by C. C. Finlay
“The Covenant of Witches belongs to no country, girl. We exist in every country, spreading our invisible empire across the globe. My master sent me here to put down this simpleton's backwater rebellion. It is not in our interest to see the British empire weakened. But I found something in this pitiful barbaric country that I did not expect: I found power. Cecily has some, but you have so much more.”
She walked over and grabbed a handful of Deborah's poorly cut hair, arching her head back.
“Cecily has ambition too. The question is, do you? Do you have the will to become one of the Twelve who serve me? To become one of the masters instead of one of the slaves?”
Proctor watched Deborah closely for her response. Deep in his heart, he knew the alternative was death, so part of him hoped Deborah took the widow's offer. If she survived today, she could escape tomorrow, or another day.
There was a tap at the door. The widow tossed Deborah's head aside almost casually and went to answer it.
Proctor stared at Deborah, trying to catch her eye. Accept the widow's offer, he pleaded with her silently, hoping she understood. Do what you must, but stay alive.
Deborah lay still, breathing hard, her eyes closed.
Chapter 22
The widow opened the door. Jolly stomped in, unshaven, smelling like whiskey. His good hand clutched a bayonet as well as a struggling, kicking ten-year-old boy. The boy's curly hair was tangled and unkempt, his secondhand shirt hung almost to his knees, and his feet were bare and dirty.
“Lemme goooooooo!” he howled.
The widow slapped the boy hard across his face as casually as she'd tossed aside Deborah. “Quit your whining,” she said calmly.
Putting a hand to his reddened cheek, he stared up at her wide-eyed, mouth shut. Proctor wanted to scream at him to run, but he couldn't force the words past the muffle of his gag.
“Will he suit?” she asked.
Jolly nodded. “He's orphaned, father dead at sea, mother dead of a fever this year past. He's been a servant in three house holds, but ran away from the first two. Hancock took him in as an act of charity, put him to work in the stables, left him behind when he left town.”
“I still do my chores,” the boy said.
“Good,” the widow answered, but whether to Jolly or the boy was unclear. She nodded absently, already turning away. Jolly shoved the boy toward the corner opposite Deborah, and he stumbled to the floor.
Proctor struggled to one knee—if he couldn't touch the widow, he could at least knock down her bully. But Jolly punched his chin, sending him to the floor.
“That one was for me,” Jolly said, pulling his fist back to hit him again. “This one is for my mates—”
“Enough,” the widow cried. “I need him sensible and whole for my spell to work.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Jolly said.
“Where's the rest of it?”
He reached outside the door and carried in a bowl, balancing it against his chest. Inside the bowl was a small embroidered bag and several candles.
“Set it by the hearth,” she said. She pointed her pipe stem at Proctor. His skin tingled, and a knot shifted low in his belly. She swept the pipe through the air, pointing it to the center of the room, and Proctor's body slid across the floor to the exact spot.
He lay there, panting through his nose, feeling sick again. He'd taken too many blows, gone too long without food or water. He didn't know how much longer he could keep fighting.
Jolly watched Proctor's movement with a wild gleam in his eye, something like lust, Proctor thought. Keeping his gaze on Proctor, he went and pulled another bag through the door, then shut it, taking up a guard's position beside it.
The curly-haired boy gulped a few times, cowering in the corner. Deborah sat quiet and helpless in hers.
The widow set her pipe on a ledge by the fire, lifted the bag, and undid the drawstrings. She plunged her hand inside and removed a scoopful of salt, glittering and crystalline. “Pay attention,” she told Deborah. “This is salt from the sea, for an empire that spans all seas. It was very clever of you to use my own salt to bind me before.”
She poured it in a circle around Proctor, stretching out almost to the edges of the room. That much, Proctor thought, was no different than Deborah's mother had done with her magic on the farm.
When she was done, she knotted the bag and placed it back by the hearth. Taking the large bowl, she stepped over to the boy cowering in the corner.
