Sup with the Devil

by Barbara Hamilton

  The dark bulk of the college buildings rose to their right as they moved on into the open field of the Harvard Yard, where the young men ran their footraces on bright spring days and played at ball, and where the hay was harvested in June. A single lamp glimmered, high in some uncurtained room, like a dim gold star in the blackness, and a stirring of night-breeze brought the smell of the college stables. Revere had brought a long, forked stick with its straight end sharpened; this he drove into the ground in the center of the yard, then hung one of the lanterns on it, above the level of the tops of the long grasses that in some places grew thigh-high. At the foot of this, Abigail laid the wrapped package of the books.

  Please, God, let all be well . . .

  She was trembling as John took her hand in his, and together they retreated back toward the college, her 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.

  Charley. Dear God, keep him safe.

  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 . . .

  Sam. Dear God. Dear God—

  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!”

  Don’t be an idiot, John, he’ll try to run toward us and get lost—

  “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!”

  I’m going to kill Sam. I’m going to kill him—

  “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—Get him! Hold him! Tory bastard! The child stood up at the sight of their lantern, held out his arms, and Abigail and John both fell to their knees, catching him tight—

  “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.

  I’m going to kill Sam.

  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 DARED he—?”

  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.”

  Do what you should have been doing all this time . . .

  Look to your child. Let men do men’s work.

  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. He’s well. He’s truly all right. He wasn’t even frightened, he says . . . Oddly, she believed him. His body bore no signs of mistreatment, just a little bruising on his wrists where he’d been tied—no worse, so far as she could tell by the candle-glow, than he got from some of his rougher games with Johnny. (Despite the strictest orders all the children had not to play any game that involved tying each other up . . .)

  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 both early risers; they were halfway through Mrs. Squills’s porridg
e, eggs, and coffee before Revere joined them.

  While she and John were still alone, Abigail inquired, “Does Sam have the true books here with him? Or was he so sure he could get away with his trick that he didn’t even bring them?”

  “He has them,” said John. “He’s staying at the Indian’s Head—”

  “For fear I may have glimpsed him yester’even and guessed what he was about?” She poured a dollop of cream from the pitcher into her coffee, a drink of which she was not truly fond, but Mrs. Squills would serve no tea.

  “For fear you’d stab him in his sleep afterwards, I think.” John spoke lightly, but Abigail could see him watching her sidelong. He knew she was still very angry indeed.

  Stab him as George was stabbed . . .

  Revere felt it, too, she could tell, when he descended the stair and greeted her, and—though happily married to his lovely Rachel—flirted a little with Mrs. Squills as she brought out hot bread and more coffee. “Is the boy well?” he asked, and John nodded.

  “He slept soundly—sleeps still. Katy’s up there now with him.”

  “I want to thank you,” said Abigail, holding out her hand to her friend. “More than I can say.”

  The silversmith shook his head. “All’s well that ends well. I could have murdered Sam—”

  “Yes,” said Abigail. “Sam. All’s well that ends well, as you say . . . But if you would, Mr. Revere, when you’re done with breakfast, would you be good enough to go to the Indian’s Head and tell Sam I want the thinnest of the quarto volumes—the handwritten one with the red cover that contains the astronomy tables and the chemical experiments and the accounts of what flowers bloomed when. Katy and I will be going on to Concord—”

  “Nab, I can’t leave Boston now!” cried John. “The King’s ship—”

  “I didn’t ask you to come with me. I know what you need to do in Boston—and you, too, Mr. Revere. All’s well that ends well—but the matter isn’t ended. Horace and Weyountah will come with us to have a few words with Reuel Seckar about who it was who handed her vile brother that poisoned frumenty. Is Diomede still in the vicinity, by the way? Or has he been smuggled clear out of Massachusetts?”

  “He’s at a place called Phips’s Farm,” said John, his brow furrowed with uneasiness at her words. “Travers—the man who actually carried out the jail deliverance—tried to talk him into flight to New York or Philadelphia, but Diomede says, he will not leave this area until one or another of us has spoken with his master, when he arrives, that Diomede may learn in how much peril he actually stands. He is loathe to utterly separate himself from all chance of seeing his wife and children again—”

  “Oh, the foolish, foolish man,” said Abigail sarcastically, and dabbed butter on her bread. “Loathe to brand himself utterly a murderer by breaking jail and fleeing? Now who ever would have supposed a man could be so silly?”

  “A man would consider the course a good deal less silly when he has a noose about his neck,” returned John. “There are men in Concord who have said they will take him in and claim him as a servant of theirs—”

  “Can he be sent for here?” Abigail glanced at the slowgraying darkness of the window. “To be honest, I could do with another outrider—”

  “You could do with half a dozen,” said John bluntly. “Sam has half a score of men at call who can bear you escort—”

  “The men Sam would give me as escort,” retorted Abigail, “if the local Sons of Liberty bear any resemblance to those of Boston, would be as dangerous to Katy and myself as Messrs Grimes, Hicks, and the Cornishman. At least they would who haven’t any business in their lives more pressing than hunting pirate treasure, rather than starting to cut their hay or make silver teapots or organize the defense of our liberties or pursue their livings like honest men. Do you think,” she added, when John opened his mouth to protest, “that ruffians like Bruck Travers and smugglers like Ezra Logan whom Sam gets to fetch and carry for him would stick at carrying off treasure if they could? Do you think Sam would stick at it if I spoke of doing a thing with the gold—if there is gold—besides handing it over at once to the Sons of Liberty?

