“Did Miss Fluckner mention that it was her engagement to Cottrell, which was to have been announced at the ball?”
Abigail raised her brows. No wonder Mrs. Sandhayes had looked coy. “I should dearly like to have been there to see them try it. The girl appears to have an understanding with Harry Knox.”
“Ah,” said John. He helped her off with her cloak and spread its heavy folds over one of the wooden settles that flanked the kitchen fire. “Well, that explains a great deal.” On the opposite settle, Nabby and Johnny had already spread their cloaks, and the thick wool steamed gently in the heat. The advancing morning had not lessened in the slightest degree the previous night’s cold; as Abigail dumped the fire-box’s coals back onto the hearth and set the box ready for that afternoon’s ration after dinner, she shivered at the thought of another three hours in the freezing sanctuary. Rail thin and unhealthy as a girl, Abigail had never, in her thirty years of New England winters and long sermons, grown used to the discipline of attending to the Lord’s Word in the bitter season.
Charley and Tommy, who had spent the morning in their usual Sabbath pastime of listening to Pattie read to them from the Bible while they fidgeted, scurried at the heels of their older brother and sister to set the table: anything being preferable to “playing quietly” and refraining from the “profane” toys of the rest of the week. John followed Abigail into the pantry to help her bring in the cold roast pork cooked yesterday, mush, sweet potatoes and molasses, and the minute quantity of milk that Semiramis and Cleopatra had only just begun to provide again as they freshened after the winter’s drought. “They’ll have taken Harry out to Castle Island, won’t they?” she added quietly, and John nodded.
For a moment they regarded one another in apprehensive silence.
After the Governor’s request for troops to “keep order” some three years ago had resulted in those troops opening fire into a crowd of civilians, it had been agreed upon that, though Boston would remain garrisoned by a regiment of the King’s forces, it would probably be better if those forces were not brought into daily contact with mobs stirred up by the Sons of Liberty. As a compromise, the Sixty-Fourth Regiment now occupied Castle Island, a brick fortress in the bay that had been built during the most recent French War. Since the dumping of the tea into the harbor in December, contact between the Bostonians and the much-outnumbered redcoats had been very limited indeed.
But Abigail—and every man, woman, and child over the age of five in Boston—was aware that Colonel Leslie was only biding his time. A man taken up for the murder of the King’s Commissioner would not only be imprisoned on the island: there was every likelihood he would not be tried in Boston at all. Like a smuggler, he would be taken before an Admiralty Court of three Crown judges and no jury at the British naval base in Halifax, three hundred miles from the sort of inflammatory pamphlets that Harry had spent most of the night printing up.
And despite John’s having defended the troopers who fired into the mob at the so-called Boston Massacre back in ’70, with his involvement in the Sons of Liberty an open secret, there was a very good chance that if he went out to the island to speak with Harry Knox, he would not be permitted to return.
She asked worriedly, “Will you send Thaxter to see him?”
Thaxter was John’s clerk.
“I suppose I must.”
Abigail nodded, understanding John’s tone rather than his words. Young John Thaxter was steady, intelligent, and cool-headed in such emergencies as were likely to arise in either the courtroom or in the Adams’ kitchen where he’d taken so many of his meals over the past year or two: he would, John often said, make a fine lawyer. He was observant, articulate, and assiduous about double-checking facts. Neither John nor Abigail had ever been able to quite put their fingers on what he lacked, but they both knew it was something. Perhaps only the cynicism that comes from a decade of riding Massachusetts court circuits in the backwoods.
Whatever it was, it was in John’s eyes as he looked at her.
“Might I go?”
“What, disguised as a boy?” His chuckle was affectionate, admiring, but a chuckle nonetheless. “A young doctor of Rome; his name is Balthazar,” he quoted Shakespeare’s description of Portia’s alter ego from The Merchant of Venice. “I never knew so young a body with so old a head . . .”
“And Balthazar won her case,” pointed out Abigail.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Not serious?” Abigail drew herself up in burlesque indignation. “Not serious about visiting my poor, wretched cousin in that horrible jail and taking him a few paltry comforts? After Mr. Thaxter’s kindliness in offering to escort me?”
“The Provost Marshal is never going to believe that my wife or any person named Adams is making a call on a man suspected of seditious activities solely for the purpose of giving him clean stockings.”