“That's a good lad,” she said. “Are you a wicked boy, or a good lad?”
His knees were drawn up to his chest. He nodded hesitantly, eyes wide with fear. “I'm a good boy.”
She smiled toward Deborah. “He's a good lad.” She placed the bowl in front of the boy, saying, “Behave just a moment longer, and we'll be done with you, all right?”
He nodded again, more enthusiastically.
“Good, that's a good lad. Now lean forward for me, so I can see your pretty hair. You have very pretty hair, my lamb. Have you been told that before?”
“Yes, ma'am, my mother used to say so.” He uncurled his knees and rose up straight, tilting his dirty face up so she could see it.
“Bend forward a bit, so I can see it better,” she said. “We're almost done.”
As he bent forward, she removed a knife from her sleeve. Deborah's muffled cry of anguish pierced the room as the blade slid across the boy's throat. The widow held up his head as his blood spurted into the bowl. He kicked once, then twitched, then hung limp and still while she drained him. She did it calmly, and smoothly, wasting no motion and spilling no blood but in the bowl. The knot in Proctor's stomach twisted again: he was sure she'd done this before.
The blood in the bowl reminded Proctor of the eggs his mother used for scrying. Both represented a sacrificial offering of life …
While the blood poured, an image began to form in front of Proctor's face—militiamen on a hillside—gunfire, smoke—their backs as they ran away, retreating—he looked down and he saw blood on his hands.
Jolly chuckled and inched forward for a closer look at the widow's work. “Don't break the circle,” she snapped at him, and he fell back.
The images dissipated and disappeared. Proctor didn't know what he was supposed to see. Blood on his hands? He still didn't trust his scrying, and he especially didn't trust anything touched by this kind of evil.
Finished with the boy, the widow bent him back into the corner and stroked his curly hair. “Such a pretty, pretty lamb,” she murmured.
His paled face stared up at the sky, seeing nothing. She wiped the knife on his shirt, leaving long red streaks in the dusty linen, then tucked it back into her sleeve.
Rising with the bloody bowl in her hands, she stepped over the line of salt, carefully so as not to break it, and stood inside the circle. She set the bowl down again, a few feet from Proctor's head, where he could not reach it to spill it. Then she removed a small wand from her other sleeve. The wood looked like blackthorn, worn smooth with age and use. There were several unnatural twists in the middle.
Tilting her head toward Deborah, she said, “This is the blood of a servant, that all the world may be bent to serve us.”
So saying, she dipped the wand in the bowl and cast a line of blood across the floor. She dipped and cast again. The third line splashed drops across Proctor's cheek. The liquid was warm when it hit him, and he felt it run, leaving a trail down his throat.
As she continued to work, the widow explained to Deborah, “This is the five-point star signifying the force of our will. Each point breaks the edge of the circle, so that our will might break the natural order and cycle of events to create a new order.”
Again, she moved carefully and precisely, her wand rising and falling as she cast the lines of her drawing. Although his head throbbed with pain, Proctor's vision had cleared, and with it his thoughts. When she came to him, he was not going to go as easily as that poor boy had.
She finished and moved the bowl outsi
de the circle, pausing to wipe her wand on the boy's shirt just as she had the knife. Picking up her pipe, she gestured with it and the coals stirred in the hearth until a few blazed red. Then she held a taper to the coals; when it flamed, she lit a candle and placed it at one point of the star.
Proctor held his breath against the odor as she lit the next three candles. They didn't smell sweet like the candles his mother used; instead, they reeked of something like whale oil, but less wholesome. Perhaps the fat of some other animal.
She held the fifth candle to Deborah as she lit it. “The fire carries the will of our spirit, by light and smoke, into the world to make our will take flesh.”
Deborah grimaced and shut her eyes, turning her face away. Proctor was glad to see her struggle.
But the widow only chuckled and placed the candle in the last spot. “I also turned my face away, the first time my master showed me the rites. But once I witnessed her power, and saw the futility of my own life wasted, I changed my mind. Jolly?”
