by C. C. Finlay
She didn’t even look up to answer him. “I’m sorry, but I’m busy right now trying to save friend Donnelson. The surgeon sewed up his stomach wound and pronounced it healed but it’s become infected. Maybe later.”
“You’ve been saying later for days.”
She wrung out the cloth in a bowl, dipped it in clean water, and wiped Donnelson’s forehead again. “If you haven’t noticed, there’s a war occurring outside this tent. We’ve been on the move every single day.”
“We need to discuss what happened on All Hallows’ Eve.”
“We will, just as soon as there’s time.”
“When will that be?”
She slapped the rag down on the little camp table by the bed and leaned forward, pressing her hand to her forehead. “I don’t know—you’re the one who can read the future, not me.”
His hand knotted into a fist. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried to read the future, but if there was an egg anywhere near this army, somebody ate it before he could use it to scrye. At one time, he’d thought he didn’t need any focus to read the future, but that had been pride; now he doubted his ability to do any spell.
He uncurled his fingers, flexing them. Then he stepped outside, flinging the tent flap shut behind him.
And stopped. Deborah had gotten exactly what she wanted again. She wanted to make him angry, so he’d walk away, and he’d let her do it.
He stomped back into the tent. “I can’t believe you used me that way.” His voice was choked, angry, but there, he’d said it; it was out.
“I told you I was very sorry.” Her back was still turned to him. She held Donnelson’s hand between hers.
“But you were doing the very thing we’re fighting against, the use of others without their permission.”
“Tell that to your precious General Washington who drags that slave Lee with him wherever he goes. Or to most of the officers in this army. They all own slaves.”
His fist knotted up again. She was right—slavery was wrong, no matter who did it, but—“I’m trying to talk about us, about you and me.”
“I’m sorry, Proctor. Do you want me to grovel for you? Do you want me to prostrate myself at your feet and beg forgiveness?”
“I don’t want you to beg. I just … I feel betrayed.” He unclenched his fist and held his open hand out to her. “I want to understand why you did it.”
She rose so suddenly she knocked over the stool, spinning on him with her own hand raised in a fist. “What is there to understand? Nobody else at The Farm—not you, not Magdalena, nobody—is as powerful as me. And I’m not powerful enough!”
He took a step back and gestured for her to lower her voice.
Instead, she advanced on him. “You saw the widow—you’ve still got the scars on your arms from what she almost did. You saw what that southern woman did to those dead bodies. You’ve seen the monstrosities given life by the German.” She pointed at the ghost hovering over the cot like a cloud of miasma. “You see that, right there, thousands of men cursed, all at once, as if it were child’s play.”
He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was coming through the door. If the word witch slipped from her mouth and someone overheard it, they could have even more enemies, and those among their friends. “Deborah—you don’t want anyone to hear you. Quietly.”
“You wanted to understand?” she shouted. “Well, now you understand—I’m afraid. I’m afraid of those people. They killed my mother and father for no reason at all. And they want to kill me too. And who’s going to protect me?”
“I will.”
Her eyes flashed like dark pieces of stone, her lips tightened, and she spun her finger once in the air. Instantly he felt bonds, as if thick cables were wrapped around and around him, pinning his arms to his sides.
“Protect me?” she said. “You can’t even protect yourself. And they’re more powerful than I am. You can’t stop them if I can’t stop them.”
He thought he sensed a way to sever the bonds with a simple breaking spell, but he’d need to distract her to work it. “We’ve done all right,” he said. “I’ve beaten Bootzamon twice.”
“You got lucky.”
“Together we found a way to free men from the curse—”
“Only so they could be killed or cursed again.” Her face tensed in anger, and she whipped her hand in a circle, tightening the invisible bonds that held him until he could barely breathe.
“Is … everything … all … right … ?”
The voice came from the bed, where Donnelson sat propped up on one elbow. His ghost strained toward Proctor and Deborah, seeming to rub its hands with glee. Proctor wasn’t sure what that meant—but if he didn’t breathe soon, he’d pass out before he could find out.
