The Ninth Daughter

by Barbara Hamilton

  Reluctantly, Abigail had agreed. Between Charles Malvern’s vindictiveness, and the general Boston attitude that a woman who left her husband must have done so from a preference for profligacy, it had been difficult enough for Rebecca to find a place to live where she might ply any trade other than prostitution. Sewing endless mountains of shirts for Mrs. Tillet and attending three sermons every Sunday at the New Brick Meeting-House were part of what she had to do, to go on living in her little house.

  “May we go back there?” John asked now.

  “There’s naught to be seen,” Tillet responded immediately. “The boys coming through after the soldiers, they’ve tracked all up, and carried away what they could, belike.”

  “Mrs. Malvern is our friend,” persisted Abigail. “If nothing else, we’d like to—”

  “There’s naught back there.” Mrs. Hester Tillet emerged from the back parlor of the shop, a woman of commanding height and substantial girth, with arms like a stonecutter’s from a lifetime of carrying bolts of cloth. “Nor will there be. ’Twas the last straw, and I’d had enough of her weeks ago. Disobliging, lazy slut, always finding some reason why she couldn’t do a little of the work she contracted to do as part of us giving her the place so cheap. If I can turn out a handsome shirt in an hour it’s sure anyone can, who puts their mind to it, and nobody needs more than a few hours’ sleep at night: I certainly don’t. And now she’s run off, and left me with twenty orders to fill. I’ve had enough, and will have no more.”

  “You can’t turn her out for what happened!” protested Abigail, and Mrs. Tillet turned upon her, arms akimbo and jaw protruding like a bulldog getting ready to bite.

  “So you’re telling me what I can do with my own property now, Mrs. Adams? Well, I’m telling you, I can’t and won’t put up with a woman who brings such friends onto my property the minute our backs are turned, to murder one another and bring the whole neighborhood tramping through. We have a position to uphold in our church and in this community, and we won’t stand for it.” And, seeing her husband looking wretched, she added, “Will we, Mr. Tillet?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “The woman asked for what was coming to her and was asking for it for some time. I don’t wish to seem coldhearted, but I think we all know the difference between the trials that God sends to prove the righteous, and the deserved punishment that befalls those who deliberately put themselves in the way of sinners.”

  “Do you, Mrs. Tillet?” The stuffy air of the shop made Abigail’s head ache, and the woman’s grating voice was an iron file on her nerves. “I honor your wisdom, then, because that’s something I’ve never had the presumption to assume that I could determine—nor the callousness to withhold the benefit of the doubt.”

  She stalked from the shop, expecting John to follow her. He did not, and as the door closed behind her she heard his voice, quick and low, “You must excuse her . . . overwrought . . . closest of friends . . .” She was within an ace of turning back and asking how dared he take their side against her, but was too angry even for that. She strode as far as the corner of Cross Street, then stopped, her temper ebbing and leaving her feeling cold and rather drained.

  A few moments later she heard John’s step on the cobbles. In a marveling voice, he murmured, “You’ve never withheld the benefit of the doubt?”

  “Only from those who don’t deserve it,” she retorted. Then, blushed. “Thank you for covering my retreat. The woman never fails to enrage me, and I won’t say my words were uncalled-for because they were called-for . . . but I would shake poor Nabby to pieces if she’d said them. I don’t know what got into me. I must go back and apologize . . .”

  “If you make the attempt I shall put you over my shoulder and carry you bodily home.” John took her elbow, guided her firmly in the direction of Queen Street. “I stayed only to keep Mrs. Tillet from following you into the street and pulling your hair out. Send her a note tomorrow, when she’ll have cooled down—except that I don’t think she ever cools down. As to what got into you,” he added grimly, “after this morning’s events, I’m astonished you’re not in bed with the vapors. I asked if I could come next week and collect Rebecca’s things—”

  “You can’t let her—” Furious, she tried to turn back, and John’s hand tightened on her arm.

  “I can’t very well stop her from doing what she is determined to do. What I can do is keep her from selling them at a slopshop. She said she’d have them ready for me.”

