by C. C. Finlay
“No, not Lydia. She was Miss Cecily’s slave in more ways than one, body and soul. She’s forced to serve Miss Cecily in spirit, but Cecily also draws on Lydia’s power, adding it to her own. That’s the kind of thing the Covenant does, and it’s wrong.” It’s what Deborah had done too. Had he forgiven her for that yet? Had she forgiven herself?
“Is that why you fight them?” Alex asked.
“As long as there’s breath in my body,” he said. “For that, and for what they did to Deborah’s parents and yours. But everyone who serves them is slave to another. Cecily is bound to a German necromancer, the same way that Lydia is bound to her, and all her power flows into him. I am certain he’s the one who set the curse.”
“Can’t we kill him and break it?”
Proctor thought about the time they’d faced him at Gravesend. He didn’t think he was ready to face the German again, not yet. And there was another problem. “A curse outlives the witch who cast it. As long as its focus remains—a house or a family—the curse continues. From everything Deborah and I could tell, this curse was placed on the Continental army, and it will last until the army is gone. Or until we find a way to break it.”
Alex seemed to shrink as they spoke. She looked like a young girl again, not even twenty, one who’d lost her parents and seen too many other people die violently and now faced the loss of even her brothers, the last friends and protectors she had in the world.
“I need your help to break the curse,” Proctor said.
She shook her head. “I can’t help you.”
“We’ll need a circle, as big as we can make it, to draw enough power to break this necromancer’s power.”
“And who do you have for this circle? You and me?”
“We’ll go get Deborah.” As he said it, he knew it was true. Alex had lost all confidence in her talent, and didn’t want to use it. But with the three of them—with Deborah, frankly, since she was the most powerful of them—they might be able to draw enough talent to break the curse.
“You, me, and Deborah?” Alex said, with a snort of miserable laughter. “The three of us?”
Proctor leaned forward. The three of them might be able to do it. “Yes.”
“That’s no circle, it’s a triangle. If this German necromancer has Cecily and Lydia and whoever else he has enslaved—I’m right in assuming he has other witches to draw on?”
“Yes,” Proctor admitted weakly.
“Then the three of us can’t draw enough power to break that. Cecily alone nearly killed us all.”
“Alex, please—”
“No! It’s foolish and plain wrong. I’m sorry I was ever drawn into this. I’m sorry for what happened to Deborah. But I won’t use my talent again, not ever.”
“Then there’s nothing anyone can do to help your brothers,” Proctor said.
Her eyes flashed anger at him. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything the door flew open. Alex instantly grabbed her hat and pulled it down over her head, hiding her face. She stood up and slammed her chair against the wall, grabbing her rifle.
The figure coming through the door scarcely seemed to notice. His long, intelligent face was worried, distracted. It was Tom Paine. “There you are.”
Proctor stood, ending up beside Alex, who couldn’t rush out the door until the other man moved. “It’s good to see you again, friend. What can I do for you?”
“You’ve already done it,” Paine said, approaching Proctor. Alex started to leave, but Proctor grabbed her arm and held her. “You found me the paper I needed to write my latest pamphlet. I’ve just come from Philadelphia, where, after more struggle than I expected, it’s been typeset for printing. I could never have finished it if I hadn’t written so much that first night. I felt a great spirit guiding my hand.”
“I’m glad to have helped,” Proctor said, holding on tight as Alex tried to pull her arm free without making a scene. “But you’ve already thanked me for that. You didn’t need to come find me again.”
Paine snapped his fingers as if trying to recall something. “It was your friend,” he said. “That very pleasant young woman.”
Proctor dropped Alex’s arm and grabbed Paine’s hand. “Deborah?”
“Yes, that’s her name,” he said. “I saw her in Philadelphia, in an upholstery shop of all places.”
Deborah was still alive. Thank God. “Is she well?”
“She is, and she asked about you, or I would never have recognized her.”
