by C. C. Finlay
But there was a ferry a few miles upriver. Where the army was crossing. He turned and ran back to the horse. It lifted its head at his approach, but its chest was still heaving as it tried to catch its breath.
Proctor laid a hand on the neck and, after a moment, it started to breathe easier. But there was no way it would rise or run again tonight. He would have to walk.
“There you are, thank God.”
He looked up at the voice. It was Alex, riding bareback on Singer, her rifle across her legs.
“I followed as fast as I could,” she said. “Where are they?”
He pointed to the distant lights of Trenton. “Across the river. I couldn’t stop them.”
“Then we have to follow,” she said. Singer stamped and circled, ready to go. Proctor began untying a roll of cloth from the other horse’s back. “What’s that?”
“Betsy’s flag,” he said, rising with the bundle in his arm. “If the army is crossing, they’ve got the ferries and every boat on this part of the river. We’ll need something to get to Washington so we can talk our way across. This is it.”
Alex offered him a hand, and he climbed onto Singer. The horse braced herself against the extra weight, but she was sturdy and could carry them both a short way. Her hooves kicked up snow behind her as she headed north along the river.
A few dark miles later, they found the army. A sentry stopped them, but Proctor said, “Message for General Washington,” and they were waved on through.
It was eerily quiet despite the chaos. Horses and artillery had been loaded onto a ferryboat, which struggled, almost capsizing, as it moved away from shore. The current slung the boat downriver and banged chunks of ice at its sides until the guide ropes snapped taut. Without a word, crews on the distant shore began to slowly pull it across.
Proctor and Alex rode past the ferry landing. Along the riverbank shadowy lines of men waited to crowd into several Durham boats, heavy craft meant for shipping ironwork up and down the river. Farther on, they saw other boats, some larger, some smaller. The scene reminded Proctor of the armada that evacuated the army from Brooklyn only a few months before. The mood on the shore tonight was no less desperate. That there were only a tenth as many men in the army now, and that they were going toward battle rather than away, amplified rather than diminished the feeling.
The ghosts they carried had much to do with that. As Proctor and Alex rode along the bank, faces glanced at them then turned grimly back to the task of crossing. Not so the ghosts—they were agitated, some of them angry, cruelly stabbing, punching, or choking their hosts. These spectral faces, the same color as the moonlight, turned toward Proctor and Alex, showing glee in their torments.
“Do you see my brothers?” Alex asked.
“No, I don’t,” Proctor said. “Maybe they’ve already crossed the river.”
“This is horrible,” she whispered. “What can we do?”
“We have to trust Deborah,” Proctor said. “She’ll find a way to break the curse. But we have to cross and stop the German before he uses the children to do something worse.” He shifted uncomfortably. “We need to find Washington, and fast.” Raising his voice, he shouted, “Message for General Washington.”
“Quiet,” snapped one of the officers as he chivvied men into his boat. He was one of Smallwood’s men, from Maryland. Proctor couldn’t recall his name, but he recognized the one-eyed ghost that followed him around like a child hiding behind a tree. “The order’s for silence.”
Proctor dropped his voice. “We’re looking for—”
“I heard,” the man said, scowling. He waved his hand upriver and went back to work, packing men into the boat. Many of them still wore their summer jackets, which was all they had. A few had wrapped their feet in rags because they lacked shoes.
The little ghost stood behind the officer, following Proctor and Alex with his one good eye until they were out of sight.
Neither Zoe nor the boy William would end up like that, Proctor promised himself.
Another boat splashed into the water as Proctor and Alex rode past. The passage of so many ghosts across the river was starting to raise a fog, as it had at Brooklyn. A small crowd of men stood just ahead—Washington, surrounded by his young officers. They in turn were ringed by a crowd of ghosts.
The men, following Washington’s lead, were outwardly stoic and calm, but the ghosts were frantic. They hurled themselves at their hosts, clawing at them with cold, spectral hands. The men were so numb with the frigid air, or so determined to see this through, that they didn’t flinch.
