The Schoolmaster's Daughter (2 page)

Abigail looked at Munroe then. He appeared to have no choice but to go along, and he stiffened with resentment—he was the soldier of rank on this patrol, before Colonel Cleaveland had intruded. Reluctantly, he sheathed his rapier. “Well, boy,” he said to Benjamin, “we will be on patrol throughout the night, so don't let us catch you out and about—”

“Escort your sister home now,” Colonel Cleaveland said, with the slightest bow toward Abigail, and for a moment he seemed to recognize the absurdity, perhaps even the humor of such an incident. “You'll not want to let your chowder get cold.”

“Thanking you kindly, Colonel,” Abigail said as she took her brother's arm. “We must make our haste for dinner, Benjamin, lest we invoke the wrath of our father.”

Laughter then as the crowd began to break up. Something to take home, or to the grog shop: a Boston girl, her younger brother, and three lobsterbacks in the evening shadows of Dock Square. There was a moment when it could have become something dangerous, something inevitable. Such encounters often led to incarceration, fines, or both. How many Bostonians languished in British prisons under false or trumped-up charges? It was a seemingly small incident such as this that had led to the Bloody Massacre five years earlier.

Occupied and occupier.

“Good evening, then,” Abigail said.

Corporal Lumley touched the brim of his hat.

However, Sergeant Munroe seemed unable to respond. He still gripped the handle of his sword, as though eager to draw it from his scabbard once more.

The crowd parted, allowing Abigail to cross the square toward Fanueil Hall, holding Benjamin close to her side. “That was brilliant,” she whispered. “Not putting anything in your hat.”

“What would I carry?” he asked as they skirted a small pond of muddy water.

“You're not carrying a letter?”

Abigail was five years older than Benjamin, and clutching his upper arm she guided him through the crowded streets, as she had since they were small children, until he suddenly took her by the hand and pulled her down an alley. Boston was a warren of narrow lanes, crooked alleys, and Benjamin employed them constantly. They turned a corner and negotiated their way through a bleating flock of sheep which was being herded toward King Street.

“Mind your step,” Benjamin said.

“Benjamin, we do not have to enter our own house by the summer kitchen.”

“Front doors are for Father's Tory associates,” he said. “Besides, I'm not going home.”

Most houses had room for vegetable gardens and livestock, and many were backed by a barn or stable. There were the sounds—and the odor—of animals everywhere: chickens, cows, horses, swine, goats, not to mention seagulls wheeling overhead. When they were clear of the sheep, Benjamin and Abigail reached a passageway cluttered with rain barrels standing between the blackened clapboard walls of two houses. He led his sister down this damp, mossy nook until they were in a tight courtyard, which was nearly dark. Overhead garments hung from clotheslines, fluttering in the salty breeze that came off the harbor.

“Turn around,” he demanded as he released her arm.

She glared at him. “And have you play one of your impish pranks? No.”

“As you wish.” He began to unfasten his belt buckle, and then reached down inside the front of his loosened britches. “Here,” he said, handing her an envelope.

“Warm,” she said. “Good thing those two soldiers didn't decide to search you more thoroughly. You'd be taking your dinner aboard the prison ship anchored in the harbor.”

“I need you to deliver it,” he said. “I haven't time.”

“No fishing tonight?” Holding up the envelope, she said, “Who is this from?”

“You needn't know that. It's safer not to—”

The envelope was fastened with a wax seal. “Nor should I even know the contents.”

“No, no, you shouldn't. Look, it's just a sign, a signal that you're the legitimate courier.”

“And what am I supposed to—”

“You hand over this letter and you'll receive another.”

“Another letter?”

“Without this you get nothing.”

“This is a rare precaution.”

“It is, yes. But you have noticed the redcoats today?”

“There's much activity,” she said. “They're gathering on the Common.”

“In full field gear.”

“A drill? They often parade on the Common. Or do you think this is it?”

“We've known that they would march out from Boston soon. There have been so many signs, preparations—”

“But General Gage,” she said with a quick smile; “he
does
like his decoys.”

“True.”

“Where am I to deliver this letter?”

He removed his tricorn and curled the brim.

“Benjamin?”

