A Marked Man (15 page)

Under two layers of stockings, her toes were growing numb.

Fetters clanked on the bricks of the hall.

“Whoever they be, they got the wrong folk,” growled a deep voice. “We got nobody here in this stink-pit town.”

“Well, they think they know you,” retorted Hoyle’s voice.
“Smith.”

“I’m Smith,” corrected another, lighter voice. “He’s Jones.”

They entered the room, one tall and one short, one fairish—his hair the color of the lowest grade of molasses sugar—the other swart. Yet something in their eyes and the shape of their unshaven chins whispered of cousinry. Abigail remarked mildly, “Well, the heavens rejoice,” at which the tall so-called Smith started like a spooked deer. Smiling, she continued, “Mr. Smith—Mr. Jones—permit me to introduce
Mr. Eli Putnam
, master of the sloop
Magpie
,” and gestured to Paul Revere. “And I am Mrs. Adams.”

The two men stared at her with widened eyes. “Jones,” the shorter, darker man in the much-fouled and faded once-blue coat, whispered reverently, “That wouldn’t be
—Sam
Adams?” and Abigail’s smile widened.

“Let’s just say Mrs. Adams for now.” She glanced significantly toward the door, through which Hoyle had disappeared. “And as my mother always says,
First things first
.” And she unpacked the basket she had brought, and set out two loaves of bread, half a crock of butter, a chunk of cheese the size of her two fists, and two bottles of cider. The men fell on these like starving dogs, without a wasted word.

“M’am,” said “Smith,” after an appropriate time, “Mrs. Adams, we owe you whatever you care to name for that.”

“I’m pleased you feel that way, Mr. Miller,” responded Abigail. “Because we really do need to know what happened last Saturday night.”

“It wasn’t us,” blurted Matt Brown. “I swear on my mother’s grave it wasn’t us!”

“Your ma’s not dead,” pointed out Miller. “Ow!” he added as Brown punched him in the arm.

“What wasn’t you, Mr. Brown?”

The two men traded a glance. Miller lowered his voice, leaned toward her, though he kept a polite distance owing to the reek—and the infested condition—of his clothing: a consideration Abigail found surprisingly fastidious, after seeing him eat. “In the jail they’re saying how the King’s man was killed that night,” he said softly. “It wasn’t us. We never saw him after he went into that house beyond the Common, and that’s God’s truth, strike us both dead for our sins.”

“What house?”

Brown and Miller traded a glance.

“We know you followed Sir Jonathan Cottrell back from Maine,” said Abigail.

“We wasn’t going to hurt him,” said Brown earnestly. “Just beat the innards out of him, to show them psalm-singing stinkard Proprietors they can’t mess with us in Maine.”

Abigail said, “I see.”

“Bingham’s man always put the
Hetty
in at Hancock’s Wharf,” explained Miller, “so we knew where to wait for him when we came in, since the
Hetty
’s the slowest thing on the water between Philadelphia and the Bay of Fundy. We loafed around the wharf for maybe two hours, ’fore they arrived. Cottrell got off the boat and left his luggage, and went up the hill to rent a horse from a feller at a livery—”

“A little bay Narragansett,” said Revere. “White star, white stockings on the near fore and off hind—”

“That’s the one!” said Brown, impressed. The single bar of his black eyebrow quirked down in the middle, over the short, ugly curve of his nose. “You wan’t there, was you?”

Revere looked wise and tapped the side of his nose.

“We thought we’d be left in the mud, us not havin’ two shillings for our dinner, let alone the price of a horse,” said Miller, leaning forward on the bench with his manacled hands folded on his knees. “But he rode along at a walk, in no hurry, down the main streets of the town and out west of town near the Common, where they got a couple of streets cut but not so many houses to speak of, and cows and gardens and maybe a house or two. Cottrell rides straight up to one of the houses that is there, a good-size brick place with what looks to be an orchard at one side of it, that nobody’s taking care of, and puts his horse up in the stable like he owned the place and goes inside. We couldn’t get close, on account of him knowin’ us and us not wantin’ to be seen.”

“How did he know you?” asked Revere, and Matthias Brown looked puzzled, as if there were some self-evident portion of the story inscribed in the air above his head that Revere had neglected to examine.

