A Marked Man

the back door and freeze to death in the yard—Abigail took coarse paper from the sideboard drawer and wrote neatly in kitchen-pencil,

Sam,

Can you inquire if men from Boothby in Maine or its vicinity came to town on Saturday morning, and if so, the name of their vessel and their ostensible business? There is a good chance they know aught of Cottrell’s true killers.

A.A.

Sam’s reply came on Thursday afternoon.

As one of Boston’s busiest lawyers, John was one of the few who rode the circuit of all the colony’s courts: from New Bedford up to Newburyport, west into the backcountry as far as Worcester, and on up into Maine. Unlike many of Boston’s lawyers, he came from a relatively poor family. Though his younger brothers still in Braintree sent the produce of the family farm—barrels of flour and apples, cider, corn, and potatoes—with three sons (so far) to educate and a daughter to whom he hoped one day to make a suitable marriage-portion, John would take whatever work was offered, wherever it might be.

Abigail sometimes wondered whether the success of her marriage with this driven, vain, overly erudite man owed something to the width of her own interests. While she missed him sorely while he was away—both in bed and around the kitchen table in the evenings—she was never bored. There were too many books in the world, too many newspapers, too many interesting friends . . . completely aside from the fact that nobody could be bored who had four such enterprising children as Nabby, Johnny, Charley, and Tommy.

She occupied herself on Wednesday with enquiries between Prince’s Street and the Winissimet Ferry after a fair, well-looking gentleman, of small stature, with a long nose and a cleft to his chin . . . etc. and learned what she had always suspected, that most people were far more preoccupied with making shoes or sewing shirts or chasing after their own errant children at ten thirty on a Saturday morning than they were with passersby. In the afternoon, after taking another basket of bread, cheese, cider, and clean shirts to Harry’s brother Billy for dispatch to Castle Island, she wrote letters to her mother and sisters—busy, gossipy Mary and the lovely and studious Betsy—and, when Nabby and Johnny returned from school, with sorting the household laundry preparatory to the gargantuan nuisance of boiling and soaking that night, before washing on the morrow. Fitful squalls had flickered over Boston on Wednesday, rain freezing to sleet, but Thursday dawned clear, windy, and brutally cold. By the time the last of the rinsed and wrung-out sheets had been hung over the lines in the yard, the first shirts and shifts and baby-clouts had frozen solid. She, Pattie, and Nabby had just cleared up after dinner, and she was settling with the mending when the children came dashing in from the yard in a skirl of mud, and Johnny gasped in passing, “Ma, something’s going on!” as they pelted through the kitchen to the hall that led to the street door.

Abigail called, “Don’t go out!” as she sprang up to stride after them. Four years ago, at nearly this hour of the spring evening with the snow still on the ground, she’d heard the shouting of men in the street, even as she heard it now when her son yanked open the door. She’d heard shots fired, had run from the house they’d had in those days in Brattle Street and around the corner, to see blood black on the snow in the twilight, bodies lying where they’d fallen under a haze of powder-smoke—

Even with lingering daylight still in the sky, the jeering voices of a mob caught her with a twinge of dread.

She caught Charley by one shoulder, Tommy by his trailing leading-strings, and looking down Queen Street saw the men: jostling, shouting, throwing ice-balls and rocks.

Coming toward the house.

DRAT the man! Has he NO sense?

She drew her children into the house, shut the front door, and unhurriedly returned along the passage to the kitchen to collect her cloak and pattens. At the same time Pattie hurried in from the yard: “Mrs. Adams, ’tis Lieutenant Coldstone, I think—”

She wrapped a scarf around her neck. “Yes, I know. Keep the children inside, please.” At the market that morning she’d heard all manner of rumors about what vengeance the King was going to take on the rebellious Massachusers for dumping his precious tea, and violence hung in the air like the whiff of powder-smoke. It would be too easy for someone to start shooting. Johnny and Nabby were sensible children, but they were still terribly young.

She stepped into the street.

Lieutenant Coldstone was indeed walking up Queen Street from the direction of the customhouse, with the burly Sergeant Muldoon at his heels. A dozen men followed them, layabouts from the wharves, mostly—Abigail judged by their rough coats and ragged breeches—and prentice-boys who should have been at their work. One man hurled a snowball at Coldstone, which shattered in a way that told Abigail that there’d been a rock inside it. By the state of his long military cloak, she surmised it was far from the first. Sergeant Muldoon had a musket— shouldered—and was glancing about him, ready for an attack but with no evidence of panic. Somebody shouted “Lobsterback!” and somebody else yelled something a great deal worse.

Abigail strode quickly toward them and held out her hands. “Lieutenant Coldstone, what a pleasant surprise! Were you coming to see me?”

A man yelled, “Tory whore!” and Abigail was gratified to see another of the ragged group grab him by the shoulder and explain to him who exactly she was. The others were already falling back to a respectful—but still visible—distance.

“I wanted a word with you, m’am, yes.” Though his voice was impassive, Coldstone bore himself as if he’d just swallowed his own ramrod.

“I do apologize for my townsmen.” Abigail led the way back up Queen Street toward her door, where she could see Pattie looking out and holding the children back. “I fear that as sailing-weather improves, everyone is counting the days until the King’s message—whatever it is going to be—arrives. Some of the most shocking things are being said and believed.”

“Your countrymen are well to be anxious, m’am. I know not what Parliament’s reaction will be to such wanton defiance and destruction of property, but I suspect—and you must know also—that the actions of the Sons of Liberty will be regarded as a test case in dealing with rebellion in the colonies. And I am sorry to say,” he added, as he bowed Abigail across her own threshold, “that the issue serves only to cloud what might or might not have happened in Governor’s Alley Saturday night.”

“Sergeant Muldoon.” Abigail turned back on the doorsill. “You shall simply freeze to death if you stay here on the doorstep. Might he be permitted to go around the back to the kitchen, Lieutenant? There’s no need for him to remain on the street, is there?”

Coldstone glanced at the men who had now taken up loitering stances all along Queen Street, and said stiffly, “None, m’am.”

Muldoon saluted her as he disappeared down the passageway between the Adams’ house and the Butlers’ next door.

“Thank you again for keeping me apprised of your interviews with the coachmen,” added Abigail, leading him into the parlor. Pattie, God bless her, had kindled the fire there and entered a few moments later with a tray bearing two cups and a pitcher of hot cider, and bread-and-butter for Abigail’s guest. “Did you come to town to do more of them? I appreciate your visiting, but you needn’t have. ’Twould be silly of either of us to deny how risky it is.”

“I came across principally to arrange for Sir Jonathan’s trunk and portmanteau to be taken out to Castle Island, and to speak to Mr. Fenton, who still lies sick at the Governor’s house. I also wished to have another look at the alley behind the mews in daylight and return to you this.”

He set on the small parlor table the covered basket he had been carrying, and Abigail saw it was the bundle of food, linen, and Don Quixote that she’d handed Billy Knox that morning. “Colonel Leslie has forbidden the prisoner to receive further gifts, fearing—he says—clandestine communications.”

“About what, for Heaven’s sake?”

“If we could anticipate all schemes devised by those who seek to foment rebellion,” Coldstone replied stiffly, “we would have little need for a regiment here, m’am. I regret to say that none of today’s enquiries yielded