The Lincoln Conspiracy (5 page)

The man next to him leaned back against the wall, stone-faced. Fiona kept pulling the thread through Temple’s wound. A heavy pair of feet bounded up the stairs outside Pint’s parlor, then burst through the door. There was swearing and then footsteps in the hallway, pounding toward the room. A panting, barrel-chested man with a tangled black beard and wandering eyes forced his way past Allen’s guard and into the room; he was clutching a wide-brimmed straw hat, and sweat matted his shirt.

Fiona looked up briefly from her sewing.

“Alexander Gardner without his magic camera,” she said, bearing back down on her needle. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“What did he say his name was today?” Gardner asked, puffing
through a Scottish burr even thicker than that of the man he gestured toward. “He dons and sheds new cloaks weekly.”

“Allen,” Fiona said. “E. J. Allen.”

“ ’Tisn’t!” bellowed Gardner. “It’s Pinkerton.”

“Heavens, I’ve been revealed,” said Pinkerton, smirking.

“Allan Pinkerton,” Gardner offered. “A spy for the federals, all through the war.”

“No longer, Alexander. My duties from the war have ended. I’m for myself again. Pinkerton’s—my company, my name, my service—is in Chicago, New York, and the District, and we’re happy to be in business, thank you. And please, be kind enough to let Mrs. McFadden know that you’ve done work for me in the past, Alexander—socialist or not, you like your money.”

Gardner mopped his brow with his sleeve and studied Temple.

“Is he all right? Word traveled from Pint, and I came as soon as I could.”

“He’s Temple,” Fiona answered as she tied off her stitching. “We just need to give him time. Now then, I know your name and the name of your mysterious company, Mr. Pinkerton, but I still don’t know why you are interested in my husband.”

Pinkerton pushed off the wall, fingering a watch fob dangling from his waist.

“It’s not your husband, exactly,” said Pinkerton. “It’s some papers he encountered at the B&O this morning that interest us. But they’re nowhere to be found on him or his clothing. He has made them vanish. He’s a most resourceful man.”

“He is most resourceful, yes,” said Fiona.

“We’ll hover nearby until he can speak with us,” Pinkerton said.

“Guardian angels?” said Fiona.

“Well said. Guardian angels. Of course.”

“Alexander, help me roll Temple over,” Fiona said.

With Temple on his back, Fiona reached over for her syringe. Pinkerton eyed the device.

“You know transfusions, Mrs. McFadden?” he said.

“You know devices that allow us to transfuse, Mr. Pinkerton?”

“I have been on the battlefield, ma’am. I worked with General McClellan. I’ve seen officers and soldiers tended to. The great general’s father was a surgeon.”

“He founded the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.”

“You’re well informed, ma’am.”

“Dr. Gross of Jefferson thought highly of the general’s father—more highly than Mr. Lincoln thought of the general. I think very highly of Dr. Gross. He taught me transfusions in an afternoon at the Patent Office. I’ve read his
System of Surgery
and his
Manual of Military Surgery
. This syringe and tubing is his invention. He gave it to me.”

“I’m duly impressed, Mrs. McFadden. You know much for a woman. Very formidable.”

“I need blood for my husband, Mr. Pinkerton. He needs to replace all that you took from him today.”

“ ’Twasn’t us who took it, ma’am. He wouldn’t be breathin’ at all if it weren’t for us.”

“I still need blood.”

The three men in the room looked at one another blankly. Gardner took a step backward.

“Alexander, I know blood makes you nauseous. Pint and Augustus, please—go fetch them for me.”

When Gardner returned with both men, Fiona stared at them.

“Pint, you’ve got as much whiskey in your blood as is in this bottle. I can’t use yours. We’ll use Augustus’s blood.”

“He’s a nigger!” Pinkerton exclaimed.

The room went silent, and in the quiet Fiona stared at Pinkerton. Everyone else backed out of the room but Pint and Augustus.

“He’s right, Fiona,” Pint said. “Bloods don’t mix. What you’re doing is witchcraft, not medicine.”

“Leave, Pint. Mr. Pinkerton, please leave with him,” Fiona said.

“I can find someone nearby, Fiona,” Augustus said.

“You’ll do no such thing. Temple thinks of you as a brother. Please roll up your sleeve.”

