by C. C. Finlay
Proctor pulled out the letters to peek at their addresses. But the captain stepped beside him, holding his hand out. Except for lacking the pipe and about twenty years, he was the spitting image of Danvers.
Proctor smacked the packet of letters into his empty palm. So much for that plan.
“We'll pay you the money once we're safely in Boston,” Deborah said. Her voice was almost a squeak.
The captain folded back the corners of the letters, examining their addresses; he grunted something that might be consent, or might be disinterest, before tucking the letters away inside his own coat. “Have either of you been cod fishing before?”
“No,” Proctor said. Deborah opened her mouth to speak, but, overcome by the rocking of the boat and the stench of the fish, shook her head instead.
“You're of no use to me then, so stay over there, out of the way, until we get into dock.”
They went aft and sat on a locker. The one remaining crewman grumbled about the workload until the captain told him to stow it. The sailor, a swarthy fellow with a black goatee and a slight French accent, glared at them as if he could force their help through shame or discomfort.
But they refused that bait, and he worked alone, cursing from time to time in French, gutting the rest of the cod and stacking them in the center of the boat. Gulls dived at them constantly. The French sailor laughed when Proctor kept ducking them. Deborah was too ill to notice. After a while, she leaned against Proctor just to prop herself up. He put a clumsy arm around her.
“Your little brother hasn't been sailing before?” the captain asked from the spot where he steered the ship.
Proctor looked at him blankly a moment, then shook his head. The captain laughed at that, looked at her, then laughed some more.
Deborah's jaw set. She scooted away from Proctor, holding herself upright even if she was too sick to speak.
They approached the harbor. Now that it was daylight, Proctor saw a hundred ships, all flying the Union Jack. It was an odd sensation, to see the red, white, and blue banner and think that it might no longer be his flag. He'd always felt a stronger connection to Massachusetts than to En gland. But until now he'd had the dual sense of being part of something local and also part of something larger. If the rebellion succeeded, he wondered if he would ever feel part of something so powerful again.
The shadow of Boston formed a hedge of peaked rooftops in the distance. The waves grew choppy as they passed among the wake of larger ships, and Deborah ran to the side of the boat and leaned over.
“We're coming into the dock, if you can just hang on,” the captain said.
She gripped the gunwale until her knuckles were white. The ship sailed past one large wharf and then another larger one, both crowded with British merchant ships. As they sailed south, they passed a series of smaller docks and wharves until they rounded Fort Hill and the captain aimed for one of the smaller wharves. The captain and the cursing Frenchman ran back and forth to steer the craft into position, where it slammed hard against the pier. The crewman jumped over the side with a rope and began tying off while Deborah staggered to starboard. Her vomit splashed into the water below while Proctor ran to her side.
“Wot, someone sick?” a voice said roughly.
Proctor looked up as one of the British dock inspectors thumped onto the deck.
The captain shrugged and handed over his papers. “My nephew—brought him aboard as a favor to my wife's sister, but he's been useless. You want to take him? We had to do all the work ourselves.”
The inspector, who walked stiffly, started toward Deborah, who stepped away from the side and made a quick gesture toward the dock while murmuring a prayer. The inspector stopped.
The captain picked up a slab of the finest cod, twenty pounds of meat or more, and said, “Would you mind holding on to this for me?”
The inspector tucked the papers back into the captain's jacket. “And how am I supposed to hold that?”
The captain grabbed a piece of sailcloth to wrap it in. The inspector stood over him as he wrapped it.
“You should be careful,” he warned. “The rebels have been trying to secret spies into the city. If we catch any, we'll make an example of them and anyone who helped them.”
“If I see any, I'll call for the city watch.”
The inspector grunted in reply, took his fish, and climbed back onto the dock. A fish merchant with two boys rolling barrows came down the wharf and argued with the Frenchman about unloading their catch.
Deborah wiped her mouth, not quite as pale as before, and pulled out the second coin to give to the captain.
“You owe me the price of that fish as well,” he said.
She swallowed and reached for her purse. But Proctor took her elbow and steered her toward the side of the ship. “I left payment for it in Elihu's boat,” he said. “You can collect it from him.”
He led her down the wooden planks. The water that lapped against the piers was filled with dead fish and trash and sewage. The British inspector was already aboard another fishing boat, using his staff to poke among its catch while the captain argued loudly with him over British policy in the siege.
When they came to dry land once again, Proctor hesitated before stepping onto it. He closed his eyes and put one foot forward. Nothing.
“What ever was affecting me,” he said, “I think the water washed it away.”
“Good,” she said weakly.
Now that he was no longer nauseous, no longer tense with worry about betrayal, he felt hungry. “We'll go to my aunt's lodgings and spend the night there. She'll have something to eat,” he said.
“I … I don't want anything to eat right now.” She clamped her hand over her mouth as she said it.
She stumbled away from him until she found a stoop to sit on outside a barrel maker's shed. He went to comfort her, but she waved him away.
