Back Bay (17 page)

She nodded. “You don’t add something like this to your collection unless you’re positive.”

Fallon studied her for a time, hoping she would add something more. Then, he looked at his watch. It was six o’clock. They had been talking for over an hour, and Fallon’s questions had been answered. He was thankful, at least, that he hadn’t wasted any more time. He offered to buy Mrs. Cooper a drink. She declined. He made a tentative date for lunch and thanked her for her help.

Outside, it was still hot and sticky. Huntington Avenue was clogged with rush-hour traffic. Fallon wasn’t quite ready to fight the crowds back to Cambridge, and he hadn’t decided what to do when he got home. The idea of sitting down to work held no appeal, but then, it never did. He was a short walk from Fenway Park. Maybe he could call someone and go to the ballgame. Neither of his college roommates was available. One was a suburban family man who programmed computers during the day and played softball at night. The other was a lawyer in New York. Fallon preferred female companionship.

A dime into the slot. Hello, Miss Carrington. Thank you for putting me in touch with your brother today. I have two tickets to the Red Sox game. You don’t like baseball. What about the movies? You have television. Thank you very much goodbye. That was quick. He didn’t want to go out with her anyway.

He squeezed his way onto the trolley for Park Street. The car was packed: exhaustion, depression, sweat. Somehow, he found a seat near the window. The trolley lurched forward. Its motion created a breeze that was, at best, flatulent, but better than standing still. The trolley began to move faster and tilted forward into the tunnel. The light dimmed, and the noise deafened.

Fallon stared out at the black wall beside him and thought about Jane Cooper’s story. “A certain fine lady from a certain New England family.” Katherine Pratt Carrington, perhaps? Fallon realized that he didn’t want to drink or write or go to the baseball game with Evangeline Carrington. He wanted to find Jack C. Ferguson.

September 1814

A
bigail Pratt Bentley slept until nine o’clock. She couldn’t remember when the patter of rain and the rumble of distant thunder had lulled her to sleep, but she knew she had not heard her father’s carriage return during the night. She wrapped herself in a Chinese silk robe and gazed down at the city, which rolled up from the waterfront to the base of Pemberton Hill. The rain had stopped, and the clouds were straggling off toward the North Shore like an army in retreat. Behind them, the sky was a deep September blue.

Abigail walked quickly down the hallway to the master bedroom. At first, she thought her father hadn’t come home. His door was open and the coverlet was pulled tight across the bed.

“I expect my breakfast in five minutes.” His face covered in lather, Pratt sat in the sun by the east window while Wilson stropped a straight-edge razor.

Abigail was relieved to see him sitting there and annoyed at her own needless concern. Wilson had been shaving him in that spot for nearly forty years, and the bed was always made before Pratt sat down. She was worrying about him too much.

“I must talk with you, Father,” she said firmly.

“Then talk.”

Wilson applied the razor to the left side of Pratt’s face.

Abigail could hear the scraping halfway across the room. “i’d prefer to talk alone.”

Wilson stopped shaving and looked at Abigail like an offended child. “I been in this house longer than you, girl, and not one word have I repeated of anything I ever heard.”

“Keep shaving and keep quiet,” Pratt turned to his daughter. “What do you want?”

Abigail hesitated. “I’m sorry, Wilson.”

The old servant grunted but did not look at her.

She turned her attention once more to her father. “I would like to know where you were last night.”

Pratt’s eyes grew small and angry behind the lather. “I told you, Abigail, we were fishing.”

Wilson stopped shaving and took a step back.

“It was raining last night,” she said.

“Rain is a concept that fish do not understand.”

“I don’t believe you’ve been fishing, and neither does Franconia. When she discovered that you and Horace were not in your rooms last night, she thought that her world had come to an end.”

Pratt stood angrily, threw down the towel wrapped around him, and stalked to the south windows, which looked onto the garden behind the house. “And this morning, Franconia is where she can be found every morning—out there, picking fruit for my breakfast.”

The garden rose in tiers toward the top of Pemberton Hill. It was not as exotic as some of the neighboring gardens, but it was filled with flowering plants, shade trees, and toward the top, fruit trees and berry bushes. Clad in a loose-flowing white dress and straw sun hat, Franconia Hampshire Pratt wandered the upper reaches of the property. She was humming a Renaissance air and choosing the ripest blackberries for her basket.

