The Ninth Daughter

arrowheads from flesh.

A few weeks ago Abigail would have sniffed, Well, there’s a first! Now she said, “You were deceived, sir. That’s all.”

“I was deceived,” he said, anger hardening his face at that recollection. Then he sighed. “But I was also wrong.” He stood, and Abigail rose, too. He grasped her hand again, a brief, businesslike grip. “I’ll not trouble Mr. Adams,” he added, as Abigail handed him his hat and gloves. “I reckon he’s got his work cut out for him. You may tell him from me that I hope it fails. Good day, m’am. Thank you—for standing a friend to Mrs. Malvern.”

She said, “We all need friends.”

More shirts. More sheets. The gray overcast of the sky thinned, engendering hopes that the garments would all actually dry this afternoon and tomorrow. The yard took on the aspect of a labyrinth of clothes-rope and poles, of linen flapping slowly, like sails in the doldrums, in such dreary puffs of wind as sneaked down the passways between the houses. As always, a path was left to the cowhouse, down which in due time Johnny would herd Semiramis and Cleopatra after an unprofitable day on the Commons. Abigail had just gone into the house to put together a scratch washday dinner of pork and cabbage—early, because John would be meeting with the chiefs of the Eighth Ward again—when the kitchen door darkened behind her and she heard Orion Hazlitt’s knock.

“I can’t stay.” He set his hat on the sideboard with a hand so uncertain that it almost fell. “I only wanted to thank you for helping Damnation with Mother yesterday. She told me—Damnation did—”

“Is your mother feeling better?”

His jaw tightened so hard that she thought it must break itself, of its own strength.

“I’m sorry—”

“No, it’s nothing . . . There’s nothing, really, that can be done. I’ve tried to act for the best,” he went on, in a voice taut with frustration and pain. “But I can’t be two people! Sometimes I feel—” He shook his head violently. “And Mr. Adams—Mr. Sam Adams—is on me hammer and tongs about these pamphlets, and this broadside Mr. Revere is engraving. I know the case is urgent. Mother doesn’t understand—”

He stopped himself, took a breath, and with a gallant recovery of a normal tone of voice, and the actions of a man unsavaged by expectations beyond human accomplishment, flourished the market basket he’d brought. “Thank you for bringing food.” He set the basket on the sideboard beside his hat. “Did we dwell in Paradise and were Mother—were Mother as calm and saintly as yourself—Damnation would still be the worst cook in the civilized world. You have once again saved our lives. You have—”

Again he fumbled for words. “You have heard nothing?” In the gray windowlight she saw that he was unshaven, and his green eyes had a restless movement to them, like a man haunted by things that only he could see.

Abigail shook her head. It did not seem to be the time, to speak of Charles Malvern, of her own questions and doubts. Time enough, she thought, when we know Rebecca will be alive to choose. Only a monster would slam the door of hope on this overburdened young man and leave him in darkness with his nightmare. “You did not tell me you grew up in Gilead.”

He blinked, startled. “I didn’t know you’d ever heard of the place.”

“I was there—”

His eyes widened with alarm. As well they might . . .

“Was your mother also the Chosen One’s bride?”

He sighed, and looked away. “Can you doubt it?”

“And that was why you fled?”

“Who can tell why one does what one does?” He made a helpless gesture. “I had to get out—had to get away. From her, from him . . . She said she would kill herself, if I ever left her. I knew she wouldn’t—” A wry grin twisted his mouth. “She loves herself far too well. But it was like cutting off my own arm, to leave her, even knowing her the way I do. And in the end I had to sneak away like a thief. I knew Bargest would look after her. It was almost a year, before one of his people here in town saw me, and wrote to him—to them—where I was.”

“His people?”

He sighed again. “Like Damnation. Like me. People who lived on Gilead, whom he can still command.” And seeing her raised brows, he asked more gently, “How do you think I could look after Mother, without his ordering Damnation to live here and help me? Say what you will about him, for better or for worse, he never leaves one of his people to make their way in the world unaided and alone.”

Not even Lucretia Hazlitt, reflected Abigail sadly. Even though her craziness had probably gone beyond what even the Gilead Congregation would put up with. She recalled those boarded-up houses, those shuttered upper stories. The place must have been much bigger, when little Orion and his mother—how old had he been then?—had come there, Lucretia afire with the words of the Chosen One, her “little King” dragged along by the hand. How many others, like Orion, had fled the community there? How many could the Hand of the Lord still call upon for service, here in Boston or in the communities along the bay?

Was it by his command that Orion had opened his house to his mother, despite what he knew it would cost him? Or had it been simply because she was his mother—because of that entangling love?

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and he shook his head again, and made a gesture of pushing some unseen thing away.

“ ’Tis all right. There’s naught to be done, and I’m used to her now. I can’t—” He rubbed his hand over his face, breathed in deep, and made a smile. “I keep thinking there was something else I could have done, but I don’t see what it is. Please don’t think ill of her.”

“No, of course not.”

“Tell Mr. Sam Adams that I’ll have his pamphlets done for him, right enough.” He bowed to her again, lifted his hat. “Now I must get back to her. She doesn’t do well alone.”

Abigail settled the pork and cabbage in the Dutch oven, ringed with potatoes, and buried the whole under shovelfuls of coals. The Reverend Bargest’s father had been a minister, too, she recalled one of her unwilling hosts saying at some point during her night’s stay—clearly one of those who’d believed in the spectral evidence of the devil’s presence in Salem—and she remembered wondering at the time what would become of those young girls she’d shared that cold attic bed with: illiterate as dogs and knowing nothing but labor on the farm, the emotional ecstasies of the House of Repentance, and the Prophet’s authority.

What was it Bess had said, in another context, a few days ago? It is almost impossible to change one’s way of life . . .

She and Nabby were clearing up after dinner when Shim Walton appeared at the back door.

“Mrs. Adams,” he said worriedly as she stepped out into the bedsheet maze in the yard with him, “I remembered what you said, about not telling a soul, and I haven’t. But since I talked to Tim Flowers this morning —he’s the brother to Hap, that’s Mr. Tillet’s junior apprentice—I’ve been thinking about it, and thinking about it, and if you don’t tell someone I’m going to have to tell Mr. Butler. Because Tim says, that Hap says, that Mr. Tillet is keeping a lady locked up in his attic.”

Twenty-seven

Nehemiah Tillet’s brother-in-law was the magistrate of the Third Ward, and Abigail knew instinctively that he would speak to Tillet before paying a visit to the house.

Thus, Abigail wrote a note to Lieutenant Coldstone, and after a word with Mrs. Butler—Shim’s master being already gone to the ward meeting with John—she dispatched Shim to find a boat over to Castle Island. The boy was