Boston was a town of passions: for religion, for liberty, for riotous street fighting that broke out every fifth of November—Pope’s Day—in parades, brawls, battles between North-Enders and South-Enders. As she followed Sam’s maid Surry along the cobbled pavement, Abigail could hear voices arguing in taverns, in tenements, in alleyways. In addition to the homes of the rich, the North End held a large concentration of Boston’s poor, and though it outraged Abigail’s Christian soul, she knew that the refuge of the poor (if they have not the spiritual mettle to either resign their souls or to better their condition) was drink, of which plenty was available. The liveliness that elsewhere characterized Boston seemed here to be only a step from violence. On this very cold morning most of the local dwellers were on their way to or from the market in North Square, but gangs and groups of countrymen clustered around the inns and taverns, with rifles on their backs, tomahawks at their belts, and little parcels of clean shirts and spare stockings under their arms.

“Do you remember hearing of the two murders, three summers ago?” she asked her companion, and the slave-woman nodded.

“Was there two? I only heard of the one. Kitta—Mrs. Blaylock’s cook”—Mrs. Blaylock was Sam Adams’s neighbor—“says Mrs. Fishwire was cut up something horrible. A judgment on her, Kitta says, though to my mind that don’t show much of the Christian charity she’s always braggin’ on that she has.” Having been the property of Sam Adams for many years, Surry was easy-tempered and virtually unshockable: a pretty mulatto woman of about Abigail’s own age, to whose speech still clung the lazy accent of Virginia.

“Why a judgment? I thought Mrs. Fishwire was a hairdresser.”

“Oh, Lord, nuthin’ like that.” The maidservant shook her head. “For one thing, Zulieka Fishwire was older than Mr. Adams—not that that’s ever stopped a woman with a good man,” she added with a pixie grin. “But Kitta—and some other folks in this town—thinks that because a woman learned herb-doctorin’ from the Indians, and maybe from the country Negroes that come in from Africa, she’s got to be learnin’ it from the Devil.” She sniffed scornfully. “Some of those white doctors can’t tell the difference between prickly heat and the smallpox . . . Well, Mrs. F. did dress hair, and did it well. But folks knew, if they didn’t want to be bled or purged or dosed with some of those awful things doctors’ll make you swallow, she was the one to come to, to get you well.”