He wouldn't look at her. “Province House.”

“The governor general's mansion—isn't
that
just fine.”

He put his hat back on his head and stared at her.

“And I give this to … General Gage himself?”

“You take it to the carriage house,” he said. “There's a groom named Seth. Deliver it to no one but Seth.”

“Have you ever done this before, taken something to Province House?”

“I just go where I'm told,” he said, “but, no, I've never gone to the governor's house before. Tonight I think you'll have a better chance of getting through, especially after what happened earlier.” He shook his head. “Besides, there's something else I must do. Listen, go immediately to Province House. I'm told Seth has just come back from Barbados. Missing an ear. Sorry to ask you to do this. With the redcoats gathering at the Commons, street patrols will be stopping runners everywhere tonight.”

“As I told the colonel, Benjamin, boys run. Boston women walk. And I walk wherever I want in this city—even if it's to Province House.” She smiled, but her brother did not, and she suddenly understood that he was nervous, perhaps even afraid. “And after I give this letter to the groom?”

“You will be given a reply—which you must take straight away to James.”

“So he can encode it.”

“Probably. Then he'll determine what's to be done with it.” Benjamin looked impatiently up the alley. “I must go.”

“Father will be upset. It appears we will both miss our supper.”

“Father is always upset.”

“Usually, at least.”

Benjamin looked at her then, and it was there in his eyes, if only momentarily: he was again the boy who not many years earlier would come to his sister's bed, frightened by a reprimand, or a nightmare. On such nights she would draw him to her beneath the warmth of the counterpane and hold him tight.

“Where are you going, Benjamin?”

“Can't say. You understand.”

“I do. But I worry—I worry that you'll …”

“Disappear.”

“Dear Benjamin, you have been finishing my sentences since we were children.”

“We both have.”

It was true. When they had been very small, no one in the family could understand what Benjamin was saying, except Abigail, and they all looked to her for an interpretation.

“It's Ezra,” he said. “You've not heard from him?”

“No,” she said. “Not since he left Boston two months ago. I am beginning to wonder—”

“If he means to disappear. From you.” She stared at her brother, afraid, exposed. “You chose him, Abigail. So you run the risk, but I don't think he's disappeared because he doesn't love you.”

“Sometimes in such matters, in matters of the heart, we have no choice.”

“I suppose not.”

He started up the alley, but paused and turned around. It was almost dark now and she could barely see his face. He pulled his hat down snug on his head, causing his long hair to curl out over his ears. “I think it's beginning finally, tonight.”

She went to him, taking ahold of his hand. He looked down, and she almost thought he was going to walk home with her to dinner, hand in hand, like they did when they were younger. Gently, though she knew he didn't want to, he pulled his hand free. He turned and ran, his familiar loping strides, the sound of his boots reverberating down that narrow cavern of weathered clapboards.

There was no choice now.

Choices had been made, for all of them.

II

Sympathetic Ink

P
ROVINCE
H
OUSE HAD A WELL-TENDED ORCHARD AND GARDEN,
and sentries stood guard on the wide front steps. Abigail walked around to the back of the property, where the carriage house gates opened onto Governor's Alley. Inside the wrought iron fence she saw a boy of about ten, beating a row of horse blankets on a clothesline with a stick. When she motioned to him, he came to the gate.

“Do you know a groom named Seth?” she asked.

“He's my father, Ma'am.”

“I wish to speak to him.” He gazed through the bars at her and didn't move. “Please tell him I have something for him.”

The boy ran across the yard and entered the carriage house, which itself was a handsome building, with a fine cupola. A moment later, a man came out and walked toward the gate. He had no hair, and his round forehead shone in the faint light. On the right side of his head there was just a small nub of flesh where there should have been an ear. “You have something for me?” For a man with such broad shoulders, he had a voice that was high and quite musical. His accent was Caribbean, which was heard frequently in the port of Boston.

“Your name is Seth?”

He nodded.

“I'm to deliver a letter.”

“James Lovell sent you?”

“Yes, he's my brother.”

Seth opened the gate, allowing Abigail to slip inside.

“You should not have come until it is completely dark,” he said.