“Does she seem upset to you?” asked Pratt angrily.

Abigail picked up the towel and put it around his shoulders. Her touch always settled him. “Franconia and I were both upset last night, Father. I couldn’t sleep at all for worry.”

“There’s no need for you to worry about me, Abbey.”

“But I do.”

“Long before you were born, I was riding out at all hours to conduct my business. I don’t intend to change my methods at age sixty-four simply because my daughter wants to act like my mother.”

Abigail’s voice began to rise with her anger. “When my James died and I returned to your house, I understood that I was to become the mistress of the household.”

“And you are,” Pratt spoke softly.

“The mistress of the house takes an active interest in the
comings and goings of her family. You’d never tell Mother the story you’ve been telling me and expect her to believe it.”

“Your mother would never have asked.”

“I would like the truth, Father, for my own peace of mind,” she said firmly.

Pratt paused for a moment and smiled paternally. “Abigail, you’re very bright and you have a fine grasp of most business matters, but unlike your mother you don’t understand that in the business world men must be about in the middle of the night without explanation.”

“While dragging their grandsons along with them?”

“The boy is my successor, Abigail. He must learn all there is to know. Now stop worrying.” Pratt returned to the chair by the window, and Wilson began to shave him again.

Suddenly, Abigail felt like a little girl asking her father for an indulgence he did not intend to grant.

The master bedroom was masculine territory. It had not been wise for her to confront him there. It contained a canopied bed, a dresser, a mahogany chest of drawers, a wardrobe, two large chairs, and a desk overlooking the garden, and still it seemed massive. Dark browns and whites prevailed. There were no curtains on the windows and little evidence of a woman’s hand. Abigail’s mother had slept in the adjoining room for the last twelve years of her life.

Abigail would not be so pliable. “You still haven’t told me where you go each night.”

Pratt slammed his hand on the arm of the chair and jumped up once more, almost losing his nose to Wilson’s razor in the process. “If we are no longer a trusting family, so be it.”

“Father, it is you who do not trust me.”

“You expect too much, Abigail. You may be the mistress of the house, but I am master of the business, and I do not like interference. We will be going out again tonight, and tomorrow night, and perhaps the night after that. We are conducting important business with a most reclusive gentleman at his home on the Neck. If you wish to follow us, go right ahead, but I will not look upon your actions with favor, and your appearance, however furtive,
will endanger our negotiations.” Pratt wiped the remaining lather from his face, then Wilson helped him into his cutaway and pinned up the left sleeve. “I trust that I have satisfied your curiosity. I will now take breakfast, then walk to my office.” Pratt left the room.

Abigail did not move. She had gotten her answer, but she had been made to feel that she was prying into areas that were not her concern. She had tried to assert herself in her father’s house, and he had turned her aside with the belittlement and indignant display that he had mastered so long ago.

As he cleaned up, Wilson studied her out of the corner of his eye. He had been watching Abigail struggle with herself and her father since she moved back to Pemberton Hill. “He still thinks of you as his little girl, you know.”

“Yes. That’s our problem.”

“No it ain’t. He still treats Jason like a little boy, and Jason puts up no fuss at all. But you, you’re just an apple that fell too close to the tree.”

At sunset, Dexter Lovell dropped anchor in five fathoms of water just off Thompson’s Island. He was in Boston Harbor. Four miles to the west, he saw the copper dome of the new state house, and he imagined Horace Taylor Pratt just sitting down to dinner in his home on Pemberton Hill. On the horizon to the east, he saw the sails of H.M.S.
Shannon
reflecting the rose-colored light, and he knew there were three more British warships just below the line.

Lovell congratulated himself on his good sense. Instead of navigating the northwest hypotenuse from Provincetown to Boston, which would have taken him into the teeth of the British squadron, he had tacked eighteen miles west across Cape Cod Bay, which the British did not usually patrol. When he reached the white bluffs of Manomet Point, he headed north, clinging to the coast until he was well past Nantasket Roads and within the safety of Boston Harbor.

