“Of course it wasn’t,” said Abigail, startled at the girl’s assumption that it could have been and that Abigail would probably believe it.
“You must let me go find him!” pleaded Mrs. Hazlitt, as Damnation steered her firmly toward her chair. “You must let me speak to him, beg his forgiveness before it is too late—”
“Of course, m’am, but first you sit down—”
Without being told, Abigail checked the mantelpiece and the sideboard for the opium bottle, then darted upstairs to the bedroom. As before, the bottle stood on the mantelpiece there; as before, a brisk fire burned in the grate, warming the room; and as before, though it was close to nightfall, nobody had cleaned the room or tidied the bed that day, nor even pushed the trundle bed away out of sight. Lying across the foot of the trundle bed, discarded at waking presumably, was a man’s nightshirt. Yesterday’s stockings, that lay on the floor by the trundle’s foot, were a pair of yellow ones that Abigail recognized as Orion’s.
She returned downstairs, and helped Damnation dose the struggling, weeping woman beside the fire, despite wailed threats that the Lord would smite them both and cast them down with Jezebel from the window to be eaten by dogs, and pleas that she had seen her son begging for her to come to him.
Walking home in the early falling darkness, Abigail tried to put aside the lingering distaste of that frowsy, smelly room. The nightshirt and stockings called up other images, of Mrs. Hazlitt dragging her son’s lips down to hers: my treasure, she had called him, my King . . .
No wonder the poor man threw himself into his work for the Sons of Liberty with such passion. Anything to be doing something other than what his life was with her . . . anything to have even the illusion of real life.
The Lord seeth not as man seeth: for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.
Abigail found herself wondering very much what the Lord saw when He looked on Nehemiah Tillet’s heart.
Twenty-six
Midmorning—the first break she had in transferring garment after waterlogged garment from the lye-tubs in which they’d soaked all night to the cauldrons of boiling rinse-water—Abigail changed her dress, smoothed her hair, and walked with John—who had himself spent the morning with Thaxter trying to catch up on legal papers neglected in favor of leading meetings and writing pamphlets—to Milk Street again. She had hoped that yesterday would have brought a letter from Miss Fluckner to Mr. Barnaby, but though the whiff of smoke still floated from what Abigail guessed to be the kitchen chimney, no window was unshuttered, and no footman opened to John’s repeated pounding at the door.
“I’ll write to Coldstone,” said Abigail, as they walked back home. “Sam can change his precious codes—or explain to Philomela, on Judgment Day, after she is murdered by this monster, why he thought their preservation as they stand was more important than her life.”
She thought John might have said something about how short the time was until the seventeenth—the day by which the Dartmouth’s cargo must be confiscated to pay the harbor dues—but he remained silent.
Shortly after she, Pattie, Nabby, and Johnny commenced the horrendous task of lifting out each dripping, steaming shirt, sheet, chemise, or baby-clout from the slowly cooling rinse-water to wring and hang to dry, Thaxter appeared in the kitchen door with the information that Mr. Malvern was here to see her.
As it had been during Lieutenant Coldstone’s call last Wednesday, the parlor was arctically cold, but as on last Wednesday, Pattie—by some miracle of efficiency—had already that morning swept the grate and laid a fire. Flames crackled cheerily as Abigail entered to receive a bow from her guest. She had been used to thinking of the tough, grim-faced little merchant as old before his time, yet seeing him now she was struck by how facile her earlier judgment had been. A week and a half ago, he had been merely weatherworn and wrinkled. Now he was old. His shoulders bowed, and the lines of his face had not merely deepened but slackened under the burden of dread.
Abigail cried, “Sir!” in consternation, and instead of curtseying, clasped his hands. “You ought not to have come.”
“You think I fear the rabble that have flooded into this town?” He sniffed, and took the seat that Coldstone had, only after Abigail herself sat down. “The lascars in Singapore would eat the lot of them for breakfast, and I managed to deal with them smartly enough. If His Majesty—” He caught himself, took a deep breath, as if forcing down the crimson anger rising to his face. “I’m quite well, Mrs. Adams,” he added, in a quieter voice. He will never be capable of gentleness, she thought. But she had the impression of looking at a granite slab that had been broken, to let the first shoots of green peep through. “And feeling a bit of a poke-nose, for I know had you learned anything—anything at all—you would have writ me, as you said.”
