by C. C. Finlay
Proctor lingered at the edge of this group looking for their enemy. They stood at the port bow, watching a group of distant fishing boats gathered in a spot where the ocean’s green-tinged waves collided with a blue current. Silver churned the surface of the water. A secondary cloud of diving gulls hung over the boats to snap up scraps of bait and other cast-offs.
“But I thought we saw the Grand Banks yesterday,” said the smaller of Adams’s two sons, an anxious boy of about ten named Charles.
“That’s why they’re called Grand—it means very large,” the older son replied.
“An excellent observation, John Quincy,” Adams said. One hand rested affectionately on the shoulder of each boy. The ship plunged through the fitful waves, as one slapped the side of the ship and sent spray over the railing. Everyone jumped back—the water was bitter cold.
Charles’s eyes brimmed with tears as his face turned a shade of green. Proctor felt sorry for him—homesick and seasick was an awful combination. “Are the waves grand, too?” he asked. “Can we leave the Grand Banks now, Father?”
Adams stared at the sky and the wind-driven clouds coming in from the northwest. “There might be a storm, but it’s nothing to worry about,” he said reassuringly. The chickens did not share his opinion: they squawked and pecked anxiously at the latches on their coop.
Proctor spotted Lydia on deck and went to see her. “Have you felt any prayer?” he asked.
“Not one amen,” she answered. Another cross-wave rocked the ship, and she grabbed hold of Proctor. As soon as he steadied her on her feet, she pulled away and, with eyes downcast, said, “I’m sorry about that, Master Brown, sir. Do you think—the weather?”
The shock of her formal address unnerved him so much it took a moment for the question to register. He looked at the storm clouds gathered overhead. He’d seen witchcraft move weather half a dozen times before, but this felt natural. “There’s no one aboard the ship who’s powerful enough,” he said. He included himself in that estimate.
He had the same thought when the gale smashed into them that night. He knew he could do nothing to avert it.
The ship climbed and crashed the swells like a great, uncomfortable horse. The planks groaned all around them, as if the sides of the ship were gasping for breath. The crew moved walls and stores around on the gun deck. Proctor was herded into a forward cabin, where he sat on the floor pressed arm-to-arm with the other American passengers, including Adams and his party. A single lantern dangled from a hook, swinging as the ship tilted. Light and shadow lurched from one side of the cabin to the other and back again. A storm, but an ordinary storm, the kind he’d weathered before on land.
A normal storm was no comfort to Adams’s younger boy, Charles, who was racked by the dry heaves. The lingering odor of vomit indicated that it probably had not started out dry. John Quincy had an arm around his shoulders and tried to comfort him, though he appeared just as miserable. Their father was nervous, and, as some men did, Proctor noticed he talked continuously to cover up his nerves.
“A ship is like a nation, and wars are a storm to be weathered,” he told his sons. “Just as America has weathered the storm of revolution, the Sensible will weather this storm as well. Thucydides was the first to make that comparison, though I find it very apt to our situation. I highly recommend Thucydides as a good foundation for young men. If your Greek continues to improve, John, I will purchase for you your very own copy in the original language.”
“Thank you, Father,” John Quincy said heavily.
“Can’t you make the captain stop the ship?” Charles moaned.
“There, there,” Adams said. “Just as we trust war to our generals, and diplomacy to wise men, so, too, must we trust the ship to the captain. He knows what is best—”
The cabin door slammed open. John Adams’s servant braced himself in the doorway. The storm howled louder through an open hatch, seeming to come at them from all sides.
“Joseph,” Adams cried. “What’s happened?”
Joseph was soaked to his knees. “The hold is filling up with water. The carpenter told us not to worry, it was normal to take on some water in a storm like this. But he had us all come up to the higher deck. May we come in?”
“Of course,” Adams said, shooing other passengers aside to make room for his men.
