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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

“She’ll return.” John rocked her softly in the clasp of his arm. “If harm had come to her, they would have found some sign of it by now.”

Abigail put her hand over his. “I think you’re right,” she replied. “Which leads me to wonder—Why has she neither been found, nor come forth? And I can think of only two reasons. One is that she received a concussion when she was hit on the head—yet if that were so, would not the people who found her know her? Or at least, have heard by this time that she was being sought?”

“I agree,” said John. “Furthermore, if she had been so severely injured, she could not have got far. And the second?”

“Barring the romantical chance that she hid herself in the hold of a ship that is now on its way to China . . . She is hiding because she recognized the man who did it. And he knows she did.”

Eight

Eight

009

From Griffin’s Wharf it was a voyage of about half an hour to Castle Island. Dozens of small skiffs and sloops made the trip daily over the choppy gray waters of the harbor, bearing provisions for the men and fodder for the horses, firewood to heat the brick corridors of the squat fortress of Castle William and tailors, boot makers, wig makers, and wine merchants to make sure its officers had everything they needed for a comfortable stay. These little craft bore also the friends of the Crown, who were likewise friends of its representatives: the customs officials who relied on the soldiers to enforce His Majesty’s duties, the clerks who surrounded the Governor (a large number of them his relatives), the Royal Commissioners who carried out the King’s decrees. And, most recently, they carried the consignees to whom the Crown had given the monopoly on the East India Company’s tea.

“The Company’s on the verge of bankruptcy, from paying for its own troops to take over land in India,” said John, as he handed Abigail down into the sloop of a farmer named Logan, who had agreed to carry them to the island. “The King’s lowered the customs duty on the tea, so that he can put the smugglers—like Mr. Hancock—out of business . . . it’ll barely be three pence a pound. Once it arrives here, there is no way it will not be sold—and then the King and Parliament will have their precedent, that it is legal for the King to tax goods that come to us, without our consent to the tax.”

“And who cares about their constitutional right to consent to be taxed,” murmured Abigail, “if it means cheap tea?” She gripped the rail as the cold wind caught the Katrina’s sails, fixed her eye on the pine and granite tuft of Bird Island, the nearest of the small eyots that dotted the harbor’s deep channel. The clammy cold seemed to seep into her joints, and the pitching of the sea turned her stomach.