Traitor to the Crown The Patriot Witch

by C. C. Finlay

  Then Charlestown was rising up in front of him—literally rising, as the fire turned it into a pillar of smoke. He would have to steal his chance to make it to the colonial lines soon.

  Another cannon boomed. This time he was close enough to hear the whistle of the shell and feel the ground shake as it hit its target in the city. Another set of stone walls tumbled in a cloud of dust.

  The mare didn't like that at all, and tried to turn back. “That's a good girl,” Proctor said, aiming toward the hill. “We'll be far away from the cannon if we go up there.”

  Then hands were reaching up and taking the reins from him. It was the officer from the barn, now considerably less angry.

  “Good work,” he said.

  Proctor thought about pulling the reins free and making a break for it, but he knew it would be a losing gambit with this mare.

  “Gentle is the word for her,” he said, dismounting.

  “This is for you,” the officer said, and handed him a shilling. “We're moving cannons up to cover the road, so we can rake the colonials when they start to retreat. Report to the quartermaster over that way, and he'll find a duty for you.”

  “All right,” Proctor said.

  When the officer led the horse away, Proctor turned toward the hill. Without meeting anyone's eyes, he simply strolled past the British lines, which were still forming, and headed up the long slope. He could almost feel the guns aimed at his back—his stomach knotted and his knees felt rubbery.

  He was less than a quarter of the distance when the shout went up, “Hey, who is that there?”

  “Halt! You there, halt!”

  “Shoot him before he reaches the rebels!”

  With half a mile to go, he started to run.

  Chapter 24

  The first musket cracked behind him.

  More shouts went up, this time from the colonial barricade, as more muskets fired behind him. The balls buzzed past his ears, just like bees. The slope grew steeper just before the summit, the ground filled with rocks and roots and ankle-breaking holes. A ball smashed into the dirt beside him. When his hat fell off, he didn't look back for it—he could find another hat.

  He reached the wall, thrown up hastily out of mud and logs, and rough hands reached out to help him.

  Balls slammed into either side of him, kicking up mud and splinters. As he tumbled over the top, he saw musket barrels rising to reply.

  “Hold your fire,” someone shouted. “Hold your Goddamned fire!”

  Proctor looked up to thank his rescuers and fell back—skeletons and talking skulls, covered with a veneer of jellied flesh, packed all around him.

  “But—” said one of the colonials.

  “Don't argue with me,” the officer interrupted. His face was a skull with eyes like smoke trapped in ice and light brown hair tied back in a knot. “We've only got seven rounds per man. We'll hold our fire until it can do some good. If you can't follow that order, you need to take yourself home right now.”

  Proctor sat, back against the wall, gasping. He fumbled in his trouser pocket—one of the charms, if he grabbed one of the charms that Deborah gave him—

  The muskets lowered and the men repeated the reasoning to one another, reassuring themselves of its wisdom.

  —and his hand closed around something unexpected, the lock of Deborah's hair. He wrapped it around his finger, and, with his eyes closed to shut out the sight of the skeletons, pressed it to his lips, and said a silent prayer. Let her healing heal me.

  The itching spread from his arms to his legs and belly, but the nausea, the weakness fled.

  He opened his eyes and saw worried faces. Bright eyes. Ordinary, healthy flesh. The officer watched him, the same pale brown eyes and hair tied back in a knot, now set in a young man's face, with a hairline scar along one cheek. Breathing easier, Proctor slipped the lock of hair back into the same pocket.

  There was a yelp and a small figure came tumbling back over the wall with something in his hand.

  “You dropped this on the way in,” the boy said. He was about twelve, with a shaggy mop of hair and a big grin on his face. He handed over Proctor's hat.

  Proctor dusted it off and put it back on his head. “Thank you,” he said. “What's your name?”

  “Tobias—I'm the drummer.”

