by C. C. Finlay
Two dozen men and women followed a narrow trail through a swamp. They were only one day away from the new moon, so the road was dark. The stars stood out vividly against the night, and the Milky Way drew its band of pale light across the sky, but it wasn’t enough to reach the ground below, where everyone was a shadow.
Proctor and Lydia had been traveling with this group for a few days now. They were mostly black, mostly runaway slaves, but they had fallen in with the poor whites and Indians who scavenged a living off the land.
Now and then, the wind played tricks and carried the sound of cannon fire to them from across the broad river.
The sound was music to Proctor’s ears. George Washington had led the American army and their French allies in a forced march with few supplies down from the North. They had penned Cornwallis up against the water at Yorktown and battered him mercilessly. It was a desperate gamble: without the supplies from the Lafayette, the Americans might have only one chance to beat the British. But Washington had taken that chance without blinking.
Proctor tried to keep himself ready when his own chance came.
One of the black men turned and said, “Things are going bad at Yorktown.”
“I was lucky to escape,” said one of the other men, a runaway slave. “Swam across the river at night. Thirty of us went there from the plantation, and twenty were dead from the pox before I escaped. It was so bad, the dogs waited outside the surgeon’s tent to eat men’s arms and legs as fast as the doctor cut them off—”
“That’s enough of that story, Jacob,” one of the women said. “We’ve heard it enough times now.”
“Cornwallis still has a chance if the British fleet arrives,” another said.
“Banastre Tarleton holds Gloucester Point, this side of the river,” said another slave. “That man fights like the devil himself had a lash at his back.”
“What battles has he won lately?” said the woman. “None, that’s how many.”
“He hasn’t had a chance to fight. You wait and see.”
Proctor listened to them talk and tried to adjust to the difference. For these men and women, a British victory held out some small promise of freedom. Few of them expected the British to keep their promises to runaway slaves, but they had made the promises. No matter what happened in the war, they were sure to lose. Proctor knew the feeling. “Where’s this plantation you were telling me about, Jacob?” he asked.
“Hard to tell, not being on the road and all, but it’s not much farther, I’m sure,” he said. “Just past the crossroads.”
Proctor had seen at least a hundred plantations, most in the twilight at dawn or dusk, or by the light of the moon at night, from the safety of ditches and trees, from the cover of the slave quarters at night. Since June, he’d been searching for the plantation he’d seen in the scrying. He’d been down the coast of Mary land and Virginia, all the way to North Carolina, inland along the rivers and back again.
“The big house is just ahead,” said one of the Indians, a fisherman in a soft hat and oft-mended clothes. His skin was darker and his eyes folded at the corners, or Proctor would have taken him for just another poor white. In the moonless night, it was impossible to tell his race at all.
They came to a road and walked along the verge. Lanterns glowed in the distance, and Proctor’s hope grew. He knew he would find the plantation, if only because he had scryed it. But he felt like he was close.
A hundred yards farther on, as the trees opened up and he saw the plantation in full, he shook his head and stopped. “That’s not it.”
Greek columns lined a broad porch, even with the ground, nothing like the place he’d seen in his vision.
The leaders of their little group withdrew into the woods off the road and whispered among themselves. Proctor sat apart from the rest, his arms resting on his knees. He could see them looking at him from time to time, a half turn of the head or a quick glance over a shoulder. A mockingbird leapt from shrub to tree to fallen log, imitating several other birds in quick succession.
“You aren’t what you seem to be, are you?” Proctor said as the large bird emitted the call of a tiny wren.
At the sound of his voice, Lydia rose and came over to his side. “They aren’t trying to exclude you from the discussion,” she said.
Proctor waved off the apology with a small motion of his hand. “I know they don’t trust me because I’m white,” he said.
“They don’t trust you because you look and act like a crazy man,” Lydia said.
He let that sink in. “Maybe I am.”
“Some of them think you’re a hoodoo man or a powwow man.”
They weren’t wrong, but he had not used his talent among them. “Is that what they say?”
“No, it’s what they don’t say, and the questions they ask me,” she said.
“I understand. I can go on by myself. I’ve dragged you far enough.”
“I haven’t come for you,” she said. “I’ve come for Deborah’s sake, and Maggie’s, and Abigail’s.”
“You may not like what we find,” he said.
“Somebody’s got to be there to remember them,” she said.
The group of runaways and freemen rose and walked over to Proctor. The fisherman spoke for them. “The men here are divided. Some want to join the British garrison at Gloucester Point. They think that Tarleton will keep on fighting, and that the British ships will come, and they will have their freedom. Others want to turn around and go west to join the Cherokee in the mountains, though that is a long, hard journey, over land that I will not travel.”
That urge for freedom. Proctor could see Lydia tense, ready to go either direction.
“I would not put any trust in the British,” Proctor said. “Go west to the Cherokee, but don’t stop there. Go farther west if you can.”
Some of the men and women nodded among themselves. They had been thinking the very same thing.
Jacob stepped forward. “There’s one more plantation, it might be the one you described. If we go back to the crossroads and follow it around to the river’s edge, we’ll come to it.”
