by C. C. Finlay
“Mm-hmm,” said Lydia, rising. “Mister Longshanks is going to fit in here, jest fine.”
“Mister Longshanks's proper name is Proctor Brown,” Jedediah said. “He's a minuteman from Lincoln. Our friend Emerson sent him to us for a time.”
Elizabeth had stopped laughing. She grunted as she made an effort to sit. “Proctor, is it?”
“Yes, ma—” He caught himself and stopped. “Yes, it is.”
“Come nearer.”
He glanced over his shoulder to see what he should do. Cecily frowned—he was certain she was attempting to discourage him—but the others watched him expectantly, waiting to see what he did.
He stepped closer.
Elizabeth reached out with her right arm, which was wrapped in bandages down to her palm. Her blistered fingers shook as she stretched them toward him. Then her fingers touched him and clamped down on him like a vise.
The sensation was the opposite of the experience he'd had when the widow had grabbed him. He felt as though light poured into, fountained into him, until he wanted to burst. Surprised, he dropped his hat to the floor.
Elizabeth nodded and let go.
He bent to pick up his hat, but the girl Alexandra nabbed it first, smiling as she handed it back.
“Thou have the talent,” Elizabeth said. “A flame shines strongly in thee.”
“Ah, I thought there was something hot about him,” Alexandra murmured.
Proctor swallowed and looked around again at the faces staring at him intently. To take his secret, the one his mother said would kill him, and have it discussed in the open felt … wrong. “I guess I do.”
“That can't be true,” Cecily said finally, with a forced laugh.
“It is,” Elizabeth affirmed. “Thou should try to sense it thyself. Thou could do it if thou tried diligently.”
Cecily blushed. “Oh, not me.”
“He takes the talent from his mother,” Jedediah said. “She's practiced her whole life in secret, undetected—”
“I should ask him those questions,” Elizabeth interrupted. “I understand it better.”
Jedediah hesitated, then nodded. “I best go see to the animals.”
Proctor turned to follow him out of reflex. A young man didn't stay alone in the company of so many women.
“Stay here,” Elizabeth commanded; at the same instant Jedediah told him, “Elizabeth will want thee to stay here.”
“I've fed and watered the pigs already,” Lydia interjected. “And I let the lambs out to the pasture behind the barn. Nimrod has been watching them.”
“Thank you,” Jedediah said as he left.
“Thou take the talent from thy mother?” Elizabeth asked.
“Just like Jedediah said. She's never told anyone about it but me, and she didn't tell me much.”
“Oh, the poor dear,” Cecily said. “I would have simply wilted away without Lydia to sustain me.” She patted Elizabeth's hand. “Until I joined you, I mean.”
“What is thy talent?” Elizabeth asked. “How did it manifest?”
“Scrying,” Proctor answered. He felt like he had to force the word past his lips; but it was so much easier to speak of it now than it had been to explain it to Emily. “A few years ago, I saw something, a death, before it happened. My mother explained it to me, told me I had a talent, then told me I had to keep it secret.”
Elizabeth nodded, then leaned back on her bed, exhausted from her effort. “We'll have no secrets here among us, is that clear?”
“Yes, ma'am,” he answered.
Lydia snorted at the sound of ma'am.
“If you don't mind me asking, what is this place?” he asked quickly, to cover up his mistake. He swung out his hat to encompass the room. “Why are all of you here?”
“Ve come here to learn,” Magdalena said.
“To learn what?” Proctor asked. Could they teach him how to make protective medallions, or create the illusion of changing shapes?
“To learn everything,” Cecily insisted. “Elizabeth is simply the best teacher—”
“Please,” Elizabeth protested.
“No, you know it's true. Elizabeth knows more than anyone about our sort of talents and how to use them.”
“And how to keep us safe,” Alexandra added.
“Safe?” he asked.
