“Do you think there will be fighting when they come ashore, m’am?”
Abigail sniffed. “I think there’ll be fighting the first time the Royal Commissioner’s bodyguard attempts to get a drink in a tavern. ’Tis all the prediction I feel can be made with certainty. As for Sam’s contention that we’ll face a flotilla and an invasion-force, I can scarcely see where the King is likely to find, at short notice, soldiers enough to hold a city the size of Boston. My guess is that he’ll send a Royal Commissioner, not an invading general, with orders to the colony to pay for the tea. ’Tis an understandable request but not worth battle in the streets.”
“To Mr. Deems, ’twould be. And Bruck Travers and his father. And George, I’m afraid,” the girl added sadly. “Just the thought that patriot militia would have the temerity to form in defiance of the King’s rule had him red in the face. Joseph Ryland had to talk him out of taking the Volunteers on Saturdays to attack the militias while they drilled.”
“That’s all we would need.” Abigail folded her shawl around her shoulders at the chill of the sea-wind.
“’Twouldn’t have been much of a battle,” pointed out Katy practically. “They’re barely a handful, and half of them not mounted, nor armed. They’d only come to the drills to cheer the others on and wear the uniforms and drink punch. At least our men have guns.”
“And massacring them would solve something? Besides giving Parliament a far better reason than a little saltwater tea to send in a few regiments to keep order?”
Katy was silent for a moment, considering this, tucking the trailing streamers of her black hair back beneath her cap. In a somewhat smaller voice she said, “Well, howsoever, Ryland talked George out of it. He’s got a great deal of sense and is a fine soldier, even if he does look at me as if I’d just crawled up out of a drain.”
“Because you’re a patriot?” Abigail had heard the slight break in her young companion’s voice.
“I daresay it’s what he tells people—and himself. But me, I think ’tis because he’s been writing love-poems to Sally Woodleigh and sending her flowers, and she won’t so much as turn her head to say hello in the street but makes—made”—she corrected herself—“sheep’s eyes at George.” She was silent for a time; the brass tube of the spyglass forgotten in her hand, she looked out across the violet chop of the bay toward Charles Town, rising on the slopes of its hills.
“I saw her Tuesday when I went to Cambridge,” the girl continued after a time. “I went to the King’s Chapel, to—not to
She shook her head, looked away across the bay again, her eyes clouded with grief. “And Sally was there. All in black, with a veil on her bonnet, as if she’d lost a husband, instead of a man she’d talked herself into thinking wanted her. I don’t think she even saw me there. She had her maid with her, and Mr. Heywood from the Volunteers. She was taken faint and leaned on his arm.”
The Charles Town wharf was drawing near. Young Mr. Peasley, the ferry’s captain, shouted himself crimson while the two deck-boys swung the yard this way and that, trying to catch sea-wind against the inshore gusts that blew off the hills behind the town. Abigail clung resolutely to the edge of the bench where she sat and fixed her eyes on the tall green summit of Bunker Hill.
“He didn’t lead her on to think it of him, did he?” she asked, and remembered the young man’s careless smile. The Sally Woodleighs of the world, at least, were not to be caught with faked marriage ceremonies . . . but even if she had not truly sent the message, asking for a meeting behind the barn, George Fairfield at least had believed that she
“No!” retorted Katy. “At least—I don’t think he did.”
“Did she favor one above another, of the others?” Abigail asked. “The Black Dog, for instance?”
“Oh, you heard about the fight that Saturday, did you?” Katy managed a pale and crooked grin. “’Tis funny, in spite of the things Mr. Ryland called me—he and George got into a
“It depends,” replied Abigail, as the ferry at long last was drawn up alongside the wet, dark bollards, “upon how we find her and where.”
Though it had been the original capital of the colony, Charles Town was barely more than a bustling little village these days, built on the footslopes of two tall hills at the mouth of the Mystic River and slightly less than three-quarters of a mile end to end along the shore. The house known as Avalon stood a few hundred yards from the ferry landing, east of the town proper, in a discreet grove of trees just where the gentle slope of Breed’s Hill began to steepen. Abigail wouldn’t have guessed it was a place of ill repute, save that Weyountah and Horace had inquired at two alehouses and had received the same directions from both. Avalon certainly bore no resemblance to the slatternly taverns along the Boston waterfront. It was built in the old style, partly of timber and partly of brick, with tall gables and an upper story that overhung the lower.
The sign above its door depicted—not much to Abigail’s surprise—a woman’s arm emerging from the waters of a lake, caressing rather than brandishing the upright sword.
“’Tis known in town as an alehouse,” said Weyountah, as the little party walked along the road that curved toward the brick kiln at the foot of Moulton’s Hill some half mile ahead. “Though the man in the taproom at the Peacock gave me a wink when I asked after the place—by which I assume that it is indeed what we’re looking for.”
“With a nice, sheltered approach on the other side of the hill,” murmured Abigail, as they reached the place where the road curved northwest again toward Bunker Hill. “Invisible if you’re coming in from Cambridge or Medford in the dusk, I daresay.” She looked back toward the Avalon. “I don’t see anyone about, do you? Though I don’t imagine there’s much activity here ’til nightfall. Still, one would expect servants at least and some sign of smoke in the kitchen chimney . . . and grooms about the stables. Best you stay out of sight, Horace. Shall I knock on the front door and see if I can at least get a look at this Mrs. Lake?”
Horace looked shocked, but Weyountah only said, “Lend Horace your spyglass, Katy; the trees across the road here ought to be close enough. Can you see the door clearly, Horace? No, turn it—that way. Good. Mrs. Adams?” He offered her his arm, and Katy drew her cloak-hood up over her head and did her best to look like a respectable servant-girl as she trailed Abigail and the Indian back toward the front door. With the trees thick with spring leaf, the whole dooryard of the house called Avalon was rather gloomy, and close-up the shabbiness of the place was more evident: the dooryard muddy, the path needing gravel, the backhouses quite obviously in need of cleaning. The diamond-paned windows had not been washed recently, and the house had an air of uneasy quiet. Abigail felt herself reminded of a woman who has been struck and waits to see what will happen next.
She knocked at the door and assumed the expression of a righteous matron drawing aside her skirts to wade through garbage in a holy cause.
The footsteps inside approached the door at a near run.
The young woman who opened the door—plump, freckled, and matter-of-fact in the rather faded print dress of a servant—looked both wary and scared. And, when she saw Abigail, taken aback—
“Please pardon this intrusion.” Abigail inclined her head. “My name is Mrs. Percy. I was told I might find a woman here who calls herself Mrs. Lake, though that might not be her right name. Dark-haired, about my height”— this was a guess, from the fact that Horace hadn’t noted either tallness or shortness—“a lady, I suppose you would call her . . .”
Something altered in the young woman’s stance: shoulders slumped, mouth tightened, eyes . . . not grieved, but the eagerness died from her face and was replaced by anxiety.
“Is she not here?” asked Abigail. “I was told—”
“She’s gone,” said the girl. “She’s been gone two days. I hoped you had word of her, for God’s honest truth, there’s not one of us that knows what to do.”
