by C. C. Finlay
“No, I just thought of it now,” she said with a shrug. “My original thought was that we just needed to be away from everyone. Where’s our spot?”
“Over here, in this clearing.”
He led her between the trees into a small clearing where the grass had been laid flat by the rain. From his bag, he took a handful of salt and began spreading a circle.
“Where did you get so much?” she asked.
“The commissary sent several complaints to headquarters but the thief was never found. Now please, let me concentrate while I do this.”
Inside the circle, he made a star with lines of salt, both to mark the five points and as a symbol of the country. When that was done, he set his bag down and took out flint and steel, and a bit of dry tinder. He knelt next to the candle and struck a few sparks, but none caught.
“I’ll do that,” Deborah said.
Kneeling beside Proctor, she lit the candle the same way she’d lit the lantern in the tent: the flame leapt from her fingertip to the wick.
“What are you staring at?” she asked as she lit the second candle and moved around the circle to the third.
“The widow used magic like that—”
“I’m not her,” Deborah snapped as she finished. “Hand me the other items.”
He reached into the bag and passed her a heavy folded coat. “This is a Continental officer’s jacket. Don’t ask how I got it.”
“I was more interested in how you didn’t get caught.”
“This is a blank letter of commission, the kind also used for officers, and this is a muster sheet, also blank, but I thought they symbolized every officer and enlisted man serving. And this is a hat I got from a Pennsylvania militiaman. Here is a man’s daily ration of food.”
“What about weapons? No man is a soldier without his weapons.”
Proctor wanted to disagree—he felt like he was still a soldier protecting their country even though he carried no weapons. “I’m supposed to be a Quaker. I couldn’t just start bearing arms now, could I? Especially without enlisting.”
She opened her mouth to argue, and then seemed to realize that they were both on edge because they were tense.
“Here,” he said, reaching into his bag. “A powder horn and flints for a musket. Muskets are useless without powder and flint. I remembered the way the widow used lead balls for her prayers—her spells, I mean. She meant to spell all the lead shot that day, not just the pieces she touched. I thought we could do the same.”
“That’s good,” Deborah said, arranging the items around the circle, inside the points of the star. She used the heavier items to pin down the papers. When she had placed everything the way she wanted it, Proctor handed her a folded blanket. She looked at him, puzzled. “Is this the common soldier’s blanket?”
“No, that’s for you. To sit on. To keep your dress dry.”
“Oh! That was very thoughtful.”
“You sound so surprised.”
“I just hadn’t given any thought to my dress.” She stepped into the center of the circle, careful not to touch or break any of the lines. She placed the blanket on the ground and then sat on it, on her knees, as if in prayer. “You should go away now, Proctor.”
He nearly laughed. “What?”
“If this goes wrong, if I draw all the spirits here and can’t release them, they may attach to—or even attack—the nearest person.”
“I won’t let them harm you,” he promised. Even though he didn’t know how he’d keep that promise. His skin prickled at the thought of all those spirits chained to his own soul. He didn’t know how Washington carried on.
“I was thinking more about harm to you,” Deborah said softly. “If you go back to the army, keep moving north, when I’m done I’ll catch up—”
“No.”
“But I could—”
“No.”
The candlelight flickered, throwing shadows across her face. Even more softly, she said, “Thank you. I do need you, more than you realize.”
She actually said thank you. He let her words fill the air between them until they faded away. She drew a deep breath and then began to recite the verses from Ezekiel that they had agreed to use for the spell.
“Wherewith ye there hunt the souls to make them fly, and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly. Because with lies ye have made the hearts of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and have strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way. Therefore ye shall see no more magic, for in the name of the Lord, I will deliver my people out of your hand.”
Cut down a bit, and a word changed here and there, but it would do. Proctor lost track of time while Deborah recited it, though he checked on her several times and could see the power flowing through her. He did his part, standing guard to make sure they were unwatched and unapproached.
Which is why he noticed the lights flowing toward them, twisting like eddies in turbulent water, carried downstream toward the rocks.
The cursed spirits were flowing to them. They came in a great semicircle, pulled like strands of toffee, from White Plains and the road and Fort Washington and places farther north. They came, like long snakes of light, writhing and squirming. Proctor quickly stepped around the clearing so that he didn’t come between them and Deborah.
“… no more magic. In the name of the Lord, I will deliver my people out of your hand.”
She shone with power, like a hurricane lamp herself. Sweat and agony both poured over her face. The spirits were almost there, drawn so thin that surely they must break, just like the others.
But they were coming slowly. As she continued to recite the words of the spell, she began to pant for breath, straining to stay upright, and her words faltered.
“… of the Lord … I will … deliver my people …”
The long, thin strands of light now turned into a mass of snapping, thrashing snakes, some lashing out as if they meant to bite, some pulling back toward the bodies they were unnaturally latched to.
“… deliver my people, out of your hand,” Proctor finished for her. She only needed a little bit more to start freeing the trapped souls. He reached inside to draw on his own magic and add it to hers.