Elizabeth was too weak to do anything but speak; he had to lean forward to hear her voice. “Talents manifest themselves in specific ways. Someone who is unprepared can be a danger to themselves and to those around them.”
“How?”
“I had an older cousin,” the auburn-haired girl Alexandra said. “She started hearing voices in her head, when she was still a little girl. Her mother didn't understand what was happening, didn't want to listen to my mother.”
“What happened?”
“The voices told her to go drown herself.” She looked away, twisting the end of her hair around a finger. “So she filled her rocks with pockets and went down to the millpond.”
“The voices told her to drown her little brother first,” Cecily whispered to Proctor. “She did that too. It was such a tragedy, you have no idea.”
“A necrovocative can hear the voices of the dead,” Elizabeth explained.
Magdalena grunted in disapproval. She carried her basket of elderberry stems to a table with a mortar and pestle.
“The dead can be as capricious and misguided as the living,” Elizabeth said. “Without proper training, her cousin had no skill to shut out those voices. Thou can imagine what happens when someone is born with a talent for fire.”
Proctor shivered. Had his mother known that, and kept it from him when he asked? She knew more than she told him, he was certain. “A man could burn himself up.”
“Yes,” Cecily said, patting Elizabeth's arm. “It's too bad that didn't happen to the widow when she was young.”
Elizabeth winced. “No—we'll wish harm on no one, but will pray that she turns away from the fire, which consumes, and toward the Light, which illuminates. I believe that, what ever her reasons, she can be saved.”
Out in the yard, the dog barked cheerfully. “What happens to those who scrye?” Proctor asked.
Elizabeth closed her eyes. “It is easy for them to be misled by their visions, pulled down a path toward darkness.”
“Men often become gamblers, I am told,” Cecily said, smoothing the sheets around the other woman. “Testing their luck until it runs out and they get shot or go broke or something terrible like that. Are you a gambler, Mister Brown?”
“Voresight tempts men to try to cheat de vill of Gott,” Magdalena said in clear disapproval, waving a pith-covered pestle at him.
Proctor remembered the scrying he'd done before mustering at Lexington, and the way he'd been wrong about what it meant, about what would happen before the British marched back to Boston. “And how do we know the will of God?” Proctor asked.
The door banged open.
Deborah stepped inside and slammed it shut again. She had dark circles beneath her eyes, and her clothes were covered with dust. Looking at Proctor, she said, “I could see the two of you when you left the main road. If you ever looked over your shoulder even once to see if someone was following you, I could have ridden home the rest of the way in that cart. Can someone help me with my shoes? My feet are bloody tatters.”
She limped over to the chair and fell backward into it. Lydia brought over her bucket and sat at Deborah's feet while Cecily gave her instructions on bathing wounds. Magdalena emptied her pestle, pulled down a bound bunch of mint stems hanging above the worktable, and began crushing them in the bowl.
Proctor ended up standing next to Alexandra in the corner. She crossed her arms and gnawed idly on a fingernail.
“How did you happen to come here?” Proctor asked.
“I drew too much attention to myself by casting love potions.” She leaned in close to Proctor so that their shoulders brushed. “Pastor Woodburn accused me of witchcraft, which was fa
ir enough, although I don't think he'd have made so much trouble about it, only his son was involved. He accused me of cavorting with the devil, and denounced me from the pulpit, and that very night I was met outside the house by two women from the next county over, and before I knew it I was walking away with them.”
“That seems odd.”
“Almost all the women in my family have the Irish powers, which is what we call them. There was the problem with my cousin, just a year before. In any case, my mother told me I had to go away for a while, so I went. It was exciting at first, seeing new places, moving in secret. But I was on the road north for weeks, moving mostly at night, never staying at anyone's house more than a day, hardly getting to know anyone. Many were Quakers, but coming up through Pennsylvania, there was even a free black family that put me up for the night.”
“And then you ended up here?”
“I ended up here about ten days ago, right before the widow attacked.”
