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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

His voice broke off in a whispered laugh, and he shook his head at himself, for even thinking of such a thing. “God made me like this. The Reverend Bargest said, after I—after the first—the first time,” he stammered, “that God never does things without a reason, and therefore, it was God’s will, that I am what I am. That I am seized with—That there are times when it is as if my soul goes into another world, where nothing looks the same, and God’s commands are different. In that world, I hear those commands shouting at me out of my heart. I did fight it,” he added, as another trooper brought up horses for them both. “The second time, when I woke up in the woods, and came back to the village and everyone talking about the Banister girl’s death, and I knew it wasn’t a dream . . .”

He shook his head. “Bargest told me, to pray God to show me a different path. A different way to combat Satan. It was the saving of me, for five years. There were bad days, bad times, in Boston, but nothing I could not put aside, with the help of God.

“Knowing Rebecca helped. Knowing she . . . she cared for me, without wanting to eat my soul. I thought then, that maybe I could choose another road.” One corner of his mouth turned down, with a breath that could have been a sigh, or another, whispered, laugh at his own absurdity. “Then Mother came.”

His mother had left Gilead, and appeared on the printshop doorstep, in May of 1772, Abigail recalled. She remembered it because Rebecca’s letter spoke of seeing John, when he’d gone to the session court at Cambridge in that month.

“And Perdita? Did you . . . Did you go into this other world you speak of?”

“Not—No. Yes.” In the torchlight by the house, Coldstone helped Rebecca to mount behind a trooper, stood speaking to her for a few moments more. She did not look in Orion’s direction.

“It was the blood,” said Orion at last. “I thought I could kill her without . . . I thought I could do what the Lord commanded me to, and no more. But then I saw the blood. Smelled its smell. The Hand—Bargest,” he made himself use the man’s name. “Bargest came to Boston at the beginning of November. With more sermons for the book I was printing, but also to attend on the court. Afterwards he came to the shop, took me aside. He told me that he had proof that Pentyre and his wife were in league with the Devil, that they were the Devil’s chosen instruments to break up our Congregation and drive us from our lands. I had fought—for over a year I had fought—to put these thoughts, this terrible sense, from me, that inevitably I would go back to what I had done . . .”