  “After taking out what she considers she’s entitled to in payment of rent,” Abigail grumbled. “Secure in the knowledge that with so many strangers tramping through, the absence of this little thing or that, can be blamed on others and not herself. Who will miss a trifle?”

  “If Rebecca returns safe to miss them,” replied John, “I shall be on my knees, giving thanks to God. Now come home and rest.”

  A bigail wasn’t certain she would be able to close her eyes, after what she had seen that morning, and the anxiety about Rebecca’s possible whereabouts that gnawed her; nor was she entirely willing to make the experiment. Finding Pattie still (at three in the afternoon!) cleaning grates and emptying ashes—with the enthusiastic help of Nabby and Johnny, who were seldom permitted to get themselves that dirty—Abigail would have changed her dress to help her: “If you don’t lie down on your bed and be quiet I shall dose you with laudanum and oblige you to be quiet,” John threatened. Then, seeing her uncertain face, he added so softly that only she could hear, “I shall stay there with you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I have briefs to read. What I should have done this morning—and, God help me, what I should be doing tomorrow morning when I’ll be out at the British camp.”

  So Abigail rested, and found herself, as she had feared, back in Rebecca’s house, climbing the dark stairs with the stink of blood all around her; hearing Rebecca sobbing in her bedroom, with the door tied shut, and horrible sounds drifting up from the floor below. But when she unraveled the knotted clothes-rope, and got the door open, Rebecca’s bed was empty, and instead of that tiny blood-spot on the pillow, the whole of the counterpane was soaked with gore.

  Dinner over—dishes washed, pots scoured, scouring-sand swept up from the floor, floor washed, Tommy prevented from falling into the fire—Abigail wrapped up a few pieces of chicken and the extra potatoes she had cooked, added half a loaf of bread and a small crock of butter, and carried this meal to Hanover Street in her marketing basket for Orion Hazlitt. As she’d suspected she would, she found the shop shuttered and the young printer, haggard and distracted, in the keeping room, trying to get his mother to drink another glass of laudanum and water.

  “You remember how we used to play in the marshes?” Mrs. Hazlitt murmured sleepily. “You’d pick daisies and mallows, and we’d make long strings of them, you and I . . . We’d both come to evening service wearing crowns of them, my little King.” She pushed aside the cup, and framed his face with her hands. “You’re still my little King.”

  “I know, Mother.”

  “Am I still your Queen?”

  “Of course you are.”

  “And she”—she pointed an unsteady finger at Abigail as she stepped quietly through the rear door—“she is the whore of Babylon, the daughter of Eve . . . the worst of Eve’s nine daughters. The Meddling Woman, going about the streets, asking what doesn’t concern her. She is loud and stubborn; her feet abide not in her house—”

  “Now, Mother,” he said carefully (Abigail was well acquainted with what happened if one contradicted her), “ ’tis only Mrs. Adams. Surely you know Mrs. Adams? It’s quite dark, you just can’t see well—” Which was true. Winter dusk set in at four, and it was pitch-black now, though six was only just striking from the tower of the Meeting House in Brattle Square. A few tallow candles had been lit, but their feeble glow showed Abigail that very little had been accomplished in the way of cleaning. “You shouldn’t have,” he said, when Abigail uncovered her baske
t, and she thought he looked ready to weep, with exhaustion and gratitude.

  “Nonsense. Even whores of Babylon can see when their neighbors need help. I can help you upstairs with her,” she added, glancing toward Mrs. Hazlitt, who had subsided into a stertorous doze. Two of the flat, square black bottles stood on the table, one empty on its side; there was another on the chimney breast. How bad had she been, that he’d needed to dose her so?

  “Thank you.” He shook his head. “I think I’ll let her go as late as I can—a few hours anyway. ’Tis easier—you’ll pardon me saying so—taking her out to the privy in this state, than it is managing a chamber pot. She’s just . . .” He flinched, the muscles in his jaw suddenly tight. “It has been a bad day.”

