Sup With the Devil aam-3

by Barbara Hamilton

  She recalled going with her mother and her sister Mary to help one of her aunts lay out a cousin when she, Abigail, was barely seven: Mary was ten, and the dead child was Abigail’s own age. It was Abigail who had helped her mother braid the little girl’s hair. She remembered asking, Would Annie be angry that it was Abigail who was alive today and Annie who was dead? and getting an hour and a half on the subject of how much luckier and happier Annie was to be dead and with Jesus . . .

  Probably true, she reflected, looking down at the worn linen where it lay over George Fairfield’s face: the little mount of nose and chin, the silky tousle of blonde hair just visible at the top. Certainly true, in fact, and what she had told Nabby—only with greater brevity and, she hoped, greater tenderness—a few months ago when little Jemmy Butler next door had died. But she had thought at the time, Will Annie miss her doll Penelope? Or her baby sisters? Or the way the sunlight makes crazy patterns of elongated diamonds on the plaster of the bedroom wall first thing in the morning? Or the first sweet strength of that first sweet spoonful of molasses on hot corn-pudding first thing on a cold morning?

  Would George miss driving Sassy full tilt along the roads to visit his friends, when he was invited to stay at this house or that . . . widely known from here to Medford as he was? Would he miss riding with his Volunteers in preparation for a rebellion they all guessed was coming but that he would not see?

  She raised her eyes to meet those of Weyountah, who sat in such stillness as to be almost invisible on the room’s single chair at the foot of the bed.

  Would he miss his friends?

  From the door, President Langdon commented, “Given the attitude of the body, and Mr. Wylie’s testimony”—he nodded toward Weyountah—“as to raised voices and harsh words spoken to a man already laboring under the intolerable resentment of his servile condition, and given the presence of Mr. Fairfield’s rum-bottle in the study and its contents all over the slave’s clothing, it seems clear that Diomede drank himself into a state of rage while his master slept, and entering the room, stabbed him as he lay in his bed. Deplorable, of course, but no more than can be expected when a man practices the injustices of slavery upon his fellow creature—”

  “But that gives no explanation for the blood on the floor of this room,” said Abigail.

  “I beg your pardon?” Dr. Langdon was clearly not used to having his diatribes against slavery interrupted by anyone, let alone a woman, for mere practicalities.

  “There is blood on the floor,” said Abigail, pointing. “It’s been tracked and trampled about, but you see where the main stain of it lay, here, beside the desk by the window. Was the window open?”

  President and doctor looked at each other.

  “It was not.” Weyountah got to his feet. A step—the bedchamber was a tiny one—took him to the place; Abigail fetched the branch of candles from the little work-desk beneath the window, searched her pocket for flint and steel—which of course she’d left back at the inn . . . She caught up flint and striker from the bedside table. The room looked north onto the quadrangle of grass that lay between the college buildings and at this hour of the morning was gloomy. No wonder the poor boy had trouble waking up.

  She knelt, holding the lights close to the floor. The main portion of the stain was clear to see. Not quite the diameter of a cider-mug, it was clearly outlined on the scuffed oak, as if it had lain there half the night. By comparison, the blots and tracks where the crowding students—and Dr. Perry himself, belike—had stepped in it were superficial. Her handkerchief, wet with a little discreetly applied spit, cleaned one of them up at once, but the original stain—which had lain hours longer—it could not touch.

  There were two others, between that stain and the bed, in direct line. Round drips, and set, as if they, too, had lain there for many hours.

  “He was stabbed here, by the desk,” said Weyountah softly, “and dragged or carried to the bed. The wound under the ribs—”

  “Which I cannot see how it could have been made,” said Abigail, “by a man standing over him on the room side of the bed. You can see how the bed lies against the wall, with the head pointing south, the feet north toward the window. The left side, where the stab-wound is, would be away from a man standing in the room. But if he were stabbed here, standing up, of course the attacker would stab him in the left side—”

  “And carry him to the bed and stab him thrice more, to make sure of him.”

