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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

“And what is the truth?” At Miss Fluckner’s gesture Abigail took a seat in one of the room’s two cane-bottomed chairs; Miss Fluckner herself sat on the bed. Rods had been rigged from the ceiling, and calico curtains, in an approximation of a half-tester—cryingly necessary, thought Abigail, given the chill of the room and the doll-like pe titeness of the fireplace. “That the man who murdered Jenny Barry, Zulieka Fishwire, and Perdita Pentyre seeks also to kill you? What makes you think this? Please speak freely,” she added, seeing the automatic look of reserve—so common to even the best-treated of slaves—that flickered across the back of Philomela’s eyes. Abigail glanced at Miss Fluckner for confirmation, then said, “Nothing that you say will be repeated, or will be held against you.”

A ridiculous assertion, she railed at herself the instant the words were out of her mouth. Even the most trusting bonds-woman wasn’t about to state some of her real opinions in the presence of members of a race who could get her whipped if they didn’t like what they heard. But it seemed to reassure Philomela.

“I don’t know about Mrs. Pentyre, m’am,” said the servant after a moment. “And I don’t know why this is happening to me. I swear, I have never spoken to this man in my life. Even as I say it, it sounds—” She shook her head, peeped apologetically at her young mistress. “It sounds like something out of the novels Miss Lucy is always reading.”

And Miss Lucy—to Abigail’s relief and doubtless Philomela’s as well—only grinned in good-natured acknowledgment.

Philomela took a deep breath, let it out. “This is what happened. It doesn’t sound like much.”

And it didn’t. And yet—thought Abigail, the hair prickling on her nape. And yet . . .

Philomela’s master in Virginia had sold her to Thomas Fluckner in April of 1772, because Mrs. Fluckner’s maid had had a child, and could no longer (Mrs. Fluckner said) devote herself to the interests of her mistress as she properly should. When Philomela had been in the household about six weeks, someone started sending her poems.

“They’d be slipped in under the kitchen door at night, or poked through the cracks in the shutters. Mr. Barnaby—Mr. Fluckner’s butler—would bring them to me, and joke me about having an admirer, and that’s all I thought they were.”

“You do read, then?”