Fiona closed the bedroom door and placed a chair next to the bed for Augustus. She wiped whiskey on both men’s arms, then pressed the needle into Augustus’s forearm. As the tube began to fill with blood, she pressed the other syringe down into Temple’s arm.

“This will cause a mess, Augustus. We’ll need to do it several times, and you’ll be powerful tired when we have finished.”

“G
et out of your bed, boy,” said one of the Dublin nuns. “The rest are up. Get out of your bed and get down to breakfast or you’ll be late for prayer and lessons.”

Temple rolled out of bed in a wrinkled linen nightshirt that trailed below his seven-year-old knees. He was shivering.

“Speak up, boy, you’re not mute.”

He slipped his feet into a pair of leather sandals. The nun smacked him on the head.

“Speak up.”

“Yes, Sister.”

“Ave Maria, gratia plena. Dominus tecum, benedicta tu …”

“In mulieribus et benedictus, fructus ventris tui Jesus,”
Temple replied.

“Don’t forget your Ora Pro Nobis.”

“No, Sister.”

“Or your Confiteor.”

“Neither, Sister.”

He hurtled from the dormitory and down a cramped, winding flight of stone steps. There was a sliver of a window carved into the wall, and through it he could see the little synagogue that the Dubliners had blocked off from the rest of the neighborhood. They’d blocked it off, indeed, but it remained plainly in view from one of the largest Catholic churches and orphanages in the city. Temple wondered if anyone in the synagogue was looking back at him out of their very own slit in a wall, or whether any of them knew that the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, swaddled in habits and devotion, had
taken an orphan from the streets but had been able to do no better with their imaginations than to name him after this very neighborhood, the Temple Bar—even though the neighborhood got its name from the synagogue! So the nuns had named him, in the end, after a Jewish house of worship, though he reckoned they’d never taken that into consideration. He was just one of many. Lord knows, a nun can’t be minding everything in this world if she is to properly serve His needs and not the needs of a ratty group of beggars tossed to the streets by irreverent parents without a dime to give anyhow, Mother save us. No, simpler to name him quickly and then think about the next child. Name him after the neighborhood, after the streets whence he came. Temple called it his Hebrew christening, which won a laugh from the other boys—except, of course, from Angus.

Temple slipped into his place on the bench at the breakfast table, a large vaulted ceiling opening above him and a cold, cracked floor spreading out beneath. About twenty boys shared his table, and the dining hall was lined with gray, splintering tables from end to end. A slab of stiff bread, a chipped clay bowl holding a puddle of gruel, and water sat on the table in front of him. His nose ran, and he wiped his sleeve against it. The Oblates told them all that they were fortunate to be here. True, that was, compared to the last place that had had him. There’d been no classes or latrines there, and all of them had been factory boys covered in grime. Some of the boys had worked in warehouses making matches with white phossy and their jaws had rotted away. Once their jaws started going, they didn’t stay long. Yes, his old orphanage had been worse. But somehow he hated this one more.

Another rap on his head from a nun, letting him know that he was late for breakfast again. She moved along, and he began eating. If she’d had dreams like his, she’d wake in the middle of the night,
too. She’d be late for breakfast herself. He brought a corner of the bread to his lips, but then he paused. Across the table from him a long, bright, almost blinding column of buttery light, like the glow between stage curtains pulling apart when a show begins, floated at eye level.

The center of the column began to form, and Temple could see the outline of a woman’s face there, a beautiful woman with long auburn hair swept neatly up behind her head into a large bun. She had full lips and crystalline blue eyes gleaming like beacons.

“Hello, Fi,” Temple said to the woman.

“I came for you, Temple,” the pretty woman said.

“You always do.”

Then the curtains were drawn and the light blinked out. The pretty woman disappeared, and Temple, still shivering, stale bread in his hand, found himself staring at Angus Mitchell, whose face was twisted into a familiar, angry knot.

“You dodgy little shit, you get out of line and I’ll stomp you again outside,” Angus allowed. “It will hurt. Like last week hurt.”

“I’ll mind the straight and narrow, Angus,” Temple replied.

“Even tha’ might not be good enough,” the fifteen-year-old sneered. “Mind yourself.”

Temple finished his breakfast and ran back upstairs to the dormitory. He opened a small wood crate at the foot of his bed and changed into a pair of wool slacks with a torn pocket hanging off the back. He pulled on a simple white shirt. His shoes fit well enough, but there was a hole in the sole that was alarming and growing ever wider.

