“Not—” She glanced at Muldoon, stopped herself from saying, Abednego Sellars, and to turn the subject said instead, “Not likely to be settled soon, if trouble comes of this tea business. I know he had notice to report to the Liberty Tree and resign his position, but I’d scarcely consider that grounds for having his visitors searched before they’re permitted to see him.”

“Damn it!” They emerged from the gate, into the mucky chaos of the camp around the walls. With a hasty, “Excuse me, m’am!” Thaxter dashed ahead, to intercept two sailors in striped jerseys and tarred pigtails, making their way up the torchlit path. Presumably, guessed Abigail, with deep forboding, the men who were to take her back to Boston. Their obvious reluctance to have anything further to do with the project was understandable: Darkness was closing in, and beyond the range of each smoky little campfire among the close-crowded jumble of tents and wash-lines, virtually nothing could be seen but a sense of movement in the shadows, and the occasional flash of an animal eye. Around Thaxter and the sailors, more civilians were coming up the path from the wharf: not rich merchants, but ordinary citizens of the town. Angry and harried-looking, they bore makeshift bundles and glanced right and left at the chaos with the expression of people who have been cheated of their rights. A small child was crying.

We have all been cheated of our rights, thought Abigail, pitying them yet knowing there was no good answer to their distress. We will all be cheated of our rights, unless we take a stand against the Crown while yet we have a little freedom to do so.

Beside her, Muldoon said, “T’cha! Searchin’—that’s goin’ a bit far, beggin’ your pardon, m’am, note or no note.”

“Note?” Abigail turned her head sharply, her mind still running on poems stuffed through shutters, hidden under floorboards. “What note?”

“The note Mr. Pentyre had, m’am. About how the Sons of Liberty were going to kill him and his wife both.”

She stared at him, aghast, and Thaxter came striding back up the path, coat flapping. “They say they’ll do it, Mrs. Adams, but you must come now.”

“Where did they get it? Who sent it?” She took Thaxter’s arm, her pattens slipping in the mud as they descended another two yards of path, turned a corner around a makeshift tavern, found themselves suddenly at the dock itself.

Muldoon shook his head. “That I don’t know, m’am, I’m sorry.”

“Does Coldstone have it in his possession?”

“Mrs. Adams, you must come—”

“I don’t know, m’am. I’ll ask him—”

“Mrs. Adams—!”

She allowed herself to be helped into the boat, what was called in New England a whaleboat: like a large rowboat with a sail. Scarcely what one wanted to be on the water in, on an overcast winter evening with wind howling down the bay straight from the North Pole . . .