“To his credit,” said Dowling, with a grin that made him seem even more boyish, “he was one of those actors who can change not only his makeup and wig, but his posture and voice and the way he walked. On stage I could tell by his stature ’twas the same man, but otherwise, he would go from a cringing slave to a bawling soldier to a pious nun. To his discredit, I understand the man is what my sisters call a thoroughly bad hat: a cheat at cards, they said on the post, and a thief of his partner’s share of the profits. Rumor had it that the only reason poor old Blaylock keeps with him is because he’s very good, and Blaylock, bless his ranting and his tears, is very bad. If they’ve parted company by this time, I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Would rumor put it past him, to murder a man, if he were paid to do it?”
“I don’t think so.” The young surgeon considered the matter. “I don’t know, really. It’s a hard thing to say of a man, you know? Especially one who’s not here to defend himself. My impression is that he would have to be very well-paid, and the murder a very safe one, for everyone said he’s the most arrant coward who walks the earth. I can’t see him thrashing Sir Jonathan, for instance.”
He frowned into the pitiful fire. “Not that he wouldn’t walk off and leave him lying, I don’t believe—but I think that, given his choice, he would pick some other way to punish him. Beating a man and leaving him in an alleyway is . . . is only incidentally conducive to death, you know. Sir Jonathan would very likely have lived through a night less cold, for the contusions on him were all quite superficial.”
They were what a man would have sustained, Abigail reflected uneasily as she made her way back toward Queen Street, who had been beaten up by the large and angry sweetheart of a woman he’d insulted. Only the offended sweetheart had been busy that night, printing up the broadsides at present lodged in her attic, and Paul Revere’s, and a dozen others in the town—broadsides calling all men of courage to be prepared to stand against the tyranny of the Crown. Not an argument one could present in one’s own defense.
“Like as not the wretched actor’s halfway to New York by this time,” muttered Abigail. “And will be on his way back to the West Indies, or to London, by the time a letter reaches the proper authorities.”
“I don’t know about proper authorities, m’am,” said Surry, pacing calmly along a half step to Abigail’s rear. “But Mr. Sam’s had the word out since last Wednesday, when Dr. Warren first said that that poor manservant had been poisoned by this Palmer, and them friends of his travel faster than any postrider in New England. If Palmer’s above the ground, they’ll find him.”
“How, among all the men in New England?”
They paused by the gate of Sam’s dwelling; Bess’s voice could be heard from the yard, singing a rather disreputable sailor’s song with her daughter Hannah. Surry smiled. “Among all the honest men in New England, they’d have a problem, m’am,” she agreed. “That actor fellow might be able to pass himself off as a Turk or a nun or a friendly fellow that’s safe to have a meal with, for a short time. But low blood and a low mind is going to come out, sooner or later, and I’m willing to bet you, acting is all the man can do. The weather bein’ what it is, we know he’s not took ship for England because nobody’s took ship for England. Which means he’s on his way to New York or Philadelphia, because that’s the only place he’ll find work, unless he’s set on livin’ off this Mrs. Cherne—whatever her real name is—that Mr. Sam said was payin’ Palmer’s bills at the Horn Spoon. The Sons’ll find him, m’am. Don’t you worry about that. There aren’t that many places an actor can be. And then you bet they’ll ask him who was the one who paid him to make sure Mr. Fenton wasn’t with his master when his master come home from Maine. And they’ll ask him so he’ll fall all over hisself to answer.”
Abigail knew Surry was right about that. Heaven only knew what the slave-woman—the sole remaining fragment, along with the house itself, of the patrimony that Old Deacon Adams had left his brilliant, scheming son—thought of the Sons of Liberty, in her heart.
Bess, when she came to the gate at the sound of Surry’s voice, understood Abigail’s excuse that she had to return home to begin dinner, for the older children would be home from school soon. “Sam has everything well in hand, dear,” declared Bess reassuringly, and pressed upon her a twist of paper containing a couple of spoonfuls of smuggled tea: “If you mix it with chamomile, you can get at least four pots from it.”
Sam has everything well in hand . . . Abigail shivered, as she hastened her steps along Long Street, the sharp gales off the harbor whipping her cloak and turning her toes and fingers numb.
Except how to get Harry Knox out of the grip of the British. Except any assurance that, faced with the noose, the young bookseller wouldn’t turn King’s Evidence once he got to Halifax where the Sons of Liberty could not take their revenge. Harry, Abigail knew, was committed to the cause of colonial liberties and to the concept of the colony’s self-government, free of interference from the King’s Commissioners and the King’s bosom friends. He was committed, moreover, to the friendships that made up the heart and soul of any normal man: to Sam and Bess, to Dr. Warren, to Paul and Rachel Revere, to Robbie Newman at Old South, to herself and John. To the people he’d known in his home town of Boston all his life.
She knew also that once a man was hoisted on the gallows, it took twenty long minutes, dangling, kicking, at rope’s end, to suffocate to death.
She remembered how Revere had joked about breaking Matt Brown and Hev Miller out of the Boston jail; how her brother’s friends had gotten him out of the place almost casually, as if he’d been locked in a cupboard or a cellar. In Boston it was generally known that the King’s Commissioners couldn’t take a smuggler, because of the providential appearance of large numbers of armed dockside types—the chief reason that the Crown had begun to prosecute smugglers in Halifax.
Walking along Purchase Street, Abigail could look out across the bay and see the Incitatus, riding at anchor off Castle Island. Waiting for the wind to change.
“Mrs. Adams?”
A girl who was passing her as Abigail turned the corner into Queen Street halted on the pavement and put back the hood of her cloak. Under a neatly starched white cap, black curls flickered in the tug of the wind.
“I’m Mrs. Adams, yes.” Abigail wondered why the wide brown eyes, the heart-shaped face were so familiar . . .
“Miss Pugh,” she said.
“I’ve waited for you, m’am—Miss Pattie let me in—but I couldn’t wait no longer.” The girl cast a frightened glance back in the direction from which Abigail had come—the direction of the Common, and the handsome houses of the rich along Milk Street and Beacon Hill. “Mrs. Hartnell, she’ll be askin’ after me, and I don’t dare not be there—”
“I shall accompany you,” said Abigail promptly, “that you may lose no time. I’m sorry I was from home. Had I known—”
Gwen Pugh shook her head, “Oh, not your fault, m’am, no, please. I saw the chance, when Mrs. H was still abed, after being up all hours playing cards.” They crossed by the Customhouse and turned along Cornhill again, stepping quickly on the slippery cobbles. “I had to find you, and speak, m’am. I didn’t know Sheba well, but she was that kind to me, not just about the tooth-drawer but afterward, when I was in so much pain. And the way she spoke of her little girl, and how worried she was about her baby when she had to go out with Mrs. Sandhayes—” She shook her head. “Though she was a Negress and all, I did so much feel like I was home again, with my own sister and baby brother. And Mrs. H has been so very kind to me also, and took me in when I was barely a mite, when my mamma died, and didn’t know no manners or how to sew or iron, and had me taught . . .” Anguish at her own disloyalty pulled at the girl’s face. “But she lied to you.”