A Marked Man

house and sealed the pot with my signet ring, and am confident that its contents are in fact lethal.”

One corner of Colonel Leslie’s mouth turned sharply down; he glanced over at the midshipman, still standing in the doorway. “My compliments to Captain Dashwood,” he said. “Please let him know that he is free to make sail at his earliest convenience. There will be no further passengers at this time.”

Abigail was heartily glad that she was the only American present. The Colonel of the Sixty-Fourth would not have taken kindly to the war-whoop of joy that would have greeted these words had any of the contingent still on the Magpie been privileged to hear them.

“And I have spoken to Lieutenant Dowling,” added Coldstone, when the middy had gone. “Upon my request, he has just reexamined Sir Jonathan’s body—which has been kept preserved in one of the post stores-depots, as the ground has been too frozen for burial. He says that the torso is certainly bruised beneath the arms, as if a thickly padded rope or line had been passed around it, to hold it suspended. Likewise, he attests that the discoloration of the extremities, which he took to be the result of cold, is consonant with livor mortis, in a body so suspended, and that the abrasions on the corpse’s head and hands could easily have been produced as the result of convulsions caused by certain types of poison.”

“She said,” murmured Abigail, “that she did not wish Sir Jonathan to die swiftly. It appears that he did not.”

It took another hour of arguing, however, to convince Colonel Leslie to release Harry Knox on a bond and let him return to Boston on the Magpie pending confirmation of Abigail’s story. As Abigail emerged from the office, almost shaking with exhaustion, she heard behind her the Colonel’s voice: “You will change your coat, Lieutenant, bullet-hole or no bullet-hole in your shoulder, and return to Boston this evening. And if you find the Sandhayes woman at the Fluckners’ after all, so help me I shall have Mr. Knox and Mrs. Adams clapped in irons, and yourself as well!”

As the Magpie put to sea again—Charley and Tommy sleeping like tired puppies with their heads on Abigail’s lap—Harry Knox dropped onto the bench beside her and whispered, “Thank you, Mrs. Adams.” He looked like he’d lost a good ten pounds during his incarceration and had neither bathed nor shaved in that time, nor, Abigail guessed, slept much. “I cannot—there are no words. Thank you.” He reached to clasp her hand, then drew back his own filthy one; from a pocket Abigail produced one of the several clean handkerchiefs that motherhood had taught her to always have upon her person, and draped it over her palm. Harry smiled—probably for the first time in two weeks—and gripped her fingers with a thankfulness that almost cracked the bones.

Dusk was gathering when Abigail finally reached her own kitchen again. Pattie, emerging from the cowhouse with a pail and a half of milk, cried, “Mrs. Adams!” and from the back door burst not only Johnny and Nabby, but John, Philomela, and, gorgeous as a peony among demure New England herbs, Lucy Fluckner.

“My God, Nab!” John cried, as the older children fell upon her, and Charley—just set on his feet by Paul Revere—said proudly, “We was in the mob!”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m well,” she said, half crushed by his embrace, “I’m well—did you at least free Mrs. Teasel from jail?”

“I did indeed—having proved the murder on her husband’s brother, who wanted to secure the property to himself before Teasel married again. The scoundrel cleared up his own tracks in the house but not those of his dog—”

“Mrs. Sandhayes has disappeared,” cried Lucy, “and we found her walking-sticks here in Mr. Adams’s parlor, and a bullet lodged in the paneling, and Pattie says there was shooting, and a fire, and a mob, and the British—” She broke off with a gasp, as the men who’d escorted Abigail back to the house moved aside, and Harry Knox stepped into the yard. “HARRY!!!”

Lucy flung herself into his arms, lice, jail-filth, and all, and buried her face in his shoulder. “Oh, Harry!” And was enfolded in a massive embrace and a blissful and reeking kiss.

