Twelve
The reflection that the books were indeed connected with a wicked old pirate’s evil doings—not to speak of a possible curse—made it no easier for Abigail to keep her thoughts focused the following day upon the Reverend Cooper’s sermons. As usual, these ostensibly concerned the doings of ancient Hebrew kings but showed a marked tendency to drift toward Parliamentary injustices and the modern misbehavior of monarchs whose deeds rivalled those of Ahab and Herod; Katy seemed to enjoy both morning and after-dinner discourses hugely.
To Abigail, this was a great relief. From the sound of it, Mr. Deems at the Yellow Cow—not to speak of his associates in the patriot militia—left much to be desired as a moral preceptor, and at intervals during the family baths in the kitchen on the previous night, she had experienced qualms about her generosity in offering roof and bed to a girl whose existence she hadn’t even been aware of that morning—and pregnant to boot! But while Pattie was bathing Charley and Tommy, Abigail had gone up to the attic to offer the facilities of kitchen, towels, hot water, and a screen before the fire to her new guest, and had found Katy, by the light of her single candle, on her knees beside the little pallet bed, weeping—as she had not let herself weep while anyone could see—for George Fairfield. It had led to a long talk, and by the time Katy had descended to take her turn at the end of the bath-line, Abigail had no more doubt that she might not have done the right thing.
“Which is fortunate,” said John, when—Saturday night, clean and damp and smelling of soap—he had yanked shut the bed-curtains and tumbled in beside her, “since Sam’s been pestering me to ride down to Providence to meet with the Committee of Correspondence there Monday. As you are deserting me again, you wayward woman, I had thought to see if Uncle Isaac and Aunt Eliza might be prevailed upon to look after the children once more. Heaven knows I’ve heard nothing all evening but about how they’d like to go back. You can send both girls along with them without fearing for Eliza’s silverware. Alone at last!”
He sighed, and in the darkness filled his hands with her hair—which, though hidden all day beneath a very proper cap, was in its unbound state like a black silk cloak. “I would bless you a thousand times, my dearest friend, only for not snoring—unlike every traveler I’ve shared a bed with these past two endless weeks . . .”
She kissed him, those lips so surprisingly soft against hers, and stroked the shorn velvet of his hair. “Bless me, then, dearest friend.”
It was good to have John home.
Thus it came to pass that on Monday morning, after helping John and Johnny with the cowshed and dispatching the older children to school, young Mr. Thaxter—John’s clerk— harnessed a horse borrowed from the neighbors to the very old Adams chaise. The prospect of three days in Aunt Eliza’s garden had reconciled the boys —and almost reconciled Nabby—to their mother’s absence; sitting between the younger boys as they drove slowly back to Milk Street with Thaxter, Pattie, and Katy pacing along beside the vehicle like the aldermen of London escorting the King in procession, Abigail heard all about Charley’s plans to implement Johnny’s design for a bird- trap, and Tommy’s intention to dig a hole clear to China.
“I trust you’ll see that he doesn’t,” said Abigail to Pattie, and both girls nodded. “At least not among Aunt Eliza’s roses. Katy, I must beg your forgiveness for saddling you with these two ruffians while Pattie helps Johnny and Nabby with their lessons—”
“Never fear it, m’am,” said Katy stoutly. “I’ll teach ’em their rifle-drill, and march ’em up and down the garden ’til they faint with fatigue—”
“I’ll faint before you do!” Tommy challenged Charley. To judge by their expressions, neither boy found the slightest objection to this program. All four children had taken to Katy with the aplomb learned early by those in large New England families, where unmarried cousins, maiden aunts, and hired girls came and went in farm households like birds of passage. Her ability to whistle, play cat’s cradle, and whittle toys won her the loyalty of the younger boys, and her curiosity and eagerness to be instructed in Latin by Johnny sparked his immediate approval. The boy loved to instruct anyone in anything and was well on his way, Abigail reflected with a sigh, to being as much of a prig at that age as Horace had been.
Katy’s hard life—harder, Abigail guessed, than the girl would admit—had left her willing and happy to fit herself into any environment, and Abigail sensed that beneath her sauciness lay great reserves of strength and loyalty. And John, of course, had fluffed up like a pouter-pigeon at the news that she had read his patriotic essays and thoroughly understood and approved.
After kisses, embraces, admonitions, and promises in Aunt Eliza’s kitchen, Thaxter helped Abigail into the chaise again, and minutes later they were passing beneath the central archway of the Boston town gates and into open country.
“Don’t you worry, m’am,” said the clerk, as Abigail turned in the seat to look behind her at the tall jumble of roofs visible beyond the curve of the harbor, at the black masts and hulls clustered along the wharves, the violet green islands floating in the water beyond. “Uncle Isaac will keep them safe, even if . . . well, even if the King’s message arrives and there should be trouble. And—well . . .” The young man coughed apologetically. “If you’ll excuse my saying so, m’am, but if there’s trouble, it’s just as well Mr. Adams is out of it.”
“Mr. Adams is
“No, m’am,” agreed the clerk, a stolid young man whom Abigail had known since his school-days. Their mothers had been sisters, and they were both part of a wide-flung family network that stretched over most of the eastern part of the colony. “All the same,” he added with a fleeting grin, “if the edict should happen to mention Mr. Adams, it’s probably best that he’s out of Boston just now—and the children out of the house.”
Medfield lay at a day’s drive along the wide bend of the Charles, and was a cluster of brown, peak-roofed houses set among stony fields and woods that stood untouched since the days when the Indians had had them to themselves. A harsh country, Abigail knew, and in places, appallingly primitive. Beyond the town’s fields the woods stood thick, a dark roof of oak and hickory shading ancient deadfalls and centuries of fallen leaves. Most of the houses in Medfield boasted two rooms plus whatever loft-space could be used beneath the steep slant of the roofs; more than one, she could see, had the enormous old-fashioned chimneys that spanned the whole of one wall, like the one in Sam Adams’s ancient house on Purchase Street, that you could sit inside in perfect comfort while Bess cooked dinner. In the winter, even the village would be isolated for weeks at a time by snow—as her childhood home of Weymouth still was, and John’s village of Braintree also—and she shivered at the thought of those outlying farms they passed. Only a hundred years ago, half the town had been burned by Indians,