He seemed startled by being directly addressed. “Yes, ma'am?”
“Where are the other items I requested?”
“Here,” he said, indicating the spot where he'd dropped them by the door. Proctor twisted his head around. He saw a flint bag, like the one he carried in the militia, and the bayonet, and a scrap of paper.
“I mean hand them to me, the musket ball first,” she said. “And mind that you don't break the circle.”
He knuckled his head, as if saluting a superior officer. Retrieving a ball from the flint bag, he leaned over the circle and held it out to the widow.
She rolled up Proctor's sleeve before taking the lead ball. “I'm so glad you came,” she whispered to him. “Before now, I was relying on my spell to make the colonials sick, too weak to fight. But now that I have a real minuteman in my grasp, someone who's already fought the British, I have the focus I need to break them utterly. And a witch, no less, someone with the power in his blood.”
Proctor wanted to fight, wanted to protest, but he could feel her draw on him, pulling on his power. Then fire shot down his forearm—she'd slashed his skin with her knife.
He had intended to struggle, but weakness flooded him, the way it had when she'd touched him through the shed door on Emerson's farm. Deborah made a muffled cry and struggled against her bonds in the corner.
“You feel that, do you?” the widow asked, with a glance at Deborah. “I am borrowing your strength now too. Pay close attention. This is a difficult spell, cast to affect men who are not present, on land that is at some distance. If Boston were not connected to the mainland by The Neck, it might not work at all.”
She pressed the lead ball into the top end of Proctor's slashed forearm and slowly rolled it down the length of cut toward his hand. His breath came in ragged nasal gasps. Sweat rolled off his forehead, stinging his eyes.
“This English ball is bathed in rebel blood—in the coming battle, may it draw all balls from English muskets toward the blood of the rebels, to strike them down in their insolence and insubordination.”
She dropped the lead ball. It thumped on the wooden planks and rolled a foot away. Proctor had to force himself to breathe, despite the stench of the candles, in order to gather his strength.
“Jolly, the bayonet.”
He held it out for her as she rolled up Proctor's other sleeve. This time he made himself watch as she pressed the tip of it into his skin and slid it along his forearm, splitting his flesh. He grunted and tried to twist away, but he was as weak as a baby.
The bayonet had three edges, to create a wound that wouldn't heal. She pressed each sharp edge, in turn, into the open wound. His vision blurred and spots swam before his eyes.
“This English bayonet is bathed in rebel blood, so that in the coming battle, every thrust of an English bayonet may find blood, to pierce the heart of rebellion and by the piercing end it.”
More than weakness had taken root in Proctor now. A chill surged through him, like winter winds pushing through the cracks in a bad window. He shivered, and only the invisible gag in his mouth kept his teeth from chattering.
An image came back to him like an echo from some distant mountain: a hillside, defended by the militia, as musket balls filled the air around them.
He could see the men falling under fire.
He could see their fallen bodies bayoneted.
He saw the survivors fleeing.
“The commission,” she said.
“It's a blank commission,” Jolly said, handing over the paper. “Copied from an original.”
The paper crackled in her hand as she unrolled it and studied the writing. “Perfect,” she said. “If it were a specific commission, the spell would work only for that one man.”
The paper ripped loudly as she tore it in half, pressing each separate piece into one of Proctor's bleeding wounds. She turned and fed the first bloody piece into the flame of the nearest candle, holding it up as it burned. When only a corner remained, she flicked it into the air and the ash spun around until the flame burned it to nothing and vanished. She did the same with the second piece.
“Let those who hold commissions be the first to fall. Let them be soaked in blood, and then be destroyed. Let the army be leaderless, like a ship without a rudder, unable to steer itself toward any shore.”
