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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

When Sam was gone, John put an arm around Abigail’s shoulders. The kitchen was quiet: the children engaged in playing with wooden soldiers near the hearth, Pattie working at her tatting, a task which to Abigail’s baffled disbelief gave her pleasure. The gray tabby cat, Messalina, purred by the fire, dreaming of the slaughter of mice. Precisely as things had been last night, thought Abigail: when she’d known her friend was safe, when the doors that looked into households of pain, and sourness, and distrust had all been shut. When she knew that she might sleep and dream of gardening, not blood.

“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.