Alex shuddered and averted her eyes. “Why isn’t Deborah’s prayer working?”
Proctor shook his head. Surely they had enough power to do the spell, even without him. Enough power to have some effect. But the only effect he saw was the wrath of the ghosts from the previous attempt.
Washington remained calmest among the men, at the center of the worst fury. The thirteen ghosts shackled to him tore at him, tearing at his clothes like a fierce wind. Washington ignored the distraction. He stood with his hands folded behind his back, watching the boats disappear into darkness and fog.
“Message for General Washington,” Proctor said.
“It’s our prodigal Quaker,” Washington replied, looking up. “Tench asked if we had seen you.”
Proctor dismounted with the rolled bundle. “A flag for you, sir, sent by Miss Betsy Ross of Philadelphia.”
“Blankets would do the men better,” Washington said.
“A blanket can warm one man, but the right flag can warm the hearts of the entire army.” Proctor knew it sounded like enthusiasm, but he also knew it to be true. He unfolded the corner. “It’s a new design, with thirteen stripes and thirteen stars on a field of blue, for the thirteen states.”
After a pause, Washington nodded. A young officer—James Monroe, another Virginian—stepped forward and took the rolled banner from Proctor’s hands.
“Make a note to convey our thanks to Missus Ross if the outcome tonight shows favor on those thirteen states,” Washington told Monroe. Then to Proctor, “It ought to be no secret to you that we mean to fight tonight. If that offends your conscience, now is the moment you should turn back.”
He had to get across the river if he had any hope at all of finding Zoe and William before the German necromancer performed some abomination with them. The memory of that little boy in Boston, the one murdered by the widow Nance for her spell, was strong in his mind. “I’ll go along and do what I can, if you don’t mind,” Proctor said, glancing at Alex. “We both will. Just tell us who to report to, and what boat to take.”
Before Washington could answer, a man ran up from the shore. “Excellency, sir,” he said. “Most of the men have departed now. We’ll need you on the other side.”
Washington nodded, then he looked to Proctor and said, “Climb aboard then, if you’re coming.”
Proctor touched Alex’s arm and said, “This is our chance.”
Alex had dismounted from Singer, but she couldn’t move away from her side. “I … I can’t.”
The ghosts. She’d seen the ghosts, and knew of the curse, but it was a different thing completely to be in the middle of thousands of specters, to see them whipped into frenzy, desperate to scare their hosts away. Anyone would run, which was why ninety percent of the army was gone.
The sailors were waving them aboard. It was a small boat, light enough to move quickly, but made to carry no more than a dozen men. Washington wouldn’t wait while Proctor tried to persuade Alex to join them.
“I understand,” he said. “Go back to the others, help them any way you can.”
He clapped her on the shoulder and hurried to board the boat before Washington changed his mind. There was no way under heaven that he was leaving those children in the hands of Bootzamon and his necromancer master.
“So you’re still around, are you?” said the man holding the boat steady on the shore. He was a black man with a round, intelligent face, w
earing a tarpaulin seaman’s jacket, and he spoke with a familiar Massachusetts accent—a sailor from Glover’s Marblehead regiment. But Proctor couldn’t place him. Seeing the puzzled look on Proctor’s face, he said, “The passage from Salem port to Gravesend.”
“That’s it,” Proctor said. “Only we stopped short of Gravesend and you rowed us ashore. Cuff, isn’t it? From the Bluejack.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s good to see you again.”
“You too. Grab an oar and pull, if you don’t mind. These southern boys don’t know how to handle themselves in the icy water.”
“Glad to,” Proctor said, and put his hands on the gunwales to climb into the boat.
The icy water was not just in the river. The boat was ankle-deep in it, and the air was cold enough to freeze. Proctor shivered as the water shot up his ankles and flowed down into his shoes. The other men in the boat crouched low and stomped, not just to break the ice, but to keep their sodden feet warm.
