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:
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:
“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.
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.
“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.
TEMPLE 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.
Even here beside the grand Potomac’s streams
The medley mass of pride and misery
Of whips and charters, manacles and rights
Of slaving blacks and democratic whites.
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.”
Temple nodded to him and turned to leave, slipping the piece of paper he had lifted from Pint’s shirt into his own pocket.
LIZZY KECKLY, AS Fiona discovered, took a stroll to be something more grand and lively than a tour around a park, or even a lengthy walk down Pennsylvania. She meant it to be an outing, and by the time she and Fiona had crossed onto Bridge Street in Georgetown, dusk was approaching. The streets were quieter here than in the District, and they could hear the grinding wheel of Bomford’s flour mill being turned by water running off the C&O canal as it streamed down to the Potomac.
As they crossed Fishing Lane and neared the High Street, Lizzy slipped her arm into Fiona’s.
“I have thought to move here to Georgetown when we leave the President’s House. I have friends in Herring Hill who would take me in, and my popularity as a modiste offers me independence. I could open a shop next to Emma Brown’s school on Third Street,” Lizzy said. “But Mrs. Lincoln leaves for Chicago in days. She says the city’s superior attractions recommend it. And while there are many of us here, I don’t know how well Georgetown takes to its Negroes.”
“Georgetown doesn’t take well to the District,” Fiona said. “Washington’s stewards want to make it a part of Washington so that our city can continue its expansion, but the tobacco merchants are resisting.”
“I always told Mrs. Lincoln that I felt Georgetown to be more South than North,” Lizzy said. “That’s why I also told her it was right just that President Lincoln had troops occupy the town, because it was teeming with rebels.”
Several large livery stables were on the High Street, near the slave markets that had closed a few years earlier, and the stench of horse manure held the air, prompting Lizzy and Fiona to press kerchiefs to their faces as they continued along. When they reached 21 First Street, at the corner of Frederick, Lizzy suggested they stop. They were in front of a handsome redbrick townhouse with black shutters and a steep, eight-step stoop bordered by an iron banister.
“This is the home of Cranstoun Laurie,” Lizzy said.
“And he is?”
“He is the chief statistician for the Post Office. More important, he, his wife, Margaret, and their daughter, Belle, are all the most gifted of clairvoyants.”
“I am in a state of complete confusion,” Fiona said.
“They are spiritualists. They can commune with the dead.”
Fiona was still at a loss. She looked into Lizzy’s face for something further, but Lizzy just stared back at her, offering nothing but a serene smile. Before she could ask another question, Fiona spotted curtains parting in one of the tall windows on the townhouse’s façade. An old woman with high cheekbones, dark eyes, and a tightly wound bun of ice-white hair atop her head peered out silently.
“A woman is at the window,” Fiona said, a small shudder running up her spine.
Lizzy turned, looked up, and nodded. The woman nodded back and the curtains closed.
“We are here to meet with her?” Fiona asked.
“No, she is the Lauries’ housekeeper. She would never let me into their home unaccompanied. She resents me.”
“Are we not to go in, then?”
“Of course, we will. But with Mrs. Lincoln, when she arrives.”
“Mrs. Lincoln is coming here?”
“She comes here regularly. The Lauries are her friends. They help her speak to her dead sons, and it is a rare and generous comfort the Lauries provide her. When Willie appears, he speaks of the pony the Lincolns gave him on his birthday and how even in heaven the weather is changeable. He was their favorite child, but he couldn’t resist the inroads of disease, and his loss still grieves Mrs. Lincoln’s heart sorely. Now she wants to speak to her dead husband.”
Fiona merely nodded, and Lizzy responded to her silence.
“I see in your face that you don’t place faith in the Lauries’ work or Mrs. Lincoln’s travels to the other side. But you weren’t in the President’s House when Mr. Lincoln’s body was brought to the East Room. Mrs. Lincoln screamed and wailed in her bedroom, and Robert tried to calm her. Tad was at the foot of her bed with a world of agony in his little face. I shall never forget the scene—the wails of a broken heart, the unearthly shrieks, the terrible convulsions, the wild, tempestuous outburst of grief.”
“If it gives Mrs. Lincoln comfort, then she is more than entitled to visit with spirits or with the dead president,” Fiona said.
As it grew darker, the evening cooled from the heat of the day and a fog crept onto Georgetown’s streets. The gas lamps on First Street were lit and the fog curled in a light mustard swirl around the lampposts before turning gray as it spread across the cobblestone streets.
