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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

The woman’s dark hair was neatly coiffed: not even death had disarrayed it. What had to be diamonds glimmered in her earlobes. A love-bite a few days old darkened the waxy flesh of her bare shoulder, and there was another beside it, white and savage yet curiously bloodless-looking. Her legs lay spread obscenely. I’m sorry, Abigail whispered, fighting the urge to straighten the body, pull down the petticoats, cover her from the stares of the Watch that she knew would come. To leave you thus will speed vengeance, on him who did this to you.

What else?

Another of Rebecca’s songs lay near the hearth, the punned names and descriptions of Boston merchants who claimed to be patriots while selling provisions to the British troops unmistakable. I have my sources, Rebecca would say to her, with her grin that made her round face look like a wicked kitten’s. I’ll make them squirm.

How long, before someone came?

Abigail put her head cautiously out the kitchen door. She’d heard Hap Flowers—the younger of Nehemiah Tillet’s apprentices—in the yard a few minutes ago, taking advantage of Mrs. Tillet’s absence to use the privy in peace. The linendraper’s wife would watch and wait for the boys—and for the sullen little scullery girl—suspecting them of loitering to avoid work. Any other day at this hour, Abigail knew the cook herself would be in the kitchen starting the day’s work at this time, but with any luck Queenie, too, would be taking advantage of her mistress’s absence, and no one would be near the wide kitchen windows that looked onto the yard.

There was a shed across the yard, where the prentice-boys left packing crates to be broken up for kindling, sometimes for weeks. Abigail darted out, found a medium-sized one that neatly covered the line of blood across the back step, ducked back inside. With luck the boys—and Queenie, too—would think Rebecca herself had set it there, for purposes of her own.

In the parlor, a basket held spare slates and chalk, for such of Rebecca’s little pupils as forgot to bring theirs from home. On one of the slates Abigail chalked, NO SCHOOL TODAY, and set it on top of the crate.

What else?