by John Smolens
Abigail turned around and faced her.
“I see ye,” Molly said, delighted. “The colonel walking out of an evening with his schoolmaster’s daughter, all fine and lovely she is, but where do ye think he goes when he wants to get himself done right and proper, like? Huh? Eliza and me, we do him good, but I think, ye know, he always kind of fancies me more. Something about Eliza being a bit too plump for his taste. And, ye know, I have the mouth.”
Abigail felt weak suddenly, and she realized Mariah’s hand was holding her upper arm, helping her keep her balance. She began to turn away, to walk off the pier, but then Molly laughed.
“That’s what he says, ye know, I give the best suck in Boston.”
Abigail pulled her arm free from Mariah’s grip, went back to Molly, and pushed her, so hard that she staggered backwards and then fell off the pier, landing in the harbor with a great splash.
Molly struggled to get up—she was standing in about four feet of water—and, looking at Abigail through matted hair, she began to laugh again. “I know about the both of ye! You was up on Trimount that night.” She peeled the shawl off of her neck. “I seen you! And I know what you was up’tah. I seen you!”
Mariah took Abigail by the arm again, and together they hurried off the pier.
The following afternoon, Benjamin and Lumley were shown in to Dr. Warren’s office in Hastings House.
“I’m glad you’re safe.” Dr. Warren shook Benjamin’s hand and gripped his shoulder—an unusual show of affection. “I’m told that you’ve had quite an ordeal.”
During their journey from Charlestown to Cambridge, both Benjamin and Lumley had been required to repeat their stories to various officers, most skeptical at best, though eventually they would be sent on with an escort.
“My brother asked me to deliver these to you.” Ben took the packet of letters from his coat pocket and handed them to Warren.
Dr. Church, who had been sitting on the broad windowsill, now crossed the room, staring at Lumley. “And you’re the deserter.”
Lumley only stared at Church, dumbfounded. Odd, Benjamin thought, because during their trip out of Boston the man rarely shut up. “I am here to assist in your cause, however I can,” Lumley said finally.
Warren placed the letters on his desk. “Yes. Well, we’ve been getting a fair number of redcoats coming across, and we certainly can use more help. But I understand you have information that might be particularly useful.”
Lumley still seemed reluctant to speak.
“So?” Dr. Church said.
“The food shortage in Boston is becoming dire,” Lumley said, looking at Warren. “General Gage is planning raids on the islands in the harbor, to procure livestock and hay.”
Church said, “It would help if—”
“I don’t know exactly when,” Lumley said, “but soon. They are awaiting reinforcements from England. When they arrive, Gage will begin plans to penetrate the countryside.”
Church went to the desk and picked up the letters. “Coming from James Lovell, these will no doubt be difficult to decipher. I should take them downstairs and have our men begin work on them immediately.”
Warren nodded without looking away from Lumley. When Church reached the door, he said, “I’ll see if they can find something for these two to eat. They looked rather famished.”
“Of course.”
Lumley watched Dr. Church open the door and leave the room, and then he turned to Dr. Warren. “I’ve seen him, sir, many times, at Province House.”
“Dr. Church?” Warren asked.
“While on guard duty there, yes.”
“He has been back to Boston since Lexington and Concord,” Warren said. “We know he was picked up and questioned.”
“Sir, he would arrive in a fine carriage.” Lumley was speaking rapidly now. “More like an honored guest of the general.”
Warren clasped his hands behind his back and walked over to the desk. “I’d like to speak with Benjamin a moment. You go on downstairs, and after you’ve had something to eat you’ll be assigned to a company.”
“Yes, sir,” Lumley said. He walked to the door, opened it, but then looked back at Benjamin. “Thanks to you—and your brother and sister—for getting me out of that wretched city.”
Benjamin nodded, and then Lumley went out of the room, closing the door behind him. Warren sat at his desk and seemed preoccupied with the papers before him. “How was he?”
“Nipping at a bottle as we crossed the harbor in an oyster boat. He prefers dry land.”
Warren looked up from papers. “You think he’s genuine?”