“And so I would,” said Abigail. “In the past week I have run up one blind alley and down another, chasing spec ters—”
Like poor Mrs. Hazlitt, conversing with the glowing blue ghost of her son, conjured by her frenzied need not to let him from her sight? She pushed the thought from her mind, though it made her stammer a little.
“I take it communication with Mrs. Moore yielded nothing?”
Abigail shook her head.
“Might—Forgive a man who’s lived hard, for his suspicions—You do not think Mrs. Malvern might have instructed her to write that she was not there, when in fact she was?”
He brought the words out carefully, not like a story thought-out beforehand but like phrases in a foreign language, recently learned: an effort to break a long-held pattern of rough and hasty speech that touched Abigail strangely. Whether this new learning would hold the first time he lost his temper was another matter—she knew how desperately hard it was, to break a habit even as trivial as biting one’s cuticles—but he was clearly trying. She wondered who he’d asked for pointers. Scipio?
“I think not, sir,” she replied. “I made the journey out to Townsend myself—”
“Good God, woman! In this weather?” His old self slammed out of the shadows of self-imposed restraint. “It’s at the ends of the bloody earth!”
“So I learned.” She hid a smile. “Yet I had to be sure.”
“Of all the damfool harebrained—” He caught himself in hand, and added, “Thank you. I would not for the world have asked it of you. No, no,” he added, as she reached for the handbell—in its proper place, for a marvel, not that Pattie or anyone else was in the kitchen to answer it—“I can see I’ve taken you in the midst of your work, and will not keep you from it. I just—”
He was silent a moment, big hands clenched, staring into the fire. Then his hard gray eyes flicked up to Abigail’s again and he said, “If you—when you . . . Please let her know that I stand ready to protect her, with all that I have, from anything, no questions asked. I am her husband,” he added. “It is my duty—and my desire.”
“I’ll tell her. I pray I will have the opportunity.”
He took a deep breath. “Tell her that I was wrong, to treat her as I did.” He pulled out the words like arrowheads from flesh.
A few weeks ago Abigail would have sniffed, Well, there’s a first! Now she said, “You were deceived, sir. That’s all.”
“I was deceived,” he said, anger hardening his face at that recollection. Then he sighed. “But I was also wrong.” He stood, and Abigail rose, too. He grasped her hand again, a brief, businesslike grip. “I’ll not trouble Mr. Adams,” he added, as Abigail handed him his hat and gloves. “I reckon he’s got his work cut out for him. You may tell him from me that I hope it fails. Good day, m’am. Thank you—for standing a friend to Mrs. Malvern.”
She said, “We all need friends.”
More shirts. More sheets. The gray overcast of the sky thinned, engendering hopes that the garments would all actually dry this afternoon and tomorrow. The yard took on the aspect of a labyrinth of clothes-rope and poles, of linen flapping slowly, like sails in the doldrums, in such
dreary puffs of wind as sneaked down the passways between the houses. As always, a path was left to the cowhouse, down which in due time Johnny would herd Semiramis and Cleopatra after an unprofitable day on the Commons. Abigail had just gone into the house to put together a scratch washday dinner of pork and cabbage—early, because John would be meeting with the chiefs of the Eighth Ward again—when the kitchen door darkened behind her and she heard Orion Hazlitt’s knock.
“I can’t stay.” He set his hat on the sideboard with a hand so uncertain that it almost fell. “I only wanted to thank you for helping Damnation with Mother yesterday. She told me—Damnation did—”
“Is your mother feeling better?”
His jaw tightened so hard that she thought it must break itself, of its own strength.