  Abigail turned, frowning, back toward Perry and Langdon in the doorway. “And then proceed back to his pallet in the study and go to sleep? Without even washing the blood from his hands? When all the college was sleeping, and he could easily have fled—”

  “The man was drunk,” pointed out Langdon, in a tone of disgust. “I—and others—remonstrated with the boy about retaining a drunkard in his service, but he would not listen. Preferring, I suppose, the prestige—if one can call it that—of owning a Negro to the drudgery of making up his own bed.”

  “If your honor will pardon me for speaking,” said Weyountah, “in my experience of the man, Diomede was not a habitual drunkard. He would go on an occasional spree for an evening if he thought Mr. Fairfield was not going to return to his rooms until late, as was the case, I believe, last night. But this is not the same thing as a man who punishes the bottle night after night.”

  “’Tis but a step, and a short one,” replied the president coldly, “from the ‘occasional spree,’ as you call it, to greater and greater frequency as the demon takes hold. Surely you of all people do not deny the pattern?”

  “No, sir.” Weyountah’s voice held level, despite the reference—which Abigail considered tactless in the extreme—to the notorious effect that white man’s liquor had on many of the Indians who used it. “I speak only of my observation as to where Diomede stood in regard to that pattern.”

  “With what was he stabbed?” Abigail wondered if Perry would let her get a look at the wounds themselves and decided that a request to do so would only exacerbate a futile situation.

  “The paper knife from Mr. Fairfield’s desk was in Diomede’s hand, m’am,” said Weyountah.

  “Would a paper knife be sharp enough to kill a man?” And do I need to worry about Johnny getting his hands on John’s from the study desk and murdering Charley while I’m away?

  The Indian edged between doctor and president—neither of whom looked as if they would have made way for him, had either been able to find a good reason for standing on his dignity to that extent—and returned from the outer study a moment later with the bloodied weapon in his hand. “The edge is no sharper than it has to be to cut paper,” he said. “But the point would surely be a deadly weapon in a strong man’s hand.”

  A bit gingerly, Abigail took the hilt and touched the point with her fingertip. Aside from the smallness of the guard and the narrow blade, it would have almost served as an actual weapon: English-made, steel, with ivory plates on the hilt and a blade about seven inches long. Long enough and strong enough to reach the heart.

  “And is there anything missing from the room? Where did Mr. Fairfield keep his money, for instance?”

  “In his pockets, if he had any,” replied Weyountah with a sigh. “Or in a desk-drawer or lying on the corner of the desk. Every excursion involved George searching for money—” A slight break flawed his voice as he remembered a hundred or a thousand tiny, trivial scenes. “And he never had a penny.”

  “I thought his father was rich!”

  “He is, m’am. And George had credit all over town. But actual money in his pockets—”

  “The boy was a gamester.” Langdon’s voice reeked with disgust. “And worse,” he added darkly, meaning, Abigail guessed from Mrs. Squills’s remarks at the Stair, given to wenching. Weyountah laid the paper knife on the corner of the desk and looked over the untidy papers there.

  More than untidy, thought Abigail. Shuffled up together into loose bundles, the way Sam’s were when he had been looking for something in
his overcrowded study.

  It could just mean that George Fairfield had mislaid his money and had searched his own desk. Still . . .

  Two Spanish doubloons and a couple of Pennsylvania pound notes lay on the floor, as if they’d fallen when the desk was opened. A dozen or so books—the Iliad and the Aeneid, lexicons of Greek and Latin, Hoole’s Catonis Disticha de Moribus and Ezekiel Cheever’s A Short Introduction, to the Latin Tongue, for the use of the lower forms in the Latin School, Being the Accidence abridged and compiled in that most easy and accurate method wherein the famous Mr. Ezekiel Cheever taught, were piled on a chair higgledy-piggledy.

  She remembered the tidiness of the front chamber. Looking around her, every portion of the bedroom save the vicinity of the desk attested to Diomede’s housekeeping skills.

  The stain on the floor was exactly between the desk—which stood beneath the window—and the bed.

