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Back The Ninth Daughter
Chapters (37)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. Twenty-six
  30. Twenty-seven
  31. Twenty-eight
  32. Twenty-nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-one
  35. Thirty-two
  36. Thirty-three
  37. Thirty-four

Though they—and the remainder of Rebecca’s letters to herself, that she’d started to read the previous Saturday—brought back clearly the memories of those times, and stirred anew her anxiety for her friend, they told her nothing new. Rebecca rarely mentioned her family, or the friends she had known in Maryland in her youth. Those were very much of the “Jess will be old enough to start school now,” variety—whoever Jess might be.

Abigail blushed once to find her own name, coupled with grateful praise: “She is so patient with my stupidity in the kitchen . . . One day I hope to have her steadiness of heart . . .”

If you think my heart is steady, my dear, it’s only because you haven’t been around when Charley pissed in the kitchen fireplace. Abigail lowered the page to her lap. In the overcast dark, church bells all over the city had begun to toll, summoning Friends, Brethren, and Countrymen to Faneuil Hall. The strange, slow ringing had a sinister note, profoundly unlike the brisk music of Sunday. Could Rebecca hear them, wherever she was? Sam had had word out for a week now, for all those Friends, Brethren, etc. to be looking for her, and there had been no word of her nor word of her body.

If she were free to leave Boston, why would she not have come to me?

It was nearly midnight when John returned. Abigail, still reading by the fireplace, looked up at the sound of the latch. The men slipped through like fugitives: all the group who met at the Green Dragon regularly over matters of coordinating the patriots in the various Boston wards, and corresponding with like-minded men in far-flung colonies like New York, Philadelphia, Virginia. Her fair-haired, delicate-looking cousin Josiah Quincy, young Dr. Warren, smooth-voiced Dr. Church, and dark Ben Edes, Sam rubbing his hands and smiling with a self-satisfied twinkle in his eye, for all the world like the Reverend Atonement Bargest out in Gilead, soaking up praise for his excellent sermon on the dangers of demons that only he could see.

The resemblance doesn’t end there, thought Abigail, smiling a little to herself as the men clustered around her, gripped her hand, all talking a mile a minute and all about their own affairs. She could have been Queen Charlotte or Helen of Troy for all they actually saw her, so preoccupied were they about the announcement to go out tomorrow that all the East India Company consignees for the Dartmouth’s tea must report to the Liberty Tree—at the head of the Neck—to resign their appointments, and the plan to have riders go out to farther-flung towns. So many hundred pamphlets from Edes, so many from Hazlitt, so many from Thomas over at the Spy—meet again tomorrow to coordinate details—John, you’ll get us up a draft of what we’re to say to the harbormaster about refusing to unload the ship . . .