Temple was lying on his back in the middle of the boat. Once they were halfway between the banks of the Anacostia, Pinkerton leaned over him and whispered into his ear.
“You smell like shit from that sewer, Mr. McFadden,” he said.
“The river itself smells like shit,” Temple responded. “I want to clean myself before I see my wife.”
“Won’t be time for that because we’re getting off this boat in about five minutes and I suspect we’ll see her right off.”
“We’re not heading farther upriver?”
“No, we’re not. And you’re welcome.”
“Thank you.”
“For rescuin’ your sorry ass I deserve more than just a thank-you.”
“My wife rescued me, Mr. Pinkerton,” Temple said. “You just brought a map and a boat to the effort.”
Both men chuckled as the skiff glided another thousand feet onto the far bank of the Anacostia at St. Elizabeth’s, in view of the Government Hospital for the Insane.
“You can sit up now,” Pinkerton said. “Your escape is a success, and the drama of your rescue will be the talk of the ages.”
Temple could still see the imposing pile of the Old Arsenal outlined across the river. If there had been a moon out, one of the sharpshooters in the towers would have been able to pick off him, Pinkerton, or their oarsman.
“Why was there a second boat?” he asked.
“Your doppelgänger. We have you headed up to the Long Bridge in that skiff,” Pinkerton said. “You will arrive there with your cane, damp clothes, and muddy boots—though not quite as, ah, pungent—and there will be a horse waiting for you. There won’t be many people to see you on the District side, but when you cross into Virginia, you’ll pass the army fortifications and the military will see you ride by, cane and all. Tomorrow, when Stanton, Wood, and Hartranft discover that you’ve abandoned their holding pen at the Old Arsenal, they’ll notify all forts and officers asking if an unusually tall man with a cane might have crossed any of the bridges late the night before. After they get a confirmation of your sighting at the Long Bridge, those crackerjacks are going to send dozens of men into Virginia to ferret you out. But they’ll never find you there. For all purposes, you will have vanished.”
“Where will I actually be?”
“Right here. The Government Hospital for the Insane. There are large, comfortable rooms. Anyhow, an asylum is the perfect residence for you.”
“And why are we still so damn close to the penitentiary?”
“Hiding in plain sight. They’ll never imagine that you’re within spittin’ distance just across the Anacostia. Your wife arranged our stay here, and the location was her inspired idea. Now, out of this boat and up to the madhouse. Mrs. McFadden and Mr. Spriggs await your arrival.”
DOROTHEA DIX WAS at the entrance to the asylum, a large brass ring with a heavily populated circlet of keys in one hand and a lantern in the other.
“You’ll need to wash before you enter St. Elizabeth’s, Mr. McFadden. I run a clean and tidy establishment.”
Temple welcomed her offer, knowing from what Fiona had once told him that it was folly anyhow to argue with Dorothea Dix. As superintendent of Union army nurses, she had won the devotion of Fiona and other women who tended to the wounded and dying, Confederate and Union alike. She was outspoken in her views of proper medical care, and that put her at odds with the phalanx of male doctors in the army who guarded their prerogatives. Removed from her position for insubordination and what the military characterized as a “generally disruptive and free-ranging running off at the mouth,” she continued overseeing the asylum she had founded several years earlier.
Government funding had made the Hospital for the Insane possible, but it was Dorothea Dix who made it function and took an abiding interest in meeting the needs of the feeble-minded who had been committed there. It was she who had insisted that the hospital be known by the more anodyne name of the grounds upon which it stood: St. Elizabeth’s.
Pinkerton took the burlap bag from Temple and went inside the asylum. Mrs. Dix led Temple around the side of the building to where a tall wooden stall was affixed to the facility’s ochre-hued wall. A fresh set of clothing, a new pair of boots, and a large tub of water were inside the shed.
“Where did these boots come from?” Temple asked.
“Your wife arranged for them. She said you ruin your boots and your clothing.”
“It’s discouraging to be predictable.”
“Predictability can be a virtue. You’ll find a bar of soap in that tub, and I expect you to make good use of the towels. We plan to give you shelter and food here. But we can’t have you trudging into our hospital smelling like a swamp rat.”
FIONA WAS WAITING at the foot of a broad staircase in the entrance hall when Temple came inside, holding the burlap bag that Pinkerton had handed off to her. Temple’s hair was still damp, and he pushed it back from his face, glad that he had washed before seeing her. He dropped his cane as he rushed to Fiona and nearly stumbled when he reached her, steadying himself on the balustrade behind her and burying his face in her neck. She put both of her hands on his cheeks and raised his face to hers so that she could kiss him, pressing her lips into his until she became short of breath. He leaned on her as they retrieved his cane, and then she led him by the hand up the stairs to their room.