And he found nothing. His magic was already drained.
Now that Deborah was weakened, now that he was looking for it, he saw his own talent flowing out of himself and into Deborah. She was draining him, the same way Cecily drained Lydia, the same way her master stole power from that little boy. And she was doing it without his permission, without even informing him.
In anger, he reached out to take it back.
Her head snapped up, eyes wide, afraid.
Before either could do anything else, a fierce wind slammed into the woods, knocking the tops of the trees together and making them clatter like the rattle of spears. Then the wind rushed over the ground, turning over the leaves like a pack of dogs sniffing for prey.
With no magic, and no weapons to defend himself—to defend them—Proctor felt suddenly vulnerable and helpless.
The wind hit their circle, blowing out the first candle and knocking it over. Then it whirled around the circle, knocking the other candles over and scattering the salt. Around and around it spun, smashing all of it, tearing the papers away, tumbling the other items, spinning all of it and the leaves up in a whirlwind with Deborah at the center.
“He’s found us!” she cried.
At the same instant the spirits stopped their twisting approach and snapped back to their scattered bodies. The air smelled like it did just before lightning struck, sharp and tainted. Through that smell, Proctor perceived another.
Cheap tobacco.
The whirlwind spun up and out through the trees and disappeared. Deborah sprawled on the ground, her cap torn from her head, hair tangled everywhere. He grabbed her under the arm and began pulling her to her feet. Her face turned toward him, dark hair spillin
g over her features. Her eyes were wide, panicked; her mouth hung dumbly open.
“Bootzamon,” he said.
Her hands groped for her cap like a blind woman. He saw it nearby on the ground, and bent to snatch it up as he dragged her toward the road. She clutched it in her fist as they ran madly through the trees. She stumbled once, and fell, and he ran back to lift her up, and they ran again until they broke through the trees and came to the road.
With shaking hands, she tied her cap on her head as they climbed over the wall. Those nearest the road, especially the married couples, saw their mussed clothing and gave them knowing looks. Even though they were strangers, Proctor flushed with shame. Deborah was still too panicked to notice. They both kept checking over their shoulders as they plunged into the midst of a group of soldiers for protection.
“Miss Walcott,” said a voice.
Proctor spun, his fist cocked to swing, but it was only the soldier who’d asked them to leave the tent. Bryan.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
They were staring at one. Bryan had been healed—Deborah had peeled his ghost off him and broken the curse. But now he was cursed again. A new spirit walked with him, propped up on Bryan’s shoulder like a wounded comrade. The spirit had a horrible chest wound, a gaping hole where it looked like the body had been hit by grapeshot. It lifted its head, and a familiar face gazed back at them.
“Livingston,” Deborah said.
“Yes, he was killed on the hill, fighting alongside Captain Hamilton,” Bryan said. He got all choked up. “I didn’t know him that well, but all of a sudden like, I can’t stop thinking about him—how sick he was, and you prayed over him every day, and then he’s dead, just like that, first day he goes back to the fighting.”
Livingston’s spirit tilted its head toward Deborah, in agony, pleading for release.
They were still walking, and Deborah turned her head away, to say something to Proctor, but then there were more spirits flowing past them, hundreds—as many as were killed in the battle. Just ahead of them, another spirit attached itself to someone else she had healed. They were seeking out those unaffected by the curse. Some spirits landed on officers who were already carrying another ghost.
Deborah began to cry. Proctor didn’t respond, still too numb from his discovery that Deborah had been stealing his power from him. It explained so much: why every time he reached for his talent, it wasn’t there. Bryan stepped up to put a hand on her shoulder and comfort her instead. But the presence of Livingston’s spirit, pleading for help, only made her sob worse.
“We failed,” Proctor mumbled.
He had never felt so sick, so hopeless, so betrayed. Deborah had used him like a slave. He had to check twice to be sure that one of the spirits had not become bound to him.
Just beyond the wall, a red glow caught his eye.
A pipe coal bobbed along the edge of the woods beside them, all the length of the road, until the woods finally ended. After that, hollow laughter followed them as they marched with the defeated army across the plains.
They could see the jets of flame from the cannons first, and then seconds later the dull boom came across the broad waters of the Hudson and echoed off the cliffs below them.
The Hudson River was the route to the heart of the states, dividing New England from the colonies below. It was clear the British meant to sail upriver and do just that, so they could pick off the remnants of the Continental army bit by bit.
Washington’s strategy had been to block the river passage by sinking hidden obstacles in all the channels—what the military men called a chevaux-de-frise. Two forts, one on the heights at the upper tip of Manhattan, and the other just across the river atop the steep cliffs of the New Jersey Palisades, protected the river and gave the Americans a place to fire on the British as they tried to navigate the sunken hazards. The fort on the New York side was named after Washington.
