Katy’s hard life—harder, Abigail guessed, than the girl would admit—had left her willing and happy to fit herself into any environment, and Abigail sensed that beneath her sauciness lay great reserves of strength and loyalty. And John, of course, had fluffed up like a pouter-pigeon at the news that she had read his patriotic essays and thoroughly understood and approved.
After kisses, embraces, admonitions, and promises in Aunt Eliza’s kitchen, Thaxter helped Abigail into the chaise again, and minutes later they were passing beneath the central archway of the Boston town gates and into open country.
“Don’t you worry, m’am,” said the clerk, as Abigail turned in the seat to look behind her at the tall jumble of roofs visible beyond the curve of the harbor, at the black masts and hulls clustered along the wharves, the violet green islands floating in the water beyond. “Uncle Isaac will keep them safe, even if . . . well, even if the King’s message arrives and there should be trouble. And—well . . .” The young man coughed apologetically. “If you’ll excuse my saying so, m’am, but if there’s trouble, it’s just as well Mr. Adams is out of it.”
“Mr. Adams is not a member of the Sons of Liberty,” retorted Abigail acerbically—a little tired of her neighbors’ assumption that just because he shared a great-grandfather with Sam Adams he was naturally hand in glove with his cousin’s more nefarious deeds. “He has no more to fear from the King’s edict than the Reverend Cooper would . . .”
“No, m’am,” agreed the clerk, a stolid young man whom Abigail had known since his school-days. Their mothers had been sisters, and they were both part of a wide-flung family network that stretched over most of the eastern part of the colony. “All the same,” he added with a fleeting grin, “if the edict should happen to mention Mr. Adams, it’s probably best that he’s out of Boston just now—and the children out of the house.”
Medfield lay at a day’s drive along the wide bend of the Charles, and was a cluster of brown, peak-roofed houses set among stony fields and woods that stood untouched since the days when the Indians had had them to themselves. A harsh country, Abigail knew, and in places, appallingly primitive. Beyond the town’s fields the woods stood thick, a dark roof of oak and hickory shading ancient deadfalls and centuries of fallen leaves. Most of the houses in Medfield boasted two rooms plus whatever loft-space could be used beneath the steep slant of the roofs; more than one, she could see, had the enormous old-fashioned chimneys that spanned the whole of one wall, like the one in Sam Adams’s ancient house on Purchase Street, that you could sit inside in perfect comfort while Bess cooked dinner. In the winter, even the village would be isolated for weeks at a time by snow—as her childhood home of Weymouth still was, and John’s village of Braintree also—and she shivered at the thought of those outlying farms they passed. Only a hundred years ago, half the town had been burned by Indians, and only a few days’ distance to the west, she knew, some of the tribes still lived . . .
Lived, and watched with festering anger the advance of the white farmers, whose cattle destroyed their village fields of corn and pumpkins, and whose craving for land ate away at the hunting-grounds that for the Indian’s substituted for livestock as white men understood it.
Ten years ago the French had armed the Indians as part of their war with England, and the King, Abigail knew, was anxious to keep the tribes on his side because of the enormous profits the Crown reaped from the trade in furs. If it came to fighting—and if the King landed troops, she knew that it would—would the King arm the Indians? Would he turn them loose upon those he perceived as rebels against his authority?
The thought was deeply unsettling. The more so, Abigail realized, because she recalled not only a hundred details of massacre-stories and farm-burnings, but the equal outrages done by the whites against the Wampanoag and the Abenaki, the Pequot and the Nipmuc . . . the summons to peaceconferences that had ended in slaughter of the Indian delegates, the burning of villages and crops. The tribes would side with the King, both in revenge and because the King guaranteed them their rights against the settlers, who bitterly resented the fact that they could not farm wherever they wished.
They can’t reach Boston, she told herself. As John said, every militia in the state is drilling . . .
And may be off fighting British troops in the east if an uprising comes.
The thought that she’d left her children in the town—though how she herself would defend them in the event of riot, invasion, or Indian uprising she couldn’t imagine—pierced her heart like a knife, and she barely heard Thaxter’s humorous observation on a very young child attempting to drive a herd of geese across the town’s unpaved street.
