The Ninth Daughter

by Barbara Hamilton

  “Were the shutters closed?” she asked. “The night of the murder?”

  “Oh, aye.” Mr. Ballagh nodded, from the doorway where he’d gone to stand talking to Mr. Gridley. “With the species of ruffians that spend their time in the Bull, you want to keep things locked up tight, once the sun goes in. The Fishwire’d keep her door open later nor most, for her trade, an’ she was always havin’ trouble with ’em.”

  Another neighbor nodded. “We was all ever havin’ trouble with ’em, m’am. One or another—sailors, sometimes, sometimes just the riffraff that unloads the boats—”

  “She’d get a gentleman, now an’ now, though.” The informant—swarthy as an Indian with an Irish brogue that could have been cut like cheese with a wire—explained to Abigail. “From the Bull, y’see. Gentlemen’ll come for the cards, an’ maybe so-be-it the deacons of their churches won’t see ’em takin’ a drink—”

  “Maybe so-be-it they’re deacons theirselves,” added a Mrs. Bailey, and got a general laugh.

  “Well, sailor or gent, they’d come down here, see the light, an’ maybe think it was a whore’s house. Or others’d come and pound on her door and curse at her, and call her witch—”

  “I throwed a man out, just the week before the killing happened,” assented Ballagh. “One of the gentlemen, he was, and cursin’ like a sailor at her, because he couldn’t do his rifle-drill—beggin’ your pardon, m’am—with some drab over at the Bull.”

  “Lord, yes!” Mrs. Kern laughed. “And he wasn’t the first or the only—You mind Abednego Sellars, that’s deacon at the New South Meeting? He had a ladyfriend lived in rooms at the Mermaid, in Lynn Street; he was here all the time at evening, all cloaked up like he thought nobody here would see his silver shoe buckles, to buy the where-withal to do his doxy justice. Then when things didn’t work out just as he’d planned, he’d be back, midnight sometimes, a-poundin’ on the Fishwire’s door and screamin’ at her that she was a witch who’d put a word on him, to keep him from doin’ the deed.”

  There was general laughter, and Abigail traded a startled glance with Surry. Both of them knew Deacon Sellars, if not well, at least for a number of years. He was a pious and prosperous chandler, a pillar of his church and—Abigail knew—likewise a pillar of the Sons of Liberty, whose pamphlets he was in the habit of taking out of Boston in his deliveries of soap and candles to surrounding towns.

  While it was true that Boston was a bustling town that seemed both enormous and crowded to her—particularly when first she had come to live there—she realized that in the five years that she’d lived on and off in Boston, she had come to know, at least by sight, scores of its inhabitants to whom she had never spoken, and by reputation, many more. Those who, like Deacon Sellars, had lived all their lives in the town would know its byways, and where to come if they wanted to deceive their wives or play cards or get drunk out of sight of the elders of their respectable churches.

  And heaven knew, you couldn’t throw a rock in Boston without hitting someone at least sympathetic to the Sons of Liberty.

  On the other hand, she reflected, as she and Surry made their retreat past the Blue Bull and out into Love Lane once more . . . On the other hand, it was curious.

  And it might behoove her to find out a little more about Abednego Sellars. And she couldn’t keep herself from mentally adding, Carefully . . .

  It was nearly ten in the morning—and poor Pattie was once again saddled with keeping the children at their lessons and beginning preparations for dinner in between her own, heavier tasks—and Abigail turned the corner onto Middle Street with a pang of guilt. A door opened just ahead of her and three men staggered out, dressed for some evening party and laughing with the exhausted silliness of men who’ve spent the night in the back room of a tavern (and the door was, indeed, of that description). Surry leaped nimbly aside. Abigail, less quick, found herself with one of them in her arms.

  She stepped back and released him with an exclamation of disgust.

  “Pardon, m’am—pardon, m’am,” mumbled the stumbler’s friend, catching the stumbler by the elbow. “M’friend’s not well, not at all well . . .” The third member of the party hooted with laughter.