It had seemed like a sensible plan to Proctor, but the fort’s adjutant commander had defected to the British just two days ago, giving them plans for safe passage through the maze of obstacles. Proctor suspected a compulsion spell—the German certainly was powerful enough—but he had no way to prove it.
Knowing the safe passages through the river would not have made a significant difference with the fort’s cannons overlooking the ships. But the adjutant commander had also provided plans to the fort, and this morning the British forces, led by the Hessians, had begun their attack.
Again, cannons jetted flame in quick succession, and the dense smoke of musket and rifle fire rolled across the heavily wooded hills defending the main approach to the fort.
A rapid series of booms echoed off the cliff walls below.
Washington, who had been watching the progress of the battle through his telescope, lowered it from his face and knuckled something at the corner of his eye. Then he quickly lifted the spyglass and resumed watching the events.
Men stood back from him, but whether it was to grant him space out of respect, or because they felt the chill force of the spirits attached by the ghostly slave chain at his ankle, Proctor didn’t know. The conversation had died as the day advanced. Colonel Magaw, the fort commander, had promised to hold it against all attack through the end of December. He would be lucky to hold it until the end of the day.
Meanwhile, watching was all they could do from this side of the river. Deborah might have been powerful enough to bring rain or storms, but ever since their failed attempt to break the curse she’d been distant, unwilling to do anything but quietly heal the physical wounds of soldiers.
“Damn it,” muttered Tilghman. He stood next to Washington and watched through his own glass.
There was a chorus of demands for an explanation.
“They’re striking the flag,” Tilghman said. “The fort is lost.”
Proctor strained to see. He could see the grand union flag of the Continental army in his head—thirteen red and white stripes, with the Union Jack of the British flag made small in the corner. It symbolized the thirteen states and their British roots.
The chorus of voices around Proctor insisted it didn’t matter; they could hold the river from their position at Fort Lee. It was only a matter of time until the British were driven back. Mere words. Proctor paid it no attention. He was focused instead on the next attack, which came rushing, invisible to all but him, across the river.
The spirits of the patriots killed defending Fort Washington sped across the water, some faster than cannon shot, as the flag made its slow descent. The spirits stormed up the Palisades and came over the ramparts like a strike force, hitting the soldiers at the exact moment the flag came completely down.
Every man up there but Proctor was already cursed. The spirits didn’t shoot past them, but plunged through the men and joined with those already clinging to them.
One, showing horrible wounds, wrapped itself around Washington’s neck as if it were trying to pull him over the wall and into the water.
His chin sagged forward to his chest.
He reached up and covered his eyes.
A gasp escaped his lips.
And then he sobbed. The general of the patriot army stood there, as the fort bearing his name fell bloodily into enemy hands while he was helpless to do anything about it, and he sobbed. Watching him, Proctor could have sworn he aged years in that moment. His brown hair seemed to thin and pale toward gray. Lines became etched on his face. His shoulders shook as he wept.
And the spirit yanked and tugged, holding frantically to Washington’s neck. The other spirits chained to Washington’s ankle pulled it slowly away, passing him back to the end of the mob and chaining it by the ankle to its spot in the line.
Washington’s officers turned away from him, more out of respect than embarrassment. Or to cover their own senses of loss, despair, and fear. No man carried the weight that Washington did, but every one of them carried multiple spirits now.
; Every one of them but Hamilton. The young artillery colonel from New York only had his own ghost, a guest from before the Revolution. It was settled so deep into him by something other than magic that Proctor could scarcely make it out as more than a vague haze.
Hamilton went and stood by Washington. Though much shorter than the general, he stood straight and tall. He stared unflinchingly at the fort across the river until Washington cried himself out and lifted his head again.
Much too formal to address the general without being spoken to first, Hamilton drew in a breath and turned his head away from Washington, as if he were planning to speak to someone beside him, though nobody stood there.
“Well, that’s done,” he said. “We’d better go back to work.”
Washington answered with a silent nod that Hamilton didn’t even see. Hamilton took a few steps away, but Washington turned and wiped his cheeks clean with his fist. When the general spoke, his habitual voice of command sounded the same as it ever did. “Colonel, let us review the disposition of the artillery with an eye to discomfiting the British, shall we?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Hamilton.
The two men walked toward the headquarters, followed by the rest of Washington’s staff. Although Proctor was generally expected to keep himself available, he was not under the same rules of command as the soldiers, and he decided to go find Deborah instead.
He went to the tent he’d left her in earlier that morning, nursing the wounded. He opened the flap and peered inside. She was pacing, reciting something to herself, weaving air with her hands. The instant she noticed Proctor at the door, she rushed to the cot of a man and sat beside him, dabbing his head with a damp washcloth. He was the only patient in the tent—the other injured had been sent home to recuperate, left behind across the river, or returned to duty. The man was sleeping, but with a fever. His face was flushed and sweaty, and he tossed feebly in his bed. A sick stink filled the room like rotting flesh. The man’s ghost was blurry, just a vague outline of a man, as if it had already half detached.
“Deborah?” Proctor said.