A Marked Man (10 page)

“But no one you know of?”

Margaret Sandhayes considered the matter, forehead puckering in a manner that threatened the thick pink and white maquillage that habitually plastered her rather horsey face, then shook her head. The whaleboned stays in the hood of her cloak creaked alarmingly—it was of the variety boned out to accommodate a much-curled and decorated coiffure, and the sharp gusts of wind that slashed across Boston from the bay gave Abigail the impression every minute that the whole structure was going to be whipped away like a kite, carrying the gawky chaperone with it.

“Would Mr. Fenton know?” asked Lucy. “Sir Jonathan’s man. He came down with
la grippe
the night before Sir Jonathan left for Maine. He was going to follow when he got better, but I think he’s still at the Governor’s.”

“La, child, one doesn’t go about questioning a man’s servants!”

“Not even to save an innocent man’s life?”

“It is shockingly bad
ton
, child, and your reputation would never recover if it got about! As well have it said that you pay peoples’ maids for copies of their letters!”

“Margaret—” Lucy looked almost as if she wanted to shake the older woman. “This is Harry’s life we’re talking about!”

“Oh, pooh.” Mrs. Sandhayes looked aside uneasily. “I daresay they won’t hang him on a clerk’s tittle-tattle—”

“They will,” said Abigail quietly. “Mr. Knox has been—er—
outspoken
in his objection to some of the Crown’s policies regarding the colonies, and yes, he stands in grave and immediate danger of being hanged. Whatever Mr. Fenton might be able to tell us truly could save Mr. Knox’s life.”

Mrs. Sandhayes made a face expressive of her opinion as to how much any servant could be useful for anything besides fetching her another tea-cake, but Lucy exclaimed, “Mr. Barnaby will know. Our butler, you remember, Mrs. Adams. His sister’s husband is Governor Hutchinson’s steward—Mr. Buttrick. Do you mind walking back with us to ask? It isn’t far.”

They had come opposite the writing-school by this time, so it was, in fact, something more than a half mile to the handsome house on Milk Street that Thomas Fluckner had purchased with his wife’s money, many years ago. This part of Boston lay west of the original town that huddled around the waterfront, and the streets were far less crowded, with open spaces of fields and gardens lying behind the houses of timber and brick. As they passed along Marlborough Street, Abigail slowed her steps before the Governor’s house itself and stood for a moment considering the mansion through the bare branches of the oak trees on its snow-covered lawn. On the cupola, the copper Indian weather vane swung in the cutting wind, and had the day not been so cold—and Mrs. Sandhayes lagging farther and farther behind—Abigail would have suggested a detour down the frozen muck of Rawson’s Lane, to have a look at the scene of the crime.

“Did Sir Jonathan write your father while he was in Maine?” she asked as they walked. “I understand he was to stay with your father’s agent in Boothbay.”

“Mr. Bingham,” affirmed the girl. “He’s in charge of collecting the rents for that whole section of the coast, from Moscongus Bay down to the Kennebec, but half the time he doesn’t send much. The whole section’s in a state of revolt against the Proprietors, and only a month ago Mr. Bowdoin’s agent was beaten up and sent back to Boston in a load of bad herring.” She laughed her schoolgirl laugh, and Mrs. Sandhayes looked shocked.

“No, he didn’t write—neither to Papa nor to Governor Hutchinson, which I thought pretty high-handed of him, considering he was going to be guest of honor at a dinner and a ball, and I don’t think he would have written to Mr. Fenton, either. From what Mr. Barnaby told me, he treated Mr. Fenton worse than any dog.”

“There,” declared Mrs. Sandhayes gloomily, catching up with the other three. “
Now
tell me servants can be trusted to keep their mouths shut about anything.”

Philomela, carrying extra scarves and shawls for the others, turned her head as if to admire the tall steeple of Old South Church on the corner and pretended she had not heard this remark.