  “There, Percy, you’ve gone and offended a respectable matron! Your wife will have words to say to you!” He caught his two friends by the shoulders, and the three of them staggered away down the hill toward Lynn Street, leaving Abigail gazing after them, not certain if she should be troubled or merely bemused.

  The young man who’d spoken to her—drunk as a lord and elegant in a coat of blue satin beneath his caped gray greatcoat—looked a great deal like Jeffrey Malvern.

  Seventeen

  Scarlett’s Wharf, where the body of the prostitute Jenny Barry had been found, lay barely four hundred yards from Love Lane. “There won’t be anythin’ to see now, m’am,” warned Surry, as they descended the hill, past taverns and tenements, past public houses where men from the country gathered, quietly talking, and when they fell silent, the tolling of the church bells filled in like the heavy scent of lightning in the air.

  “I know.”

  Had her hair been red? Blonde? Coldstone hadn’t said.

  Had she been young? So many of the girls who came and went through the doors of the Queen of Argyll tavern near the head of the wharf seemed, to Abigail’s eyes, barely children. Others had the bitter faces of crones, though probably no older than her youngest sister Betsy, who was barely twenty-three. Despite her decent upbringing and wary loathing of drunkenness, Abigail felt her heart contract with pity at the sight of them. You could not open yourself to six or eight or ten men a day, she thought, without the assistance of alcohol—of something to keep your mind from what you did and what you’d become. Her thoughts went back to Mrs. Kern and her daughters, hanging gentlemen’s shirts on the stretched lines, their hands red with lye. The youngest one—whom Mrs. Kern had sent without a second thought to fetch Mr. Ballagh from the tavern—had looked barely six.

  More men loitered on the wharves, waiting their time to take a shift at guarding the Dartmouth’s cargo to prevent it being unloaded. She crossed Ship Street, pattens clanking on the bricks, to the short wooden platform that stretched out over the salt-smelling waters, and behind her caught the words “liberties of Englishmen . . .” “. . . Parliament . . .” “. . . make us slaves, sure as if we was Negroes ourselves!”

  From the head of Scarlett’s Wharf the Dartmouth was hidden by the weathered buildings erected on the quarter mile-plus of the Long Wharf and the clusters of masts beyond; by the shoulder of Fort Hill and the gray stone mass of the Battery. “You think the Governor’s gonna call the soldiers, to get that tea ashore, m’am?” asked Surry, when Abigail’s eyes turned in that direction. And what did they make of it, Abigail wondered: the Scipios and Surrys of the world. Men and women who not only could not vote, but whom the law permitted to be bought and sold, as if they were truly the cattle that Virginians sometimes called them. What did they make of all this furor among the whites, over three-pence a pound on tea?

  “I shouldn’t like to be the commander of the regiment trying to implement the order.” She nodded toward a group of newly arrived youths, making their way along the quay under the watchful eye of a bearded older man. “I understand that the Dartmouth’s captain has offered to take his cargo back to England, but Governor Hutchinson has ordered the vessel to remain until the tea is unloaded and delivered to its consignees.”

  “I will purely like,” remarked Surry, as they turned south and started to walk along Fish Street toward home, “to see him try.” She had, Abigail reflected, been with Sam Adams a long time.

  Abigail pulled her cloak tighter about her shoulders as the gray wind cut at her, tucked her chin into the layers of scarves that swaddled her neck. At any other time, I would be rejoicing.

  At any other time—ten days ago—I would have cried out against anyone who tried to stop any of the Sons of Liberty from their endeavors, for any reason. Ou
r liberties—our rights as English citizens—take precedence over the misdeeds of any individual.

  In her mind she saw the little black cat on the windowsill, washing itself philosophically with the stump of its paw.

  . . . deacon at the New Brick Meeting . . . a-poundin’ on the Fishwire’s door and screamin’ at her . . .

