“Not being idiots, the stevedores sent to unload the tea didn’t even make the attempt. Sam sent men out to Cambridge, Roxbury, and Dorchester the moment the ship was sighted, and more messengers went out as soon as the time and place for the meeting tonight were set. There’s a man on top of Beacon Hill, watching Castle Island, but Colonel Leslie hasn’t stirred. I pray God he does not,” he added grimly. “The last thing we need is to give the men aboard the Cumberland reason to start shelling the town.”

“They wouldn’t!”

“They won’t if they think doing so would cause more damage than rioters. I must go,” he added, as Nabby scampered back into the kitchen with Abigail’s knitted wool slippers and stoutest shawl. “We’re meeting at the Green Dragon at eight: Sam, Revere, Warren, Church, Hancock, and I. The Faneuil meeting later will be a bear-garden. We need to know in advance what measures to propose. Sam at least knows that we have to move carefully, if we’re to keep support in England and not be dismissed as hooligans out for nothing but loot.”

Abigail nodded again. She had been aware for years that despite the cries of Democracy, the heads of the Sons of Liberty took care to plan their strategies closely, and leave as little as possible to the whims of the rank and file. Sam kept a finger on the pulse of the poor men, the laborers, the dispossessed and discontented, but he knew well that they could be swayed by the urgings of other men as easily as by his own. John was his balance wheel, his gauge for what would work and what only sounded well.

“By the by, this came for you this morning.” He held out a thick little letter, addressed in Scipio’s neat hand. The outer sheet enclosed a second missive on much finer paper—though not, she observed, anything like that of the forged note. In nearly illegible French handwriting, it informed her that M. Pentyre had indeed visited the house of Mme. Belle-Isle Wednesday night, leaving shortly after eleven. Clarice, the maid of Mme. Belle-Isle, would not drink rum and so Lisette had been obliged to purchase a bottle of smuggled French cognac for two dollars with which to ply her to obtain this information.

Feeling as if she had stumbled into a more than usually tawdry novel, Abigail brought up a couple of tallow work-candles and wrote out a little invoice for Charles Malvern: I feel the woman’s information is truthful, so far as she has been told the truth. If nothing else, it clears the ground for further inquiry . She then brought out the packet of letters that Catherine Moore had given her.