Mr. Barnaby, who opened the door to the four women and clucked over the coldness of the weather, confirmed all of Lucy’s information about Sir Jonathan’s manservant. “It’s not unusual for a gentleman to have so little regard for his man, and I’m sorry to say some of the gentlemen from the home country are the worst I’ve seen in that regard.” A stout, genial, middle-aged man with a deeply pockmarked face and the accent of London to his voice, he bowed and signed a liveried footman to collect their wraps. “Most vexed he was that poor Mr. Fenton should have been taken sick the night before their departure, leaving him no time to replace him before he left. He said if Mr. Fenton didn’t follow him within two days, he could consider himself discharged and find his own way back to England or wherever he wished to go, but I wouldn’t have wanted to think he meant it.”

Mrs. Sandhayes, emerging from the chrysalis of whaleboned hood and two woolen cloaks, looked surprised at this view of the matter. “Whyever not? One can’t let people of that order start believing that claiming a bellyache will excuse them from their duties. The man should have taken better care of himself.”

Lucy ignored this remark. “So what will Mr. Fenton do now?”

“That I don’t know, Miss. It’s the worst case of the grippe I’ve seen; the Governor’s had a surgeon in twice to bleed him, and he’s worse, if anything.”

Abigail sniffed. “You astonish me, sir.” She had a deep mistrust of physicians other than her friend Joseph Warren, having seen too many at work. “Is he well enough to speak to, do you think?”

“Oh, yes, m’am. He’s never had a fever, nor lost track of his senses, or anything like that. Would you like me to arrange it?”

“What on earth for?” inquired Mrs. Sandhayes, from the pier glass where she’d gone to readjust the high-piled edifice of her coiffure with an ivory comb. “The man’s not been out of his bed. It sounds to me as though some of these Maine ruffians followed Sir Jonathan back from his journey and lay in wait for him on his return to the Governor’s house. I daresay they’re safely back home in Obseybobscott or Pennywayback or whatever outlandish place they come from, and so the Admiralty Court will see, once they’ve heard the whole story.”

“Will they?” said Abigail drily. Despite aching gratitude for the warmth of the parlor after the morning’s bone-breaking cold, she could not keep from her mind John’s descriptions of the houses he had seen in Maine—two-roomed, primitive, buried beneath snow for months at a time—as she considered the curtains of pea green velvet, the printed Chinese wall-papers, and the delftware bowls displayed in the mahogany cabinets. “I am not, myself, quite so sanguine about what three Crown servants in Halifax are going to see.”

On the opposite wall, a portrait of Lucy’s mother—whose father had talked then-governor Dunbar and the Board of Trade into granting him the Maine land—smiled stiffly into middle distance. Her pink and silver gown was rendered with such meticulous attention that Abigail could recognize that the lace was Dutch rather than French, but her face might have been a whittled doll’s.

“Was there anyone at the Governor’s ball Saturday night, who might have wished Sir Jonathan ill?” she asked, interrupting Mrs. Sandhayes’s raptures over the entrance of her hostess’s overfed lapdog Hercules. “Anyone who disappeared for a period of time—”

“My dear Mrs. Adams, you are not suggesting that one of the
Governor’s guests
might have been responsible for this—this outrage?”

“Does social standing exempt a man from vengeance, or greed?” demanded Lucy indignantly. She added wryly, “Sir Jonathan himself is proof that it doesn’t exempt one from lust.”

“Lucy!”

Lucy turned eagerly back to Abigail. “People were coming and going all the time, m’am, but I think I can remember who I danced with, and the order of the dances. And Margaret was in and out of the cardroom—she plays like a Greek bandit! We can surely come up with some idea of it, if someone was absent for any period of time, especially if I gossip about among Mama’s friends. They all tear up characters like Harpies! I’ll ask if anyone knew anything to Sir Jonathan’s discredit or if he had a mistress—”

“You had best let me do that, dear,” said Mrs. Sandhayes firmly. “Your mother would expire of horror if she thought you even knew what a mistress
was
, and I would certainly be blamed for not giving you a more elevated tone of mind. Ah, Mr. Barnaby!
À la bonne heure!
What ambrosial delights has dear Mrs. Prawle prepared for us? Not her wonderful molasses tarts! There now, Mrs. Adams, I told you Barnaby was a genius: he’s even thought to prepare you some of that nasty tisane that dear Lucy has taken to drinking in preference to tea—”

“It’s rose hips and licorice-root,” said Lucy, with shy pride. “I tried getting coffee, but it’s Dutch, and Papa wouldn’t have it under his roof, and it’s a terrible nuisance to roast and grind the beans, and you can smell it all over the house. Philomela went down to the market and got me this, and I keep it hidden in my dresser-drawer. Thank you, Barnaby.”

