A Marked Man

Magpie’s porthole in the frozen stillness of the new-fallen dark. Even in the harbor, sitting in the little sloop’s damp cabin had left her aching and slightly sick. “If they were looking to flee the town, they hadn’t far to run to get on a ship. Going inland across the Neck would only get them to Cambridge, where it doesn’t sound as if they had friends. They could take the ferry to Charles Town or Winissimet, but why? Thank you,” she added, when they turned along Ship Street, toward her home and the much-belated supper that poor Pattie would have been obliged to prepare. “I beg you extend my apologies to Rachel for taking you away like this—”

Revere waved a hand good-naturedly and then grabbed for his hat again. “Lord, Thursday is Rachel’s night to have her sisters over,” he said. “They’ll be clustered around the fire, stitching and talking like a tree-full of finches in the spring.” He grinned. “You’ve only made me a trifle late for my pint at the Salutation—” He named one of the North End’s most notoriously Whig taverns. “And I know for a fact that that’s never killed a man, because Rachel’s told me so a thousand times. I’ll send you a note in the morning, to let you know if anything turns up at the jail.”

But the note that arrived the next morning, as Abigail was scalding the churn and the dasher preparatory to starting (Heavens be praised!) the first butter of the year, was borne, not by Paul Revere, Junior, but by the young black footman who had served her tea and cakes at the Fluckners’. He emerged from the passway from the street, grinned with relief as he recognized her, and hurried up to her, shivering a little and wrapped to his cheekbones in scarves and a coat. “Mrs. Adams, m’am.” He held out a note. “This from Miss Fluckner. She say it’s important.”

“Come inside.” She left the bucket standing on the icy bricks, deposited the butter-making equipment in the shed as they passed its door, and took a silver bit out of the box on the sideboard to pay the youth. Though she heartily disapproved of tipping the servants of rich people who probably ate better than did her own children, Abigail knew also that the small pleasures of freedom would be few for a slave. “Does she need a reply?” she asked as she broke the seal, and the young man, who was holding out mittened hands gratefully to the fire, shook his head.

“She didn’t say, m’am. Just that it was important that you get this right away.”

Mrs. Adams—

Can you come at once? I don’t know what to do about what I’ve found, or what it means, but everyone will come home before dinner and I’d like you to see this before that happens. Mr. Barnaby has instructions to let you in.

L.

Nine

What on earth—?” Abigail knelt in a whisper of petticoats to peer behind the narrow bed that Lucy had pulled away from the wall of the little attic room.

“I put it back exactly where I found it,” provided the girl. “Bathsheba had a piece of planking over the hole, braced in place with the end of the bed. I know a lot of the servants hide their tips, because there’s always somebody in any house who steals. You couldn’t see this, unless you moved the bed and lay down on the floor.”

“I see.” Abigail brought her own cheek close to the worn planks, tried to angle the candle to the hole that had been gouged straight through the thick layer of plaster and broken-off lathe, without burning down Mr. Fluckner’s very expensive residence.

“This whole attic used to be one huge room,” explained Lucy. “This”—she slapped the wall—“covers a truss- beam about twelve inches square, and there’s another partition wall there on the other side, with a hollow in between where the beam goes. You can reach in,” she added, when Abigail hesitated. “There’s nothing awful in there.”

Abigail obeyed, bringing out first an old teapot, half full of something that made it weigh several pounds, and then an apron, rolled together around what felt like coins. Quite a number of coins.

“I wanted you to see them exactly how they were.”

She spread the apron out on the bed. “Good heavens!”

“I counted,” said Lucy in an awed voice. “There’s twenty-three pounds in there.”

Abigail picked up one of the coins. Silver—English. On its face, King George stared superciliously off into space. She sorted the rest of the coins with swift fingers, while Lucy held the candle above her shoulder, for the window in the little dormer was small and faced west, away from the fitful morning sun. “All English,” she murmured, still trying to adjust her mind to the fact that a slave-woman would have that much hard cash.

She opened the broken-spouted teapot, and from it dipped out more coins. These were more typical of the little hoards of hard money collected and saved by all of her friends: quarters and bits of Mexican doubloons, French deniers, Dutch rix-thalers. As a girl, she’d scarcely ever seen currency. Most business in Weymouth and the surrounding farms had been done by barter: I’ll fix your shoes if you give me some butter. John still had a great many clients who paid him in potatoes. When he did get paid in cash money, it was always like this, minted in the name of a dozen European kings because Parliament would not give any colony the power to hold silver or strike coins of its own.

She didn’t think she had ever seen twenty pounds in English coin all together at the same time.

She let the bits and coppers slither through her fingers, touched the hem of the apron, clean and still stiff with starch. “That apron hasn’t been in there long. Nor has the silver tarnished.”

“And Papa isn’t missing any money,” added Lucy. “Believe me, the whole house would know it if even a penny went missing out of his desk. Sir Jonathan’s the only person—maybe even counting Governor Hutchinson—who would have that much English coin. But why would he give it to her? He could get fifty harlots for it—couldn’t he?”

“At least,” agreed Abigail absentmindedly, her thoughts on other things than her companion’s moral upbringing. “Depending on how fastidious he was. And what were you doing, young lady, searching your servant’s room?” She looked around her at the bare and icy little chamber. Besides the bed there was only a low bench that appeared to do service as both table and cupboard. There were two stools tucked beneath it, and along its back edge a neat line of folded petticoats, caps, and stockings, piles of clean baby-clouts and tiny garments. Both children must have shared their mother’s bed, a desperate necessity in the unheated room. Something in the stale air of the place made her think that the room had been closed up for the almost two weeks since Bathsheba’s disappearance, and Abigail breathed a prayer of relief. At least they weren’t making poor little Marcellina stay up here alone.

“I remembered what you said,” said Lucy slowly, “about Sheba maybe being dead. I hope she isn’t—Papa’s still offering a reward for her—but if she doesn’t come back soon, I know he’s going to sell the children, or even just give them away just to get them out of the house!” There was real distress in her voice. “I know it isn’t my business, but I thought . . . I know some of the servants keep their tips. When Sheba was my maid, men were always paying her off to carry love-notes to me. I don’t mean that to sound like it does,” she apologized. “But it’s true. For three years now, I’ve been . . . It makes me sick, Mrs. Adams. Sick and mad. That’s why Harry—”

She stopped herself, her jaw tightened at the thought of Harry Knox. Abigail laid a hand on the girl’s shoulder, and Lucy shook her head, pushing the thought aside.

“Anyway, I knew Bathsheba was saving her tips, to buy Marcie free, and then Stephen when he was born. And I thought, she might have saved enough that if I gave it to you, you could buy at least one of them. Mama’s already spoken to Mrs. Barnaby about the time she spends changing Stephen’s clouts and feeding him and Marcie. I honestly don’t know where they can go. I don’t even think the orphanage would take Negro children, and that only leaves the poorhouse . . .”

“I won’t let that happen,” said Abigail firmly, seeing the tears start in Lucy’s eyes. “And who told you it