“I … heard … shouting …”
Deborah dropped her hands to her waist, smoothing her dress over her hips. The bonds dropped from Proctor like severed ropes, and his knees almost buckled before he drew breath and righted himself.
“Everything is fine,” Proctor said. “Just a small family disagreement.”
“Can’t you see you’re disturbing a sick man?” Deborah said. “Leave now.”
“They’re still out there,” Proctor said, softly enough that he hoped only she could hear him. “Bootzamon and the widow’s ghost, Cecily, the German. They’ve got Lydia and that little boy. If we don’t stand against them together, we’ll surely fall to them alone.”
Donnelson slumped back to the bed, gasping in pain. Deborah turned away from Proctor, uprighting her stool and sitting down again.
“I still may be able to help this man,” she said, wiping his brow to cool him. “I know how to heal. I’ll stick to what I know. You should do the same.”
He walked over to the tent and held open the flap. “Funny,” he said, pausing before he went out. “I thought I knew you.”
He lingered a moment, hoping she would do something to change his mind, but she only sat there, back to him, pretending to take care of a man too far gone to help. He slapped the tent shut and stomped off. Let her be that way. If she wanted him to leave her alone, he would.
Nearby, a noncommissioned officer was instructing some of the men as they stored barrels of flour, all the army’s provisions for the remaining winter. “Do you know where I can find General Washington’s headquarters?” Proctor asked.
“At the river,” the veteran said, jerking his thumb. His ghost echoed him, jerking its thumb the same direction. “Out by the Dutchman’s gristmill.”
“Thank you,” Proctor said, tipping his hat. The other man looked at him oddly, and Proctor realized it was a wide-brimmed Quakerish hat. Quakers tipped their hats to no one. He walked away quickly without saying anything instead of trying to repair the fiction. As he followed the other man’s directions, his head swirled with the thought that if he was done with Deborah, maybe he ought to be done pretending to be a Quaker too. But when he encountered others along the way, he was careful not to take off his hat for them.
He saw the gristmill from the road and then, as he came closer, spied the large, long gambrel-roofed house that flew the flag of the general’s headquarters. He went in the open door and saw a small crowd surrounding a table covered with maps and papers. Colonel Henry Knox, who was taller than Washington and weighed three hundred pounds, filled the space of two men, bookishly holding a page up to his face to read it. Colonel Glover, the wiry-haired sailor from Marblehead, only half the size of Knox, stood on his toes trying to read along with the other man. Their ghosts jostled and fought with each other, though the two men restrained their own tempers to focus on their work. The room felt crowded by the restless spirits clinging to Washington and the other officers, all stirring as if the defeat of the army would mean their freedom.
The men all took their cue from Washington, who, somehow, ignored the great mob chained to him ankle-to-ankle like a line of slaves. Tilghman, bent over a table with the general, saw Proctor and greeted him with the slightest dip of his head before turn
ing back to work.
A slightly built man with a cleft chin and calm, thoughtful eyes leaned against one wall, watching Washington and the others; he looked more like a schoolboy, intent on following a lesson, than an officer, but Proctor recognized him as a lieutenant from the Third Virginia. The ghost that clung to him was that of an old veteran, someone from the wars with the French and the Indians. The ghost also appeared calm and thoughtful, as if death were less of a burden than the one he’d carried during life.
Proctor struggled to recall the officer’s name as he sidled up next to him. “James?”
The man’s ghost thrust out a hand to shove him away. Proctor shivered as the spectral palm passed through him, just as the young man turned.
“Yes, Monroe, James Monroe,” he said.
“Is there any place a fellow might catch a nap?”
“There’s space in the rooms upstairs. But if you’re cold, I’d grab a spot in the second parlor, nearer the fire. Bound to stay warmer there.”
