Sup With the Devil

got quickly to his feet and offered Abigail his chair, and a man whom she recognized as one of Uncle Isaac’s extremely wealthy merchant rivals brought his own seat over for Nabby, who curtseyed her thanks in some confusion. At not quite nine, the plump, quiet girl was curious and a little proud to be taken out into company, but invariably shy once among strangers, and sat with hands folded in silence, wide blue eyes taking in the old- fashioned, elegant hangings and carved wainscot of the room. Abigail sent in her petition and took note of the men whom the Governor called in before her with abstract curiosity. She rated, evidently, below the merchants—who were probably relations of the Governor—but above the two she guessed were ship-captains.

Given that no one in Boston had the slightest idea what the King was going to rule appropriate punishment for the colony and the town, it was not surprising that His Excellency was being inundated with requests for audience, favors, and assurance of protection.

From her satchel she took the small packet of love-letters that had been in George Fairfield’s pocket and glanced over them while she waited, as she would on another occasion have brought a book. Delicate and rather rounded handwriting, thin expensive French paper, passionate sentiments, a faint scent of attar of roses, and no signature. But obviously some wealthy man’s daughter who had been taught, at least, to handle a pen.

“Mrs. Adams?” said the secretary from the inner door.

Governor Hutchinson—whom John habitually described as a pusillanimous traitor— was on his feet when Abigail came into his study, and himself held the chair for her when she sat.

“This sounds like a most serious matter, Mrs. Adams,” he said in his soft voice, seating himself and touching the petition that lay before him on his desk. “And one in which there is certain to be some question from Governor Dunmore of Virginia, regarding the legality of distraining a man’s property here in Massachusetts, should Mr. Fairfield, Senior, demand the slave Diomede’s immediate return. Are you sure of what you contend, that the man was drugged and not merely drunk?”

“Two students who entered the room and—as young men will—drank off the rest of the rum in the carafe were rendered unconscious within minutes. Two others—I presume juniors who were only able to get a lesser share—were groggy and stumbling. No rum remained in the carafe, but I found the inference compelling.”

“And the items removed from the room—?”

“Two old volumes, only recently acquired by Mr. Fairfield from a Mrs. Seckar.”

The Governor’s narrow face lightened: “Not old Professor Seckar’s widow? Dear Heavens, if ever there was a man who would cut you to pieces over whether God’s predetermination of the saved and the reprobate was active or passive—I remember that thundering lecture of his on infralapsarianism and the precise timing of the Fall of the Angels that went two hours over into the dinner hour, and all of us ready to tear apart the youngest freshman in the room and eat him, we were so hungry. Which I suppose,” he added with a smile, “was proof in his eyes that we were none of us saved and all doomed to the eternal fires. But I thought he left the whole of his library to the college when he died?”

“I believe these volumes had come down to Mrs. Seckar from her grandfather.”

“I wonder that—” He visibly bit back some epithet applicable to the Reverend Dr. Langdon, and continued, “I wonder that Dr. Langdon didn’t insist on their inclusion in the bequest. That wouldn’t be Barthelmy Whitehead, would it? By all accounts the man was practically illiterate, but with a heart like a counting-frame—one of the last men in the colony to attempt to sell Indians as slaves to the West Indies and one of the first to enter the Negro trade.”

Abigail guessed that having written a history of the colony—his own troublesome ancestress having played no small part in it—the Governor was intimately acquainted with the affairs of every family from Cape Cod to Halifax.

“Perhaps Dr. Langdon did not consider them appropriate for inclusion in the College library,” she replied. “I understand from my nephew—whom I was visiting in Cambridge on Tuesday night, when the crime took place—that they were of an improper nature.”

“Ah.” Hutchinson frowned. “Young men being what they are, that might account for their theft but surely not for murder being done over them.”

“Among normal men, no, sir. But I’m sure Your Excellency is aware that where darkness corrodes a man’s heart, even matters of insignificance become reasonable grounds for murder.”

He shot her a sidelong glance—clearly thinking of Wily Cousin Sam—and murmured, “Just so.”

“The circumstance of their theft so soon after their acquisition, and of poor Diomede—Mr. Fairfield’s man— being drugged to prevent his waking during the theft, seem to me sufficient grounds to merit investigation, and intervention on your part to have the matter tried here in Massachusetts, where witnesses in the man’s defense can be brought forward. Objectionable as the condition of slavery is, I do not see it as ipso facto proof of a slave’s guilt in his master’s murder when there are circumstances that so clearly point to another cause.”

“I quite agree, Mrs. Adams. And yet, the law is established to defend a man’s rights to his property, and I cannot subvert it—”

“The law is established, Your Excellency, to defend a man’s life. And the slave Diomede’s life will surely be forfeit if he is taken back to Virginia, for whatever witnesses can be found as to another motive for the murder will most likely not follow him there. In their absence, I very much fear that the courts—if a slave is even entitled to a hearing before Virginia courts—”

“He is,” put in the Governor drily.

“I am thrilled to hear it,” she returned. “But do you trust them? Do you trust them even to read the affidavits? Do you trust them not to take the simplest reading of the matter and avoid putting themselves to the inconvenience of delving for the truth? Would you wish to rely on such a court to defend your own life? Or the life of one of your sons?”

His thin lips pressed together—annoyed at her vehemence, she suspected, yet unable to refute her words. “I see what you mean, Mrs. Adams,” he said at length. “Yet your position is based upon supposition, and your assumption of what a certain body of men may do or might do. Mine is based upon the law. It is beyond my power, as Governor of this colony, to abrogate the rights of property, particularly the rights of a citizen of another colony—and it is moreover quite properly beyond my power. Heaven forfend that a man should take a legal action based upon suspicion of what might be in another man’s mind. Yet I shall certainly write to Mr. Congreve,” he added, as Abigail opened her mouth to object, “that he is not to release this Negro man into the custody of Mr. Fairfield, Senior’s, agents until he has communicated with me. I assume”—his voice thinned a little, like one forcing himself to be absolutely just—“that your husband will take it upon himself to defend this unfortunate valet?”

“He will.”

“Then your best course of action—and his—will be to ascertain the facts of the case as quickly as possible, before communication from Virginia forces the issue one way or another. It will be at least two weeks, perhaps more, before Mr. Fairfield, Senior, arrives on these shores. With concrete evidence of a third person involved, I shall have more leverage against the law of property. Without it, I must yield. I hope you understand my position, madame?”

“I do.” Abigail rose, and held out her hand. Her whole Christian soul revolted against what the Governor had said, and yet, as a lawyer’s wife, she understood the principle from which he spoke. She forced back her temper, and said with an assumption of warmth that she barely felt, “And I thank you for what you can do, sir, and for what you are willing to do in this poor man’s defense.”

The Governor’s slim fingers—cool and dry as a snake’s back—closed around hers, and he led her to the door. “Mr. Oliver—?”

His secretary materialized, bowing, to conduct her out.

Mrs. Adams!” Joseph Ryland got to his feet in surprise as she came back into the parlor, which was—despite the dimming of the daylight from the windows—more crowded than before. Nabby—to Abigail’s approval—who had been about to leap to her feet and scamper to her mother’s side, yielded at once to the dictum that the affairs of adults took precedence over the discomfort of eight-year-old girls abandoned in roomfuls of strangers, and settled back in her chair, grateful at least that her mother was in the range of her sight.