The Patriot Witch

by C. C. Finlay

  “Your mother wanted each man's items separate. When Cecily thought no one was looking, she mixed them together. I thought she was just nervous—you know how she's always touching stuff—so I moved them all back.”

  “It was deliberate,” Deborah said.

  Alexandra leaned forward eagerly. “She must have been terrified that they were going to reveal her.”

  “Yes,” Deborah said. “She didn't undo Proctor's spell before she left, because she didn't know about it. We should all have been taking steps like that to protect ourselves.”

  He grabbed her hand and held it. “That's enough with the second-guessing. It's no good.”

  After a moment, she nodded.

  “What do we do now?” Alexandra asked. Her face and posture were those of a girl again, helpless, wanting someone else to solve her problems. Proctor tried not to be surprised: she was on the cusp of adulthood, one moment a child, the next a woman.

  “I have written letters to the Reverend Emerson and others asking them for information about this Mister Nance,” Deborah said. “But there wasn't time to post them, and now it seems rather pointless to proceed in that direction.”

  “Why do you say that?” Proctor said. “It seems like this Nance is still the hinge that swings all the doors.”

  “He is, but I don't think we'd receive a reply quickly enough. The time for waiting has passed.”

  “I could always go and see Emerson directly,” Proctor said. And that would let him check on his parents as well. “I'd be back in a couple of days.”

  “No,” Alexandra blurted at the same moment that Deborah said, “I think not.”

  “Why not?” Proctor asked.

  “You need to stay here to protect Alexandra and Magdalena,” Deborah said. “It was only your quick action—and your spell—that saved all our lives two nights ago.”

  It wasn't quite all their lives, but Proctor didn't want to draw her attention to that. “How can we take action and stay here at the same time?”

  “We aren't all staying here,” she said. “I'm going to Boston—to find Cecily, or the widow, or Nance.”

  “And what exactly do you think you'll do when you find them? Invite them to hold hands and pray with you, the way Elizabeth did, talking to those spirits?”

  “That's uncalled for,” she snapped.

  “No, he has a point,” Alexandra said. Deborah glared at her. The girl fidgeted uncomfortably and wouldn't meet Deborah's eyes, but she continued to speak. “Don't think I care for the idea none, but he has a point. We can't sit here and wait for them to make another attempt to kill us, especially when we don't even know why they're trying. But you can't go haring after them alone. They'll tear you to pieces.”

  The criticism made Deborah bristle, so much that when Alexandra reached across the table to squeeze her hand, Deborah pulled hers away.

  “I'm not trying to run you down, believe me,” Alexandra said. “Because I know how powerful you are. But this is a fight, and this fellow here is the only one of us who has experience fighting.”

  Proctor swallowed hard. Sure, he did his duty, but he didn't think of himself as a fighter. It's not who he had ever wanted to be.

  “He doesn't have enough experience using magic,” Deborah said firmly.

  “It was enough to protect us two nights ago,” Proctor snapped.

  “That's why you both need to go,” Alexandra said. “You know the magic. You were born to it, and your mother, she taught you everything she knew.”

  “I wish that were true,” Deborah said. She leaned back in her seat, resigned.

  “And him”—Alexandra pointed to Proctor—“he's shown he has a trick or two in a fight. I figure he'll need all of them if you run into this Nance or whoever he is.”

  Proctor rubbed his head, trying to think clearly. There didn't seem to be anyone else to turn to, or any better solution. “So you'll stay here and take care of Magdalena?”

  “Hell, no,” Alexandra said, and when the two of them stared at her, she added, “Excuse my language, and let me explain before you say anything. The way I figure it, we've got a little window here.”

  “What kind of window?” Deborah asked.

  The word drew Proctor's attention to the window outside, where the summer light was already fading amid the buzz of insects and the occasional call of a bird.

  “For all this Nance knows, we're all dead right now,” Alexandra said. “Miss Cecily, she's not the type to stick around to see what kind of mess she made.”