Deborah was soaking her feet in a pan of water, redolent of mint, describing her pursuit of the widow.
“—I had great luck at first, telling people I was trying to find my addled aunt. They were extraordinarily helpful, many of them having seen her pass, a stranger crossing fields in the morning mist. She was in such a hurry to return to the safety of Boston that she made little or no effort to cover her trail. But in Charlestown, only an hour behind her, I lost her. She simply vanished. I searched for her for another whole day without finding her or anyone who had seen her. I'm sure she made her way into Boston.”
“But isn't Boston under siege?” Cecily asked. “How could she get past the soldiers?”
“A woman may pass where a man may not,” Deborah said. “And old women are, in particular, as you know, largely invisible to men.”
Magdalena made a snorting sound.
Elizabeth could not find the strength to sit upright again, but she turned her head to watch Deborah. “Do we have any better idea whom she serves?”
“No,” Deborah replied. “We thought it was some gentleman by the name of Nant or Nance. I asked around, when I was searching for her, but no one knew a British officer by that name. The Reverend Emerson and Mister Revere promised to make further inquiries. But we do know something more about her magic.”
Cecily stood up, leaving Elizabeth's side. “What?” she asked eagerly. “What did you learn?”
Magdalena was toweling dry Deborah's feet and applying an ointment to them while she said a spell. Deborah grimaced, leaned back her head.
“She draws power by siphoning it off those around her,” she said. “I had suspected as much, because I felt weaker when I went too close to her.”
“How does she do it?” Cecily said. She reached out to touch Lydia's arm for reassurance; the black woman wore a sickly expression on her face.
Deborah gritted her teeth while Magdalena wrapped one of her feet. Then she said, “She creates a circle without the permission of the other witch. She's powerful enough to do it without contact, although the effort drains her too, once the circle is broken.”
She explained how the widow had drawn on Proctor while he was hiding in the woods, breaking Deborah's binding spell. By the time she finished explaining how Proctor had helped the widow escape by going to her shed, the women were glaring at him. Dusk had fallen; their faces were lit only by the glow from the hearth, giving their expressions a malignant orange cast.
“I didn't do it with the intention of helping her escape,” he said. “I didn't know better. I don't know about circles and siphons and things like that. No one has ever taught me.”
“Vell,” Magdalena said, then shook her head, bundling up the dirty towels and scraps of bandages.
“It seems like you might have learned a lesson the first time she took advantage of you, Mister Brown,” Cecily said.
“Come here,” Elizabeth said, her voice so soft he barely heard it.
He turned and took a step toward the bed. “Yes?”
“Stay here. I will teach thee as soon as I am well.”
“Yes, ma'am,” he said.
She smiled at the ma'am, then gave him a single nod and closed her eyes.
Cecily rushed back to her side. “Everyone out. Elizabeth needs her sleep. We must let her rest.”
The women dispersed, quietly going about their different chores, while Deborah limped to the other room and Alexandra climbed the narrow stairs to the second floor. Proctor stood where he was.
“I have my eye on you, Mister Brown,” Cecily said. “If you have decided to aid this widow, or be a willing part of her circle, I will be the first to know it.”
“You don't have to worry about that,” he said. “But I don't know where I'm supposed to go.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she smiled slowly.
He climbed into the loft of the barn carrying an extra blanket. His ascent of the ladder woke Jedediah, who was already stretched out asleep on his blankets in the straw.
“Was there a problem?” the old man asked with mild amusement in his voice.
“It's a small house, only three rooms, and with so many women there already, there wasn't a bed to spare for me,” Proctor said.
“Mmm-hmm,” Jedediah murmured, rustling the straw as he shifted his bedding over to make room for Proctor. “Thou wilt like it better out here anyway.”
“Why's that?” Proctor said.
“It's much quieter.” He rolled over to go back to sleep.