“I’m sorry—”
“No, it’s nothing . . . There’s nothing, really, that can be done. I’ve tried to act for the best,” he went on, in a voice taut with frustration and pain. “But I can’t be two people! Sometimes I feel—” He shook his head violently. “And Mr. Adams—Mr. Sam Adams—is on me hammer and tongs about these pamphlets, and this broadside Mr. Revere is engraving. I know the case is urgent. Mother doesn’t understand—”
He stopped himself, took a breath, and with a gallant recovery of a normal tone of voice, and the actions of a man unsavaged by expectations beyond human accomplishment, flourished the market basket he’d brought. “Thank you for bringing food.” He set the basket on the sideboard beside his hat. “Did we dwell in Paradise and were Mother—were Mother as calm and saintly as yourself—Damnation would still be the worst cook in the civilized world. You have once again saved our lives. You have—”
Again he fumbled for words. “You have heard nothing?” In the gray windowlight she saw that he was unshaven, and his green eyes had a restless movement to them, like a man haunted by things that only he could see.
Abigail shook her head. It did not seem to be the time, to speak of Charles Malvern, of her own questions and doubts. Time enough, she thought, when we know Rebecca will be alive to choose. Only a monster would slam the door of hope on this overburdened young man and leave him in darkness with his nightmare. “You did not tell me you grew up in Gilead.”
He blinked, startled. “I didn’t know you’d ever heard of the place.”
“I was there—”
His eyes widened with alarm. As well they might . . .
“Was your mother also the Chosen One’s bride?”
He sighed, and looked away. “Can you doubt it?”
“And that was why you fled?”
“Who can tell why one does what one does?” He made a helpless gesture. “I had to get out—had to get away. From her, from him . . . She said she would kill herself, if I ever left her. I knew she wouldn’t—” A wry grin twisted his mouth. “She loves herself far too well. But it was like cutting off my own arm, to leave her, even knowing her the way I do. And in the end I had to sneak away like a thief. I knew Bargest would look after her. It was almost a year, before one of his people here in town saw me, and wrote to him—to them—where I was.”
“His people?”
He sighed again. “Like Damnation. Like me. People who lived on Gilead, whom he can still command.” And seeing her raised brows, he asked more gently, “How do you think I could look after Mother, without his ordering Damnation to live here and help me? Say what you will about him, for better or for worse, he never leaves one of his people to make their way in the world unaided and alone.”
Not even Lucretia Hazlitt, reflected Abigail sadly. Even though her craziness had probably gone beyond what even the Gilead Congregation would put up with. She recalled those boarded-up houses, those shuttered upper stories. The place must have been much bigger, when little Orion and his mother—how old had he been then?—had come there, Lucretia afire with the words of the Chosen One, her “little King” dragged along by the hand. How many others, like Orion, had fled the community there? How many could the Hand of the Lord still call upon for service, here in Boston or in the communities along the bay?
Was it by his command that Orion had opened his house to his mother, despite what he knew it would cost him? Or had it been simply because she was his mother—because of that entangling love?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and he shook his head again, and made a gesture of pushing some unseen thing away.
“ ’Tis all right. There’s naught to be done, and I’m used to her now. I can’t—” He rubbed his hand over his face, breathed in deep, and made a smile. “I keep thinking there was something else I could have done, but I don’t see what it is. Please don’t think ill of her.”
“No, of course not.”
“Tell Mr. Sam Adams that I’ll have his pamphlets done for him, right enough.” He bowed to her again, lifted his hat. “Now I must get back to her. She doesn’t do well alone.”
Abigail settled the pork and cabbage in the Dutch oven, ringed with potatoes, and buried the whole under shovelfuls of coals. The Reverend Bargest’s father had been a minister, too, she recalled one of her unwilling hosts saying at some point during her night’s stay—clearly one of those who’d believed in the spectral evidence of the devil’s presence in Salem—and she remembered wondering at the time what would become of those young girls she’d shared that cold attic bed with: illiterate as dogs and knowing nothing but labor on the farm, the emotional ecstasies of the House of Repentance, and the Prophet’s authority.
What was it Bess had said, in another context, a few days ago? It is almost impossible to change one’s way of life . . .
She and Nabby were clearing up after dinner when Shim Walton appeared at the back door.