  Surry strolled beside her, half a pace behind as behooved a slave, but commenting now and then on this or that ship, this or that group of countrymen . . . Comfortable with Abigail, as with a member of the family. And so she was, reflected Abigail, glancing at her: plump and quite pretty in her spotless white head-wrap and calico dress. She had long ago guessed that Cousin Sam used this woman as a concubine, and that Sam’s wife, Bess, if not precisely delighted by the arrangement, had accepted it. They were both good-natured women, they were both dearly fond of Sam, and both would rather work together to keep the household comfortable than rend it with recrimination and jealousy. Had she been white, and a free man’s wife, Surry would have been precisely what Bess was—as respectable a housewife as she was an “honest” slave.

  Thus it was no good asking her if she knew anyone who might have known Jenny Barry. The gulf that divided the respectable from the raffish was deep, and cut across both slave and free. Even a woman as poor and as slatternly as Hattie Kern would feel deeply insulted, had Abigail asked her about the dead prostitute’s friends, enemies, clients. What makes you think I’d know a woman like that?

  A man could cross that gulf, of course. As Jeffrey Malvern obviously did, coming to the North End taverns to play cards and drink—it occurred to Abigail to wonder if he, like Abednego Sellars, had a “ladyfriend” with “rooms” somewhere among these anonymous little rear buildings and yards. No man—anger prickled behind her breastbone at the thought—would suffer ostracism from friends and fellow members of the Congregation, merely for speaking to a publican, a whoremaster, a thief.

  Paul Revere could help her there. But Revere was still away, carrying pamphlets and broadsides to every town in the colony, bidding all men who loved their country to come to Boston and stand against tyranny.

  As they passed Hitchborn’s Wharf, Surry pointed to the whaleboats that were putting out for Castle Island, carrying the families and property of the tea consignees, seeking protection from the Crown against the mob that was growing larger by the day.

  Knowing that in all probability she would be immured within her own house for the rest of the day, making dinner and performing the belated tasks of housewifery, after parting from Surry by the town dock Abigail made her way to Hanover Street. She found the shutters up at Orion Hazlitt’s shop, but, hearing voices down the narrow passway to the yard, went back and found him endeavoring to explain to his mother why he was going out, yet again.

  She was weeping pitifully, her arms around him like a lover. “But why, son? You’re always leaving me alone now. You didn’t used to. How have I angered you?”

  “Mother, I’m not angry. I could never be angry with you. I’ll be back this afternoon.” He tightened his arm around her, bent his head, to kiss her full on the lips. “I would never abandon my best beloved.”

  She laid her head on his chest. “But you have,” she whispered. “You have left me, over and over. Please tell me, how I can win back your love.”

  “Mother—” he said desperately.

  “What if it should rain?” she begged, in a small voice like a child’s. “What if the rain should pour down, and the waters rise, and the house begin to float away? All the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered; fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered . . . and all that was in the dry land died.”

  “I won’t let that happen.” Over her starched lace cap his eyes met Abigail’s, and there was a haunted flicker in them—wondering if I saw that kiss?—as if begging her to understand. He looked as if he had neither eaten nor slept properly in many nights. “I didn’t leave you alone the other night, did I? When it started raining, and you were so frightened, I came back.”

  “You did,” she whispered. “You held my hand. All flesh died, that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth . . .” And she clasped his fingers now, and kissed them with a passion that made Abigail cringe. No wonder the poor man did not feel able to bring a wife into his house. “I could not live without you, now that we are outcasts, exiles, wanderers upon the face of the earth . . .”

  “Nor I without you, Mother. Truly, honestly. But I must leave now—”

  “Of course, dearest. Just come inside for a moment and see how I’ve embroidered those new pillowcases for your bed, just the way you liked them—”

  “You showed me already, Mother, and they’re beautiful.” A note of desperation crept into his voice. “And I’ll see them again when I return. Damnation—”

  A young woman emerged from the house, whom Abigail vaguely recognized as the “girl” indispensible to any household in the town, a lanky, broad-shouldered female with a long, rectangular jaw and dirty hair.