“Because I’d laid hold of him in the ordinary-room of the Blue Ox and told him I’d beat the innards out of him for the festerin’ English Tory psalm-singin’ bastard he was.”

Revere echoed Abigail, “I see.”

“Only after that the festerin’ psalm-singin’ English Tory bastard kept indoors, or had two of Bingham’s men go about with him, so I never got the chance in Maine, y’see. I followed him all the way down to Georgetown Island and back, too. And that witch-friggin’ coward Quimby that owns the Blue Ox kept close to him, like they’d got engaged, as if there’s any harm in poundin’ the Proprietors’ agents, the festerin’—”

“Quite so,” said Abigail. “So you threatened Cottrell with a beating in front of witnesses.” No wonder Miller—who seemed in charge of what brains the duo possessed—had exhibited anxiety over the magistrates learning their right names.

“Ain’t I just told you that? But like Hev was sayin’, we never got the chance.” Brown’s deep voice was tinged with regret.

“Did you wait for him outside the house?”

“Oh, yes, m’am,” said Miller. “The house stands on a rise of ground, some two-three hundred yards off from the meeting-house that looks out over the Mill-Pond. I had my glass with me, so we stayed by the corner of the meeting-house and watched the place, turn and turn about, all the afternoon. Just before dinnertime a man rode up on a dapple gray horse and went inside, and stayed maybe an hour. Bar that, there was nothing, though just after Cottrell got there, smoke came out the chimney, white and clotty-looking the way it is when the chimney’s cold. We didn’t see no servants, no stableman, nothing.”

“When it grew dark,” asked Abigail, “did you see lights in the house?”

Both culprits looked abashed and scratched in silence.

“It was mighty cold there by the meeting-house, m’am,” said Miller at length. “As bad as back home, or nearly.”

“And we hadn’t had but a heel of bread and some cheese we brought from the boat,” added Brown. “And no rum for hours and hours.”

Abigail said again, “I see.” The Lynd Street Meeting-House stood largely isolated in that hilly, thinly built district north of the Common, but along the Mill-Pond nearby stood little clumps of habitation, which included at least two distilleries and several of Boston’s less salubrious taverns.

“We weren’t going to be gone from our post but for a few minutes,” added Miller earnestly. “Either of the pair of ’em would have been in sight when we came out, if they’d left, and if those festerin’ Massachuser scoundrels at the Dressed Ship had been able to hold their rum like real men.”

“It wasn’t the rum,” insisted Brown. “ ’ Twas the damn butter.”

“When you show witch-friggin’ Massachusers how to make hot buttered rum,” explained Miller to Abigail, “you’ve got to watch out for the butter. Lot of men can’t take it. Renders ’em quarrelsome.”

“Ignorant festerin’ bastards,” added Brown.

Abigail sighed. She’d heard all about hot buttered rum from her brother William, and how it was indeed all the fault of the butter. “And did it,” she asked, “render the other customers of the Dressed Ship quarrelsome?”

“It has to be good butter,” insisted Brown. “This slime they had at the Dressed Ship wasn’t hardly butter at all, so we wasn’t to be blamed really for what happened. If they’d had decent butter there, all would have been well, and so we told ’em.”

Miller nodded agreement.

“What time did the fight start?” asked Abigail resignedly. “Was there still daylight in the sky?”

“Oh, yes, m’am,” said Miller. “But only just.”

“The sun was down,” agreed Brown. “But when they throwed me through the window, there was plenty light in the sky for me to find a good stick of firewood to go back in with.” He made a gesture indicative of brandishing a club. “Those table-legs, they just break first thing you hit with ’em.”

“I’ll remember that,” said Abigail. “Was it still light when they brought you here?”