Temple turned to go back down the stairs, but Angus was loping toward him from the doorway. As Angus neared, the odd white light appeared again, enveloping Angus; the light separated again in the middle and the beautiful woman’s face appeared. She was smiling and reached a hand out to touch him.

Temple focused on her, on her face and her eyes.

“Temple,” she said. “How are you feeling? Temple?”

How does she float there like that? Even the nuns can’t fly. As
Temple stared at her longer, the curtains drew farther apart and he realized she wasn’t floating at all. She was seated in a chair and had a moist rag in her hand.

“Temple,” she said again. “How are you feeling?”

He began to recognize her. Yes, Fiona, in my orphanage. In my Dublin. Why is she here?

“You’re still murmuring. You’re not in Dublin,” she said. “You’re in Washington.”

“I’m cold. My nightshirt isn’t warm enough,” he said.

“You’re in Washington, with us. You’re safe. Try to talk to me.”

“I am talking to you. I just don’t. Don’t. I’m not.”

“Think clearly now,” she said. “You’re in Washington.”

“No, I’m in Dublin, Fi,” he said. “I’m cold.”

Again she disappeared, evaporating along with her column of creamy light. Angus replaced her, standing there with his fists clenched and a mass of angry pimples scattered across his forehead.

“You can’t run from breakfast till I say ya can run from breakfast, laddie,” said Angus. “You’re the only one who never seems to mind me. I’ll tell the nuns you’re disobedient and they’ll ship you to the Old Bailey and have you hung.”

Temple nodded briskly.

“I’ll be goin’ now. Not to bother ya.”

“But you do bother me, and mightily, Temple-without-a-last-name.”

“Few of us have last names. The Oblates say we’re to be unknown in the world but not in the eyes of the Lord. I’ll be off now, Angus. Please let me pass.”

Angus stepped forward, aiming a punch at the smaller boy’s jaw. Temple, trembling, slipped beneath his arm and sprinted to the dormitory door. Angus raced after him, bouncing off the stairwell’s cold walls and then down a hallway, cornering him. Tears welled up in Temple’s eyes. Angus slapped him.

“Temple,” he heard Fiona say. “Come back here with us.”

“It stings my face,” Temple said.

“No, the bullet was in your
shoulder
, not your cheek. You’re healing.”

A small cross dangled from a chain around Fiona’s neck. Temple reached up to it.

“Your jewelry,” he murmured.

“My bedrock,” Fiona said. “You could use a foundation of your own.”

“No, no. Got to flee. See you when I see you.”

Late at night in the dormitory, and Temple was knotting sheets he had filched from a closet down the hall where the Oblates kept their bedding. Straw fell from the fabric and a roach flitted across his wrist. The other boys were sleeping, and he had stuffed his pillow, nightshirt, and towel under his bedspread to make for a proper body should the nuns take a look. He had his clothes and jacket on and a piece of bread that he’d nicked at breakfast jammed into a pocket. He pushed open one of the tall windows that overlooked the courtyard, tied one end of his makeshift rope to one leg of his bed, and dropped the other from the window. Then out and down he went. He heard the bed slide across the stone floor and crash into the wall as he slithered down, then shouting in the room. A boy’s head peeked out the window, then another, shouting at him, pointing. He hung on to his sheets, unsure of what to do—up or down? He was still five yards off the ground and already found out. Some of the boys had pulled back his bedding and savaged his mattress; they had torn straw from it and were tossing wads of it down at him from the window.

“Temple, stop struggling, lie still,” he heard Fiona say.

He looked up again and saw Angus there, stretching down from a window, pushing a knife into one of the knots, giggling as he cut through it. Temple rushed, trying to slide down as fast as he could, but the rope went slack and he dropped through the air, all of him
landing on his right leg, his knee twisting, the long bone in his thigh pressing up into him, snapping.

The nuns found him crumpled and unconscious at the bottom of the wall. Several of the boys dragged him back inside, into the dining hall, where they laid him on a table. Bone stuck out from the side of his leg, which dripped with blood. Darkness enveloped him—until he felt, again, a hand on his cheek and a moist towel on his head. Not a woman’s hand, though; a man’s. And voices around him: the nuns and someone new. The voice of a stranger.