Voices sounded suddenly loud in the other room, two women bewailing the inconveniences of the island and the savage barbarity of the traitors whose insanity had taken over Boston. One of them expressed a strident hope that Sam would be hanged. Recalling Sam"s outright command to John to keep her from this expedition today-and his probable reaction if John came to him with the news that Abigail had not returned-she felt inclined to agree. "And the scarf?"
Philomela"s forehead puckered, trying to call back a moment that she would rather forget. "Red? Dull red, I think. What we"d dye wool at home, with madder-root."
Abigail owned three of that color, including the one she had on at the moment. "I must go," she said, rising. A man"s voice cut through those of the ladies next door, gruff and rumbling. "Else I won"t be able to get home at all. Is there anyone left at your father"s house, Miss Fluckner?" And when she nodded, "You say this poem is under the floorboard in your room?"
"Yes, m"am. "Tis on the second floor, between Miss Lucy"s room and her mother"s. There"s a loose board beside the head of the bed, near the wall. Mrs. Adams, thank you-"
"Don"t thank me yet. Miss Fluckner, can you send me a note, as soon as may be, authorizing me to whoever is in charge at your father"s house? We live in Queen Street, anyone there will know where. I must-"
A knock on the connecting door: "Lucy, dearest? Are you ready?"
"Drat it-tea with Commander Leslie-" Lucy bounded off the bed, turned her back on Philomela. "Get me unlaced . . ."
"Lucy?" bellowed Mr. Fluckner"s voice.
"I"ll be dressed in a moment, Papa."
Abigail curtseyed and left through the outer door. Behind her, framed in the lamplight, she saw Philomela rapidly divesting the girl of her brilliant day-gown in a cloud of green and yellow silk.
John Thaxter was pacing the bricks fretfully outside the commander"s office, looking in all directions. When he saw Abigail across the parade he strode toward her, followed by the st.u.r.dy, towering figure of Sergeant Muldoon. Rather despairingly, Abigail added Thaxter to the list of men she knew who owned caped gray greatcoats. "M"am, I"ve been to the wharf, the men say-"
"We"re going," promised Abigail, and obediently turned her steps toward the castle gate. Distantly, the tolling of Boston"s church bells carried over the three miles of tumbled gray harbor, dreary and ominous in the failing light. "Is Lieutenant Coldstone-?"
"He"s with Colonel Leslie, m"am." Muldoon saluted her respectfully as he spoke. "In a rare taking he is, and the Provost Marshal, too, and trying to get shut of a mountain of business before the Colonel"s to take tea with the Royal Commissioners and the wives of all these rich n.o.bs from Boston, beggin" your pardon, m"am." He nodded toward a small group of men crossing the parade, the torchlight borne by the soldier who preceded them glittering on the bullion that decked the Colonel"s dress uniform, gleaming on the marble smoothness of powdered hair. Beside the Colonel, resplendent in a caped greatcoat of some dark hue that could have been liver brown or indigo in the darkness, walked Richard Pentyre, gesturing with his quizzing gla.s.s and speaking with what appeared to be a ferocious intensity.
No sign of Coldstone. Drat it. Drat it.
"I hope your talk with Mr. Pentyre went as you hoped it would, m"am?"
Abigail shook her head. "It wasn"t a wasted trip, but Mr. Pentyre was hardly forthcoming."
"Well, you can scarce blame him, can you?" remarked Thaxter, as the freezing draft dragged at Abigail"s cloak and they entered the lamplit tunnel of the gate. "Between the lawsuit over the Sellars land that"s to be decided next month, and being served notice by the Sons of Liberty to-"
"What lawsuit?"
"Up in Ess.e.x County, m"am. If all this isn"t solved, the thing looks to be dragging on into another session. It"s been up in the courts, or some other nuisance suit that he"s brought in aid of it, every time Mr. Adams and I have had a case on the docket there."
"Not-" She glanced at Muldoon, stopped herself from saying, Abednego Sellars Abednego Sellars, and to turn the subject said instead, "Not likely to be settled soon, if trouble comes of this tea business. I know he had notice to report to the Liberty Tree and resign his position, but I"d scarcely consider that grounds for having his visitors searched before they"re permitted to see him."