  “She's probably halfway back to Charlestown and her fine house already,” Deborah said ruefully.

  “Right. So it may be a few more days before they send anyone up here to find out different. We can use those days to our advantage. The two of you to go after him, whoever he is, and me, well, I plan to make Magdalena comfortable in that horse wagon and head toward home.”

  “She's too sick to travel,” Deborah said.

  “She's too weak to stay here if someone else comes after her again. I can go slow, keep her comfortable on the road. I can hitch a wagon and take care of myself just fine.”

  Deborah leaned forward to argue, but Proctor spoke first. “If you go by way of Emerson's first, he'll set you back on the Quaker Highway. You can go from crossroads to crossroads until you get back home.”

  “I'm not sure,” Deborah said.

  “You'll find healers along the way, who can help Magdalena recover faster,” Proctor added. To Deborah, he said, “It's a good plan. She's right about taking advantage of the days while they think we're dead.”

  After a long hesitation, she finally nodded her consent.

  Proctor stood. “You two better get some sleep, so we can leave first thing in the morning. I'll go set a protection spell and take first watch.”

  Chapter 18

  The walk to Boston took two days down the coastal road through Lynn. They stopped twice, the second time to spend the night with a family whom Proctor suspected was part of the Quaker Highway. The first time had been to sell the milk cow.

  “We can't leave the cow behind,” Deborah had said. “The chickens can fend for themselves, but it'd be cruel to leave her unmilked.”

  The reduced price they sold her for seemed crueler still to Proctor. But when they resumed their journey on the second morning, they used the coins to cross the penny ferry at Charlestown.

  “You can tell we're close to Boston,” Deborah said when they disembarked on the Charlestown side of the river. “I see soldiers everywhere.”

  “They're not soldiers,” Proctor corrected her. “They're militia, just ordinary men trying to do their duty.” He was short-tempered from lack of sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he had nightmares about corpses attacking him.

  “What ever you call them, all I see are men with guns,” Deborah said disapprovingly.

  Proctor carried Jedediah's musket. He would have snapped at her, but he knew that the loss of both her parents had taken a toll on her. When he thought about all she had gone through, about the horrors she had seen, he was amazed that she stayed as pleasant as she did. She was strong-willed, that was for sure, but in the good way that carried a person through a bad harvest followed by a difficult winter. There was genuine kindness in her as well. If she ended up a spinster, it would likely be because she couldn't meet many young men in the isolated life of The Farm. He'd have to think about it, see if he didn't know a good fellow for her.

  “If we can get past the men with guns and into Boston, we can rest at my aunt's lodgings,” he said. That was their plan: get into Boston, find his aunt, then start hunting for the person who'd done all the terrible things to Deborah's family.

  “If you really need to rest that much, you should have let me spell you to sleep last night,” Deborah said.

  “And then not be able to wake if we're attacked again? No thanks.”

  They fell silent as a group of militiamen passed them. By their rough appearance—with beards and hunting caps—and the backwoo
ds sound of their voices, they'd come all the way down from the Maine territory beyond New Hampshire. The men stared at Proctor, who, after several sleepless nights and a day without shaving, looked just like them. Several of them nodded greetings to him.

  Either the heat of the sun or the lack of sleep caught up with him. As he nodded back, two of their faces turned to bone-white skulls shining through translucent skin.

  He stumbled. Deborah reached out to grab him, and the men laughed as they walked by.

  “What just happened?” she asked in a hushed tone.

  “I tripped over a rut in the road,” Proctor said, pulling his arm free and staggering forward to regain his balance.

  “That's nonsense,” she spit back, chasing after him. “I saw your knees buckle—I felt the surge of power through you.”

  “I haven't been sleeping well,” he said. “I think I'm falling asleep on my feet, dreaming while I walk.”

  “What kind of dream?”

  He described the vision of the skulls, how it was specific to two of the men.

  “Sometimes the talent surges through in a dream state,” she said. “Maybe you're still agitated about … what happened. And since you're sleepy, it pushes through.”

