The Demon Redcoat

by C. C. Finlay

  “If I have to pass through blood and fire, then I best make sure that blood and fire is as far away from you as possible. And think about it—I spent my whole life serving a witch who served the Covenant. I can recognize them, and I know how they do some of the things they do. It only makes sense that I go along.”

  As soon as she said it, it seemed obvious to Proctor, so much so that he wondered why he hadn’t considered it himself. Still, he had reservations. He didn’t know what he was going to face and didn’t want to put anyone else in danger. “You don’t have to do that,” he said. “I don’t know how we’d explain the two of us traveling together.”

  Lydia rolled her eyes. “Believe me, you don’t need to be a witch to be invisible. I’ll go—” She hesitated, as if the word was hard to spit out. “I’ll go as a slave. If people think I’m your slave, I’ll be as good as invisible to them.”

  Deborah shook her head firmly. “I don’t care for even the appearance of slavery. It does irreparable harm to both the master as well as the slave.”

  Proctor agreed. “Now that you have your freedom, I could never ask you to act the slave again. I won’t do it.”

  “It is a false pride not to do what must be done,” Lydia said. “All those years I traveled with Miss Cecily as her slave, I pretended to myself that I was free. Now that I’m free, I can travel one more time, pretending to the world I’m a slave. Especially if it will defeat men who would make slaves of us all.”

  Deborah would not let go. “For all we know, there may be blood and fire here as well,” she said. “You don’t need to go looking for it on our account.”

  “That may be true,” Lydia said. “But you’ve been good to me, better than I have had any reason to expect, after what Miss Cecily did here. If I go away, and blood and fire shows up here as well, at least I’ll know it’s not because of me.”

  Proctor would not argue that point with her. It was too similar to his own motivations for going.

  Deborah turned to him, her chin set firm, her voice trembling and bitter. “I thought you were done doing work for Washington, done with making sacrifices for your country.”

  “I’m still a patriot. I still want to see our country free, and I’ll do my part to make that happen. But let’s be clear about one thing.” He looked Deborah in the eye and fought to control the emotion in his voice. “I’m not doing this just for Washington or my country. I’m doing it for you and for our daughter, and God help any man on any side of this war who gets in my way.”

  His traveling bag hung on a peg by the door. He rose and put the letter, with its accompanying papers of introduction, into the bag. A gesture to make his decision final.

  The fire had burned down and now cast the room in a dull, even glow. Outside the window, the sky quickened toward dawn. Maggie squirmed in Deborah’s arms. Deborah’s face, for once, looked bleak and defeated.

  “It’s as good a time as any for us to do the spell,” she said at last. She turned to Abigail. “Will you go fetch the box with Maggie’s cord and all the rest of it?”

  Chapter 6

  Dawn rose on a tiny crib set in the shelter of a tree.

  They gathered at the edge of the orchard. Deborah had positioned them at the four points of the compass, around the dead patch of ground where Cecily’s black magic had once raised corpses.

  “Are you certain this is the right place to do this?” Proctor asked. He could see the same question on Abigail’s face, though Lydia’s expression was hard to read. At one time, Deborah would have worked to bring everyone to a consensus, but for this spell she simply told them where it was going to happen.

  “Absolutely,” she answered. “We will confront evil directly wherever it attacks us. On this farm, we will always answer fear with love and the blunt force of violence with the irresistible persistence of peace. When they leave a mark of destruction, we will turn it into a garden of hope.”

  It was a message for him. It would be more convincing if she didn’t sound angry when she said it. She wasn’t going to change his mind. He didn’t think the Covenant was going to be stopped by love or peace or hope. It wasn’t that kind of world.

  Maggie made noises for attention, but they sounded more curious than distressed.

  “Proctor?” Deborah said.

  He stepped forward with the spade. Suppressing a spasm of revulsion at the memory of the vile thing he’d fought here years ago, he jammed the spade into the ground and dug the hole. The soil was dead and full of gravel. A barrow full of garden compost, black with leaf mold and alive with worms, sat off to one side. Proctor scooped several spadefuls into the hole.

  “Abigail,” Deborah said.

  Abigail held a small box wrapped in cloth. Maggie’s afterbirth and cord. She knelt by the hole and gently lowered it to the bottom. When she stepped out of the way, Proctor dumped another spade of compost in the hole. Clumps of dirt pattered over the box.

  “Lydia,” Deborah prompted.

  Lydia had a small apple tree at her feet, a large root-ball with three and a half feet of slender trunk. It had been her memory that led to this spell, so Deborah had asked her to choose the tree. She knew exactly the one she had wanted, and Proctor had dug it up in the dark.

  She bent over, grabbing the trunk by the base near the roots. She swung the tree back and forth for momentum, shedding dirt each time it brushed against her leg. She let go when it was out over the hole and it dropped solidly into place. The top of the root-ball mounded just over the lip of the hole. Proctor made a circle of compost around the tree, moving clockwise and filling in the edges. After he patted the dirt down, continuing his clockwise motion, he placed the spade outside the circle and then returned to his position.

