Sup with the Devil (14 page)

“The man’s a trustee of Harvard. Belike he’s already got his hands on the rest.”

“He said nothing of it . . .”

“Good Lord, woman, d’you think he’d mention it to you if he sees you poking about on the trail of the stolen books? The man’s a snake, I tell you. There’s every chance ’twas he who hired Mrs. Lake in the first place,
and
the man who put laudanum in young Mr. Fairfield’s rum.”

“Now, that’s ridiculous!” said Abigail. “I know you and John hate the man like poison, but even his enemies allow him to be a man of justice—”

“God save us,” retorted Sam, “from a good man with a bad idea—though I reserve my judgment about our dear Governor Hutchinson’s goodness. He’s a merchant and a pedant who convinced the King to appoint him, first to the chief justiceship of the colony, despite the fact that he has exactly as much legal training as the kitchen cat, then to the governorship—on the grounds of his loyalty to the idea that the colony exists solely for what money can be wrung out of it and handed to the King’s friends. And he’s kept there by his adherence to the principle that any means are legitimate to keep its people in bondage to the merchants of London who support the King. If he so much as suspects that money embezzled from the Jamaica treasury a hundred years ago is floating about in ‘undeserving’ hands—”

“I think you’re confusing the man with Cesare Borgia,” replied Abigail resolutely.

“And I think you’re confusing him with Solon the Good, Lawgiver of Athens . . . who had a few weaknesses of his own that they’ve kept out of the history books. Will you show me this ‘reconstructed’ treasure-key, when your nephew finishes with it?”

“So far as I know it isn’t the ‘key’ to any ‘treasure’ . . .”

“Someone seems to think it is.”

“I know,” retorted Abigail. “I’m looking at him.”

“Don’t mock me, Nab.” Sam’s voice fell suddenly quiet. “And don’t play hide-and-seek. The matter is serious.”

“Of course ’tis serious! A man’s life—”

Sam brushed aside the issue of Diomede’s guilt or innocence with a wave of one square, blunt-fingered hand. “We need that treasure. If it’s there, we need to be the ones who find it. Not this Mrs. Lake or whoever is behind her. In a week, maybe in a day, there’ll be British troops landing in Boston—”

“How can you know—?”

“For God’s sake, Nab, what else can the King do? He’s not going to content himself with some watered-down Royal Commission as everyone seems to expect. We destroyed his tea, he’ll send troops, and the whole colony will rise in rebellion. Everyone who’s been sitting on the fence dithering about which side they’ll hop down onto, will see that there
is
no middle course anymore: the choice is between rebellion and slavery. No, I’m not going to make a speech at you, Nab, don’t look that way,” he added. “You’ve heard it all before.”

He spread his hands out over the covers of the books and leaned toward her. He was bulky and powerful in his gray coat, and compelling, for all Abigail’s distrust of his alliance with every man who liked his politics simple and violent; for all the whiff of boiling tar, burnt feathers, and charred flesh that seemed to her, for a moment, to cling about him, like sulfur on the sleeves of a man who’s had supper with the Devil.

“We need money,” he repeated. “Every farmer in New England possesses a gun, but when those farmers come into Boston to work on the wharves or in the grist-mills, they leave their guns at home. And every gun needs powder and ball, flints and cartridge-paper—things we’re forbidden to manufacture here and must purchase . . . and the King tells us, we can only purchase them from England. We need guns for those who have not the money to buy them, but only the willingness to shed their blood for their rights to choose where and how they’ll spend their money
and
their blood. Will you help us, Nab? Will you tell us what you find? This could be a Godsend, if and when it comes to shooting . . . which it will very soon. When do you go out to Medfield to find this Mrs. Seckar?”

“Monday, I hope,” she replied unwillingly. “If I hear from her tomorrow. John should be back—”

“If he isn’t, I’ll send a man with you,” promised Sam. “Did you speak to this slave Diomede about his master’s books?”

“I tried,” said Abigail. “On Wednesday he was still too stupefied yet from the laudanum—and were he not, I should think he would have been too shocked and grieved at the death of a master he loved . . . for all what that imbecile Langdon said!”

“If I sent a man with you tomorrow—someone respectable,” he added, as Abigail opened her mouth to make a comment on the waterfront ruffians who were usually most at liberty to run Sam’s errands for him. “Would you go?”

“Thank you. And if I could prevail on you to carry a message for me there this afternoon, with some food for that unfortunate slave, I would most appreciate it.” As long as Sam was eager to make himself her partner in the enterprise, reflected Abigail, she might as well take advantage of the facilities he offered, even if those consisted of assistance from every scoundrel, idler, and illegal importer of French contraband from here to Halifax. “And whatever else you may learn of Seckar and pirates and Geof Whitehead . . . I must be circumspect,” she added, gathering her shawl about her shoulders again. “Else John will divorce me, I shall be forced to enter a convent, and there will be no treasure for anyone.”

Sam bowed. “I should be much entertained,” he said, “to see what havoc you would make of a convent, m’am. There’ll be a man by at noon to take your message, and a wagon to get you to Cambridge first thing in the morning. But you watch out for Hutchinson,” he added. “I understand you wanting his help in getting that poor slave out of danger . . . but the Governor is a powerful enemy. The more so because he seems so
nice
.”