“Where is she?”
“John Ross’s shop, on Mulberry Street, between Second and Third, close to the waterfront. His wife Betsy is a Friend, but also a friend to liberty, like you.” Paine turned toward the door. “I have to go report to General Greene. Philadelphia is ready to quit the fight, if we don’t do something to change their hearts at once. But I wanted to find you and let you know Deborah was well and asking after you.”
“You’ve done me a greater favor than you know,” Proctor said.
“As you did for me,” Paine replied. He dashed out the door as fast as he’d entered it, forgetting to close it as he left.
Alex stood there rubbing her arm. “You didn’t have to hold me so tight,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. It felt like the only thing he had said to her since she arrived.
“You were very worried about Deborah,” Alex said. “You didn’t even know where she was.”
“No, I didn’t,” he admitted.
“Do you think she can break the curse on my brothers? I don’t want to see them hurt by this. They’re all the family I have left.”
“If anyone can help them, it’s Deborah.”
“She’ll have to do it without me,” Alex said. “I’ll go with you to find her, but I won’t touch the talent again, not for anything.”
“Not even if it touches you?”
She didn’t answer that.
Proctor looked out the window at the sky. They could travel for a couple of hours yet tonight, be halfway there by morning. He grabbed his bag from under the table and slung it over his shoulder. “Do you need to tell your brothers that you’re going?”
“If I do, they won’t let me go,” she said. “Not without explaining, and I don’t think I want to explain the curse to them. So the sooner we leave, the better.”
He nodded. “If you meet me at the edge of camp, just past the smithy, in half an hour’s time, I’ll have supplies and a horse. Can you ride double?”
“If you’ve got a horse that will carry us,” she said. “If you don’t, I’ve walked a few hundred miles already. I can walk a few more.”
“It might come to that,” he admitted. Two horses would be impossible, and even one might be difficult. It made him wish for Singer, who’d been so indefatigable on the trip to Virginia and whom he’d left behind in Massachusetts.
Looking either direction to make sure she wasn’t seen, Alex stepped out the door and dodged behind the next house. Proctor watched to make sure she was headed in the right direction before he followed her.
The air was cold and dry on his lungs as he stepped outside, and he squinted against the bite of the wind and the brightness of the sun on the snow. He stopped by stores and talked the quartermaster’s aide into giving him a few extra measures of biscuit and salted meat. “We’re short of couriers, so we’re taking important letters to Philadelphia.”
“What about the regular couriers?” the quartermaster asked. “They just left this morning.”
“It’s a critical letter, and can’t wait until tomorrow,” Proctor said. He was thinking about a spell he might use to persuade the quartermaster’s aide, but the man recognized his face from Washington’s headquarters and served out the supplies.
He stopped at the stable, hoping for similar results. “I’ve got letters to—”
“That’s the mount over there,” the stable boy said as he shoveled the stall. “Don’t push it too hard and it’ll be fine.”
The horse was
clearly intended for someone else, but Proctor didn’t stop to explain. Instead he moved quickly, before the other rider showed or the stable boy realized he wasn’t the right courier. It didn’t matter what the other man’s message was: Proctor’s mission was more vital to the success of the army, even if no one knew it.
Leading the horse out of the stable, he swung into the saddle and directed it around to one of the back streets. A new group of carriages and wagons waited on the main road, visible between the houses. One of the horses was a sturdy bay, reminding him again of Singer. Even the way the horse tossed her head and looked smartly around was similar. But it was only a trick of desire, seeing what he wanted to see.
He leaned forward and patted the heavy gelding on its neck. This was the horse he had, and it was big enough and strong enough to carry two of them to Philadelphia, which was all they needed. Although he hoped to reach Alex unseen, luck brought Colonel Tilghman hurrying down the street just as Proctor passed. Tilghman, recognizing Proctor, waved him to stop.
