“Is it?”
“Of course.” She returned to a normal posture and looked at Abigail as if surprised she hadn’t heard the whole tale. “Lemuel Chamberville was the magistrate at Waterford when the King tried to force the Stamp Act down our throats, and Boam Travers—Bruck’s father—and his boys hamstrung Chamberville’s cattle and horses, and burned his barn, and half killed his coachman, and eventually Chamberville went to live in Boston and rents out his land to the Harters, who’re Tories, too, but have about five sons and hold the debts on nearly everyone in the township. The house has been empty for years.”
And through the window, Abigail heard Horace cry excitedly, “That’s the house! I know it!”
Score one for John.
Weyountah tied up the horses as Horace—pale with mal de mer—sprang down from his tall perch and ran across the drive (which could have stood a few wagonloads of gravel, in Abigail’s opinion) to the shuttered windows. “These were open,” he said at once. “When we drove up, there were lamps burning inside.”
“They show no sign of having been forced,” remarked Abigail, bracing her feet on the foundation bricks and raising herself up a little to examine the wood. “Either that, or whoever did it was very skilled—I myself have no practical experience in the forcing-open of window-shutters.” She led the way to the front door, and knelt on the single shallow step to examine the wood around the doorknob. “No fresh scratches here—”
“And we’re far enough back from the road that there’s no reason they’d have chosen the back door over the front,” added Weyountah. But they went round to the back in any case, checking every shutter en route, and found the kitchen door likewise innocent of fresh evidence of a break-in. The stable was also closed up, but horses had certainly stood in the yard, and the droppings left there looked no more than a week old—
“And look here,” called out Katy, emerging from around the corner of the stable with her short skirts tucked up even shorter under her belt. “Someone’s eaten an apple and smoked a couple of pipes of tobacco here by the corner—”
“That would be Oculus Cicatricosus.” Horace turned back to look at the house. “I don’t think the parlor I was in overlooked the stable-yard . . .”
“No, but Mrs. Lake left you, as you recall, to fetch you poisoned bread and coffee,” pointed out Abigail. “And this corner lies in clear sight of the kitchen door.”
“Were you here?” Katy hunkered like a child to prod at the nasty little wads of tobacco with a twig, where they lay all but hidden in the unscythed grass. “Did someone try to break into the house?”
“We think Horace—Mr. Thaxter—was lured to this house,” explained Abigail, “by people who almost certainly were not the Chambervilles . . . On the other hand,” she added thoughtfully, “they might well have been.”
“Chamberville is a Tory of the deepest dye.” Katy straightened up and tucked back into her cap—under the shading brim of her straw sunbonnet—the long wisps of Indian-black hair that seemed to have a tendency to stray everywhere. “A close friend of the Governor’s and ripe to turn his hand to any villainy in the King’s name. What happened?” She looked sharply from Abigail to Horace, then back toward the house . . . which certainly could have been easily opened, Abigail reflected, by someone who had simply been able to get the key from its owner, as John had said.
“And is there anyone that you know of,” she asked, “whose face is scarred in a V over his left eye—” She demonstrated again the mark that Charley had so carefully duplicated in mud on his own pink countenance.
“Blue eyes,” said Horace eagerly. “Very light blue, under black brows—the one brow whitened where the scar goes through.”
Katy frowned thoughtfully and shook her head. She trailed Abigail and the two young men as they circled the stable, all four studying the ground without any clear idea of what they sought or might find. “He doesn’t sound like the sort of person Mr. Chamberville would employ,” she guessed, which, Abigail reflected, was probably true.
“I daresay not. And I daresay he and his spiritual brethren could be hired for a penny a day on the wharves, by whoever knows Chamberville well enough to beg his key off him for a night, with the throat-cutting thrown in gratis.”
“Were they going to cut your throat?” The girl regarded Horace’s tall, bespectacled form with renewed interest.
“I don’t know,” said Horace uncomfortably. “It seemed so to me last Friday night, stopped in the darkness of the woods with these people . . . Now, I’m not so sure.”
