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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

John sprang up from the kitchen table when Abigail came in, having detoured a little out of their way to accompany Muldoon and Coldstone to the small stone building that housed the crew of the gun emplacement at the end of Ship Street. When she tied up Balthazar in the yard and crossed to the back door she was almost stumbling with weariness. John caught her in his arms as she crossed the threshold: “What happened? You’re frozen!” He was dressed for the meeting already, in his second-best brown suit, the one he wore to plead in the circuit courts, his best wig on his head. Papers covered the big kitchen table. He drew her to the fire, brought up a small table as Johnny darted to drop a swift kiss on her cheek, then dashed through the back door to look after the horse. Nabby left her schoolbook to throw her arms around Abigail’s neck—“We were looking for you for hours!”—and Pattie hurried into the icy scullery, to come back with butter, cheese, bread. “We’ll have coffee in a trice—”

Abigail cursed the Crown for making it impossible for her to drink tea at this moment.

John chaffed her hands: “Run fetch your mother some warm slippers, Nabby, and her shawl. Was she there?” he asked more quietly, as their daughter dashed away up the tight-shut little box of the stairway. “Did you learn aught?”

“Only that there are as many witch-hunters and religious fanatics in Massachusetts as ever there were in the old days.” She put her hand to his cheek as he gently unlaced and drew off her boots and stockings. “Catherine Moore told me nothing of Rebecca’s past or family that I did not know already, from Rebecca herself, or from Scipio and Mr. Malvern. Nor can I find anyone who might have had reason to harm Mrs. Pentyre. The only thing I learned was just how impossible it would be for Rebecca to take refuge with Catherine’s family, always supposing she could get out of the town at all last Wednesday night. And I suppose Sam has found nothing?”

John shook his head.

“Has he gotten a man into Rebecca’s old house?”

“Impossible. The Tillets are refusing to rent to anyone. To tell the truth, once the Dartmouth was sighted—and that was but two hours after you left—neither Sam, nor Revere, nor any of us has had many minutes to spare. Griffin’s Wharf is surrounded. One customs man tried to force his way through to examine the cargo and was tarred and feathered—”

Abigail flinched, sickened at her recollection of the single time she’d seen that form of mutilation done.