“Odd. I'm usually admonished for refusing to
not
stay indoors at night. Or perhaps you would have me taken for the sort of woman who sells her wares in the dark?”

“I speak not of your honor, Mistress, but of necessity.” He studied her with a bold eye, which made her uncomfortable, but then he whispered urgently, “Boston is in such a state, what with hangings, executions, and tarrings, that we all may be required to make sacrifices, no?” He bowed his head, as though requesting forgiveness.

“Indeed. This is so.”

He smiled then, revealing broken yellow teeth, and then with great haste and an air of formality he led her up the cobblestone drive to the carriage house, which they entered by a side door. It was a clean, orderly stable, smelling of horses and hay, and they went into a small office, where there was an oil lamp on a desk. From her shawl she removed the letter Benjamin had given her and handed it to Seth.

“Sit, please,” he said, gesturing toward a desk chair.

Abigail didn't move. To sit would seem to place her at a disadvantage. Other than her brothers, no one could be entirely trusted.

“Very well,” Seth said. “You can stand here, if you prefer. All the easier to flee for the gate, if you lose your nerve. Some do, you know. The British have made us all wary. Fear is their greatest weapon.” He stared at her once more, his dark eyes earnest and even greedy, and then he tucked the letter in his pocket, saying, “It may take a while, but I will be back.”

She watched as he went out into the courtyard and entered Province House by a back door. In one window she could see an enormous chandelier with dozens of lit candles, their glow casting an oblong of light down across the cobblestones, making them seem polished.

There were so many letters. They were the whispered voice, the unspoken language of Boston, the only means of genuine communication since the city had fallen under the yoke of General Gage's military occupation. The British had been a heavy presence in Boston for as long as Abigail could remember. Before she was ten she had witnessed her first hanging at the Great Elm in the Common, and since then public floggings and executions were all too frequent. Gage was perceived as being even-handed as he meted out punishments for his men as often as for the colonists. Tensions increased five years ago, when on a wintry night in March British soldiers opened fire on a crowd of Bostonians gathered in front of the Customs House on King Street. Five people died and numerous others were wounded, yet at the trial the commanding officer, Captain Preston, had been absolved of any culpability. The Bloody Massacre, as it was often called (though the British referred to it as the Boston Riot), was commemorated every March 5th by enormous crowds gathering to hear Whig speeches, this year's being given by her brother James.

As the situation became increasingly intolerable, more troops were shipped over from England. There were some fifteen thousand Bostonians, and perhaps three thousand British soldiers, many of them billeted in homes against the will of their owners. The sense of confinement on the Boston peninsula only contributed to the tenor and frequency of altercations. Yankee rum was plentiful and cheap, and there was a great tendency toward drunken disorder amongst the Regulars. Boston being a seaport, the situation was further complicated by the availability of easy women. Daily incidents occurred in the streets, in the taverns, and particularly in waterfront establishments, which were infested with idle sailors since General Gage had ordered the port closed, as a form of reprimand for the colonials' unwillingness to bow to a series of edicts and acts regarding taxation. That winter, even William Dawes, jocular Billy Dawes, had knocked down a soldier in the street in response to an insult made to his pretty wife.

Indeed, all of Boston was waiting, expecting the situation to break open any day, especially since the series of powder alarms which had taken place the previous fall. It started when General Gage began a campaign to secure the gunpowder throughout New England. A sound strategy, perhaps, taking weaponry away from a discontented people on the brink of revolt, but ultimately the plan only succeeded in exacerbating the situation. In September, he sent the first of several military expeditions out from the city. There were only two ways off the Boston peninsula, and before daylight a Lieutenant-Colonel Maddison led his men out Long Wharf, where they boarded some dozen longboats, which were then rowed across the harbor and up the Mystic River. They landed at a place called Temple's Farm and marched about a mile to the Quarry Hill powder house. This stone tower, which housed several hundred barrels of gunpowder, belonged to the towns in the province (one of Benjamin Franklin's new lightning rods rose up from its conical, shingled roof). It was a tidy operation, the mission carried off without any mishaps, and nary a shot fired; by midday the soldiers returned to Boston with the largest supply of gunpowder in the region, plus two brass field pieces.