Free The Schoolmaster's Daughter by John Smolens Page A

her chair back and sprang to her feet. “I can’t listen to any more.”
    She rushed out of the dining room, veering down the hall to the kitchen. For a moment she was at a loss for what to do, and she considered simply going back up to bed. But she recalled that her mother had mentioned that they would need eggs for dinner, so dutifully, even thankfully, Abigail went out the kitchen door and crossed the small yard to the chicken coop.
    It was warm inside, and dark. If Benjamin had his hiding places all about Boston, Abigail had the coop. Since she’d been a girl, she had often sought refuge here among the chattering hens, perched in straw bins. She had come in anger, sometimes in fear. And at times simply to be alone. She used to talk to the hens—as a child, she’d had names for all of them—and they seemed to respond with a nervous intensity that led her to imagine that when she was not there, they would talk about her amongst themselves. Mother insisted that chickens had no brains, but Abigail was convinced that they were actually quite perceptive, that they knew when it was she who reached into their straw nests to retrieve eggs. As she pulled the door shut behind her, they greeted her with a flurry of cackling and feather-ruffling.
    Behind her, there were footsteps out in the yard, and then the door opened behind her. This time the hens went into a panic as her toga-clad father bent forward as he entered the coop. He yanked the door closed behind him and sat on the small crate in the corner.
    â€œThat door,” he said shortly. “With the coming of warm weather it sticks—I have asked Benjamin to plane it down.” He busied himself with tamping and lighting his clay pipe. “You really have no idea where he is?” He exhaled smoke, his voice soft now, almost pleading.
    â€œNo.” Abigail extended her arm into the top bin and felt around in the straw. It was like being blind. The hens moved aside at her gentle insistence, reluctantly yielding their secret, their treasure.
    â€œThis hiding,” he said. “It used to be a game when he was small, but now, now it’s dangerous. The world is a dangerous place, Abigail. Boston is—we have been on the brink for so long now.” He drew loudly on his pipe a moment. “You think I don’t worry, we don’t worry?”
    She picked up an egg, warm in her palm.
    â€œLoyalty is not a terrible thing,” he said. “You know that. There is no greater loyalty than ours.”
    Abigail found another, and then another. “I know that, Father.”
    She went to her father then and carefully released the eggs in his lap—he spread his legs, allowing them to sink into the folds of his toga. Often, when she’d been younger, when she was upset (often after they had argued), he would know that he could find her here, in the coop. She would sit on his lap. He would pat her back, stroke her hair, his large hands warm, loving. Still, there was the scent of his tobacco, which she had always loved.
    Now he merely took her hand in his (which no longer seemed so large, but frail, and disconcertingly so) and pressed her palm to his lips, before gently holding it on his shoulder. Perched, she thought, like a small bird.
    â€œI—your mother and I—we believe in order, in learning. It’s all we have to give to you. Without these things, I don’t understand how one can thrive. We have always been loyal to the king. It’s a source of pride, of honor.”
    â€œI understand that, Father. But we—we Bostonians—are not treated fairly.”
    He didn’t answer for a moment, but with his other hand placed the long stem of his pipe in his mouth and inhaled, slowly releasing a blue plume of smoke which curled languidly in the dim light. “Suppose, for the sake of argument,” he said. “Suppose I abandoned my allegiance to the king. What influence do you imagine that