The Demon Redcoat

by C. C. Finlay

  “I don’t know her at all,” Proctor said. “But she came to me in Paris and said that she was leaving the Covenant to start her own twelve. Somewhere in Russia, I think. She … wanted to recruit me.”

  “And did you join her?”

  “No!”

  “Erzebet was there, I believe,” Digges said. Proctor twisted around uncomfortably to look at him. Digges slouched in another of Gordon’s chairs, his feet dangling over the arm, his face wan and haunted. “She was the one leading Weston. But I don’t know who the other woman was.”

  “Cecily Sumpter Pinckney,” Proctor said. “Or Cecily Aikens. Or some other name. Lydia said that she’d had many names.”

  “You’re on a first-name basis?”

  “She pretended to be one of us on The Farm.”

  “One of you?”

  “The Farm—it’s hard to explain. It was run by Deborah’s mother—a place where witches could go to learn to control their skills in secret and stay hidden from the world.”

  “Sort of like the work of the Covenant,” Gordon suggested.

  “Not like it at all,” Proctor said coldly. He stood up, daring Gordon to make the suggestion again.

  But Gordon pulled back the curtain and peered out the window, perhaps to see if the chanting mobs had returned. So far today, there had been no one. But there wouldn’t be. The Covenant released everyone from the spell now that it was complete. “So she’s an American?” Gordon asked.

  “Yes, I think so,” Proctor said. He plopped back into the chair, exhausted and drained.

  “That fits Dee’s pattern. He finds people of extraordinary talent from distant places and joins them together in common purpose. He wishes to subjugate America, so he would naturally want an American to serve him.” He stared closely at Proctor.

  Dee.

  The name that none of them had voiced was finally spoken. A confusion of thoughts swirled through Proctor’s head. Beware of D. Dee? Deborah? Demons? Or were all three of them now one?

  “Who is John Dee?”

  Gordon stared out the window, fidgeting uncomfortably. There were sounds from the street but Proctor couldn’t see what they were, nor did he care. Not until he learned what he needed to know to defeat the Covenant.

  “Dee,” said Digges, shifting in his seat, “was my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s mentor.”

  “You know your family that far back?” Proctor asked.

  Gordon looked at Proctor as if he would never understand.

  “Dr. John Dee was a man of extraordinary breadth of talents,” Digges went on. He was leaning back in the chair with eyes closed, as if he didn’t want to face the world any longer. “He was both an astonomer and an astrologer, an alchemist and a mathematician. He served in the court of Queen Elizabeth, where he encouraged exploration and the founding of the colonies. My namesake’s connection to Dee is part of the reason his son was made the royal governor of Virginia.”

  “Dee also put into motion policies that would give Britain mastery of the seas,” Gordon said. “He expressed a desire to see the British empire span the globe. It was laughable at the time, I am told. Now it might become a reality.”

  “Dee spent the latter years of his life exploring necromancy,” Digges said. “He believed that he had discovered the language of angels, and he traveled widely.”

  “That’s how he first came in contact with others of similar interest and talent,” Gordon said. “Those who had pursued immortality and eternal youth individually were brought together by Dee. Those who spoke with angels and demons he gathered unto himself. Just as he brought astrology and alchemy together in the new sciences, he brought all these other talents together in a new pursuit.”

  “And this is the culmination of his plans,” Digges said.

  “It is,” Gordon answered. “And now I am the only one left to stand in his way and stop him.”

  Proctor’s jaw dropped open. He was tapping his chest, about to protest, when a knock sounded at the door. It popped open without invitation. Gordon’s obsequious secretary shared his forced smile around the room before lighting on Proctor in the chair.

  “It’s time, my lord. They’ve arrived.”

  Grueby closed the door on him. “Are you sure you want to go through with this, my lord?”

  Gordon stared at the floor and shuffled his feet. “You know the stakes. It’s for the freedom of England. I must.”

  Proctor looked to Digges for an explanation, but Digges was sitting up in his chair, looking back and forth from Gordon to Proctor with a puzzled expression. “What’s going on here?” Proctor stood and took a step toward Gordon.