Outside the door, men clambered up and down the open hatch, shouting frantically. The pump gears echoed through the ship, steady as a metronome during the repeated crescendos of the storm. Lydia was the last one to enter. Proctor made room so she could squeeze in beside him. Her dress was wet to her waist, smelling of salt water and bilge.
“What happened?” he whispered, leaning his head close to hers.
“I overheard the carpenter say that the caulking in the hold was bad, and it can’t be fixed except in port,” she whispered back. “At least that’s what I think he said. Le calfatage a été mal fait. Je ne peux pas le réparer avant qu’on arrive au port.”
“How do you know French?”
“Miss Cecily wanted to learn it at one time.”
“Is it prayer work?” Proctor asked, meaning the damage to the caulking. The merchant on the opposite side of him shifted and jabbed Proctor with an elbow.
“I don’t know.”
The light swayed dizzily overhead, flickering as if it might go out.
Proctor realized how foolish he had been.
The Covenant did not need to use magic to achieve their goals. Hadn’t they sent ordinary assassins to kill them once on The Farm? This was no different. It would have been easy to hire someone in Boston to come on board under some pretense and then sabotage the ship. The problem would not show until they were in heavy seas, and no one would know for a long time that the ship had sunk. It might be weeks or even months before Adams was missed, and longer yet before another man could be charged with negotiating peace.
“We have to do something,” Proctor whispered.
“We should pray,” Lydia said.
He had the same thought. But what kind of spell would strengthen the ship and ease their passage? He couldn’t change the weather and didn’t know how to stop the leaking, but he had to do something. “What can we use as a focus?” he asked.
“No, I meant we should pray,” she said. Her voice was shaking as she folded her hands together and bowed her head.
The ship crashed down a swell, bouncing them both off the cabin wall. Outside, the wind renewed its fury, sending wave after wave against the hull. The lantern, spinning around, sputtered and went out. The dark lasted through the night and the next day while the storm raged outside.
When the last winds finally ran away and the sky cleared, the air was much colder. The damp had settled into everything, soaking every corner of the ship, so that Proctor felt chilled even after the cookpots were fired up and the passengers served their first hot meal in two days.
They were out of the storm but hardly out of danger. On deck, the two pumps on either side of the mast operated constantly. The crewmen worked in shifts, day and night, swinging the great elm handles up and down, spraying water over the sides of the ship. Proctor peered over the side for signs of damage. The ship rode noticeably lower in the water and seemed likely to sink at a moment’s notice if he looked away.
“This is no good,” Adams said nearby. He was talking to himself, which he often did. “If an English ship comes along, we’ll be unable to outrun it. They’ll snatch us up in a heartbeat.”
He ran off to complain to Captain Chavagne, who was standing by the pumps. Proctor followed him.
Chavagne, his eyes bloodshot and his cheeks ashen, had lost his wig and hat somewhere during the storm. He had close-cropped black hair and a receding hairline. Though clearly doing his best to keep up with Adams’s rapid flow of words, the expression on his face revealed how much he was also missing.
Proctor interrupted. “What can we do to help?”
Adams looked at him, startled, as if he had appeared, a st
ranger, out of nowhere.
“There is nothing but the pumps,” the captain said. “The pumps and repairs.”
“I can pump,” Proctor said. “It’ll free up someone to work on the ship.”
Chavagne looked at Proctor and pasted a false, tight-lipped smile on his face. “No, monsieur, I can’t allow—”
“I’m no gentleman,” Proctor said. He had failed to think like the Covenant, failed to foresee or prevent their methods. He had to do something. “Let me take a turn at the pump.”
Chavagne shrugged indifferently and gestured him toward the pump.
Jack stood at the near handle. He was shirtless, despite the bitter cold, and sweat poured down the corded muscles of his back. His hair was plastered to his face, and the ship’s boy stood there with a ladle to pour water into his mouth whenever he asked for it. He looked like he’d been pumping for a very long time.