“I’m surprised at you, John Adams, making assumptions about what another man might be persuaded to believe.” She spooned butter from the little crock that had been brought up from the cellar—nearly rock-hard in the cold despite the fact that she’d set it near the door into the kitchen—and collected the milk-jug from the warmest corner of the pantry. The thin skin of ice would melt off it after only minutes in the kitchen’s warmth.
“The most they can do is forbid me to see him and make me sit on a bench for an hour in the cold while Thaxter asks his questions. They’re certainly not going to clap me in a dungeon and send you a note demanding you come alone and unarmed to some deserted spot, you know.”
“I suppose not.” John grinned, and followed her back into the kitchen, platter of pork in his hands. “I should dearly love to see them try, though. If they forbid you to visit Mr. Knox, dearest Portia, I daresay you might improve the idle hour by paying a call on your friend Lieutenant Coldstone.”
Abigail’s smile widened in return. “My thought precisely, dearest Lysander.”
He set down his prosaic burden and kissed her hand at the old courting nickname. Lieutenant Jeremy Coldstone of the Provost Marshal’s guard was the officer charged, last November, with arresting John for the murder of Colonel Leslie’s mistress, and from that inauspicious beginning, respect and liking had grown up between Abigail and that stiff-backed young servant of the Crown. Sternly, Abigail disciplined her thoughts against a twinge of regret as she poured warmed cider from the hearth-kettle to a pitcher, and John gathered the children to table. It would be the Sabbath until bedtime tonight, so she would be unable to bake fresh bread to carry across to Castle Island as a gift for Coldstone, whom she knew was at the mercy of Army food-contractors: a pity. The goodwill was cheap at the price. And Harry, of course, would appreciate it, too.
She gave herself a mental shake, and turned her thoughts resolutely back to the morning’s sermon and the questions the Reverend Cooper had raised about the Mark of the Beast, and conversation over dinner reverted to Sabbath thoughtfulness. If keeping the Sabbath holy were easy, God would not have needed to enshrine it in Eternal Law. When John sent a note to Cousin Sam, however, requesting that transportation to the island be arranged in the morning with one of the smugglers who worked for fellow-Son John Hancock, Abigail scribbled a quick message for Lucy Fluckner, postponing their own meeting until Tuesday, when at least the delay would result in some information to impart. Officially there was no post in Boston on Sundays, but there was no harm in asking the next-door neighbor’s prentice-boy if he would happen to be walking that way this evening on his return from Meeting.
She, John, and Pattie returned to the meeting-house that afternoon with righteous hearts and proper attitudes.
The short spring evening, however, brought a knock on the front door and a resumption of Abigail’s career as a Sabbath-breaker.
She had at least the comfort of knowing that she wasn’t the only one in the household engaged in violating the Lord’s Commandment—if comfort one could take in such a reflection—because on their return from the afternoon servic
e John had been greeted by a note from wily Cousin Sam, followed closely by the man himself: was John agreeable to conceal two boxes of the pamphlets Harry had been printing last night and several pieces of the frame of the press itself, which Paul Revere, indefatigable Sabbath-bender and bricoleur, was going to dismantle that night?
“So far as anyone can tell, they’ve got no one watching the bookshop,” Sam said, as he guided John out of the kitchen and down the short hall to John’s study at the front of the house. By anyone, Abigail assumed he meant any of the prentice-boys, layabouts, and stevedores out of work who constituted the eyes and ears of the Sons of Liberty in Boston’s narrow streets. And men pride themselves on not being “gossipy” like women! “We’ll have the pamphlets out of there and the press broken down by midnight, and if it does occur to the Provost Marshal to get a man in to search the cellar, he’ll find nothing but Caesar’s Commentaries and quires of stationery for his trouble—”
Presumably, thought Abigail as she returned to the kitchen to pour cider and lay out a plate of yesterday’s gingerbread for the men, Sam has decided to take the Sabbath as ending at sunset . . .
What mark—she could not keep herself from wondering— would this decision about where the boundaries of the Lord’s Day lay leave on Sam’s head and hand and heart, once the goal of political representation for the colonies in Parliament was achieved? Would the Sons of Liberty disband then? Or would they begin to turn on one another, as the ancient Romans did? Or on anyone they perceived as an enemy to whatever the new order was?