“You must be sure,” pointed out the girl. “’Tis when you have doubts and hesitate that you become their victim—whether highway robbers or the Governor’s men spreading lies to keep the people from acting for their rights. Only in certainty lies the attack, and only in the attack lies salvation and freedom.”
“Some craven scruple,” quoted Weyountah, shaking his head, “of thinking too precisely on the event.”
Horace replied, from the same play, “But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall.”
“Well, you can’t be all that pigeon-livered,” reasoned Katy, “if the Tories want to kill you—”
“We cannot be sure they were Tories,” said Abigail. “For the simple reason that it appears—at least at the moment—that they were also the ones who killed Mr. Fairfield.”
The girl stopped still, thinking about that. Abigail saw the tears rise to Katy’s eyes, only to be pushed aside with a shake of her head. “Who are they, then?” she whispered.
“That’s what we’re trying to learn. Did you leave your stepfather a note?” she added, as they approached the chaise again. “When you set out to find George this morning?”
The girl nodded, her eyes bleak. “I told him . . . well.” She gestured helplessly, letting the thought go. “I’ve wanted to leave him,” she went on. “And I’ll not say it wasn’t in my mind, when George proposed marriage to me, that even if he later cast me off—which, mind you, I wouldn’t put it past that pa of his making him do, in the end . . . But George wasn’t the man to behave scaly to a girl. I know he wasn’t. And I know it shocks you to hear it, m’am, and I really did marry him before a clerk of the county . . . Anything was better than staying with Mr. Deems.”
She looked aside, and color crept up again to her cheeks.
“Did you tell him you weren’t coming back?”
A slight move of the head that might have been a nod.
“Will he come after you?”
“He might. Because of Bruck,” she added. “He had it all fixed up with Bruck that Bruck was going to marry me and take Mr. Deems in to work for him at his livery, because Mr. Deems never did like Mrs. Cousins who owns the Yellow Cow—Mrs. Cousins is my aunt.”
Abigail nodded. Life was such that many people of her acquaintance ended up raising other peoples’ children simply because they were thrown onto the world suddenly parentless. She knew, too, that stepsons and stepdaughters were often looked upon as a kind of bounty from Heaven, a cheap source of labor that didn’t have to be paid or—frequently—fed with any regularity.
“That is, her first husband and my mother were brother and sister, but she’s never had much use for me, nor for Mr. Deems, not that I can blame her for that.”
“Can you cook?” asked Abigail as they reached the chaise, wondering if she’d regret this. “And clean? And mend?”
Katy was nodding, her eyes suddenly huge with hope. She seized Abigail’s arm. “M’am, I swear—”
Abigail held up her hand. “Can you take orders?” she went on. “’Twould be from a girl younger than yourself . . .” She was aware that not only Katy, but Horace and Weyountah were looking at her like overboard mariners gazing at a drifting plank. John is going to kill me—
“It cannot be permanent,” she added firmly. “Yet I daresay you can remain in my house until we find another place for you—”
“Oh, m’am—” began Katy, and then—wholly to Abigail’s surprise—the girl burs
t into tears.
When Abigail, startled, said, “Here—” and moved to take her hand, the girl pulled away, shook her head, made a gesture of denial.
“I’ll be all right, m’am. It’s just—I really didn’t want to go back . . . But I can’t—”
“You can.” Abigail possessed herself of Katy’s hand. “And the rest we can talk about in private. Now get in the chaise,” she added, “because that’s three o’clock I hear striking—is that the Concord church?—and if I find myself stranded in Cambridge once again Mr. Adams really will kill me.”
Their speedy departure notwithstanding, Weyountah thought it better to take the land route back to Boston, swinging south through Cambridge at a smart clip and down through the sunny fields and scattered woodlands to Brookline, and so across the salt marsh, shallows, and mudflats in the lengthening spring sunset, then over the Neck to the town gate. “If we tried for the ferry and missed,” reasoned Abigail, when Katy pointed out that from Cambridge the way was slightly shorter to the ferry, “then we’d have twice the distance to reach the Neck overland and might find the gate shut against us. This way, though ’tis a trifle longer, we’ll be certain of getting home.”
