Sup with the Devil (27 page)

“She didn’t . . . She was quite modestly dressed,” protested Horace. “She didn’t have the air of a—er—
meretrix
. . .”

“Obviously she knew enough not to dress like a bird of paradise,” said Abigail, “for fear of frightening her own bird away. You’d never have gotten into the carriage with her,” she explained, to Horace’s inarticulate protest that he wasn’t
that
much of a shrinking violet, “if she’d been tricked-out and tire’d up and painted to her eyes like Jezebel at her window. I claim no knowledge of ladies of ill fame,” she went on thoughtfully, “but it sounds to me—does it not to you?—that she’s more than the answer to some sailor’s prayer. She could steal a key, but a carriage and pair is another matter, even for the madame of a house of accommodation. Would you know her again?”

“Of course.”

“If she were dressed differently, I mean, and painted up?”

He blushed. “I think so. Her hair was her own; I’m not sure I’d know her in a wig.”

“Then let us make a pilgrimage tomorrow,” said Abigail. “I can do that in the morning before John gets home—and see what we can see before Sam takes matters into his own hands. For when a man will truly stop at nothing, there is no telling who may be hurt.”

 

 

S
he asked the boys to stay for dinner, and prepared the lamb (only she would have gone bail that it was actually mutton) dressed with spinach, and put up a pan of potatoes beneath the hearth-coals to roast and some corn-and-milk for Horace. Johnny and Nabby came home from school, and Abigail let them thoroughly explore the cleaned and tidied house before starting them on their chores. Though the spring evenings were long, she guessed that once darkness fell, the children would be uneasy in a house that had been entered and ransacked by strangers, had they not had the chance to patrol it by daylight and see with their own eyes that all was safe. The boys departed immediately after dinner with a basket of provisions for themselves and another to be delivered to Diomede in the Cambridge jail—and Weyountah returned fifteen minutes later with Charley, whom Abigail had not even missed in the confusion of good-bys and who had managed to follow Horace and Weyountah nearly to Summer Street.

Since the handsome Indian didn’t return a second time she assumed he did, in fact, make it through the town gate by sunset, though he and Horace—unless they found a friendly farmer with a wagon—would beyond all doubt be walking the last mile back to Cambridge in the dark.

Between dinner and supper, she and the girls put up laundry to soak—Abigail’s housewifely instincts revolted at not having spare sheets clean and ready at all times—and as she at last led her little household in Bible reading and evening prayer, she reflected that few Israelites in Pharoah’s brick-pits had put in a more strenuous day than her own.

F
riday morning was, fortunately, a mild one. While Katy and Nabby milked the cows (’twas miraculous what one more pair of hands would do for the household), starting the moment it was light enough to see, Abigail and Pattie beat and rinsed, beat and rinsed the lye-smelling oceans of laundry, and had sheets, shifts, shirts, and clouts flying like flags from the maze of clotheslines in the yard by noon. By one (Charley had disappeared again, to be rescued by Katy from almost beneath the hooves of a dray on Cornhill), Abigail and Katy were crossing the Charles Town ferry.

“No sign of them yet.” Katy folded up the brass spyglass she had drawn from her pocket to look out past the steep promontory of Copp’s Hill toward the bay. No need to specify who
they
were.

From here Abigail could see the brick walls of the British camp on Castle Island and thought with deep regret of her friend Lieutenant Jeremy Coldstone, the assistant to the Provost Marshal and a young man, she sensed, who might greatly assist her in the unraveling of this tangle of codes and books and treasure that seemed to appear and disappear. But with tensions rising every day in Boston, it would be impossible these days for Coldstone to enter the town unmolested—particularly if Sam got word of his presence.

And in any case, reflected Abigail, the young lieutenant undoubtedly had enough to deal with these days. But she wondered what the men in the castle fort were doing to pass the time while
they
waited for word from the King to come.

