Dinner over—dishes washed, pots scoured, scouring-sand swept up from the floor, floor washed, Tommy prevented from falling into the fire—Abigail wrapped up a few pieces of chicken and the extra potatoes she had cooked, added half a loaf of bread and a small crock of butter, and carried this meal to Hanover Street in her marketing basket for Orion Hazlitt. As she’d suspected she would, she found the shop shuttered and the young printer, haggard and distracted, in the keeping room, trying to get his mother to drink another glass of laudanum and water.
“You remember how we used to play in the marshes?” Mrs. Hazlitt murmured sleepily. “You’d pick daisies and mallows, and we’d make long strings of them, you and I . . . We’d both come to evening service wearing crowns of them, my little King.” She pushed aside the cup, and framed his face with her hands. “You’re still my little King.”
“I know, Mother.”
“Am I still your Queen?”
“Of course you are.”
“And she”—she pointed an unsteady finger at Abigail as she stepped quietly through the rear door—“she is the whore of Babylon, the daughter of Eve . . . the worst of Eve’s nine daughters. The Meddling Woman, going about the streets, asking what doesn’t concern her. She is loud and stubborn; her feet abide not in her house—”
“Now, Mother,” he said carefully (Abigail was well acquainted with what happened if one contradicted her), “ ’tis only Mrs. Adams. Surely you know Mrs. Adams? It’s quite dark, you just can’t see well—” Which was true. Winter dusk set in at four, and it was pitch-black now, though six was only just striking from the tower of the Meeting House in Brattle Square. A few tallow candles had been lit, but their feeble glow showed Abigail that very little had been accomplished in the way of cleaning. “You shouldn’t have,” he said, when Abigail uncovered her basket, and she thought he looked ready to weep, with exhaustion and gratitude.
“Nonsense. Even whores of Babylon can see when their neighbors need help. I can help you upstairs with her,” she added, glancing toward Mrs. Hazlitt, who had subsided into a stertorous doze. Two of the flat, square black bottles stood on the table, one empty on its side; there was another on the chimney breast. How bad had she been, that he’d needed to dose her so?
“Thank you.” He shook his head. “I think I’ll let her go as late as I can—a few hours anyway. ’Tis easier—you’ll pardon me saying so—taking her out to the privy in this state, than it is managing a chamber pot. She’s just . . .” He flinched, the muscles in his jaw suddenly tight. “It has been a bad day.”
“No word of Rebecca?”
He shook his head. “I was going to ask you the same. I haven’t been out, but Mr. Adams—Sam Adams—must have sent word, if she had . . .” His words fumbled, and he looked aside. Flinching, Abigail thought, from the inevitable conclusion, that the man who has murdered Perdita Pentyre has killed her, too.
And why not? If she had gotten out of the house, if he had run her down in the alley or the rain-hammered dark of the street, would he have carried her body back to the house?
Bracingly, she said, “If he left one body for all the world to find, he would have left two. We’ve learned who the murdered woman was, though: Perdita Pentyre.”
He blinked at her, almost as if he did not recognize the name, then seemed to come to himself a little and said, “Perdita Pentyre? Colonel Leslie’s—” He bit back the word mistress , as if he thought Abigail had never heard the word and didn’t know what one was, and cleared his throat.
“I’ll tell you of it later.” She glanced at the slumbering woman by the fire. “Will that wretched girl of yours be back tomorrow?”
“I hope so. Damnation isn’t so bad—”
“What?” Abigail blinked at the non sequitur.
“Damnation. That’s her name. Damnation Awaits the Trembling Sinner.” A smile flickered across his face. “I’m lucky my mother had me before joining the congregation I grew up in, or I’d be called something like Breakteeth or Doomed unto Hell. As I say, Damnation isn’t a bad girl, just . . . lacking.” He touched his temple.
“She will perish,” observed Mrs. Hazlitt, waking and regarding them with jade green eyes that seemed very brilliant with the narrowing-down of her pupils. “Four things the earth cannot bear: A servant when he reigneth; a fool when he is filled with meat; an odious woman when she is married; and a handmaid that is heir to her mistress. Jezebel the Queen was the daughter of Eve, and the Lord smote her, and with her her handmaid that was privy to all her ways. Have you brought us supper?” she asked, with a sudden, dazzling smile. “How very sweet of you, dear, though not at all necessary. It won’t take me but a moment to put together a green goose pie and some veal fritters; I’m sure my son has told you how well I cook. The prophet of the Lord says that my cooking would be sinful, if I were not so righteous myself.”
And smiling, she fell asleep.
When Abigail returned to her house it was to find Sam in the study, talking quietly with John. “Has there been any word?”
Sam shook his head. “I’ve put out word to every patriot in the town,” he said. “And I’ve been to see Hancock. He’s having all his tea smugglers look in every cellar, every hidey-hole, every warehouse along the wharves—every nook and cranny throughout the town. Revere tells me that white-faced pup from the Provost’s office found Pentyre’s chaise sunk off Lee’s shipyard, and the chaise was all they found. No word of the book, either.”
His brow clouded further when John told him of their visit to the Tillets’, and Mrs. Tillet’s declaration that all Rebecca’s things would be put out of the house. “I’ll see what I can do, about getting one of our men to rent it,” he said. “That way it can be searched properly.”
“If you can find someone pious enough to suit Tillet,” muttered John.
“Doesn’t have to be pious, my boy.” Sam grinned, putting on his hat. “Just an enemy of someone—like Charles Malvern—whom Tillet hates.”
When Sam was gone, John put an arm around Abigail’s shoulders. The kitchen was quiet: the children engaged in playing with wooden soldiers near the hearth, Pattie working at her tatting, a task which to Abigail’s baffled disbelief gave her pleasure. The gray tabby cat, Messalina, purred by the fire, dreaming of the slaughter of mice. Precisely as things had been last night, thought Abigaiclass="underline" when she’d known her friend was safe, when the doors that looked into households of pain, and sourness, and distrust had all been shut. When she knew that she might sleep and dream of gardening, not blood.
“She’ll return.” John rocked her softly in the clasp of his arm. “If harm had come to her, they would have found some sign of it by now.”
Abigail put her hand over his. “I think you’re right,” she replied. “Which leads me to wonder—Why has she neither been found, nor come forth? And I can think of only two reasons. One is that she received a concussion when she was hit on the head—yet if that were so, would not the people who found her know her? Or at least, have heard by this time that she was being sought?”
“I agree,” said John. “Furthermore, if she had been so severely injured, she could not have got far. And the second?”
“Barring the romantical chance that she hid herself in the hold of a ship that is now on its way to China . . . She is hiding because she recognized the man who did it. And he knows she did.”