  Gordon gestured at the chair. “Do you find that comfortable?”

  “I guess so, yes,” Proctor answered.

  “Grueby, take the chair also,” Gordon said.

  The hulking brute picked up the heavy, carved wood easily and carried it out of the door. Proctor was entirely confused. As Grueby disappeared through the door, a new head poked in, one Proctor had seen around the mansion last night and this morning.

  “Come, dear brother,” the newcomer said. “The army’s here to guarantee you safe passage to the tower. You should be with family at this time. You know we’re here for you.”

  Grueby returned before Gordon could answer. “He’ll be along in a moment,” Grueby said. Gordon’s brother withdrew angrily.

  “My family doesn’t know about my talent,” Gordon said. “They think all of you are advisers to the Protestant Association. Secretaries and whatnot. Will you ride with me to the tower, Mister Brown? We can continue our conversation along the way.”

  Grueby appeared at Proctor’s elbow and guided him toward the door in Gordon’s wake. When they passed through, all Gordon’s staff, and his family, and their servants were lined in the hall, heads bowed. As they stepped out the door into the bright summer light, Proctor saw a whole regiment of Redcoats lined up in the street before and after Gordon’s carriage. Crowds of curious onlookers peered through the rows of bayonets, and a whisper ran through the crowd. Gordon reached the carriage first. He opened the door and let Proctor go in.

  “Something’s not right here,” Proctor said.

  “Don’t you worry, Mister Brown,” Gordon repeated. He took a seat across from Proctor and stared out the window at the soldiers. “I assure you, you’ll be entirely safe.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the king’s tower. Have you ever been?”

  “I haven’t been to any towers since I arrived in England,” Proctor said. He looked out of the carriage and saw Digges standing in the doorway, scratching his head. “Why isn’t Digges coming with us?”

  “Mmm, Thomas?” Gordon said, distracted. “I should have thought to ask him.”

  The sergeants called out marching orders to the men, boots thumped in unison ahead of the carriage, and then it rolled across the uneven street, jarring Proctor back into his seat. The carriage rolled slowly down Bond Street, where many of the shops had finally reopened. Shop keepers stood in their doorways to watch the procession. Some hurled epithets at Gordon, but he didn’t seem to notice. He seemed so lost in thought that Proctor let many blocks pass before he spoke.

  “How do you propose to stop the Covenant now?” Proctor asked.

  “Mmm? Yes, that is the question, isn’t it?” Gordon said, scratching his scruffy chin. “They have built a complicated mechanism for a simple purpose, to summon this creature—”

  “This demon,” Proctor insisted.

  Gordon flashed a frown and then continued. “So they mean to summon a demon and fix it in flesh. But whose flesh, and to what end? I have my suspicions.”

  Proctor hated all the indirection. “And what are those suspicions?”

  Gordon studied Proctor thoughtfully before he answered. “You must understand that King George the Second, grandfather to the current monarch, was my godfather, so I was welcome at court when I was young,” Gordon said. “Everyone expected his son Frederic
k to become king, so they were surprised when the star charts cast for the grandson, George, indicated that he would reign longer than Elizabeth. Then Frederick died suddenly, and his son was crowned George the Third. Dee was an astrologer, and he has had access to court. He would know His Majesty’s star charts as well.”

  “And?” Proctor prompted impatiently.

  “His Majesty has ruled twenty years already, but to surpass Elizabeth he will rule forty more. Forty more years. That’s a long time to pursue plans for empire. If the Covenant means to use the Crown as a focus, they will want to control King George. I suspect they summon the demon to that purpose. I think we have arrived.”

  The carriage rolled up to a walled fortress along the Thames. Proctor watched through the window as they crossed a bridge over a moat and passed through an ominous gate. They came to a stop in a courtyard. Proctor spied a dozen towers along the walls or within its compass. Guards stood everywhere, and Proctor took it for a palace of the king. Indeed, if King George was afraid of attack, it would make sense to stay in a defensible spot like this. In one of the gardens, he glimpsed strange animals—a horse with black and white stripes; a cat like a panther but twice as large with a great ruff around its neck. Suddenly he realized where they were, recognizing it from descriptions he had read.

