The Ninth Daughter

Despite his look of having quietly thrown up his supper not long before, Revere managed a wry grin. “Depend upon me to do so, m’am.”

Twenty-nine

My dear Miss Fluckner,

Thank you for the help you have given us, beyond what I can express.

The man who wrote the poems to Philomela is a printer named Orion Hazlitt. He is being sought by authorities now, for yet another crime. My suspicion is that he will flee the district, yet the possibility remains that he may attempt to cross over to the Island. Please be alert, and both you and Mistress Philomela take care about going anywhere alone. Yet I beg you, for reasons which you must take on trust, do not speak of this, or show this letter, to anyone, unless you should return to the mainland, or see him on the Island.

I will advise you, when I hear that he has been apprehended. I do not feel that it will be long.

Your friend,

A. Adams

This note John carried down to the waterfront, to send across to Castle Island, when he left the house in the morning to meet Sam. “Don’t wait dinner for me,” he said as he kissed her. “Nor supper either. The Lord only knows how long it will take, to trace this rumor and find out who exactly is planning to take off the Beaver’s cargo—if indeed anyone is at all.”

“I shall leave a bowl of food for you on the doorstep,” Abigail promised, neatly tying the tapes on Tommy’s clout. “Right next to Messalina’s.”

He put a hand on her shoulder and leaned to kiss her nape. “Portia, your price is above rubies.”

Gomer Faulk, coming in behind Pattie with her arms full of ice-cold linens from the yard, said, “Good-bye, Mr. Adams,” as he passed. Making a place for the big woman in the household would be awkward, reflected Abigail, for the little time she’d be there—I MUST write a letter to Papa today as well, and get Thaxter to take it—but at least she was good-hearted, eager to do what lay within her simple understanding, and loved children.

“Well, she’s living proof that the Lord does provide,” remarked Pattie, with a twinkle in her eye. “Here she’s come just on the day when we need help with the ironing.”

AND a letter to the pastor at Medford, to find out who the woman really is related to . . .

Abigail shivered, as she and Pattie returned to the yard for another load of shirts and sheets, at the thought of how easy it was for a woman with no family connections to drop out of sight without a trace. Her mind roved, not to Pamela in the novel, but to Jenny Barry, to the children of Mrs. Kern the laundrywoman in Love Lane Yard—little six-year-old Nannie who’d been sent down to the tavern to fetch Mr. Ballagh, as casually as if she’d been a grown girl able to defend herself—to Philomela, after whom no one would inquire once money was handed over. Even to the maddening, clinging, outrageous Lucretia Hazlitt, whom everyone avoided if they could . . .

That, she supposed, in spite of its absurdity, was why she came back to Pamela again and again. Because at its heart, it was true. No one really cared about a girl who was poor, more than they cared about themselves.

Movement in the passway to the street caught her eye. Turning—her thought going at once to Sam and his “boys”—she saw Sergeant Muldoon. He saluted, and she quickly draped the garments over her big wicker clothes- hamper and hurried across to him: “Good Heavens, man, are you mad? I’m astonished you weren’t set upon, on your way here.”

“Well, there was a bit of a botheration.” He craned his head around to look over his own shoulder at splotches of fresh horse dung smeared on his back. “But ’twas just bad words, when all’s said, and none tried to stay me. ’Tis early yet. Though I’ll be hopin’,” he added a little shyly, “that you’ll be so kind as to find a minute, to walk me back to the wharves. I’ve this for you, from Himself.”

He held out a sealed note.

My very dear Mrs. Adams:

When we parted yesterday evening I expressed myself harshly, being very angry. Yet on reflection I see that we are equally accessories after the fact.

If we do not trust one another, at least insofar as this case is concerned, the next victim’s blood will be upon both of our hands. Sooner or later, one of us must surrender the high ground of safety with proof of good intent.

Therefore, as I am detained today upon the island, I enclose the reason that Colonel Leslie is so sure that it was your husband who was responsible for the murder of Mrs. Pentyre. I trust, first, that you will show this to no one—not to your husband, nor to anyone whom you may know or suspect to be associated with the Sons of Liberty—and that you will return it to me.

I hope that this gesture will prompt a reciprocal sharing of at least some of the information which I know that you have been keeping from me, concerning the circumstances of Mrs. Pentyre’s murder. I promise you, that I will keep silent concerning what you tell me, save where it touches that which would immediately endanger the lives of the soldiers under Colonel Leslie’s charge. I know you to be a woman of profound integrity, and loyalty to your husband and to his cause; even as I have my loyalty to my King and to my Regiment.

Your obedient servant,

Lieutenant Jeremy Coldstone

King’s 64th Regiment

She unfolded the enclosed note.

Pentyre—

The hand of Liberty lies heavy upon you, and shall crush your wife and yourself for your Sins against your Country and those who Love her.

Novanglus

For the second time in just over half a day, Abigail was smitten dizzy with the vertiginous sensation of being bombarded with too much light. As if she had opened a door long closed, and before her a vista of doors slammed open in such swift sequence that the sight of what lay beyond one was immediately overwhelmed by what lay beyond the next. Her breath stopped—she had the sensation it was minutes before she was able to draw it again, and she fought to keep her hands from shaking.

Rebecca.

DEAR GOD!!!

She folded up both notes. She was almost surprised, to see her yard with its mazes of clothes-ropes exactly as it had been five minutes before. “Can you read, Sergeant Muldoon?” she inquired in her sweetest voice.

“Oh, not me, m’am. I can put me name good and proper, but more’n that our priest never did manage to teach me.”

“Hmm,” said Abigail. “Well, Lieutenant Coldstone writes here that you are to disregard all former orders to