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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

They trudged in silence. Though Abigail fought to keep her concentration sharp, cold, hunger, daylong fatigue, and bone-deep exhaustion dragged at her thoughts, which kept returning to a gnawing anxiety about where John and the others might be. She found herself a dozen times obsessively calculating how many hours had passed since she’d sent off her notes—good heavens, did any of those notes actually arrive? Had ill befallen Shim, or Jed Paley, or the others in carrying them? Had Orion accomplished Pentyre’s murder after all? Had John and the others all been arrested?

For that matter, had their arrest (if it had taken place) triggered rioting? Was there fighting in Boston? Her mind fretted at the memory of cries and gunfire barely a street away in winter twilight, of running to King Street in the icy night four years ago, to see the bodies lying in the churned-up snow, of the stink of gunfire hanging in the raw air.

Abigail, stop it! she told herself firmly. They’ve just got lost.

A more prosaic and likely reason, and one which just as surely condemned her and her companions to wandering in darkness until the witch-hunters found them. But at least it didn’t involve British cannon opening fire on Boston.

“Bide here.” She heard the rustle of Muldoon’s cloak, and the blanket as he lowered Rebecca to the ground. He took the musket from Abigail’s hand. “The beasts should be hereabouts, t’other side of the road. If I call, Mrs. Adams, you cross the road, follow my voice. If I call, Mrs. Malvern, you know they’re there and they’ve got me.”

“You’re very good at this,” Abigail whispered admiringly.

“Saints, m’am, I spent the whole of me boyhood poachin’ Lord Semphill’s rabbits. Me an’ the other lads, we had it worked to fare-thee-well, how to keep from gettin’ a thrashin’.” With barely a rustle he moved off through the trees. Rebecca’s hand closed over hers, cold as ice, and Abigail groped around them in the darkness until she found what felt like the remains of a deadfall tree. To this she guided her friend, and sat beside her, unbuckling her belt to bring the shuttered lantern between them. She hadn’t dared crack the slide so much as a half inch for light, for most of their flight, but the hot metal was a comfort to fingers nearly frozen.

Above the wind in the trees it was nearly impossible to distinguish smaller sounds.

Then a gun fired like the breaking of Doom, and Muldoon yelled, “Mrs. Malvern, run for it!”

And at half a dozen points around them, dark-lanterns shone out suddenly among the trees.

Thirty-three

Thirty-three

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