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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

“Is he a relation of Richard Pentyre’s, then?” asked Abigail, after the four women had sewed for a time in quiet.

“Oh, Lord, yes! There was bad blood between them, you see, over the land that Pentyre’s mother inherited: Well, to my mind the bad blood was inherited, too, because it was Abednego’s father that got passed over in the will, not Abednego himself. But it was Pentyre he went to when his son was pressed into the Navy, see—as family, you know. I don’t know a great deal about the British Navy,” she added, setting her sewing down for a moment, to sip her tea. “Nor do I know, how long it takes even for a man who’s a friend of the Crown, to get them to turn loose of a common sailor, even if they can find the man, on all their ships all over the seas. So, I don’t know the right of it. Abednego claims Pentyre was lazy, and put the matter off, as not important to him, for nearly a year, before they even located what ship poor Davy was on. And by then it was too late.”

Eighteen

Eighteen

019

Rain started late that night, raw and cold. Abigail, since childhood a subject to rheumatism, felt the change of weather in her sleep, and turned restlessly, seeking John’s steady warmth, like a heated brick. Seeking, in her dreams, his unquenchable flame of spirit.

But all her dreams were drawn toward darkness. In her sleep she heard Mrs. Hazlitt’s wailing: All flesh died, that moved upon the earth . . . fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. Though even in her dream her reason told her that the vision was simply a confused old woman’s hallucination, she went to the window and looked out, and saw all of Queen Street drowned in rising waters. Water climbed the brick walls of the opposite houses, rain-pocked in the blackness yet visible with the all-seeing knowledge of dreams. Church bells tolled their wordless warning of danger, and she saw in her dreaming Nabby and Johnny in the next room, clinging together in fright as the water poured silently in over the windowsill. The Dartmouth floated by, laden with its burden of tea, its crewmen waving their cargo manifests and asking to be allowed to vote.