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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

After a slight pause—because no well-bred servant would follow into even someone else’s interruption of a white lady—Philomela said, “The day before yesterday, I saw him again. Watching me the way he used to, on the way to the market.”

Twenty-three

Twenty-three

024

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” There was not a shadow of doubt in her voice. “But the problem is, m’am, I can’t be sure. When he would watch me, the summer before last, he wore summer things: a blue coat with a good trim cut to it, and stockings and shoes, not boots. Thursday he was muffled up in a greatcoat, and boots, and a scarf, for ’twas bitter cold. But it was the man. I saw his face, and the way he stood and moved. It was the man.”

Abigail was silent for a time. Throughout this recital she’d held her watch cradled in her palm, and the time stood very near four thirty. Light was nearly gone from the sky. Yet if she could not cross back to Boston, then neither could Thaxter, or anyone. With matters as they stood, would John have the good sense to wait until morning? Would he show up, alone and unarmed, in the boat of one of Sam’s smuggler friends, like the hero of a gothic romance to attempt a rescue? Under ordinary circumstances, of course—

She looked back at the two young women, Lucy in her gaudy silk, Philomela who wore her extraordinary beauty like a nimbus of light. What other victims has this man sought? Is this man still seeking?

She took a deep breath. “What color greatcoat?”

“Gray. A sort of stone gray.”

The same color as John’s. And Orion Hazlitt’s. And Charles Malvern’s. And Paul Revere’s and Nehemiah Tillet’s and Mr. Ballagh on Love Lane and several score more of Abigail’s male acquaintance both in and out of Boston. “Caped?”

Philomela closed her eyes, calling the scene back. “Yes. I think so, yes.”

Voices sounded suddenly loud in the other room, two women bewailing the inconveniences of the island and the savage barbarity of the traitors whose insanity had taken over Boston. One of them expressed a strident hope that Sam would be hanged. Recalling Sam’s outright command to John to keep her from this expedition today—and his probable reaction if John came to him with the news that Abigail had not returned—she felt inclined to agree. “And the scarf?”

Philomela’s forehead puckered, trying to call back a moment that she would rather forget. “Red? Dull red, I think. What we’d dye wool at home, with madder-root.”