Traitor to the Crown (12 page)

“I don’t know what to say,” Proctor stumbled. “Merci?”

“Oui, c’est ça, ‘Merci.’ Très bien. De rien.” The captain nodded respectfully. “I have never seen elm pumps work so long without plugging. I believe that you earned your passage to Ferrol. Good day and good wishes, monsieur.”

Chavagne walked away, taking long steps that carried him back to the other group as it disappeared down the street.

Proctor held up the purse. “It looks like we can pay our own way. Adams cannot refuse us now.”

Lydia sighed with relief. “God is looking out for us. Did you drop something?”

Proctor had been spinning around, searching. “I was
looking for the cat. I thought I ought to buy something else for another stray, just as an offering of thanks, but it’s gone.”

Despite Adams’s protests that he did not like to travel on Sunday, they began the journey to France on a Sunday afternoon, the day after Christmas. The skies were gray and foreboding, and the air was cold enough to leave one feeling miserable all the time.

It had been six weeks since Proctor left Deborah and Maggie, and the thought of them enjoying Christmas dinner in front of a warm fire, with snow on the ground outside and without him, made him feel lonely and sorry for himself. He would have been willing to start for France on Christmas Day if it meant that he’d return home sooner.

Adams came out to begin the journey. Proctor tipped his hat, only to have Adams ignore him. The diplomat had been put out to discover that Proctor had found means of paying his own way, and though he would not go back on his word to allow Proctor and Lydia to accompany them, he remained frostier than the air.

Adams had hired three calashes, but they were older than any Proctor had ever seen in Boston, and in worse repair. The leather, whether in seats or harness, had never known the touch of oil, and was sunbaked and cracked. The tack was falling apart and knotted together with twine. The calashes were a perfect match for the mules, the only animals that could be bought or hired in the area. The mules were lean and shorn from ear to tail of almost all their hair to prevent the infestation of parasites. Adams and his sons took one calash, Adams’s secretary and the boys’ tutor took another, and two other Americans who had attached themselves to Adams took the third. The servants rode mules, as did Proctor and Lydia. Mr. Lagoanere, the American agent in northern
Spain, accompanied them on the first part of the journey. Lagoanere was the sort of man who weighed a little too much for his frame, paid a little too much for his clothes, and drank a little too much at meals: in short, the sort of congenial companion who made almost anyone feel superior in his presence.

Though it was described as the easiest part of their passage, Proctor found the roads in such poor repair that he thought the country abandoned. It was different from going across the remote parts of America—those had a feeling that they were waiting to fill up. The Spanish countryside gave an impression of long occupation and ultimate surrender. Men had tried to live well here and, after many generations, had failed. Now the only people who remained were those too stubborn to try somewhere else.

The steep ascent was mountainous and rocky, and they finished it near dark. The calashes groaned and complained as they bounced over the deep ruts and fallen rocks, until Proctor thought something would crack. The mules proved sure-footed in the harsh terrain, but the ride was jarring.

When they arrived in Betanzos, an ancient city set on steep slopes, Proctor turned to Lydia. “I think that’s about twelve miles done. Only nine hundred and eighty-eight more to go.”

“If they’re all as rough as these, can I go back and wait for the ship to be repaired? I promise to meet you in France.”

Mr. Lagoanere helped them find rooms for the night. “The very best that are available,” Lagoanere told all the Americans. Proctor didn’t understand the apologetic tone in the agent’s voice until he saw the rooms. The floors were bare ground, carpeted with straw, while the walls and ceiling were covered with soot from the open-floor ovens. Everything smelled like smoke. The mattresses
were dirty cloth stuffed with smashed straw and crawling with fleas. Proctor would have complained, but the family who owned it ended up sleeping on the floor in another room.

Lydia did a very discreet spell that caused the fleas to leave the mattresses. “Just like Moses, chasing off the plague of flies,” she said. It was the least they could do for the family they displaced. “But if every night is like this, I am definitely going back to the ship.”

The Adamses were in a different house, since John Adams was unwilling to share quarters with someone who wasn’t part of the official American party. That was fine with Proctor. He stood in the doorway to see how Adams and the others were doing. Charles and John Quincy sat in the doorway of their house, silhouettes playing with a thin black cat. “Isn’t that the same cat we saw in front of the church?”

Lydia came and stood at his side. “How can you tell in the dark? There are black cats anywhere you go.”

Lydia was right. It was just a passing fancy. He turned back into their own room. “It will have to be better tomorrow.”

The roads the next day were steeper and rockier. It was still early in the cloudy morning, and they were twisting around a narrow road with a steep drop on one side when a loud crack sounded. The black cat leapt from the calash carrying Adams and his sons. At the same instant, it pitched abruptly to one side with a snapped axle.

The mules knew their business, however, pulling instead of panicking, and they dragged the carriage to a safe spot before the momentum carried it over the cliff.

Proctor looked for the cat, but it had disappeared. “It had a white streak across the head, just like the one outside the church,” Proctor said, stretching in his saddle.

“I thought you were imagining it,” Lydia said. “But now I’m not so sure.”

Something large and wet hit Proctor’s face, and he looked up to see if a bird was flying overhead. Another drop hit him and another. Just what they needed—rain.

By the time they fixed the axle and continued on their way, the rain was steady and dismally cold. They traveled no more in the whole day than they had in half a day before. The town they arrived in that night was smaller, the houses were cruder, and the mud-floored rooms were shared by people and their animals. The ventilation was so poor the rooms filled with smoke, and the room that served as the bedchamber was also the kitchen and storeroom. Baskets of rapeseed, oats, and Indian corn lined the walls.