“Do you think there will be fighting when they come ashore, m’am?”

Abigail sniffed. “I think there’ll be fighting the first time the Royal Commissioner’s bodyguard attempts to get a drink in a tavern. ’Tis all the prediction I feel can be made with certainty. As for Sam’s contention that we’ll face a flotilla and an invasion-force, I can scarcely see where the King is likely to find, at short notice, soldiers enough to hold a city the size of Boston. My guess is that he’ll send a Royal Commissioner, not an invading general, with orders to the colony to pay for the tea. ’Tis an understandable request but not worth battle in the streets.”

“To Mr. Deems, ’twould be. And Bruck Travers and his father. And George, I’m afraid,” the girl added sadly. “Just the thought that patriot militia would have the temerity to form in defiance of the King’s rule had him red in the face. Joseph Ryland had to talk him out of taking the Volunteers on Saturdays to attack the militias while they drilled.”

“That’s all we would need.” Abigail folded her shawl around her shoulders at the chill of the sea-wind.

“’Twouldn’t have been much of a battle,” pointed out Katy practically. “They’re barely a handful, and half of them not mounted, nor armed. They’d only come to the drills to cheer the others on and wear the uniforms and drink punch. At least our men have guns.”

“And massacring them would solve something? Besides giving Parliament a far better reason than a little saltwater tea to send in a few regiments to keep order?”

Katy was silent for a moment, considering this, tucking the trailing streamers of her black hair back beneath her cap. In a somewhat smaller voice she said, “Well, howsoever, Ryland talked George out of it. He’s got a great deal of sense and is a fine soldier, even if he does look at me as if I’d just crawled up out of a drain.”

“Because you’re a patriot?” Abigail had heard the slight break in her young companion’s voice.

“I daresay it’s what he tells people—and himself. But me, I think ’tis because he’s been writing love-poems to Sally Woodleigh and sending her flowers, and she won’t so much as turn her head to say hello in the street but makes—made”—she corrected herself—“sheep’s eyes at George.” She was silent for a time; the brass tube of the spyglass forgotten in her hand, she looked out across the violet chop of the bay toward Charles Town, rising on the slopes of its hills.

“I saw her Tuesday when I went to Cambridge,” the girl continued after a time. “I went to the King’s Chapel, to—not to
see
George, because of course the door’s locked, but to . . . I don’t know. He’s dead—’tis only his body in there . . . cold clay. But ’tis the body I held in my arms. The mouth I kissed; the fingers that would braid my hair. His hair was so soft, like silk . . . I know he’s not in there, but . . .”

She shook her head, looked away across the bay again, her eyes clouded with grief. “And Sally was there. All in black, with a veil on her bonnet, as if she’d lost a husband, instead of a man she’d talked herself into thinking wanted her. I don’t think she even saw me there. She had her maid with her, and Mr. Heywood from the Volunteers. She was taken faint and leaned on his arm.”

The Charles Town wharf was drawing near. Young Mr. Peasley, the ferry’s captain, shouted himself crimson while the two deck-boys swung the yard this way and that, trying to catch sea-wind against the inshore gusts that blew off the hills behind the town. Abigail clung resolutely to the edge of the bench where she sat and fixed her eyes on the tall green summit of Bunker Hill.

“He didn’t lead her on to think it of him, did he?” she asked, and remembered the young man’s careless smile. The Sally Woodleighs of the world, at least, were not to be caught with faked marriage ceremonies . . . but even if she had not truly sent the message, asking for a meeting behind the barn, George Fairfield at least had believed that she
would
have.

“No!” retorted Katy. “At least—I don’t think he did.”

“Did she favor one above another, of the others?” Abigail asked. “The Black Dog, for instance?”

