Sup with the Devil

by Barbara Hamilton

  “A signal?”

  “Through the window,” said the boy. “He’d sat himself where he could see it, instead of where he usually sits in the corner by the fireplace. I thought later—when I was talking to Horace—that he might have been meeting a girl. He wouldn’t have come across to speak to George anyway, because George’s window was dark.”

  “Hmm,” said Abigail. “Well, another theory gone west. Would George have been asleep at midnight, Horace? It sounds a trifle early for him.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Horace, and she saw the shadow of grief darken his eyes. “He—Weyountah and I stayed up until nearly ten thirty, at work on a—a translation—which I have yet to finish,” he added, seeing that she understood that he meant his reconstruction of Mrs. Lake’s naughty document. “George hadn’t come back from when he left me after we spoke to you at the Stair . . .”

  “There was a light in his room earlier,” provided Mr. Pinkstone. “But that would have been old Dio waiting up for him like a mother hen.” He grinned sadly. “I say, that was all stuff about Dio murdering him, wasn’t it? Old Dio wouldn’t hurt a fly, and the way he quizzed George when he’d been out, and waited up for him when he was off with some girl or other, and tried to find fellows to do his work for him—that’s a damned shame, what they’re saying. But when Pugh broke up the card game, George’s window was dark, because he looked out—Pugh did—and I was standing behind him, and him with one of those nasty cats sitting on his shoulder like a parrot. Besides,” added the boy, “the Black Dog wouldn’t have come across to speak to George anyway—they couldn’t stand one another.”

  “Really?” said Abigail. “Whyever not? Mr. Pugh wasn’t in favor of colonial rights, was he?”

  “Not that I ever heard.” The boy glanced up the stair, then back across the courtyard toward the window of the man of whom they spoke, as if Mr. Pugh might be standing in it, watching for his return. “No, the thing is, m’am, old George had cut him out with Sally Woodleigh, and had drawn his cork over it but two days before. So there’d be precious little that he’d have wanted to say to George at midnight or any other time.”

  “Did he, indeed?” murmured Abigail, as she and Horace made their way up Horace’s own stairway to deposit the honey—and Weyountah’s rather depleted stock of gingerbread—behind the books in Horace’s room. “Did you know that?”

  Horace shook his head. “I knew George and the Black Dog were at odds, but I thought . . . George never could stand a bully,” he said. “I think even before Pugh started plaguing me, it raised George’s dander. He was like that.” He was silent a moment as they returned down the stair. Then, carefully controlling his voice, he added, “But I can’t see even Pugh poisoning Dio in order to lie in wait for George . . .”

  “No, of course not. Yet if George surprised him in the act of stealing from his rooms—an act that might end Pugh’s career at Harvard and would certainly end any chance of his winning back the fair Mistress Woodleigh—it might be enough to make a man lose his head in anger or in fear. ’Tis only a theory,” she added.

  “One that takes no account of Mrs. Lake,” pointed out the boy diffidently.

  “On the contrary: the Black Dog might have been watching George’s window, waiting for the candle to wink out, demonstrating that Diomede was well and truly asleep. ’Tis far more likely that he went across on account of Mrs. Lake’s business than that of Mistress Woodleigh; what matters would be that he was in the room when George returned.’Twill be something to bear in mind when we drive out to see this house that you and Weyountah have discovered.”

  Ten

  Diomede bore out Horace’s account of relations between George Fairfield and St-John Pugh, and to it added an eyewitness account of the combat that had taken place between them the preceding Saturday afternoon. “It was nothing much, m’am.” The servant leaned forward on the bench in the sheriff’s little watch room, his elbows on his knees. Abigail was pleased to see that Mrs. Squills had kept her word about seeing to it that Diomede had at least clean linen and food to eat in the jail. And the small brick jail in Cambridge—though it could never have been called comfortable—was at least habitable, unlike the “Hell on Earth,” as it was described, of Boston’s.

  Through the window that opened onto Church Street, the sound of drums drifted from the Common, where the militia of Cambridge were beginning their drill. Mr. Congreve, slouched in a wooden chair (he had given Abigail his good one) by the door, moved his head now and then as if following the sound with his ears, though whether this was because he thought he should be among them bearing a musket or because he was waiting for the sound of a fight beginning, Abigail couldn’t tell.

