Friday, November 7, 1800

In Weymouth, nearly half a century ago—in those bright quaint times when it never occurred to anyone that one day there wouldn’t be a King—there had been a man named Goslin who’d been the Town Drunk. Abigail’s earliest recollections of him included seeing him work now and then, casual labor like digging ditches or splitting shakes, always followed by a spree in Arnold’s Tavern and a stagger through the streets, singing at the top of his lungs. She, Mary, and Betsey had always fled him, at their mother’s orders. But Abigail, being the Original Eve of curiosity, had watched from a distance the man’s innumerable arguments with his long-suffering, snaggle-haired wife. Nobody knew what they lived on or why she’d married him, but through the years Abigail had seen him work less and less; until he became a dirty, whiskered, trembling automaton, stinking of his own urine, glimpsed sitting in a ditch or under a tree, engaged in rambling conversations with people who weren’t there.

She’d often wondered about his wife. It had never occurred to her to even think about his mother.

Until now.



The carriage lurched heavily as it turned through the break in the fence, and despite Jack Briesler’s careful driving its wheels slithered into ruts deep in mud. The jolt of the springs made Abigail feel as if every bone in her body were being broken with hammers.