“It's getting dark,” he said. “We need to find my aunt's lodgings.”
Swallowing hard, she forced herself back to her feet. “Where does she live?”
“The big wharf we passed is Hancock's, which connects King Street. She lives above a wig maker's shop on Pudding Lane, just off King Street. If we head that way, I know I can find it.”
“Can you find me fresh water first?”
“Yeah, I'm thirsty too.”
He could see Fort Hill rising on their right, so he led her away from the water and into the city. He thought he might be able to find a well or even a rain barrel outside someone's house, but a ropeyard ran the length of the first street he chose. The long open grounds smelled of pitch. A handful of men were still at work; one of them stood by the street tapping a hickory bat against his palm. Everyone seemed on edge. Feeling like one of the spies the inspector had warned about, Proctor decided not to speak to anyone.
Despite what he'd told Deborah, he didn't know the southern end of Boston at all. So he led her from street to street, peering around houses, looking for a public square with a well, like the north square he was familiar with from his previous visits. Instead, they saw several open pastures, some with cattle. He finally led her to a trough at the edge of one of the pastures, and they scooped water from it, drinking with their hands.
“This looks like Orange Street,” he said when they were refreshed. “I think it leads toward King.”
Deborah looked at the darkening sky. “We better hurry,” she said.
He could tell they were headed the right way now. The streets were narrower and dense with buildings. As they wandered from street to street, looking for a landmark Proctor recognized, a shutter banged open above them. A bareheaded man in a nightdress leaned from his second-story window. “It's after curfew—I'll call the watch on you, you damned troublemakers.”
They hurried away as he yelled after them, cursing all apprentices and boys with loose morals.
After that, they moved from shadow to shadow, dashing across the streets, staying out of sight. They didn't dare allow themselves to be caugh
t after dark without papers.
Proctor thought they were close to King Street because he could faintly smell the peculiar mix of odors—fish, tobacco, tea, and rum—that defined the wharf when a voice shouted one street over.
He dodged into a doorway, pulling Deborah after him. At the corner closest to them a light appeared, then two lights. It was the night watch, two men in long coats and broad-brimmed hats, carrying heavy staves and lanterns.
“Nine fifty pee em,” the first voice said, and the second added, “And the wind is blowing from the north.”
They held the light up to the doorways as they passed, stopping to check the lock on a small bakery directly across the street.
Proctor's hand searched all his pockets, looking for sand, for dust, for anything he could use as a focus for a quick spell. His heart began to pound as he realized he had nothing.
Deborah lifted her head to him and silently mouthed a warning: We can't be caught.
He answered her with a small nod. Too much was at stake. They would have to outrun the men if they approached. He braced himself to knock them down.
Instead, the watchmen stared in the window at the counter with its baked goods and talked about coming back for fresh bread when the baker opened shop in the morning. The thought of warm bread made Proctor's stomach growl, loud as a shop dog, but they didn't hear it and moved on. They turned the corner, and Proctor heard, distantly, “Nine fifty-five—”
Deborah's fist, closed on the hem of his jacket, finally relaxed. Proctor whispered to her. “I think I recognize that bakery—we're just around the corner from my aunt's.”
When they rounded the next street and turned down an alley, Proctor's heart leapt. He not only recognized her lodging but saw a light burning in her window, despite the late hour.
“Come on,” he said, taking Deborah by the hand.
He tapped lightly at the door.
It cracked open instantly, and his aunt's thin face peered out at him. “Proctor,” she said, hardly sounding surprised. “Well, come in.”
She stepped back, holding the door open so they could enter. Proctor watched the street while Deborah entered first, then he slipped inside and shut the door behind them.
When he turned around, he saw his mother sitting in a rocking chair by the fire, wearing all black, hands folded in her lap.
“I knew you were coming, Proctor,” she said. “I scryed it. I saw your arrival at this very day and hour.”
Chapter 20
Proctor was so stunned, all he could do was yank his hat off his head and stand there. “Hello, Mother.”
She looked as though she had aged ten years. Her already careworn face was thinner, the circles under her eyes darker, her hair grayer.
“Two months,” she said. “Two months gone from the only home you've ever known, two months gone and your own loving parents needing you, two months gone … and all you can say to me is Hello, Mother?”
His aunt moved quietly to the far end of the room next to the door, as if she was ready to block his potential escape.
“But the Reverend Emerson—” he started.
“The Reverend Emerson,” she said, “called on me for about an hour one afternoon, told me how you were off to fight the war, and when I asked him who was to take care of your family while you were gone, he told me not to worry, it wouldn't be long, and then he was off to go do his own part, and days went by, and turned into weeks, and I didn't hear a word, didn't even receive a scrap of letter from you.”
“Mother—”
“Let her have her say, Proctor,” his aunt scolded. Then muttering to herself, “God knows as much as I've had to listen to it, you should too.”
“Don't you dare criticize me, Sarah!” His mother's head turned to look at her sister, but her hand raised from her lap, finger extended at Proctor, as if to pin him where he stood. When she looked back to Proctor, the finger stayed aimed at him.