"d.a.m.n it!" They emerged from the gate, into the mucky chaos of the camp around the walls. With a hasty, "Excuse me, m"am!" Thaxter dashed ahead, to intercept two sailors in striped jerseys and tarred pigtails, making their way up the torchlit path. Presumably, guessed Abigail, with deep forboding, the men who were to take her back to Boston. Their obvious reluctance to have anything further to do with the project was understandable: Darkness was closing in, and beyond the range of each smoky little campfire among the close-crowded jumble of tents and wash-lines, virtually nothing could be seen but a sense of movement in the shadows, and the occasional flash of an animal eye. Around Thaxter and the sailors, more civilians were coming up the path from the wharf: not rich merchants, but ordinary citizens of the town. Angry and harried-looking, they bore makeshift bundles and glanced right and left at the chaos with the expression of people who have been cheated of their rights. A small child was crying.
We have all been cheated of our rights, thought Abigail, pitying them yet knowing there was no good answer to their distress. We We will will all be cheated of our rights, unless we take a stand against the Crown while yet we have a little freedom to do so. all be cheated of our rights, unless we take a stand against the Crown while yet we have a little freedom to do so.
Beside her, Muldoon said, "T"cha! Searchin"-that"s goin" a bit far, beggin" your pardon, m"am, note or no note."
"Note?" Abigail turned her head sharply, her mind still running on poems stuffed through shutters, hidden under floorboards. "What note?"
"The note Mr. Pentyre had, m"am. About how the Sons of Liberty were going to kill him and his wife both."
She stared at him, aghast, and Thaxter came striding back up the path, coat flapping. "They say they"ll do it, Mrs. Adams, but you must come now now."
"Where did they get it? Who sent it?" She took Thaxter"s arm, her pattens slipping in the mud as they descended another two yards of path, turned a corner around a makeshift tavern, found themselves suddenly at the dock itself.
Muldoon shook his head. "That I don"t know, m"am, I"m sorry."
"Does Coldstone have it in his possession?"
"Mrs. Adams, you must must come-" come-"
"I don"t know, m"am. I"ll ask him-"
"Mrs. Adams-!"
She allowed herself to be helped into the boat, what was called in New England a whaleboat: like a large rowboat with a sail. Scarcely what one wanted to be on the water in, on an overcast winter evening with wind howling down the bay straight from the North Pole . . .
"Who signed the note?" she asked, standing up precariously as the boat moved from the dock. "Whose name was on it?"
Muldoon looked puzzled, fishing in his memory. "Something Latin," he said. "No-vangelus?"
Novanglus. New Englander. New Englander.
John"s pseudonym.
And John, of course, was away at a meeting when Thaxter finally walked her up from Rowe"s Wharf to Queen Street again. "Mrs. Adams, you must be froze!" Pattie almost dragged her and Thaxter indoors. The warmth of the kitchen-redolent of soap and wet bricks, for Pattie had Johnny and Charley in the tub before the fire and Nabby was drying her long blonde hair-wrapped her like a shadowy amber blanket. Woozy as she was with residual sea-sickness from the crossing, Abigail was suddenly, crashingly conscious that she had consumed nothing since the bread-and-b.u.t.ter nuncheon just after two.
On that thought came another, of the promise she"d made poor Orion. It was nearly full-dark-the sailors had grumbled about having to spend the night with the little Battery garrison, instead of rowing back to the safety of Castle Island-and Abigail was almost certain that for the pious Hazlitt household, the Sabbath had well and truly begun. Still, she reflected, she could but try.
And she knew she"d better try now, because if she so much as sat down and took off her pattens, she knew she wouldn"t want to stand up again.
"Hercules-" She put her hand on Thaxter"s arm. "Could I trouble you for one more Labor before you turn in for the night?"
Abigail suspected that this particular Labor would be in vain, and so it proved. The little house on Hanover Street was closed up tight, the feeblest glimmer of candlelight leaking through the cracks in the rear shutters visible only by the comparative blackness of the yard when she and Thaxter groped their way to the back door. No one answered her knock, though she thought she heard the droning voice within pause in its reading of Scripture.
When it resumed, she sighed. "No sense adding to the poor man"s trouble by leaving bait out for rats." She settled the basket more firmly on her arm. "But, I couldn"t sleep tonight, without having tried."
Wind screamed along Hanover Street as they made their way back, cutting through Abigail"s cloak and jacket as if she wore gauze and lace. This corner of Boston, along the footslopes of Beacon Hill, was but thinly built-upon yet, and the neighborhood along Hanover Street lacked the crowded liveliness of the North End. With all shutters closed, and the moon hidden in cloud-wrack, the darkness was abyssal, swallowing the wan flicker of Thaxter"s lantern and causing Abigail to wonder what people did, who were abroad in such darkness who didn"t know the way. Even thieves Even thieves, she reflected, would have a hard time would have a hard time- She stopped, and turned to look back.
"What is it, m"am?"