“Kindly appreciated,” Proctor said, marveling how those Virginians always found the northern states so cold. Still, he agreed with Monroe: the fire sounded good. He was weary, and chilled beyond the air by the hovering presence of so many spirits.
He grabbed a quick bite of bread and a pint of watered rum from a sideboard set out to feed the flow of officers who filled the room, and made his way through the downstairs rooms looking for the other parlor. When he found it, there was only one thin officer there, the sharp angles of his knees and elbows hunched over a small folding camp table next to the fire. He was writing intently on a sheet of paper that hung over the edge of his table. Several other pages lay scattered at his feet.
“Do you mind if I come in?” Proctor asked.
The other man continued scratching words on the paper. Without looking up, he said, “Suit yourself. This is a country for free men.”
“Thank you,” Proctor said.
He had gone in and taken one of the other cane-bottomed chairs against the wall before he realized the other man had no apparent ghost. Somehow he had escaped the curse.
“Do you serve in the army?” Proctor asked.
The man finished what he was writing, held the sheet up to the fire to read it, then set it on the floor next to the others. “Aide-de-camp to General Greene,” he said, taking another sheet of paper and sharpening his quill before continuing his composition.
Proctor didn’t understand it. How did this one man escape the curse? He was studying the man and thinking about this when a new voice showed at the door.
“Mind if I join you gentlemen?”
James Monroe stood there, trailing his gaunt, angry spectral veteran from the French wars. Proctor had liked the warmth of the room, and he braced for a wave of cold as the cursed man entered. Also, Monroe’s spirit was the most aggressive he’d seen, the first to try to actually attack him.
“Suit yourself,” the writer answered, hunched over his table again. “This is a country for free men.”
Monroe lifted his foot to step through the door.
And froze.
The moment he passed the barrier, a spirit rose up out of the writer’s body, the shining figure of a woman, almost too bright to be seen. This was no thin, sexless angel: she was full-hipped, with rounded belly. Wings of pale fire, feathered with tiny dancing flames, unfolded from her back, and she snapped her hand toward the door as if swatting a fly.
Monroe’s ghost recoiled as if the swat had hit him and had burned. Instantly it began tugging and pulling Monroe, trying to escape the room the way a whipped dog might flee its attacker.
Monroe cleared his throat. “No, I can see you are working. I’m sure it’s important. I’ll leave you to it.”
The writer finished his sentence, dipped his pen in the ink, and paused a moment while a fat drop of liquid fell from the tip back into the bottle. “I’m very obliged to your kindness.”
Monroe spun on his heel, leaving the doorway empty as he proceeded to another room. Proctor watched him go, tracing the vivid relief in the aspect of the ghost. When he turned back, the writer’s spirit had disappeared. The man continued writing, as if oblivious to everything that had just transpired.
Well, they were all oblivious to what was transpiring. They felt the effects, but—unless they had the secret talent shared by Deborah and Proctor—couldn’t see the cause.
Proctor put another log on the fire and stirred the coals. He was sick of this struggle, tired of the ghosts that haunted every step of the army. It was too much to face, too hopeless.
Yet here was a soldier, a commissioned officer and aide to General Greene, who was untouched. As far as Proctor could tell, the man had no natural gift, no direct control over magic, yet somehow he had a powerful protection against the curse. A powerful protector.
When the other man finished writing another sheet and set it aside, Proctor cleared his throat. “I believe we’ve met, but I can’t recall your name.”
The other man smiled, as if he had heard that before. “Tom Paine,” he said.
“Pleased to meet you. My name’s Proctor Brown.”
Paine waited a moment. “Common sense.”
Every time he used the false name, he was afraid someone would catch him, still, even after so many months. Licking his lips, he said, “I’m sorry, but that’s my name. I’m not sure how it’s common sense.”
Paine tapped his chest. “No, I wrote Common Sense.”
Proctor stared at him blankly.
“The pamphlet, arguing for American independence—”
Suddenly it clicked for Proctor. “Oh, you’re Thomas Paine, the man who wrote Common Sense! Of course. Last year, before the Declaration of Independence. Now you’re an aide to General Greene.”