“Think nothing of it, miss.”

“Mr. Barnaby.” Abigail lifted a finger to stay him. “Before you leave—what was Bathsheba’s reaction to Sir Jonathan’s departure? Was she relieved, as you’d expect, or was she troubled?”

“There now!”

Abigail was conscious again of a twinge of un-Christian pride, at the expressions of astonishment on the faces of both the butler and Mrs. Sandhayes.

It was Mr. Barnaby who spoke first. “How the—? M’am, I don’t know how you’d know of it, but you’re dead right. Poor Sheba . . . Well, he pestered her, as he did all the women of the house—”

“
Pestered
nothing!” exclaimed Lucy hotly. “He broke into her room one night, after he was supposed to have left here, and got into bed with her—”

“Lucy,
really
!”

“Well, he did. He told her if she didn’t shut up he’d buy her from Papa and use her how he pleased! Papa claimed he ‘took care of’ the matter,” she added mutinously, “but of course Sir Jonathan denied he’d done any such thing—”

“Dear child,” protested Mrs. Sandhayes, “your Papa could scarcely take the word of a
servant
over that of a King’s Commissioner, and a
Negress
at that—Dear Philomela, run and take Hercules outside, I see him contemplating his favorite corner of Mrs. Fluckner’s carpet in a way that I mistrust. Mind you”—she turned back to Abigail—“I wouldn’t put anything past the man.”

“Bathsheba’s as truthful as you or I,” protested Lucy. “
Far
more truthful than me, in fact . . .”

“Be that as it may, m’am, miss,” Barnaby interposed tactfully. “It’s true, as you’d expect, the day he left, poor Sheba went about like she’d just been let off a whipping, knowing he wouldn’t be coming to the house for a week and more. But Friday evening, it was like she’d seen a ghost on the stair: not able to settle to her work and barely did a third of what she’d usually accomplish with her needle. Mrs. Barnaby spoke of it—my good wife has the charge of the maids and the sewing,” he added almost shyly. “Showed me some of it, too—as badly mended and clumsy as if she were a girl in love with her mind a thousand miles away, and Sheba generally so neat and particular. There was something weighing on her mind, I’ll swear to that.”

“’ Tis true.” Philomela, coming back in with the relieved Hercules in her arms, spoke for the first time in the morning. “Begging your pardon for speaking, Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Sandhayes. But the Friday evening, after she returned from being out, Sheba was not herself.”

“She didn’t say why, did she?” asked Mrs. Sandhayes, and Philomela shook her head. “Because now that you speak of it, I do recall how distracted the poor girl was, when she was shopping with me that morning—and I must say, it is
such
a nuisance, not knowing what new colors of ribbons they’re wearing in Town until they’re the
old
colors—”

Abigail guessed that by Town she meant London.

“At first I thought it was only that her baby had the croup or something—brats forever ailing with one thing or another, in winter—but after she’d missed the way twice—and
what
a tangle those streets are, by Hancock’s Wharf!—I asked her, what on earth was the matter with her, and she begged my pardon and then burst into tears, right there on the street! She said, ‘Something terrible has happened, and I don’t know what to do!’ I asked her what, but she would say nothing of it, only that there was nothing to be done, and begged my pardon again for having troubled me. Well, she was in such a state that one couldn’t get any sense out of her then, so I made up my mind to speak to her again on Saturday, when she was a bit calmer. Frankly, it crossed my mind that as wan as she looked, and in view of Sir Jonathan’s
disgraceful
behavior, she might have found herself
enceinte
. But before I even came downstairs on Saturday, she walked out of the house and has not been seen since.”