“Mrs. Adams,” he said worriedly as she stepped out into the bedsheet maze in the yard with him, “I remembered what you said, about not telling a soul, and I haven’t. But since I talked to Tim Flowers this morning—he’s the brother to Hap, that’s Mr. Tillet’s junior apprentice—I’ve been thinking about it, and thinking about it, and if you don’t tell someone I’m going to have to tell Mr. Butler. Because Tim says, that Hap says, that Mr. Tillet is keeping a lady locked up in his attic.”
Twenty-seven
Nehemiah Tillet’s brother-in-law was the magistrate of the Third Ward, and Abigail knew instinctively that he would speak to Tillet before paying a visit to the house.
Thus, Abigail wrote a note to Lieutenant Coldstone, and after a word with Mrs. Butler—Shim’s master being already gone to the ward meeting with John—she dispatched Shim to find a boat over to Castle Island. The boy was back in a few minutes, not much to Abigail’s surprise, considering how quickly dark was falling. With the onset of night, and the brisk wind now setting off the bay, no more boats were putting forth that day.
“But, m’am, they’re saying all along the wharf—and I could hear the men shouting about it in the taverns, too—that the other two East India Company ships have been sighted, the Beaver and the Endeavor. They’ll be at Griffin’s Wharf, they’re saying, with the flow of the tide.”
“I would not have believed it.” John held out his hands to the kitchen fire, rubbing them as if he’d never get his fingers warm again. Most of the household was abed. For an hour Abigail had waited up by the kitchen fire, listening to the monotonous tolling of the church bells that penetrated even the thick walls of the brick house. “Shall I write Pamela’s author a letter of apology?” He raised an eyebrow, which Abigail answered with a wry half smile as she brought up the bowl of bean soup that had been waiting for him on the hob.
“According to Shim—by way of poor little Hap—the south attic, whose window looks onto the alley, was unoccupied and used for storage until Thursday the twenty-fifth. The house was in an uproar that day, of course, with Coldstone and his henchmen questioning Mrs. Tillet, who returned with the luggage at about ten. Hap says, he thinks Mr. Tillet came in later, but he isn’t sure because everything was at sixes and sevens, but at about eleven Mr. Tillet suddenly came downs
tairs and asked what the commotion was.”
“Came downstairs?”
“As you say,” murmured Abigail. “Hap had just come into the front hall and saw his master come down the stairs and walk straight into the parlor, still in his travel clothes, cloak, and hat. He said, ‘See here, what’s going on?’ and said that he’d just then returned.”
“Whereas in fact he’d returned and gone upstairs—for how long, we don’t know.”
“The following day—the day that you and I spent most of kicking our heels outside Colonel Leslie’s door at Castle William—Hap was in the south wing of the house, where Mr. Tillet has his study, and heard what he thought were footfalls in the attic above. He’d just left both Tillet and Queenie downstairs, and of course being only a little boy—he’s nine, and young for his age I think—he immediately thought it was a ghost. He tiptoed up the attic stairs and found the door locked, which it wasn’t usually up until that time. But from that day the entire attic floor has been kept locked, with only Queenie keeping the key.”
“At least your blameless imbecile Pamela was permitted to go about Mr. B’s house.” Despite his jocular tone, in the firelight John’s eyes were grave. He set the empty soup bowl on the hearth beside him, stared for a time into the low-burning flame. “Madness of a different sort,” he murmured after a time. “And one more difficult to prove, than the kind that carves people up with knives.”
“As you say.” Abigail thrust the poker beneath the logs, sending up a shower of sparks. She would have returned to the settle where she had been, but John put an arm around her waist, drew her to his knee. “Someone—probably this second lover of Mrs. Pentyre’s, but just possibly Richard Pentyre himself—forced the alley window of Rebecca’s house just after the rain began—possibly while Rebecca herself was at the front door asking Queenie just what she was doing lingering by the yard gate. The intruder knew the code and knew that Mrs. Pentyre would be at the house at midnight. When Rebecca came back into the house he struck her over the head, bound her, put her in her bedroom—the best evidence we have, I think, that he had heard about the two murders in ’72, but was not the killer.”
The Ninth Daughter Page 26