Proctor would visit every plantation in America if he had to, but there was no reason to drag these other people along. “How do you know of it?” he asked.
“It’s called Rosewell. My master Thomas Jefferson stayed there in ’seventy-six, when he was writing the Declaration of Independence.”
Proctor’s skin goose-pimpled with anticipation. The residence where Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence would be exactly the kind of place where the Covenant would seek to destroy that Independence. Crush freedom at its source.
“Can you take me there?” Proctor asked.
Jacob nodded. They all set out together, but as they passed the crossroads, Proctor noticed the others turn away. “They don’t want to go this way,” Jacob said.
Proctor didn’t ask them why. He didn’t have the right. “If you don’t want to go on, just point the way,” he said. “I’ll find it myself.”
Jacob tipped his felt hat. “Thank you for that. I’m going to follow the Dragon to freedom myself, I think.”
“Follow the dragon?”
“Dragon Swamp,” Jacob said. “We want to get a head start on that way west.”
He turned and ran after the others without further good-bye. Proctor looked at Lydia. “Do you want to go as well?”
“I can’t explain it,” she said. “I feel a strong urge to go the other way. But I won’t. I came to see this through.”
Odd, but he didn’t feel that at all. Instead, he felt drawn onward, as if he was headed to the place he was appointed to reach.
The road was dark and silent, curving through the woods. The green smell of fresh water tinged the air. The trees grew thicker as they went, at least until Proctor stepped on a stick in the road. The branches were filled with hundreds of black crows that he had mistaken for leaves—at the loud snap, they flapped their wings and swirled into the sky before settling d
own again where they had started.
“Is that normal?” Proctor asked.
“I’ve never seen it before,” Lydia whispered in reply. “But they’re carrion birds, and there is a battle just across the river.”
As if in response to her mention, the sound of cannons echoed over the water from miles away. The wind that carried the sound rummaged through the trees, ruffling feathers and sending autumn leaves tumbling to the ground.
This was the place. Proctor was certain.
They pushed on, down a long lane lined with trees. The woods were full of saplings, thick as a thumb, as if the clearing and mowing had been neglected. When the road opened out on acres of broad lawn, Proctor recognized the place at once.
A brick mansion on a foundation six feet tall, rising three stories, with each story twelve feet high, was framed by four massive chimneys, one at each of the corners. There were five windows across each floor, including the windows framing the entry door, and a light shone in every window. They spilled out over the structure, illuminating the fine brickwork and the elegant proportions. It was as if a building had been lifted from the London street where Lord Gordon lived, or even the neighborhood of Lord Shelburne, and dropped in the middle of the Virginia woods. The door was cracked open, and the sounds of stringed instruments came from within, and people whirled in the light as if dancing. Laughter echoed out across the grass.
A single figure stood on the doorstep.
He had long gray robes and a ruffled collar. He reached back and pushed the door open, saying something to those inside. Then he walked down the wide stairs to the lawn. A large man blocked the light streaming through the doorway. He was followed by a petite woman in an elaborate dress. They were both followed by a priest. The priest was followed by a beautiful young woman in a black dress of foreign, almost Oriental, cut.
One by one they walked down the steps and faced Proctor across the lawn.
John Dee. The prince-bishop, Philipp Adolph von Ehrenberg. Cecily Sumpter Pinckney. William Weston, the English Jesuit. Proctor thought the fifth one might be Erzebet Nádasdy. That was the only other name Gordon had given him that he remembered.
A blond boy in a tattered red coat skipped out of the woods laughing hilariously, slapping his chest and spinning around. The sleeves of his jacket hung down over his hands, but his pants were too short, and his ankles stuck out of the bottom. His hair was wild and un-brushed. As he stepped into the light cast by the house, Proctor recognized him.
“William.”
William Reed. The orphan boy whom Proctor had lost to the prince-bishop at Trenton. The boy lifted his head at the sound of his name, even whispered from a hundred yards away. His eyes glowed like fire. He ran over to the prince-bishop, who wrapped an arm around him and stroked his head like a man with a favorite pet.
“Behold, the herald of Balfri, come in advance of his master,” John Dee said with a sweeping motion of his hand. Though he spoke in a normal tone, his voice carried, just as Gordon’s had, clear to Proctor’s ear.
Four hooves thundered on the dark road behind Proctor. A man in a worn green jacket, faded and torn like the leaves in autumn, with a black cap upon his head, galloped past. A woman in a gray dress—gray like the color of Dee’s robes—sat behind him. She glowed with a numinous light. Deborah.
Proctor had waited, frozen, too long.
He spread out his arm toward the hundreds of saplings growing in the woods. With one slash of his hand, all the branches and leaves were stripped bare. A second gesture—a spin of his fingers—whirled around the tops, sharpening them to pointed stakes. A third motion, his hands raised up, snapped all of them off at the ground and brought them up in the air like spears.
With a roar, he pulled both arms back and flung them forward. The spears flew toward the tiny group of witches and the little demon boy.