Rock Farm lay four miles beyond Medfield at the end of nearly a further mile of lane, and it was nearly dark when Thaxter finally guided the tired horse into the yard. A lantern hung over the door of the farmhouse—small, old, and crude-looking beyond belief—and a couple of men were just crossing from the barn to the lean-to with pails of milk on their neck-yokes. The oldest of them, bearded and grimlooking except when he smiled, set down his pails and strode to the chaise, holding out his hand and beaming, a huge yellow dog trotting at his heels.
“You’ll be Mrs. Adams, I expect? Seth Barlow—my son Eben, our cousin Jehu. Tilly, go tell your mother and auntie Mrs. Adams is here—” A girl in faded hand-me-downs darted from the woodpile into the house. “Mr. Thaxter? Pleased to meet you—Down, Rex! Sit, sir . . . Thad, help Mr. Thaxter with the horse—Methusaleh, take Mrs. Adams’s things—” Mr. Barlow seemed to have an infinite number of children and young adults on-call, some of the boys no older than Horace but clearly men who did men’s work. “I can’t tell you how much Aunt Sissy looks forward to your visit, m’am.” He held out a hand like a pickled cutting-board to assist Abigail down. “Tell me if you will—and just yes or no, I’ve no intention to tire you after that drive!—what’s the news from Boston? Has the King’s edict come?”
“It has not,” said Abigail, marveling at the reach of the Boston newspapers. She hadn’t seen a coffeehouse or anything resembling one in Medfield—presumably the newspapers were left at the local tavern, though she hadn’t seen one of those either. Sam would be pleased. “The town waits daily, and—I am told—every militia from the Kennebec to Martha’s Vineyard is readying for trouble.”
“And out to Springfield as well.” Mr. Barlow named one of the westernmost of the colony’s settlements as they crossed the yard to the house, where in the open doorway two women stood framed. One was stout and rosy even in the fading daylight, in a much-mended apron and a dress worn colorless by age and sun—Mrs. Barlow, Abigail guessed even before her bearded husband kissed her. The other, fragile and white-haired, held out her hand with a welcoming smile.
“Mrs. Adams? I’m so pleased you could come. I am Narcissa Seckar—and I knew that old sinner would cause trouble, though he’s been in his grave for close to eighty years now! My husband said there was a curse on those books—Do you mind a bed in the kitchen tonight? Hannah and I are quiet as mice when we start the fires up in the morning, I promise you . . . I would say I’m pleased he was right—my husband, I mean—save that it’s brought death and grief to innocent men. Girls, this is Mrs. Adams, she’ll be staying tonight.”
Abigail was introduced to Tilly, Hagar, Zilpah, Dinah, and Susanna, all engaged in putting up their after-dinner tasks of mending, knitting, weaving—a loom took up most of one end of the sand-floored “keeping room” that combined the functions of kitchen, parlor, dining room, wash room, and nursery. They hurried about in a rustle of hand-me-down skirts, setting the long table for a modest supper of bread, molasses, and milk. Hot water was fetched for Abigail, and her portmanteau set near the box-bed beside the fireplace where, Abigail guessed, old Mrs. Seckar herself usually slept: Thaxter would bed down in the loft with the boys. The younger Barlows—and those of the company who were cousins or hired help or both—stood behind the benches of the adults to serve, and to eat their meal standing in the old way;
one of them (Hagar? Susanna?) brought close a lamp, so that Mr. Barlow could read a chapter of the Bible before the meal. (Second Peter, and a very proper warning to the righteous to avoid conversation with the unrighteous lest they be corrupted as the Children of Israel were corrupted by long association with Egypt.)
He quizzed the younger children on what he’d read, prayed an extensive prayer that included thanks for Abigail’s safe journey and a blessing—rather surprisingly—on Rex the Dog, the horses, cows, pigs, and cats in the barn, and proceeded, finally, to supper. After a day of travel, Abigail had never encountered bread, milk, and molasses that tasted so good.