“If you think you can do it,” he told Proctor. “I could use a break for a minute or two.” To the other crew, he said, “Faites place. Ce monsieur veut faire notre travail—laissez-le essayer. On the count of three now, ready? Un, deux, trois.”
On three, he pushed the lever down and stepped out of the way. Proctor caught it on the upswing, turning the motion into the next downward pump. His arms, soft from two weeks of not working, strained with the first stroke. Jack laughed at him.
But Proctor got into a rhythm, like splitting wood or cutting wheat, and he blocked out everything else—his mistake in underestimating the Covenant, his memory of the demon, his fears for Deborah and Maggie—and he pumped over and over again, sending water sluicing across the deck and back out into the ocean.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been at it, but his shirt was stuck to his back, and his breath was shallow and ragged. A voice at his side said, “All right, that’s good enough, more than your turn. I’ll take it now. On the count of three.”
The count slid past and he staggered out of the way. Jack was watching him, and he frowned, the way a man does when a dearly held belief is shattered. He turned and walked away.
Lydia was waiting for him with a blanket. “You’ll catch your death of cold,” she said.
Water ran across the deck and past their feet. “Better than catching my death of wet,” he said. “I’ll take my chances.”
Other passengers volunteered, but within a day the voluntary work became mandatory, a matter of life and death. With both pumps running constantly, the water in the hold stayed level. The minute the pumps stopped, it began to rise. Nothing could be done to plug the hold because the whole ship was leaking. It would have to be repaired in port, assuming they made it to port.
Adams took his turns at the pump, and even John Quincy lent a hand. He tried to talk to his father about public service, and everyone contributing, but he soon ran out of breath.
Assuming they avoided British ships, assuming there wasn’t another storm, assuming they could find a port, their chances looked good, Proctor thought.
Until the first pump plugged. The crew had to disassemble it, clearing out all the bilge and muck that fouled the pipe. Proctor watched them work, fearful of the rising water in the hold. As they were putting it back together, he overheard two of the American crewmen.
“That’ll do, at least until the box fouls,” one said.
“Pray that doesn’t happen soon,” said another. Both had their eyes east, looking for a shore.
The pump, Proctor discovered, had a filter box at the bottom in the hold. When it plugged up, the best they could do was take the rest apart, bang a pole around the box from topside, and hope it dislodged what ever was blocking the filter.
Not the most reassuring method Proctor could imagine.
It was the middle of the night two days later when the box plugged.
Proctor lay awake belowdeck when he overheard the crewmen talking to each other. “There’s nothing coming through,” the first one said.
“Pump harder,” the second one replied.
“It’s plugged,” the first one snapped back. Proctor recognized Jack’s voice. He took more than his share at the pumps because of his size and strength. “We cleaned the pipes a few bells back, but we’ll have to do it again.”
“The water gained six inches on us the last time we stopped the pump, and we haven’t made up the difference yet.”
Proctor rose and climbed up through the hatch. “I’m fresh,” he said. “Let me take a hand at the pump. Maybe it will jar something loose.”
The pump handle stood dead. “If you can loosen it up, I’ll eat what ever comes out of this end,” Jack said.
“You’re just trying to sweeten the deal, aren’t you?” Proctor said.
He bent his back into the pump and could feel the plug at once. The handles moved, the gears ground, but only a trickle of water came through. There was no suction. He took a deep breath and drew on his talent. It was one thing to move rocks that he could see, but another entirely to shift shapeless muck hidden way below him. He used the rhythm of the pump for a focus, closed his eyes, and sent his will down the pipe.
“The gentleman should leave off now, sir,” a crewman said. “We’ve got to take it apart, as quick as we can.”
Proctor kept pumping. He tried to draw the muck through the screen and couldn’t, and it affected him in turn—he tried to draw a breath and felt as if his lungs were blocked. The flow of water decreased from a trickle to almost nothing. Without the sound of water, the noise of the metal pump gear grinding grew even louder.
“It’s no use,” Jack said. “Now stand aside.”