  “I trust Horace, John,” she went on more gently. “I trust Weyountah. And I must do this now, soon—ere the King’s ship lands and the Governor acquires more strength, as you know he’ll do, whatever else the King’s Commission decides. And if it isn’t the Governor, but only Black Dog Pugh, do you think his strength will be less if the Crown’s is greater?”

  “You sound as if, having found the true culprit in Fairfield’s murder, you intend to go on from Concord to seek this mythical treasure.”

  “I do, John,” said Abigail. “I must. Whoever is behind the attempt to kidnap Charley—whether ’tis the Governor or Pugh or someone else we’ve no notion of—do you think his failure will make him shrug his shoulders and give the matter up? If this treasure is not accounted for and seen to be accounted for, one way or the other, these men will try again, to force me or Horace or someone else close to us to aid in its discovery. We might not be so lucky next time. Next time you or Sam or any of our friends may be in jail or in hiding, and unable to lend a hand. It must be done now.”

  And she knew that—whatever her mother might say of it—this was true.

  “Where do you mean to look? Sam has been through the court records, and this Mr. Ryland of yours”—she had told him of her conversation with the young Loyalist—“has seen everything the Governor has in his private collection, and both agree Whitehead had no property in the backcountry.”

  “If he was living in an Indian village, he wouldn’t have,” replied Abigail. “And if land were registered in his name, after King Philip’s War I’m very certain some good Protestant congregation made sure that the records were changed, and serve him right for living with the Infidel. I shall see what Katy and Weyountah—and old Beelzebub himself—can tell us of the matter. Charley!” she added, springing to her feet as Katy came down the stair with the boy’s hand in hers.

  “You’ve had an adventure, son,” said John, moving over on the bench to make room for the child. “Will you have coffee with us?” Which meant a great deal of milk and the tiniest bit of the bitter black fluid to darken it. “So tell me, lad, did they starve you and keep you in chains?”

  Thus encouraged by the lightness in his father’s attitude, Charley poured forth his account of his captivity from the moment that Mr. Scar-Eye had scooped him up in the alley that led from the yard to Queen Street (only Abigail suspected that her son had actually gone out to the street). Other than being tied up and locked in an attic somewhere near the waterfront, it didn’t sound as if Charley had been mistreated, and Abigail marveled a little at John’s handling of what was, essentially, an interrogation: Where were you taken? What did they do? Could you recognize the place again? By treating it as an adventure—when Abigail knew, from the redness of John’s ears, that his rage was no less than her own at the men who had kidnapped his son—he drew the fear from the event and disabled nightmares to come. “I knew you’d save me,” Charley said again, hugging his father’s arm and pressing his face to his coat-sleeve.

  All’s well that ends well. Yet aside from the fact that the deaths of the scar-faced Dubber Grimes and his associate prevented learning who had paid them, Abigail felt no pity for them and tried not to be glad that they were dead. She was burningly conscious that “all” had come very close to not “ending well.”

  “Do you think you—and Weyountah—will be able to figure out at least where Old Beelzebub’s fortress might have lain from the notes in his commonplace-book?” she asked Katy quietly, when Revere returned to the inn with the volume.

  “If someone can read it to me.” The girl turned the pages as—at the other end of the table—Charley negotiated for a ride back to Boston on the crupper of Revere’s mare instead of at his father’s side in Mr. Revere’s dull old chaise. “Lord if I ever saw handwriting to beat this! It seems like the old man took careful note of where he
found things and what the woods looked like and whether the dirt was clay or—is that word supposed to be gravel? That bog he speaks of where he’d gather his cranberries—that sounds like the one over beyond Medway—I don’t know another where you’d get twelve gallons of berries in a day in mid-September. But over here he speaks of walking out to gather witch hazel, which grows on higher ground, and it doesn’t sound as if it’s far. And I do know there’s high ground just north of there.”

  Horace and Weyountah arrived shortly after that, driving Sassy in George’s chaise and accompanied by Diomede, who had been mounted—and armed—by the local militia. Two other saddle horses were tethered behind the chaise, from the same source, Abigail assumed, though Sam had had the good sense not to show his face anywhere near her. The prospect of riding back to Boston with Mr. Revere—and of boasting of his adventures to those of his siblings who had not been so fortunate as to be kidnapped by villainous ruffians—had reconciled Charley to his mother not coming back with them. He flung his arms around her neck and kissed her before his father tossed him up onto the back of Revere’s saddle: Abigail smiled a rather crooked smile.

  “Take care,” whispered John, and glanced at Diomede as he handed rifles to Weyountah and Horace.

  “We should be back tomorrow near sundown,” said Abigail. “With at least some idea of where this treasure lies . . . if anywhere.”

  “And if the King’s vengeance comes to Boston whilst you are gone?”

  “Get the children to Isaac and Eliza’s,” she said. “And I shall meet you in Concord.”

  She kissed him then, and he helped her up into the chaise— and gave a good-natured boost to get Horace onto the obese and mild-mannered nag that one of the local Sons had lent to the expedition. Weyountah, with a rifle on his back and another scabbarded beside his saddle, was very different from the scholarly chemist Abigail had met only a few weeks before: quiet and grim and watchful as he prepared to return to the world on which he’d turned his back. Horace, in his ill-fitting black coat and hand-me-down boots, looked considerably less heroic—he’d coated his face with an aromatic compound designed to keep mosquitoes and gnats at bay.