A conscientious guest, Abigail helped the women and girls of the family clean up, while Thaxter went out to give the boys a hand bedding down the stock. When the young clerk sat down with Mr. Barlow, Eben, Jehu, Methusaleh, Josiah, and Cry-Out-at-the-Coming-of-the-Lord to discus the latest news from Boston, Abigail was taken aside to the corner beside the enormous hearth to share a little tisane with old Mrs. Seckar and to talk of pirates and curses.
He was my great-grandfather.” The tiniest trace of admiration flickered in Mrs. Seckar’s voice. “And a fearful old sinner he must have been, by all accounts. In addition to commanding a fleet of four vessels—with a flagship whose name was so scandalous my father wouldn’t even tell me what it was—old Geoffrey Whitehead was said to be a sorcerer, able to call the storms or flatten the waves at will, and to turn common rocks into gold, though if that were in fact the case I’m sure he would not have spent so long on the high seas plundering Spanish ships. Old Beelzebub, they called him, and the Nipmucs worshipped him as a god.”
“What on earth was he doing in Massachusetts?” By the light of the fire—and a branch of work-candles—Abigail was helping her hostess mend sheets that were so worn she herself would have converted them to dish-cloths . . . having the luxury of one of the busiest lawyers in the colony for a husband. “Spanish ships being rare in these waters, even a hundred years ago.”
“I gather he’d hide here when he made things too hot for himself in the Caribbean.” Narcissa deftly turned the heel of the sock she was making, her knitting-needles long darts of reflected gold. “He’d repaint his ship and change her sails, and come ashore pretending to be a Dutch merchant—he spoke over a dozen languages with ease, and could pass himself off as anything from an Arab to an Indian. It also turns out he had at least three wives that anyone knows about, in different colonies. The Massachusetts one was my greatgrandmother, the daughter of a Boston merchant who didn’t see anything odd in her sea-captain husband being gone for a year at a time . . . nor apparently questioned why he would return from his voyages so very rich. In addition to her, he was said to have married a Nipmuc chief’s daughter and built a castle in the backcountry somewhere, where he’d retreat when his Boston in-laws got on his nerves . . . as I imagine they must have,” she added, giving her ball of yarn a twitch, which immediately brought it under attack from two of the kittens whose brothers and sisters were virtuously asleep in the basket beside the hearth. “If they were anything like grandfather Barthelmy, whom they raised.”
“A heart like a counting-frame, was how I’ve heard him described,” Abigail remarked.
“I suppose I should be charitable toward him,” sighed Mrs. Seckar. “Given that he, his mother, and his sister were deserted when he was small, and he was raised among her family as a poor relation—no wonder the man was grasping. Oh, I don’t mean all poor relations are treated ill,” she added, with a smile and an affectionate glance across at the group on the other side of the hearth. “The whole family here is poor, by Boston standards, and I could not be better treated if I were their grandmother rather than just their mother’s aunt. But Mr. Seckar’s mother and sisters lived with us, and when Mr. Seckar died, there was talk of me going—with my surviving sister-in-law—to Mr. Seckar’s brother near Concord. I would . . .” She seemed for a moment to grope for a polite way of describing him, and Abigail’s mind returned to Katy Pegg and the way her glance had dodged aside when she’d spoken of her stepfather. Abigail remembered, too, some of the tales her parson father told of how children—and the incapacitated elderly—within his own flock were sometimes treated by those obliged to take them unwillingly in.
“Then it seemed Providential,” Narcissa went on tactfully, “that I did have great-grandfather’s books to sell, so that I could contribute a little toward my own keep here—in spite of what my husband’s family insisted: that the books, by coming into my possession, were in fact his and should go on to Harvard with the rest. I was grateful, too, that I could find buyers for them all so quickly—though mind you, I was not at all surprised that the indecent ones went first!”
She sank her voice, though the girls were chatting happily among themselves as they sewed and the men were totally preoccupied in slandering the King. “I was almost tempted to keep those. I’d had no idea . . .”
Among the deep lines of laughter and age, a dimple touched her cheek, and Abigail saw how pretty she must have been as a girl. “Such an amazing thing, is the human imagination!” Mrs. Seckar went on. “But of course, Mr. Seckar—my husband—was the first to cry out that they should be burnt, for if anything bore Beelzebub’s curse, ’twas those. And alas,” she added, raising troubled eyes, “that it seems to be so. No ill has come of the others, has it? The Arab texts—which I believe you said your nephew purchased?—and those that the Governor bought . . .”
