by C. C. Finlay
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just too much of a strain.”
“No, you’re fine,” Deborah said. “You should sleep. We’ll sit here and pray over you for a while.”
“You really don’t need to go to all that trouble,” he said. “I’ve seen enough men die now to know what’s coming. I’ve made my peace with the Lord.”
“And I’ve made my decision to change His mind if I can,” she said, brushing the hair back off Livingston’s forehead.
“See what she’s like,” he said to Proctor.
“Oh, I had a notion already,” Proctor replied.
“Rest now,” Deborah commanded, her hand on his forehead. The man’s eyes blinked sleepily and he smiled, then his head sagged to one side and he fell instantly asleep.
“That was another—” Proctor left the word spell unsaid.
Deborah stared at him challengingly as she pulled up the man’s covers and tucked in his arms. “It’s easier for us to pray if he’s resting.”
Some of the other men looked their way. Deborah lifted a small blanket from the end of the bed and pulled it through the air as if drawing a curtain closed around them.
“They can’t hear us now,” she told Proctor.
It was hard to believe that was true—the other men weren’t more than six feet away—but he saw how powerful she was becoming and accepted it. Nevertheless, when he spoke again, he still held his voice to a whisper.
“Is it safe, using so much … prayer?” he asked.
“I need to practice to grow stronger,” she said. “So, yes, I practice every chance I have. Most of what I do makes these men better, helps them to heal faster, gets them back on their feet. Livingston here is the exception, because there is nothing wrong with him except the curse.”
“What other … prayers have you tried over him?” Proctor asked.
“I’ve used every verse for casting out spirits that I can think of, but they all have a similar effect.”
“Those are for evil spirits,” Proctor said. “This may be an evil spell that ties these spirits to the soldiers, but this isn’t an evil spirit in and of itself. It looks like a pious man.”
Deborah looked at Livingston and his spirit thoughtfully. “Yes,” she admitted. “He kind of reminds me of the Reverend Emerson.”
Proctor smiled at the mention of the Concord minister who was responsible for the two of them meeting. That seemed like a lifetime ago, even though it had only been a year and a half. Not even that. He looked at the spirit and saw the resemblance. “He’s a chaplain now, serving with the army at Fort Ticonderoga.”
“I know,” she said. “If he were closer, I would ask him for help with our prayers.”
“Prayer-prayers or prayers?”
“Both.”
“What other kinds of prayers could we try?”
Deborah folded her hands in her lap and bowed her head to think. “Are there verses for release or letting go?”
Proctor thought about it for a moment. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
“Very funny.”
“Just choose a different focus.” He pulled the little knife from his pocket and lay it surreptitiously on the edge of the blanket, next to Livingston. “Like that, for example.”
“Cut the connection between the spirits?”
“It’s worth a try.”
Deborah nodded, placing one hand over the knife and another on Livingston. “Thine hand shall be lifted on thine adversaries, and all thine enemies cut off.”
She was so powerful that Proctor felt the magic flowing through her, falling like the warmth of the sun on his skin. But nothing happened with Livingston, who slept, pale and frail, while the ghost twisted and turned above his bed.
“Let’s try it again,” Proctor said.
“No, that’s not the right verse,” Deborah whispered. “The ghost is not his enemy—whoever it is, he’s just another casualty, trapped in the world when he should be freed from it. What’s the verse, The Lord is righteous. He hath cut the something—”
“Psalm One Twenty-nine? The Lord is righteous. He hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked. Let them all be confounded and turned back who hate Zion.”
“Yes, that’s it. Neither Livingston nor”—she nodded toward the ghost—“is wicked, but the cords that bind them together are evil and filled with hate. Can you hold my hand and pray it for me?”
“Anything you need,” Proctor said. He took her hand and bowed his head. When she whispered she was ready, he began reciting the verse. Hand in hand with her, he felt her power even more intensely than before. He called on his own talent, trying to add it to hers, hoping it was not too weak.
She placed Livingston’s hand over the knife and held them both while Proctor recited the verse another time. He thought he saw something—the ghost stopped twisting, almost growing stiff or tensing. Livingston’s spirit also rose in his body. The wind outside the tent picked up suddenly, snapping the fabric of the wall. Cold air flowed over Proctor’s skin like water from a mountain spring.
Both spirits blinked out for a split second as he came to the end of another repetition of the verse. Livingston gasped at the exact same moment, but then his spirit and the ghost shimmered back into existence and he breathed more easily again.
“One more time,” Deborah said. “We almost did something there.”
Proctor nodded, although he was unsure what they had almost done, and began reciting the verse again. Deborah’s eyes squeezed shut and her brows furrowed, and light seemed to flow into her like the flame lighting up a hurricane lamp. She was doing something with the knife as a focus; probably imagining a cutting of the tangle between the two spirits.
It was taking her a while to find her way to the proper spot. Her right hand squeezed Proctor fiercely as she lifted her left hand off the bed and mimed the kind of cutting gesture she might make with the cord of a newborn baby.