“Well.” Benjamin had to look away from Warren’s gaze. “I suspect he is. What he says about Dr. Church is rather odd. I mean, he just got here and all. Why would he make up something like that? Wouldn’t he just try and fit in?”
Dr. Warren was a man famous for his manners and his eloquence, yet now he maintained a silence that made Benjamin nervous. When he ventured to look at the doctor again, Warren merely nodded. “Go get yourself something to eat.” As Benjamin went and opened the door, Warren said, “And rest. I notice that you’re walking with a limp. I want you to remain close at hand—you stay here in Hastings House—because I will want you to run messages for me.”
“Sir, if I may say so …” Warren suddenly looked impatient. “I’d like to fight.”
“I understand, and no doubt that will all come in time. But for the moment I need a good runner, so you should rest. Besides, I may have to send you back.”
“To Boston?”
“Eventually.” He smiled. “You still possess a talent for slipping in and out of the city. And even when captured, they don’t have a prison that can hold you.”
XVI
Bold Suggestions
FOR DAYS, ABIGAIL REFUSED TO SEE SAMUEL WHEN HE CALLED at the house. Her mother and father were baffled and eventually overwrought from making up excuses to the colonel. Finally, he stopped coming.
She spent much of her time in her room, which was becoming increasingly uncomfortable as May proved to be a warm month. Rachel was gone, Benjamin was gone. Occasionally she visited James, and regularly she would go to Mariah’s house, usually after supper, when the day’s heat was diminishing. Mariah was herself often distracted, but she seemed to welcome Abigail’s visits.
“You’ve heard nothing from Benjamin?” she said one night as they walked the beach below her house.
“Nothing.” It was dusk. They had their shoes off and held their skirts up so that the hems wouldn’t trail in the wet sand. “I look forward to this all day,” Abigail said.
“I know. This heat.” Mariah stared down at her bare feet and avoided broken shells in her path. “My cousins, they have suggested that I evacuate, but I’m not going to. They want me to go up to an aunt’s in New Hampshire—Concord, which is so far inland. At least we get some relief from the heat down here at waterside.” She stopped and picked up a shell, and then another; wading out into the water, she rinsed them off and deposited them in the sack she always carried over her shoulder during their walks. “I don’t know how I’m to live, nor do they. There’s little food. Right after father died, they brought food around, but now it’s so scarce. I comb the beaches and sometimes find something, usually a bunch of mussels clinging to a rock. Yesterday I found a bracelet and sold it in Dock Square.” She walked on, coming back up to the sand. “I think some relatives really want to get the house—they have families and … and I suppose it’s selfish of me to live there all alone. But it is my house.”
“Of course.” Abigail picked up a conch; it wasn’t broken and had a dark purple streak emerging from its smooth interior. “This one?”
“Yes, I think so.” Mariah took the shell and placed it in her sack. “There’s something I should tell you. It’s about that woman, Molly Collins.” She looked out at the harbor, where high pink clouds were gathered over Noddle’s Island. “What she said that night on the pier.”
“I’
ve not seen Samuel Cleaveland since then.”
Mariah nodded. “Not surprised, though eventually you will.” She glanced at Abigail, and for a moment her eyes seemed as old and wise as they were sad. “You know that, don’t you?”
Abigail inhaled a deep draft of salt air and released it slowly.
“It’s the other thing she said, about Trimount,” Mariah said. Now she sounded slightly winded, as though she were confessing something long repressed. “Do you remember what Molly said?”
“About being up on Trimount the night Sergeant Munroe was killed, yes.” Abigail’s hair had come loose in the sea breeze and she gathered it at the side of her neck as she turned to Mariah. “She said she saw both of us—it didn’t occur to me until now—she saw both of us up there. You were on Trimount?”
Mariah stooped over and picked up another shell.
“You saw Munroe?” Abigail said. “Why? How?”
After a brief inspection, Mariah dropped the shell in the sand. “I sent him a note, asking him to meet me up there. I lured him there. He didn’t know who I was, but I made bold suggestions.”
