When Abigail returned from her marketing on the following morning, she found Sam’s promised minion waiting for her, a grim old codger in his sixties who was reassuring John—as Abigail came down the passway into the yard—that he would treat and treasure Mrs. Adams as if she were the Queen of England, and the more so because it stood to reason the bastard King wouldn’t marry any but a whore . . .
And for the hour and a half that it took for old Mr. Creel’s wagon and team to reach Cambridge, Abigail was obliged to listen to that gentleman’s opinions as to what ought to be done to those who were conspiring with the King to enslave the men of Massachusetts—as well as to the New Hampshire sons of whores who were trying to cheat the colony of the best of its lands, the heretic bastards in Rhode Island who were siding with the Indians in a conspiracy to massacre women and children because they (the heretic bastards) were in the pay of the French, and all Pennsylvania merchants who were all born cowards and thieves. Abigail made several attempts at rebuttal to his more outrageous statements (“Them praying-Indians they talk about got no more prayer in ’em than cats: they worship the Devil ’cause they’re Devils themselves . . .”), but the old man was almost stone-deaf and violently obstinate, and by the time they’d crossed the narrow neck of land that joined Boston to the mainland, she gave up and sat fuming. The man was, after all, giving her a ride in his wagon for seven rather weary miles, and she realized she had the choice of shouting her objections to him at the top of her lungs—objections to which he wouldn’t listen even if he could hear them accurately—or walking.
Even attempts to turn the subject availed little: his neighbors were all Tory traitors also, apparently. And heretics. “Served’em right that their horses was blinded and hamstrung by the Committee—that’ll show ’em not to go speaking against Mr. Sam Adams and Mr. Hancock—We took an’ strung up Cal Lechmere’s dog, hung it right in front of his door with a sign on its neck,
“And what did the dog ever do to harm you?” demanded Abigail. “Or the poor horses, either?”
Which was a mistake, resulting in a long catalog of the late dog’s transgressions—which seemed to consist merely in doing its loyal duty to drive off intruders—and the observation that a) Tory beasts deserved what they got and b) women didn’t understand these things and should keep their noses out of men’s doings.
Abigail was frothing with wrath by the time she was set down outside the gates of Harvard College, and the first thing she did was to take from her pocket Sam’s letter of introduction to one Lazarus Dowdall—of Perking Hill Farm—asking him to oblige Mrs. Adams by returning her to Boston that afternoon, and tear it up. The man was probably the local sheep-thief anyway.
A man in shirtsleeves pulling weeds around the single great tree in the court informed Abigail that Mr. Thaxter was carrying a note from Mr. Pugh to Mr. Beecham in town and would be back any time; Abigail watched through the window of the parlor of Massachusetts Hall where she was seated until she saw Horace come through the gate carrying a package. When she intercepted him, he greeted her with obvious relief—“I’ve been carrying notes back and forth between Pugh and Jasmine half the morning, just to be bloody-minded . . .” She walked with him up the end staircase of Harvard Hall, when he went to knock on Mr. Pugh’s door.
The door was opened by a very young-looking fair-haired boy in a short freshman’s gown, over whose shoulder Pugh’s voice called out, “Oh, is that you, Thaxter? Did you get the coffee? Good lad! Now I’ve one more errand, if you would be so kind—”
“I beg you’ll excuse my nephew,” said Abigail, and the baby-faced freshman stepped quickly aside out of the doorway as Pugh set aside the enormous white Persian cat from his knee and rose from the chair beside the window: the study reeked of beer fumes and stale smoke, and Abigail had the impression, looking in, of rather old- fashioned furniture—opulent and tapestried—and not a book in sight. “I’ve come from town this morning to visit him.”
“Madame, I abase myself in shame.” Pugh made a surprisingly graceful leg for a man that corpulent, sweeping aside the skirts of the brocaded banyan he wore over his shirtsleeves as if it had been a court-coat at the Palace of St. James. From the mantle of the fireplace a black cat blinked down, like Satan surveying the world beneath his feet; a long-furred gray tortoiseshell was washing itself in the windowsill. “Had I known our Horace was expecting company, I would never have taken him from his morning tasks. Don’t just stand there, Pinky, put the coffee away—”
The freshman hastened to relieve Horace of his package.
