“But ask Miss Fluckner as well where her suitor went in Maine and whatever she can recall of her father’s dealings with the tenants on the land. I’ve heard it said that the chief reason Fluckner needs clear title is so that he can put the tenants off the land—men who’ve been farming there for two generations—and bring in German settlers who’ll pay more for the privilege of freezing while being robbed.” With a neat gesture, he dropped the peel back into its place on its pegs, turned back to her with a grave wariness in his eyes. “My experience has always been that of all the things a man will kill for, land is ever close to the top of the list.”
Abigail had expected Lucy Fluckner to be accompanied only by Philomela on her walk to the Common the following morning. But when she caught sight of the girl’s bright red walking-cloak among the elms of the Mall that bounded the Common’s eastern side, she was surprised to make out the tall, swaying form of Mrs. Sandhayes at Lucy’s side. “My dear Mrs. Adams, I wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to assist at a romance for a thousand pounds!” replied that lady, smiling, when Abigail tactfully inquired whether the icy wind was not too bitter for her. And, reading Abigail’s true concern, which had little to do with the weather, she added, “My physicians insisted that exercise will eventually strengthen my limbs—and indeed, I get about much more handily than I did! So I welcome every step. Did you convince the authorities to let you visit Mr. Knox?”
“How is he?” demanded Lucy. “Did you give him my message? He isn’t—they didn’t”—her face suddenly changed as she fought a shiver of dread from her voice—“they didn’t put him in irons or anything, did they?”
“They did not,” said Abigail briskly. “Nor is he in a common cell with the camp drunkards and troublemakers, but in a little room—a very little room, rather dank and cold, but he has blankets and his greatcoat—by himself. I took him food and a book—”
“Oh, thank you! Bless you!”
“—and slipped your note between its pages, and I shall see Mr. Thaxter goes across tomorrow with more. But,” she added, cutting short the girl’s next rapturous exclamations, “matters are worse than we knew. Did Mr. Knox lend you a scarf of his recently? Red and yellow—”
“The one I knit for him.” Lucy nodded, black curls bouncing in the frame of her scarlet hood. “Saturday a week ago, when I sneaked away and got poor Margaret into such trouble with Papa . . .” She threw an apologetic glance at her chaperone. “We met at the burying-ground, and I’d slipped out so quickly I forgot to bring a scarf of my own, and he lent me his, because I was nearly freezing. Does he want it back? I think it’s in my drawer, or maybe I left it in the pocket of the cloak I had on that day—”
“He has it,” said Abigail grimly. “Or, rather, the Provost Marshal has it. A Mr. Wingate made a special journey out to Castle Island with it on Sunday afternoon, with the information that he saw Harry emerge from Governor’s Alley at three o’clock Sunday morning—your father having sent him back to collect a forgotten wallet from the Governor’s after the ball—”
“The liar!” Lucy stopped in her tracks, mouth momentarily ajar with shock. “Oh, the blackguard!” She made a move as if she were about to run all the way to her father’s countinghouse, cloak flying, and throw herself at him in rage, then whirled back to face her companions with her face twisted with disillusion, betrayal, and dread. “Oh, how could he!”
“Dearest—” Mrs. Sandhayes laid a hand on her young charge’s shoulder. “Now, you know he must have done so at your father’s behest—”
“Well, of course he did! Because he’s a cheat, that’s why . . . About five years ago he borrowed a little money out of my father’s strongbox without telling him about it—” She pursed her lips, pulling herself back from her rage, and her blue eyes filled with sudden tears. “I shouldn’t speak badly of him, because it was when his wife had their last child, and both she and the baby were so sick . . . But Papa caught him putting the money back, you see. So if he were to dismiss him, you know it would be without a character—”
“La, child, your Papa wouldn’t do such a thing!”
“He would.” Lucy sighed, and wiped at her eyes with the back of her wrist, like a child. “Just as he’d think to send Harry’s scarf over to the Provost Marshal, with that ridiculous story about a wallet, only to get Harry into trouble.”
“And so we must get him out of trouble,” said Abigail stoutly. “Come, shall we walk? And you must tell me all about Saturday night, in as much detail as you can recall. There must have been a great deal of comment when he did not appear at a ball to announce his own engagement.”
“My dear Mrs. Adams, like hurling a grenado into a dovecot!”