AUGUSTUS AND PINKERTON were seated by a window in a corner of the dining room the next morning when Temple and Fiona came downstairs to eat. Augustus dropped his fork and leapt up to embrace Temple as he neared the table. Two patients at a nearby table clapped and giggled, then banged their forks against their plates. A short, pudgy patient with cuts on his arms and neck was spinning in a slow circle in the middle of the room, singing to himself in a soft, drooling mumble.
“Did you decide on this locale, Mrs. McFadden, so you and your husband would present more favorably in comparison to those around us?” Pinkerton asked.
“People with unhinged mentalities are cared for in our society by chaining them in jail cells with common criminals, Mr. Pinkerton,” Fiona said. “Mrs. Dix has given these poor souls a refuge. You should have more sympathy.”
“People need to be responsible for themselves and their own misfortunes,” Pinkerton said. “We cannot always keep life’s miseries from intruding upon the lives of our fellow man.”
“For someone who has gone so far out of his way to aid us, you remain extravagantly hostile,” Temple said, cutting into the ham on his plate and spreading jam across his bread.
“You deceived me in a graveyard, tried to blackmail me with a madam in Alexandria, and have withheld the diaries from me—even after I saved your life in the Center Market. I have reason to be hostile.”
“Which is why I’m confounded about your assistance to me and my wife.”
“If either of you should perish, I imagine the world would lose one or both of the diaries. Such an outcome would spare the war secretary, Lafayette Baker, and the others from greater scrutiny.”
“But how do you know that?”
“That the diaries have information that would implicate Stanton and Baker or anyone else. Had you read them previously?”
Pinkerton put down his knife and fork and pulled the napkin from the top of his shirt, balling it up and putting it on the table in front of him.
“I might remind you that I oversaw the Secret Service for a goodly amount of time before the war secretary relieved General McClellan and me of our duties. I had extensive lines of information in every corner of the District.”
“Of course, you did, Mr. Pinkerton,” Temple said, putting his own napkin on the table. “I hope you’ll excuse my failure to recognize your prowess.”
“Apology accepted. Now, might I see the diaries?”
“I think the time has come for that. But I need to confer with Mr. Spriggs. I have had an evening with my wife but no time with him, and he and I have much with which to reacquaint ourselves. Might I leave you in my wife’s good hands and we can discuss the diaries later in the day?”
“I find your wife more pleasing company than you, and I look forward to conversing later in the day.”
Temple and Augustus got up from the table.
“Mr. McFadden.”
“Yes?”
“It is only just that I view the diaries. I am owed what I am owed.”
“Indeed you are.”
AUGUSTUS’S ROOM WAS on a floor beneath Temple and Fiona’s, and the rooms near his were more active. A patient a few doors down the hall had built a tiny monument from a collection of small, speckled river stones and was diligently knocking them from their pile and reassembling them, again and again, without looking up from his work.
“Fiona said you got lost in your opium when she stayed with you,” Temple said to Augustus.
“It has never been something I’ve hidden from you.”
“Yes, but it was something you agreed to keep from her.”
“It has gotten to a state in which it’s impossible for me to hide it from anyone.”
“Well, we won’t have Pint to help us raise cash anymore. Maybe it’s time to purge ourselves.”
“I think that is an easier challenge for you,” Augustus said.
“You have no idea how gambling can consume the soul.”
Another monument of river stones toppled onto the floor down the hallway, and a patient in another room began cackling.
“Temple, we must not show anything to Pinkerton. He’s not to be trusted.”
“I know that. It wasn’t only the war secretary who removed him and McClellan from their duties. President Lincoln ordered it as well. He had grown weary of McClellan, and he ignored Pinkerton’s entreaties not to cashier him also. I don’t think justice has anything to do with why Allan Pinkerton wants the diaries.”
“Why does he want them?”
“I don’t know, but I will be finding out soon enough.”
“How?”
“I’ll need to go to New York to do that.”
“I think New York is a fine destination.”
“And why is that?”
Augustus pulled the Booth diary from a desk drawer and opened it to the back pages, where another telegram from Patriot to Avenger sat next to a version of the same message that he had decoded onto a fresh sheet of paper. Augustus spread them open across the top of the desk and raised a shade to allow more light into the room.
Temple bent over the desk to look at the pages. A familiar sensation coursed through his body, the rush of excitement and anticipation he got when people and events overlapped.
Two addresses were in the middle of the page:
“Augustus, is the name John Surratt familiar to you?” Temple asked.
