“Better watch out for them behind us, then, if they take it into their heads we’re the divil’s henchmen. All over the barrack, they say colonials grow up with guns in their hands, an’ don’t have to be taught to shoot ’em, like we do that the landlords have up for poachin’ if we so much as throw a rock. Lead on, m’am.”

For nearly a mile they skirted the edge of the open fields that lay to the eastern side of the village. The rain had been much less here, inland from the sea, but the going was slow, wet leaves and broken branches treacherous underfoot. The thicker undergrowth along the edge of the woods screened them from sight of the village itself, but within the woods the ground was clearer, the world bathed in a cold shadowless light. Now and then Abigail and her escort would work their way through the knots of hazel and bindweed, to the ditch that demarcated the fields. Beyond the ditch, low stone walls kept wild pigs, deer, and—probably more effectively—saplings and creepers at bay.

“Looks a right mess to get a plow through,” whispered Muldoon, gazing across the brown field with its pocked, uneven ground. “What do they grow hereabouts?”

“Maize—Indian corn—mostly, and beans and pumpkins between the rows. The Indians used to not plow at all, just make hills for each plant, and bury a dead fish in each hill, to put heart into the plant. We grow corn on our farm—south of Boston, in Braintree—as well as wheat and rye, but ’tis a hard crop on the soil. If you’re to grow corn you need three times the land you’re going to plant, plus meadows for hay.”

“And it all belongs to somebody else anyway, you say?”

“A great deal of it. It isn’t that unusual, for boundaries to get mixed up, especially if the land goes through the hands of a speculator. When Bargest originally sought out land for his congregation he bought what was cheapest without looking into title too closely.” Abednego Sellars himself had been absent when Abigail had called at the chandlery on her way out of Boston—evidently a good many of the Sons of Liberty were out investigating the rumor that the Beaver was going to be surreptitiously unloaded at sea. But Penelope Sellars had provided a wealth of detail about her detested in-laws’ legal troubles, with considerable spiteful satisfaction, including the information that indeed, the case was scheduled to be settled at the next General Court. Legal details aside, Abigail couldn’t imagine anyone thinking that the decision would go against a good friend of the Crown who dined regularly with the Governor.