  He reminded Proctor a little of Arthur. Or, if he thought about it, the fifer with the Acton minutemen, the one who taunted the Redcoats at Concord with his songs. Proctor reached into his vest pocket for the shilling the British officer had given him. Instead his hand closed on one of the lead charms.

  He pulled the charm out anyway and handed it to the boy. “You've got my thanks, Tobias. You carry this for luck, and it'll see you through the day.”

  The boy took the musket ball and rolled it in his hands. If he saw anything unusual in it, he didn't say so, but he dropped it in his pocket with a thank-you-sir.

  The leader held out his hand. “That was a brave run there. Who are you and how'd you end up on that side of the line?”

  Proctor got to his feet and took the hand hesitantly—no new wave of nausea passed through, nothing made him sick. “Name's Brown—I'm a minuteman with the Lincoln militia, but then I got stuck in Boston. You the captain here?”

  “Not as such. What were you doing in Boston?”

  A crowd of men had gathered around him to listen. A few of them moved behind Proctor.

  “A fisherman took me into the city,” he said, and then, because he didn't want to appear to be a spy, he added, “so I could check on my aunt. I was going to try to get her out, but with the attack coming, I thought I should get myself out first. I convinced the Redcoats I was one of their stable boys and they brought me over. Then I made a break for it, to get up here.”

  As he spoke, he looked around at the faces. They were similar to the British faces below—some grim, some grinning, some angry. Most young, about his age. But they were wearing the same clothes they'd wear to work in a field, they stood about as they pleased taking their ease, and they argued with their officers when they didn't care for an order.

  The vision he had, the scrying when the boy's blood was spilled, came back to him.

  This hillside. Smoke. Relentless fire. The dead. The survivors fleeing.

  Blood on his hands.

  His failure.

  “I need to find my commanding officer and report,” he finished.

  “Soon enough,” the man said. “You say you're from Lincoln—we got any Lincoln men nearby?”

  “Not that I know,” one man answered.

  “Lincoln's 'tween Lexington and Concord,” another said.

  “I was at Lexington,” Proctor replied. “Captain Parker, from Lexington, he'd remember me, if he's here. He loaned me shot at the bloody corner.”

  Just saying the names evoked memories of that day, only two months past. Was it only two months? He felt like he lived in a different world now than he did then, like he'd become a different man. And this—looking at the fort, the lines of the colonial militia, the lines of the British below, protected by the guns on their warships—this promised to be a different kind of battle.

  “I recognize 'im,” a voice said. It was a black man, the one who'd pulled him free of Pitcairn's guards when he'd tried to take the medallion.

  “Who're you?” a surly man asked

  “That's Peter Salem,” another answered. “I know him.”

  “I know him too,” the leader said. “Hi, Peter.”

  “Hi, Will. He was in the thick of it on the Concord Road,” Salem said with a nod at Proctor. “There was one last Redcoat riding a horse, and this fellow went down to the road and knocked him clean off.”

  “So you know him?” Will asked.

  “I don't know as I can say I know him, because we've never been introduced,” Salem said. “But that was something, taking that officer off his horse, and I'd recognize the man who did it anywhere, even I saw him dressed up like a Turk in Timbuktu.”

  The men
laughed at that.

  Will held out his hand. “It's good to meet you, Brown. I hope you'll forgive the questions.”

  “No problem. There's a war on, I understand.”

  “Major Israel Putnam is in charge.”

  “Only a major?” Proctor said.

  “After the way we whipped them in Lexington, I guess we figured we don't need a general to beat 'em here.”

  The men laughed again, and Proctor was struck by the similarity they shared with the men on the other side. He put his hand in his pocket and felt the lead balls. It seemed like a small shield against so much bloodshed.

  “Old Put's the one you'll want to report to,” Will said. “You'll find him down at the center of the line.”

  “Thank you,” Proctor said, and he took off at a quick pace. The British had aimed their cannons at the fort now, and a plume of dirt shot up in front of him as a ball struck just outside the wall. He waited until the dirt settled and then kept on going, asking for Putnam. There were so few men up here, maybe no more than a thousand, about a quarter of the number he saw among the British.