“Yes, m’am,” said Miller promptly, though his friend looked a bit puzzled, possibly because he had not been completely conscious at the time. “Fight didn’t last but a minute or two, before the Watch came in. Probably drinkin’ just down the street, festerin’ Puritans. Dusk it was, when we come in here, and that scoundrel Hoyle took my glass in trade for just enough wood so we didn’t freeze to death in the night, the witch-friggin’ Massachuser bastard. The magistrate had already gone home, and next day was Sunday, so nobody asked us our names. And by Monday everyone in the jail was talkin’ that Cottrell had been found beat to death. So we figured, better we not give our names nor nuthin’, and take our whippin’ at the stocks, and be on our way. Only
someone
”—he glared pointedly at his friend—“got mixed up whether he was supposed to be Smith or Jones, and the magistrate said, we’s to stay in the jail ’til they figured who we really was and if we’d done some other crime like robbery, and he wouldn’t pay no mind when we swore on the Bible an’ everythin’ that we’d been with each other the whole of the day and neither of us had done anythin’ barrin’ defend ourselves from a bunch of witch-festerin’ Massachuser scoundrels who can’t handle hot buttered rum on account of the butter bein’ unfit.”

“Your time’s up.” Hoyle reappeared in the doorway, possibly brought back in by the incautious raising of Hev Miller’s voice. Paul Revere got to his feet and crossed to meet Hoyle. Abigail heard the clink of a coin, followed by the discreet closing of the door again.
Money may be the root of all evil, but it can certainly make the affairs of the world more convenient.

“He says we’re going before the magistrate Monday,” murmured Miller, lowering his voice again. “Then we’re going to get shut of this town, quick as ever we can. Eli’s all right, isn’t he?” he added. “You seen him? The
Magpie
’s all right?”

“It is,” said Abigail. “But—”

“I’m afraid getting out of town isn’t in it for you yet.” Revere came quietly back to the remains of the fire, to which Abigail and the two prisoners had been huddling with greater and greater intimacy as the sticks were consumed. “They’re searching for you—not the Watch, but the Provost Marshal of the Sixty-Fourth Regiment—and they’ve got a man keeping an eye on the
Magpie
at the wharf.” This was news to Abigail, but he laid a hand, very gently, on her shoulder to suppress her start, and she nodded quickly and made her face grave.

“’ Tis true. We were afraid we wouldn’t find you in time.”

“But don’t worry, men,” Revere went on bracingly. “And hold yourselves ready. I’ll talk to Mr. Adams tonight.” He winked at them. “We’ll find a place to keep you, ’til we can find another way to take you out. In the meantime I’ve given that brute Hoyle the price of a half-decent meal and a blanket for the two of you, and we’ll get word to Eli that all’s well.” He clasped Miller, then Brown by the hands. “You boys stay sharp. And not a word to anyone. Someone will see you tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir—Thank you, sir—”

“Mr. Revere!” Abigail stopped herself from scratching as they followed Hoyle back through the cold little vestibule and grudgingly handed the man a tip as he bowed them out the door. “You aren’t going to have Sam arrange a jail deliverance for those two ruffians, are you?”

“The way I see it, we have little choice, m’am.” They crossed Queen Street, then turned down the little passway that led to the Adams yard, Abigail reflecting in annoyance that her dress, both her cloaks, and every petticoat she had on would have to be hung up outside overnight in the freezing cold to rid them of the livestock they’d picked up.
And
she would be obliged to wash her hair . . .

“For one thing,” Revere went on, “we’re going to need them to point out the house. There’s probably half a dozen within that distance of the Lynd Street Meeting-House, and at least two I know of have the remains of orchards or gardens attached. For another, it may take us some time to locate Cottrell’s mysterious visitor—the last man to see him alive. The last thing we need is to have to send to Maine for them—and get them sobered up and back down here to testify in court that it was indeed he whom they saw enter the house.”

“What about the boy Putnam?” asked Abigail, surrendering to the inevitable. “You can’t oblige that poor child to stay living on the water like that—”

“Heavens, no! We’ll have to tell him some tale that will get him out of town altogether—Lynn or Salem should do. One of our boys there will see to him, so we can send for him quickly if need arises.”

“I suppose now our only problem will be,” she sighed, and maneuvered her arm beneath her cloak so that she might scratch without being obvious about it, “whether when we find Cottrell’s visitor, the Provost Marshall will believe our witnesses about a mysterious visitor to an unknown house . . . or whether he’ll find a more complicated explanation too much bother to pursue.”