  “When you said the tower, you meant ‘the Tower of London,’” Proctor said to Gordon.

  “Of course,” Gordon said. “But we’re in London, so the phrase of London is rather superfluous, is it not?” He tugged at his collar and nervously loosened a gold chain around his throat. “I have to speak to the king’s warden. Will you help Grueby carry this bag up to the room there, the one overlooking the garden?”

  The request made Proctor suspicious. He looked at his clothes, but then he saw Gordon’s brother outside, and Grueby, and all sorts of men who knew them both. What had Lydia said? No one who knew them both would ever mistake them for each other. “I’ll carry this up to the room, but that’s all I’m doing until you make me part of your plans,” Proctor said.

  “I’ll ask no more of you,” Gordon promised. “You’ve already done more than I could have ever expected, and I am deeply indebted.”

  Proctor climbed out of the carriage with Gordon’s bag. Guards stared through him as if he weren’t there. Gordon’s family averted their eyes or peered into the carriage where Gordon still sat.

  Grueby held the large chair. “The rest of the furniture will be sent along shortly, I am told. Come on, let’s get this done with.”

  He sounded uncharacteristically gruff, even a little unhappy.

  “What’s going on with Gordon?” Proctor asked. “He’s acting very strangely.”

  “Hrmph” was all that Grueby would say.

  Proctor was very uneasy now. As soon as they dropped off the items, he planned to confront Gordon and force an answer from him. If Gordon didn’t have a plan that was more specific than “Look after the king,” then Proctor would formulate his own. Guards led them into a small tower above an archway leading to the river. They climbed up two flights of steps to a large but empty room.

  “We’ll take it from here,” Grueby said.

  After a moment the guards withdrew to the bottom of the steps. Proctor sensed something very wrong now, so he hesitated at the door. Grueby entered the room and dumped the chair over by the window.

  “There’s Gordon, speaking with the warden now,” he said.

  Proctor crossed the threshold to look through the window, and instantly felt dizzy. The room seemed to whirl around him. He dropped the bag as Deborah’s lock of hair twisted and jumped in his pocket. He reached for it, but it crawled out of its own accord and dropped to the center of the room like a living thing. The black ribbon—the one that the Countess Cagliostro had given him, the one he was always forgetting to exchange—untied itself and scattered the hair in a circle at Proctor’s feet. It slithered like a flat snake toward the window, where it shivered and withdrew. It did the same thing at the door. It ran to the corners and turned back each time, before rushing to the center of the room, where it whirled in a circle at Proctor’s feet, caught fire, and burned. All of Deborah’s scattered hairs caught fire, twisting and burning like a hundred tiny snakes.

  It was over in a moment. All that remained of his focus was a swirl of ash marks in the floor.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” Grueby said.

  “I can’t touch it,” Proctor said.

  “Not with it all burned up like that.”

  “No, I can’t touch my talent—it’s as if there’s nothing there.” It wasn’t like when another drew on his talent and he felt it flow away from him. He reached for it and nothing was there. Like a dry well. He turned and ran for the door, but Grueby reached it first and stopped him.

  “Before you leave, I’m supposed to tell you about this room,” he said.

  “What about it?” demanded Proctor. His pulse raced and he felt sweat beading on his brow.

  “This is called the Bloody Tower. Not because of all the blood shed here, though that’s what everybody thinks. It’s called the Bloody Tower because the mortar was mixed with blood, and all the stones are inscribed on the inside with marks that shield against the use of witchcraft.”

  “What?”

  “This tower was built during the reign of King Henry the Third. The first witchcraft trials in England occurred during the reign of his father, King John, but it grew worse in Henry’s day. There was a pirate, Eustace the monk, who ruled the channel, first serving England, then France, wherever profit or whim suited him. Do you want to hear this?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Proctor said, but he knew there was a lesson here about witchcraft and kings. A room where no magic could be performed might be useful in stopping the Covenant, though he wished Gordon had just spoken to him directly.