 

 

“Midnight,” muttered Abigail to herself, turning Weyountah’s note over in her fingers even as she shed her shawl and donned an apron. “A curious time to break up an evening of cards: I wonder if the Black Dog cheats? I see an interview with Mr. Pinkstone is in order—”

She glanced at the late-morning sunlight through the kitchen window, estimating the time before John would be home against the chores undone: Pattie’s wooden clogs thudded on the floor overhead (doing the sweeping, by the sound of it) . . . Beds to be made, lamps to be cleaned and filled, and then the ironing of those wash-damaged linens mended yesterday . . .

At her feet, beside the heavy sideboard, Tommy played contentedly with four walnut shells and two of Charley’s toy soldiers and
where was Charley
???

His blocks were by the hearth, but her middle son was distinctly missing. Nor could his scurrying steps be heard upstairs, following Pattie from bedroom to bedroom impeding her work. Abigail’s first thought—
The stable—
was succeeded by a more frightening one,
The street
. . .

Two steps took her to the back door, caught between her usual anxious spurt of panic about her increasingly adventuresome son making his way down the little alley to the street, and preparation for a stern talking-to if he was found digging around in the clean—but probably none too sanitary—straw in Their Majesties’ stalls . . . And as she opened it, Charley swung into sight from behind it, clearly in disguise in the raggedy old coat that John wore to clean out the cowshed, and a knitted cap acquired from Heaven only knew where, into whose hem straw had been thrust to approximate a bandit’s long, untidy hair.

“Stand and deliver, m’am!” the boy croaked throatily, brandishing a crooked stick. “For I’m a robber on the King’s Highway.”

“Gracious me!” Abigail flung up her hands in mock terror. “Have mercy . . .”

She broke off and took a closer look at the boy. “And just who are you supposed to be?”

“I’m Mr. Scar-Eye,” replied Charley cheerfully. “I saw him, and I bet he’s a robber and a villain.”

He had made for himself, as a part of his disguise, out of wax and mud and Heaven only knew what, a V-shaped scar down his left eye and cheek . . .

Precisely as Horace had described.

A
nd of course, the first thing John wanted to know of when he returned that night—just as Abigail was sweeping the coals from the lid of the Dutch oven, and Johnny and Nabby were setting the table for dinner—was about what everyone in town was saying about the King and whether the ship from London had been sighted?

This was understandable, Abigail knew, considering the possibility—remote but not unthinkable—that John himself might be included on a list of suspected persons as Sam’s cousin . . . and as someone who had written any number of inflammatory letters and pamphlets concerning Governor Hutchinson. “The countryside is in arms already,” he said, when Abigail had outlined what she knew on this subject, which was—as with everyone else in Boston—merely a collection of speculation and rumor. “From here to the Kennebec, every village and town has formed militia, elected officers . . . They’ve spoken of reestablishing the minutemen, as a first defense against an alarm, and are stockpiling powder and muskets in Concord and a dozen other places. What good that will do against trained troops—”

He shook his head, his round face grave. “What frightens me more, Portia—”

She smiled a little, at his use of the old nickname from their courting-days.

“—is that the Tories are arming as well. If war breaks out, ’twill be civil war, with every local squabble about landboundaries and who-cheated-who-out-of-Grandpa’s-inheritance dragged into it, to confuse and embitter the quarrel. Sam has threatened the King:
If you don’t give us our rights, we’ll open the gates of Hell in this country
. . . But I think Sam has deeply misjudged what will emerge from those gates.”

Abigail was silent, sitting beside the spent dishes—dinner over, Nabby and Johnny quietly clearing off and (thank Heavens!) fending aside Charley and Tommy as they clamored for their parents’ attention . . . “How much danger are you in?” she asked at last.

“Not much, I don’t think. I’m Sam’s cousin, not Sam.” John finished his cider, handed the empty cup to his daughter, who—Abigail feared—was listening more than was probably good for the little girl’s peace. “I’ve done what it’s within the rights of every Englishman to do: spoken for our rights as Englishmen. I’ve broken no windows, boiled no tar, hamstrung no man’s horse—”

“What if they don’t care?” asked Abigail softly. “What if the Crown gives Hutchinson extraordinary powers to disregard the rights of habeus corpus, to suppress disorders here as and how he pleases, and sends him the troops to do it with? You’ve marked yourself his enemy—”

“If the Crown has given its Governor the power to punish a man’s thoughts and words,” returned John, “it will have made me its enemy indeed . . . and every man of the colony as well. Now leave over the clearing-up for a time, and tell me of your endeavors these two weeks, dearest friend.” He gathered her onto his knee. “And tell me how it happens that you left our children with Uncle Isaac and Aunt Eliza for a night while you went gallivanting about the countryside—”

“Gallivanting, is it, sir?” Abigail raised her brows. “Take the log from thine own eye, Lysander, before you go looking for specks in mine . . .”

He pressed his knuckles to his breast and inclined his head in penitence, with an expression so humble that Abigail couldn’t keep herself from pushing back his wig a little to kiss the smooth skin of his forehead.

Then she rose, and while she helped Pattie and the children clear up and do the dishes (“Sit down, John, you’ve a dispensation for today . . .”), she recounted the tale of Horace’s adventure and its increasingly disquieting chain of sequels. She did not speak of Charley’s encounter (
HAD it been an actual encounter?
) with Mr. Scar-Eye until she had returned to John’s side, on the settle by the fire, and the children were occupied with their studies or their play, but when she did, she saw how his face flushed with anger.