Sup With the Devil

proceeded in good order. But on Sunday, as she sat next to John for the morning sermon, she found her thoughts straying to Diomede, to the wife he had left behind him in Virginia, to the daughters he had begged to be able to write to. By breaking out of the Cambridge jail, he had virtually guaranteed that he would never be able to go home—for who would believe him when he had fled from justice?

And yet, she thought, Sam had not been obliged to do anything at all for the man. Diomede was nothing to him, save an obstacle preoccupying Abigail’s thoughts and preventing her from concentrating on what Sam wanted her to do. And it was true, she reflected—as she listened to the long elaboration upon the adventures of King David and his men hiding out in the wilderness from the King whom the Prophet Samuel had deprived of his crown—that there was every chance that Sam had saved Diomede’s life . . .

And how could I tell?

How can any of us tell what lies down the road we do not take?

Dr. Cooper’s second sermon—after eating a cold Sabbath dinner, and reading a little to the younger children, and hearing Johnny and Nabby give their summaries of the earlier sermon to make sure they understood the matter—concerned such martial prophets as Gideon and Deborah: Hear, o ye kings, give ear o ye princes; I, even I, will sing unto the Lord . . .

One of the oldest songs in all the Holy Writ, her father had said: how the small nation had risen against those that would oppress it, and how the stars in their courses joined battle on the side that was right. So let all thine enemies perish, o Lord; but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.

Sisera was coming—the King’s Commissioner or whoever the King was going to send.

With who knew how great an army in his train? With who could tell what weapon in his hand?

And by what would that Commissioner be met?

Abigail walked home quietly through the beautiful light of the early evening, listening to Pattie and Katy’s soft chatter behind her: the girls had remained at home in the morning to look after the smaller boys—Thaxter invariably spent Sundays with his mother, so John and Abigail took turns missing the afternoon sermon to mind the children so that the girls could attend. If I speak to Sam just after the marketing is done tomorrow, ’twill give me time to go with him out to Cambridge or to wherever they’ve hidden Diomede. And if he DARE bring up the subject of Old Beelzebub’s treasure, I really will strike him with a broom-handle . . .

She turned from Brattle into Queen Street and saw, rather to her surprise—for Boston streets were quiet as a rule on the Sabbath—John. John hastening along with no hat on his head, looking right and left about him . . .

She quickened her stride in the same moment that he saw her. What she saw in his face shocked and chilled her; she gathered up her skirts and ran.

Before she could even ask him what was wrong he said, “Charley’s gone.”

Twenty-one

They didn’t get the note until morning.

Before darkness fell Sunday evening, the whole of the neighborhood had been called into service: Tom Butler the cooper and his two sturdy apprentices, Ehud Hanson the shoemaker, Uzziah Begbie and his wife, Gower the blacksmith down the street . . .

No one had seen a sturdy fair-haired little boy, not even quite four weeks from his fourth birthday . . .

Please, dear God, Abigail prayed soundlessly as she walked along Cornhill toward Milk Street, please let him see his fourth birthday. Let us all see his fourth birthday . . .

The streets were Sabbath-quiet—Thank you, God!—without the carriages and cart traffic of the weekdays, without the cattle being herded along and the barrows, drays, flocks of chickens and geese that rendered the cobbled, crisscrossing ways so confusing for a tiny child. He’ll have set off for Aunt Eliza’s, Abigail told herself as she walked, and gotten distracted by something else— the handsome lawn of the Governor’s house or horses being harnessed to take some fashionable “worthy” to church. In this part of Boston, at least, if a stray child was found wandering—even one of the ragged little urchins from the North End waterfront—someone would take him or her in, would ask, “Where do you live, dearie?” and if no answer was forthcoming would keep an eye on the street for a distrait dark-haired woman in her blue go-to-church gown looking up every alleyway, around every tree . . .

Eliza and Isaac Smith were horrified. Eliza and Abigail searched the garden, and Young Isaac—for all his usual talk about not profaning the Sabbath—instantly put on his hat and went out to search in the streets round about, returning only when darkness was settling over the town to offer to walk Abigail home. “Of course we’ll send and let you know . . . We’ll have Cuffee outside in the street watching for him . . .”

“And poor Johnny thinks ’tis his fault,” said Abigail, as she and Young Isaac—still so-called though he was twenty-five years old and had his own church and congregation—made their way along Cornhill arm in arm. “Nabby was watching the younger boys and Johnny got into some kind of quarrel with her—as children do, with their rivalries over books and toys and slate-pencils. John came out of the front of the house and adjudicated the conflict, and by the time anyone looked round, Charley was gone.”

“He can’t have got far,” opined Isaac firmly, despite the fact that his mother’s house on Milk Street was far from Queen Street by anyone’s stretch of the imagination and no one seemed to think that Charley had any other destination. And then—giving himself the lie—“Would he have found his way to the Common?”

Abigail looked up. Dark had fallen, and above the black jumble of rooflines, stars shone clear and glittering, like diamonds. The moon was in its last dwindle toward darkness. “Why?” she asked. “Your mother’s house is nearer—”

“Would he have known that?” reasoned the young parson. “He could simply have gotten lost. And if he grew frightened, it could easily be that he’d hesitate to speak to a stranger . . . and there are few about the streets of a Sunday between dinner and dark.”

“True,” said Abigail, as they passed the tall brick tower of the Old Meeting-House and turned up Queen Street. “But Charley isn’t the least shy of strangers. When he gets hungry, he’ll turn to the first friendly looking stranger he meets to ask him to lead him home. And he knows he lives in—”

She broke off, seeing the men moving about the alleyway that led to the back of the house. She quickened her steps, almost snatching up her skirts to run. When she got close, she saw that in addition to her neighbors, there were four or five of the North End roughnecks whose assistance Sam could habitually call on if so be he needed a Tory’s shopwindow broken or—for instance—a mob to storm the Governor’s house . . .

Paul Revere was in the kitchen, talking to John. “—almost certain, ’twas the same woman,” he was saying. “I’ll tell Sam to get his men out onto the Common, though I cannot imagine Charley wouldn’t walk up to the door of the first house he came to and knock on it, asking to be taken home—or given part of their dinner on the spot, more like—”

“You’ve heard nothing, then?” Abigail’s glance went from her husband to her friend. “Did Sam send you?”

And saw the look that passed between the two men, that turned her blood to water in her veins. “I came on another matter,” Revere said. “Sam heard today that the corpse of a woman whom he believes might be this Mrs. Lake you spoke of—the one who kidnapped your cousin Horace—”

“She didn’t precisely—” Abigail hesitated on the denial, realizing that, effectively, that was exactly what had happened. And then, as the silversmith’s words sank in, “Corpse?”

“A couple of boatmen”—by which Abigail knew he meant smugglers—“found her washed up on the rocks of Bird Island, where the river’s current sets around with the tide. She was well-dressed, they said, and dark-haired. They said they’d heard from Munn in Charles Town that a woman thereabouts had disappeared.”

“Mrs. Morgan,” said Abigail softly. “The owner of—”

“Good Lord, not La Fata Morgana?” Revere almost laughed—he clearly knew what Mrs. Morgan was known to