  “No word of Rebecca?”

  He shook his head. “I was going to ask you the same. I haven’t been out, but Mr. Adams—Sam Adams—must have sent word, if she had . . .” His words fumbled, and he looked aside. Flinching, Abigail thought, from the inevitable conclusion, that the man who has murdered Perdita Pentyre has killed her, too.

  And why not? If she had gotten out of the house, if he had run her down in the alley or the rain-hammered dark of the street, would he have carried her body back to the house?

  Bracingly, she said, “If he left one body for all the world to find, he would have left two. We’ve learned who the murdered woman was, though: Perdita Pentyre.”

  He blinked at her, almost as if he did not recognize the name, then seemed to come to himself a little and said, “Perdita Pentyre? Colonel Leslie’s—” He bit back the word mistress , as if he thought Abigail had never heard the word and didn’t know what one was, and cleared his throat.

  “I’ll tell you of it later.” She glanced at the slumbering woman by the fire. “Will that wretched girl of yours be back tomorrow?”

  “I hope so. Damnation isn’t so bad—”

  “What?” Abigail blinked at the non sequitur.

  “Damnation. That’s her name. Damnation Awaits the Trembling Sinner.” A smile flickered across his face. “I’m lucky my mother had me before joining the congregation I grew up in, or I’d be called something like Breakteeth or Doomed unto Hell. As I say, Damnation isn’t a bad girl, just . . . lacking.” He touched his temple.

  “She will perish,” observed Mrs. Hazlitt, waking and regarding them with jade green eyes that seemed very brilliant with the narrowing-down of her pupils. “Four things the earth cannot bear: A servant when he reigneth; a fool when he is filled with meat; an odious woman when she is married; and a handmaid that is heir to her mistress. Jezebel the Queen was the daughter of Eve, and the Lord smote her, and with her her handmaid that was privy to all her ways. Have you brought us supper?” she asked, with a sudden, dazzling smile. “How very sweet of you, dear, though not at all necessary. It won’t take me but a moment to put together a green goose pie and some veal fritters; I’m sure my son has told you how well I cook. The prophet of the Lord says that my cooking would be sinful, if I were not so righteous myself.”

  And smiling, she fell asleep.

  When Abigail returned to her house it was to find Sam in the study, talking quietly with John. “Has there been any word?”

  Sam shook his head. “I’ve put out word to every patriot in the town,” he said. “And I’ve been to see Hancock. He’s having all his tea smugglers look in every cellar, every hidey-hole, every warehouse along the wharves—every nook and cranny throughout the town. Revere tells me that white-faced pup from the Provost’s office found Pentyre’s chaise sunk off Lee’s shipyard, and the chaise was all they found. No word of the book, either.”

  His brow clouded further when John told him of their visit to the Tillets’, and Mrs. Tillet’s declaration that all Rebecca’s things would be put out of the house. “I’ll see what I can do, about getting one of our men to rent it,” he said. “That way it can be searched properly.”

  “If you can find someone pious enough to suit Tillet,” muttered John.

  “Doesn’t have to be pious, my boy.” Sam grinned, putting on his hat. “Just an enemy of someone—like Charles Malvern—whom Tillet hates.”

  When Sam was gone, John put an arm around Abigail’s shoulders. The kitchen was quiet: the children engaged in playing with wooden soldiers near the hearth, Pattie working at her tatting, a task which to Abigail’s baffled disbelief gave her pleasure. The gray tabby cat, Messalina, purred by the fire, dreaming of the slaughter of mice. Precisely as things had been last night, thought Abigail: when she’d known her friend was safe, when the doors that looked into households of pain, and sourness, and distrust had all been shut. When she knew that she might sleep and dream of gardening, not blood.

  “She’ll return.” John rocked her softly in the clasp of his arm. “If harm had come to her, they would have found some sign of it by now.”

  Abigail put her hand over his. “I think you’re right,” she replied. “Which leads me to wonder—Why has she neither been found, nor come forth? And I can think of only two reasons. One is that she received a concussion when she was hit on the head—yet if that were so, would not the people who found her know her? Or at least, have heard by this time that she was being sought?”

