Traitor to the Crown

by C. C. Finlay

  But not Deborah. Not their daughter.

  He had done that much. This time.

  He went outside and scraped his bucket and tools clean, then washed his hands and found his hammer. He meant to nail the old house shut. He didn’t trust the hearth, and he didn’t trust the old house, and they weren’t going to use any part of it. When he had time, he would tear it down to the ground, no matter what Deborah thought.

  The wood was old and hard, and he bent half a dozen nails boarding the front door shut, but soon he was done. The new addition had a kitchen door. He tucked another board under his arm and went in there.

  The diapers drying on the rack by the fire left a faint scent of soap in the air, and made him think of his daughter all over again.

  He went to the back door that connected to the old house and slapped the board across it. He fished a nail out of his pocket and was tapping it into place when a voice spoke behind him.

  “Proctor?” Deborah said softly.

  He jumped. He’d been so focused on his work, he hadn’t noticed her sitting in the bent hickory rocker across the room. She held their sleeping daughter to her chest. Their daughter. So tiny in her mother’s arms, a face in swaddling, topped by a tousle of black hair. Dear God, he wanted to build a wall around her and never let anything hurtful come near her again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, setting the board down and slipping the nail back into his pocket. “I didn’t mean to hammer so loud. It’s just … the noise comes with the hammer.”

  “No, that’s fine,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about her name.”

  Elizabeth Prudence, after their two mothers. Or was she going to be Prudence Elizabeth? Both names sounded good on his tongue. He liked their diminutives too. Betty. Prue. “Either one is fine with me,” he said.

  “Maggie,” Deborah said.

  “Who?”

  “Maggie,” Deborah repeated, staring down at the little girl while she rocked. “Her name is going to be Maggie.”

  After Magdalena. Proctor set the hammer down and walked over to kiss Deborah on her forehead. She leaned into his lips. He liked the smell of her.

  “Maggie, huh?” he said as he straightened. “I like that.”

  “Maggie Elizabeth,” Deborah mumbled.

  Proctor frowned. “You never were one much for Prudence, were you?”

  “If I was going to name a daughter for a trait, I think it would be Courage. Or Independence.”

  Proctor started to laugh and then the laugh died on his lips. It was too soon after Magdalena’s death to welcome that sound. “Courage and Independence will serve us—and our daughter—well. But it would still be prudent to look to our defenses. Abigail was talking to me—”

  He paused. A doorway opened onto the kitchen. Abigail and Lydia stood framed by the jambs, listening to Proctor’s and Deborah’s conversation. Lydia wiped her hands on a towel.

  Abigail’s face, normally full and square with rosy cheeks, looked drawn and wan. “I told him the same thing I told you, that only witchcraft can protect us from other witches.”

  Deborah rocked in her chair, staring down at Maggie. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. Demons are spirits without flesh—that’s one reason why they’re so eager to possess men. It gives them power in this world. Babies are most vulnerable at birth, when the soul enters with the first breath. The demon doesn’t have to be invited to possess, doesn’t have to fight to enter the body, because the newborn child is already open to spirits.”

  “How do you know that?” Proctor asked.

  Deborah sighed. “My mother treated a woodcutter possessed by a demon once, and we discussed everything she knew. Every word for ‘soul’ means ‘breath’ in its original language. That’s why babies always cry when they take their first breath—because it hurts to have a soul.”

  “So the demon was sent specifically to possess your baby?” Lydia asked.

  A lump formed in Proctor’s throat at the thought, but it was the only explanation that made sense. “Maybe it’s the only thing they could get past our defenses. They’ve tried just about everything else in the past.”

  “No, the Covenant wants their demon to possess a witch,” Deborah said. “What ever their plan is, it requires great power.”

