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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

“I think his last note came just before Mrs. Fishwire was killed,” said Lucy after a moment. “Philomela and I were just terrified, because I’d already talked to Papa about not selling her and he gave me his lecture about how she wanted to stay with us only because I spoiled her, and all Negroes lie, etc. etc. And Mama gave me her lecture about how that wasn’t any of my business anyway, and young ladies shouldn’t concern themselves with men’s business etc. etc.” She reached across the short distance that separated them, and gripped her servant’s hand.

“And after that,” said Philomela quietly, “nothing. This man I’d thought was him . . . I didn’t see him anymore. But for a year and a half now, every time I go outside, it’s terrible. That poem is still under a floorboard in my room, but it’s like a burning coal, that I smell the smoke of, every waking moment.”

“It’s like the Sword of Damocles in the story,” agreed Lucy. “For months—over a year—we’ve been waiting for the thread to break, and the blade to drop. But at the same time, you know how easy it is, to think, Were we really making that up? Did that truly happen? Or was it like the games you play when you’re little, about being a princess in danger, and all the time you know that nobody really gets carried off and held captive in a big house far from anywhere, and has their captor fall madly in love with them. And then Philomela told me about Mrs. Pentyre.”

“From whom did you hear that?”

“The woman who comes to help with the laundry, the next day. I was scared, and when I went to the market Saturday I asked about. And Mrs. Adams, it truly sounded like the same man who’d killed the others. Then a few days later Scipio told me you were asking about it, because of Mrs. Malvern disappearing, and that you’d talked to Mrs. Pentyre’s French maid, and were really looking, the way the constables and the magistrates never did . . . Scipio’s a sort of friend of mine,” she added. “He lived for years in the same part of Virginia I come from—though he was long gone from there before I was ever born. But he knew a lot of the people I grew up with. I didn’t know you by sight, but on the wharf yesterday, Miss Lucy heard the officer introduce you to her father, and knew you would be coming here today.”

“And you thought you would tell me what you know of the matter? Can you remember—”

“It isn’t just that,” Lucy broke in.