chill, exertion, and clothing damp from the wet of the woods. She realized she was very lucky to be alive at all. Rebecca, slumped behind the King’s bloody-back savage, was shivering, too. The Indian reached out a hand to her, but Abigail, mindful of the soldiers watching them, kept her grip on the reins.
In a quiet voice she asked, “I take it you didn’t get my message until the town gates were shut for the night. Was the storm too bad to get a boat across the bay?”
“Ugh.” He looked, first at Rebecca, his eyes filled with pity, then at Orion.
“The Reverend Bargest is dead,” said Abigail. “Hazlitt shot him—goodness knows what his followers are going to do.” She coughed, fighting to still it, then gave the Indian a smile. “It is very good to see you, dearest friend.”
He smiled back, and saluted her with his tomahawk. “Ugh.”
The Indian who looked like Paul Revere slipped the account book into his own saddlebag, and signed to his men. Two of them took the reins of Orion’s horse. Orion turned in the saddle, and sought Rebecca’s eyes, but did not speak. With him among them, the whole tribe disappeared into the night.
Thirty-four
Presumably this same tribe of Indians, five nights later, boarded the three tea ships at Griffin’s Wharf—the
Abigail herself only heard the men go by in the street, from the bed where she lay in the weak aftermath of fever. Though her window was closed and shuttered by that time, still the tramp of their feet came to her, quiet and well-disciplined, though some of them sang.
“And not so much as a belaying-pin on any of those three ships was stolen or damaged,” Rebecca Malvern reported the next morning, when she came after breakfast with fresh-baked scones and a hot ginger tisane. “The Indians even swept the decks clean afterwards.”
“How very tidy of them.” Abigail—dressed for the first time since being put to bed with a feverish cold— tugged her several shawls closer about her shoulders, and sipped the tisane. “Sam does nice work.”
“It makes me wish I could write a poem about it.” Rebecca smiled, and drew over to herself the papers that Thaxter had left on the big kitchen table for them: notes copied from the Essex County court records, which showed just how much of the Gilead congregation’s lands actually belonged to the Sellars family, and through them, to Richard Pentyre.
Abigail looked across at her, and raised an inquiring brow. After being sick herself for two days, nursed by Gomer Faulk in the tiny chamber from which Tommy and Charley had been temporarily evicted, Rebecca had been on her feet again and helping Gomer and Pattie nurse Abigail—thus Abigail had witnessed the meeting between her friend and Charles Malvern.
It had been awkward—no self-respecting novelist would have produced the fumbling dialog between the elderly merchant and his estranged and rescued wife—but, Abigail thought, not painful. The afternoon following— which was Wednesday—Malvern had called again, and Wednesday evening, Scipio had arrived with a light gig, to take Rebecca home.
Rebecca continued, “Perhaps I will write a poem, at that. I’ll keep it in my desk drawer, until—until we know how any of this will turn out.” She smoothed the folds of the dark wool dress she wore, a dress that bore the signs of neat refitting and was laced as close as it would draw around her wasted body. Framed in the neat dark wig she wore, her strong-boned, triangular face had a waifish look.
Still, she’d been enough herself to smile and laugh when Johnny and Nabby had greeted her back with embraces, and demanded help with their sums, at which they were working at the other end of the table: “Will you be teaching us again?” Nabby had wanted to know. “I’ve told Gomer she can come to your school, too.” And Rebecca had replied, “I would love to have you again—and you, too, Mistress Faulk—but it may not answer, now that I’m to be Mr. Malvern’s wife again.”
Now Abigail asked, “And what does Mr. Malvern say to last night’s events?”
“Everything that he always did.” Rebecca’s smile turned a little wry. “I knew his promise not to speak of politics wouldn’t hold—I think he’d go off in an apoplexy if he tried to keep it. But at least so far he does remember, that we have ‘agreed to disagree.’ Having Tamar gone helps,” she added. “She went on a great deal about prisons and convents, when her father broke it to her she was being sent to her aunt’s. But I think the prospect of living in New York cheered her, before she even got on the boat. I still keep to my own room, and Mr. Malvern to his.” She turned on her wrist the little bracelet of pearls, that Abigail did not remember among her things before. “And we will see, how it all answers, in time.”
Silence lay between them, and Abigail drank her tisane. Pattie and the children went out into the scullery— Pattie had promised to make a syllabub for after dinner—and the kitchen was quiet. Oddly so, it seemed, without the church bells that had rung over Boston for two weeks. Indeed, the silence seemed a little ominous.
“I must say I’m a little surprised, that the Indians unloaded all three ships,” remarked Abigail after a moment. “What came of the rumor that someone was going to unload the
Rebecca laughed, and flung up one hand in exasperation: “Do you know who was behind that?
To call her thoughts back, Abigail said, “He guessed there’d be trouble, and sneaked off after seeing his mistress, to hire smugglers to circumvent it?”
Rebecca nodded, and made herself smile. Abigail saw the tears flood to her eyes.
“And of course he guessed there’d be trouble because that wretch Bargest had sent him a note, threatening his life.”
Rebecca drew breath, to steady herself, and let it out again. “ ’Tis lucky he had the note, or he’d have been a suspect himself.”
“Don’t think I didn’t suspect him.” Abigail refilled her cup. The silence returned.
At length Rebecca said, “I dreamed about it last night. Again. In daytime I barely remember it, but at night —”
“ ’Twill pass.”
“I know.” Rebecca pressed her hands to her eyes for a moment, and sighed again. “I don’t even know if the things I see in my dreams really happened or not. I remember—I think I remember—waking up lying on my bed with my hands tied, in the dark, but I have no idea how I got there. Orion had come earlier, of course, with some more of the Hand of the Lord’s wretched sermons, but I know he left. And I remember going out a little later, and seeing Queenie standing in the alley gate, talking to one of the men who buys kitchen leftovers—grease and suet and such, only of course Mrs. T. forbade her to sell them. The way she started when I spoke to her, I suspect she was selling other things, like the odd spoon, or a few ounces of Mr. T’s cognac.”
Abigail sniffed. “I wondered if ’twas something like that. The way she lied and prevaricated about having been in the alley, or having talked to you—”
“Miserable woman. I suppose,” she added, “that living under the same roof with Mrs. Tillet would make anyone miserable, let alone a thief and a liar. I remember talking to her, and going back into the house as the rain was starting, but nothing after that.”
“We think—John and I,” Abigail said slowly, “that Orion must have unlatched the window in the parlor when he was there earlier, and slipped back in that way while you were out talking to Queenie by the gate. Yours was the only house, you see, that he knew he could get Mrs. Pentyre to come to alone.”