“Oh, you heard about the fight that Saturday, did you?” Katy managed a pale and crooked grin. “’Tis funny, in spite of the things Mr. Ryland called me—he and George got into a
tremendous
quarrel about me—I could almost feel sorry for the poor man. Teaching her chemistry and writing love-poems—he really does write his own, you know . . . Mr. Apthorp pays Beaverbrook to write his—’tis like watching some poor mouse in a trap, running round and round against the wires, and you know he’s never going to get out. Look, there’s Weyountah!” She pointed, her face breaking into a brilliant smile. “And Horace, there on the wharf! What are you going to say to this Mrs. Lake when you find her?”

“It depends,” replied Abigail, as the ferry at long last was drawn up alongside the wet, dark bollards, “upon how we find her and where.”

 

 

T
hough it had been the original capital of the colony, Charles Town was barely more than a bustling little village these days, built on the footslopes of two tall hills at the mouth of the Mystic River and slightly less than three-quarters of a mile end to end along the shore. The house known as Avalon stood a few hundred yards from the ferry landing, east of the town proper, in a discreet grove of trees just where the gentle slope of Breed’s Hill began to steepen. Abigail wouldn’t have guessed it was a place of ill repute, save that Weyountah and Horace had inquired at two alehouses and had received the same directions from both. Avalon certainly bore no resemblance to the slatternly taverns along the Boston waterfront. It was built in the old style, partly of timber and partly of brick, with tall gables and an upper story that overhung the lower.

The sign above its door depicted—not much to Abigail’s surprise—a woman’s arm emerging from the waters of a lake, caressing rather than brandishing the upright sword.

“’Tis known in town as an alehouse,” said Weyountah, as the little party walked along the road that curved toward the brick kiln at the foot of Moulton’s Hill some half mile ahead. “Though the man in the taproom at the Peacock gave me a wink when I asked after the place—by which I assume that it is indeed what we’re looking for.”

“With a nice, sheltered approach on the other side of the hill,” murmured Abigail, as they reached the place where the road curved northwest again toward Bunker Hill. “Invisible if you’re coming in from Cambridge or Medford in the dusk, I daresay.” She looked back toward the Avalon. “I don’t see anyone about, do you? Though I don’t imagine there’s much activity here ’til nightfall. Still, one would expect servants at least and some sign of smoke in the kitchen chimney . . . and grooms about the stables. Best you stay out of sight, Horace. Shall I knock on the front door and see if I can at least get a look at this Mrs. Lake?”

Horace looked shocked, but Weyountah only said, “Lend Horace your spyglass, Katy; the trees across the road here ought to be close enough. Can you see the door clearly, Horace? No, turn it—that way. Good. Mrs. Adams?” He offered her his arm, and Katy drew her cloak-hood up over her head and did her best to look like a respectable servant-girl as she trailed Abigail and the Indian back toward the front door. With the trees thick with spring leaf, the whole dooryard of the house called Avalon was rather gloomy, and close-up the shabbiness of the place was more evident: the dooryard muddy, the path needing gravel, the backhouses quite obviously in need of cleaning. The diamond-paned windows had not been washed recently, and the house had an air of uneasy quiet. Abigail felt herself reminded of a woman who has been struck and waits to see what will happen next.

She knocked at the door and assumed the expression of a righteous matron drawing aside her skirts to wade through garbage in a holy cause.

The footsteps inside approached the door at a near run.

The young woman who opened the door—plump, freckled, and matter-of-fact in the rather faded print dress of a servant—looked both wary and scared. And, when she saw Abigail, taken aback—

“Please pardon this intrusion.” Abigail inclined her head. “My name is Mrs. Percy. I was told I might find a woman here who calls herself Mrs. Lake, though that might not be her right name. Dark-haired, about my height”—this was a guess, from the fact that Horace hadn’t noted either tallness or shortness—“a lady, I suppose you would call her . . .”

Something altered in the young woman’s stance: shoulders slumped, mouth tightened, eyes . . . not grieved, but the eagerness died from her face and was replaced by anxiety.

“Is she not here?” asked Abigail. “I was told—”