  Diomede looked haggard, and—Abigail was distressed to see—older than he had only four days ago when he’d joked with her as they’d walked back to Cambridge in the twilight, leading the limping Sassy by the bridle.

  “They’d always rubbed each other the wrong way, from the time Mr. Pugh was a junior ordering around Mr. George as a freshman—not that Mr. George would take any nonsense from him or any man, no matter what these college customs say. First day he was a sophomore, Mr. George thrashed Mr. Pugh, and him five years younger than Pugh and nowhere near his weight. Miss Woodleigh, I can’t say she favored Pugh much over any of the others that courted her—if you’ll excuse me saying so, m’am, she’s a bit of a butterfly—”

  “She’s a damned little flirt,” put in Congreve from the doorway, “and her father’ll be the happiest man in the colony when she finally settles . . . and her new husband the most miserable.”

  “Well,” said the slave carefully, “it’s not my place to say, of course.”

  Not about a white girl, at any rate, reflected Abigail. “What happened?”

  “What you’d expect, m’am. Mr. George and a dozen of the Volunteers rode over to Mr. Woodleigh’s house on the Lexington Road after they were done with their drill; I think Mr. Woodleigh had invited them all for a bowl of punch. He—and Mrs. Woodleigh especially—had great hopes for Miss Woodleigh and Mr. George, and of course from the moment Miss Woodleigh saw George in his uniform, she’d had eyes for no one else. Myself,” he added with a wry half smile, “I think the uniform might have had a great deal to do with it, for he did look mighty splendid. Mr. Pugh’s nose was out of joint over it, as you’d expect.”

  “Everyone’s was,” put in Horace, glancing up from surreptitiously counting his own pulse. “Varium et mutabile semper femina . . . at least, she was variable and mutable to those wealthy enough for her to notice in the first place. She’s above our touch, but every senior and bachelor-fellow who isn’t a candidate for the ministry is courting her, and half the professors are as well.”

  “And the prettiest little thing under a bonnet in Suffolk County.” Diomede smiled.

  “The best-educated little thing under a bonnet in Suffolk County,” added Weyountah thoughtfully. “Or at least the most comprehensively tutored. Entirely free of charge, I might add. They fall over one another to instruct her—Latin, history, theology, not that she’d know a sacrament from a syllogism. I taught her astronomy for about three months when it was first fashionable, but I made her father pay me, since there wasn’t a hope he’d have let me court her if I’d wanted to. She burned off Ryland’s eyebrows during a chemistry lesson, but he’s still tutoring her, I think: he’ll be lucky if she doesn’t blow him to bits. She’s clever, though . . .”

  “She’s clever enough to pick the handsome ones as tutors,” grunted Congreve. “Makes the rest jealous. And who was it who said, there’s no such thing as an ugly heiress?”

  “Well, be all that as it may,” continued Diomede, “Mr. Pugh was there when the Volunteers rode up. Of course Miss Woodleigh went into ecstasy over Mr. George. She always spoke of him as her affianced, but there was nothing formal to it, and to my mind he never favored her above the common run.”

  “I just don’t think it ever crossed her mind that the man she adored wouldn’t adore
her in return,” Horace opined. He coughed and cleared his throat and wiped his lips with one of the half-dozen clean white handkerchiefs he habitually carried in his pockets. “I know he didn’t speak of her when they were apart—well, not more than any of the others.”

  “Which I expect is what fascinated Miss Woodleigh the most,” remarked Abigail. “No wonder she pursued him.”

  “That I wouldn’t know, m’am,” said the servant. “But Saturday she leaped up from where she was sitting beside Pugh and cried out that she counted the days ’til she and Mr. George could be wed, and Mr. Pugh got pretty red in his face and said as how Miss Woodleigh would favor Pedro—that’s one of his own grooms, m’am, a savage straight from Africa—if he was to dress up in a red coat, or a monkey for that matter, and added that to get Mr. George’s notice she’d have to stand in line behind half the tavern-maids in the countryside. Mr. George flung himself straight off Sassy’s back onto Mr. Pugh and threw him down the porch steps, then leaped down after him and beat him to the ground. Made him look no-how, and sent him off with a blooded nose and a lesson about bandying a woman’s name in front of a troop of cavalry. He was like that,” he added quietly, his voice altering. “No, she wasn’t his affianced—and it rubbed him, I think, to hear her go on about it—but he wouldn’t hear her slandered, not if she was a scullery-maid.”