“Well, it was supposed to be announced at dinner,” said Lucy. “And of course Papa had arranged to have me seated next to Sir Jonathan, or where Sir Jonathan would have been sitting had he been there. I caught Governor Hutchinson first thing, as he received us in the hall, and begged him for a word, and told him that whatever Papa had said, I would not marry the man, and he arranged to have my place changed at the table. That set everyone talking, and Papa looked ready to have an apoplexy, but at least I didn’t have to sit next to his empty chair. And of course, no one would say things in front of me—”
“They did before me,” reported Mrs. Sandhayes, limping gamely along the frozen gravel of the walk on Lucy’s other side. “La, the rumors that flew about the cardroom! That Sir Jonathan had heard you’d jilted him and had walked out of the Governor’s house—that you’d told His Excellency some terrible tale about that charming Sir Jonathan and had obliged the Governor to eject him—that Sir Jonathan had discovered that your Papa was about to cheat him over the Maine lands, which really belonged to Mr. Gardiner—”
“They do not!” Lucy protested.
“That’s not what Felicity Gardiner says.”
“Felicity Gardiner’s a—Well,” said Lucy. “Anyway, His Excellency kept sending servants to ask in the stables, had Sir Jonathan arrived yet? He even sent a footman down to the wharf to see if Mr. Bingham’s boat had come in from Maine as it was supposed to, and he brought word back that yes, Sir Jonathan had debarked that morning and gone off no one knew where, without sending word or anything. That set the cat among the pigeons! And everyone kept staring at me and whispering behind their fans—”
“They weren’t whispering about you at that point, my dear.” Mrs. Sandhayes raised her kohl black eyebrows. “I suppose you’re aware by this time, Mrs. Adams, that Sir Jonathan’s appetites would have shamed a rabbit in the brambles. I don’t doubt—and neither did anyone at the Governor’s that night, I assure you—that he had a sweetheart somewhere in town, for whom he’d been pining all those days in Maine. Not that he wasn’t perfectly capable of trying to get up an intrigue or two in the Penobscot or the Kennebec—lud, what names you Americans think up! But then I understand the women of the province tend to be of the granitey, Gog and Magog variety—”
“But no one you know of?”
Margaret Sandhayes considered the matter, forehead puckering in a manner that threatened the thick pink and white maquillage that habitually plastered her rather horsey face, then shook her head. The whaleboned stays in the hood of her cloak creaked alarmingly—it was of the variety boned out to accommodate a much-curled and decorated coiffure, and the sharp gusts of wind that slashed across Boston from the bay gave Abigail the impression every minute that the whole structure was going to be whipped away like a kite, carrying the gawky chaperone with it.
“Would Mr. Fenton know?” asked Lucy. “Sir Jonathan’s man. He came down with la grippe the night before Sir Jonathan left for Maine. He was going to follow when he got better, but I think he’s still at the Governor’s.”
“La, child, one doesn’t go about questioning a man’s servants!”
“Not even to save an innocent man’s life?”
“It is shockingly bad ton, child, and your reputation would never recover if it got about! As well have it said
that you pay peoples’ maids for copies of their letters!”
“Margaret—” Lucy looked almost as if she wanted to shake the older woman. “This is Harry’s life we’re talking about!”
“Oh, pooh.” Mrs. Sandhayes looked aside uneasily. “I daresay they won’t hang him on a clerk’s tittle-tattle—”
“They will,” said Abigail quietly. “Mr. Knox has been—er—outspoken in his objection to some of the Crown’s policies regarding the colonies, and yes, he stands in grave and immediate danger of being hanged. Whatever Mr. Fenton might be able to tell us truly could save Mr. Knox’s life.”
Mrs. Sandhayes made a face expressive of her opinion as to how much any servant could be useful for anything besides fetching her another tea-cake, but Lucy exclaimed, “Mr. Barnaby will know. Our butler, you remember, Mrs. Adams. His sister’s husband is Governor Hutchinson’s steward—Mr. Buttrick. Do you mind walking back with us to ask? It isn’t far.”
