A Spell for the Revolution (11 page)

It was in the hours before dawn when they set anchor in Oyster Bay like smugglers so they could go ashore.

“I’d wait until morning,” Hammond said. “But we can’t afford the delay.”

Cuff rowed the dinghy up onto a beach strewn with shells. Proctor climbed out of the boat and helped Deborah leap from the prow to the shore without soaking the hem of her dress.

“Which way do we go?” Proctor asked.

Cuff pointed over the dunes, past a gray, weatherworn house. “Go that way until you find the road. When it curves to the west, take the footpath south toward the ridge. It’s about nine miles to Jamaica Pass. From there, you’ll find King’s Road to Gravesend.”

“Good luck,” Proctor said.

“Same to you,” Cuff replied. He hesitated, then leaned forward and offered Proctor his hand. “Hope you make it a ways before she stops to do her morning prayers.”

Proctor smiled as he shook the other man’s hand, then helped push the boat back into the waves. Deborah hiked across the wide, flat stretch of sand.

“The sooner we finish, the sooner we can go home,” she said. “I don’t want to leave my students in Magdalena’s hands any longer than I must.”

“Why do you have such a problem with Magdalena? Your mother trusted her to teach. She knows a thing or two about the talent.”

“It’s the wrong things. She knows protective charms to
keep your milk cow from the dropsy, or how to heal your baby from an ague, but what can she do against power wielded by the likes of that southern woman? She ran out of the house in fear the night she found that black altar. My mother died chasing after her.”

Proctor understood. Deborah didn’t trust Magdalena because she blamed the old Dutch woman for her mother’s death. “If Magdalena hadn’t woken and run outside in a panic, everyone would have died,” Proctor said.

Deborah’s hand knotted into a fist and slammed into her pocket. But after a moment, she said, “Maybe you’re right.”

“Have you given thought to how we’re going to get home?” Proctor asked.

Given a practical problem, she relaxed. “The Lake family has served as guides on the highway, I know that much. I’m hoping that if we make contact with them, we can follow Friends north until we reach home.” She stumbled over a rut in the road, but caught herself before she fell. “There will be a lot more walking, I expect.”

“Walking’s not so bad if the company’s right. How many guides on the highway, do you know?”

So she told him about the Quaker Highway. She started with her earliest memories, traveling with her father as a small girl when he guided witches to new locations, because a man, a woman, and a child together were invisible, unlike a man and woman. The night raced by while they traded stories and covered the miles to Jamaica Pass. Deborah laughed several times, and Proctor found himself smiling more often.

Dawn pressed up against the windowpane of the sky, peeking over the horizon as they passed through lightly forested hills very close to the pass. Birds sang in the trees. Deborah stopped to inhale the fragrant white blossoms clustered thick on a climbing vine.

“I swear you’d stuff a mattress with those if you could,”
Proctor said with a laugh. “What flower is it, that you love it so?”

There was just enough light in the sky to see her blush. “You’re mocking me,” she said.

“No, really I don’t know. What is it called?”

“Virgin’s bower,” she said.

She dropped the blossoms in her hand. When she looked up at him again, with all the wariness and worry erased from her face, his heart wanted to spill out of his chest. For the moment, he felt like they had become man and woman again instead of brother and sister. He held out his hand for her.

Her fingers were outstretched to clasp his when they heard the tramp of boots on the road. They yanked their hands back and stepped out of the way as a unit of British troops approached.

“Who goes there?” the British officer shouted at them as his men set up a barrier across the road.

“Who are you?” Deborah asked. The hard lines had returned to her face. “We’re on our way home.”

“Hurry on, then,” he said. “You’ll want to keep your heads down and stay out of the way today, miss. God save the king.”

“God save us all,” Deborah said, picking up her skirts and hurrying past them.

“I don’t know the land hereabouts,” Proctor said quietly when they had passed the soldiers. “But Redcoats, this far north, it can’t be good. Do we continue to Gravesend or do we try to help Washington’s army?”

