The blocks of the North Street Ward had originally been plotted deep enough to permit gardens behind them, but during the course of time this land had been sold, and divided, and built upon for rentals and barns and work-shops. In much the same way, old Ezra Tillet had built the narrow little house behind his own, that his son Nehemiah had rented to Rebecca Malvern. The result of this rear-yard building was that much of the North End was a maze of yards and cottages, and alleyways that would admit no more than a wheelbarrow. Down one of these, past the Blue Bull tavern and behind Love Lane, Surry led Abigail, to a sort of cobbled courtyard surrounded by three or four ramshackle structures of various sizes, aswarm with grubby children barefoot in the cold.

Washing-lines stretched from house to house, and a bonfire burned in the middle of the court under a black cauldron that looked as if it had begun its career on a whaling vessel. Two children who should have been in school were feeding the fire beneath it. A third, slightly older, stirred an acrid burgoo of shirts and chemises simmering within it. The heavy air smelled of woodsmoke, lye, and privies that needed cleaning.

Abigail walked up to the older woman engaged, with yet another child, in hanging shirts of white ruffled linen over the stretched ropes, and asked, “Begging your pardon, m’am, but does Hattie Kern still live hereabouts?” Rachel Revere, who lived two streets away on North Square, had given her this name along with the information that Mrs. Kern took in washing. Sure enough, the woman said, “That’ll be me, m’am.”

“I’m Mrs. Andrews, from Haverhill.” She held out her hand to the warm, laundry-wet grip of those rough fingers. “And this is Lula.” Surry curtseyed. “I understand a woman named Fishwire used to live near here; Lula was her niece. We only heard this past summer about the poor woman’s death”—in an isolated township like Haverhill, this was not beyond the realm of possibility—“and Lula being her closest relative we had wondered, if any of her things remained?”

“Lord save you,” exclaimed Mrs. Kern, and dried her hands on her apron. “I have some of her things—a good few, anyway—and Georgie Ballagh still has that poor cat of hers. Nannie”—this to one of the children feeding the cauldron fire—“run get Mr. Ballagh, there’s a good girl . . . Not you, Isaac, you stay with the fire. To think of her having a niece after all!”