by C. C. Finlay
“He said we were lucky the broken axle and the rain happened today, as this is still the easy part of our journey.”
Proctor snapped up a speck with his fingernails, but it was only dirt and not a flea or bedbug. “I know this may sound like simple raving—” he started, then stopped.
“But you want to keep an eye on that cat,” Lydia finished for him.
Their eyes met. She had been thinking the same thing, and he did not feel so mad after all. “Familiars sometimes take on the appearance of their masters. We should look for someone like the cat.”
“How?” Lydia asked. “Everyone in this country wears black wool and little else, and white hair is as common as old people.”
She had a point. “We’ll just keep an eye out for the cat then,” he said.
But the cat did not appear the next day nor in the days after that. Proctor thought they had left it behind as they traveled from village to village. The new year came and they stayed up late with their hosts for that night, eating grapes at midnight around a bonfire. But the next morning they resumed their journey just like any other day. As the week passed, Adams had a stubborn determination to reach Paris as soon as possible. The roads grew even worse as they wound through mountains that had been cleared of trees. The farms were small and scattered, the people were poor and dirty, and the cities marked by a lack of industry and commerce. The only signs of wealth were the old churches and monasteries, vast in size, rich in decoration, and containing the only fat men to be found anywhere in the country.
“That is the popery I was warned about as a child,” Proctor said, rocking in the saddle of his mule as they passed the long stone walls of a monastery.
“You sound disappointed,” Lydia said.
“Sometimes you realize you’re in a foreign country when everything you heard to be true proves to be the case,” he said. He kicked his mule, which made its way slowly ahead to Adams, who was riding with his secretary and the tutor. They had traded transportation with their servants, finding the mules more comfortable than the carriages. The face of Mr. Dana, the secretary, was more pinched than before, as if he needed to squeeze everything in his body together just to stay seated on the mule. Mr. Thaxter, the tutor, owned one item of note, an extravagant velvet hat so black it was nearly blue, accented by a silk headband of matching hue. He rode with one hand on the reins and the other firmly holding the hat to his head to prevent its blowing away.
“How did Spain become this reduced?” Proctor asked as he joined the three men.
“What do you mean?” Adams replied curtly in the manner he used whenever Proctor joined his party.
“Was not Spain the richest country in the world as recently as two centuries ago?” Proctor asked. “We see the signs of its wealth all around us, in the churches and buildings. But its present poverty is overwhelming. America is a young nation, never wealthy, and yet our meanest towns and poorest houses are not this squalid. How does a country go from being the richest country in the world to one of the poorest?”
“It is the inevitable fate of any nation that attempts to become an empire,” Adams answered, warming up to the question. “Look at the present case of England. Money spent abroad on the military and on mercenaries is money lost. Spain became poor the same way it became rich: it built an empire overseas, plundering the labor of the people that it conquered. In turn, the empire squandered the wealth, wasting it on armies and bureaucrats. I daresay we see England reaping the same fruits from its colonies in America. Empire bankrupts a nation. In a democracy, we will never have that problem because the people will keep the government honest.”
“So the governments of Spain and England are not honest?”
“Sometimes they are and sometimes they are not,” Adams said. He glanced at Mr. Dana and Mr. Thaxter as if expecting the confirmation of his opinion. “There are no checks on the power of royalty. America will never oppress other nations because the people provide a natural check on the ambitions of our leaders. Can you imagine our militias being called up to fight overseas?”
“No, I can’t,” Proctor said.
“That is why America will never become an empire nor bring ruin to itself. We merely wish to be left alone to pursue our own interests in agriculture and commerce.”
Mr. Dana began to expound on the superiority of the militia to a standing army, which, if it existed, must have wars to justify its existence, while Mr. Thaxter offered observations on the armies of the Romans. They came to a narrow place in the road; Proctor let Adams go ahead. The other two men squeezed in front to cut him off, leaving Proctor with his thoughts. He had never served in anything else but the militia, and here he was, pursuing an enemy overseas. He stared across the largely barren plain in front of them, the herds of sheep crowded behind mud walls, and wondered what Deborah was doing, whether Maggie was starting to crawl. He hoped he had made the right decision in leaving them to pursue the Covenant.