And in that case—
“Mrs. Adams?” Pattie, who was standing at the front door even as Abigail stepped out of the study into the hall again, turned, and beyond her Abigail saw a cloaked form on the threshold in the dusk. “A lady here to see you.”
Miss Fluckner? Thank goodness there was a fire in the parlor fireplace this afternoon . . .
“My dear Mrs. Adams!” As Pattie stepped aside, Mrs. Margaret Sandhayes limped into the hallway, paused to prop one of her gold-headed canes against her pannier, and this time—second encounter being obviously ground for a promotion—extended her entire hand instead of the cool two fingers as before. “I am desolated to interrupt you at this hour, but dear Lucy warned me—at the same time that she begged me to bring you this—that you Puritans spend the entire day in Church on Sundays. Is that true? Doing nothing but listening to the minister prose on about God and holiness? How very extraordinary—but very morally uplifting and good for the character, I’m sure.”
She smiled and held out a thick-folded packet of paper, crusted everywhere with blots of sealing wax into which a seal of a flying bird had been hastily squished. An equally impatient hand had scrawled Mrs. Adams across the front.
“Won’t you come in?” Abigail nodded to Pattie and stepped back to open the parlor door.
“Well, just for a moment, thank you so much.” In a vast rustle of petticoats Mrs. Sandhayes shed her cloak into Pattie’s hands and preceded Abigail into the parlor, her panniered skirts—a style worn by only the wives of the wealthiest merchants in the colonies—swaying uneasily with her lurching stride. “Of course I should attend more regularly—Dear Hannah Fluckner tells me that the minister at King’s Chapel is dazzling, and so handsome, too, for a man of his years, and with a beautiful voice. I always think a Man of the Cloth must have a beautiful voice, don’t you? So much more important than all that dusty Bible-quoting! Yet vestries over here never seem to think of that when choosing them, or even offer training in elocution or rhetoric at seminaries, which makes it such a bore for the poor parishioners.”
She settled in the chair beside the fire and propped her canes beside her, her movements suddenly graceful: as she removed her gloves, Abigail noticed the length and pale beauty of her well-cared-for hands. “And God forbid if there’s some perfectly simple word that he habitually mispronounces, like concupiscence, which dear Dr. Ellenbrough at St. Onesimus’s always pronounced con-cuppy-since, and I’m afraid we girls would start giggling and could not stop ourselves—Why, thank you,” she added, as Pattie came into the parlor with a tray: softly steaming teapot, small plates of bread, marmalade, fig-paste, and soft cheese. “How very kind of you, m’am! Such a freezing night as it promises—” Mrs. Sandhayes broke off, started back for a moment as Abigail poured out the un-Sabbatical tea: “Chamomile?”
“Would you prefer mint?” Abigail inquired serenely. “I know some people think mint is rather everyday.”
“Oh, dear me, I completely forgot.” She laughed, the silvery sweetness accompanied by a dismissive wave. “The notorious tea fracas! Don’t tell me you subscribe to the boycott, Mrs. Adams? La, such a to-do dear Lucy makes of it, and all just to annoy her Papa, as girls will—especially girls whose Papas insist they marry dreadful little snirps like Sir Jonathan, nihil nisi bonum and all that, of course . . . Please do read Miss Lucy’s letter.”
The outer note enclosed a thicker inner packet, sealed but unaddressed. A blotted scribble implored:
Mrs. Adams,
Got your note! What luck that you’ll see Harry! I beg you, put this into his hand! Philomela and I will go walking on the Common Tuesday 10 o’clock . . . I beg of you, meet us there, away from prying ears! I am consumed with envy—will you go disguised as a boy?
Lucy
William Shakespeare, Abigail reflected, had a great deal to answer for.
“The poor child.” Mrs. Sandhayes heaved a deep sigh. “I positively weep for her, but of course one understands one can’t have one’s daughter marrying a bookseller. But I’ll swear the boy is no fortune hunter.”
“Of course he isn’t!”