  “Son!” pleaded Mrs. Hazlitt, suddenly frantic. “Don’t—” She pulled against the grip of the young woman, clutched at her son’s hands, then the lapels of his coat, as he tried to step away; she began to struggle and weep. “Why have you stopped loving me, son? Why won’t you tell me what I’ve done to make you hate me? There is a generation that curseth their father, and doth not bless their mother! There is a generation whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives . . .”

  The young man turned swiftly, and Abigail walked with him out through the passway to the street. “She’ll forget all this by the time I’m home, you know,” he said quietly, seeing the trouble on Abigail’s face. “I hate it: I hate having to do it. And she—she doesn’t understand. She’s never understood—” He shook his head, as if trying to shake away sacking wrapped around his eyes and brain. “Have you heard anything? Anything at all?”

  Abigail debated for a moment about telling him that at least two other women had been murdered in the same fashion as Perdita Pentyre, then put the thought aside. “I know Rebecca hasn’t fled to stay with her maid,” she said. “Her husband—”

  He had been wavering, caught between his fear for his mother, and the tug of the tolling bells. Now he grew still. “You’ve seen him?”

  “He has been most helpful, Orion.”

  “If I had—” he began impulsively, then stopped himself, and stood for a moment, looking past her, his face wooden with anger and distress. “He’s shown before he’ll do anything to possess her, up to and including putting her under lock and key! Do you think you can trust him?” he asked at last.

  “I think so,” she said slowly.

  “Do you ever wish—?” He hesitated, then let his breath out in a rush. When she put her hand on his arm, Abigail was disconcerted to feel him trembling. “Let me know,” he said, “if you learn anything. If you find anything. I know it’s—” He shook his head again, and rubbed his eyes. “Her husband will always be her husband.” He sounded like a man reminding himself. “And Mother will always be my mother. I know that. Yet I can be her friend.”

  Wish what? Abigail watched him stride away down the slope of Wine Lane toward Faneuil Hall. Wish that instead of sitting at home comforting his mother when the rain began Thursday night, he had been still at Rebecca Malvern’s, when Perdita Pentyre’s killer came knocking at the shutter? Asking in a voice she knew, to let him in?

  Wish that he had stood at God’s elbow, there at the beginning of Time, and asked that the woman he loved not be given in marriage to a bone-dry merchant with two half-grown children? That he could spend his days with a mother whose grip upon him was an embrace and not a stranglehold?

  And in her mind she heard her father’s gentle voice: But we were there, my Nab, at the beginning of Time with God. And we saw, and assented to, every single act and event of the lives He drew up for us, seeing i
n them His wisdom, before we entered into the human condition of blindness day-to-day.

  The sound of the church bells followed her home.

  At least one portion of her investigation proved easy, and God had pity on her—or perhaps on poor Pattie, condemned to glean behind her erratic reaping these days. John came home to dinner late, when the meeting was done, with the news that none of the consignees had yet resigned his position, and that the Governor was still refusing to let the Dartmouth leave port. “Some of the men are returned, from the villages,” he said, ladling the thick stew of chicken out onto the plates held by Johnny to serve parents and siblings. “We’re meeting again, at the Green Dragon, at eight tonight. I beg your pardon, Portia, for deserting you again this way . . .”

  “Then unless you wish me to behave like Mrs. Hazlitt,” she said, “and cling weeping to your coat, may I send to Bess, to pass the evening in her company?”

  Bess—born and raised, like Sam, in Boston—brought her daughter Hannah with her, a lively girl of seventeen, with her father’s broad shoulders and sturdy build and her father’s quicksilver mind. Both had heard already all about the expedition with Surry into the North End, so there was little explanation necessary. All Abigail had to do was say, at the right point in the exclamations of horror and shock, “The curious thing was, someone spoke of Abednego Sellars as having bought herbs of this Mrs. Fishwire. Surely not Mr. Sellars the chandler? Why, he is a deacon!”

  “Nab,” said Bess, wisely shaking her head, “you’re the smartest woman I know, and married to the most long-headed man of my acquaintance, yet it’s plain you come out of a country parsonage. A whited sepulchre,” she said, with an expression that added, There are plenty of those around.