“Who signed the note?” she asked, standing up precariously as the boat moved from the dock. “Whose name was on it?”

Muldoon looked puzzled, fishing in his memory. “Something Latin,” he said. “No-vangelus?”

Novanglus. New Englander.

John’s pseudonym.

And John, of course, was away at a meeting when Thaxter finally walked her up from Rowe’s Wharf to Queen Street again. “Mrs. Adams, you must be froze!” Pattie almost dragged her and Thaxter indoors. The warmth of the kitchen—redolent of soap and wet bricks, for Pattie had Johnny and Charley in the tub before the fire and Nabby was drying her long blonde hair—wrapped her like a shadowy amber blanket. Woozy as she was with residual sea-sickness from the crossing, Abigail was suddenly, crashingly conscious that she had consumed nothing since the bread-and-butter nuncheon just after two.

On that thought came another, of the promise she’d made poor Orion. It was nearly full-dark—the sailors had grumbled about having to spend the night with the little Battery garrison, instead of rowing back to the safety of Castle Island—and Abigail was almost certain that for the pious Hazlitt household, the Sabbath had well and truly begun. Still, she reflected, she could but try.

And she knew she’d better try now, because if she so much as sat down and took off her pattens, she knew she wouldn’t want to stand up again.

“Hercules—” She put her hand on Thaxter’s arm. “Could I trouble you for one more Labor before you turn in for the night?”

Abigail suspected that this particular Labor would be in vain, and so it proved. The little house on Hanover Street was closed up tight, the feeblest glimmer of candlelight leaking through the cracks in the rear shutters visible only by the comparative blackness of the yard when she and Thaxter groped their way to the back door. No one answered her knock, though she thought she heard the droning voice within pause in its reading of Scripture.

When it resumed, she sighed. “No sense adding to the poor man’s trouble by leaving bait out for rats.” She settled the basket more firmly on her arm. “But, I couldn’t sleep tonight, without having tried.”

Wind screamed along Hanover Street as they made their way back, cutting through Abigail’s cloak and jacket as if she wore gauze and lace. This corner of Boston, along the footslopes of Beacon Hill, was but thinly built-upon yet, and the neighborhood along Hanover Street lacked the crowded liveliness of the North End. With all shutters closed, and the moon hidden in cloud-wrack, the darkness was abyssal, swallowing the wan flicker of Thaxter’s lantern and causing Abigail to wonder what people did, who were abroad in such darkness who didn’t know the way. Even thieves, she reflected, would have a hard time—

She stopped, and turned to look back.

“What is it, m’am?”

What had it been? She stood for a moment, wondering if she should say anything . . . “I thought I saw a light behind us,” she said.