  Proctor’s right hand was a fist. The thought of anyone trying to hurt his child or possess it for evil … “Demons are creatures of fire, soot, and ash,” he said. “That’s how they use chimneys to enter homes. But this hearth is protected. It tried to enter here and couldn’t. I witnessed the attempt, but I didn’t understand it at the time. Nothing can come through the other chimney now, not even a bird. No fire, no soot, no ash. No demon.”

  “I’m sorry, but that makes no sense,” Abigail said.

  Proctor started to protest that no, he was sure the hearth was blocked, but Abigail continued.

  “Why possess the baby? We don’t even know if she has any talent, and we won’t know until she starts to become a woman. The Covenant’s plan was to possess the baby right in front of us and then wait twelve years to do anything with her? What did they expect us to do the whole time? Twiddle our thumbs and wait for them to show up?”

  “Maybe they could use the baby to kill us,” Proctor said, his voice lowered as if to say it might make it true. He watched Maggie and Deborah with a sharp edge of worry.

  “The demon was already powerful enough to kill us if it wanted,” Abigail said. “Or didn’t you notice that it killed Magdalena?”

  They weren’t sure how the demon had killed Magdalena. When they examined her, her face had been … almost peaceful. It was the first time Proctor could remember seeing her without the tightness of pain marking the corners of her mouth and eyes.

  “I’ll tell you what they wanted,” Abigail said, coming out of the doorway into the room. “They wanted Deborah. The mother is also at her most vulnerable when she’s giving birth. The demon could have possessed her right at that moment without her being able to stop it. Then it would have a witch who could do its bidding.”

  Proctor’s gut knotted. That was a horrible thought.

  Deborah reached out and took hold of Proctor’s hand. He started to squeeze back to reassure her, but she held it up in the air to study his missing finger.

  “They wanted something else to hold over us,” she said in the tone of voice she used for teaching when she didn’t want to be questioned. “They wanted a way to make us do their bidding.”

  “Now, that makes sense to me too,” Abigail said. Her shoulders slouched, deflated. Proctor could tell she had really wanted her explanation to be right. “You would do anything for Maggie. We all would. They have to know that.”

  Deborah dropped Proctor’s hand. She stopped rocking and leaned forward on the edge of her chair. “But what do they want us to do? Why do they need our power?”

  They all looked at Lydia. She had spent her life as a slave of Cecily, who was a member of the Covenant. She folded the towel and tossed it onto a bench. She turned her body away as if she meant to leave, but then she crossed her arms over her chest, with her hands on her shoulders so they formed a scissors at her throat.

  “When we were with the prince-bishop, he talked about the circle of misery,” Lydia said. She shivered. “He used to chuckle when he said it. It’s power that depends on forcing someone unwilling into the circle. Cecily drawing on the power of a slave gave her greater power to control others. When the prince-bishop drew on the power of that orphan boy, who was an innocent, it gave him greater power to corrupt others.”

  “That’s black magic,” Abigail murmured. Lydia shifted uncomfortably at the phrase.

  “Maybe there’s a better term for it,” Proctor said.

  “How about evil?” Deborah asked.

  “If they’re doing the same thing here,” Lydia said, “then I expect that by destroying your belief in the cause of liberty, they could tap into your power to destroy the cause. What ever circle they’re trying to form requires patrio
ts to complete it.”

  “It’s not enough just to protect ourselves,” Deborah said. “I have to believe that ultimately we can turn their hearts …”

  Proctor had his doubts about that, but he withheld them.

  “… but in the meantime, we must take additional steps to protect ourselves,” she finished.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Abigail said. The baby startled in Deborah’s arms, and Abigail lowered her voice. “I’m sorry.”

  “Mama Chamba,” Lydia said.

  Proctor didn’t understand what she had said. “Mumbo jumbo?”

  “Mama Chamba,” Lydia repeated. “She was an old slave woman on the Aikens plantation where I lived with Miss Cecily for a time. Came straight from Africa and still spoke the old tongue from there. She was a healer, like Deborah’s mother. She’d use the afterbirth of a baby to help protect it.”