What had it been? She stood for a moment, wondering if she should say anything . . . "I thought I saw a light behind us," she said. She stood for a moment, wondering if she should say anything . . . "I thought I saw a light behind us," she said.
"There"s naught now." Thaxter raised his lantern-not that the single candle inside could have put out enough light to show up a regiment of dragoons at ten feet. The two of them might have been sewn up in a sack, for all either could see.
With the wind, the whole of the night seemed to be in motion: creakings from shop-signs, the constant whispered rattle of shutters in the darkness.
"Could have been a cat," the young man opined.
It could have.
"Or there"s no reason that we"re the only ones abroad tonight."
None.
It was only a few hundred feet, to the narrow pa.s.sway that led back into the Adams yard and the warmth of the kitchen door. Abigail looked back over her shoulder half a dozen times, but never saw a thing in the darkness.
When John came home and heard what Sergeant Muldoon had said about the threat made in the name of Novanglus, his face took on that congealed, heavy look of rage that Abigail knew so well-then he shook his head, and let it go. "I must say I"m a little insulted, that the British believe I"d be such a b.o.o.by as to announce murderous intentions under the name that pretty much everyone in New England knows is mine." He pulled off his wig, folded it carefully, and laid it on the corner of the table, then vigorously scratched his scalp. A small pot of cider-and two larger ones of hot water-steamed gently over the fire, and Abigail went to fetch cold chicken and a couple of slices of corn-pudding for him from the crocks where tomorrow"s cold Sabbath dinner waited, cooked and ready.
Of her account of Richard Pentyre"s reaction to being asked about his movements on the night of the twenty-third, he said, "In truth it"s no more than I expected. Even if he didn"t murder his wife, he might have been up to a dozen things he"d rather the Provost Marshal didn"t know about. The fact that he"s a friend of the Crown and a consignee for the East India Company"s tea doesn"t mean he isn"t elbow-deep in smuggling cognac, silk, and paint-pigment from the French."
"Is that something Sam could find out about?"
"I suppose." John poured mola.s.ses over the corn-pudding. "If you feel like explaining to him that you"re still investigating this murder."
"I do," said Abigail grimly. "While on the island I spoke to Lucy Fluckner-"
"What, Tom Fluckner"s heiress?"
"And a true-blue Whig, it sounds like," said Abigail. "She told me that at the time Mrs. Fishwire and Mrs. Barry were murdered, a third woman-the Fluckners" maidservant Philomela-was having horrible poems sent to her, and was being followed, by a man whom she suspects was the killer."
"Suspects-?"
"Because of something in one of the poems, about killing a red-haired woman. A few days ago-less than a week after Mrs. Pentyre"s murder, in other words-he started following her again."
John whispered, "d.a.m.n. Is she sure? Not that it"s the killer, but that it"s the same man who followed her the summer before last?"
"She"s sure." Quickly she outlined all that the girls had told her. "There was no time to seek out Lieutenant Coldstone after I learned this, or I would have been stranded on the island for the night, and Heaven only knows what Sam would have had to say. I"ll write him tomorrow. Coldstone, I mean, not Sam. At least she shall be safe there at the fort . . ."
"If the man isn"t a Tory himself, and there among them," murmured John, and carried his plate to the sideboard. "Or masquerading as one. With the island that crowded, and people coming and going on business to the town, it would be easy. It does sound as if he"s been away, doesn"t it?"
Together they brought the tin tub from the corner where she and Pattie had stood it earlier, brought up the screen to protect it from drafts, and poured the hot water in. "There"s nothing to tell us that he lives in Boston and not New York or Halifax, for that matter," said John, as he took off his coat. "In fact, nothing in any of this indicates that the man who killed Perdita Pentyre has anything to do with the man who killed the others and now, apparently, has resumed his pursuit of another woman who, like your precious Pamela, has neither friends nor family strong enough to look out for her."
"Pamela." Abigail, who had gone to fetch the candles from the table, came back around the screen. "John, tell me if this sounds mad, but-it occurred to me today-is there any chance that the reason Rebecca has not come forward-has not even gotten a message to me or Sam or Orion-is that she"s . . . she"s being held prisoner held prisoner somewhere?" somewhere?"
He paused in the act of removing his neckcloth, regarded her in the softly flickering light with a kind of gentleness, as if she had an injury that would reawaken in agony if touched. "I think it far likelier that she is dead," he said.
"I do-I would-because of course in any house in Boston where she could be locked in an attic, she could also be buried in the cellar. Except this man, whoever he is . . . he doesn"t hide the bodies of his victims."