Katy looked askance at the red-coated guards, as Weyountah drew rein before the three brick archways and Horace sprang down to open the chaise door, and at the sight of them Abigail felt herself shiver again: Has anything happened while I was away—?
And yet when they’d passed through Brookline, though militia had been drilling on the Common there, there had been no uproar. In Roxbury, at the land end of the Boston Neck, the local volunteers had been clustered companionably around the door of the Sun.
All is well. I’ll return to find the house as it always has been, the boys well—
She pushed from her thoughts Charley’s counterfeit scar and vague assurances that he’d only seen Mr. Scar-Eye yesterday or the day before, he didn’t know where . . .
—John safe . . .
“Are you able for the walk of a mile and a half?” she asked Katy, as she kissed Horace, shook hands with Weyountah, made a hasty exchange of promises to keep one another abreast of whatever might be found while the guards glared at them, and pointedly pulled the leaves of the gate half to. “The house lies on Queen Street; ’tis some little distance.”
“I’m well, m’am.” The girl glanced sidelong at the soldiers again as they passed through, the last of the day’s traffic. The gate-guards shut the three great archways behind them as the last light flashed on the shallow waters, a hundred yards off across the rough field that was all that the Neck contained, and shot the bars. A number of men—rough-coated and jesting with one another—were also coming in on foot from Roxbury: Abigail guessed they’d gone across to drill with the militia. Darkness outlined the hills and trees beyond the river where it flowed into the bay. As the fields along Orange Street gave place to the brick houses of the wealthy, set in their own orchards and gardens, lights were coming up in the windows, a guilt-inducing reminder of those good housewives who had not spent the day gallivanting about with undergraduates in the countryside around Cambridge looking for villains, Tory plots, and pirate treasure.
Those Marthas of the world, who had prudently cooked the meals for the Lord’s Day tomorrow instead of hastily giving instructions to servant-girls who were really too young to have the whole of those duties thrust upon them—though Pattie was perfectly capable of putting together chickens to roast and beans to bake . . .
And so it proved. When Abigail and Katy reached the house, the kitchen was redolent with the scents of tomorrow’s dinner and filled like a jewel box with the amber warmth of firelight and lamps. John was, of course, still out at the Green Dragon—Abigail knew that it wasn’t the ale in the place that kept him, but the conferences going on all day in its long upstairs room with the Sons of Liberty—and Charley and Tommy flung themselves on her with the frantic abandon of children who sense themselves set aside, however necessarily, in favor of matters that they cannot understand.
Katy was introduced, and when Abigail came downstairs from showing her the small attic room in which she would sleep (with no little relief that she was at least enough of a housewife to have extra sheets clean, ironed, and on hand), Pattie handed Abigail a letter. “This came this afternoon, m’am. Will Mistress Fairfield be having her bath here in the kitchen, when the rest of us do?”
“If she does,” said Abigail, “she’ll go after you—I brought her in to help you as much as because she needed a place to stay. But she may not, tonight,” she added, remembering that the girl had heard only that morning that her lover was dead.
She broke the seals.
Rock Farm Medfield
28 April 1774
Mrs. Adams,
Thank you for your kind favor, which I have received today. How extraordinary, that strange matters seem to follow my great-grandfather’s books! It is as if one of the old man’s own curses has clung to them, and though I am indeed sorry to learn that one of these curses has cost a young man his life, still I yearn to hear more of the matter.
Indeed I would be delighted to receive you at your soonest convenience. Rock Farm lies four miles beyond Medfield, down the second lane that branches to the left from the road that continues on toward Stonton. It is a fearful drive from Boston, and I shall speak to my niece to prepare a bed for you here.
So retired is my state here that your visit would be attended with eagerness, even were it not in connection with that wicked old pirate’s evil doings!