When they arrived in San Juan Segun that evening, Proctor was so sore that he almost welcomed the squalor. The tavern keeper was eager to rush them indoors, repeating a warning to them several times.
“What is he saying?” Proctor asked.
“It is just superstition,” Adams replied. Though hardly shaped for hard travel, he bore it as well as any of them, stretching his arms and legs at the end of the day as if he had been only a short while in the saddle. “He is telling us that we must be careful, for it is a Friday night and the sorginak are about.”
Proctor had an uneasy feeling. “The sorginak?”
“Witches, men and women who fly off to their black Sabbath every Friday night. He is not a local, but comes originally from Biscay, where I am told they have their own peculiar beliefs. As I told you, it is mere superstition.”
Superstition or a hint of truth? “Why are the sorginak to be feared? Does he say?”
“I suppose they are to be feared because they do what all witches do everywhere—they worship Satan and fight the will of God.”
Proctor opened his mouth to argue and then snapped it shut. He thanked Adams for his information and then joined Lydia to make arrangements for their own rooms for the night.
“What was he saying?” she asked.
“There are witches among us,” Proctor said.
She shouldered her own pack and lifted Proctor’s. “What are the chances?”
“Flying witches,” he said.
“If that were possible, we’d be in Paris already.”
“I hope he’s right,” Proctor said. “Because if there are witches about—other witches—maybe it’s the connection we need to find the Covenant.”
Chapter 9
The next morning when Proctor went out to mount their mules and carriages, Adams and the other travelers stood in the cold light, scratching their newest flea and bedbug bites. They had purchased their own mattresses, pillows, and sheets, lugging them from one town to the next, but it only reduced the problem rather than eliminating it. As soon as Proctor had the chance, he meant to rid their bedding of vermin.
He looked west, in the direction of home, but a cold fog obscured even a glimpse of the mountains or any perception of distance. Perhaps weeks in this harsh landscape had hardened him. In truth, he felt only a regret that Adams’s sons suffered with him.
“Father!” John Quincy said. “Look, it’s Priscilla.”
The boy was bending to pet a thin black cat that rubbed up against his leg. Proctor tensed. Certainly he was imagining things. It couldn’t be …
Adams turned away from supervising the servants’ loading of their baggage. “Priscilla?”
“I called her that because she seems so ancient,” John Quincy said. He lifted the animal and held it up for his father’s inspection. It was unmistakably the same cat as before, with white whiskers and a white streak across its head. “Look, it’s her.”
“Don’t be an enthusiast, John,” Adams chided affectionately. “There are so many cats in Spain that they aren’t worth r
emarking. It just happens to resemble every other old black cat.”
John Quincy started to protest, pointing out the mark on its head, but Proctor had walked over for a closer look. As soon as he came near, the cat hissed and squirmed out of the boy’s hands. He and his brother Charles began chasing it around the wheels of the calash.
Proctor felt a familiar tingle run across his skin. The cat must be a familiar, like Bootzamon’s Dickon. Proctor scanned the narrow street and stone houses, the laborers in black wool shifts going about their work, the curious faces under broad-brimmed hats. There was a witch somewhere nearby.
He walked back to Lydia, who stood with their mules. Proctor’s mount nipped at him as he came close, and Proctor missed Singer. He had ridden a thousand miles from Boston to Virginia in a fortnight on that horse. They had been on the road more than a fortnight already and were barely halfway to the French border.
“Looks like the sorginak may be around after all,” Proctor told Lydia under his breath. “I think the cat’s a familiar. Will you keep an eye on it?”
She nodded. “Looks like someone wants to make it easier for me, too.”
