The Ninth Daughter

Abigail knew that Orion Hazlitt had managed, on the slender proceeds of his printing and stationery shop, to pay an elderly housekeeper . . . an arrangement which had concluded within three days of Mrs. Hazlitt’s appearance on the doorstep.

“The Devil sends tempters to call my poor son away from me, to take him from my side.” The lovely widow stopped directly before Abigail, stared at her with tears suddenly brimming in her emerald eyes. “He wouldn’t forsake me of his own volition, and I tremble for him, tremble at his sin! Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land that God hath given thee!”

“Of course, m’am.” It was no wonder, Abigail reflected, that for two years now the printing business had been in slow decline, and the shop, with its few books and boxes of stationery, wore a dusty and neglected look. Too many days Abigail had walked down Hanover Street and seen the shutters up while Orion, with superhuman patience, reasoned with this woman, or cleaned up the messy destruction that resulted from her moments of fury.

“Why would God have given Mankind Commandments, if as that—that deplorable and desolate Worldly-Man out there—has said, that some are saved from the beginnings of Time? Honor thy father and thy mother, and yet he thrusts me away from him! He leaves his own mother to be drowned in the Flood, while he chases after the Daughters of Babylon, the Daughters of Eve! The serpent, the harlot—”

“Now, Mother.” To Abigail’s infinite relief, the door through to the shop opened and Orion came in, trailed by Sam. “Wasn’t I there to hold your hand, the moment the rain began?”

Mrs. Hazlitt flinched at the word, and shivered. “Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail,” she whispered, “and the mountains were covered.” Her long, slender hands clutched at her son’s coat-facings, and she pressed her face to his breast. “All flesh died, that moved upon the earth.”

“Mrs. Adams,” whispered Orion, with a nod in the direction of the cold fireplace. “Could you bring me that vial, there on the corner of the mantle . . . Just a drop, in a cup of water . . . only a drop . . . Mother,” he said gently, in the voice of one trying to coax a much-loved child, “Mother, it’s all right, I’m here. I’ve been here all the time. There’s nothing to fear. Your little king is here.”

Sam stood with folded arms in the doorway, watching with a combination of exasperation and pity. He wasn’t insensitive, Abigail knew. Only swept, like a prophet, with a sense of his mission, and at the moment, his mission was to protect the cause of colonial liberties—the Sons of Liberty—from being absolutely undone by having the Watch come into Rebecca Malvern’s house and somehow stumble upon the book of names that he hadn’t been able to find. Orion looked fagged to death, as if he had had very little sleep, and if the state of his mother’s mind at the mention of rain was anything to go by, the night must have been a trying one.

“The waters prevailed,” she murmured, sinking down into her chair, “and all the high hills under heaven were covered. But you were there to save me and comfort me. Don’t ever leave me, my son.” She looked up at Abigail. “My son is a good son. A child of righteousness,” she whispered, and transferred her grip to Orion’s hands as he put the cup to her lips. “I pray every day that he will be delivered out of the snares of Evil, and find his way back to Salvation before it is too late. Save me and comfort me . . . How could a boy who is so good run after the ways of Sinners, and stuff himself in the trough of Hell?” She began to nod.

“What happened?” Orion asked over her head in a low voice. “Mr. Adams tells me you found a woman— dead—in-in—He said that Rebecca—that Mrs. Malvern,” he corrected himself shakily, “—is-is gone, fled—”

“Did you see her yesterday?” asked Abigail.

“Yesterday evening, yes. That’s what I was telling Mr. Adams. I went there just after eight, to pick up the proofs for the sermons she is correcting for me, and a broadside about the meeting Tuesday against the tea tax.” Just about the only printing business that remained to him, Abigail knew, was that done for the Sons of Liberty. And even in that he was becoming less and less reliable, as he struggled to balance caring for his mother with making a living.

“Did Mrs. Malvern say anything about meeting someone there later?”