They had come opposite the writing-school by this time, so it was, in fact, something more than a half mile to the handsome house on Milk Street that Thomas Fluckner had purchased with his wife’s money, many years ago. This part of Boston lay west of the original town that huddled around the waterfront, and the streets were far less crowded, with open spaces of fields and gardens lying behind the houses of timber and brick. As they passed along Marlborough Street, Abigail slowed her steps before the Governor’s house itself and stood for a moment considering the mansion through the bare branches of the oak trees on its snow-covered lawn. On the cupola, the copper Indian weather vane swung in the cutting wind, and had the day not been so cold—and Mrs. Sandhayes lagging farther and farther behind—Abigail would have suggested a detour down the frozen muck of Rawson’s Lane, to have a look at the scene of the crime.
First things first.
“Did Sir Jonathan write your father while he was in Maine?” she asked as they walked. “I understand he was to stay with your father’s agent in Boothbay.”
“Mr. Bingham,” affirmed the girl. “He’s in charge of collecting the rents for that whole section of the coast, from Moscongus Bay down to the Kennebec, but half the time he doesn’t send much. The whole section’s in a state of revolt against the Proprietors, and only a month ago Mr. Bowdoin’s agent was beaten up and sent back to Boston in a load of bad herring.” She laughed her schoolgirl laugh, and Mrs. Sandhayes looked shocked.
“No, he didn’t write—neither to Papa nor to Governor Hutchinson, which I thought pretty high-handed of him, considering he was going to be guest of honor at a dinner and a ball, and I don’t think he would have written to Mr. Fenton, either. From what Mr. Barnaby told me, he treated Mr. Fenton worse than any dog.”
“There,” declared Mrs. Sandhayes gloomily, catching up with the other three. “Now tell me servants can be trusted to keep their mouths shut about anything.”
Philomela, carrying extra scarves and shawls for the others, turned her head as if to admire the tall steeple of Old South Church on the corner and pretended she had not heard this remark.
Mr. Barnaby, who opened the door to the four women and clucked over the coldness of the weather, confirmed all of Lucy’s information about Sir Jonathan’s manservant. “It’s not unusual for a gentleman to have so little regard for his man, and I’m sorry to say some of the gentlemen from the home country are the worst I’ve seen in that regard.” A stout, genial, middle-aged man with a deeply pockmarked face and the accent of London to his voice, he bowed and signed a liveried footman to collect their wraps. “Most vexed he was that poor Mr. Fenton should have been taken sick the night before their departure, leaving him no time to replace him before he left. He said if Mr. Fenton didn’t follow him within two days, he could consider himself discharged and find his own way back to England or wherever he wished to go, but I wouldn’t have wanted to think he meant it.”
Mrs. Sandhayes, emerging from the chrysalis of whaleboned hood and two woolen cloaks, looked surprised at this view of the matter. “Whyever not? One can’t let people of that order start believing that claiming a bellyache will excuse them from their duties. The man should have taken better care of himself.”
Lucy ignored this remark. “So what will Mr. Fenton do now?”
“That I don’t know, Miss. It’s the worst case of the grippe I’ve seen; the Governor’s had a surgeon in twice to bleed him, and he’s worse, if anything.”
Abigail sniffed. “You astonish me, sir.” She had a deep mistrust of physicians other than her friend Joseph Warren, having seen too many at work. “Is he well enough to speak to, do you think?”
“Oh, yes, m’am. He’s never had a fever, nor lost track of his senses, or anything like that. Would you like me to arrange it?”
“What on earth for?” inquired Mrs. Sandhayes, from the pier glass where she’d gone to readjust the high-piled edifice of her coiffure with an ivory comb. “The man’s not been out of his bed. It sounds to me as though some of these Maine ruffians followed Sir Jonathan back from his journey and lay in wait for him on his return to the Governor’s house. I daresay they’re safely back home in Obseybobscott or Pennywayback or whatever outlandish place they come from, and so the Admiralty Court will see, once they’ve heard the whole story.”
“Will they?” said Abigail drily. Despite aching gratitude for the warmth of the parlor after the morning’s bone-breaking cold, she could not keep from her mind John’s descriptions of the houses he had seen in Maine—two-roomed, primitive, buried beneath snow for months at a time—as she considered the curtains of pea green velvet, the printed Chinese wall-papers, and the delftware bowls displayed in the mahogany cabinets. “I am not, myself, quite so sanguine about what three Crown servants in Halifax are going to see.”
