The Lincoln Conspiracy by Timothy L. O'Brien Page A

York. I know of Mars. He wants my papers. Robert wants my papers and he wants my money. Yet nothing is worse than my Darling Husband’s absence. That is my daily crucifixion. My Gethsemane.
    “It ends there,” Augustus said. “It stops.”
    Several minutes passed before Temple stood up. Nail moved closer, bending over to examine the diary.
    “You can read!” he said to Augustus.
    “Negroes read,” Augustus replied. “A self-taught mathematician and Negro—Benjamin Banneker—surveyed and helped designPennsylvania Avenue here seventy years ago. We can read and we can add.”
    “You mistake me,” Nail said. “I mean, you read beautifully. All I can read are banknotes. I cannot read as you read. I can’t read books.”
    “Augustus is the son of free Negroes who fled Texas after the Alamo,” Temple offered. “He is educated and he is a teacher.”
    Nail nodded, smiled, and extended his hand to Augustus. But Nail pulled back his hand when a fury of howling and scratching erupted around the warehouse’s entry, interrupting him. Then a fist pounded against the door.
    “In!” Nail shouted.
    One of Nail’s men opened the door a crack. The tip of a rifle peeked through the gap and the snouts of two dogs pushed through, snarling, around the man’s legs. He bent his head farther inside and looked across the warehouse to where Nail and the others were standing.
    “ ’Sall right!” Nail hollered.
    The door closed again.
    “There’s still the other,” Augustus said.
    The three men looked down at the two diaries stacked on the floor.
    “You’ve done it once before, Temple. Open it again,” said Nail.
    Mary Todd Lincoln’s diary was almost perfectly square, appearing as new and fresh as it was the day it was bought, and it was heavy with thick pages and a sturdy binding. The second diary, like the first, was bound in leather, but it was distinct in every other way. It was long and slender, and its red cover was faded and spotted. Some of the pages hung loosely, close to falling out. The script inside was a man’s, and the writing was tight and small, with none of the looping curves that marked Mrs. Lincoln’s notes. But the language, while not as florid as Mrs. Lincoln’s, was just as self-absorbed.
    Temple sat down and began reading aloud:
    For six months we had worked to capture, but our cause being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done. But its failure was owing to others, who did not strike for their country with a heart. I struck boldly, and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on. A colonel was at his side. I shouted
Sic semper
before I fired. In jumping broke my leg. I passed all his pickets, rode sixty miles that night with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump. I can never repent it, though we hated to kill. Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment. The country is not what it was. This forced Union is not what I have loved. I care not what becomes of me. I have no desire to outlive my country
.
    Temple looked up at Augustus and Nail. Augustus didn’t say a word. Nail’s eyes met Temple’s and Nail grimaced, shaking his head. Temple read on:
    For my country I have given up all that makes life sweet and holy, brought misery upon my family, and am sure there is no pardon in the Heaven for me, since man condemns me so. I have only heard of what has been done (except what I did myself), and it fills me with horror. God, try and forgive me, and bless my mother. Tonight I will once more try the river with the intent to cross. Though I have a greater desire and almost a mind to return to Washington and in a measure clear my name—which I feel I can do. I do not repent the blow I struck. I may before my God, but not to man. I think I have done well. Though I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me, when, if the world knew my heart, that one