  Deborah leaned forward in interest. Maggie stirred in her arms. One tiny hand had wormed loose from her blankets and groped blindly in the air. “I know of the afterbirth from one child being used in a spell to ease the birth of the midwife’s next patient,” Deborah said.

  “That’s not what my mother does,” Abigail said, eager to contribute. “She wraps it up in a clean white cloth and buries it. If the baby’s a girl and she wants her to grow up to be a good seamstress, she might run a needle through the cord first. Or if it’s a boy, and his parents want him to be a good carpenter, she might use an iron nail or a wooden peg. But that was only rarely. Mostly she said we should be careful never to put the afterbirth in fire or water, lest the child end up burning to death or drowning …” She noticed she was rambling. “Maybe that could help us too.”

  Proctor watched his daughter stir between wakefulness and sleep. “So what do we do to protect Maggie?”

  “I can only tell you what Mama Chamba did,” Lydia said. “She would take the afterbirth to a tree on the plantation, a hidden tree used only by the slaves and not the master. It was usually a fruit tree, sometimes a nut tree. She would bury the afterbirth among the roots. Then only those who had sworn to protect the child were allowed to eat from the tree.”

  “Did it work?” he asked.

  Lydia dropped her arms to her sides. “Mama Chamba planted a tree for me when I was born. I’m still trying to decide whether my life has been protected or not.”

  That seemed like a fair thing to wonder, Proctor thought.

  “It’s a powerful focus,” Deborah said. She was rocking again, and Maggie had settled back down to sleep. “It’s connected directly with life, with the protection of a mother for her child, with the entrance of a new soul into the world.”

  “I saved the afterbirth,” Abigail said. “Wrapped in waxed cloth, in a box of cedar chips.”

  “Is that why you wanted those cedar chips?” Proctor asked.

  “No,” Abigail said. “I wanted them because there were moth holes in my sweater. But then I thought about what my mother did with the afterbirth, and I wrapped it up so I could ask Deborah what we should do later.”

  “Thank you,” Deborah said. “I didn’t even think about it.”

  “You had other things to worry about,” Abigail said, stifling a yawn. Within a moment he and Deborah were both fighting their own yawns. Deborah’s stretched on until she squeezed her eyes shut.

  “We’re all exhausted,” Proctor said. “And not as sharp as we need to be. Let’s sleep on this tonight and prepare a spell tomorrow.”

  Now that they had some kind of plan, maybe they could actually get some rest.

  The new addition had two stories. The kitchen and the parlor were downstairs, with a pair of good-sized bedrooms up. Abigail and Lydia shared one, and Proctor and Deborah took the other.

  Proctor wanted to talk to Deborah privately about the Covenant’s possible plans, but by the time he finished checking all the doors and windows and climbed the stairs to join her, she was already curled up in bed asleep. Maggie nestled in her arms, eyes closed, mouth puckered as if she was ready to be fed. Or soothed.

  He reached over and stroked her soft, perfect cheek with his thumb. “If you ever have a brother, he’s going to be named Lemuel,” he whispered.

  Nothing could soothe Proctor. He kept thinking about the Covenant’s last plan to destroy Washington’s army. They had put a curse on the soldiers, binding their souls to the ghosts of the dead. Proctor and Deborah had been able to defeat them after months of trial and error, and only because they had the help of their whole circle. Magdalena, Ezra, Sukey, Esther—they had all played a part, and they were all gone. Magdalena was dead and Ezra had gone back to the south China seas, both of them out of reach. Even Alexandra had played a role, and she was off in the army now.

  If the Covenant summoned demons and possessed the army the same way … He had to stop dwelling on it. They had tried. They had failed. That was it.

  Except he knew now for certain that the Covenant would try again. Not only would they try to destroy the army, and the cause that he believed in, they would try to use his family—his family, his wife and daughter—to do it.