Proctor briefly flirted with the notion of riding past Tilghman as if he didn’t see him, but the officer stepped into the road to block his progress.
“Yes?” Proctor said.
“You’re lucky I caught you,” Tilghman said, tilting his head up and shielding his face from the wind with a gloved hand. “Some fellow just stopped by headquarters looking for you. I told him you were around. I didn’t realize you were leaving.”
He must’ve meant Paine, although Proctor was sure Tilghman should recognize Paine. “He already found me,” Proctor said.
Tilghman looked puzzled, as if this wasn’t possible. He checked over his shoulder at headquarters, expecting to see Paine there perhaps, and then let it go. “Ah, good,” he said. “Where are you headed?”
No reason to lie. He’d be back soon enough, if it all worked out. “To Philadelphia. Someone saw my sister there, and I mean to go see how she’s doing.”
“Of course,” Tilghman said. Even the officers and enlisted men took leave to see their families. “We’ll see you soon.”
“As fast as I can return,” he promised.
Alex waited for him behind the smithy, just as they had planned. She had her arms wrapped tight around herself, looking small and cold. “What took you so long?” she asked.
“Someone was looking for me,” Proctor said. He pulled her up in front of him. They set out on the hard mud of the frozen road at a pace the horse could keep for hours.
After a short night’s camp, they continued their ride across the snowy landscape. Alex sat in front of Proctor, with her rifle resting across her legs. She’d held herself rigid, not daring to lean too much into him, despite the bitter cold. Proctor passed the miles by thinking about Deborah and how it would be good to see her for Christmas.
He and Alex approached Philadelphia from the north, passing through rich farmland until at last they saw chimneys rise like row on row of cornstalks, from rooftops spread out like a furrowed field alongside the broad, deep waters of the Delaware River. Proctor thought Boston and New York were big cities, but Philadelphia looked twice as big as either.
“They say forty thousand people live there,” Proctor said.
“It’s wrong,” Alex answered.
“They’ve got to live somewhere, I suppose.”
“No, not the number,” she said. “See how few of the chimneys are in use.”
She was right. Though thousands of chimneys rose into the sky, smoke rose from fewer than half. It was late December, with snow on the ground, and the air below freezing for days. What house would not keep a fire going?
As they passed through the outskirts and into the city, the answer became obvious. Empty houses did not require fires. Up and down the streets they roamed, with every other house boarded up. Whole streets appeared to be abandoned. In the houses that were occupied, faces peered out and, seeing Alex’s rifle, disappeared again. A few men moved here and there through the streets, but when Proctor called out to them, they hurried away.
“What do they fear?” Alex asked.
“You’d think the British army was one street over,” Proctor said. “Not a state away.”
They made their way into the center of the city. Proctor finally spied the offices of a printer. A man stood out front, smoking his pipe and watching the street.
“Can I buy a paper?” Proctor called.
“None for sale,” the man said. “No one wants to be held to account when Cornwallis comes marching down the street tomorrow or the day after.”
“The British army will never reach these streets,” Proctor said.
The man blew out a ring of smoke, then stepped inside his door and locked it.
“Where’s Mulberry Street?” Proctor yelled. The man pulled his curtains shut.
Eventually, they identified Second and Third Streets, and made their way inward from the docks until they came to Mulberry. There was one upholstery shop on the street, advertised only by the wares in the window. It was a bandbox house, one in a row of similar buildings, two windows wide and winding upward several narrow stories. The windows weren’t boarded up, which was promising. The store was in the front of the first floor: whoever worked here lived in the back half of the house and on the upper floors. He hoped they could lead him to Deborah, tell him where she had gone.
They dismounted, and Proctor tied the horse up out front. The bell hanging above the door rang as they entered.
“Hello,” Proctor called. He heard voices in the back.
