The Ninth Daughter

“to see him try.” She had, Abigail reflected, been with Sam Adams a long time.

Abigail pulled her cloak tighter about her shoulders as the gray wind cut at her, tucked her chin into the layers of scarves that swaddled her neck. At any other time, I would be rejoicing.

At any other time—ten days ago—I would have cried out against anyone who tried to stop any of the Sons of Liberty from their endeavors, for any reason. Our liberties—our rights as English citizens—take precedence over the misdeeds of any individual.

In her mind she saw the little black cat on the windowsill, washing itself philosophically with the stump of its paw.

. . . deacon at the New Brick Meeting . . . a-poundin’ on the Fishwire’s door and screamin’ at her . . .

Surry strolled beside her, half a pace behind as behooved a slave, but commenting now and then on this or that ship, this or that group of countrymen . . . Comfortable with Abigail, as with a member of the family. And so she was, reflected Abigail, glancing at her: plump and quite pretty in her spotless white head-wrap and calico dress. She had long ago guessed that Cousin Sam used this woman as a concubine, and that Sam’s wife, Bess, if not precisely delighted by the arrangement, had accepted it. They were both good-natured women, they were both dearly fond of Sam, and both would rather work together to keep the household comfortable than rend it with recrimination and jealousy. Had she been white, and a free man’s wife, Surry would have been precisely what Bess was—as respectable a housewife as she was an “honest” slave.

Thus it was no good asking her if she knew anyone who might have known Jenny Barry. The gulf that divided the respectable from the raffish was deep, and cut across both slave and free. Even a woman as poor and as slatternly as Hattie Kern would feel deeply insulted, had Abigail asked her about the dead prostitute’s friends, enemies, clients. What makes you think I’d know a woman like that?

A man could cross that gulf, of course. As Jeffrey Malvern obviously did, coming to the North End taverns to play cards and drink—it occurred to Abigail to wonder if he, like Abednego Sellars, had a “ladyfriend” with “rooms” somewhere among these anonymous little rear buildings and yards. No man—anger prickled behind her breastbone at the thought—would suffer ostracism from friends and fellow members of the Congregation, merely for speaking to a publican, a whoremaster, a thief.

Paul Revere could help her there. But Revere was still away, carrying pamphlets and broadsides to every town in the colony, bidding all men who loved their country to come to Boston and stand against tyranny.

As they passed Hitchborn’s Wharf, Surry pointed to the whaleboats that were putting out for Castle Island, carrying the families and property of the tea consignees, seeking protection from the Crown against the mob that was growing larger by the day.

Knowing that in all probability she would be immured within her own house for the rest of the day, making dinner and performing the belated tasks of housewifery, after parting from Surry by the town dock Abigail made her way to Hanover Street. She found the shutters up at Orion Hazlitt’s shop, but, hearing voices down the narrow passway to the yard, went back and found him endeavoring to explain to his mother why he was going out, yet again.

She was weeping pitifully, her arms around him like a lover. “But why, son? You’re always leaving me alone now. You didn’t used to. How have I angered you?”

“Mother, I’m not angry. I could never be angry with you. I’ll be back this afternoon.” He tightened his arm around her, bent his head, to kiss her full on the lips. “I would never abandon my best beloved.”

She laid her head on his chest. “But you have,” she whispered. “You have left me, over and over. Please tell me, how I can win back your love.”

“Mother—” he said desperately.

“What if it should rain?” she begged, in a small voice like a child’s. “What if the rain should pour down, and the waters rise, and the house begin to float away? All the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered; fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered . . . and all that was in the dry land died.”

“I won’t let that happen.” Over her starched lace cap his eyes met Abigail’s, and there was a haunted flicker in them—wondering if I saw that kiss?—as if begging her to understand. He looked as if he had neither eaten nor slept properly in many nights. “I didn’t leave you alone the other night, did I? When it started raining, and you were so frightened, I came back.”

“You did,” she whispered. “You held my hand. All flesh died, that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth . . .” And she clasped his fingers now, and kissed them with a passion that made Abigail cringe. No wonder the poor man did not feel able to bring a wife into his house. “I could not live without you, now that we are outcasts, exiles, wanderers upon the face of the earth . . .”

“Nor I without you, Mother. Truly, honestly. But I must leave now—”

“Of course, dearest. Just come inside for a moment and see how I’ve embroidered those new pillowcases for your bed, just the way you liked them—”

“You showed me already, Mother, and they’re beautiful.” A note of desperation crept into his voice. “And I’ll see them again when I return. Damnation—”

A young woman emerged from the house, whom Abigail vaguely recognized as the “girl” indispensible to any household in the town, a lanky, broad-shouldered female with a long, rectangular jaw and dirty hair.

“Son!” pleaded Mrs. Hazlitt, suddenly frantic. “Don’t—” She pulled against the grip of the young woman, clutched at her son’s hands, then the lapels of his coat, as he tried to step away; she began to struggle and weep. “Why have you stopped loving me, son? Why won’t you tell me what I’ve done to make you hate me? There is a generation that curseth their father, and doth not bless their mother! There is a generation whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives . . .”

The young man turned swiftly, and Abigail walked with him out through the passway to the street. “She’ll forget all this by the time I’m home, you know,” he said quietly, seeing the trouble on Abigail’s face. “I hate it: I hate having to do it. And she—she doesn’t understand. She’s never understood—” He shook his head, as if trying to shake away sacking wrapped around his eyes and brain. “Have you heard anything? Anything at all?”

Abigail debated for a moment about telling him that at least two other women had been murdered in the same fashion as Perdita Pentyre, then put the thought aside. “I know Rebecca hasn’t fled to stay with her maid,” she said. “Her husband—”

He had been wavering, caught between his fear for his mother, and the tug of the tolling bells. Now he grew still. “You’ve seen him?”

“He has been most helpful, Orion.”

“If I had—” he began impulsively, then stopped himself, and stood for a moment, looking past her, his face wooden with anger and distress. “He’s shown before he’ll do anything to possess her, up to and including putting her under lock and key! Do you think you can trust him?” he asked at last.

“I think so,” she said slowly.

“Do you ever wish—?” He hesitated, then let his breath out in a rush. When she put her hand on his arm, Abigail was disconcerted to feel him trembling. “Let me know,” he said, “if you learn anything. If you find anything. I know it’s—” He shook his head again, and rubbed his eyes. “Her husband will always be her husband.” He sounded like a man reminding himself. “And Mother will always be my mother. I know that. Yet I can be her friend.”

Wish what? Abigail watched him stride away down the slope of Wine Lane toward Faneuil Hall. Wish that instead of sitting at home comforting his mother when the rain began Thursday night, he had been still at Rebecca Malvern’s, when Perdita Pentyre’s killer came knocking at the shutter? Asking in a voice she knew, to let him in?

Wish that he had stood at God’s elbow, there at the beginning of Time, and asked that the woman he loved not be given in marriage to a bone-dry merchant with two half-grown children? That he could spend his days with a mother whose grip upon him was an embrace and not a stranglehold?

And in her mind she heard her father’s gentle voice: But we were