Horses passing on Georgetown’s cobblestones made a distinctive clip-clop, but the sound that drew Lizzy’s attention was more involved than that, and more imperial. Fiona turned to look in the same direction as a handsome black barouche, pulled by four large carriage horses, emerged from the fog onto First Street.
“Mrs. Lincoln has come for a séance,” Lizzy said.
“She won’t find my presence alarming?” Fiona asked.
“I will make the introduction. She has faith in my judgment.”
The barouche stopped at the Lauries’ house, and the driver climbed down. Mrs. Lincoln was dressed in layers of black—black silk dress, black cap, black shawl, black gloves—and she sat on the edge of her white leather seat staring at Lizzy and Fiona for several moments before she extended her hand to her driver. As she stepped to the curb, she cleared her throat and fixed Fiona with a pair of alert but careworn eyes that, in the fog and the darkness, also appeared to be black, save for fine pinpoints of light in their very middle. She was small, barely over five feet tall, and rotund, and she clutched a small black handbag close to her bosom, gripping its handles so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. She let go long enough to offer her hand to Fiona, who took it and curtsied.
“I am Mary Todd Lincoln,” she said softly, barely above a whisper.
“I am Fiona McFadden. And I am honored.”
“You are a friend of Lizabeth’s?”
“If she considers me such, yes, ma’am.”
“She is a friend, Mrs. Lincoln,” Lizzy said.
“Are you here to participate, Mrs. McFadden?”
“Well, ma’am, I—”
“Yes, she will participate, Mrs. Lincoln,” Lizzy said.
“Lizzy, I must tell Mrs. Lincoln my reason for being here,” Fiona said, cutting her off.
Mrs. Lincoln gripped her bag again tightly and stepped away from Fiona, closer to Lizzy.
“I have had more unknown people come into my life this year to tell me things that have been all but devastating,” she said. “I must ask you to bear that in mind, child, whatever you are here to say.”
“I mean to cause you no fresh burden,” Fiona said.
“I am my own burden,” Mrs. Lincoln whispered. “I wish I could forget myself.”
“Ma’am, I have your diary.”
Mrs. Lincoln’s hands dropped to her side and her bag fell to the pavement. She turned her head to the side, and the gaslight limned the dark pools beneath her eyes. She crept closer to Fiona.
“My diary went missing after my husband was murdered. It was—it is—a private possession.”
“I know, Mrs. Lincoln, and that is why I seek to return it to you. I have it. Not here with me now, but I have it. Had I known I was to meet you today, I would have brought it with me. My sincerest apologies.”
“How did you come upon it?”
“It came into my husband’s possession, ma’am. I’m not at liberty to explain all of that to you, but I most certainly would like to safeguard its return.”
“Have you read it?”
“I have not, ma’am. But I confess that my husband has.”
“Your husband? What kind of a man is this, so lacking in chivalry?” Mrs. Lincoln asked, her voice regaining the authority and Southern cadences of a Kentucky Todd.
“My husband is an honorable man. He was uncertain of what he had until he read it. And he listened to me when I told him it was proper and decent to return it to you.”
“I leave the President’s House and am bound for Chicago on the twenty-second of May, two days hence. Could you be so kind as to return it to me then?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“How do you know my Lizabeth?”
“We have a common acquaintance,” Fiona said.
“Who might that be, Lizabeth?”
“A man who was once a close and trusted friend of my son, George,” Lizzy said.
“Is this the same man who convinced George to join the Union forces?”
“He is, ma’am.”
“Yet you told me that you considered that man a murderer for convincing your boy to go to war.”
“At one time I believed that for certain, Mrs. Lincoln. I most assuredly did,” Lizzy said. “Augustus convinced my George to march, and now he is dead. But you know what death does to us mothers, Mrs. Lincoln. It turns our hearts and our minds around. I think I have found a different resolution for my grief, and I do believe that Mrs. McFadden comes here, today and to you, with goodwill.”
“Certainly she comes with goodwill, yes, yes, yes, yes. With malice toward none, with charity for all. Of course she does,” the widow said with a long, forlorn sigh, tipping her head back and closing her eyes to the night sky. “I do know what death does. Death rends one, utterly.”
Mrs. Lincoln stood still, her face still raised to the moon, her arms at her side, her chest rising and falling slowly. Silent.
Fiona and Lizzy watched the widow and awaited her next word. When Fiona began to speak, Lizzy held her finger to her lips to warn her off. There was no movement on the street, just the three of them bound in the moment by Mrs. Lincoln’s wanderings.
She broke from her reverie with a start, addressing Fiona.