Before she could answer, they heard the tramp of more feet. There was a crossroads just ahead. Files of Redcoats passed through, followed by horses pulling gun carriages. There were so many, an overwhelming number. Suddenly guns boomed in the east, startling the birds to silence.

Proctor met Deborah’s gaze. “If the British win this battle,”
he said, “the Revolution will be dead in the cradle. The Covenant will have the victory it wants.”

“We can slip behind the British,” she said. “Make our way to Gravesend.”

Proctor shook his head. “Why don’t you go?” he said. “The roads will be safe behind the lines. Or you can wait here for me, at the tavern down the road. But I have to go see what I can do to help.”

“What difference can one man make in a battle of thousands?” she said.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I have to do something. I won’t feel right if I don’t. If I can’t make any difference, I’ll turn around and come back.”

She looked angry enough to strangle him. “If you’re going, I’ll come too. Lead us where we need to go.”

He turned west and cut through the woods along a trail that followed the line of the ridge. The trail reminded him of the race through the countryside during the battles of Lexington and Concord. The sound of guns and artillery echoed over the hills. From their vantage, Proctor and Deborah could see the British take position on the hillside. A group of Americans advanced on the road below, unaware of the danger.

The familiar cry of “Ready! Aim!” sounded from the hillside. The Americans would be cut to pieces.

Deborah stretched out her arms. At the cry of “Fire!” she flung her hands into the air as though she were tossing seed.

Fire jetted from the ends of the British guns. One American pitched backward, and another fell, spinning, but most of the lead whistled overhead, tearing up the leaves and branches. The Americans beat a quick retreat to cover, and Deborah collapsed to her knees.

Proctor’s knees felt shaky at her display of power. He rushed to lift her to her feet.

“It’s no use,” she said. “I don’t have the strength or focus to move all that lead every time they fire.”

On the opposite hillside, the British fired a second volley at the retreating Americans. Despair marked Deborah’s face.

“Come on,” Proctor said. “We’ll try to find some spot where we can make a difference.”

Easier said than done. They scrambled along the top of the ridge, chasing the battle and trying to catch up with the American retreats. Eager to make a difference, Proctor pushed forward too far. As soon as he heard lead ripping through the leaves around his ears, he dragged Deborah to the ground and rolled under the edge of a log. They cowered there for what felt like an hour while shot whistled overhead and thudded into the deadwood that sheltered them. Then artillery began to fall, shaking the ground again and again. Every time the ground shook, Deborah stifled a cry and pressed herself against the flimsy shield of Proctor’s body. The only sounds that broke through the thunder of the guns were the cries of the wounded on the hillside below them.

Finally, the shelling stopped. Still Proctor shielded Deborah with his own body, and they didn’t move until the shelling resumed farther up the road. They stumbled to their feet, covered with leaves and twigs. Deborah had dirt smeared across her face. Proctor took hold of her arm to lead her away from the battle. She pulled away and stood transfixed. A line of abandoned dead stretched along the road away from them. At the edge of their view, a small group of Americans no bigger than ants defended a wooded knoll.

“What we just went through,” she said, absently brushing twigs from her dress. “That’s what they …”

“They can shoot back,” Proctor said. “Which is more than we could do. Let’s go.”

“No,” Deborah whispered. “I need to see this.”

The Redcoats flanked the knoll and moved artillery into position. The monotony of the gun and cannon resumed, and soon dead men littered the hillside under the trees like pieces of fallen, broken fruit. Proctor could not bear to watch, and turned away.

“Was this what it was like for you?” she asked. “At Lexington, at Bunker Hill?”

Proctor remembered watching old Robert Munroe fall in the first volley on Lexington Green, and seeing his friend Amos Lathrop die at Bunker Hill. “A bit,” he said. His body ached as if he’d been reaping hay all day. “But this is twentyfold, thirtyfold larger.”

Deborah held her face in her hands. “No,” she said.

