Sup With the Devil

John (my cousin, not your esteemed husband) has told me upon many occasions of your extraordinary acuity in seeing through the riddles of criminal conduct, a veritable Alexander (if one may so term a member of your sex) cutting the

nodum Gordium

of both puzzling circumstance and the

obstructio deliberi

of evildoers.

Therefore, I write to you in a state of mental perturbation regarding events that befell me this week, which I am at a loss to interpret.

The events were made the more troubling because I was introduced to them by a letter from Mr. Adams (your esteemed husband, not his notorious cousin), which induced me to believe myself safe in entering a situation at best equivocal, and at worst giving rise to fears that I might have been—and may still be—in danger of my life.

Might I beg the pleasure of calling upon you on the 30th, when Mr. Adams will be returned from the circuit courts and propriety will permit you to receive a male caller? This is a matter that troubles and—though others have said it is the merest

exiguum

—frightens me. I look forward to the favor of your reply.

Your ob’t h’bl svt,

Horace Thaxter

Propriety indeed. Abigail Adams, perched on the back of Uzziah Begbie’s delivery wagon as it jolted its way along the extremely narrow streets of Boston’s North End, reread her nephew’s letter with mixed amusement and exasperation. You’d think the boy was forty instead of barely seventeen.

You’d think I was a sixteen-year-old village maid instead of a woman of twenty-nine with a husband—off at the Maine Assizes or not—and four children.

And you’d think we were in London instead of Massachusetts, where women have been going about their business in perfect freedom and safety since the Indians left. Does he think the neighbors are going to suspect him of an assault on my virtue?

Or suspect me of an assault on his?

On second thought, reflected Abigail, tucking the letter back into her smallest marketing basket, considering some of my neighbors . . .

In addition to Horace’s letter, which had arrived late yesterday afternoon, the basket was stocked with apples, carrots, corn-bread (wheaten flour of any kind gave Horace migraines), a small crock of honey, and ten hard-boiled eggs, and rested beside her on the narrow bench that served as a wagon-seat. On her other side, the carter Uzziah Begbie clucked to his horse as the wagon made its careful way among the carts and barrows that cluttered the cobblestones of Prince’s Street. To their right loomed the piled-up rooflines of Copp’s Hill, a maze of steep alleyways and small yards; to their left, through a break in the roof-lines, Abigail could glimpse the placid green water of the Mill Pond. Wind from the river flicked her face, caught a strand of her black hair that had escaped her neat white cap. She smoothed it primly into its place again. Were she on the farm in Braintree, she reflected— the land that her “esteemed husband” (as Horace Thaxter described him) and his family had farmed for three generations—she would have pulled her cap off altogether, run to the top of Prospect Hill to let the wind of the bay have its way with her hair . . . would have revelled in the sweetness of May after so harsh and unsettling a winter.

But this was Boston, and people did talk.

Indeed, as they rounded the last of the brick and timber houses and came to Gee’s Shipyard on the rocky nose of North Boston, people were doing nothing but talking. The boundaries of the street itself dissolved into a roughly defined apron of gravel and mud around the end of the hill, beyond which lay the hard blackish sapphire waters of the bay. Sailors, roustabouts, stevedores, and the lady who sold hot pies stood in knots among the piled timber and coiled cables, gesturing out toward the British warship that patrolled the bay and half shouting over the clattering symphony of shipyard hammers.

I hear the King’s going to close the port . . .

He can’t do that, can he?

They say in Salem there’s a royal commission on its way to inquire . . .

Royal commission my backside, my cousin says they’ll send troops from Halifax and hang the rebels that did it . . .

Sam Adams’ll never let that happen.

Don’t be a fool, Adams is the first man they’ll hang. The King won’t put up with rebellion . . .

No, agreed Abigail silently. The King won’t put up with rebellion. And she wondered for the dozenth time since leaving the house if she had any business going out of Boston even for an afternoon.

Her common sense told her that even if the King sent a Royal Commissioner to investigate the circumstances of last December that had resulted in over three hundred crates of East India Company tea being dumped into Boston Harbor, trouble wasn’t going to erupt on the first day. For one thing, the Sons of Liberty—the semi-secret organization devoted to defiance of the King’s arbitrary commands—would have to take the measure of the commission’s mandate and decide what to do. And these days, Sam Adams—her husband’s wily cousin—kept a tight rein on the Sons, cooling violence in one place, puffing it up in another, simplifying the issues at stake, and playing upon the angers and fears of men like a virtuoso playing upon a pianoforte.

A journey out to Cambridge for the afternoon would likely do no harm.

She hoped.

Begbie drew rein to let a half-dozen men pass, bearing on their shoulders the massive beam of what would be a ship’s keel. Some of them called out greetings to him, asked after wife, children, that keg of nails they were waiting for . . .

Abigail returned her thoughts to the note she had received.

To what “troubling” events did John introduce Horace by letter? As far as Abigail knew, her esteemed husband—stout, peppery, brilliant, and maddening—hadn’t had anything to do with any of the Thaxters other than John Thaxter, his young law clerk and Horace’s cousin (second cousin? Uncle? That was the trouble with being related to half the colony . . . ) for over a year, one whole branch of that well-off merchant clan having decided that she—Abigail—had stepped down in the world by marrying a farmer’s son even if he was related to the extremely respectable (back then, anyway) Deacon Adams of Old South Church . . .

And into what earthly situation could John have pitchforked the boy that would have put him—so he believed—in danger of his life?

A man in the leather apron of a ship’s carpenter emerged from a chandler’s shop, crossed the gravel, and spoke to the deliveryman, quiet beneath the din of hammering. Abigail didn’t hear his exact words, but she knew what they were.

Any news . . . ?

Begbie shook his head.

Only a few clouds spotted the bright April sky, but Abigail felt a chill and pulled her shawl close about her.

No news yet.

Six weeks for the news of the so-called Tea Party to reach England. Then whatever Parliament was going to decide to do about the rebellion growing in the colony. Then six weeks back.

Which meant that whatever was going to happen, was going to happen soon.