The spirit of the minister was agitated. He leaned toward Proctor, as if eagerly trying to speak, and then both spirits blinked away again. Livingston opened his mouth to take a breath and simply stopped breathing.
Proctor stopped in mid-verse and yanked his hand free of Deborah, who jerked back, startled.
“What? Why did you just do that? I was so close.”
Coughing, hacking for air, Livingston swallowed air in deep gulps, half waking before he mumbled and rolled over. Deborah stared at him, eyes wide with a new uncertainty.
“I think that cutting the bond is too sudden,” Proctor said. “I don’t think it released the spirits so much as it destroyed them.”
She leaned back, covering her face with her hand for a moment. “Dear Light,” she murmured. “Thank you for stopping me, Proctor.”
“It was working,” he said. “Maybe the German has a trap built into the spell—”
“No,” she said firmly, standing abruptly, turning once, then sitting down again. “It’s like I was telling you. It’s just impossible. There’s no way to break it.”
“We don’t know that,” Proctor said. “We only know that the ways we’ve tried don’t work.”
“What other ways are there? I’ve been trying for a fortnight and this is the closest I’ve come.”
“Then we know we’re on the right path,” he said. He reached out and squeezed her hand again, but she let it lie limp in his fingers then tugged it free. “Look, there has to be a different way to do this.”
“I’m not going to try again,” she said. “Not if it means a spirit never gets where it’s supposed to go, not if it means that a man might die.”
“I’m thinking there’s a gentler way,” Proctor said.
Deborah raised her eyebrows.
“Releasing, casting out, cutting—they’re all methods of power.”
“It’s a powerful spell—it will take power to break it.”
“But there’s power in slowness too. Have you ever made caramel toffee?”
“Huh?” She looked at him a
s if he’d lost his mind.
“I’m sorry. One of the officers, Tilghman, he carries some around in his pocket and never shares it, at least not with me, so it’s been on my mind. But you know how to make toffee?”
“Sure …,” she said, clearly not knowing where he was going with the thought.
“You can’t yank it apart suddenly. And it’s hard to cut, and not only because your knife gets fouled. No, you have to pull it apart slowly. Slowly, but steadily, and the pieces come apart. Do you see what I’m saying?”
“If we could find a way to stretch the two spirits away from each other, they might naturally separate.”
“Yes.”
“But how do we know that the same thing won’t happen, that just happened here?”
“It might. We’ll watch and see, and if it’s headed that direction, if there’s any sign of that at all, we’ll stop. But I’m thinking …” He trailed off, not sure if he could say what he had planned to say.
“Go on,” she said.
He decided to just be honest. “The man who created this sp—prayer is powerful, very powerful. So he’ll have defenses in place against powerful counterprayers. But if we think differently than he does, do it by our way instead of his, we might be able to break it.”
“That’s smart,” Deborah said.
“Careful—my head may start to swell.”
She rolled her eyes at him and smiled briefly, but only briefly. The deeply intense, focused expression returned. “We need a verse as a focus for our prayer, something about stretching things out. Something about the Exodus, you think?”
“Reaching the Holy Land after a long delay—it might work.” Proctor reached for his pockets, feeling the frayed flaps under his fingertips, even though he already knew he’d left home without his Bible.
But Deborah understood his gesture. She lifted her head to one of the other patients. “Friend Hawkins,” she said. “May we borrow your Bible, the one I see you reading each day?”
The young man with his leg bound up and his arm in a sling, in too much pain to sleep, was eager to help them. His ghost was horribly mangled, like some of the men Proctor saw hit by cannon shot at Brooklyn. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But all I have is this Bay Psalm Book. You’re welcome to it, if it will help your prayers.”
“It will indeed,” Deborah said. She rose and went to his bed to take the book that he offered her. “Thank you muchly.”
“David, is he going to make it?” Hawkins asked.
“That’s in the hands of God, isn’t it?”
“We have to have faith, don’t we?” he said.
“Faith and prayer,” she said with a smile, and placed a hand on him, whispering something that eased his pain.
She handed the well-thumbed Psalter to Proctor and waved the folded blanket through the air, reestablishing their spot of silence.
“There’s nothing of the Exodus in here,” Proctor said, tapping the closed book against his palm.
“We can use the Psalms,” Deborah said wearily. “They do go on forever.”
“There must be something.” Proctor flipped through the pages. “They’re all about protection and deliverance. Look, what about this one?”
“Psalm Thirteen?”
“Waiting a long time for God to deliver you from your enemies. It fits the bill.”
“What do I do while we recite that prayer?”
Proctor looked at the body on the bed, and at the two spirits bound to each other. “You can touch them, right? So pull them apart like toffee.”
She sighed and sat down. “All right then.”
He placed the open Psalter on his lap and took her hand again. “O Jehovah, how long wilt Thou forget me aye? How long wilt Thou Thy countenance hide from me far away? How long shall I counsel, in my soul take, sorrow in my heart daily? O’er me set how long shall be my foe?”
Deborah inhaled, drawing in power with her breath, and placed her folded hands over Livingston. To the others, it might look like she was praying, but Proctor could see that she was kneading the spirits where they connected, working them between her palms like dough.