Paine stared at Proctor as if he were dim-witted. When he spoke again, it was slowly, with more emphasis on each word. “Yes, that’s exactly as I told you. Now, if you don’t mind, I should get back to writing.”
He took a clean sheet of paper and smoothed it across the tiny desk. He dipped his quill and had it poised over the blank sheet.
“What’re you writing?” Proctor asked.
A fat blob of black ink dripped onto the page. Paine grabbed a rag and was quick to blot it up. “I’ve been trying to write something new to inspire the soldiers and citizens of this great country to greater sacrifice in the hour of its need.”
“How is it going?” Proctor asked
Paine held the blemished sheet up to the light and frowned. “Roughly. All inkspots and letters crossed out as soon as they’re written. But that’s the way of it. Sometimes the road to the right phrase leads through a thicket of wrong words.”
“The way the path to peace and freedom leads through war and sacrifice.”
“Well, yes,” Paine said, now clearly annoyed with Proctor. “I’d best return to work. Don’t let me disturb you any further.”
While they talked, Proctor had been studying Paine closely for some clue to his protection, or protector, but he saw none. He only had the image, seared into his head, of the fiery-winged woman standing in the way of the cursed spirit. Paine began writing again. Proctor decided to approach the question directly. He waited until Paine held his pen above his ink, and then spoke.
“Do you believe in angels?”
Paine lifted his head, as if surprised to find Proctor still there. “I beg your pardon.”
“Do you believe in angels?”
Paine sat up straight, squared his shoulders, and faced Proctor directly. “If this is about the passage I wrote in Common Sense, I stand by every word of what I said. Call me atheistic or vilify me by any name you choose, but I still contend that this country will never be strong so long as it gives primacy to any one religion over another. If we all held the same faith, there would be no opportunity for virtue in any of us.”
“What?” asked Proctor.
“Huh,” grunted Paine.
“So you’re not—” Paine started at the same
second Proctor said, “I wasn’t—”
They both stopped.
“Angels,” Proctor said. “I only wondered if you had ever experienced something you might describe as a divine presence.”
Paine’s mouth, creased in anger, softened at the corners, and then the ghost of a smile played across his lips. “Yes, I have known an angel.”
Proctor shot forward in his seat. “Really?”
The other man laughed. “Mary, my wife. If there are such things as angels, then she was of their kind, bright and glorious, and left for a foundling with her dull parents.”
Disappointment welled up in Proctor: Paine was speaking metaphorically when he spoke literally. The habit of empathy made him ask, “What happened to her?”
Pleasure disappeared from Paine’s face. “She died giving birth to our first child.”
The two men were silent for a moment. Paine leaned back in his chair and looked into the fire, rubbing his chin with his writing hand. Proctor awaited signs of the angel’s return, wondering if naming her would call her, but nothing showed. He had the impression that she only acted when Paine was in danger, as when someone with the curse came too close. If it was his wife, she may have had the talent herself—many women who did had trouble conceiving, or passed away in childbirth. Deborah said that was the first thing that drew so many witches to midwifery. If she did have the talent, she might have attached herself to her husband on purpose, as a way of staying with him.
“She was a Quaker like you,” Paine offered.
The voice startled Proctor out of his deep reverie, and then his reaction was amplified by his own uncertainty. Wasn’t he pretending to be a Quaker anymore? Where did things stand with him and Deborah?
Paine saw his reaction. “It was not my intention to give offense. If I’ve misjudged you by your clothes …”
“No, you’ve not misjudged me, friend,” Proctor said quickly. “You’re a writer, are you not? You choose a cover for your book to reflect the interior, and good men do the same.”
“Just remember, friend,” Paine replied. “If God could clothe the world in myriad colors, as varied as all the flowers of the fields, as bright as the birds of the forest, then it can be no sin for you to wear something more cheerful than brown and black.”