  In the stillness that followed, a sharp-shouted command could be heard from the Common, followed by the ragged thunder of musket-fire. It was only the men drilling, Abigail knew, yet the sound made her shiver.

  From here to the Kennebec, every village and town has formed militia . . .

  Stockpiling powder and muskets in Concord . . . What good that will do against trained troops . . .

  Civil war. The words filled her with dread, echoing the bloody chaos that had brought down the Republic of Rome. She remembered Joseph Ryland’s grave face as he watched men less competent than he step ahead of him to take George Fairfield’s place in command.

  It is our duty, as subjects of the King, to keep it from degenerating to such a pass that the French or the Spanish think themselves safe to come in and take over these colonies for themselves . . .

  And young George Fairfield, riding here and there through Massachusetts, raising a company of gentlemen loyal to the King . . .

  She forced her mind back to the man before her. One thing at a time . . .

  “And nothing further came of it?”

  “No, m’am. Mr. George was a little more careful after that about hiding—well, hiding things that might get him into trouble if it should come to Dr. Langdon’s ears that he had them in his room—”

  “Like his rum?” asked Abigail. And then, sinking her voice to a whisper—though Congreve’s attention had been drawn to a confusion of angry shouting from the direction of the nearby tavern on Church Street—“Or his books?”

  “You know about his books, m’am?” Diomede’s voice lowered to match hers, and behind Abigail, Horace coughed again and fished for another clean handkerchief.

  “I know he had them.”

  The servant sighed, and his face creased with vexation. “I told him—Well, they were mighty tempting books. But I did warn him, after he wouldn’t sell them to Mr. Pugh, that Mr. Pugh would turn around and use them to get him into trouble—report him to Dr. Langdon and get him sent down. Dr. Langdon being a great Whig and always crying out for the colony’s liberties. Everyone in the college knew he was just looking for a reason to get Mr. George turned out . . .”

  “Mr. Pugh tried to buy those books?”

  “Yes, m’am.” Diomede looked apologetic. “Right after Mr. George bought them from poor Mrs. Seckar, almost three weeks ago now it was. Knowing Mr. Pugh and half thinking the offer might just be a way of learning if Mr. George had them, so he could report him to the provosts, Mr. George refused to admit he had them. But the day after this to-do at Mr. Woodleigh’s, the Sunday evening, Pugh sent Eusebius, that other black African of his, to me with five pounds, m’am—five pounds!—for me to steal them and get them to him—”

  “How did he know of them in the first place?”

  The slave shook his head. “That I don’t know, m’am.”

  Abigail was silent, thinking about the young man who’d come striding breezily out onto the landing, crying, Good Lord, get that woman out of here!

  About the handsome young face lying so still on the pillow in the instant before Dr. Perry had twitched the sheet over it.

  It seemed impossible that she’d known him for less than twelve hours.

  “Does Mr. Pugh have any white hangers-on?” she asked quietly. “A dark-haired gentlewoman whose name may or may not be Mrs. Lake? Or a man with a scar like this”—she made a V of her fingers and pressed it to the left side of her face—“over his eye? Have you ever seen a man with a scar like this in Cambridge? Or in the countryside round about?”

  Diomede turned the matter over in his mind. “No, m’am. I wish—” He looked aside, his features twisting with the effort to control them. “This is my fault, m’am, and I know it’s my fault—”

  “’Tis nothing of the kind,” said Abigail firmly.

  “If I hadn’t been drunk—”

  “Then whoever did this would have found some other way of drugging you. The drug was meant for him as well as you, Diomede . . .”

