Horace replied, from the same play, “
“Well, you can’t be all
“We cannot be sure they were Tories,” said Abigail. “For the simple reason that it appears—at least at the moment—that they were also the ones who killed Mr. Fairfield.”
The girl stopped still, thinking about that. Abigail saw the tears rise to Katy’s eyes, only to be pushed aside with a shake of her head. “Who are they, then?” she whispered.
“That’s what we’re trying to learn. Did you leave your stepfather a note?” she added, as they approached the chaise again. “When you set out to find George this morning?”
The girl nodded, her eyes bleak. “I told him . . . well.” She gestured helplessly, letting the thought go. “I’ve wanted to leave him,” she went on. “And I’ll not say it wasn’t in my mind, when George proposed marriage to me, that even if he later cast me off—which, mind you, I wouldn’t put it past that pa of his making him do, in the end . . . But George wasn’t the man to behave scaly to a girl. I know he wasn’t. And I know it shocks you to hear it, m’am, and I really did marry him before a clerk of the county . . . Anything was better than staying with Mr. Deems.”
She looked aside, and color crept up again to her cheeks.
“Did you tell him you weren’t coming back?”
A slight move of the head that might have been a nod.
“Will he come after you?”
“He might. Because of Bruck,” she added. “He had it all fixed up with Bruck that Bruck was going to marry me and take Mr. Deems in to work for him at his livery, because Mr. Deems never did like Mrs. Cousins who owns the Yellow Cow—Mrs. Cousins is my aunt.”
Abigail nodded. Life was such that many people of her acquaintance ended up raising other peoples’ children simply because they were thrown onto the world suddenly parentless. She knew, too, that stepsons and stepdaughters were often looked upon as a kind of bounty from Heaven, a cheap source of labor that didn’t have to be paid or—frequently—fed with any regularity.
“That is, her first husband and my mother were brother and sister, but she’s never had much use for me, nor for Mr. Deems, not that I can blame her for that.”
“Can you cook?” asked Abigail as they reached the chaise, wondering if she’d regret this. “And clean? And mend?”
Katy was nodding, her eyes suddenly huge with hope. She seized Abigail’s arm. “M’am, I swear—”
Abigail held up her hand. “Can you take orders?” she went on. “’Twould be from a girl younger than yourself . . .” She was aware that not only Katy, but Horace and Weyountah were looking at her like overboard mariners gazing at a drifting plank.
“It cannot be permanent,” she added firmly. “Yet I daresay you can remain in my house until we find another place for you—”
“Oh, m’am—” began Katy, and then—wholly to Abigail’s surprise—the girl burst into tears.
When Abigail, startled, said, “Here—” and moved to take her hand, the girl pulled away, shook her head, made a gesture of denial.
“I’ll be all right, m’am. It’s just—I really didn’t want to go back . . . But I can’t—”
“You can.” Abigail possessed herself of Katy’s hand. “And the rest we can talk about in private. Now get in the chaise,” she added, “because that’s three o’clock I hear striking—is that the Concord church?—and if I find myself stranded in Cambridge once again Mr. Adams really
Their speedy departure notwithstanding, Weyountah thought it better to take the land route back to Boston, swinging south through Cambridge at a smart clip and down through the sunny fields and scattered woodlands to Brookline, and so across the salt marsh, shallows, and mudflats in the lengthening spring sunset, then over the Neck to the town gate. “If we tried for the ferry and missed,” reasoned Abigail, when Katy pointed out that from Cambridge the way was slightly shorter to the ferry, “then we’d have twice the distance to reach the Neck overland and might find the gate shut against us. This way, though ’tis a trifle longer, we’ll be certain of getting home.”
Katy looked askance at the red-coated guards, as Weyountah drew rein before the three brick archways and Horace sprang down to open the chaise door, and at the sight of them Abigail felt herself shiver again:
And yet when they’d passed through Brookline, though militia had been drilling on the Common there, there had been no uproar. In Roxbury, at the land end of the Boston Neck, the local volunteers had been clustered companionably around the door of the Sun.
She pushed from her thoughts Charley’s counterfeit scar and vague assurances that he’d only seen Mr. Scar- Eye yesterday or the day before, he didn’t know where . . .
—
“Are you able for the walk of a mile and a half?” she asked Katy, as she kissed Horace, shook hands with Weyountah, made a hasty exchange of promises to keep one another abreast of whatever might be found while the guards glared at them, and pointedly pulled the leaves of the gate half to. “The house lies on Queen Street; ’tis some little distance.”
“I’m well, m’am.” The girl glanced sidelong at the soldiers again as they passed through, the last of the day’s traffic. The gate-guards shut the three great archways behind them as the last light flashed on the shallow waters, a hundred yards off across the rough field that was all that the Neck contained, and shot the bars. A number of men—rough-coated and jesting with one another—were also coming in on foot from Roxbury: Abigail guessed they’d gone across to drill with the militia. Darkness outlined the hills and trees beyond the river where it flowed into the bay. As the fields along Orange Street gave place to the brick houses of the wealthy, set in their own orchards and gardens, lights were coming up in the windows, a guilt-inducing reminder of those good housewives who had
Those Marthas of the world, who had prudently cooked the meals for the Lord’s Day tomorrow instead of hastily giving instructions to servant-girls who were really too young to have the whole of those duties thrust upon them—though Pattie was
And so it proved. When Abigail and Katy reached the house, the kitchen was redolent with the scents of tomorrow’s dinner and filled like a jewel box with the amber warmth of firelight and lamps. John was, of course, still out at the Green Dragon—Abigail knew that it wasn’t the ale in the place that kept him, but the conferences going on all day in its long upstairs room with the Sons of Liberty—and Charley and Tommy flung themselves on her with the frantic abandon of children who sense themselves set aside, however necessarily, in favor of matters that they cannot understand.
Katy was introduced, and when Abigail came downstairs from showing her the small attic room in which she would sleep (with no little relief that she was at least enough of a housewife to have extra sheets clean, ironed, and on hand), Pattie handed Abigail a letter. “This came this afternoon, m’am. Will Mistress Fairfield be having her bath here in the kitchen, when the rest of us do?”
“If she does,” said Abigail, “she’ll go after you—I brought her in to help you as much as because she needed a place to stay. But she may not, tonight,” she added, remembering that the girl had heard only that morning that her lover was dead.
She broke the seals.