  They had stopped the Covenant’s ghosts. They had stopped this demon. Knowing the Covenant, they already had another plan prepared. He had been simple to think they were through. It had been wishful thinking, just like Deborah said.

  He watched Maggie in the dark, so tiny and trusting, unconscious of any danger.

  She looked like her mother. The same eyes, the same firm little chin. He never expected that he could feel so protective of someone. In some ways, the feelings were even stronger than his feelings for Deborah, magnified both by the love he had for Deborah and by Maggie’s own helplessness. He was afraid that something would hurt her. He was even afraid that he might roll over on her in the middle of the night.

  But he had to sleep.

  He patted his pillow down in the space between the two of them, nested his head in the crook of his arm, and settled down as close to the edge of the mattress as he could get. The mattress was old and flattened at the sides, so he felt like he was constantly on the verge of rolling off the bed. He braced one arm against the bed frame and forced himself to stillness.

  Sleep continued to evade him like a beam of light cast by a mirror, dancing out of the grasp of a kitten. His thoughts tossed and turned until finally, in the darkest part of the night, he rose again.

  The bedroom door opened onto a hallway much longer than he remembered, and the steps downstairs seemed to stretch and curve in front of him, leading into the old house. When he stepped off the bottom stair, he passed through a doorway and landed in the parlor at the exact spot where Magdalena had died.

  Magdalena stood there, her back to him. Her plain black dress and dark gray bonnet had been replaced with a silver robe and a gleaming white cap. She leaned on her cane, which was whole and unbroken. She faced the bricked-up hearth.

  Behind the stones and mortar, something tapped at the barrier.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t let it in.”

  “Magdalena,” Proctor said. He fought back the tears he hadn’t let himself shed before now, but they seemed to flow down his throat, swelling until they threatened to choke him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “What happened was meant to be. I believe this to be true, now more than before. Listen to me closely, Proctor.”

  He tried to take a step toward her, but his limbs were heavy and sluggish.

  “Look at your hand,” she said.

  She didn’t say which one, but he knew what she meant. He raised his arm slowly from his waist, fighting the weight of it, and turned the palm over. His hand was whole again, the finger there as it had been before.

  “Why do they want Deborah and the rest of us dead?” he said, his words as thick as water.

  Magdalena turned around. Her face was young again, her skin as smooth as a baby’s and her features free of any pain. Proctor would not have recognized her had he not already known her
voice, her clothes, her stance. She held up her cane, bouncing it lightly in her hand.

  “Not they, but he,” she said. “He wants you dead because you have the power to stop him. He has stretched his life for centuries, building toward the fulfillment of his plan. He must bring it to fruition soon or he will wither like a tree that failed to bear harvest in its appointed time. He will do anything he must to bring his plan to fruit. He will use you against your loved ones, use your loved ones against you.”

  “Who? The necromancer—the prince-bishop?”

  “Beware this one,” Magdalena said. She took her cane and scratched a figure in the floor.

  D

  “Who is ‘D’?” Proctor asked. Did she mean Deborah? “Who’s ‘D’?”

  Magdalena had her back to him again. He tried to call out to her, but the pressure of the air weighed on him. The words rose into his mouth, but went no farther.

  Behind him, he heard Deborah calling him. He turned to answer her and tripped. He fell, unable to raise his arms to catch himself. He closed his eyes and flinched, but when he hit the floor, it was soft, and yielded under him like a pile of wet straw. A black pit opened beside him. His arm and leg dangled in the air over a hole that dropped all the way to hell.

  Chapter 5

  “Proctor?” Deborah whispered again.

  He opened his eyes. He was in bed at the edge of the mattress, with an arm and leg dangling over the side. His chin was slick with drool. “Whuh?”

  “You’re mumbling in your sleep and thrashing about. Are you all right?”

  He wiped the drool off his chin and the sleep from his eyes. He rolled over and saw Maggie suckling at Deborah’s breast. She looked so small. The idea of anything happening to her—especially because of him—was too much to bear.