John took the candles from her hand, set them on the chimney breast. "The man who killed Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Fishwire doesn"t hide the bodies," he said. "The man who killed Mrs. Pentyre-if he is not not the same man-only left in the open the body that he the same man-only left in the open the body that he wanted wanted the Watch to find. Why go to pains to imitate a crime, if not to have someone blamed for it? The point of this crime," he went on, "now does not seem to be to kill Mrs. Pentyre, but to kill the Watch to find. Why go to pains to imitate a crime, if not to have someone blamed for it? The point of this crime," he went on, "now does not seem to be to kill Mrs. Pentyre, but to kill me me. I admit I will be most curious to see the handwriting on that poem sent to Fluckner"s girl. Now might I persuade you," he added, "to wash my back for me, before it becomes the Sabbath?"
Twenty-four
A note from Lucy Fluckner awaited John and Abigail on the sideboard when they returned from services the following morning. Either the Fluckner household wasn"t one in which the Sabbath was regarded with Puritan strictness, or its heiress had found some outright heathen among the hangers-on about Castle William to carry her message across the bay. When Abigail broke the seal, she found requests from both Miss Lucy Fluckner and Philomela Strong, that Mr. Barnaby permit the bearer to enter the house and the chamber of Philomela, to take possession of the doc.u.ment they would find hidden under the floorboard near the head of the bed.
Please say nothing of this to Papa, Lucy"s paragraph added. It is from the man who wrote those awful poems to Philomela the summer before last. We have reason to think that he has done something dreadful, and Mr. Adams is looking into the matter on Philomela"s behalf. It is from the man who wrote those awful poems to Philomela the summer before last. We have reason to think that he has done something dreadful, and Mr. Adams is looking into the matter on Philomela"s behalf.
"And if I discovered my butler was keeping intrigues like this from me, at the behest of my sixteen-year-old daughter and a servant girl," remarked John, pocketing the paper, "I"d sack him. We"ll be fortunate if he lets us into the house."
"You"re known throughout the town as a respectable man," Abigail replied soothingly.
"I"m known throughout the Tory community as a fo menter of sedition," grumbled John. "Were I a Royal Commissioner, in hiding from the mob, I I wouldn"t let me in the house . . . particularly if my daughter has expressed, as you say she does, leanings toward evil Whiggish doctrines like our right as Englishmen. I wonder who"s been sneaking the girl pamphlets?" wouldn"t let me in the house . . . particularly if my daughter has expressed, as you say she does, leanings toward evil Whiggish doctrines like our right as Englishmen. I wonder who"s been sneaking the girl pamphlets?"
"The other servants, belike." Abigail put on her ap.r.o.n and went to the pantry, as Johnny and Nabby hurried to set the table. She shook her head in mock disapproval. "It all comes of teaching girls to read-" Both children glanced around at her, and John added gravely, "And of not beating boys soundly enough."
Solemn Johnny flashed him a rare grin.
After a cold Sabbath dinner they returned to Meeting with Pattie, leaving Nabby and Johnny home to watch the younger boys. As Abigail had suspected would be the case, the sermon, which ostensibly concerned King David, had a great deal more to do with tea and taxation than with the affairs of ancient Judea. Yet through it all her mind roved again and again to attic windows, shuttered or unshuttered, to forged notes and skillfully crafted lies. Though she had long trained her mind to shut out the profane in contemplation of the divine (which was more than Pastor Simmonds seemed inclined to do just now), she found her thoughts drawn again and again to the image of the lovely fifteen-year-old servant girl in Pamela Pamela, kept prisoner in the midst of a respectable community . . .
Ridiculous, she reflected uneasily. John is right. John is right. She had always justified her fondness for the novel with the argument that it was a paradigm of how every woman was treated, if not physically then emotionally and socially. Never before had she seriously considered whether it would be possible for someone to actually do. She had always justified her fondness for the novel with the argument that it was a paradigm of how every woman was treated, if not physically then emotionally and socially. Never before had she seriously considered whether it would be possible for someone to actually do. I fear to be turned off without a character I fear to be turned off without a character, one servant quails in the novel; He He-meaning the l.u.s.tful and powerful Mr. B-has it in his power to give or withhold a living from me, another excuses himself.
And in truth, on several occasions Charles Malvern had actually imprisoned Rebecca for periods of days or weeks, when he suspected that she would use her liberty to get in touch with her family (as in fact she had). He was, Abigail reflected, probably holding his daughter under a similar form of house arrest at this very moment, and neither she nor any man in Boston would think twice about his right to do so.
But "tis a long way from that, to holding a woman captive when you have no legal right to do so-isn"t it?