It was unlikely he'd taken into account his own ferocious snoring. Proctor lay awake a long time, chewing on the end of a straw as he watched the stars through a crack in the board. If these women could be comfortable with the notion of witchcraft, he could find a way to make Emily feel the same way. He grinned in the dark. Emily would like Cecily—he could just hear them comparing fashion, deciding on the best dresses to show off their color and eyes.
He would stay long enough to learn some useful magic, that was decided. And he would have to learn how to control his scrying as well—he didn't want to be misled by it again, the way he had been at Lexington. By the time he'd rolled all these thoughts through his head, he'd flipped over enough times to crush down the straw to make it comfortable. He spit the chewed piece out of his mouth and pillowed his head on his arm.
A hand on his shoulder was shaking him awake almost as soon as he fell asleep. It was still dark outside.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Time to get to work,” Jedediah said. “Thou art going to help me take care of the chores, right?”
Chapter 12
Proctor grabbed the top branch of the downed tree and dragged it clear of the woods. He dropped it and paused to mop the sweat off his forehead.
“A trunk that big, I'd have to hitch Mary up to move it,” Jedediah said. Mary was the name of his horse.
“Nah, it's been down a long time, mostly dry. It's light enough to shift.”
“Maybe,” Jedediah said, handing Proctor an ax.
From this spot on the hillside, he could see all fifty-one acres of The Farm occupying two low hills between the swamp and the woods. The buildings and gardens and fields were laid out neatly, and kept in working order; but the sun was bad, the soil was poor, and the pasture pushed up rocks faster than grass.
“You'll never get rich on this farm,” Proctor said.
“Worldly riches may be a wall that keeps us from the wealth of heaven,” Jedediah said.
“I don't even think you need an enchantment to hide this place. I could live my whole life within a mile of here and never look at it twice.”
“Elizabeth says that's why her great-grandparents chose it, right after the witches were hanged at Salem.” He tilted his chin, indicating the town nearby to the east.
“They've been at this a long time, then?”
“I reckon the Quaker Highway got its start right here.”
“So witches from Massachusetts come through here and are sent somewhere else for safety?”
“Yes,
and witches from elsewhere come north. Elizabeth, and her mother and grandmother before her, have trained witches to use their powers quietly, both for their own safety and for the safety of their communities. In the time I've lived here, I've seen dozens pass through, though we have more now than ever before.”
“Any men among them?” Proctor asked.
“Well, there's thee.”
Proctor turned his head and spit. “Any idea when she'll start lessons again?”
“Any day now I'm sure,” Jedediah said. He carried his ax around to the other side of the tree. “Will thou help me cut this tree, friend? Or dost thou expect the wood to split itself?”
Proctor hefted the ax and fell into rhythm with Jedediah, each blow falling in turn to hew the trunk in half. It'd be nice, Proctor thought, if there were a way to do it with magic instead.
So far he'd seen very little in the way of magic.
His first week on The Farm, Elizabeth had been recovering from her burns, and all the women tended to her, lending their efforts to help her heal. For that week and the next, Jedediah kept Proctor busy with all the neglected tasks that could use two sets of hands—fixing the barn roof, rebuilding the chicken coop, digging a new spot for the necessary house.
By the third week, Proctor had been ready to leave. If he was going to work this hard, it might as well be on his own farm. Then a messenger came from the Reverend Emerson. Emerson apologized for his absence, but the siege in Boston and the rebellion against British rule occupied all his energy. He had been able to find out nothing more about the widow, except that she was somewhere in Boston. The messenger brought a letter for Cecily, from her family, and she promptly sat down and wrote one in return.
The messenger also carried a note for Proctor: Emerson wanted Proctor to know that his parents were well, and that young Arthur Simes was helping out with their day-today work on the farm. He praised Proctor for his devotion to the patriot cause and encouraged him to learn anything he could that would help them down the road. Emerson's note concluded by promising that the messenger would deliver any letters Proctor had written to his parents.