“The Governor?” said Abigail, startled.
“Governor Hutchinson.” Mrs. Seckar regarded her in some surprise. “He purchased the bulk of them. Fifty-four books, not counting those I sold to your nephew and his friends.”
“He never spoke of them—”
“Perhaps the subject did not arise,” said Mrs. Seckar, in her comforting, grandmotherly tone. “He might have thought—”
“No, we were speaking of the books,” objected Abigail impulsively. “He’s the one who told me about your grandfather’s grasping heart, and said he was surprised your grandfather had owned books at all. The whole question of the slave Diomede’s guilt or innocence is hinged to the theft of the books. Yet he didn’t mention them at all.”
Thirteen
That is most curious.” Mrs. Seckar’s hands stilled on her knitting; she regarded Abigail for a time in the dim flicker of the fire. Mrs. Barlow was nursing the baby for the last time that night; the younger children had already scrambled up the ladder to the loft and bed. “He paid me twenty-five pounds for the lot of them, hard currency, which was extremely generous. I am sorry to say, the transaction annoyed Mr. Seckar’s sister Reuel beyond speaking.” Her lips twitched, but she put the un-Christian smile quickly away.
“How did the books come into your hand?”
“Now that,” said Mrs. Seckar, shaking her head, “was entirely my doing. For years, I had asked my husband if ’twere possible for us to enlarge the rear wing of the house, which was used as a laundry. He argued I had done quite well there for the whole of my life, and ’twas only vanity that sought more room for ironing and primping . . . though an ill-ironed shirt was enough to justify the cancellation of supper—”
“For a shirt?”
The old woman looked for a moment as if she might have made some comment about her husband, but again, she mastered herself and put the thought away, this time without a smile. “He was as he was,” she said at last. “I daresay it taught me care in my work—”
“He would cancel his wife’s supper? ’Tis not the maid we’re talking of?”
“We had no maid,” Narcissa replied calmly. “He said, ’twas against the will of the Lord to bind another to servitude—”
“He seems to have felt no compunction about binding you to servitude.”
“A good wife is given unto man for his comfort.” Again that small silence, as she looked back over the years spent with Malachi Seckar, infinite tiredness in those surprisingly bright blue eyes. Then she repeated, “He was as he was.
My father, while he lived, thought it no great matter, and worth an occasional missed meal himself, to school me, as he said. And I had old Mrs. Seckar, who lived into her nineties, and my husband’s sisters Reuel and Rachel to share in the work, though toward the end, in that last ten years, there was only Reuel and myself.”
Narcissa Seckar looked to be in her seventies, white-haired and rather fragile in appearance, and Abigail felt herself flush with anger at that selfish old man who had decreed that his wife could do the tasks of hauling water and wood, cooking and cleaning, with her only help a woman who was probably as old as herself.
Before Abigail could snap ungracious words about the dead, however, Narcissa forestalled her. “In any event, I did at last prevail after quite literally decades of asking. And when the workmen broke down the wall of the laundry, lo and behold, they found a sort of little chamber hidden between it and the newer portion of the house. The whole end of the room had been bricked across and plastered, and in the space behind the bricks were two shelves of books.”
“Good gracious!” Abigail—a bit reluctantly—put aside the subject of this woman’s father, who hadn’t even protected his daughter against a domestic tyrant, in contemplation of a treasure trove more valuable, to her mind, than gold. “I take it the house had been in your family? Was it your father’s house? I know the Reverend Seckar willed it to the college when he died—”
“The house was built by old Beelzebub.” Again there was that trace of pride in Narcissa’s voice as she spoke her ancestor’s name. “By Captain Whitehead, as my father insisted upon calling him. Father pretended to the end of his days that his grandfather had been no more than a sea-captain in the West Indies and had not even sold slaves, much less stolen them from the Spanish and sacked towns in passing. One cannot really blame him, considering the position he held, in the college and in the Church.”
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