Proctor picked up an oar and braced the end against the shore, ready to push off. Cuff leaned against the boat and it lurched forward, throwing everyone in it off-balance. He shoved again and it slid over the icy mud of the bank toward the water. Before he could jump in, Alexandra ran down from the shore and splashed through the water. Surprised, Proctor reached out a hand to pull her aboard.
“Deborah would kill me if I let you out of my sight,” she said before he could ask. The other men shifted aside to make room.
Proctor reached out and pulled in Cuff, who was now soaked to his thighs in the icy river water, but he didn’t say a word of complaint. He bent low, rocking the boat from side to side as he made his way between the other crouching bodies to the front to help pole their way across.
Proctor glanced at the boat. Most of the men were attached to Washington’s headquarters staff, but they represented a mix of the whole army. Captain Blackler and another private from the same Marblehead regiment as Cuff worked the oars. Lieutenant Monroe, from the Virginia regiment, carried the flag. Two other lieutenants, from Haslett’s Delaware and Smallwood’s Maryland regiments, were there, ready to convey Washington’s orders to their commanders as soon as they landed: Washington relied on his Chesapeake troops to take the brunt of any fighting, and he liked to keep their junior officers close to hand. Backwoods Pennsylvania riflemen, like Alex’s brothers, in hunting shirts and fur caps, sat at either end of the boat, pushing off ice and paddling. All of them carried ghosts with them, so many that they blurred together into a mist.
A pair of Jersey farmers, armed with shotguns, huddled under blanket coats, filling the last two spots in the boat. Proctor guessed that they were locals, men Washington had recruited to be his guides once they reached the far shore. One had his head bandaged, probably a knock to the skull in some recent skirmish with the Hessians. He was sick the instant the boat started to rock, leaning over the side to empty his stomach.
No, the farmer wasn’t sick from the rocking of the boat—he felt the presence of the ghosts. The confines of the boat held more ghosts than men, and the fear they created was enough to set Proctor’s teeth on edge. They were too mixed together to stay distinct, but when they brushed up against him, like a cat on the stairs in the dark, it made him feel that he was ready to tumble and break his neck, a feeling that washed through him every few seconds. At least he could see and recognize the cause. These other men could only sense it and blame their own cowardice. He glanced back at shore. Why hadn’t Deborah and the others broken the spell yet? What was taking them so long?
Beside him, Alexandra’s teeth chattered, and not just from the cold water. She felt it too, and felt it worse because she hadn’t had months to grow accustomed to it.
“Give me your oar,” she said. “I need something to do.”
He handed it to her and turned to crouch behind Washington and Monroe, who hunkered low against the wind in the center of the boat. Proctor looked out across the water. The rising fog obscured the moonlight, and the black water absorbed the rest, so that they were surrounded by darkness. A steady wind, bitter and frosty, pushed them backward.
Alex grunted, pulling on the oar against the current and the wind. They were slowly moving across the river.
Suddenly the wind turned into a storm. Sheets of sleet hurtled out of the sky into their faces. The gale kicked up waves on the river, slamming chunks of ice against their sides hard enough to rock the boat. The storm raged as if to capsize and drown the entire army in one fell swoop.
Perhaps it was meant to do that. Proctor had seen the kind of weather Deborah summoned, and the German was more powerful than her. During the battle at White Plains, he had summoned rain to douse the grass fires as his Hessians marched up the hillside against Hamilton’s cannons.
He had to assume that Bootzamon and the widow Nance had returned to their master and warned him of the attack. He had to assume their master was intent on stopping it.
Proctor felt the cold of the ghosts pass through him again. He looked up in sick worry. The curse still held. Had Deborah failed? Worse, had Cecily returned, or Bootzamon and Nance been sent back to stop them? Proctor felt trapped, unable to reach the children, unable to go back to Deborah’s aid.
“Victory or death,” Washington said. He was kneeling in the boat ahead of Proctor. It took Proctor a moment to realize that the general had addressed him.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.
“Victory or death,” Washington repeated. “That’s the password tonight, if I need you to run messages to Tench for me.”