“We can’t do anything,” he said. “It’s too big.”

“No, I do not accept this.” The set of her mouth was angry, but tears ran down her cheeks. “I do not.”

She pulled her cap off her head and crawled on her hands and knees, sweeping aside leaves and grasses to form a circle. Then she found a damp spot in the ground and scooped up fresh mud, which she smeared on her cheeks and face.

Proctor thought maybe she had gone mad. “Deborah?”

“You stay right here beside me, all the way through this,” she said. “You promise me you’ll stay right here.”

“I’ll stay,” he said, shaken.

She knelt with her hands clasped in front of her for prayer and tilted her head to the sky. “Behold, waters rise up out of the north,” she said. “And shall be an overwhelming flood, and shall overflow the land, and all therein.”

A tingle shot through Proctor as he recognized the verse from Jeremiah. He looked up at the sky, expecting it to crack open at once. When he rose to walk over to her, his legs buckled and he fell into a kneeling position at her side.

She dropped her head and repeated the verse. The tears running down her cheeks made streaks through the mud.

The crack and thunder of the battle came close for a while and then moved away from them. Still they knelt there while Deborah repeated her spell. The wind changed first, from fitful to firm, growing colder as it whipped around them. The wind alone would keep the British ships from taking the Narrows and cutting off the Continental army’s escape.

In time the sky grew dark as the clouds rolled overhead, blotting out the sun. If the rain came, and if it poured hard enough, it would be impossible to keep the powder dry. The roads would bog down, preventing the movement of the gun carriages. Men would stop fighting, at least for a while.

Deborah sagged forward, barely able to stay upright. “Help me,” she whispered, holding out her hand.

Proctor reached out and took hold.

Something like lightning shot through him. Not affection, not the thrill he felt in her presence, not the tingle of ordinary magic. It started in the soles of his feet and vibrated through him, setting all his hair on edge and shooting out his hand. He’d felt it before.

When the widow tried to steal his life energy.

“Deborah?”

“I need you,” she said in a small, raw voice.

In fear, he tried to pull his hand away, to force her to talk to him. But she gripped him too tightly.

And then he was rooted to the spot while the lightning shot through him again and again, like thunderbolts falling from the sky on the same tree. His sense of time warped, like a piece of wood in the rain, bending back on itself. He saw the clouds roll in, until the whole sky was dark. He felt the sharp cold shock of raindrops as large as shillings splash across his face. The rain sluiced down like a waterfall: one moment his shoulders were damp, the next he was soaked to the skin, as if he’d been dropped, fully dressed, in a tub of water.

He was shivering, bitter cold, more hungry than he’d ever felt before. Somehow it had gone from noon to night. The sound of artillery boomed in his ears, but maybe it was only an echo from earlier in the day or perhaps it was the sound of thunder. In time, even that faded, replaced by the steady patter of raindrops on leaves mixed with the random splashes of water spilled off the leaves and into the puddles that filled every crack in the ground.

His head was lifted in wonder, and at the same moment he felt so dizzy he thought he might tip over. He reached out to steady himself, and his hand came to rest on a wet pile of clothes. It took him a second to realize the pile of clothes was a woman.

“Deborah?” he said, trying to find her heartbeat without taking liberties. He lifted her hand to his face. It was a limp, dead weight. “Deborah!”

She didn’t respond to his first gentle shake. His eyes had adjusted to the dark now, enough to see that she was curled up on her side, like a newborn baby. He shook her harder, calling her name, and she flopped over on her back. She was so cold and pale.

He tugged off his jacket, even though it was soaked, and wrapped her in it. Then he rubbed her arms and legs, trying to bring feeling back to them. He looked around, seeking shelter of some kind, a place to dry off, find food. But it was impossible to see far in the rain and darkness.

Gathering her up in his arms, he stood—and staggered sideways, almost falling. She tumbled out of his arms, sprawling across the wet ground.

Even that was not enough to bring a reaction from her. She lay there as motionless as she had been when he awoke.