“Because …” Abigail hesitated, gazing out at the water. “Because of your father.”
“Yes.”
“No. Mariah—”
“I cut his throat.”
“Oh, please Lord, no.”
“I used a shucking knife, the one my father had so long that the handle was worn down to smooth ridges by the grip of his fingers.” The wind swirled hair about her face, but she didn’t seem to notice. “I was much surprised,” she said, her slow voice now filled with wonder, “at how easy ’twas—easy as carving a quahog out of its shell.”
They stood for a moment longer, and then Mariah began walking again, back toward her house. It was nearly dark now.
When Abigail caught up, Mariah said, “I shouldn’t have told you. It’s not your burden. It’s mine, and I’ll bear it the rest of me days. And I might as well tell you the other.”
“What other?”
“Colonel Cleaveland, he sent a messenger to my house this afternoon. I’m to meet him tomorrow, at the Two Salutations Tavern.”
“We first met there,” Abigail said.
“Now that you’ve refused him, do you suppose the colonel harbors amorous intentions toward me?” Mariah’s laugh surprised Abigail—it was sly, even devious. “Or do you suppose Molly has been using that fine mouth of hers again?”
Benjamin spent his days going to and from Hastings House, delivering messages for Dr. Warren. He slept in a storage bin in the cellar, which was cool if damp. It was better—and dryer—than lying in a tent on Cambridge Common, where several thousand men, the bulk of the American army, now lived in their own filth.
One evening he was sent to Medford, to deliver a message to General John Stark, leader of the militia that had come down from New Hampshire. Benjamin spent that night in Charlestown, where several hundred men were encamped in the hills above the village, with a view across the Charles River to Boston. Marching exercises were conducted and bonfires were burned, in an effort to give the impression that the troops were disciplined and great in number. In fact, provincials came and went from home at will; there was little order, and a great deal of illness.
Benjamin discovered that Ezra was living in a tent on the north pasture on Bunker Hill. He offered Benjamin a bit of ham, which he’d brought from a recent visit to his mother in Concord. Afterwards they walked down to Morton’s Point, a small hill overlooking the mouth of the Mystic River. They sat in the tall grass, lightning bugs weaving about their heads.
“When you were in Boston there,” Ezra said, “you saw your family?”
“My parents, no. James and Abigail, yes, but briefly.”
“Did you mention that you saw me, to your sister?”
“No,” Benjamin said. “You asked me not to.”
Ezra handed him the spyglass. “I did. So Abigail asked after me?”
“No.”
“How does she fare?”
Benjamin held the glass up to his eye and scanned the harbor, seeing nothing unusual, just a few fishing boats beating for Boston, their lanterns swinging gently, their light reflected on the chop. “She’s well.”
“Good,” Ezra said. “I’m glad to hear of it.”
Benjamin continued to gaze out at the harbor. He knew Ezra was staring at him in the near dark. Finally, he said, “This siege in Boston—they are in hard times. Food is becoming scarce.” Benjamin returned the spyglass. “But she is well, Ezra.”
Evenings, Abigail often walked to the Mall alone. There was growing consternation in the city that the British were going to cut down the trees lining the path. So much damage had been done—houses and churches dismantled in a matter of days—that nothing seemed safe any longer. Rumor had it that John Andrews had begun a vigorous campaign, writing letters to General Gage, protesting the possibility that the Mall trees might be felled for firewood. She had heard her father in conversation with some of his Tory friends, and even they expressed dismay at the ravaging of the city, fearing that by winter the town would be barren as the moon.
There was little news from the countryside—a great deal of conjecture, but little news. There were constant rumors that the provincials were about to launch an attack on the city, which caused the British to labor tirelessly at their fortifications. And there were reports—verifiable and often accompanied by the most outlandish details regarding the redcoats’ behavior—of occasional skirmishes, often the result of a boatload of British soldiers stealing ashore to take a few pigs or set fire to a barn. There was news of a raid on Grape Island, south of Boston, which led to watches being set up along the coast.