  “Eustace was a necromancer. He used blood magic to make his ship invisible. At this same time, there was a witch who served in the English fleet, a man by the name of Stephen Crabbe. When English ships challenged the French, they could gain no advantage. Their arrows would rain down on the open boats, killing the Frenchmen, but then before the victory, the English ships would have their hulls shattered, turn by turn, and sink.”

  “Eustace and his invisible ship,” Proctor said.

  “Exactly,” Grueby answered. “Crabbe, though, he had the vision, just as you and my lord do. Let those who have eyes see, right? He jumped out of his own ship. It looked to the Englishmen around him as if he were walking on water. As he danced over the waves, he swung his ax about him, like a woodcutter in the forest. Men thought him mad.”

  “But he wasn’t.”

  “No, he walked across Eustace’s deck and killed men right and left, until the spell was broken. Eustace’s last act, before he was beheaded, was to summon demons. The demons came and tore Crabbe to pieces where he stood. But he was a hero. He saved England from a terrible magic.”

  “And then King Henry built this tower to protect his throne against similar magic.”

  “Right again,” Grueby said, tapping Proctor on the chest. “And now we face a similar situation. An enemy using witchcraft and demons, and Britain’s very survival threatened by our foe across the ocean.”

  “A Catholic foe, and the friend of America,” Proctor said.

  “There is that,” Grueby answered. “But Gordon feels outnumbered by the Covenant. So he thought that he might use the Tower to help even the odds.”

  “What was that ribbon?” Proctor asked.

  “It was a token. The embroidery was written in Enochian, the language of angels that Dee and his followers have learned to speak. Members of the Covenant use those tokens to recognize one another.”

  “And Gordon has taken me for a member of the Covenant,” Proctor said. He slapped his forehead and felt the ache slam all the way through his hand. “How stupid am I, really? Be honest.”

  “Not so stupid as all that,” Grueby said indifferently. “After what you sa
w last night, most men wouldn’t be able to think straight. You were sick, and then you didn’t eat right or rest for days. I’ve been exhausted just trying to keep up with you.”

  “What’s this then?” Proctor said, taking the pendant in his fist.

  “I wouldn’t try to take that off if I were you,” Grueby said.

  The warning came too late. Proctor tried to snap the chain, and it wrapped around his throat like one of those snakes that suffocate their prey. Black spots were swimming before his eyes and he was falling toward the floor before he could let go. Grueby caught him and helped him back to his feet.

  “I figured you for the type that would have to learn for yourself,” Grueby said.

  “Why does it work when other magic doesn’t?” Proctor gasped, his hand at his throat.

  “Because there’s almost no magic in the necklace itself, as I understand it,” Grueby said. “Gordon has it all focused in the matching necklace that he wears. This tower aside, he was very concerned that you not notice any spell when you put it on. Try to say your name or explain who you are.”

  “Must I?” Proctor asked.

  “I figure you will, sooner or later. But the effects are the same.”

  “So this makes me look like Gordon, and Gordon look like me?”

  “Near enough. I should go get the rest of your possessions. You’re going to be here for a long time.”

  “Not damned likely,” Proctor said.

  “That’s what they all say when they enter the Bloody Tower,” Grueby said. “I heard those were Sir Walter Raleigh’s exact words as well. But to be blunt, this here’s a prison, and you should plan on staying for a while.”

  He turned to go. “Wait,” Proctor said.

  Gordon’s servant stopped.

  “You saw me. I heard you tell Gordon how I attacked the Covenant. If you’ve been following me, you know that they’re my enemy, too, and I’ll do anything I can to destroy them.”

  “That might be.”

  “It is! So why would you help lock up an ally? Why would you help put away the one man you can trust to help your lord’s cause?”

  Grueby shrugged indifferently. “Because I was told to.”