  Putnam was older and more rotund than the other men in the redoubt, but no one looked more like an officer or moved with more purpose and energy. He was taking reports from half a dozen men, stopping every so often to mop his brow with a handkerchief. When it was his turn, Proctor repeated the story he told the other men.

  “The British are moving cannons up to cover the road,” Proctor said. “They're planning to rake us, if we have to retreat.”

  “That's excellent, Brown, excellent.” Turning toward one of his men, Putnam said, “Have them throw up some defenses along the Charlestown Neck to cover our retreat.”

  The man, who looked exhausted the way that only a man who has been digging all night can, saluted briskly and ran off to see to it.

  Putnam turned back to Brown. “Do you have a musket?”

  “Not here—the Lobsters would have been suspicious if I carried it along their lines.”

  “True.” Putnam chuckled, mopping the sweat from his forehead. “The fact is, we've got more men than guns.”

  “How're you on shovels?”

  Another shell whistled in and hit the wall nearby, throwing up dirt and shards of wood. A man fell down, pierced.

  “We're short on shovels right now too,” Putnam said. “Truth is, most of the digging's done and it's time to fight. If you stay back and help any wounded men away from the wall, we'd appreciate it. You'll be able to pick up a musket and fill in a hole on the line at some point.”

  “Yes, sir,” Proctor said. As Putnam turned away to his next task, Proctor said, “Sir?”

  “What is it, Brown?”

  Proctor pulled one of the musket balls from his pocket. “If you would take this for luck, sir, it would honor me.”

  Putnam saw it was a musket ball and dropped it in his bag. “You don't have any powder to go with that ball, do you?”

  “No, sir,” Proctor said. “That's why it seemed like I ought to give it to someone who might use it.”

  “Powder would have been luckier for us all. But thank you.”

  Proctor moved along the line, asking after officers and finding few senior men there. He gave the charmed musket balls to a few captains. They looked at him oddly, but if he handed it over with some excuse, and moved on quickly, no one looked too closely. Suddenly, he found himself wishing for the widow's sickness on him again. If he could see the skulls behind the flesh, he'd know for certain which men to give them to. Instead, he watched for anyone else who acted like a leader and passed a lead ball on to them. It was the best he could do.

  The sun was high overhead: it was past noon. All of Charlestown was aflame, the wind pushing the smoke over the hilltop so that their eyes constantly stung. British mortars fell along the fort so often that the sound of explosions no more startled him than the sound of his own heart. But when he looked over the wall and saw the lines of the British regulars, thousands of them, ready to attack, his pulse skipped a beat.

  The attack would begin anytime now.

  A cheer went down the line as a single man, followed by a dozen others, approached Putnam. He was tall, fair-haired, and handsome.

  “Who is that?” Proctor asked a man nearby.

  “That's Doctor Warren. He was just appointed major-general of the whole army yesterday.”

  “Ah,” Proctor said, recognizing the name. Dr. Joseph Warren was considered about the finest man in all of Massachusetts—intelligent, brave, and the best physician in the colonies. He pushed closer to hear his conversation with Putnam.

  “—I wouldn't think of it,” Warren was saying.

  “By rights you should be the commanding officer here,” Putnam said.

  “Nonsense,” Warren replied. “My commission hasn't taken effect yet. It's dated for tomorrow.”

  “A mere formality.”

  “Not at all,” Warren said. “You were here first, you threw up the defenses, you've taken all the reports, and you understand the situation. I'm here as a volunteer, and I'll serve like any other.”

  “Are you certain?” Putnam asked, though he was clearly flattered by the younger man. “There is no ego involved. I would be honored to pass the command to you.”

  “As I am honored to serve under you,” Warren said. The way he said it, Proctor felt that he wasn't merely being polite or affecting enthusiasm. He really meant it. “Now, I have my own musket and enough shot and powder to share,” he added. “Where should I go?”

