complete darkness, thrust open the door at the top, and emerged into a hall furnished—as the parlor was downstairs—with the newest style of straightlegged chairs, a small marble-topped table, and a painting by an inferior artist of Venus putting on her makeup.
Abigail signed Katy sharply to stay where she was, then moved with all the silent care of which she was capable—and having grown up with William for a younger brother, there was little she hadn’t learned about sneaking in silence—from one door to the other of the four rooms that opened from the hall.
Two bore the eappearance of guest-rooms—beds with French hangings of brocaded silk—one was a parlor with a large mirror on the ceiling, and one, Abigail guessed, belonged to Mrs. Morgan—the Lady of the Lake— herself. She signed to Katy again—
Abigail checked all the drawers of the highboy and between the mattresses of the bed—no book, no notes, no mysterious manuscripts in Arabic, and no household money. She crossed, stepping carefully, to the dressing table, examined its drawers, and found only an astonishing quantity of white lead, carmine, pomade, rice-powder, and kohl.
And in a corner of the dressing table, an ink-bottle.
Half empty.
And a used quill. Much used, in fact, its tip was whittled down nearly to the feather.
Abigail gathered her skirts about her, knelt carefully, and reexamined the marble surface of the dressing table itself.
Ink-stains. Granny Quincy had owned a marble-topped table, and Abigail knew exactly what happened if you didn’t wait until the ink was absolutely dry before you turned the sheet over to write on the back—you ended up having to rub and polish with solutions of oxgall and wood-sorrel and chalk, listening to Granny Quincy’s lectures on cleaning all the while.
So what had Mrs. Morgan been writing up here that she wouldn’t write at her very pretty gilt secretaire in the parlor downstairs?
Gently, Abigail removed every drawer from the dressing table in turn and found the papers tacked to the back side of the lower left-hand one. Four pages torn out of what looked like a housekeeping book; two bearing a laborious, crooked-lettered copy of Arabic writing; and two written over with the nowfamiliar dialog (and descriptive prose) between Lt. Governor Morgan and Mistress Pitts in a woman’s strong hand.
Footsteps in the backstairs—Abigail knew she’d been correct, they vibrated all over the house—and a voice calling softly, “Mrs. Percy—!”
Abigail shoved the papers into her pocket, wiggled the drawer back onto its runners, and darted to the window in time to see a huge, hulking man in a corduroy coat crossing back to the stables: the Cornishman. His head was cropped so closely it might almost have been shaved, and he carried it thrust forward, rather like an animal that has only recently learned the trick of walking on its hind legs . . .
“He’s gone,” said Nancy, as she and Katy entered the bedroom together.
Abigail heaved a convincing sigh—not entirely feigned—and put a hand to her chest: “What did he want? I vow, I was ready to go under the bed—”
“And you’d have done well to,” replied the dark-haired girl. “He’s a foul one to cross, and the more so when Dubber’s not around, for he hasn’t the brains on his own to know when it would pay him to hold on to his temper. Your redskin friend’s got a ready tongue in his head,” she added, with her sidelong, triangular grin. “I was afraid he’d get himself into trouble when the Cornishman demanded what he was doing there—he’d seen there was someone at the house—but Lord! The excuses and the whining, and letting the Cornishman bully two shillings out of him before he slunk out of the house with his tail between his legs—our boy never even thought there might have been someone else here. But,” she added, “it’s best you go. He’s a nasty piece of work, and you were right to hide. He wouldn’t think twice of telling your husband you were here, and getting money to keep quiet about it . . . and maybe worse, for your girl here.”
She put a brief arm around Katy’s shoulders.
“Is the coast clear?” asked Abigail. “Dassie said there were three of them . . .”
Nancy smiled—very briefly—at her use of the smuggler’s slang, but only said, “Grimes and Hicks went off to town this morning. Hicks and the Cornishman are straight off the boat this year, but Grimes has friends in town. And to tell the truth,” she added, as she led Abigail down the main stair to the front parlor downstairs, “that has me worried, for I wouldn’t put it past Grimes to sell us—Belinda and me—to one of those waterfront kens your sister- in-law spoke of . . .”
“
Nancy regarded her with a dark eye full of wry amusement. “You truly are an innocent, aren’t you, m’am? Girls with no family, no one to speak for us and—God knows—no way of making a living, save what she and I have done since we were thirteen . . .”
She put an arm around Belinda’s shoulders, as she had Katy a few moments before, and hugged her, all the beauty leaving her face for an instant, shadow in her wry and tired eyes. “I could probably sew a straight seam for twelve inches if the salvation of humankind depended on me doing so, but Belinda would need six months’ teaching by St. Martha herself to learn to sweep a floor. Don’t you worry, m’am,” she added, seeing Abigail’s face. “I’ve saved a little and so has Dassie, and if Mrs. Morgan isn’t back by morning, we’ll be out of here. What was your niece’s name, m’am? The girl you’re looking for? Pamela, yes—Pamela what? Not that she’ll use her right name . . . If I see her, m’am, I shall tell her you’re looking for her and will help her . . .”
“Thank you,” said Abigail, with difficulty retrieving her appearance of concern over that fictitious damsel’s plight in the face of this tall young woman’s genuine fears.
“And confusion to your nasty old sister,” added Nancy with her tight-lipped grin. “And to my nasty old aunt as well, and Belinda’s ma, and all them others . . . Well. Now best you be gone. Last thing any of us would need is for Dubber and Newgate to come strolling up and see you here . . . Ah, there’s your chief, I see him in the trees. Good luck to you, m’am.”
And with a smiling wave at Weyountah, Nancy closed the door, leaving Abigail with a good deal to think about as she and Katy crossed the road.
Nineteen
That isn’t my hand,” protested Horace at once, when Abigail showed him the paper she’d taken from Mrs. Morgan’s dressing table. “’Tis a fair copy, though, of what I wrote . . .”
“At a guess, I’d say Mrs. Morgan copied it for herself the moment you were out the door.” Abigail handed him the other sheets, which he turned over in puzzlement. “Not the same ones you translated from? But the same text, no?”
“Yes. Copied left to right by rote again—”
“Precisely. Mrs. Morgan is working for someone: possibly the Governor, possibly—dare I breathe a sullying word upon a reputation so spotless?—Black Dog Pugh—”
“Catch me,” remarked Katy, “ere I faint with shock.” They lengthened their steps as they came near to the first houses of Charles Town, and the bright sharp breeze from the harbor flapped at the women’s cloaks.
“Do you see a rash on my neck?” asked Horace of Katy, as they dropped behind a little. “I think one of those trees was a poisonous sumac . . . And I was bitten to pieces by gnats . . .”
“Goose, the only mark there is where you’ve scratched yourself . . .”
“I thought Miss Belinda looked like the sort of—er—young person who might attract Pugh’s attention,” said Weyountah. “If he isn’t corrupting some presumed-virtuous young matron in Cambridge instead. What have you there?”
“Letters purporting to be from my husband,” said Abigail, “and my great-uncle, Justice Mercer from Haverhill .
