“Let me out here,” said Abigail, and dug in her pocket for pencil and her commonplace-book. Quickly she wrote:
—a glance at the clock above the King’s Chapel showed that it wanted but ten minutes of the hour—
“Who’s Althea—?” began Horace, and Weyountah chuckled.
“Very good, m’am! And if Mr. Pinkstone is there studying, I’m to send him on an errand to fetch a hair from the Great Cham’s beard?”
“Something like that.” She sprang down from the chaise and handed Weyountah the note. “Do you know anything about this Eusebius? Anything at all that I can use to keep him talking when he gets here?”
“He has a wife in the West Indies named Violetta and is courting one of the maidservants at Mr. Vassall’s house,” provided Weyountah. “He was brought from Africa as a youth and was trained there by the local witch doctor—”
“Was he, indeed?” asked Abigail sharply, and the Indian’s eyebrows went up thoughtfully.
“So far as I know, the only thing he’s used his training on in this country is making up embrocations for the Black Dog’s horses and cats.”
“Ah,” said Abigail contentedly. “I had forgotten the cats. While Weyountah is searching Pugh’s room, Horace, perhaps— to make sure we’ve covered all possibilities—you have a look through Mr. Ryland’s, just to see if the Governor is in the habit of sending him on errands. It occurs to me that as His Excellency’s pensioner, Mr. Ryland may well have been the one who undertook the purchase of the books and can testify that indeed the Governor took possession. Now, go—”
St-John Pugh was still deep in conversation with Mistress Sally Woodleigh as Abigail came around the corner of Massachusetts Hall and crossed the road toward the chapel. Like a good servant, the man Pedro stood impassive, his scarred face expressionless, looking around him with dark uninterested eyes. Abigail called out, “Mr. Pugh!” and was greeted with a deep bow and an off-swept cap, and introduced to Sally Woodleigh.
“I am terribly, terribly sorry to hear of your loss,” said Abigail, taking the two fingers offered her in the British fashion, and Mistress Woodleigh immediately began to shed tears, silently, tragically, and without any accompanying sobs that might have rendered her lovely nose red.
“Thank you,” the girl whispered—she must have been sixteen or seventeen, Katy’s age, Abigail guessed—and wiped her eye with a handkerchief, trimmed in Brussels lace a handspan deep, that her handmaiden stepped forward to offer her. “Everyone has been so good . . .”
Pugh took her other hand in his and pressed it expressively; Abigail noticed the squeeze of gratitude that Mistress Woodleigh returned.
“I was never more shocked,” said Abigail warmly, “as when I heard the news. I did not know Mr. Fairfield well, though my nephew thought the world of him.”
“All loved him,” replied the girl simply. “And I—I never understood what the poet meant, when he spoke of one’s heart being in the grave. But it is, m’am. My heart is back there in that chapel—” She turned and gestured, a trifle too much like Juliet in an amateur theatrical performance. “I only go to visit it . . . and him.”
“Say not so.” Pugh patted the small gloved hand still in his. “Leave those of us who loved him—and others yet on this earth—still with the blossom of hope.”
Sally Woodleigh, Abigail reflected, watching the dewy smile she gave him, though she had the air of one who has talked herself into believing in a grief that made her the center of attention, was clearly in actual pain; the glint in Mr. Pugh’s eye could not be described as anything but amused at the scene. It was just as well that the slave Eusebius appeared at that moment, calling out, “Michie Pugh, sir! Michie Pugh! Got a message here; he say it important for you!”
Abigail watched St-John Pugh’s face as he read the note she had written five minutes previously and was gratified to see how his eyes narrowed. “Thank you, Eusebius,” he said. “Who delivered this—?”
“Michie Thaxter, sir. He say a woman give it to him, out by the stable; say she couldn’t come into the stair.”
The Black Dog looked as if he might have cursed, had he not been still standing next to Mistress Woodleigh. Abigail guessed he had a Rabelaisian turn of phrase. He glanced toward the Chapel tower, then turned back to the girl, and bowed deeply over her hand. “Please pardon my haste,
In a sweetly pouting voice, Mistress Woodleigh chided, “And who is this lady you’re running off to see the instant she beckons?”
“A withered old trout who’s done business with my father,” replied Pugh at once, though Abigail had made up the name Althea Mainwaring out of thin air. “’Tis tedious, beautiful nymph, but she carries tales, and I wouldn’t have my father’s ill-will for worlds.” He bent to kiss her hand. “I know ’tis an effort for you to shake off your grief, but for the sake of those of us who—who are deeply concerned for your feelings, will you permit me to call on you tomorrow and take you walking with me on the Common? You must have a care for your health.”
“You are too kind . . .”
Abigail was afraid Pugh would prolong the scene and send Eusebius back to his room again, but evidently both men knew that Mr. Pinkstone had been left in the chamber; in any case, Pugh, after another bow and a further reverent salute on the hand of his beloved, set off at a smart pace for the far end of Cambridge, trailed by Pedro, and Abigail turned just as Eusebius was walking away.
“Eusebius,” she said, as if trying to remember something about the name—and, well-trained slave that he was, the African came back. One did not walk away from a white woman who spoke to you . . . “My nephew tells me you know something of the ailments of cats?”
To her surprise the ferocious face, with its tribal scars, relaxed into a gentle smile. “Oh, pretty ones,” he said in a deep bass voice, and made a gesture as if cradling a cat in his arms.
“Could you spare just a moment?” asked Abigail. “I know it sounds fond and foolish of me, but my poor cat has begun scratching at herself, constantly, poor thing . . .”
She described at considerable length symptoms displayed by Granny Quincy’s sour old Black Witch the previous summer, and Eusebius listened gravely, asking questions now and then—What was m’aum chatte’s age, did she have rough bumps of the skin beneath her fur, was she lose fur on her backside? Since poor Black Witch had suffered with precisely these symptoms through the past three summers, Abigail took notes of what Eusebius prescribed—putting garlic in her food, braiding herbs into a collar for her if she would take it, washing her (“She no like, so you make her do anyway, m’aum”) in a solution of mild aromatics.
With luck, she reflected, handing the servant half a Spanish reale, Mr. Pinkstone would have time to return from whatever errand Weyountah had sent him on before Eusebius got back to the rooms, sparing them both anxiety about what to tell Michie Pugh . . .
She had to remind herself, as she walked round to the lane by the college stables where Weyountah and Horace waited for her with Katy—flushed and cheerful and not a penny the worse for her long walk—that Eusebius’s obvious expertise with the ailments of cats was a sword that cut both ways . . . and he would have known exactly how much to dose a frumenty to guarantee that it would transform an entire household into Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
“We both went in to look,” said Weyountah, as Horace helped Abigail and Katy up into the chaise and the vehicle set off at a smart pace—as the sun was, yet again, sinking toward the hills and threatening to catch Abigail on the wrong side of the Boston town gates. Katy turned around to wave back at Horace, then clung to the rail of