“Lucy Hale made a point of mentioning him to me at the National Hotel. I suspect he is the Patriot to Booth’s Avenger.”
“Well done. Now, tell me why you don’t trust Pinkerton.”
Augustus pulled two more sheets of paper from the back of the diary. It was another telegram that he had also decoded on an accompanying page. Temple scanned it, nodding in recognition as he reread it.
February 10, 1865
From: Patriot
To: Avenger
Maestro says Bloodhound asks to be a cinder dick.
“We should get back to Mr. Pinkerton,” Temple said.
“I was worried about even leaving him alone with Fiona.”
“Fiona and Mrs. Dix have the situation in hand.”
PINKERTON, STILL FOGGED, stretched his legs to their limits on his bed and pressed his elbows outward, trying to test the boundaries of the straitjacket pinning his arms to his sides.
Temple opened the door to his room and stepped inside.
“Your wife is untrustworthy, McFadden. She and that other beast, Mrs. Dix, had two attendants hold me back at the breakfast table, and then your wife chloroformed me.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Your wife also did this to one of my men at the Smithsonian. She burned his jaw.”
“I’m aware of that as well. You’re not burned. Be thankful.”
Pinkerton rolled against his restraints again, but the leather straps surrounding his chest and crossing underneath his crotch stayed taut.
“Mr. Pinkerton, you yourself have women in your employ who are quite pleased to be aggressors.”
“One woman. I have just one woman in my employ.”
“She aided my wife, and we’re grateful to her.”
“Right now I think Miss Warne should have let your wife rot in Defiance.”
“Did you ever seek employment from a railroad man in New York?”
Pinkerton stopped struggling against the straitjacket.
“I loved President Lincoln, Mr. McFadden,” Pinkerton said.
“You’ve said this to me before, Mr. Pinkerton, and I don’t doubt that you loved the president. Your work for the Underground Railroad was honorable.”
“You know of that?”
“I supported the Underground Railroad, too. It rather conflicts with your blather that the needy must always fend for themselves, does it not?”
“I wouldn’t equate emancipating slaves with tolerating the vagaries and inadequacies of nutters who need to be confined to asylums. The latter individuals have already demonstrated that they cannot contribute to society. The former were never given an opportunity to prove themselves.”
Temple sat down on a chair next to Pinkerton’s bed and laid his cane on the floor. Pinkerton turned his head toward him, his eyes creased with worry.
“So there is mention of me in the diary, then?”
“Which is why you wanted it in the first place, yes?”
“Surely.”
“You never have read it, have you?”
“No, of course I haven’t. I knew about it because Lafayette Baker’s read the diary. He told me that if I got unruly in any capacity, he would make sure that the information came out in some fashion. But I’m not one to simply absorb threats without taking action. It was why my men were at the B&O in the first place.”
“Why would it be damning for you to have sought work as a cinder dick?”
“We have much to talk about, Mr. McFadden.”
“Be that as it may, you’ll have to remain here and bound by your new camisole for a few days, I’m afraid.”
“Days?”
“Days.”
“The man who got us here in the skiff knows where I am. He’ll return if he becomes worried.”
“You’ll send a signed note to the door through Mrs. Dix that you’re not to be bothered.”
“Without the use of my damn hands?”
“Mrs. Dix has four men here who can help her, if need be. They’ll unstrap you. As far as they know, you’re just another patient. If you begin screaming again, you’ll get chloroformed.”
Temple leaned forward in his chair, patting Pinkerton on the arm.
“Now,” he said, “let’s talk about New York.”
TEMPLE SPENT TWO more days at St. Elizabeth’s, resting, eating, conferring with Augustus and Fiona, and waiting for the search for his double in Virginia to begin winding down.
He left just before sundown on the fourth day, wearing the uniform he had pilfered in the burlap sack from the Old Arsenal. The greatcoat was too heavy for late spring in the District, and he draped it across the neck of the horse that Mrs. Dix had loaned him, stashing his cane beneath it, tied to the pommel, so that it wouldn’t draw attention when he crossed the river again.
Fiona reached up to rub her husband’s bad leg as he sat in his saddle.
“You finally got to put on a uniform.”
“War’s over, Fi.”
“You still wear it well. And that’s another brand-new pair of boots you have on.”
“I’ll mind them.”
“You come back home to me, Temple McFadden. We have a life to live together.”
Temple put his hand on his lips and smiled down at her, then tipped his Union cap to the doorway, where Augustus and Mrs. Dix stood. His horse bucked and snorted as he trotted down the hill, away from the asylum. Temple patted the mount’s neck, leaning forward to whisper in its ear, until it calmed down. The light began to fade from orange to violet as he made his way to Edwin Stanton’s home.