The woman in the gray dress—Proctor tried not to look at her; he didn’t want to fight her—slipped off the back of the horse and passed her hand through the air.
The spears hit in an invisible shield just short of the witches and fell to the ground.
“No, Deborah, not like this,” Proctor whispered.
But he ran forward, already launching his next attack. He saw two large boulders on either side of the lawn, amid other small ones.
He lifted the boulders, dripping dirt and grass, and sent them hurling toward each other like two mortar stones, big enough to grind the Covenant to bone and meal between them.
Deborah reached into the air and cast the boulders aside. They flew high up into the night sky across the river and out toward the bay. They boomed, cracking the air as thunder did, and then caught fire as they burned up like shooting stars. He had never seen that kind of power from her before.
“Don’t stop me, Deborah,” Proctor whispered.
He whirled his hand in the air, calling forth every piece of metal and silver from the house. There were knives and sabers, awls and saws, every kind of sharp tool or blade you would find on a large plantation. They flew out of the door like a nest of hornets. He spun the mass in a circle and sent it whipping toward the Covenant, too fast to deflect and toss away.
Deborah dropped her hands to her sides and walked into the path of the blades, blocking the way to the Covenant.
It wasn’t Deborah, Proctor told himself.
She had been possessed by the demon Balfri.
Balfri must be destroyed. He was the only one who could do it. He had been prepared for it by his journey, brought by steps to a greater power than he had ever dreamed possible. Balfri had to be stopped, and he was the instrument of its destruction.
But he couldn’t do it, not even if Deborah was only the shell of herself.
When the whirling blades were inches from cutting her to shreds, he flung them to the ground. He dropped to his knees a second later, exhausted. He had drained himself and accomplished nothing. He covered his face, and said he was sorry over and over again, not sure whether he was apologizing to Deborah for failing or for nearly chopping her to pieces.
The orphan boy—what did Dee call him? Balfri’s herald—capered and laughed, clapping his hands with glee.
“Make way for Balfri,” he shouted. “Lord of the red coat, the purifying flame, the scorching wind. Balfri, the bond and the fetter. Balfri, the covenant fulfilled and the master of mighty legions. Make way!”
Deborah walked across the lawn toward Proctor. She always seemed to glide, so sure and steady was her step. He could not lift his head to look at her face as she approached. When she stopped in front of him, he saw only the hem of her dress.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sounding the same as she ever had. “I cannot let you harm them while they possess my daughter—”
He had turned his face toward her when she mentioned their daughter. She was the same Deborah he had always known. Her cap had fallen off, and her hair tumbled down around her shoulders. But she had the same determined set to her mouth, the same large eyes, the same numinous inner light.
“… Proctor?” She reached out to him.
Words would not come to him, but he reached back. Their hands touched and, after a moment’s hesitation, clasped. A pure light flowed through their grip. He jumped to his feet and wrapped his arms around her. She fit in his embrace, the way she had before. He pressed his face against her head—she smelled wonderful, familiar. There were bits of dried flowers falling from her hair.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I thought you were—”
She threw her arms around his neck. “I didn’t recognize you,” she said. “I thought you were … I thought you were dead, that you were never coming back, that you had run off to Russia with that countess.”
“What—? No!”
She held his head in her hands and started kissing his face, his eyes, his lips. He kissed her in return, feeling the tears roll down his cheeks.
“I would never leave you,” he said. “I thought you had been possessed … I … I thought �
�� I was wrong, I was so wrong …”
She didn’t stop kissing him so he stopped speaking instead. He could feel the tears on her cheeks, mixing with his where their faces pressed against each other.
A shadow fell over them.
“Now that we are all reunited,” Dee said, “it’s time for us to begin. Balfri has already waited too long.”
Chapter 27
Ropes slithered across the ground like snakes, tying them up. They were both too weak to resist. The ropes wound around them, binding them to each other, and then a single strand climbed straight into the air, as rigid as a pole, and looped itself over an invisible branch. The two of them dangled there.
“Why didn’t you recognize me?” Proctor asked as he struggled against the ropes.
“You’ve changed—so powerful, the black clothes—I thought you were a rival witch.”
“They have Maggie?”
“I sent her into hiding with Abigail, but they found them.”
“What … where were you?”
“I had stopped their herald, and held him a prisoner—I was healing him, or so I thought—until tonight he escaped.”
Dee moved like a mathematician writing out an equation. He stood in the center of the great lawn and spun slowly with his hand outstretched. Fire leapt from his fingertip, scorching a large circle in the grass. When the circle was complete, he slashed his hand in a series of five sharp motions, completing the pentagram.
The same symbol he had drawn in fire in London during the riots.
“The two of you might have been good students,” Dee said. “If only you hadn’t been born in this wilderness. The star is a powerful symbol to astronomer and astrologer, to the mathematician and the necromancer alike. It is from the Greek word pentagrammon, meaning ‘five-lined,’ but it is associated with the Roman word lucifer, meaning ‘bringer of light and knowledge.’ I consider myself a bringer of light and knowledge to this dark world.”