He felt the muck break apart through the screen. He almost had it. It was like pulling on a thousand tiny rocks all at once. He was thinking: from a little fountain was made a great flood, from a little fountain was made a great flood.
A heavy hand fell on his shoulder, breaking his focus.
What came out of his mouth was a scream of raw frustration, and what surged through his hands was a burst of power.
Water hiccuped out of the pump. Wet sludge flopped onto the deck, followed by a gush of slimy water. Proctor didn’t break his rhythm. He closed his eyes and fell into the work, bringing muck up through the pipe until the water flowed smooth and fast.
He meant to pump a long time, the way he always did, but the spell had weakened him and he staggered back, falling onto his rump.
A big hand reached out to pull him up. Proctor took it and came face-to-face with Jack. He glared at Proctor angrily, like a man shamed by being wrong or bested in strength by another. But he put a cup of undiluted grog in Proctor’s hand and jabbed a thumb toward the captain, standing watch on the quarterdeck. The officer favored Proctor with a reluctant nod of approval.
“You still need to eat that sludge,” Proctor told Jack.
“What do you think I put in your grog?” he grumbled, then walked away.
Proctor smiled and sat on the chicken coop. The hen ruffled her feathers, squawking at him. The chill air settled around him as he savored the grog. No taste of sludge.
For the next two weeks, the ship limped slowly eastward. Proctor took regular shifts on both pumps, keeping the water flowing smoothly before the box could be blocked. There were cheers when land was sighted, but not from Adams. Proctor thought he had the most to cheer about, with his children aboard. He followed Adams when he went to complain to the captain. Lydia followed him.
“—is it true that we’re going to put into a Spanish port?” Adams asked. “That’s a disaster.”
“A disaster is what happens if we don’t put in at the nearest port,” the captain said.
But for once Proctor found himself agreeing with Adams. He had no money left. He had expected to borrow in Paris with Tallmadge’s letters to Franklin. Those wouldn’t help them in Spain at all. Adams faced a very similar problem.
“I don’t know how we’ll get to France,” Proctor told Lydia. “If we wait for them to fix the ship, I don’t know how we’ll eat.”
“We
can walk or beg if we must,” she said.
“It might come to that.”
Still, when the ship raised land and came into the shipbuilders’ wharves at Ferrol on Spain’s northern coast, Proctor’s relief was genuine and unblemished. The crew stopped pumping as soon as they tied up, and the ship responded by starting to sink. Proctor was standing on deck with the other passengers, who momentarily ceased sorting out their travel options to watch the ship’s steady descent in place and decide whether they should make a desperate leap to the docks. While they argued, a crewman popped his head out of the hatch and called to the officers.
“Il y a plus de deux mètres d’eau dans la cale!” Crewmen ran to the hold while others went to man the pumps.
“What did he say?” Proctor asked.
“I think he said there’s almost seven feet of water in the hold,” Adams answered. He stared at Proctor for a moment, as if wondering who he was, but then, as if struck by the enormity of the news, he continued. “And that’s in less than an hour. We barely escaped with our lives. If even a mild storm had followed the first, it would have carried us to a grave beneath the waves.”
Exactly what the Covenant had hoped for or even intended. “Thank God they didn’t think you worth a little more effort,” Proctor murmured.
Adams’s brow furrowed as he overheard Proctor’s comment. Without another word, he turned away to gather his sons and servants.
But Proctor was too lost in thought to give it more than passing notice. The essential thing was this: the Covenant had failed, and though Adams was a thousand miles from Paris, he was not yet dead.
“What’s troubling you, Master Brown?” Lydia asked.
“We’re a thousand miles from Paris, with no idea how to find the Covenant from here.” It was early December, and his plan to find and finish the Covenant quickly so he could return home to Deborah and Maggie had already gone astray.
“I wouldn’t trouble about that too much,” Lydia said. “If it’s anything like home, I expect they’ll find us.”