“Yes, sir,” Proctor said, forgetting his Quaker guise. Or rather, dropping it. He would be no pacifist tonight, not when those he loved were in danger.
Washington caught the sir. He glanced back at Proctor with a very small smile.
Victory or death. With the curse on them, and enlistments about to end, it was more than a password. Icy water sloshed about their feet, freezing as they stood in it. Sleet and wind clawed at their faces. Cursed spirits fought to hold them back, and a well-trained enemy waited ahead. It was hard to believe in the possibility of victory.
Where was Deborah? What was she doing?
Proctor lowered his head against the bitter wind. The men—and woman—at the oars tugged onward. The men with poles pushed off ice and steadied the balance of the boat. Proctor guessed they had reached the halfway point in the river, but they could see nothing. One shore was blank behind them, and the other hidden by the fog and the weather ahead.
Monroe, crouching next to Proctor, suppressed a gasp as if at some unexpected hurt.
Proctor looked up. His ghost grappled with him as something tried to pull it away.
Deborah! Their spell was working.
Monroe’s ghost clung desperately to the living soul, but it was not enough. It was stretched thin, and then whipped away. In quick succession, three more ghosts went flying, from the Marblehead private, the Marylander, and the rifleman at the rear of the boat, like ships’ pennants torn from their stays in a gale.
Proctor snapped his head around. He thought he saw a brightness above the far shore. They had done it! They had completed the spell and opened the gates to the afterlife.
But the ghosts did not go gently into that good light. They hung on to tethers of spirit torn from their hosts, fighting like salmon at the end of a fishing line. The Marblehead captain lost his ghost, which ripped at his soul the same way. He hesitated in mid-stroke. With three men frozen at the oars, the boat’s forward progress stopped and the current turned the prow of the boat to carry them downriver.
“Row on,” Washington ordered. Obeying the sound of his voice, the men dug in mechanically and the boat surged forward again.
One by one, the other ghosts were torn away but not torn free. Long lines of spirit snaked away from their bodies, like yarn being spun into thread. The strain on the men showed in their faces—it was a physical pain, an agony of doubt in the heart, and every man believed he suffered it alone in
shame.
Only Washington’s ghosts held on tightly.
Washington’s ghosts were shackled to him. Deborah’s spell pulled them backward, like a line of buoys dropped from a ship in a fast wind, but they refused to let go. The first ghost in the line buried his hands in Washington’s shoulder blades like some demon ripping out an angel’s wings. Each ghost behind that one reached out and clawed its way back to Washington.
If Washington’s ghosts held on, Proctor was certain they all would. He had a sick fear in his stomach about the children, but he feared that he made a mistake. If Deborah’s spell failed because he should have stayed behind and added his power to the others, he would never forgive himself.
The pull of the ghosts was so strong that they slowly dragged Washington physically backward, as if they meant to tug him overboard and drown him before they would be cut loose.
Washington’s head came up into the wind. He squared his shoulders, found his balance, and rose to his feet, bracing one leg in front of him. But the ghosts could pull him no farther.
The wind shrieked and howled. The air spit water and ice like a fountain of misery. The other men’s ghosts began to climb their way back along the tethers to their human hosts.
Young Lieutenant Monroe, embracing the flag in his shaking arms, rose to stand beside Washington. The flag began to unfurl, its striped corners snapping in the wind. Proctor scooted forward, behind the two men, ready to catch them if the ghosts should try to drag them down. Deborah’s spell wasn’t strong enough. It wasn’t strong enough because she wasn’t in the middle of the army.
Fog closed in around them. Neither shore was visible, and the other boats disappeared into shadows as gray as the fog. The ghosts pulled themselves back together into a cluster behind Washington. The other men’s ghosts came out of the dark toward the boat, like fish swimming upstream against diminishing rapids. Proctor knew he had to help Deborah break the curse, but he had no idea how to do it.
“Put your backs into it now, my good fellows,” Washington said. He removed his telescope from his pocket, though he didn’t bring it to his eye. “I can see the far shore.”