by C. C. Finlay
Proctor stroked his hand deep through the lion’s mane. “There was a man crossing the garden,” he said. “Where was he going?”
“I don’t know,” said the first guard.
“He must be visiting the American,” said the second.
“There’s an American in the Tower?” Proctor asked, continuing to pet the lion.
“Henry Laurens,” said the first guard. “Don’t you read the news? He was sent as a diplomat to the Netherlands, but we caught him on the way. It’s why we’ve gone to war with the Dutch. We’re not allowed to let him speak to anyone, except those approved through diplomatic channels, but there are plenty enough of those come to visit him.”
“Ah,” Proctor said. “Would that he were the only American to ever grace this prison.”
The guards looked puzzled, until one of them said, “Oh, because there’ll be no more America?”
Before Proctor could respond, the lion suddenly turned its head and snapped at him, and the guards quickly pulled him and the lion apart.
“Maybe you shouldn’t pet the lion anymore,” the guard said.
“I think that’s best,” Proctor answered. “I’ll go back to my room now.”
When he was escorted back to his quarters, and the door was shut and closed, he opened his hand and looked at the lion’s hair he had gathered. It was pulled out by the roots, which should give it more power as a focus. He took one of his candles and set one hair on fire, burning it in the center of the floor where Deborah’s hair had burned.
Then he hesitated. Blood magic was black magic. He thought of the rioters dying in the street, in fire and blood, and the way that Dee had used it to summon a demon. By using fire and magic the same way, was Proctor pulling himself closer to their world? Was he aligning himself with their magic, their way of changing the world?
Did he care?
He was trapped by blood magic. He could see no other way out. He sorted his memory for Bible verses about lions, setting aside those that had lions laying down with lambs or comparing Satan to a lion. He scratched open the scab on his finger and smeared a stain of blood across the floor, overlaying a stain he had already made once before.
“The righteous are as bold as a lion,” he said. “Let me rise up, as bold as a lion. Let me not lie down until I have taken the prey and tasted the blood of the slain.”
He felt a tingle flow through him, faint as a fly’s wing brushing his skin, but it made him think that he had touched the source of magic. He reached up and grabbed the necklace, hoping to remove it and break the spell.
He awoke on the floor. When he touched his neck, he could feel the deep gouges left there by the chain of the necklace.
It had been a good thought.
The days passed into weeks, and the weeks into months. The long days of summer grew ever shorter and darker. The trees gave up their fruit and the leaves turned color. Proctor walked in the garden every day to build his strength. When he was alone in his room, he lifted the heavy furniture over and over to keep strong. Every day Grueby visited Proctor, and every day they had a similar exchange.
“You promised to bring me paper and pen,” Proctor said.
“I forgot,” Grueby said. “But I’ll make a note and remember to do it soon. In the meantime, I hope you continue your walks in the gardens.”
So every day, Proctor took walks in the gardens and studied the marvelous animals in the menagerie. Quagga grazed on the grasses. They were a sort of wild horse from Africa, with black and white stripes in front and brown behind. The keepers explained that it helped them blend into the scrub where they were found. Monkeys ran among the trees, pulling hats off the visitors and flinging things at them. The ravens gathered on the wall, where the keepers clipped their wings so they couldn’t fly away.
Proctor thought he saw Barnaby’s raven, Grip, but though the bird marched back and forth and stared at him familiarly, it never spoke again.
A month passed before he spied Digges again. Their eyes met, and though Digges kept on walking, Proctor felt like a promise had been made between them. He lingered among the peacocks near the garden gate, boring the guards with his silence and inactivity, and waited for Digges to leave.
“You don’t look well, my lord,” Digges said, pausing to watch the flock of birds.
“I’m no one’s lord,” Proctor said, tugging at the chain around his neck. He had to be careful with what he said.
Digges did not look up. “Gordon?”
“Let those who have eyes, see. Are you Church now?”
“Warburton.”
“What brings you here, Mister Warburton?”
“To check on the welfare of Mister Laurens and see if there is anything he needs.” He glanced at Proctor’s injured hand, but it looked complete to anyone seeing him through the illusion. “I am not amused by your prank, sir.”
Proctor searched his brain for something that only he would know, that Gordon wouldn’t. “Franklin doesn’t like you much. Israel Potter would walk more easily in boots with lower heels.”
Digges shifted uncomfortably. “Brown?”
The necklace twitched at his throat like a living thing. “I can’t speak of it. Can you get me any money? I must buy everything here for my own needs, but I don’t have Gordon’s income at my disposal.”
Digges stroked his beard to a point. “Oh, good. I thought you’d ask for something difficult, like a winged horse or an army to command.”
Two of the guards had noticed Digges lingering near the man they took for Gordon and came over to investigate. “Is there something we can help you with here?”
Digges shook his head. “Be careful,” he said. “You can never tell when a peacock might be a common raven in disguise.”
He exited the grounds, leaving Proctor behind him without an answer or a promise.
As Proctor watched him go, he spied Gordon’s man Grueby lingering among the Tower visitors. He turned away as Proctor glanced in his direction.