“Will you have some tea, Mrs. Adams? No? My heart shall never recover. Yes, yes, Horace, it is well, run along—Pinky, dearest, I fancy you’d better take this note on to Jasmine’s room—” He scooped up the tortoiseshell cat as it moved to wind itself around Abigail’s skirts.
“That’s Mr. Pinkstone?” asked Abigail softly, as they descended to the courtyard again.
Horace nodded as he took Abigail’s basket. “Is that gingerbread?” he asked, sniffing the air rather wistfully— since gingerbread was one of the many things that brought on his hives.
“I brought it for Weyountah,” she explained, “and some honey for yourself—”
The gratitude and delight in his face were almost painful to see. Honey was one of the few treats that her nephew could consume with impunity.
“—and a little extra gingerbread, for purposes of corruption. I take it Mr. Blossom lives in Massachusetts Hall?” Though Horace would have turned right toward the main door of Harvard as they emerged from Pugh’s staircase, Abigail set out briskly across the courtyard for the hall opposite.
“How did you know?”
“I assume Mr. Pugh would not have been sending you back and forth with notes to someone who didn’t live in the building farthest from Harvard Hall . . . I think the walk will do us good, both to unload the honey, which is rather heavy, and to lie in wait for Mr. Pinkstone, who—threats of cannibalism aside—seems ripe to do his master a disservice. Upon which staircase does Mr. Blossom reside?”
After lying in wait for a very few minutes within the entry of the hall that led to the various staircases, Abigail and Horace were rewarded by the sight of young Mr. Pinkstone emerging from Harvard Hall and scurrying across the open court as if pursued. The clock on the chapel chimed noon as he came, and from the doors of the hall a great number of students began to pour forth, gowns bright against the Indian red of the brickwork and the green of the new grass. Abigail rather feared that Mr. Pinkstone would turn back or engage himself in conversation with one of them, but in fact he quickened his steps—probably fearing to be intercepted by some student more senior to Mr. Pugh and sent on some yet more tiresome errand.
He checked his steps as he approached the door, but Horace called out, “I wanted quick word with you, Pinky, where the Black Dog couldn’t see—and I’m sorry you got caught up in all his bloody-minded note-carrying. Here,” he said, and took Abigail’s basket from her. “My aunt brought Weyountah some gingerbread, but I think he doesn’t need all of it.”
The young man took what Horace handed him and began immediately to devour it, like a small dog who expects his bone to be seized by a larger dog. “That’s decent of you,” he said, and after the first bite, “Lord, that’s good, m’am! Did you make it?”
“Catch me palming off someone else’s gingerbread on my nephew’s friends,” said Abigail. And then, to Horace, as if they’d arranged the matter beforehand, “Ask him about the marzipan tea I’d sent you that was in poor Mr. Fairfield’s rooms.”
“What? Oh, yes.” Horace looked momentarily startled, then nodded. “I’ve been thinking what you said about the Black Dog breaking up the card game early Tuesday night—You don’t think he came across to poor George’s room then, by any chance, do you? It’s just that my aunt had sent me some marzipan tea, and I had it in the room with me when I was studying there—”
“’Twas in a Japan-ware caddy,” corroborated Abigail, “that belongs to my grandmother. I’m afraid it sounds like a terrible thing to be concerned with, but she’ll be very upset if it’s lost. And while I wouldn’t wish to accuse anyone of thievery, the tea is the sort of thing that someone might help themselves to, and you can’t carry it off in your pockets, you know. And I only wonder—”
“Well, m’am, I wouldn’t put it past Pugh.” The boy rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I haven’t seen anything like a tea caddy in his room—What color was it?”
Abigail described her Grandma Quincy’s Japan-ware tea caddy, which was in fact safely on a shelf in Aunt Eliza’s kitchen. “It just occurred to me when Horace mentioned the matter, that midnight is a tremendously early hour for a man like Mr. Pugh to be breaking up a promising game.”
“He was winning, too,” said Pinkstone. “Not that that’s anything new—the fellow cheats like Iscariot. He’d heard Shallop from over in Hollis Hall had just got money in from his family, and was physicking him of it when he