On the opposite wall, a portrait of Lucy’s mother—whose father had talked then-governor Dunbar and the Board of Trade into granting him the Maine land—smiled stiffly into middle distance. Her pink and silver gown was rendered with such meticulous attention that Abigail could recognize that the lace was Dutch rather than French, but her face might have been a whittled doll’s.
“Was there anyone at the Governor’s ball Saturday night, who might have wished Sir Jonathan ill?” she asked, interrupting Mrs. Sandhayes’s raptures over the entrance of her hostess’s overfed lapdog Hercules. “Anyone who disappeared for a period of time—”
“My dear Mrs. Adams, you are not suggesting that one of the Governor’s guests might have been responsible for this—this outrage?”
“Does social standing exempt a man from vengeance, or greed?” demanded Lucy indignantly. She added wryly, “Sir Jonathan himself is proof that it doesn’t exempt one from lust.”
“Lucy!”
Lucy turned eagerly back to Abigail. “People were coming and going all the time, m’am, but I think I can remember who I danced with, and the order of the dances. And Margaret was in and out of the cardroom—she plays like a Greek bandit! We can surely come up with some idea of it, if someone was absent for any period of time, especially if I gossip about among Mama’s friends. They all tear up characters like Harpies! I’ll ask if anyone knew anything to Sir Jonathan’s discredit or if he had a mistress—”
“You had best let me do that, dear,” said Mrs. Sandhayes firmly. “Your mother would expire of horror if she thought you even knew what a mistress was, and I would certainly be blamed for not giving you a more elevated tone of mind. Ah, Mr. Barnaby! À la bonne heure! What ambrosial delights has dear Mrs. Prawle prepared for us? Not her wonderful molasses tarts! There now, Mrs. Adams, I told you Barnaby was a genius: he’s even thought to prepare you some of that nasty tisane that dear Lucy has taken to drinking in preference to tea—”
“It’s rose hips and licorice-root,” said Lucy, with shy pride. “I tried getting coffee, but it’s Dutch, and Papa wouldn’t have it under his roof, and it’s a terrible nuisance to roast and grind the beans, and you can smell it all over the house. Philomela went down to the market and got me this, and I
keep it hidden in my dresser-drawer. Thank you, Barnaby.”
“Think nothing of it, miss.”
“Mr. Barnaby.” Abigail lifted a finger to stay him. “Before you leave—what was Bathsheba’s reaction to Sir Jonathan’s departure? Was she relieved, as you’d expect, or was she troubled?”
“There now!”
Abigail was conscious again of a twinge of un-Christian pride, at the expressions of astonishment on the faces of both the butler and Mrs. Sandhayes.
It was Mr. Barnaby who spoke first. “How the—? M’am, I don’t know how you’d know of it, but you’re dead right. Poor Sheba . . . Well, he pestered her, as he did all the women of the house—”
“Pestered nothing!” exclaimed Lucy hotly. “He broke into her room one night, after he was supposed to have left here, and got into bed with her—”
“Lucy, really!”
“Well, he did. He told her if she didn’t shut up he’d buy her from Papa and use her how he pleased! Papa claimed he ‘took care of’ the matter,” she added mutinously, “but of course Sir Jonathan denied he’d done any such thing—”
“Dear child,” protested Mrs. Sandhayes, “your Papa could scarcely take the word of a servant over that of a King’s Commissioner, and a Negress at that—Dear Philomela, run and take Hercules outside, I see him contemplating his favorite corner of Mrs. Fluckner’s carpet in a way that I mistrust. Mind you”—she turned back to Abigail—“I wouldn’t put anything past the man.”
“Bathsheba’s as truthful as you or I,” protested Lucy. “Far more truthful than me, in fact . . .”
“Be that as it may, m’am, miss,” Barnaby interposed tactfully. “It’s true, as you’d expect, the day he left, poor Sheba went about like she’d just been let off a whipping, knowing he wouldn’t be coming to the house for a week and more. But Friday evening, it was like she’d seen a ghost on the stair: not able to settle to her work and barely did a third of what she’d usually accomplish with her needle. Mrs. Barnaby spoke of it—my good wife has the charge of the maids and the sewing,” he added almost shyly. “Showed me some of it, too—as badly mended and clumsy as if she were a girl in love with her mind a thousand miles away, and Sheba generally so neat and particular. There was something weighing on her mind, I’ll swear to that.”
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