Abigail was so deep in thought during her stroll that she didn’t notice the sound of a horse’s hooves approaching from behind, until suddenly the white head of Samuel’s stallion was nearly breathing on her shoulder. When she looked up, Samuel touched the brim of his hat in a rather formal manner.
“Might I walk with you a spell?”
Abigail looked straight ahead. “I prefer not, thank you.”
“It’ll be dark soon, and do you think it wise to be out unaccompanied?”
“I am long accustomed to walking Boston by myself.”
“Yes, I know. But things have changed.”
“And who is responsible for that?”
“A fair question,” he said. “Which requires a complicated answer.”
“You may withdraw, and the question will no longer be pertinent.”
“Withdraw?”
“To England. All of you.”
Samuel didn’t reply, and Abigail listened to his mount’s easy tread upon the path. She glanced toward the horse’s head, his large brown eye suggesting that he was content to keep pace. His coat gave off a fine scented heat.
Finally, Samuel said, “That would present difficulties, I’m afraid.”
“It shouldn’t, really. Simply pack your men aboard the ships in the harbor and depart.”
“Back to England?” Samuel laughed. “That is … impossible. Imagine the reception we’d receive, an army sent to quell dissention in the colonies coming home without having accomplished its mission.”
“If it would help troop morale, we would gladly provide you with a rousing sendoff.”
“I am sure,” Samuel said. “No, I believe we have no choice but to stay.”
He pulled up on the reins and the horse stopped, but Abigail continued on, listening to the creak of the leather saddle as he dismounted. When he said her name, she paused and turned around. The sun had just set and the buttons on his coat seemed to absorb the last light of day. The horse nudged his shoulder and with one hand he pushed its snout away.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked. He walked toward her and she took a step backwards, which caused him to hesitate. “How many times have I called at your house and you’ve refused to see me?”
“Tell me, Colonel. What is your interest in Mariah Cole?”
“Mariah Cole.”
“You wish to question her, I understand, regarding Sergeant Munroe?”
“Oh, yes. It’s possible that she was on Trimount the night he was murdered.”
“What is your source of information?”
He stood up a little straighter. “I’m afraid I can’t divulge—”
“It’s Molly Collins.” Abigail began walking toward him. “She provided you with the information, didn’t she?” As she passed him, she said, “And that’s not all she’s provided.”
“I do not take your meaning, Abigail.”
“I believe you do, Colonel.” She continued down the Mall, the last moments of sunlight streaming through the canopy of leaves overhead.
XVII
The Livestock Skirmish
LUMLEY WAS INTERVIEWED REPEATEDLY AT HASTINGS HOUSE, and he seemed to relish the attention. “Nobody in Tommy Gage’s army ever heeded my words so,” he told Benjamin after emerging from yet another session with the American command. “That was a right good interrogation. Your Dr. Warren’s a bit of a fop with his fine clothes—a real gentleman he is—but I’ve never seen a man so devoted to a cause. This General Artemas Ward, though, he’ll have to go. Too old, and can’t make up his mind. His subordinates are walking all over him. All these questions make me hungry, and thirsty.” They went out the front door, past two guards sleeping on the steps. Lumley nudged one, rousing him. “You could be whipped for that in Boston.” He smiled at Benjamin as they walked down into the street, which was littered with piles of manure, strong in the warm air. “And this Dr. Church,” Lumley said. “He’s the smooth one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every time they haul me in for one of these confabs, he makes himself scarce. I haven’t seen him since that first time you and I met Dr. Warren.” Lumley tapped a finger to his forehead. “Church, he knows.”
“Knows what?”
“That I know.”
They wended through the roiling tent camp that was now Cambridge Commons, and went down Garden Street to a small tavern they’d taken a liking to, The Sign of the Dancing Crane. Ezra was awaiting them at a table, his shirtsleeves encrusted with dried blood from the day’s operations. The ale here was good and cool, the meat charred black. As they hovered over their trenchers, Lumley reviewed what he had told the officers at Hastings House. “It all comes down to this,” he concluded, nodding toward the shank of lamb in his hands. “General Gage is running out of fresh meat and his horses are in desperate need of hay.”