The Ninth Daughter - By Barbara Hamilton Page 0,67

jobs and a little rack of spools of thread of various colors. The resemblance between this place and Rebecca’s house lifted the hair on her nape. And yet, she told herself, there was little variation possible in these ramshackle dwellings. It was such a place as any woman obliged to make her own living in the world would take, if she could: a small house on one of Boston’s many inner courts, that would be black as pitch once the sun was down, save for the dull gold chinks of closed shutters . . .

“Were the shutters closed?” she asked. “The night of the murder?”

“Oh, aye.” Mr. Ballagh nodded, from the doorway where he’d gone to stand talking to Mr. Gridley. “With the species of ruffians that spend their time in the Bull, you want to keep things locked up tight, once the sun goes in. The Fishwire’d keep her door open later nor most, for her trade, an’ she was always havin’ trouble with ’em.”

Another neighbor nodded. “We was all ever havin’ trouble with ’em, m’am. One or another—sailors, sometimes, sometimes just the riffraff that unloads the boats—”

“She’d get a gentleman, now an’ now, though.” The informant—swarthy as an Indian with an Irish brogue that could have been cut like cheese with a wire—explained to Abigail. “From the Bull, y’see. Gentlemen’ll come for the cards, an’ maybe so-be-it the deacons of their churches won’t see ’em takin’ a drink—”

“Maybe so-be-it they’re deacons theirselves,” added a Mrs. Bailey, and got a general laugh.

“Well, sailor or gent, they’d come down here, see the light, an’ maybe think it was a whore’s house. Or others’d come and pound on her door and curse at her, and call her witch—”

“I throwed a man out, just the week before the killing happened,” assented Ballagh. “One of the gentlemen, he was, and cursin’ like a sailor at her, because he couldn’t do his rifle-drill—beggin’ your pardon, m’am—with some drab over at the Bull.”

“Lord, yes!” Mrs. Kern laughed. “And he wasn’t the first or the only—You mind Abednego Sellars, that’s deacon at the New South Meeting? He had a ladyfriend lived in rooms at the Mermaid, in Lynn Street; he was here all the time at evening, all cloaked up like he thought nobody here would see his silver shoe buckles, to buy the where-withal to do his doxy justice. Then when things didn’t work out just as he’d planned, he’d be back, midnight sometimes, a-poundin’ on the Fishwire’s door and screamin’ at her that she was a witch who’d put a word on him, to keep him from doin’ the deed.”

There was general laughter, and Abigail traded a startled glance with Surry. Both of them knew Deacon Sellars, if not well, at least for a number of years. He was a pious and prosperous chandler, a pillar of his church and—Abigail knew—likewise a pillar of the Sons of Liberty, whose pamphlets he was in the habit of taking out of Boston in his deliveries of soap and candles to surrounding towns.

While it was true that Boston was a bustling town that seemed both enormous and crowded to her—particularly when first she had come to live there—she realized that in the five years that she’d lived on and off in Boston, she had come to know, at least by sight, scores of its inhabitants to whom she had never spoken, and by reputation, many more. Those who, like Deacon Sellars, had lived all their lives in the town would know its byways, and where to come if they wanted to deceive their wives or play cards or get drunk out of sight of the elders of their respectable churches.

And heaven knew, you couldn’t throw a rock in Boston without hitting someone at least sympathetic to the Sons of Liberty.

On the other hand, she reflected, as she and Surry made their retreat past the Blue Bull and out into Love Lane once more . . . On the other hand, it was curious.

And it might behoove her to find out a little more about Abednego Sellars. And she couldn’t keep herself from mentally adding, Carefully . . .

It was nearly ten in the morning—and poor Pattie was once again saddled with keeping the children at their lessons and beginning preparations for dinner in between her own, heavier tasks—and Abigail turned the corner onto Middle Street with a pang of guilt. A door opened just ahead of her and three men staggered out, dressed for some evening party