“… Illuminate mine eyes, lest I the sleep of death do take. Lest my foe say, ‘I have prevailed ’gainst him.’ And me those who do trouble, do rejoice …”
When he reached the end of the Psalm, he began again. He was on his third recitation before he could begin to see a difference due to Deborah’s actions.
As the cord binding the spirits began to thin, the soul of the minister drifted away. Livingston, as far as Proctor could see, seemed to fall deeper and deeper into sleep.
Sweat beaded on Deborah’s forehead, and her cheeks flushed red with effort. Proctor wanted to suggest that she take a break, but he was afraid to interrupt her.
He’d lost count of the number of times he’d recited the Psalm when the cord finally snapped. Deborah gasped and slouched forward, catching herself before she sprawled across the bed. The spirit of the minister hung in the air for a moment and then disappeared like smoke dispersed by wind with a sigh that Proctor thought audible to everyone in the tent. Livingston’s body had gone completely still. Proctor could not see his spirit at all. He reached out his hand to assure Deborah that it was not her fault, that it was the work of the Covenant, their fault the man had died.
Livingston sighed again—the sound had come from him—and rolled over. His face was full of natural color again, and his cheeks no longer seemed so thin or sunken.
Joy sparked through Proctor. “You did it,” he said.
“It was a lot harder than pulling toffee,” she said. And then she looked at him and grinned. She was so beautiful when she smiled that way, and it was unique to her, something Emily could never match. “We did it! You figured it out for me.”
She embraced him jubilantly and he hugged her back. Suddenly, he was very aware of the warmth of her body. She tilted her head up to say something to him, and he pressed his lips against hers. He kissed her hard, and she kissed him back hard, and for a second it was full of joy.
Then she seemed to realize what they were doing, and pulled away. They both glanced around nervously to be sure no one had seen them. Deborah touched her fingers to her lips and looked at her patient. “Do we have time to free every man in the army?” she whispered.
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “We’ll do as much as we can. It will get easier. Most of the men have signed on until the end of the year. No matter how much they despair, I believe most will hold on until then.”
“That’s two and a half months. Maybe eighty days.” Her face fell again, losing all the exuberance that had dressed the last few moments. “This was exhausting, Proctor. Even if it gets easier, I don’t know that I can do it more than a few times a day.”
“All we are asked to do is help those we can. The fact that we can’t save everyone is no reason not to save anyone.”
“Right,” she said. She reached out and squeezed his hand again. “Thank you for reminding me of that. Thank you for everything.”
“You were amazing,” he said. “You are amazing.”
It felt like everything was going to be all right between them again. If she would just lean forward and say that she loved him, if he could just find the words to reassure her that he felt that way toward her, it would all be all right. They looked into each other’s eyes and stepped toward another embrace.
Voices sounded outside the tent, and Deborah pulled away instantly.
“Deborah?” he whispered, his arms still open.
“What will they think?” she whispered back.
The tent flap snapped open to reveal a sky lightening toward dawn and to let in the sound of a single bird singing. A man and woman in their mid-twenties stepped inside. The spirit attached to the man was a British soldier, clearly eager to escape.
“Thought we’d find you here,” the woman said. She was the pretty young woman Proctor had seen the day before, and the man was the former patient.
&nbs
p; Deborah rose to greet them. Proctor followed her, gently laying the Psalter on Hawkins’s bed as he passed.
“Proctor, this is John and Margaret Corbin. John has been discharged. John, Margaret, this is my …” She hesitated a moment. “My brother, Proctor.”
“Pleased to meet you,” John said, vigorously shaking Proctor’s hand.
“John had the camp fever,” Margaret said. “I didn’t think there was anything anyone could do for him better than myself, but your sister had him back on his feet in a day. It’s like magic.”
Deborah’s smile froze on her face.
“It’s nothing of the sort,” Proctor said quickly. “Our mother was a healer, and her mother before her. There are things you learn, things that get passed down, that you hardly even notice or could explain.”
“Well, she has a gift,” Margaret said. “And she was a friend to me when I was a bit short with her too.”
“It’s nothing,” Deborah said.
“It’s something to us,” John said. “That’s why we came to say good-bye.”
“Are you going?” Deborah asked.
“No, you are,” Margaret said.
“The British are marching to attack,” Corbin explained. “The orders were just issued. General Washington’s going to take the main body of the army north to White Plains to meet them. I’m in artillery, so I’ll stay here to defend the heights.”
Margaret wrapped her arm through his and smiled at him. “And I’ll be staying with him, in case they need an extra hand with the shells.”
There was a moment of silence while this news sank in.
Proctor met Deborah’s eyes and saw that she understood. “I work at headquarters,” he said. “I’ve been here … praying all night. It’s another hour till reveille, but I’d better report back.”
“Of course,” Deborah said.
“It was good to meet you,” John called behind him.
Proctor didn’t answer. Another battle with the Continental soldiers weighed down by the curse could end the war in favor of the British. He didn’t mind the British winning as much as he feared the evil the Covenant might do if they achieved their goal. He sprinted all the way back to headquarters.