Her face was beatific, as though she had prayed for a blessing of rain and saw the clouds form overhead. She smiled down at Proctor, and he could not tell her age. Though her eyes seemed as old as his mother's, or older, her face was free of wrinkles but for the corners of her eyes, and her mouth curved like a young girl's.
“This is the last part,” she said, softly, stroking Proctor's hair just as she had stroked the boy's. He tensed to kick her, hoping for a lucky strike with his knee or foot, but the life force drained from him more completely than ever before. She was drawing on him, drawing on his magic, every drop of it, for her next act. He could feel it flowing out of him, but he didn't know how to stop it.
She held the killing knife in her left hand. Up close, it was shorter than he expected, and curved like a sickle.
“With the death of this rebel, let there be fear of death among all rebels,” she whispered to Proctor, still smiling.
Energy poured from him now, like water gushing through a broken dam. She tugged open his shirt, and he tried to drive his elbow into her, but it lay dead against his side.
“When this knife pierces his heart, let fear pierce the heart of all the rebels.” She placed the point of the knife between his ribs, and pressed one hand on the hilt to push it home. “As the soul flees this mortal shell, let men flee the battlefield in fear for their own flesh and souls.”
This was his last chance. He grunted with all the force of life left in him and rolled away from her, thrusting his knees at her side, hoping for something that would give him even a momentary advantage.
He landed a mere six inches away from the tip of her knife. His knees bounced off her and rested still on the ground while he panted through his nose for more breath. He looked for Deborah, but couldn't see her. Maybe he had caused enough of a distraction to allow her to escape.
“Good,” the widow murmured, focused entirely on him, drawing on his magic until the pond inside him was dry and the ground beneath was cracked and split. “The greater your courage, the greater their fear.”
She leaned forward again. And stopped.
He panted, his eyes wet with tears, so at first he thought he was mistaken. Wrinkles appeared at the corner of the widow's mouth. Her cheeks grew sunken while she stared at her hands, now bent and arthritic. Gray roots appeared at her scalp.
The gray roots lengthened. The hair seemed to flow out of her scalp, like water pouring from a fountain, dusty gray tresses that fell in abrupt cascades about her shoulders, draining toward the floor. Her hands withered and her fingernails grew, first to sharp points, then to cracked edges. The knife fell from her hand with a clatter to the floor and the nails kept
growing, curling back on themselves like yellowed snakes, nine or ten inches long, making her hands useless for work.
“You slut,” she screamed, turning toward Deborah, who cowered in the corner directly behind her, but the words came out of her mouth like a puff of dust. “You whore, you miserable fat sow!”
The last was no more than the croak of a small frog.
Deborah sat upright, her eyes fierce and fearless, fixed on the widow. Though it was night, she seemed to glow, as if the sun had been poured into her.
The widow, ashen-faced and filthy, like a figure drawn in charcoal, turned toward Deborah. Too weak to rise, she fell forward on her hands and knees. Unable to use her deformed hands, she wriggled forward like a snake, smearing the blood of her star, breaking the salt of her circle, tipping over a candle and extinguishing the flame.
Deborah leaned forward, prepared to meet her, but the widow's body grew smaller with each inch she crawled until she collapsed in a pile of rags at Deborah's feet.
Deborah's face lifted to meet Proctor's eyes, searching to see if he was all right. He felt life flow back into him like the first drops of a welcome rain.
He pulled himself up, tipping away the bloody bayonet between his knees. With that gesture, he realized his hands were free, and his mouth. He crawled toward Deborah, gasping for air through his unblocked mouth.
She stared at the rags, saying, “I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to kill her.”
“You did that? Was it a severing spell?”
“Because of you,” she said. “She grew so focused on you when you tried to roll away that I was able to pull her magic into me—a circle always flows both ways. But there was so much of it.”
“She was far older than she looked,” he said, watching the blood run down his slashed arms and over his hands. “Magic must have been the only thing keeping her alive.”
“It was horrible,” Deborah said. Proctor held her elbow and tried to help her to her feet. “And glorious.”