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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

Then Bargest would know that his tool—his human weapon—would either not be returning here at all—that he would be killed—or that he would return, and demand Rebecca’s release. Either way, Rebecca would be no longer of use.

The attic was crammed with supplies—sacks of corn, barrels of apples, smoke-black hams hanging from the rafters to keep them away from mice—but no clothesline. By the attenuated glimmer of the single gable window, and the weak flicker of Abigail’s candle, they eventually located a stout coil of it downstairs in the porch, after what felt like half an hour of hunting. By that time the ground outside was a mere blur of iron gray, the sky barely to be distinguished above the coal-black line of the trees. “Can you find the thicket?” Abigail slipped the lantern-slide shut on her candle, and Muldoon nodded. “Then go now, and rig a line to the blockhouse,” she whispered. “I don’t know what I’ll find there, or how long it’ll take.”

“Stand at the corner of the house toward the wood, then,” whispered the sergeant, “with the lantern-slide open toward me, or I’ll never find the place comin’ back.”

Abigail obeyed. As she stood waiting, she could hear the drift of sound from the House of Repentance, a single voice, crying out in terror, shrieking in horror at the spirit of the witch that assailed him. Now and then, like the gust of wind in the trees, the congregation gasped or screamed in response.

Like the Sons of Liberty, she reflected, when Sam would shout at them, Do you want to see your homes overrun, your goods plundered, your children at the point of British bayonets . . . ?

No—! Like the hammer of the sea . . . or the slow tolling of Boston’s bells . . .

For a time she could make out the black shape of the sergeant, his heavy military cloak belling out behind him, moving over the paler ground. Then she blinked, and could see him no more. She herself could scarcely find the blockhouse, though she oriented herself carefully toward the dark bulk of it against the final limmerance of sky. She followed its wall around, opened the lantern-slide, pointed it out toward the wood.