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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

Muldoon has time for one shot. The thought passed, very coolly, through Abigail’s mind and, bracing her feet on the house-wall, she began to lower herself as rapidly as she could. Someone fired a shot, then another, followed by a great deal of shouting and cursing and Muldoon’s voice bellowing, very unlike his usual good-natured self, “And the next one goes between the eyes of the first man steps forward!”

He has John’s pistol.

Then she was on the ground. She ran to the sergeant’s side, scooped up the musket that he’d dropped to the ground to draw the pistol: “Go!” he said, and she went. The yarn-clue was there, and she fled along it, the musket weighing pounds in her hand, the spreading firelight showing her up. At the thicket she waited, gasping, hearing shots behind her in the dark and seeing the black figures of men and woman silhouetted on the red glare of the fire.

Men and women both. The words ran in a circle in her head. Men and women both . . .

The way she herself, and Rebecca—and poor Mrs. Pentyre—had arrayed themselves at the sides of the men, in their fight for the colony’s rights?

She shoved the thought from her as she’d have struck a mouse away that tried to climb her skirts: We’re following the principles of justice! The rights that Englishmen have fought for—

But she knew perfectly well that many members of the Sons of Liberty were in the organization simply because they were following Sam Adams.

It isn’t the same. She knew it in the marrow of her bones.

His recent outburst against her notwithstanding, would Sam hesitate to order killed a man he saw as a threat to the Sons?

It isn’t the same.

But at that moment, kneeling, gasping, in the wet ground by the hazel thicket, it seemed frighteningly close.

“Mrs. Adams?” “Abigail?”

Whispered voices, hoarse with exertion and fear. “Here.” She shot the slide back for one instant, then closed it again.

“Bide,” said Muldoon.

Rebecca caught at her arm, her shoulder, her weight frighteningly slight. How few days ago had she wakened and been able to eat and drink? At the same moment the pistol was put into her hand, the musket taken, and she heard the oily snick of the lock, the faint noise of a cartridge being ripped. A moment later, the clink of the rod rammed home: once, twice, thrice. Every man in the militia whined like a schoolboy about drill—How many times we got to show them we know how to load our bloody guns?