drinking—but, Mark always insisted, at a reasonable price and nourishing). When the night grew late, Mark would put a tray of chocolates on the bar, one to a customer and not for their mouths but for the missus at home. He called the candies “wife pacifiers.”

Mark spotted Temple the moment he passed through Scanlon’s doors.

“Here comes Detective McFadden, due to set the world right and save our souls before the priests get to us,” he shouted, grinning ear to ear and raising a glass as Temple approached the bar. “Too much time has passed since you visited us last.”

“I’ll have a whiskey, Mark,” Temple said, resting his cane against the bar and leaning against it himself to take some weight off his leg. “Are you caring for my mate here?”

“Aye, doing the best I can. Pint’s a mighty chore. He tells me that the District’s nefarious elements have taken to giving you beatings.”

“I’m here, Mark. I’m still here.”

“I won’t complain about that.”

Mark walked to the other end of the bar to serve a small group of dockworkers. Pint slipped his piece of paper into his coat and regarded Temple with amusement, his cheeks offering a first, faint flush as the spirits began to take hold of him. He bent his head sideways so that he could see around Temple’s shoulder and up to the print of Venus, her torso and backside luminescent as she gazed at herself in a mirror that Cupid held as he crouched upon her bed.

Pint held up his drink, tipping it toward the goddess.

“She is majestic, and I am in love.”

“You’re a chirk lad, Pint. What are you drinking?”

“A rascally compound: applejack and whiskey. I’ll move on to a mug of flip after this.”

Pint put a hand on Temple’s shoulder and moved him aside so that he could get another, clearer view of the print above them on the wall.

“Venus is an inspiration and an entertainment,” Pint said. “Honors to Velasco.”

“Velázquez.”

“Who?”

“The painter. That’s a copy of his Venus up there.”

“She’s a beauty.”

“So are you.”

“And where have you been?”

“Fiona and I have been at Augustus’s, in the Shaw.”

“Ah. Fiona told you Gardner and I were at odds?”

“She did. You have a history with Pinkerton?”

“Once. Only once for me,” Pint said, his words starting to slur. “But Gardner, your Gardner, worked for Pinkerton throughout the war. On many, many occasions.”

“Why didn’t you tell Fiona and me when I was laid up in your boardinghouse that you knew Pinkerton?”

“You were delusional at my house, Temple. And Fiona was utterly focused upon your care and recovery. Besides, I never knew Pinkerton directly. When he was working for Stanton—”

“Pinkerton worked for the war secretary?” Temple asked.

“Only briefly. He was really McClellan’s man,” Pint said, belching. “Stanton replaced him with someone else he wanted to run the intelligence service.”

“Who was Pinkerton’s replacement?”

“Lafayette Baker.”

A loud crack rang out. Mark had smacked a thick club across the end of the bar, breaking up two men who had squared off and were about to brawl. He told them to drink or leave. Temple recognized both of them. One was a fence and the other a hoister. Their argument, he imagined, was commercial.

Temple turned back to Pint.

“Who is Lafayette Baker?” he asked him.

“He trucks a fearsome reputation. He runs the National Detective Bureau, which Stanton established to take on Pinkerton’s old chores. It is said that Baker breaks teeth to get information inside the Old Capitol Prison.”

“What does he look like?”

“I’ve never met him.”

“Where does he operate from?”

“No idea.”

“And your own work with Pinkerton?”

“I did it just once, and I already sorted this with Fiona,” Pint wheezed, throwing the rest of his drink down his throat. “I was working in the telegraph office when Stanton began tapping into communications in and out of Washington. Lincoln himself supported listening to the wires, you know. They had me monitor things. Then I got word from one of Pinkerton’s deputies that they wanted me to spy on the boys at Georgetown College who were sending signals to the Secesh. That was all I did.”

Pint ordered another drink. Temple put ten cents on the bar for his whiskey and nodded to Mark that he was leaving. Then he leaned in toward Pint.

“You’re my mate?”

Pint leaned away, boozy and uncertain.

“Always your mate, Temp, always your mate.”

“Is your shipment still at the B&O?”

“My shipment?”

“The silk and linens and silverware. That’s why I was meeting you there, after all.”

“Ah, right. Of course it’s still there. We’ll have to get back to the B&O and round it all up. There’ll be money in it for you and Augustus, Temple.”

Temple stepped back, gathering his cane.

“Does ‘Mars’ mean anything to you, Pint?”

“Huh?”

“The word ‘Mars.’ When you were snooping on the telegraph messages. Did the word ‘Mars’ ever come up?”

“No, Temple, I can’t say it did. How so?”

“As a name. Or as a code. In communications between spies.”

Pint shook his head.

“What about in communications between assassins?”

Pint shook his head again, his eyes moist and pink.

“Never,” he said.

Temple hugged Pint closely, something he had never done before, and the intimacy puzzled Pint. When Temple released him, he patted him on the chest.

“Old friend,” Temple said, nodding.

“Old friend.”

He turned to walk out the door, but Pint cleared his throat and asked him to stop. Temple turned back.

“Venus is Mars’s lover,” Pint said. “And Mars is the god of war.”