The cat had crawled into the calash, where the boys were persuading their father to take it along while the servants braved its claws in an unsuccessful attempt to dislodge it.
“Oh, very well, you may bring it along,” the elder Adams said. “But you must promise not to be upset if it leaps out the first time you rattle over a rock or rut.”
“We won’t,” Charles promised earnestly.
Adams’s servant had just snatched the creature up and it dangled by its scruff, twisting and hissing. Perhaps the cat had just reacted to Proctor the way it would to anyone that might approach it. “Let it down, Joseph,” Adams said.
Proctor still hoped that the cat would run away. No doubt Adams did as well, but when Joseph dropped it to the ground, it immediately ran back to the boys’ calash and jumped in among their bags. Proctor scanned the street for anyone who might be the creature’s master, but saw no one.
Adams sighed heavily. “I forbid you to think too much about the creature, or become too attached, do you understand me? You must treat her well and see that she is comfortable. But she’s liable to run off again at any time, and you must accept that we will not expend one moment looking for her.”
“Thank you, Father,” John Quincy said. He guided his brother into the carriage and quickly followed him before his father could change his mind. Proctor felt sorry for the boys. They were as bored and exhausted by the journey as anyone. He promised himself to spell the fleas off their sheets and mattresses.
Except that a spell might alert the cat’s master to their presence, if he or she did not already know that Proctor and Lydia were witches.
Adams mounted his mule and encouraged everyone to get moving. The carriages creaked into motion, followed by the gentlemen riders, followed by Proctor and Lydia on their own mules. Soon they were outside the town and into a thicker fog. The damp air settled on Proctor’s skin, raising more ordinary goose bumps.
The air stayed chilled and damp all that day. When they arrived at a town for the night, both the boys had developed colds and could not stop coughing. Proctor and Lydia watched for the cat to slip away, or the master to come find it, but it stayed curled up in the laps of the children. There was a cat on the farm that did the same thing with Deborah whenever she was the least bit unwell.
Adams would not let Proctor or anyone else come near his sons, but it did no good. By the time they reached the town of Sellada el Camino, which was little more than a roadblock meant to slow down travelers, everyone in Adams’s party had developed a cold.
Another night in a mud-floored house with only coals for warmth and no chimney to let out the smoke could not be good for the boys. Proctor went to the house that lodged Adams and his children, and begged an audience, doing his best to explain to the uncomprehending expression of the Spanish host that he wished to help. The sounds of per sis tent racking coughs came from within. Finally, the host drew Adams to the door. He had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and clutched his ribs as if they ached. “What is it?” Adams gasped out during a lull in his own coughing.
Proctor couldn’t answer him immediately. The faint image of a skull had formed behind Adams’s face. It shimmered and faded, but before it was gone it reminded Proctor sharply of the widow Nance’s spell during the siege of Boston that had brought sickness on the militiamen surrounding the city.
“Perhaps Lydia can help you,” Proctor said when he found his tongue again. “She’s nursed many people back to health before. I’m sure she can ease your discomfort.”
He was careful not to refer to her as a slave, but Adams could not let it pass. “I will not benefit from slave labor,” he said. “It offends the principles of freedom on which our nation is founded. I’m sure we’ll improve when we reach better dwellings in the city of Burgos tomorrow. Good night, Mister—”
Another burst of coughing interrupted him before he could finish, but he covered his mouth and closed the door on Proctor anyway.
“It’s not a natural sickness,” Proctor told Lydia when he rejoined her. He described what he had seen and how it resembled the widow’s spell at the beginning of the war. “I think I’ve learned enough from Deborah to undo the spell, especially before it’s had too many days to do its work,” he said. “But you’re a better healer than I am.”
“I’ll need to get close to the children and the others to do it.”
“And we need to catch that cat,” Proctor said. “Perhaps we can learn something from it, whether its master appears or not.”
