A Mischief in the Snow - By Margaret Miles Page 0,81

though its light had lost the exuberance of the morning.

“The wills, then,” Moses Reed began. He stood before a window stroking his beard; Longfellow, Charlotte, Edmund, and Diana sat in chairs arranged before him.

“As I have already said, it appears that Catherine Knowles wrote two wills in the space of the past year, each of them brief. Magdalene assures me she witnessed the first, though not the second, of which she knew nothing. The first document was witnessed as well by Alaric Jones, who delivered it to me in Boston shortly before his own death. The only witness to the final will was Alexander Godwin. It was he who came to me with the document several weeks ago. Godwin, in fact, was the sole and final heir, at the time of Catherine's unfortunate death.”

“As we've already deduced,” Longfellow informed the lawyer.

“Yes, I thought as much. Now for the rest. I assume, since Magdalene informed Mrs. Willett of the fact, and I have since discussed it with several of you, that it's no longer a secret she bore a son some seventeen years ago. After a short time, the boy was taken from his mother. Upon this, Catherine Knowles insisted.”

“I would like to know exactly why that was the case,” Diana interjected. Her face, Charlotte thought unhappily, had the intensity of an avenging angel, bound on righting injustice in the world.

“I'm sorry to tell you of this, Mrs. Montagu,” Reed said with a grimace of concern. “I'm aware that you, too, recently lost a child. Nor do I wish to open Magdalene's wound, though it came to her long ago. However, she assured me this morning that it has greatly lessened, since—” He stopped, as if to reconsider.

“But perhaps I should not go ahead of my story,” he continued. “First: Magdalene is unmarried, though her lover did hope to return one day and claim her. For whatever reason, that never occurred.”

“But how did the child come to leave the island?” Diana asked once more.

“I must admit I took the boy away, as Mrs. Knowles instructed me to do. You ask why, Mrs. Montagu. I will try to explain. Catherine Knowles held strong views on hereditary rights and duties. As I recall, she felt she owed her husband's family something better than—well, than a bastard, and one who quite possibly would not have developed a full mental capacity, or a full moral sense. She felt it would be better for the boy, as well, if he had no chance to inherit wealth and power, if in fact his blood carried his mother's affliction, and his uncle's. She believed it would have been a sort of pollution. In this, she refused to take part.”

“She believed, then, in primogeniture,” said Longfellow, looking to see Edmund Montagu's reaction. The captain's face was an unchanging mask.

“But again I jump ahead,” said the lawyer. “Mrs. Knowles insisted it would be far better if the Philadelphia family did not know what had happened—that Magdalene had been secretly with child when John Fisher died, and had been delivered of that child some time after the return of Peter Knowles to Philadelphia. Catherine then asked me to repay her father's earlier kindness to me. I was glad to be able to do so. And, because of the trust she placed in me, I was able to establish myself in Boston, where I have since acted as her attorney and advisor.”

“But Reed, what did you do with the boy?” asked Longfellow.

“I took the child to a place where I was sure he would be well looked after. Again, at the request of Mrs. Knowles, I did not tell her with whom the boy would live. Nor was Magdalene ever to know. I've often wondered if I made the right choice, in following this plan…”

“His name, man—his name!” Longfellow insisted, sensing that the lawyer still did not wish to give it. “Was it Alexander Godwin?”

“Godwin? No. The boy's name, the new name he was given, is Edward Bigelow”

“Ned?” cried Longfellow. “It can't be!”

“I think Mrs. Willett suspected as much,” said Reed, as Charlotte felt his eyes examine her own.

“You gave him to old Jonah?” Longfellow asked, his voice still full of disbelief.

“To Jonah and his wife, who had long been my neighbors. I knew they'd lost their own children to illness, some time before. They were very glad to take Ned, as they called him, and to raise the boy as a child said to be related to Mrs. Bigelow. Then, when