  “Maybe you're right,” he said.

  “You'll have to rest before we get to Boston. I'll need all your energy and strength when we find this Nance. You must let me perform a spell to help you sleep to night.”

  He thought about it for a moment. “If you show me how you do it, so I can do it too. And if you promise to stand guard.”

  She nodded and immediately slipped into other thoughts.

  Her cheeks had dust on them from the road. Proctor wanted to reach out and brush it off, but her head was bowed in such serious contemplation that he let it go.

  The Charlestown peninsula was dominated by two large hills that overlooked the little city at the water's edge. Across the narrow bay stood Boston. On his last visit, he had gone to Charlestown and taken the ferry to Boston. He thought they might do the same this time, but they found the road down to the water blocked by militia.

  A dozen or so farmers and tradesmen lounged about on a couple of stumps and an old fence, laughing and talking. At Deborah and Proctor's approach, they picked up their weapons and blocked the way.

  “Excuse me—” Proctor said.

  Their leader was an older man in a buckskin hunting shirt—he grew pale and washed-out before Proctor's eyes: his face became a skull and his flesh hung dead and bruised on his skeleton like the walking corpses on Deborah's farm. Proctor's knees buckled and he jammed his musket in the ground for a crutch.

  The men aimed their weapons at Proctor. “What's the matter?” the old man asked.

  “Nothing,” Proctor said, forcing himself upright. “We're just trying to find a way into Boston.”

  The old man looked Proctor up and down, then spit. “Nobody but Tories is trying to go into Boston.”

  Deborah stepped forward and placed her hand on his bare wrist. He could feel the power flowing into him, giving him strength to stand. The strength didn't erase the vision before his eyes: the old man was still a skeleton covered with rotting flesh. Now that Proctor looked, he saw that several of the other men were too.

  “We're sorry to bother you,” she said. “But our aunt is trapped in the city. We want to bring her out before the Lobsters do any more harm.”

  Our aunt sounded wrong to Proctor, even though he and Deborah had agreed on the pretense of being brother and sister.

  “Doesn't she have a husband to look after her?” the leader asked suspiciously. Proctor winced and averted his eyes because the talking skull unnerved him.

  “Not since our uncle died,” he said. “She rents a small house, does laundry for folks.”

  “If she does laundry for people, she's doing it for British officers,” said one of the young men.

  The leader answered, “Now, now, Elias, just because you never wash doesn't mean no one else does.”

  The men laughed at this. Proctor said, “My name's Proctor Brown, and I served with the Lincoln minutemen on April nineteenth, all the way from Concord to Lexington. We'd really like to help our aunt.”

  The leader looked at him sideways. “So you served under Captain Lamb?”

  “No, sir, that'd be Captain Smith.”

  The leader smiled. “Sorry, about the deception there, but I had to be sure.” He offered his hand. “The name's Nehemiah Johnson, and I wish I'd been there with you to give the Redcoats a licking.”

  “You'll get a chance soon enough,” Proctor said.

  Johnson's hand waited for him, all bone and rot beneath the translucent sheath of his visible skin. Proctor hesitated, then took hold of it—the touch turned his stomach. He shook it quickly, then let go before he puked.

  “If you head around and cross The Neck, you might get in that way,” Johnson told them. “Good luck with your aunt.”

  Deborah was already tugging on Proctor's arm, pulling him away. “It happened again, didn't it?”

  “Yes,” he said, mopping the cold sweat from his forehead.

  “I don't think it's from lack of sleep or nightmares.”

  “But they look just like those fellows we saw on the farm, all dead, even though they're up and walking. Could you see that too?”

  “No, I can't see anything but by the effect it has on you. What do we do now?”

  “We go around to The Neck,” he said. They walked in silence for a while, Proctor trying to control the shakiness he felt in all his limbs.

  When they left the peninsula and turned down the road toward Cambridge, Deborah said, “I don't know what's going on. But both times it happened, I've felt a strong surge of magic. All the hairs on my body stood on end at once, like when lightning is about to strike.”