  She asked, “Does it look to you as if George had done any work at this desk? As if he’d been able to do work at it as it is?”

  The Indian frowned and reconsidered the papers—the fact that no single paper lay in the center, that the inkstand and standish had been moved to the windowsill . . . the fact that, in effect, the desk looked as if someone had taken everything off it, then piled it back on . . .

  “He did keep up with his work,” said Abigail, standing at Weyountah’s side. “He spoke of it last night . . . See, there’s been wax dripped on the surface of the desk, fresh, it looks like, and under these papers . . . When did George come in last night, do you know?”

  “The curfew is nine o’clock,” pointed out Dr. Perry, rather severely, from the door.

  Weyountah said nothing, but the glance he gave Abigail spoke clearly enough.

  “Mrs. Squills spoke yesterevening of George meeting a friend out by the stables,” she went on, turning toward Horace, who now stood a little behind the physician and the college president in the doorway. “Horace, you walked with George from the inn after he so very kindly saw to my lodging . . .”

  In a stifled voice, Horace said, “We—George and I—parted between Massachusetts Hall and the brewhouse. I-I did warn him ’twas nearly nine, and he said he’d not be late.”

  And quietly, Weyountah added, with a warning glance toward Perry and President Langdon, “George had many friends. If he . . .”

  Voices raised in the staircase outside, followed immediately by a thumping on the outer door. “Dr. Perry, sir—!”

  At the same moment, Abigail became aware of voices in the quadrangle below.

  Going to the window, she saw Pugh’s tall, skinny follower Lowth slumped unconscious beside the door of the staircase, with two of his companions bending over him. Another young man lay on the ground, surrounded by his friends, a short distance away. She turned back as the excited young Mr. Yeovil burst into the study, crying, “Dr. Perry, Dr. Perry, they’ve been poisoned!”

  Mr. Ryland, hard on his heels, added, “Dr. Perry, there’s something very strange going on . . .”

  Sheriff Congreve led Diomede away to the town jail while everyone piled and crowded after the stricken scholars as they were carried into the parlor of Massachusetts Hall. Since one of them was Mr. Lowth, Pugh and Jasmine Blossom had apparently lost any interest in guarding the staircase; even as she turned from the window, Abigail heard some of them coming up the stairs. They’ll trample over the room like cattle . . .

  She dropped behind as Langdon and Perry followed everyone out, then quickly turned down counterpane and sheet—she’d heard both John and her friend Joseph Warren speak of doing this with the victims of murder, and it made good sense to her—and caught up the paper knife, intending to compare the width of its blade with the size of the wounds. But as she turned back, she stopped, stood for a moment, and looked down into George’s face: that young man she’d met but yesterday, that personable young gentleman, as Diomede had called him, who had talked of men as he’d found them, who’d never been able to tell Ajax son of Telamon from Ajax son of the other fellow, who’d come running from an assignation with a willing wench to make sure she, Abigail, was housed in the best inn of the town . . .

  Someone killed him, she thought, and her throat tightened suddenly, her eyes flooded with tears. The slight changes of mortality had already taken hold, so that his face was not so disturbing as a man’s new-dead. Her uneasy horror was gone, leaving only memory and pity.

  Someone stabbed him, ended his life at the age of—what? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? With all the world before him . . .

  Feet in the stairway; voices in the chamber.

  What was it the Romans said? Ultio prima, secundae lacrimae. Vengeance first, then tears . . .

  No, she corrected herself, as she laid the blade against that strangely ivory-colored flesh. ’Tis not vengeance I seek but salvation for the man who didn’t do this crime . . .

  All four of the wounds looked a good half-inch wider than the width of the blade.

  Swiftly, Abigail pulled down the young man’s nightshirt, drew up the coverlet, even as she heard the doctor’s voice cry angrily in the staircase, “Here, this won’t do!” She dunked her handkerchief in the water-pitcher and was wiping the last traces of blood from her fingers when Joseph Ryland came in.