“No of course about it, my dear Mrs. Adams.” Mrs. Sandhayes took a sip of the chamomile tea, politely suppressed a grimace, and set the cup aside. “Mr. Fluckner’s ships, cargoes, and property in Boston are worth a hundred and twenty thousand pounds if they’re worth thruppence, not to speak of proprietary rights to over a million acres in Maine, wherever Maine is”—she laughed again, dismissively—“once the title is confirmed. It has a very French sound, don’t you think? And say what you will about the French, they may be our enemies and Catholics and all that, but they cut a dress in a way that no Englishwoman ever could, not if she lived to be a hundred. I had a mantua-maker in London—”
“And I’ll swear”—Abigail returned to the subject under consideration—“that Lucy hasn’t formed an attachment to Mr. Knox simply to disoblige her father.”
“What? Oh, dear, no.” Mrs. Sandhayes folded her lovely hands. “I think that’s why dear Lucy was so taken with Mr. Knox: because they’d met half a dozen times, and talked of books and battles and horses and dogs, before Harry ever knew who she was or that the man who won her should be rich for life. That he was taken with her, she said, and not with her dowry, which is a great deal more than could be said about Sir Jonathan Cottrell. It was really very sweet.”
“’Twill be a good deal less sweet if Harry is taken for a military trial in Halifax and hanged for it,” replied Abigail grimly. “Was Sir Jonathan wealthy?”
“My dear Mrs. Adams, the King does not have penniless friends.” Disconcertingly after her babble of mantua-makers and fashionable preachers, a flash of worldly wisdom glinted from the Englishwoman’s green eyes. Even with the last of the evening light fading from the windows, and the gentler glow of candles and the parlor hearth concealing the details of the day, Abigail could see that however fashionable the cut of Mrs. Sandhayes’s clothing, the fabric itself was faded, and the lace and ribbons that decked her bony bosom either clumsily refurbished or repaired. At the meeting-house that morning Lucy had spoken of her chaperone as her social equal, her mother’s “friend who is staying with us,” but now it occurred to Abigail to wonder if this were not simply a polite fiction. Had Mrs. Sandhayes delayed borrowing her hostess’s carriage to deliver Lucy’s message until a time when she knew that the light would be kinder to a gown that had seen better days? The pearl earrings and the Med
usa-head cameo at her throat were old and probably valuable—this was a woman who wouldn’t wear trash. But they were also the jewelry she’d had on earlier in the day.
“It’s surprising,” the woman went on, “the number of people who subscribe to the belief that just because a man has a respectable fortune, he isn’t going to pursue a woman with a larger one. I use the word pursue advisedly,” she added drily. “Sir Jonathan adhered to the Kiss-Me-Kate School of wooing and seemed to think that a girl of Lucy’s boisterous temperament would find violence of conduct as well as sentiment appealing.”
Abigail’s thoughts snapped back from consideration about who it was who might have left Margaret Sandhayes penniless, and said, “Toad.”
“Well, to be perfectly accurate, my dear Mrs. Adams, weasel would be le mot plus bon—though it is not a terribly nice thing to be saying about either toads or weasels, poor things. A little spindle-shanked fellow with a voice like a mouse at the bottom of a barrel and a nose like one, too, always aquiver for what would benefit him. Or for a well-turned ankle, I’m afraid, though he managed to convince Mr. Fluckner of his respectability. Do you make this marmalade yourself? You colonials are positively astonishing! Please tell me the oranges were smuggled from Spain! I must be able to write my friends in Bath and tell them I’ve supped on smuggled goods with a patriot who refuses tea on political principle! La, I shall be the envy of Abbey Crescent!”
“Was Miss Fluckner aware that her father was going to announce her engagement to Cottrell at the Governor’s ball?”
“Dear, me, yes, and such an uproar as there was over it! With Miss Lucy vowing one moment she wouldn’t go at all, and the next, that she’d slap Sir Jonathan’s face before all Boston and spring up on a chair and denounce him for a blackguard, and Mr. Fluckner bawling at the top of his lungs he’d throw her into the street for a disobedient trull, and her poor little sisters crying! Like a bear-garden, it was! I suggested that the best thing she could do would be to speak to her host about the matter when they arrived, for the dear Governor would know better how to get ’round Mr. Fluckner than poor Lucy, and he’d never have permitted the announcement in his house against her will, you know. Such a gentlemanly man—not at all what one expects in the colonies—and perfectly good ton! Shocking, how the lower orders here have treated him!”
A Marked Man aam-2 Page 3