  “But they knew! They knew I have this weakness—”

  “Pish-tush! There isn’t a servant on Earth who doesn’t drink his master’s rum when his master isn’t looking. ’Twas only chance that Mr. Fairfield woke when the intruder came in, and cried out—”

  “No,” whispered Diomede, and clasped his hands together, pressing the knuckles for a moment to his lips. “I swear to you, m’am, when I woke up—when I heard what had happened . . . It was my fault, the same as if I had got up and used that knife myself—”

  “Stop it!” ordered Abigail. “What you’re saying does no one any good and will only confuse the search for Mr. Fairfield’s real killer.” But her heart sank within her, for she guessed that was precisely what Charles Fairfield was going to say when he came north from Virginia to collect his son’s body . . . and to avenge himself on those responsible for his son’s death. “Can you write, Diomede?”

  “Yes, m’am. Mr. Charles’s father—old Mr. George—he didn’t hold with servants being ignorant. I was made to do lessons alongside Mr. Charles and his sisters.”

  “Could you write out what you’ve told me? About the fight with Mr. Pugh and his attempts to bribe you, and about Mr. George’s books that he bought from Mrs. Seckar? Write it in your own words, everything that you can remember. Mr. Congreve, do you have any objection to that? Weyountah, if you could see to it that Diomede has pen and paper—”

  The Indian—who at Horace’s nervous insistence had been listening to Horace’s heartbeat—nodded, and Congreve said, “For all the good it’s like to do you, m’am. I tell you, I’ve met these Virginia planters—”

  “Which is exactly why every effort should be made to get the case heard here in Massachusetts—Yes, Horace, I’m sure you’re quite all right; your coloring looks just as it should. With sworn statements in hand, I think my husband will have a better chance of at least getting a trial here—”

  The slave closed his eyes for a moment, his face immobile; then he whispered, “Thank you, m’am,” in the voice of one who knows perfectly well that miracles do not happen. “I’ll do as you ask and have it for you if you should come here again. But if you would, m’am—could I trouble you, if I were also to write out a letter to my wife and to our daughters back in Virginia? Would you see that it’s sent to them?”

  “Of course.” Then another thought occurred to her, and she dug in her pocket for the elegant love-letters. Lowering her voice to exclude the sheriff—who might not approve of a young lady’s letters being viewed by a slave—she asked, “Does this handwriting look familiar to you, Diomede?”

  He responded immediately, “Yes, m’am.” And
—taking the letters, with his own swift glance toward Congreve, who seemed to be preoccupied with the shouting from the Common—he whispered, “It’s Miss Woodleigh’s, m’am.”

  “Let me see those—” Horace held up his hand to stay her from tucking them away, as he, Abigail, and Weyountah stepped into the sunlight of Church Street.

  “Is he right?” Abigail glanced up at Weyountah, who was looking around Horace’s shoulder. “You tutored her—”

  “That’s her hand, yes.”

  “Yes, but this—” Horace held up the note. As you love me, be behind the barn at midnight . . . “This isn’t her paper. It isn’t the same as the letters, look—”

  Which was quite true. The note was stiffer and thicker, and of a warmer hue than the thin, slightly crinkly sheets on which Sally Woodleigh had poured out effusions of love. From the pocket of his hand-me-down coat, Horace took an identical sheet—folded in the same fashion as the note, in quarters, rather than the longer letters, which had been folded rather elaborately and sealed.

  Startled, Abigail asked, “How did you come—?”

  “This one’s not from Miss Woodleigh.” Horace unfolded it. “It’s the one St-John Pugh gave me to deliver this morning to his bootmaker. You can see the paper—and the ink, too, look”—he held both notes to the sunlight—“are exactly the same.”

  “Pugh,” said Weyountah. They came onto the Common again, headed for Brattle Street and the College. “Pugh sent him a note in Sally’s hand . . .”

  “To get him out of his room at midnight.” Behind his thick spectacles, Horace’s gray eyes seemed to glow with somber eagerness, his fancied ailment forgotten. “Pinkstone said he was watching for something . . .”

  Before them, men formed up uneven lines, officers—that is, the men they’d elected as their own officers—dashing back and forth among the would-be soldiers like distracted sheepdogs, shouting commands to load and fire. Light powder, Abigail calculated, and no bullets: Sam had not been exaggerating when he’d said how short the militia was of such supplies. Most lead had to be imported—illegally—from France.