Weeks passed, and Digges did not return. It was a cold dismal fall. Proctor saw the American, Henry Laurens, walking in the gardens under guard. He was not supposed to speak to anyone else, but Proctor arranged to go outside, and then immediately left the path he had promised his guard he would take and approached the American as he paced.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said.
Laurens, his face drawn and angry, looked up, startled. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
“George, Lord Gordon,” Proctor said, thrusting out his hand in a typically American gesture. “Pleased to meet you.”
Laurens looked up, startled, while his guards attempted to place themselves between the two men. “I’m sorry, sir,” one said to Proctor. “But I must ask you to refrain from speaking to the prisoner.”
“Surely, you can permit us a simple civil exchange,” Proctor said. Gordon’s guards had arrived and now placed themselves between the two men. Proctor spoke over them. “We are both prisoners, we both wish an end to the mutual hostilities of our nations, and we share a mutual friend, a Mister Warburton.”
Laurens’s brows drew down and his face shut off any emotion. “I don’t have any idea who you mean.”
The guards pushed them apart, very angry with Laurens. “My mistake,” Proctor yelled, though he doubted it would do Laurens any good.
If Digges didn’t come through for him, he was going to have to find some other way to get the things he needed. He looked out his window toward the Traitor’s Gate and wondered if there might be some way to escape by way of the river.
Grueby did not appear one day; a different servant from the kitchens brought Proctor his plate of food. Proctor stood at his window and gestured toward the table. “Leave it there,” he said.
“Yes, Your Lordship,” came the reply.
Proctor spun at the voice. It was Digges, his face dirtied and his clothes matching those commonly used by the servants. A guard stood in the hall. Digges placed the serving tray on the table, blocking
the guard’s view with his body, and lifted the lid on the plate. A heavy purse sat there among the food.
“It’s a rich meal, Your Lordship,” he said. “If you eat it all, you shall gain a hundred pounds.”
“I’m feeling a bit thin,” Proctor said. “Thank you.”
Digges ducked his head and made his way out. Proctor pocketed the purse, wondering where he should hide it and what he might want to buy.
He looked at the plaid pants he was wearing and decided the first thing he was going to buy would be clothes.
* * *
More than seven months had passed. Christmas came and went, with no news of a final victory over the Rebellion. Some guards still spoke of Tarleton’s successes; others talked about his cruel excesses. The winter brought frequent visitors to Laurens as the Americans tried to negotiate his release. Proctor stood at the window, listening to the muffled sound of their conversation in the rooms below, when Grueby arrived.
Proctor did no more than glance at him until he set ink and paper down on the table.
“We can put it off no longer. Your trial is scheduled to begin in days,” Grueby said. “If you wish to escape here, I suggest you write your true friends.”
Proctor’s heart leapt up. “Finally,” he said. “The chance that I’ve been waiting for.”
Grueby stood over him while he wrote two letters addressed to his wife and daughter. When he finished, he handed them to Grueby, who scowled, tore them up, and fed them to the fire.
“You can’t write those things,” he said. “No one will believe that you are not Lord Gordon. No one will believe this talk of blood and demons.”
“But it’s the truth,” Proctor said, looking at the pages curling in the hearth. He touched the necklace. “Interesting, that I can write the truth to someone who already knows it and not fall down choking.”
“Is there no one else you want to write to? No code you wish to employ?”
“None,” Proctor said. “Is this what you were told to do, Mr. Grueby? Is it what you feel like doing?”
Grueby snapped up the ink and paper. He looked around for the quill but, not finding it, stormed out of the room.
Proctor rushed to the fire and pulled out the charred bits of the paper. He carried them cupped in his hands to the spot in the center of the room, already dark with ash and blood. Deborah’s hair had marked a sunburst pattern in ash there. Proctor had written over every mark in his own blood, day by day across the weeks. He had slowly and meticulously repeated the marks with the lion’s hair for strength, the quagga’s hair for disguise, the monkey’s hair for cunning, and none of it had worked.
Now he knelt down over the sun formed of ash and blood, and in a passionate rush he smeared the ash into the lines he had marked before.
“Ye shall know the truth,” he said with each hurried mark of his thumb.
When he was done, he took the quill from the pocket where he had hidden it and jabbed it into the unhealed scar on his hand. Only the tools of those who had trapped him in the necklace and imprisoned him could break the spell and set him free. Drawing blood onto the end of the quill, he scooted around the floor in a circle, slashing red lines over the marks in ash.
With each slash of the pen, he said, “The truth shall set me free.”
He could feel the lightning running through his whole body as he completed the circle. He cast aside the quill and stepped into the middle of the circle.
Blood magic could be defeated by blood magic. Slowly, over the months, he had shed enough to create one spot here in the middle of this room that the spell on the Tower could not touch. Or so he hoped.
He grabbed hold of the necklace and felt it sting his hand.
Bracing himself for the worst, he pulled on it and felt it tighten against his neck. He gritted his teeth and prepared to be choked unconscious.
