“You’re a Fenian, then?”
“Oh, Samuel, if I say yes, you’ll ask ten thousand questions. If I say no, you won’t believe me.” She sighed beneath her bonnet. “I am not at liberty to tell you.”
The river lapped at the boat’s hull. In the distance a factory whistle shrilled and a bird’s cry answered starkly overhead.
“Not at liberty,” I muttered, looking at this woman from a different era, seeing her old-fashioned clothes and button shoes. As we floated along a sunlit stretch of shoreline, clear images of my daughters came to me: laughing, calling “Daddy,” running to me in the sunlight of another century; I saw their faces, heard their voices.
“Samuel . . . ?”
I looked up. She was leaning forward, peering at me with troubled eyes.
“Are you ill?”
I shook my head. “Daydreaming.”
“You were so far away, you frightened me.”
“Sorry.”
“Samuel, try to be patient. Please?”
I managed a grin. “It’s not my strong suit.”
“Remember,” she said, “there is a great deal I do not know about you.”
“I guess that’s true.” My understatement of the century.
As I steered back to the dock we exchanged wistful smiles that seemed to acknowledge the complexity of it all.
I ransacked every paper I could find covering the past month. Sitting with stacks of them in the Mercantile Library, I learned that five hundred delegates from all over the United States had assembled at Fenian Headquarters in Manhattan. General O’Neill had been present and “the veil of secrecy” was drawn “with unusual care” over the session.
A recent New York Times article asserted that the Fenians contemplated an immediate move on Canada and were also plotting to abduct Prince Arthur should he visit there or this country. I leaned back and rubbed my eyes. Unless the Times had fabricated the whole thing, the Fenian leaders were either insane or blowing smoke clouds. But why? Were they not yet ready, but hoping to build momentum? Were they covering up what they really hoped to pull?
No less confused than when I’d started, I focused on the most immediate question in my mind: What exactly was in Cait’s basement?
I was truly gorgeous in my best dark suit. My collar was starched and snowy, my beard and hair trimmed. I managed the block and a half from the Gibson to the photographer’s without wilting in the noonday heat. They were waiting for me, Timmy in short pants, Cait looking sensational in a green satin dress.
“You’re beautiful, Miz O’Neill,” I said.
“And you, Mr. Fowler,” she said, smiling and taking my arm, “are most noble to the eye.”
I think she felt a bit guilty about our boating afternoon. When I’d said I wanted to have a portrait made of her and Timmy, she surprised me by insisting that I be included. In terms of our relationship, she was hard to read. Not only were her moods unpredictable when we were alone together—so far we hadn’t repeated our one transcendent kiss—but I couldn’t really tell if she saw me as gentleman friend, admirer, potential lover, or a brotherly sort of extension of Andy. Perhaps in her mind we were engaging in heavy courtship. I had no idea. I was trying hard to learn the rules as I played. And trying equally hard not to push things.
“All is ready!” The photographer, a tall, nervous man named Daviscourt, his fingers stained brown from chemicals, led us to a backdrop painted with an idyllic woodland stream in front of which were imitation flowers, shrubbery, and a bark canoe. He posed me with Timmy inside the canoe and settled Cait on a stool between us—which made her look, I thought, as if she were sitting in the water. He handed her a parasol and me a rustic walking stick. Props at the ready, we waited. He ducked beneath his black cloth, emerged to inform us that light conditions were posing unusual problems, and eventually made half a dozen exposures of us gazing frozenly at each other or into his lens. Timmy had trouble staying still so long.
“Uncommonly difficult,” Daviscourt grumbled. “The skylight seemed to give off unusual radiance, but not uniformly. I hope another sitting won’t be required,”
We said we hoped the same.
“Sam, can we toss the ball?” Timmy said at home. “My throwing’s stronger!”
I pulled out my watch. “Sure, for a couple minutes, then I have to get to practice.”
“Who do you play next?”
“We leave for Portsmouth tomorrow.”
Cait looked up. “When will you return, Samuel?”
“Friday morning,” I lied, wondering if her interest were only casual. We were actually scheduled back Thursday evening. I had a bit of sleuthing in mind.
She nodded gravely, her eyes holding mine for a moment.
I felt like a shit.
The pennant-holding Eckfords were coming to play us next week. A sure sellout. Deciding the occasion called for new products, I visited Bertha Bertram, a seamstress, in her millinery shop on Elm. Harry employed her each year to make the club’s uniforms. She looked at my designs for silk rosettes and ribbon badges bearing red-stocking in-signias and said she could make them for six cents apiece. I agreed readily, thinking I could sell them for at least a dime, and ordered as many as she could have ready.
Next I went to a print shop on Vine. Sheet music for “The Red Stocking Scottische,” which was “dedicated to the ladies of Cincinnati,” had recently been published. On its cover were the players’ likenesses, pirated poorly from the engraving in Leslie’s. I lent them my print of the original photograph and ordered five thousand small posters to be made along the same format: oval head shots of the starters, with Harry in the center. I figured I’d easily clear a dime on each. Champion would go nuts.
The house lay dark and silent in the half-light. No wagon stood in front this time. I crept to the basement door and took a screwdriver from my pocket. The hinges were not rusted, and the screws came out easily. I lifted the door free. A ladder led