“What happened, Nab?” asked John, taking her hand to lead her into the kitchen. “Miss Fluckner has been back and forth three times this afternoon, and Pattie was only able to tell me—and her—that Mrs. Sandhayes was here, waiting for you . . . and knows nothing further of what befell. But it appears that your Lieutenant Coldstone has put the teapot under seal . . .”

“I hope you left it so!”

“Good Lord, yes! The cups as well, which were set aside with a note from him to be left precisely in situ—”

“I knew I could trust my Lysander.” Despite seasickness and fatigue so great she felt almost faint, Abigail managed a smile as John tucked a loose strand of her disordered hair behind her ear. “The Lieutenant—and he is not my Lieutenant—will undoubtedly arrive in the morning to impound pot, cups, tea, and all, and test them for poison. Lucy, dearest”—she turned back in the doorway—“perhaps you had best return home and inventory everything Mrs. Sandhayes left behind her before Lieutenant Coldstone gets there. I’m sure a look into her trunks will be instructive.”

John’s face, which had been smiling, turned suddenly sober as he loosened the arm which he’d put around her waist: “What’s this?”

Abigail felt her side where his hand had been, just beneath her lowest rib. There was a short, straight gash in her bodice where Mrs. Sandhayes’s bullet had passed, the edges of the cloth, and the sturdy corset beneath, charred with powder.

Charley turned to Johnny with reprehensible smugness and announced, “We had ’n adventure!”

Quietly, Abigail agreed, “To be sure we did.”

Morning brought a note from Lieutenant Coldstone, by the hand of Sergeant Muldoon, begging her pardon for the inconvenience and requesting that the sealed teapot be turned over to the bearer, along with the contents of each teacup, placed in separate clean jars and labeled, as well as she could recall, as to which cup had been Mrs. Sandhayes’s and which Abigail’s guest had poured out for her.

I fear I cannot call myself, as I will spend the great part of the day dragging the marshes for the bodies of Palmer and Bathsheba, as you suggested. Be assured that I will wait upon you at my earliest convenience.

Abigail—who knew quite well which teacup was her own because it had for years been slightly discolored— obeyed the instructions with care, and sealed up the clean herb-jars, with labels signed by herself, John, and Sergeant Muldoon as witnesses. John remarked, “’ Tis the act of a man who knows he has a case.”

Calling that afternoon on Lucy Fluckner, she was greeted by Mr. Barnaby’s stilted assurance that, Miss Fluckner is unable to receive callers, m’am, and was intercepted in half a block by Philomela, wrapped hastily in her mistress’s red cloak. “I doubt you’ll ever be welcome in the house again, m’am, begging your pardon,” panted the servant. “Mr. Fluckner is in a fearful taking, to the point that I’m actually worried—I’ve never seen a white man turn that color! Mr. Knox has asked for Miss Lucy’s hand in marriage, and Miss Lucy says she’ll have him or none.”

“Hardly the best time to make the request, of course.”

Philomela half smiled. “M’am, meaning no disrespect, there will be no best time for that, not if everyone were to wait ’til Judgment Day. Miss Lucy said to tell you that we went through Mrs. Sandhayes’s luggage and room last night, and found her trunk had a false bottom. Beneath it were a man’s things—boots, coat, waistcoat, wig—and nearly five hundred pounds in sovereigns, all of it British, such as we found in Sheba’s room. There were bottles and packets there, too, of what Miss Lucy said was probably poison. And there was this.”

She held out a slim roll of drawing-paper, which, unfastened, displayed the image of an extremely pretty girl of about Lucy Fluckner’s age. The sketch was a rough one, only shadowy suggestions marking the cloud of hair and the lace of her chemise, but the vividness of her smile was captured there for all time, the dancing light in her eyes. Around her throat was Margaret Sandhayes’s Medusa cameo. On another part of the page the artist—whoever it had been—had sketched a blocky little church-spire and part of a churchyard, labeled St. Onesimus’s. A scribbled note in one corner marked the date: June 1765.

Margaret’s only weakness, Coldstone had said. For one instant, Abigail seemed to