But it was only the normal pull of metal against skin. He yanked and the chain broke. The light went out in the gem on the pendant.
He ran to the window and gasped for breath. He could hear the voices below, saying their farewells to Laurens.
Had he done it? Had he broken the spell?
He would only have one chance to find out. He had bribed one of the servants to bring him ordinary clothes, cut in the plain style of the Americans, and paid her extra to keep silent about it. He hurried and changed and then went to the door. The guards did not stand outside his room, but watched the Tower exit.
Proctor hurried down the steps and joined the group of merchants, religious men, and diplomats representing the American interests in London. They looked at him oddly but said nothing as he followed them to the exit.
The guards at the exit stared at Proctor for a moment and he thought that all was lost.
Then they turned their heads away. Clearly they didn’t recognize him, and in a group with the Americans they let him pass through gates and over the moat.
He looked up at the gray sky and felt the cold drizzle of rain on his face.
He was free. If he did not feel the weight of months of preparation, the sharp pain of the scar on his hand where he’d drawn so much blood, he would have called it easy. But the hard part was only just beginning.
Where did he go next?
Grueby would know.
Chapter 22
Proctor was sure he could find his way to Gordon’s house on Welbeck Street, but if everyone thought Gordon was in prison, it was doubtful he was staying there. Grueby still took his orders from Gordon, and he would run back to his master as soon as he found Proctor missing.
It was the next day before Grueby returned. Proctor watched for him from a doorway opposite the Tower entrance. It wasn’t until he saw Gordon’s man go strolling through the gate with his breakfast that he felt all the anger flood through him. Eight months of his life lost in prison, and who knew what had happened to Deborah or Maggie in the meantime.
He forced himself to calm down. His time in the Tower had taught him that skill. He had to decide whether he wanted vengeance on Gordon for locking him away, or vengeance on the Covenant for the success of their plans. How much of his old life could still be salvaged? And if all that remained was wreckage, did he want it?
Grueby returned through the gate very shortly with a bundle of items under his arms and made his way down to the riverbank. He tied a rock inside the bundle and hurled it out into the river. Dumping all the evidence of Proctor’s escape. That was neatly done. Proctor respected Grueby as a practical man.
Grueby mounted a horse and took off through the streets. Proctor jogged after him. Little chimney sweeps, covered with sores and black dust, laughed at him as he ran. One stuck out his pole to trip Proctor, but Proctor moved his hand and knocked it out of the way. He had gone another block before he realized that he had done the spell just by thinking of it. All the months of working on the blood magic of the Tower had increased his power incredibly.
When Grueby turned his horse down Bond Street, Proctor thought he might be going to Gordon’s house after all. But then he turned again, into a neighborhood of mansions that dwarfed Gordon’s house in size and ornamentation the way that Gordon’s house dwarfed a poor man’s farm house. A broad park lined with trees—was it called a commons here? Proctor wondered—sat at the heart of the neighborhood. Grueby entered a large house of beautiful formal proportions at the southwest corner of the park.
“Excuse me,” Proctor said to a stranger. The gentleman ignored him and walked on by. Proctor tried again, this time addressing a man in servant’s clothes. “Where am I?”
“If you ask me, you’re lost,” the servant answered.
“I’m sorry,” Proctor said. “I’ve just arrived in London.”
“You ought to turn around and go back where you came from,” the man said, walking away. “Not much has been right here since the riots.”
“What’s this neighborhood?” Proctor persisted, following alongside him.
“Berkeley Square. Now if that’s all—”
The man stopped, frustrated but plainly willing to answer one more question if it meant Proctor would stop accosting him. “That’s Lansdowne, the earl of Shelburne’s house,” the man said. “I’ve worked in his gardens. Don’t even think about robbing him.”
“I’m not here to rob anyone,” Proctor said. “I followed a man I know, someone I don’t trust, and saw him enter there.”
“Shelburne’s a politician. They’re always in deep with men who can’t be trusted. And the earl, he considers himself enlightened. Keeps company with scientists and philosophers and all sorts of unsavory, untrustworthy folks.” He tipped his cap to Proctor. “Now good day. And don’t get caught hanging about or they’ll take you before the bench.”
Proctor stood in the park and watched the house while trying not to look like a thief. What were Grueby and Gordon doing here? And did Proctor have to worry about magic again?
He shook his head at that. Gordon wasn’t coming near him.
The house was surrounded by trees and formal hedges. Proctor waited until a carriage had passed, then crossed the street and walked toward the front of the house. With a glance over his shoulder, he slipped into the trees and ventured a small spell to avert any watchful eyes.
Not that there were many watchful eyes. As he circled the house, it appeared to be empty. There were no servants anywhere—even the stable in back was empty except for horses and a carriage. The curtains were all drawn shut as well.
He watched the house, considering what to do next. As he watched, he saw the draperies shift. Someone inside was impatiently watching the street at the rear of the house. Proctor was willing to bet it was Gordon.
He went up to the servants’ door and tried the handle. It was unlatched. He stepped inside and closed it quietly behind him. Voices came from the room where the draperies had moved. One of them was Gordon’s.