The Ninth Daughter

.”

He is jealous of you, Rebecca had said, on another of those occasions when she had sneaked from her husband’s house, to take refuge in Abigail’s kitchen. Of my father, of the secrets I tell my maid. Even of little Nathan. He wants me to be his completely . . .

“But, I do not,” said Abigail, keeping her voice level with an effort. “And I doubt you would say this woman had her deserving, if you—” She bit off her words once more. You weren’t there . . .

“If I what?” shouted Malvern. “If I were willing to wink at treason, at sedition, at the creatures your husband and his cousin play upon to get their way? Don’t tell me she wasn’t hand in glove with these Sons of Liberty—Sons of Belial, more like! You ask your husband, if you want to know who this bitch was that was murdered, or where my wife might have run off to. And so I’ll tell the Watch, when they come—if they come, and this isn’t all another of Sam Adams’s lies. And as for you, Mrs. Adams, shame on you, a mother of children, and shame on your husband for permitting you to walk about the town like the harlot of the Scripture: Now is she without, and now in the streets . . . her feet go down to hell. To Hell is where you have led my wife, Mrs. Adams, in dragging her into the affairs of your so-called friends. And for that I will never forgive you, or them. Now get out of my house.”

Scipio whispered, “What happened?” as he emerged from the book-room, to escort her to the door.

In the study, Malvern’s voice bellowed, “Scipio!” and the butler flinched.

“Mrs. Malvern has disappeared,” replied Abigail swiftly, softly—knowing the master’s wrath would descend on the slave’s head if Scipio were one moment late in answering, or if the merchant so much as suspected the butler had spoken with his dishonored guest. “Where would she go, if she sought refuge? To her maidservant? She left Boston, didn’t she? Catherine, I mean—”

“She did—”

“Scipio, get in here, damn you!”

“She might. It’s a long way, I don’t know the name of the place but I’ll—”

The study door slammed open. Impassive, Scipio opened the outer door for Abigail, held himself straight and correct as she passed through. Only when Abigail glanced back over her shoulder as the door was closing, did she see Charles Malvern seize his slave by the shoulder of his coat and thrust him back against the wall, and strike him with the back of his hand across the face.

Six

In wardly shaking from her interview with Malvern—and possessed by what she knew was a fantasy that she would reach home to find a dripping-wet Rebecca huddled beside her kitchen fire—Abigail forced herself to stop in the market on her way back to Queen Street. As surely as she knew her own name, she knew that once she reached her own house, no marketing would get done. John (surely John was home by this time—it was nearly noon by the clock on Faneuil Hall) would demand a minute account of what she had seen in Rebecca’s kitchen, and would also demand to know why she hadn’t stopped Sam, as if anything less than a nine-pound gun could stop Sam once he got going. Poor Pattie would be struggling to finish her own chores and Abigail’s neglected ones, and both Johnny and Nabby—usually at Rebecca’s dame school at this time of the morning—would be underfoot, not to mention the two little ones . . .

Life on Queen Street was one continuous domestic crisis, with brief breaks for meals and church on Sunday.

So while her mind tugged and tested at where Rebecca could have taken refuge, at who the dead woman was and how the killer could have gotten into the house, she borrowed a basket from one of the farmwives she knew at the market—her own having been set down at some point in the morning she could no longer recall—and filled it with squash and corn and beans, pears and the best of the available remaining pumpkins, two chickens, and a lobster. She also paid a farthing for molasses candy, for the children and as an offering to Pattie for running off and leaving the poor girl with the whole house to clean and the ironing.

Not that Pattie was ever resentful or sulky, thank heavens. The girl would never set the world afire with her wits, but when King Solomon had set a good woman’s value above mere rubies he’d clearly displayed his shortcomings as a housekeeper . . . A reliable servant’s is above the stars in the sky.

Which is what comes of having kings write scripture and not housekeepers.

I must remember to bake extra tomorrow, and send something to Orion.

She turned the corner into Queen Street, and saw bright as the blood-stream on Rebecca’s doorstep that morning the scarlet of soldiers’ coats.

Not for a second did she doubt at whose door the men stood.

John. There was a list that we didn’t find, and the Watch did . . .

Abigail went cold down to her toes.

Over a dozen neighborhood children milled around them, at a safe distance precisely calculated, like blue jays teasing a cat. “Bloody-backs, bloody-backs,” chanted Shimrath Walton, and shied a knob of pig dung at the smaller of the men: not the first such missile, to judge by the state of the boy’s hands and the man’s uniform. The little soldier’s face turned as red as his coat and he took a stride toward the offenders, but they scattered, shrieking with laughter, only to reform a few yards away. “Lobsters for sale!”

“Sure now, what’ll your Ma say, you chuckin’ your lunch about like that?” retorted the taller soldier, which got a laugh from the children in return.

“Shimrath,” said Abigail sharply, “come here this moment. You, too, Jed,” she added, picking out the leader of the little band, and before she could single out a third, her own Nabby and Johnny darted out of the alley that ran beside the house:

“Ma, the redcoats have come to arrest Papa—”

“We tried to stop them.” Nabby flung plump arms around Abigail’s waist and held her desperately tight. “We tried—”

“Are they still in there?”

Both children nodded. Nabby was a silent girl, even at eight years of age worrisomely withdrawn. Her composure shattered, she looked like she’d been weeping: She adored her father. All Johnny’s blunt-spoken sarcasm seemed to have deserted him as well.

“Nabby.” Abigail bent down to her daughter to whisper, “You run at once to Mr. Revere’s shop—Johnny, you go with her”—Johnny would never tolerate seeing his sister dispatched on an errand if he were not given one as well, and never mind that he was barely out of dresses—“and tell Mr. Revere that soldiers are here—How many are there?”

“These two and an officer inside,” reported Johnny promptly. “He’s from the Provost Marshal.” In addition to studying Latin and the beginnings of Greek under his father’s eye, the pale, fair-haired boy had lately become the neighborhood expert on the facing-colors and insignia of the regiment stationed on Castle Island.

“Tell Mr. Revere that. He’ll know what to do. Shimrath, run tell Mr. Sam Adams. He may be at his house again and he may still be at Mrs. Malvern’s house in Tillet’s Yard—Jed, you go to Tillet’s Yard. I’ll hold them here.”

The children bolted in all directions. The shorter guard, not having been privy to Abigail’s murmured instructions, grunted, “Thank you, m’am. Those brats are a nuisance, no error.” The taller—a young man with a snub nose and wide-set blue eyes—regarded Abigail worriedly as she moved toward the mouth of the little alley that led to the yard behind.