Flat and soggy in the wet air, a shot cracked out. A horse burst from the woods nearby, running loose with empty saddle and trailing reins; among the trees themselves, a dim confusion of shouts. Abigail turned in her saddle and glimpsed something red in the brown shadows of the woods, a single British soldier bringing up his musket like a club as half a dozen men closed in on him.
Abigail exclaimed, “For shame!” and spurred toward the woods. Thaxter scrambled into his own saddle to follow. Hard as old Balthazar had been ridden all day, the animal responded nobly, and Abigail raised her voice in a shout, “Get away from him, you louts!” before she had any clear idea of what she’d do if those louts didn’t. They seemed to be, she could see as she got closer, the rougher types who made up the rank and file of the Sons of Liberty: the poorer class of farmer, out-of-work laborers from the docks of Boston, and two big lads who looked like apprentices playing truant from their work. Such young men followed Cousin Sam and Andy Mackintosh in the violent street battles by which the North End boys and the South End boys celebrated “Pope’s Day”—the anniversary of the Catholic Plot to blow up England’s Parliament in 1605. At the moment, instead of tearing effigy monks and priests to pieces, they seemed bent on doing the same to the redcoat, who was standing—Abigail saw now—over a fallen comrade in a dark cloak.
She raised her voice again, shouted, “Leave them be!” and the men stopped, more startled than actually obedient. She spurred through them and to the side of the two soldiers, Thaxter galloping up in support, and the men, as she’d expected they probably would, scattered back into the trees. A couple of them shouted “Tory bitch!” and similar sentiments, but none of them was ready to attack a woman—particularly not one who came escorted. Someone threw a rock at them, which missed by yards. Ignoring this completely, Abigail dropped from her horse at the soldiers’ side.
“Is he badly hurt?” She pulled away the dark cloak that covered the fallen man’s crimson coat, and saw to her surprise that it was Lieutenant Coldstone. Looking up quickly, she met young Sergeant Muldoon’s quick glance, before he returned his attention to the darkening woods around them.
“Dunno, m’am—Mrs. Adams. Him and the horse fell together—”
Abigail was already feeling beneath the red coat, and pushed back the stiffly powdered white wig to run her fingers through the young officer’s short, fair hair. It was silky as a child’s.
“No blood. He may only have been stunned by the fall. Thaxter, help me get this man on my horse. You did well, Sergeant, not to fire at your attackers. The last thing we need right now is another murder trial.”
“I did fire, m’am,” admitted the Sergeant. “I think the powder’s damp.”
“Here—” Abigail held up a hand as Thaxter shoved his own horse pistol into his pocket and made to lift the Lieutenant. She took her pin-box from her skirt pocket, selected the longest, and drove the point hard into the unconscious man’s leg just below the knee. Coldstone’s leg jerked and he turned his head, gasped, “Damn it—!”
“Very good,” approved Abigail, as Thaxter helped the fallen man to sit. “He hasn’t broken his neck.” She replaced the pin in her box. “Are you all right, Lieutenant?”
He was already scanning the woods around them.
“Gang of hooligans, sir,” reported Muldoon. “They made off—”
“Can you stand, sir?” Thaxter had risen to his feet and had his pistol at the ready again, though, Abigail reflected, his powder was almost certainly damp as well. She was astonished the attackers had managed to get off a shot. He held down his left arm for the Lieutenant to take hold of, and Coldstone rose, a little shakily, to his feet, and immediately staggered.
“Where’s my horse?” he asked. “She came down on my ankle, it feels like—”
“She was well enough to leave the woods at a gallop,” Abigail said. “Sergeant—?”
Muldoon shook his head, and waved vaguely in the direction his own mount had gone.
“The innkeeper at the Fish-Tail will advertise a reward,” said Abigail. “I think the sooner you two are back in Boston, the better off you’ll be. The ferry’s stopped running by now—” She glanced worriedly at the gray overcast above the leafless trees.
Thaxter made a noise of disgust as he brought his horse around for Coldstone to mount. “The cook at the Fish-Tail’s got to have done for twenty men at least—”
“The ferry will oblige us, in the King’s name.” Coldstone’s face turned wax white when Muldoon boosted him into the saddle, but his expression of arctic calm did not alter. “Thank you, Sergeant.” He took the wig that Muldoon picked up for him, but didn’t put it on; it was covered with mud and leaves. So was his hat, but he did don that. It fit ill, without the wig. “I trust my sergeant and I will be able to command a bed among the men at the battery, if the weather worsens before we can cross back to the Castle. I am much obliged to you, Mrs. Adams. I guessed you to be formidable, but did not realize you were so fearsome in combat.”
Boosted up by her clerk, Abigail settled herself in her saddle. “It does not do to underestimate Americans, Lieutenant. I’m surprised,” she added, as they reined back toward the road, and the dim yellow lights of Winnisimmet beginning to speck the darkness, “that they chose to attack you in daylight, so close to the town. You haven’t been picking out quarrels with the local worthies, I hope?”
“If by ‘picking out quarrels,’ you mean, investigating rumors of treason and sedition,” replied Coldstone, “I fear that I have, m’am. As you should well know. And, I am not surprised in the least, that such men would lie in wait for an officer of the King.”
“He’s right, m’am,” added Sergeant Muldoon diffidently. “Town’s like a nest of hornets, it is.”
Coldstone glanced quellingly down at his henchman, but Abigail heard something in the big Irishman’s voice that made her ask, “Why is it like a nest of hornets, Sergeant? What’s happened? We’ve been away,” she added, turning back to Coldstone.
The officer sniffed. “Have you, indeed? Then you have missed a great deal of excitement. Yesterday the Dartmouth put in from England, with the first shipment of the East India Company’s tea.”
Fourteen
Friends! Brethren! Countrymen! That worst of Plagues, the detested tea shipped for this port by the East India Company, is now arrived in the Harbor; the hour of destruction, or manly opposition to the machinations of Tyranny, stares you in the Face; every Friend to his country, to Himself, and to Posterity, is now called upon to meet at Faneuil Hall, at nine o’clock this day, at which time the bells will ring to make united and successful resistance to this last worst and most destructive measure of Administration. Boston, Nov. 29, 1773.
Movement stirred in every shadow, as Abigail and Lieutenant Coldstone rode down Prince’s Street beneath the high darkening shadow of Copp’s Hill. Though chilly night now covered the city, every alleyway, every courtyard, every intersection jostled with men as if it were noon on market day, and against the dim lights of every tavern door shadows appeared. Voices muttered from within these establishments, grim voices, not the cheery riot of card players and sailors on their sprees, and the murmur of men’s talk grumbled in the night like the fretting of the sea on rocks.
Now and then Abigail glimpsed rough, badly shaven faces, and the coarse textures of hunting shirts and tattered farm coats in the tavern doorways. They’re coming in from the countryside, she thought, and remembered how Sam and Revere had summoned nearly threescore men to stand in Queen Street when Coldstone arrived to arrest John. Not rioting, not threatening—just standing there. Standing there and outnumbering the little party of British a dozen to one.