The next day did not give them any opportunity to approach Adams. He climbed into the calash that morning with his boys, pulled the canopy shut, and forbade anyone’s approach. Proctor’s last glimpse of them was the cat curled in a blanket on John Quincy’s lap, smiling as if it had just eaten a juicy mouse.
Proctor and Lydia were forced to ride in the bitter weather. A constantly changing mix of rain and snow soaked through their clothes, which then stiffened with the cold. The other members of Adams’s party, especially the servants relegated to riding mules after days in the calashes, were sullen and ignored any attempts at conversation.
Proctor shared their mood. It improved slightly when Burgos appeared on the road ahead of them. The river that split the city was crossed by several impressive bridges. Even from a distance, Proctor saw the ruins of a castle, the spires of numerous iglesias, and the compounds of several large monasteries, all within the small compass of the city.
When they arrived at their destination, which was, supposedly, the best tavern to be had, his hopes fell again. There was again no chimney, which left the rooms smoky despite the petty heat offered by a brass pan of coals. The sound of the children, coughing until they were near to vomiting, echoed through the building. Proctor found Adams at a table, making notes in his diary to calculate the remainder of their journey. He wadded a handkerchief in his free hand and covered his mouth with it as he wrote. The image of bones showed through the backs of his hands.
“Mister Adams,” Proctor said. “Whether you approve or not, Lydia is a skilled healer. For your children’s sake, please let her see if she can ease their coughing.”
Adams looked up from writing, his eyes red-rimmed and watery. He was coughing too hard to answer, so he waved Proctor on, giving him permission to try.
Lydia went to the boys’ room, which had a stone floor for the mattress they shared. Mr. Thaxter and Joseph were there. Proctor talked with them about the city and its churches, distracting them while Lydia watered down a cup of wine and heated it over the coals. She offered each boy a sip, touching his hand and saying a healing spell as she helped him hold the cup. When she was done, she heated undiluted wine for the men, making excuses to touch their hands and say a similar spell.
Proctor turned to the boys. Charles had fallen asleep as soon as his coughing stopped. It seemed almost too e
asy.
“Where has your cat got to?” Proctor asked. “Priscilla, right?”
John Quincy wrapped the blanket up to his chin. “Father said we must leave her outside. She is a hunter, or she would never have grown so old, and she can fend for herself.”
“He’s very wise, your father,” Proctor said.
“She tries to sneak in the kitchen door, Joseph told me,” John Quincy said. “If you see her, will you make sure she has a warm place to sleep tonight?”
“I will,” Proctor said.
When he and Lydia stopped in the hall, she shook her head. “It was a poor prayer,” she said, referring to the spell she had broken. “Like the imitation of a better prayer, heard once, a long time ago. I had no trouble with it.”
“It seemed that way to me too, with even the little I know about healing,” he said. It nagged at him. If these were the same people who had sent a demon after his wife and child, why were they making such a poor effort here? “Let’s see if we can find Priscilla.”
They stopped to leave a cup of warmed spiced wine for Adams, telling him it would ease his coughing. Lydia laid a sympathetic hand on his wrist and said she was praying for him. He was so absorbed in his notes that he returned a perfunctory “thank you” and went back to work. Proctor led her through the kitchen.
“The boy says the cat’s been trying to sneak in this door,” Proctor said. “Do you think you can catch it?”
“Easier than you could catch a cold,” she said.
He frowned at her, but waited until she was in position by the door, then reached out with his long arm and pushed it open. The black cat darted through the gap before he was ready for it.
Lydia’s hand snapped out lightning-fast and caught the cat by its neck.
The creature howled in fury, twisting and slashing with front claws and back. But Lydia held it at arm’s length while Proctor pinned its back legs in one hand and its front legs in another. Its howl changed to a cry that was almost human in its misery and pitifulness. It was a skinny thing, its legs barely more than bone, and its bones barely more than sticks. Proctor doubted it weighed much more than a kitten.