Resolutely, she tried to force her thoughts to a more sacred direction, though the pastoral tirade on the subject of the rights of G.o.d"s chosen to cast off the bonds of unjust rulers hardly qualified as that. The meetinghouse was packed to the walls, as it had been for the morning service, and as they had for the morning service, John and Abigail shared their pew with half a dozen complete strangers, young farmers from Chelsea and Brookline and one from as far away as Worcester, brought into the town by the tolling of the bells and the word that was circulating the countryside: Your Country is in Danger. The King"s demands must be challenged if we are not to be enslaved Your Country is in Danger. The King"s demands must be challenged if we are not to be enslaved. These young men listened to the sermon with deep appreciation, shook hands afterwards with John, and said they"d heard him speak at Old South Thursday: "We"re ready for anything, sir."
Reflecting on the number of things that could go wrong in the eleven days between now and the deadline for the tea"s unloading, Abigail thought, We had better be We had better be.
The Fluckners lived in Milk Street, a new and extremely handsome house, suitable to a man who was not only Royal Commissioner of Ma.s.sachusetts but proprietor of a million acres in the Maine district to the northeast. Beyond a doubt it was crammed to the rafters with expensive furniture, fine silk clothing, costly silver and china, and similar lootable goods. "Sam claims there will be no looting," murmured John, surveying the tightly shuttered brick facade. "The Sons of Liberty learned their lesson when Governor Hutchinson"s house was gutted; there are standing orders that anyone who loots the houses or goods of the Tories will be punished. If we lower ourselves to the acts of criminals, we will lose our support among men of good character, both here and in England, and justify the Crown in treating us as such."
"Which includes murder as well as theft."
"Precisely." His mouth tightened. "I dearly wish there were a way you could ask to see this "Novanglus" note of Coldstone"s without displaying in turn the one that was on Mrs. Pentyre"s body. "Twouldn"t take a clever man long to guess the code, if he knew already that she met her end on a Wednesday night at close to midnight. Nor do we know how close they are to unraveling whatever other papers Mrs. Pentyre may have left-including, you say, all Rebecca"s previous notes." He shook his head, forestalling her unspoken question. "It can"t be risked." He led the way across the street.
But the knocker had been taken from the Fluckners" door. When they walked around the side of the house to the carriageway, they found the gate into the back quarters shut and locked. John glared at the shuttered windows, and returning to the front, pounded on the door with his fist.
"The droppings I saw through the gate of the carriageway were fresh," provided Abigail. "And there"s smoke in the kitchen chimney."
"Fluckner"s probably given orders to open to no one they don"t recognize." John gave the portal an impatient and un-Sabbathlike kick. "And it"s too much to hope, that he"d permit his daughter to come back to town to get his servants to open up the house-even to someone who wasn"t wasn"t under suspicion of treason and murder. Always supposing," he added, as he came down the single brick step, "that telling Fluckner of the poem in the first place wouldn"t cause him to sell the poor girl out of hand, to spare himself trouble." under suspicion of treason and murder. Always supposing," he added, as he came down the single brick step, "that telling Fluckner of the poem in the first place wouldn"t cause him to sell the poor girl out of hand, to spare himself trouble."
"For something she couldn"t help?" Abigail stopped in her tracks, half inclined to go back and have another try at the door. "For receiving poems that she didn"t want, from a man who is clearly insane? Knock again, John, they might-"
"And pigs might fly." He put his hand at her back, started to lead her down the street. "I"ve argued in the Commonwealth courts for thirteen years, my girl, and if I had a shilling for every man who would sell a slave rather than deal with more than an hour"s "nonsense," as men like to call it, from people that slave might attract to the household . . . Well, I"d have bought you a house as big as that one, and a new lace cap to wear in it."
They turned the corner onto Cornhill. It was barely four, yet lamplight shone in many windows, where children in their Sabbath best sat politely in parlor chairs while mothers read the Scripture to them, or told them Bible stories as Abigail"s father had told them to her. The taverns and ordinaries were of course closed, yet in every one they pa.s.sed, Abigail saw lights behind the shutters, where the men lodged there gathered, muttering with talk.
It is a dangerous game they"re playing, Sam and Mr. Hanc.o.c.k and Dr. Warren and the others, she thought. All those meetings, at Old South and Faneuil Hall, were not just to keep spirits roused and angry-and to keep that potential mob of farmers and countrymen in town-until the date pa.s.sed on which the tea must be confiscated.
The Sons of Liberty had to keep that anger just below the boiling point. To keep it from erupting into uncontrolled violence, from giving the Governor an excuse to call in extra troops, an excuse to say, These men are criminals, not defenders of Englishmen"s rights as they claim These men are criminals, not defenders of Englishmen"s rights as they claim.