  Several company commanders spoke up at once, and not just for the chance at an extra round or two of powder. Warren was one of the great leaders of the colony. Proctor thought he had never seen a more gracious man. He needed one of the charms, if any man did.

  As Warren moved away from Putnam, Proctor shoved his hand in his pocket and pushed forward. “Doctor Warren, if I may trouble you. Doctor Warren?”

  And then his footsteps faltered. His pocket was empty. He had no charms left.

  “Yes?” Warren said, puzzled.

  Proctor pulled out his empty hand and offered it to Warren. “I just wanted to shake the hand of one of the finest men in Massachusetts.”

  The men around them laughed at that, but Warren took his hand and shook it heartily.

  Another shell whistled over the wall, and a few men ducked as it exploded. But Warren held his head up, and the others were quick to mimic his example.

  “They're coming!”

  The line of Redcoats had started marching up the hill. The drummers beat out the call to arms and men ran to defend the wall, taking any spot that was empty, regardless of where they might be assigned. Proctor grabbed a tall, thin fellow as he ran by. “Can you spare one lead?”

  The man opened his mouth to say something, but his fellows were calling for him to join them.

  “Please,” Proctor said.

  He thrust his hand in his bag and pulled out one round, slapping it into Proctor's palm. Proctor retreated from the front line, back among the drummers and fifers and the other unarmed volunteers.

  He sat down and looked at the lead ball. It seemed like such a small thing, that could snuff a man's life. It seemed smaller still, that it could act as a protection. He cupped his hands around the lead ball, holding his lips to the gap between his thumbs.

  “Dear Father in heaven,” he prayed. “May Thy light shine on this simple ball of lead. If it be Thy will, let it become a shield of life rather than a taker of life. Let no man who bears it fall before his appointed time.”

  He opened his hand. Nothing had happened.

  Clasping his hands again, he prayed more fervently, repeating it three times under his breath. But he didn't feel anything flow through him—no tingle of energy, no warmth, no difference at all.

  The lead ball sat in his palm. It was still no more than a lead ball.

  Maybe he couldn't do it without Deborah. Maybe she had drained all his magic too. All his power had flowed into the widow, and all the wid
ow's power flowed into Deborah. Maybe he had nothing left.

  The British fired as they advanced, the front line shooting, the second line marching up and doing the same while the first line reloaded. One man fell nearby, struck by a musket ball, and lay still.

  “Hold your fire!” Putnam shouted. “We have to make every shot count—don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”

  “If they get that close, we can stab them and save the powder,” a man called back, and they all laughed.

  “Be firm, men,” Putnam shouted.

  Another series of mortars fell, smashing parts of the wall and throwing back the defenders. A round of musket fire followed. A man fell nearby, clutching his shoulder and moaning as he tried to crawl back up to his position.

  “Can we have a hand?” a captain called.

  Proctor dropped the lead ball and ran forward to help, hunched over to duck the musket fire buzzing overhead. The wounded man's shoulder was smashed, his right arm hanging bloody and dead. With one hand under his left arm and the other on the man's belt, Proctor hauled him back from the line and loaded him on one of the horse carts that were waiting to remove the wounded.

  “Hold,” Putnam shouted, and the call went down the line.

  Proctor ran to drag another injured man away from the wall. Halfway to the carts, he realized the man was dead. At that moment a shell crashed over the wall, and Proctor instinctively covered the body with his own.

  The British soldiers were less than a hundred yards away. They had the range with their cannons. They had numbers on their side.

  The colonials had the high ground and they had courage. At least that part of the widow's curse had failed.

  The British came within fifty yards now, and still the colonials held their fire. Another round of musket fire came over the ramparts and more men fell, but none ran.

  And none, Proctor saw, were officers, even though they stood exposed to harm as they marked the progress of the British line.