  Deborah held a pitcher of water. She circled the tree in the same direction as Proctor, pouring until the pitcher was empty. Then she set it aside with the spade and returned to her position. She stood at the north point of the compass, Proctor at the east, Lydia at the south, and Abigail at the west.

  Maggie’s cries had grown a little more insistent. Proctor looked over to make sure she was fine, but Deborah said, “Everyone stay with me for a moment longer.”

  She held out her hands. Proctor closed his hand around hers and felt Lydia grab his other. The power started with Deborah and flowed through them, like water moving a mill wheel, but returning with more strength every time it passed through. He counted four slow pulses of energy, marked by the tingling of his skin and the hair rising on his neck. As the fourth pulse completed the circle, Deborah spoke.

  “Deliver us from our enemies, O our God,” she said, and they all repeated the phrase after her. “Defend us from those who rise against us. Deliver us from the workers of iniquity and save us from bloody men. For lo, they lie in wait for our soul.”

  When he chorused the last phrase with the others, he felt a sting in the severed joint where his finger had been, and he realized that she intended the spell to protect him as much as she meant it to protect The Farm. Maybe she wasn’t even protecting The Farm at all.

  “Fight against those that fight against us,” she said, quoting the Psalm, and they repeated the phrase. “Take hold of Your shield and buckler, and stand up for our help. Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after our souls.”

  The final chorus ended and the flow of power subsided. Deborah let go, and they all dropped their hands. The ghost-sting in Proctor’s finger faded. Maybe he had just imagined it. Knowing Deborah, she had worked the spell in her head to encompass him, Maggie, and The Farm. But dividing the focus that much might weaken the spell. It might leave her unprotected.

  “Let this tree be dedicated to Magdalena Elizabeth Brown,” Deborah said. “Let no one eat of it who is not willing to shelter her when she needs shelter, feed her when she needs food, comfort her when she needs comfort, and protect her when she needs protection.”

  She would never ask anyone to take a vow or swear an oath, so willing was as strong as she would make her statem
ent.

  “I am willing,” Proctor said with the other two.

  “Let this tree grow as Magdalena grows, let it be a shelter when she needs shelter, a source of fruit when she needs something to eat, a comfort and a protection to her all her life.”

  The tree itself seemed to respond to Deborah’s words. The branches twisted upward, turning their leaves, already gold with the season, toward the morning sun.

  Magdalena’s fussing had finally turned into a persistent cry. Deborah said, “That’s all, we’re done,” and turned to go get their daughter, but Proctor reached her first. “It may be my last chance to hold her for a while,” he said as he picked her up. She continued to fuss.

  “Hold her closer to your body,” Deborah said, pushing his arms up against his chest. “You won’t break her.” She stroked the baby’s head. “You come back soon, and you come back whole. It’s four to six weeks’ sailing either way. I want you back here by spring, in time for planting.”

  “I’ll take care of things as swiftly as the circumstances allow,” Proctor said. “And I’ll write to you if I can. You can send letters to me also, care of the American legate in Paris.”

  Deborah hated letters. Her mother had taught her that witches should never put anything down in writing, lest it be used against them. “She’s hungry,” Deborah said, taking Maggie from his arms. “I should feed her.”

  “I should go pack,” Proctor said, though he lingered by Deborah’s side as he said it.

  She reached out and grasped his hand. “I want you to know that you’re ready to face the Covenant. You’ve grown in power, and I trust you to use that power wisely. They don’t know what they’re in for.”

  “Brave words.” He hoped they were true. He didn’t have as much power as Deborah, but he hadn’t had a lifetime of learning to use his talent either.

  She let go and pushed him away. “Go already. You can’t harvest the field before you plow it. The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll return.”

  He wanted more time, but he was afraid that if he took it, he would lose his resolve to go and instead try to find some way to protect his family here. That way was a trap. He looked up and saw the other two witches standing nearby. “Lydia?” he said.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  He took one last look at Maggie suckling. “Then let’s grab our bags and go.”

  The road to Boston was barren and unpromising. The sky was an expansive gray slab, spackled along the horizon with brown leaves, among which were scattered a few sere reds and yellows. The ground had not yet frozen, but it was stiff and unyielding. Every clod of mud was hard enough to turn an ankle.

  “It’s going to be a harder winter than I thought,” Proctor said.

  Lydia was wrapped in a heavy cloak that she held tight around her thin frame. “What you call summer here feels like a hard winter to me.”

  “It might be even colder where we’re going,” Proctor said. “I’m sure it won’t be any warmer.”

  “Were I looking for someplace to spend the rest of my life, I might take that into consideration,” Lydia said. “But I’m going because there’s a job to do.”

  “Just confirming,” he said, but he watched her closely.

  Lydia wore her forty years more heavily than she used to, while her clothes hung a little looser. The lines on her face had been etched more by pain than laughter, and the last two years on The Farm could not erase that. When she reached up to pull the hood down around her face, her sleeves fell to her elbows, revealing arms that looked like corded rope. Nor was she afraid of hard work.

  He was glad that she had decided to come.