“Have you spent time with spiritualists and mediums, Mrs. McFadden?”
“No, ma’am, I haven’t.”
“They are the ones—other than the good Lord—who weaken death’s grip upon us. The Lauries have given me back my Eddie and my Willie, and I intend to see my Abraham again.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Lincoln sank into silence once more, shaking her head, and then engaged Fiona again.
“Queen Victoria lost her Albert at almost the same time that my Willie passed. There are so many losses. Many, many, many. My sister Emilie knows that Willie’s spirit has visited us in the mansion. On occasion he has come to me at the foot of my bed with the same sweet adorable smile he always had. Sometimes Eddie is with him, and once he came with my late brother Alec. They all love me so.” “Yes, ma’am.”
“Willie was so small. He didn’t damage me the way Tad did at birth,” Mrs. Lincoln continued. “We did all in our power to save him. We gave him Peruvian bark, Miss Leslie’s puddings, and beef tea, but still he left us. So we laid him out, properly embalmed, in the Green Room of the mansion with a laurel sprig upon his chest. And then we buried him in a little metal casket worked to appear like rosewood. It was gentle in its way. Not like my poor husband, no, no, no. Mrs. McFadden?”
“Ma’am?”
“Did you know that the blood that streamed from the bullet hole in my husband’s head stained the cape I wore to Ford’s?”
“No, Mrs. Lincoln, I did not.”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
“I am truly sorry for all of your losses, Mrs. Lincoln.”
“I still have my Tad. I fear, however, that my Robert is not true. My son Robert covets my money and tells me that my emotions unravel. He says he is frightened to leave me alone, because I am … because he says I am … unwell. Tad doesn’t say these things. But Robert is not truly at odds with me for my mind, Mrs. McFadden. I know his devices. He hires Mr. Pinkerton’s agents to follow me, and he is in league with the railroad men and the New York bankers. His father had lost faith in him before he died. Those men all tortured the president so …,” she said, her voice trailing off.
Lizzy put her arm around Mrs. Lincoln’s waist and guided her toward the stairs of the Lauries’ house.
“Mrs. McFadden, will you join our séance this evening?” Mrs. Lincoln asked. “Invisible beings surround us like a great cloud, and the Lauries can summon them from across the river Styx. Séances can be the gayest of pleasure parties, even in a darkened room.”
“I would be honored to join you, but the hour is late; I want to fetch your diary, and I need to find my husband lest he worry. I would be most grateful if we could converse but one time more. My husband has an unquenchable thirst for information about the president. He admired him so.”
“Yes, yes, yes. Be on your way, then,” Mrs. Lincoln said. “I will tell Mr. Lincoln this evening that you have recovered my prized journal. The news will comfort him. How will you get my diary to me?”
“You could join us on the train to Chicago, Fiona,” Lizzy interjected. “If Mrs. Lincoln approves, of course. We could get it from you then, and you could have the longer conversation with Mrs. Lincoln that you have sought.”
Fiona nodded.
“Yes, yes, yes, join us for Chicago, Mrs. McFadden. Mr. George Pullman is sending a private rail car for me. I insisted on such, and Mr. Stanton and the others cannot contest and complain about such courtesies now that I am no longer a captive of the President’s House or Washington. I do expect my husband to scold me inside, however. He has always been wary of my extravagances.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Allow me to steer you properly to your home,” Mrs. Lincoln said, as she began laboring to scale the Lauries’ imposing staircase. “My driver will see you to your husband in my barouche, and I will see you on the twenty-second.”
“I am deeply obliged.”
“You are without children?”
“Lizzy inquired of the same earlier, Mrs. Lincoln. Yes, I am, but I am also hopeful for the future.”
Fiona had to strain now to hear the widow, who, intent upon her ascent, had her back to Fiona and was speaking directly to the Lauries’ townhouse. When Mrs. Lincoln finally reached the top of the staircase, she was out of breath and pulled a fan from her handbag to cool herself. Her bosom heaving, she looked down at Fiona as the door to the Lauries’ house swung open.
“Lear had it exactly so, my child. Yes, yes, yes,” Mrs. Lincoln said to Fiona. “Our young ones can unwind us most deeply. My Robert is the serpent’s tooth. I wish you daughters when motherhood arrives for you.”
Before Fiona took the driver’s hand to climb into the Lincolns’ barouche, she studied Mrs. Lincoln for a moment, taking stock of a woman bereft and shrouded by the fog, floating upon a sea of miseries and losses.
Fiona nodded to Lizzy and stepped up into the carriage.