cloak and skirts flapping around her ankles, the yellow smudge of the closed-down lantern-beam bobbing on the ground before them in the dark. Her thoughts seemed to have narrowed, running in a blind circle of fear and hope and agony.
Stillness and the watching sparkle of the distant stars. John shut the lantern-slide and they stood in the darkness among the trees along the wall of the college barn, where Fairfield had met with goodness only knew how many young ladies in his short career. Nothing below the level of the sky was visible, save that single light out in the midst of the Yard. John’s breath was a steady whisper beside her, and his arm circled her waist, his strength surprising. Katy’s hand stole into Abigail’s free one, chilled in the night. A bird cried somewhere in the trees.
Then silence.
The distant light went out.
Abigail’s breath caught. She started forward; John’s arm tightened around her: “Give them a moment to get away from him.”
But she knew if Charley had the freedom of his own limbs he’d immediately start looking for them, would get lost in the long grass . . .
Then a rifle-shot cracked, like thunder in the darkness. Then another and another. Abigail gasped as if cold water had doused her—somewhere a man cried out . . .
She tore the lantern out of John’s hand and the two of them were running, running toward where the light had been. John shouted, “Nab—!” and his hand caught hers in the darkness, and then, “
“Charley!” she screamed. “Charley, we’re here—!”
Shouting ahead of them, in the direction of the Sever orchards, and another gun fired, and then, thready in the blackness, a child’s wail, “Ma!”
“Stay where you are!” shouted John. “Stay where you are and GET DOWN!”
“Ma!”
How she found her way in the whole blackness of the Harvard Yard she didn’t know, but the jolting lantern- beam showed her Revere’s forked stick, the quenched lantern, and Charley huddled down next to the stick—not in fear, but trying to untie the short piece of rope that fastened him by one ankle to the upright wood. Somewhere in the darkness men were shouting, a confusion of sounds—
“Are you all right?” gasped Abigail. “Are you—”
The soft skin pressed her cheek, miraculously, blindingly.
“I wasn’t scared,” said the boy cheerfully. “I knew you’d get me.”
In the blackness behind them, two more shots rang out.
At John’s insistence—obeying his direct order was one of the most difficult tasks in their relationship so far—Abigail remained in their room at the Golden Stair, lying beside the sleeping Charley while John waited in the common room downstairs for Sam to put in an appearance. On the walk back to the inn, Paul Revere swore with such softvoiced fury at his fellow Son of Liberty that Abigail was inclined to believe that he hadn’t been in on the plot, but cold rage at them all nearly stifled her.
“How dared he?” she began, when she and John carried their son up to the chamber, “How
John stroked Charley’s head—the boy had fallen asleep in Abigail’s arms before they’d even reached the Common—and breathed, “Later, Nab. Look to the boy.”
Sick rage filled her: at herself, at them, at the world. At the Sons of Liberty. At Sam.
Listening—for their room at the Golden Stair was close to the staircase that led down to the common room —she heard when the Sons of Liberty came in: the sarcastic voice of Mrs. Squills asking, would Mr. Congreve care for some assistance in arresting them all for breaking the curfew?, and then the low-voiced rumble of explanations, arguments, accounts. Twice Abigail almost fell asleep only to jolt awake again from dreams of panic, dreams in which she reached the lanternstaff in the middle of Harvard Yard and there was no child sitting beneath it, or dreams in which the child beneath it—
She shook her head, forcing the image away in panic.
If Dubber Grimes and his minions hadn’t been shot out of hand by the Sons of Liberty, she supposed she owed them a plea of clemency for that.
The voices faded.
John’s tread on the stair.
His dim shape in the light of the candle in his hand as he opened the door. She could see he carried the package of books beneath one arm.
“Did they take them?”
He set the light down on the small table beside the bed, barely large enough for the candlestick and the package he bore. It was still wrapped all around in string, the big red globs of sealing wax uncracked. “Two of them,” he said. “The scar-faced man—Grimes, I think his name was—and the man they called Newgate Hicks. Both are dead, shot in the scuffle—”
“And I suppose Sam didn’t give a thought to the fact that we might want to ask these gentlemen who was paying them for their services? Whether it was the Governor or Mr. Pugh or—”
“Sam is furious. Of course he wanted to know who the true culprit is.”
“You astound me.” Abigail heard the shrewish shrillness that cracked her voice but couldn’t help herself. “I didn’t think Sam had a thought in his mind except finding this accursed treasure, if there is a treasure, no matter what it costs . . . just like whoever it is who is behind this attempt. And will be behind the next one.”
She was aware that she was trembling, almost sick with reaction to shock, with anger. She reached out, ran her hand over the package of books—
Then looked up at John and said, knowing it for the truth, “Were the books even in this package?”
“No.” He sat on the bed at her side, and when she threw his hands off her—furious with him as with the others—and ripped at the thick paper, the heavy seals, he persisted and took from her the half-revealed copies of some of Sam’s old Greek textbooks. Drew her against him, held her close. “’Tis all right,” he said softly. “’Tis all right, Portia. ’Tis done.”
“It isn’t,” she whispered, and leaned her head on his shoulder.
“It is for tonight.”
Twenty-four
Abigail was calmer when she and John descended to breakfast the following morning, but the anger she felt, though colder, was no less real. Years of milking cows and doing farm-chores had made of them