  It was a long walk to Boston in one day, so they spent the night with Quaker friends near Malden and continued on their way the next morning. When they came to Boston, they found more life. Proctor had been to the city before the war started, and it was both the same and completely transformed. They crossed over on the Charlestown ferry, and he led the way through twisting streets, dense with buildings, noting the differences. The main ways were as crowded as ever before, and the mixture of familiar voices and foreign accents the same, but the British Redcoats were absent, replaced by Continental soldiers in blue and buff. Ships still crowded the harbor, their masts and rigging a forest that surrounded the city, but the Union Jack no longer snapped in the wind and the flag of France, a white cross on a blue field, was as common as the banners of the states. Closer to the docks, where the air smelled of fish and garbage and the seagull cries filled the air, merchants sold items imported from halfway around the world—coffee beans, cane sugar, and pimientos—but what they had for sale depended on which British trade ships the American privateers had recently captured. He couldn’t help thinking about the way he had also been transformed by the Revolution. He was both the same as he had always been and yet completely different.

  “Proctor?”

  He felt Lydia’s hand on his forearm and jerked to a stop as a carter with a wagonload of firewood clattered past.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Just thinking about where we need to go.” He pointed to the long wharf extending out into the harbor and the dozens of masts and hulls that lined it. “It should be one of the ships out there.”

  Their destination, the French frigate La Sensible, was all the way out at the end. It was more than a hundred feet in length, as long as the British ships of the line that Proctor had seen sailing around Manhattan, but sleeker, with only two decks instead of three. It was painted black, with a yellow band around the gun deck and ports for sixteen cannons.

  “This is promising,” Proctor told Lydia. “This could outrun any ship big enough to beat it, and beat any ship fast enough to catch it. Must be why they named it Sensible.”

  “You think the Covenant will attack it during the crossing?” Lydia asked.

  “The British will, if they get a chance,” Proctor said. “But yes, if the Covenant is committed to stopping the Revolution, they’re likely to do something to stop Adams, who is authorized to negotiate that peace.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” Lydia said. “We might be attacked even before we land in France.”

  “It’s not too late to change your mind,” he said. “You can go back to Deborah. She’d welcome you.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Lydia said. “I’m just wondering what else I hadn’t thought of yet.”

  “You and me, both of us,” Proctor said.

  They walked down to the gangplank and looked up at a deck crowded with several hundred people. Casks of fresh water dangled overhead as sailors lifted them by ropes from the dock to the hold. Other sailors climbed in the rigging and among the furled sails. A group of passengers stood at the railing arguing with the ship’s captain. One of the passengers was a man of average height and stout girth, with a balding head shaped like a cannonball onto which human features had been impressed. He kept slipping into halting French while the French officer answered in fractured English. Neither tactic seemed to make either speaker better understood.

  Proctor stepped aside to let Lydia lead the way up the gangplank.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she snapped under her breath. She yanked his bag out of his hand and carried it as well as her own. “If I’m going to be your slave, you will ignore me except to tell me what to do. You will never step out of the way to let me go first.”

  That was something he hadn’t thought of right there. He was taken aback by her vehemence, and it was hard to fight his own nature, but he could see what she meant. “I’ll remember that.”

  “See that you do,” she said quietly but fiercely. “And don’t look at me that way.”

  He waited while a mob of laughing dockmen, loads on their shoulders, surged around them and stomped up the sagging gangplank to the deck. “What way?”

  “As if I’m an equal, as if I’m someone you’ve offended.” She kept her voice low and her eyes averted. “I’m not a person to you and you can’t treat me like one or
you’ll put us in danger.”

  “I’ve seen men treat their slaves like people. Washington has a servant, William Lee—”

  “You’re not Washington,” Lydia interrupted. “And you don’t know near as much as you think. A ship is a small town, where every word that is spoken is heard and every action observed. If anyone suspects I’m not your slave, they may—” She hesitated, and Proctor could see that she did not wish to put into words something bad that had happened to her before. “They may kidnap me as an escapee when we get ashore and then resell me,” she said finally. “And I will not be put on the block. So I must have no more feelings in your mind than your cattle.”

  He started to protest, then turned away without uttering the apology already formed on his lips.

  “Good,” she whispered tensely.

  He felt foolish, but also properly chastened. They were heading into an unknown and dangerous situation. It would be foolish to add another danger to the stew. He walked up the plank without looking back, though it galled him to do so. He could tell from the slight sway of the plank that Lydia followed him.

  The captain was a dignified man who gave the impression of a beaked nose framed by a powdered wig, with rows of white curls that hung over his ears like furled sails. He wore the smart red uniform and dark blue jacket of the French navy. Proctor expected to wait until he was finished talking with the other passengers, but the captain excused himself and turned to speak to the newcomers.

  “Captain Chavagne, commanding La Sensible, what may I help you?”

  The loud, round gentleman with the cannonball head blustered impatiently, but the captain ignored him. Proctor presented his letters of introduction. He would have to use his and Deborah’s savings to pay for their passage, but the letters would bring him money in Paris, and Tallmadge would see that he was reimbursed when he returned.

  The captain stared at the letter, concentration written in the crease of his brow, then folded the papers and snapped them back to Proctor’s open hand. “The ship is too full already. Are not you certainment—another ship?”