  Proctor wasn't ready to talk about it quite yet, so he said, “You've seen lightning strike? I mean, close enough to feel it.”

  “Yes, when I was living with friends of my mother's down in New York State,” she said. She paused, tilting her head up at the sky, as though she was making up her mind to continue. After a bit, she said, “The storm was coming in over the other side of the valley, black thunderheads down there and clear skies right above us, just like a line separating light and dark, drawn right through heaven. I went outside to watch the storm develop. I was holding Sissy, their cat, in my arms—I was probably the same age as Alexandra. While I was standing there, listening to the distant thunder and watching the rain fall in torrents a mile or two away, my skin tingled and all the hairs stood on end, and then thunder went off right beside me, and lightning hit the barn roof not twenty feet away, set it on fire.”

  Proctor shook his head. “That's something.”

  “Yeah.” She rolled up her sleeve and held her arm out for him. Pale white scars, thin as a cat's claw, marked her skin. “The cat was terrified. Of course, I was scared too, so my first instinct was to hug her tight. Her instinct was to get away. She tore me up pretty bad trying to escape.”

  They walked farther while Deborah rolled down her sleeve. “Why were you living with friends of your folks?” Proctor asked. “Couldn't they take care of you?”

  “Oh, they could take care of me fine,” Deborah said.

  When she didn't elaborate, he asked, “Why then?”

  She had a thoughtful look to her eyes, as if she was making up her mind again how much to say. “Mother said there was only so much she could teach me, so she sent me off to stay with friends.”

  “Do you mean Friend friends, or just friends?” Proctor asked.

  “They weren't Quakers, if that's what you're asking,” she said. “Her name was Margaret, and she was Methodist, though not especially devout. On Sundays, we were as likely to be in the tavern as at church.” She frowned at some memory she was unwilling to share. “It helped me learn to make my own choices.”

  “My father never said much,” Proctor said. “But my mother seemed to think the fewer choices I m
ade, the less trouble I'd get in.”

  Deborah kept walking, refusing to say anything about getting into trouble.

  “So that's why you don't talk like your folks?” he asked.

  “You mean with all the thee-ing and thou-ing?”

  “Well, yeah, that's what I mean.”

  “Yeah, that's why. When I arrived at Margaret's, all her children mocked me. Later I learned that her two boys got in a fight with some other boys who were making fun of me, but I didn't know that then. I learned to talk like Margaret's family so I could fit in there. I didn't go back to the old way, not even when I came home.”

  “I am glad thee don't talk like thou parents anymore,” Proctor said in an approximation of her father's tone.

  “Thou don't and thy parents,” she corrected him. Then she saw that he was mocking her. She frowned at him, but the corners of her eyes crinkled. Then the mention of her parents hit both of them, and they remembered how they had died. All the humor drained out of Deborah's face in an instant.

  “I'm sorry,” Proctor said.

  “Stop that,” she replied. “Just stop.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop apologizing every time we mention my parents. It's not your fault that they're dead.”

  “But if I had only—”

  “Stop it!”

  He fell silent. She was so strong in the face of losing her parents. He didn't how he would handle the same thing. He knew his father wasn't there much in spirit anymore, but he still dreaded his passing.

  “It is solely the fault of those who killed them,” she said. “And they will be called to judgment for it.”

  They were far away from the militiamen now, headed toward Cambridge and the Harvard College buildings. Even though there were no men in sight, Proctor still felt ill. His limbs were rubbery and his stomach churned.

  “So we could be looking for the widow, or Miss Cecily, or this fellow Nance who's behind it all,” he said. “No matter how you cut it, I'm not sure how we're going to deal with them once we find them.”

  Privately, he hoped it was Nance. If they were attacked with magic again, and their magical defenses failed, it might come to killing. He was sure he couldn't kill Cecily or even the widow, not even if his own life depended on it. He might not even be able to kill Nance. After the past week, he'd thought he might have lost any taste he had for fighting and killing. He was afraid to tell that to Deborah.