  “Are you finished here, Mrs. Adams? Dr. Perry has sent for a litter to carry poor George’s body to the infirmary—”

  “What happened out there?”

  The bachelor-fellow shook his head. “Lowth was suddenly taken queer, he said, and slumped down as if he’d been shot. In the next second Mosson went down, too—Waller and Blossom said they were feeling queer . . .”

  Abigail stared at him for a moment, then said, “Oh, those wretches!” and dashed past him and out into the study.

  The cut-glass rum-bottle that had stood next to Diomede’s bloodstained pallet had been tucked unobtrusively behind a chair. It was empty.

  “And it serves them right!” she exclaimed. “Only now of course there’s no way of proving it—”

  “Poison?” Ryland followed her, brow drawn down half in consternation, half in disbelief. “How could—?”

  “I have drugged their possets, Lady Macbeth says.” Abigail sniffed at the carafe, but could smell only the overwhelming reek of rum. “More likely laudanum than poison—”

  “Meant for George?”

  “Those idiots,” said Weyountah, going to the window—meaning, Abigail guessed, Lowth and Jasmine and Waller and Mosson who’d thought it was so clever to sneak an extra drink while everyone was milling about . . . “’Twould serve them well if it were poison.”

  Ryland and Abigail—carafe in hand—were already hurrying down the stairs.

  In the parlor where Abigail had waited last night for young Fairfield, dark little Mr. Blossom was being plied with hot coffee while half-a-dozen masters and students were trying to revive Lowth and Mosson. The smell of burnt feathers and panic filled the air. “They’ve been poisoned!” cried Mr. Yeovil again, and Pugh shouted to a little freshman named Pinkstone—presumably, thought Abigail, his own luckless “fag”—to run fetch coffee from his own room, which was on the staircase of the new hall directly across the quadrangle from that of Fairfield, Weyountah, and Horace.

  “They have not,” retorted Abigail, entering hard upon this line. “Mr. Blossom, did you drink the rum in the carafe in George’s room? I thought so. Mr. Waller?” A tall young man with a long, horsey face—sitting with his head between his knees in a circle of frightened acquaintances—jerked upright shakily and gazed at her with pupils narrowed to pinpricks, even in the gloom of the parlor.

  “I did, too—” gasped another young man in a green robe. “I-I feel so queer . . .”

  “I’m sure you do,” returned Abigail briskly. “There was laudanum in the rum, which would amply account for poor Diomede not waking up—”

  “And for poor George—” cried someone else.

  “The blackguard!” exclaimed another young gentleman. “To poison his maste
r, then drink himself stupid in celebration—”

  “Nonsense!” snapped Abigail, taken aback this interpretation of her evidence. “Fairfield was stabbed, for one thing, and for another, a killer would have to be stupid to take a drug like that before even getting out of the room—”

  “It’s exactly what that nigger of mine would do,” remarked Pugh, straightening up from beside the pile of coats where Lowth lay. “Only he’d probably drink off half the rum before drugging it, to give himself a little Dutch courage—” He put his hands on his hips, regarded Abigail’s openmouthed indignation with some amusement. “They don’t think the way white people do, m’am,” he said. “You ask any man who’s grown up among ’em as I have. They don’t look ahead—not two minutes, not two feet. Like dealing with a lot of fouryear-olds.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  Pugh raised one eyebrow. “Got a lot of ’em in Boston, have you, m’am, to know ’em so well?”

  And a man with the accent of the Carolinas affirmed, “Ours sure don’t think before they act.”

  As she looked from face to face, Abigail was shocked to observe how many of these young men were nodding—some of them unwillingly, but accepting the judgment as it stood. Someone said, “Poor old George!” and someone else, “My Aunt Caro was killed by a nigger maid—”

  “And what do you expect,” demanded Dr. Langdon, rising from beside Dr. Perry where both men had knelt beside the vaguely stirring Mr. Mosson, “when you have grown up in an atmosphere envenomed by the vice of slavery? When a poor Negro is driven to desperation by the ill-treatment of a vicious master—”