The showroom was crowded with goods. In the window and on the shelves near the front were stacked items no one could afford to purchase during wartime—curtains, umbrellas, Venetian blinds. On the worktable at the back of the room were spread a variety of more practical items: folded tents, blankets, and cartridges, all for the army. Strips of leftover cloth had been rolled for bandages. A pair of shears used for the work lay nearby.
A door opened into the private quarters at the back of the building. The voices of two women came through the doorway, but only one woman entered the showroom as the other stopped short.
The second woman withdrew into the shadows of the back room, but Proctor recognized her at once. His skin tingled all over as he felt her draw power to defend herself. It rolled through the room like heat lightning across a stormy sky, and then went still again, shut off.
“Deborah?”
She didn’t answer, but the shopkeeper, a pleasant young woman with dark hair and a quick smile, turned and looked back. If she wanted direction, she must have received it.
“You must be mistaken,” the shopkeeper said. “There’s no one named Deborah here.”
“Deborah Walcott,” Proctor said. “She’s a friend, and more than a friend.”
The shopkeeper hesitated, then put on a false smile. “If anyone comes by with that name, whom shall I say came calling?”
“Proctor Brown,” Proctor said. Paine had told him that Deborah was asking after him, so why was she hiding? “But she saw me, and knows me by sight.”
Alex took off her hat and shook the snow out of her auburn hair. “Tell her that Alexandra Walker was here also.”
Deborah appeared in the doorway at the sound of Alex’s voice, and then rushed forward, wrapping her arms around the younger woman. She kissed her cheeks, saying, “Alex, praise the Light. I feared you were dead.”
So that’s how it was, then, Proctor thought. He was as good as dead to Deborah. She would rush out to embrace Alex, but she would hide from him. Her eyes met his, and she looked away at the floor.
“So these are friends of yours?” the shopkeeper said.
“They are,” Deborah said. She took a ribbon from her pocket and circled Proctor and Alex, whirling it around them, saying, “The God of my rock, in Him will we trust. He is our shield, and the horn of our salvation, our high tower, and our refuge, our savior, who savest us from violence.”
Proctor could not say which of his senses had been touched, but he felt a nu
mbness, like the kind that happened to a foot that had fallen asleep. Alex felt it too. “What did you just do?” she asked.
“Agents of the Covenant are here in Philadelphia, searching for women with the talent. I just created a shield that will keep them from sensing your presence, the way I sensed it when you walked through the door.”
“I feel like there’s a layer of oilcloth between my body and the world,” Proctor said. “It’s … odd.”
“I don’t like it,” Alex grumbled.
“The sensation will fade,” Deborah promised. “And it keeps us hidden, and protects our hostess from unjust retribution for coming to our aid. Proctor, Alex, may I introduce you to my dear friend Betsy. She and her husband, John Ross, own this shop.”
Betsy’s head swiveled from Proctor to Deborah and back again. “This is the young man you were just telling me about?” she asked.
Deborah blushed, confusing Proctor.
Before he could sort that out, Alex asked another of the questions that was on his mind. “Why were you hiding from us?”
Deborah reached out and squeezed Alex’s hand. “I’m sorry. It was because I thought you were a soldier, yet you did not carry the curse, and yet you had the talent—”
Proctor cleared his throat.
“No, it’s all right,” Deborah said. “Betsy’s family have long been guides on the Quaker Highway. She knows every thing.”
“Samuel and Becky Griscom, my parents,” Betsy said. “There were seventeen children. With so many people in the house, no one noticed when an extra person or two stayed with us a day or two passing through.”
“She knows Magdalena,” Deborah said.
Betsy nodded. “She stayed with us for a night over a year ago, on her way from Lancaster to Salem. I hope she’s well.”
“I haven’t heard from her lately,” Proctor said. “The last we saw her, she was teaching the students that Deborah left behind.”
The mention of her students touched a raw nerve for Deborah, who seemed eager to change the subject. “When I saw you with a witch disguised as a soldier, I thought it was someone from the Covenant, come to find me at last.”