The Ninth Daughter - By Barbara Hamilton Page 0,94
the way the constables and the magistrates never did . . . Scipio’s a sort of friend of mine,” she added. “He lived for years in the same part of Virginia I come from—though he was long gone from there before I was ever born. But he knew a lot of the people I grew up with. I didn’t know you by sight, but on the wharf yesterday, Miss Lucy heard the officer introduce you to her father, and knew you would be coming here today.”
“And you thought you would tell me what you know of the matter? Can you remember—”
“It isn’t just that,” Lucy broke in.
After a slight pause—because no well-bred servant would follow into even someone else’s interruption of a white lady—Philomela said, “The day before yesterday, I saw him again. Watching me the way he used to, on the way to the market.”
Twenty-three
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” There was not a shadow of doubt in her voice. “But the problem is, m’am, I can’t be sure. When he would watch me, the summer before last, he wore summer things: a blue coat with a good trim cut to it, and stockings and shoes, not boots. Thursday he was muffled up in a greatcoat, and boots, and a scarf, for ’twas bitter cold. But it was the man. I saw his face, and the way he stood and moved. It was the man.”
Abigail was silent for a time. Throughout this recital she’d held her watch cradled in her palm, and the time stood very near four thirty. Light was nearly gone from the sky. Yet if she could not cross back to Boston, then neither could Thaxter, or anyone. With matters as they stood, would John have the good sense to wait until morning? Would he show up, alone and unarmed, in the boat of one of Sam’s smuggler friends, like the hero of a gothic romance to attempt a rescue? Under ordinary circumstances, of course—
She looked back at the two young women, Lucy in her gaudy silk, Philomela who wore her extraordinary beauty like a nimbus of light. What other victims has this man sought? Is this man still seeking?
She took a deep breath. “What color greatcoat?”
“Gray. A sort of stone gray.”
The same color as John’s. And Orion Hazlitt’s. And Charles Malvern’s. And Paul Revere’s and Nehemiah Tillet’s and Mr. Ballagh on Love Lane and several score more of Abigail’s male acquaintance both in and out of Boston. “Caped?”
Philomela closed her eyes, calling the scene back. “Yes. I think so, yes.”
Voices sounded suddenly loud in the other room, two women bewailing the inconveniences of the island and the savage barbarity of the traitors whose insanity had taken over Boston. One of them expressed a strident hope that Sam would be hanged. Recalling Sam’s outright command to John to keep her from this expedition today—and his probable reaction if John came to him with the news that Abigail had not returned—she felt inclined to agree. “And the scarf?”
Philomela’s forehead puckered, trying to call back a moment that she would rather forget. “Red? Dull red, I think. What we’d dye wool at home, with madder-root.”
Abigail owned three of that color, including the one she had on at the moment. “I must go,” she said, rising. A man’s voice cut through those of the ladies next door, gruff and rumbling. “Else I won’t be able to get home at all. Is there anyone left at your father’s house, Miss Fluckner?” And when she nodded, “You say this poem is under the floorboard in your room?”
“Yes, m’am. ’Tis on the second floor, between Miss Lucy’s room and her mother’s. There’s a loose board beside the head of the bed, near the wall. Mrs. Adams, thank you—”
“Don’t thank me yet. Miss Fluckner, can you send me a note, as soon as may be, authorizing me to whoever is in charge at your father’s house? We live in Queen Street, anyone there will know where. I must—”
A knock on the connecting door: “Lucy, dearest? Are you ready?”
“Drat it—tea with Commander Leslie—” Lucy bounded off the bed, turned her back on Philomela. “Get me unlaced . . .”
“Lucy?” bellowed Mr. Fluckner’s voice.
“I’ll be dressed in a moment, Papa.”
Abigail curtseyed and left through the outer door. Behind her, framed in the lamplight, she saw Philomela rapidly divesting the girl of her brilliant day-gown in a cloud of green and yellow silk.
John Thaxter was pacing the bricks fretfully outside the commander’s office, looking in all directions. When