  “I agree,” said John. “Furthermore, if she had been so severely injured, she could not have got far. And the second?”

  “Barring the romantical chance that she hid herself in the hold of a ship that is now on its way to China . . . She is hiding because she recognized the man who did it. And he knows she did.”

  Eight

  From Griffin’s Wharf it was a voyage of about half an hour to Castle Island. Dozens of small skiffs and sloops made the trip daily over the choppy gray waters of the harbor, bearing provisions for the men and fodder for the horses, firewood to heat the brick corridors of the squat fortress of Castle William and tailors, boot makers, wig makers, and wine merchants to make sure its officers had everything they needed for a comfortable stay. These little craft bore also the friends of the Crown, who were likewise friends of its representatives: the customs officials who relied on the soldiers to enforce His Majesty’s duties, the clerks who surrounded the Governor (a large number of them his relatives), the Royal Commissioners who carried out the King’s decrees. And, most recently, they carried the consignees to whom the Crown had given the monopoly on the East India Company’s tea.

  “The Company’s on the verge of bankruptcy, from paying for its own troops to take over land in India,” said John, as he handed Abigail down into the sloop of a farmer named Logan, who had agreed to carry them to the island. “The King’s lowered the customs duty on the tea, so that he can put the smugglers—like Mr. Hancock—out of business . . . it’ll barely be three pence a pound. Once it arrives here, there is no way it will not be sold—and then the King and Parliament will have their precedent, that it is legal for the King to tax goods that come to us, without our consent to the tax.”

  “And who cares about their constitutional right to consent to be taxed,” murmured Abigail, “if it means cheap tea?” She gripped the rail as the cold wind caught the Katrina’s sails, fixed her eye on the pine and granite tuft of Bird Island, the nearest of the small eyots that dotted the harbor’s deep channel. The clammy cold seemed to seep into her joints, and the pitching of the sea turned her stomach.

  “Are you all right?” John pulled his own scarf higher and tighter about his throat. “I will be quite safe, you know.” As Abigail had feared, she slept little. When John had come to bed after midnight she had been lying with open eyes, fearing what she would see when she closed them.

  “I know you can slay any number of British troopers with your bare hands,” she replied gravely. “Yet you may need someone to untie the boat, while you battle your way to the wharf.”

  John slapped his forehead. “I had forgot, we might have to fight our way out.” His eyes danced as they met hers. But there was a sober worry in them, that answered the fear in hers, and neither needed to speak of what they both knew
. On Castle Island, there was no chance that Sam could summon up a convenient armed mob to outnumber the available British troops. The only thing that might prevent Lieutenant Coldstone from arresting John the moment he set foot on Castle Island would be the fact that if he wished to do so secretly, he would have to detain Abigail as well.

  Exhausted as she had been by the time she’d lain down last night, Abigail had remained awake by the light of her single candle, picturing over and over in her mind every room of Rebecca’s house, both before and after Sam and the others had gone over it. What did they forget? What could Coldstone have found that convinced him of John’s guilt? No list, no fragment of paper . . . Had she, Abigail, dropped her handkerchief, for someone to deduce John’s presence from? Yet why (her overtired mind had picked endlessly at this detail) would John have been carrying his wife’s handkerchief?

  If they had found the brown-backed “Household Expenses” book, they would have gone to Sam, or Revere.

  The same could be said if their only ground for suspicion was that Richard Pentyre—that wealthy and fashionable friend of the Crown—was one of the consignees to whom a monopoly of the East India Company tea had been granted. John had always held himself aloof from the darker doings of the Sons of Liberty. Even his pamphlets argued in terms of reason and the Constitutional Rights of Englishmen, not Sam’s flamboyant demagoguery.

  Now, in the gray daylight, with the walls of Castle William bobbing ahead of them, Abigail shivered at the thought, What did they find in Mrs. Pentyre’s room?