“Didn't I teach you your letters? Didn't I spend winters with you practicing your writing, over and over, until you could spell as well as boys raised up in fine houses with their own schoolmasters trained at Yale? And to what end? You left without a word, for months, and you couldn't even write me a single letter to let me know where you were or that you were still alive?”
“I sent you a note—”
“This?” She pulled up his note to her from some weeks past, and flapped it at him. “This is barely a note. I've seen bills of sale that contained more information. There's nothing in here about where you were, why you were gone, when you'd return—nothing!”
“It had to stay a secret,” he said.
Her voice went very cold. “Boy, another word for secret is lie. I don't want to hear any more lies.”
“But I haven't lied.”
“That's a lie right there,” she snapped. “You told the Reverend Emerson you were going off to fight the war, but I went to see Captain Smith, of the minutemen.”
“My captain?”
“Yes, your captain! Because if my son was off to fight this … this God-damned war!—”
That was the first time Proctor had ever heard her take the Lord's name in vain. He took a deep breath.
“—you'd think his captain, the man he signed a covenant with, the man he reports to, you'd think that man would have some idea, maybe a general inkling, even a notion, where one of his minutemen was assigned. Or where he was off volunteering. But no! Your captain had no idea at all! He said he hadn't seen you since the fight on the road to Lexington.”
Proctor's mouth set. She must have been worried sick about him, and he couldn't blame her. He was going to stand here and take it, let her get it out of her system, before he tried to explain things to her.
Deborah shuffled uncomfortably behind him.
“So then”—she looked over to her sister for confirmation, as if Sarah had been witness to all of this—“I go back to the Reverend Emerson. And he tells me not to fear, that God is looking out for you, and I ask him, ‘Who is looking out for me? With my only son gone and his father ill?’ And he promised that God would provide, but I can tell you God didn't provide me with nothing but heartache. Because it was just like you were one of the men shot dead on the green, only there wasn't nothing left of you to bury.”
“But I thought Arthur Simes came over to help you out. Emerson said—”
“Arthur Simes helped himself to dinner and that was about it.” She leaned forward, the crease showing in her brow. “Are you a Tory?” she asked.
“What?”
“Have you been hiding in Boston with the Ruckes this whole time?”
“No, I just arrived tonight.”
“Because I couldn't figure out where you'd gone or where you were. I never scryed so often or so hard as I scryed looking for you, and God did not answer one of my prayers, not once in all the rest of April, nor in May. I couldn't see anything! It was like you were wrapped in a shroud, as if you were dead—”
The image of a dead man wrapped in a shroud made Proctor shudder.
“—until three days ago, when I scryed and there you were again.”
Her voice cracked, and she paused to wipe her cheeks and restore her frown.
They'd left The Farm three days ago. The concealment spells must have hidden him from her. Softly, he said, “I'm sorry.”
His apology only infuriated her. “So there I am, my only child has left me, and God and His angels have left me—”
“Now, Prudence,” Sarah said.
“That's what it felt like. And then, then—” Her voice cracked again, and she couldn't speak for a second.
Sarah walked over to her side and rested a hand on her shoulder. “There now, it'll be all right.”
His mother reached up to squeeze her sister's hand, but she continued to stare directly at Proctor. She tried to speak again, but her voice broke before any words came out, and she turned her face away and pressed it against her sister's hand.
Proctor shuffled his feet, feeling
sick to his stomach again. “Mother, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone off without saying anything, and I should've sent you a letter, but when it was all happening—”
She lifted her head again, just long enough to say, “And then your father passed on.”
Proctor stepped back as if he'd been kicked by a horse, bumping into Deborah. She touched his elbow and whispered, “Oh, Proctor, I'm so sorry.”
He yanked his arm away as if her touch were fire, and started toward his mother, wanting to comfort her, wanting with all his heart to make things right. A look of reproach from his aunt stopped him dead in his tracks.
“And who did I have then?” his mother wailed. “My husband was dead. My son, my only child, who I loved and depended on, was missing, without a word, without a letter, no way to reach him. Even the Reverend was gone, off to help raise troops.”
Her sister patted her shoulder and kissed the top of her head, murmuring to her. “There, Prudence, there, now, if I had known, I would have come.”
“I couldn't even send word to you,” she sobbed. To Proctor, she said, “The only family I have left in all the world, when I need her most, and she's trapped behind a fort, behind a wall of soldiers, all because some fool started shooting at the Redcoats back in April.”
Proctor came forward, and bent down on one knee at his mother's feet, hanging his head as low as he felt. “I have no right to expect it, but I beg your forgiveness. I should have been there for you, and I wasn't. I let you down.”
His mother sniffled, but her face, red-eyed and wan, was set hard against him.
“You must never let her down again,” his aunt scolded.
“I won't,” Proctor said.
“You've always been a good boy,” his aunt said. “A little headstrong, yes, maybe a little too sure of yourself, but it never brought you to any harm.”