Now, Dexter Lovell’s journey was almost over. In a few hours, he would turn the tea set over to Horace Taylor Pratt and spend
the rest of his life as a man of property. He would be glad for a hot meal and a warm bed, but was unhappy that the adventure had ended. He hadn’t felt as young in years. He was standing up straight, filling his lungs with fresh air, and walking on sea legs long unused. His age-yellowed complexion had turned brown in the sun. He took a bottle of port from the deck box and called to Jeff Grew.

“It’s time you ’n’ me drink to the end of a long voyage,” said Lovell. “You’ve done a good job.” He took a slug of wine and handed the bottle to Grew.

The black bared his teeth. He was smiling, but his eyes were wary. He drank deep, all the time watching Lovell over the upturned bottle.

This was the moment Lovell had chosen to kill Jeff Grew. He no longer needed the black, and two quick shots into Grew’s gut would be the end of him. It had been easy to kill the Dawsons, and Lovell thought it would be easy to kill this nigger, with his cocky ways and his leering smile and the machete that he sharpened so carefully each day. It wasn’t.

The rain which had fallen softly on Boston the night before had attacked Cape Cod Bay with a violent thunderstorm that united Lovell and Grew against a common enemy. At the height of the squall, a powerful gust had torn loose the staysails. Without them, Lovell had to fight to keep the small sloop on course. She was taking on water, and if she swung broadside into the wind, a single wave could send her to the bottom. With a splicing awl in his hand and a knife between his teeth, Grew crawled out onto the bowsprit, which dug like a rapier into the chest of every wave. The sea crashed over him and nearly pulled him off the ship, but he held on. He secured the sail and saved the
Reckless
, and Dexter Lovell knew he would not be able to shoot Jeff Grew.

The storm cleared Grew’s head, and he changed his mind about killing Lovell. He couldn’t sail the
Reckless
to Jamaica himself, and even if people in Boston treated blacks like free men, he knew that a Jamaican with a strongbox on his shoulder would look suspicious anywhere. By morning, he had decided to stay with Lovell
and keep his hand close to his machete. He trusted no white man. He knew only one. Best to keep him alive.

The black emptied the port into his belly and tossed the bottle over the side. “Dat sure be tasty, Dexter Lovell, and I glad to see you drinkin’ some of it with me. I been lately wonderin’ if you don’t like me or somethin’.”

Lovell managed to smile. “I don’t, but you showed real balls last night. You saved us both. You’ll be treated fair when we get that tea set ashore.”

“I don’t expect nothin’ else.”

The two thieves took final measure of one another. They had traveled five hundred miles on a tiny ship, but neither could guess what the other was thinking. They felt no friendship, no trust. Only the most grudging respect. A tea set and fear and a thread of decency held them together. It was a very fragile bond.

Grew offered a large paw to Lovell. They shook hands, and Grew closed his around Lovell’s like a vise. Lovell felt his fingers and knuckles squashing together, but he showed no pain. Grew was giving him one last glimpse of physical strength, and Lovell would not be intimidated. He squeezed back as hard as he could, just enough to neutralize the pressure from Grew’s hand. Finally, as if on signal, both men let go, and Dexter Lovell wished he had the stomach to kill Jeff Grew.

Three hours later, the
Reckless
was washed in the glow of the full moon. The rowboat was pulling gently on the rope which tethered it to the sloop. The two smugglers were sitting in their private corners of the boat. Lovell perched above the cargo hold which contained the Golden Eagle. Grew nestled in the stern with a bottle of rum and his machete. The tide was turning. It was time to go ashore.

Lovell took an ax from Jack Dawson’s deck box and went below. In the cabin, a windowless hole beneath the waterline, Lovell picked a spot on the bulkhead and swung the ax. Ten, twelve times the ax bit into the side. A thirteenth and water began to trickle into the cabin.

“What in hell you doin’?” Jeff Grew jumped down the ladder.

Lovell swung again and cut through the side of the
Reckless
.

“Jesus Christ, man. You gone crazy?”

“Not at all, my dark friend, but we’ll ’ave no more thoughts of sailin’ this ’ere sloop to Jamaica and no evidence of the
Reckless
.”