Sincerely,
Narcissa Seckar
Twelve
The reflection that the books were indeed connected with a wicked old pirate’s evil doings—not to speak of a possible curse—made it no easier for Abigail to keep her thoughts focused the following day upon the Reverend Cooper’s sermons. As usual, these ostensibly concerned the doings of ancient Hebrew kings but showed a marked tendency to drift toward Parliamentary injustices and the modern misbehavior of monarchs whose deeds rivalled those of Ahab and Herod; Katy seemed to enjoy both morning and after-dinner discourses hugely.
To Abigail, this was a great relief. From the sound of it, Mr. Deems at the Yellow Cow—not to speak of his associates in the patriot militia—left much to be desired as a moral preceptor, and at intervals during the family baths in the kitchen on the previous night, she had experienced qualms about her generosity in offering roof and bed to a girl whose existence she hadn’t even been aware of that morning—and pregnant to boot! But while Pattie was bathing Charley and Tommy, Abigail had gone up to the attic to offer the facilities of kitchen, towels, hot water, and a screen before the fire to her new guest, and had found Katy, by the light of her single candle, on her knees beside the little pallet bed, weeping—as she had not let herself weep while anyone could see—for George Fairfield. It had led to a long talk, and by the time Katy had descended to take her turn at the end of the bath-line, Abigail had no more doubt that she might not have done the right thing.
“Which is fortunate,” said John, when—Saturday night, clean and damp and smelling of soap—he had yanked shut the bed-curtains and tumbled in beside her, “since Sam’s been pestering me to ride down to Providence to meet with the Committee of Correspondence there Monday. As you are deserting me again, you wayward woman, I had thought to see if Uncle Isaac and Aunt Eliza might be prevailed upon to look after the children once more. Heaven knows I’ve heard nothing all evening but about how they’d like to go back. You can send both girls along with them without fearing for Eliza’s silverware. Alone at last!”
He sighed, and in the darkness filled his hands with her hair—which, though hidden all day beneath a very proper cap, was in its unbound state like a black silk cloak. “I would bless you a thousand times, my dearest friend, only for not snoring—unlike every traveler I’ve shared a bed with these past two endless weeks . . .”
She kissed him, those lips so surprisingly soft against hers, and stroked the shorn velvet of his h
air. “Bless me, then, dearest friend.”
It was good to have John home.
Thus it came to pass that on Monday morning, after helping John and Johnny with the cowshed and dispatching the older children to school, young Mr. Thaxter—John’s clerk— harnessed a horse borrowed from the neighbors to the very old Adams chaise. The prospect of three days in Aunt Eliza’s garden had reconciled the boys—and almost reconciled Nabby—to their mother’s absence; sitting between the younger boys as they drove slowly back to Milk Street with Thaxter, Pattie, and Katy pacing along beside the vehicle like the aldermen of London escorting the King in procession, Abigail heard all about Charley’s plans to implement Johnny’s design for a bird-trap, and Tommy’s intention to dig a hole clear to China.
“I trust you’ll see that he doesn’t,” said Abigail to Pattie, and both girls nodded. “At least not among Aunt Eliza’s roses. Katy, I must beg your forgiveness for saddling you with these two ruffians while Pattie helps Johnny and Nabby with their lessons—”
“Never fear it, m’am,” said Katy stoutly. “I’ll teach ’em their rifle-drill, and march ’em up and down the garden ’til they faint with fatigue—”
“I’ll faint before you do!” Tommy challenged Charley. To judge by their expressions, neither boy found the slightest objection to this program. All four children had taken to Katy with the aplomb learned early by those in large New England families, where unmarried cousins, maiden aunts, and hired girls came and went in farm households like birds of passage. Her ability to whistle, play cat’s cradle, and whittle toys won her the loyalty of the younger boys, and her curiosity and eagerness to be instructed in Latin by Johnny sparked his immediate approval. The boy loved to instruct anyone in anything and was well on his way, Abigail reflected with a sigh, to being as much of a prig at that age as Horace had been.
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