Hazlitt shook his head. “She said she had sewing yet to finish for that Tillet harpy, and after that was going to bed. I was ashamed to keep her up, waiting even that late for me. But that wretched witch Queenie spies on her. The Tillets would put her out, if they thought she was meeting a man. The woman you found—”

“We have no idea who she is. Clearly she’s wealthy. She had on diamond earrings—”

“They threw her down from the window.” Mrs. Hazlitt raised her head, blinked sleepily up at Abigail. “She tir’d her head, and painted her face, and called out to Jehu as he drove his chariot into the court. They threw her down from the window. Her blood was sprinkled on the wall and on the legs of the horses, and the horses trode her underfoot. When they came to bury her, there was naught left of Jezebel the Queen, save her skull, and her feet, and the palms of her hands.” She tucked her son’s hand a little more closely beneath her cheek, and drifted off again into her dreams.

Abigail looked around the little room again, at the messy hearth, and the candlesticks clotted with tallow and the few dishes containing nothing but bread crumbs and butter-smears. There was a stain on the whitewashed plaster of the wall, where food had been recently thrown. “Have you no one to look after her?” she asked. “Or yourself, for that matter—”

“The girl chose yesterday afternoon to go off and visit her family,” sighed Hazlitt. “She should be back tomorrow. I shall manage. It isn’t the first time.”

Presumably, reflected Abigail, any girl willing to work for what Hazlitt could pay, and put up with Mrs. Hazlitt into the bargain, was not to be turned out no matter how flagrantly she took advantage of her employer.

“Have you called the Watch?” asked the printer.

“We’re off to do that now.” Sam glanced over his shoulder into the shop at the tinkle of the bell above the door. But it was only Revere and Dr. Warren, elaborately casual as a couple of Roman Senators pretending they didn’t have daggers under their togas. “We needed to make sure what you knew, before we went stirring up any ponds and raising a stench. For all we knew, she’d come here to you—”

“Would to God she had!” Hazlitt looked desperately across at Abigail. “I would have thought she’d go to you, Mrs. Adams, if she couldn’t wake that half-drunk slut of a cook . . . whom Judgment Day wouldn’t wake, belike.”

“I would have thought so, too,” said Abigail quietly.

“It’s early days yet.” A trace of uneasiness stained Sam’s rich voice. “Listen, Hazlitt. While you were in Mrs. Malvern’s house, did you see a brown quarto-sized account book anywhere? It had ‘Household Expenses’ stamped on its front cover.”

The printer shook his head. He was, Abigail guessed, thirty, and took after his mother’s beauty. When Abigail had first met him back in ’68, she’d marveled that, poor as he was, he had no wife. Had he married then, she wondered, would his mother have been able to move in with him as she had? Or would she have done so—quoting the Fifth Commandment all the way—and driven the wife out, as she’d driven that poor housekeeper? Weariness and shock, instead of aging his face, seemed to make him appear younger, like a boy frightened and uncertain. She put out her hand, and touched his elbow, where his hand cradled his mother’s cheek. “Forget the book,” she said, and Sam opened his mouth in indignation. She went on, over his protest, “Did Rebecca ever speak to you of a woman friend—a wealthy woman—who might be sympathetic to the cause of our rights? Or, did she ever speak to you of someone who might wish her—Mrs. Malvern—ill herself?”

He lifted his head and his green eyes flashed sudden fire. “Other than that brute of a husband, you mean? The swine had the temerity to write to Tillet, threatening to bring him to law for ‘harboring a harlot,’ as he called her, and ‘operating a house of ill fame.’ If ever there was a case of God’s hand being needed in mortal affairs—” He broke off, and turned his face away, his breath coming fast and a stain of angry crimson flushing his cheekbone.

“Without the hand of the Lord, no mortal affair can prosper.” Mrs. Hazlitt raised her head, her fingers tightening around those of her son. “All our deeds are in vain, unless God guide us by his strong hand, and only through the hand of the Lord lies our salvation.”

“Harlot or no harlot,” said Revere, “I’d give much to be there when the Watch tells old Malvern his wife’s gone missing. And under such circumstances as these.”

“Good God, man,” cried Warren, “you’re not thinking Malvern had aught to do with—”

“I’m not thinking anything,” retorted the silversmith lazily. “But after all the spite and venom he’s poured