“I overheard Mr. Adams talking with his secretary,” Lydia said as they looked at their beds.

Proctor was trying the spell to chase the fleas away. He remembered reading how Aaron had caused a plague of lice on the pharaoh, and he thought again how much miracles were magic by another name. Lydia had been the first one to tell him that. He bent to peer at the mattress to see if anything was crawling on it. “What did the secretary say?”

“He said we were lucky the broken axle and the rain happened today, as this is still the easy part of our journey.”

Proctor snapped up a speck with his fingernails, but it was only dirt and not a flea or bedbug. “I know this may sound like simple raving—” he started, then stopped.

“But you want to keep an eye on that cat,” Lydia finished for him.

Their eyes met. She had been thinking the same thing, and he did not feel so mad after all. “Familiars sometimes take on the appearance of their masters. We should look for someone like the cat.”

“How?” Lydia asked. “Everyone in this country wears
black wool and little else, and white hair is as common as old people.”

She had a point. “We’ll just keep an eye out for the cat then,” he said.

But the cat did not appear the next day nor in the days after that. Proctor thought they had left it behind as they traveled from village to village. The new year came and they stayed up late with their hosts for that night, eating grapes at midnight around a bonfire. But the next morning they resumed their journey just like any other day. As the week passed, Adams had a stubborn determination to reach Paris as soon as possible. The roads grew even worse as they wound through mountains that had been cleared of trees. The farms were small and scattered, the people were poor and dirty, and the cities marked by a lack of industry and commerce. The only signs of wealth were the old churches and monasteries, vast in size, rich in decoration, and containing the only fat men to be found anywhere in the country.

“That is the popery I was warned about as a child,” Proctor said, rocking in the saddle of his mule as they passed the long stone walls of a monastery.

“You sound disappointed,” Lydia said.

“Sometimes you realize you’re in a foreign country when everything you heard to be true proves to be the case,” he said. He kicked his mule, which made its way slowly ahead to Adams, who was riding with his secretary and the tutor. They had traded transportation with their servants, finding the mules more comfortable than the carriages. The face of Mr. Dana, the secretary, was more pinched than before, as if he needed to squeeze everything in his body together just to stay seated on the mule. Mr. Thaxter, the tutor, owned one item of note, an extravagant velvet hat so black it was nearly blue, accented by a silk headband of matching hue. He rode with
one hand on the reins and the other firmly holding the hat to his head to prevent its blowing away.

“How did Spain become this reduced?” Proctor asked as he joined the three men.

“What do you mean?” Adams replied curtly in the manner he used whenever Proctor joined his party.

“Was not Spain the richest country in the world as recently as two centuries ago?” Proctor asked. “We see the signs of its wealth all around us, in the churches and buildings. But its present poverty is overwhelming. America is a young nation, never wealthy, and yet our meanest towns and poorest houses are not this squalid. How does a country go from being the richest country in the world to one of the poorest?”

“It is the inevitable fate of any nation that attempts to become an empire,” Adams answered, warming up to the question. “Look at the present case of England. Money spent abroad on the military and on mercenaries is money lost. Spain became poor the same way it became rich: it built an empire overseas, plundering the labor of the people that it conquered. In turn, the empire squandered the wealth, wasting it on armies and bureaucrats. I daresay we see England reaping the same fruits from its colonies in America. Empire bankrupts a nation. In a democracy, we will never have that problem because the people will keep the government honest.”

“So the governments of Spain and England are not honest?”

“Sometimes they are and sometimes they are not,” Adams said. He glanced at Mr. Dana and Mr. Thaxter as if expecting the confirmation of his opinion. “There are no checks on the power of royalty. America will never oppress other nations because the people provide a natural check on the ambitions of our leaders. Can you imagine our militias being called up to fight overseas?”

“No, I can’t,” Proctor said.

“That is why America will never become an empire nor bring ruin to itself. We merely wish to be left alone to pursue our own interests in agriculture and commerce.”

Mr. Dana began to expound on the superiority of the militia to a standing army, which, if it existed, must have wars to justify its existence, while Mr. Thaxter offered observations on the armies of the Romans. They came to a narrow place in the road; Proctor let Adams go ahead. The other two men squeezed in front to cut him off, leaving Proctor with his thoughts. He had never served in anything else but the militia, and here he was, pursuing an enemy overseas. He stared across the largely barren plain in front of them, the herds of sheep crowded behind mud walls, and wondered what Deborah was doing, whether Maggie was starting to crawl. He hoped he had made the right decision in leaving them to pursue the Covenant.

When they arrived in San Juan Segun that evening, Proctor was so sore that he almost welcomed the squalor. The tavern keeper was eager to rush them indoors, repeating a warning to them several times.

“What is he saying?” Proctor asked.

“It is just superstition,” Adams replied. Though hardly shaped for hard travel, he bore it as well as any of them, stretching his arms and legs at the end of the day as if he had been only a short while in the saddle. “He is telling us that we must be careful, for it is a Friday night and the sorginak are about.”

Proctor had an uneasy feeling. “The sorginak?”

“Witches, men and women who fly off to their black Sabbath every Friday night. He is not a local, but comes originally from Biscay, where I am told they have their own peculiar beliefs. As I told you, it is mere superstition.”

Superstition or a hint of truth? “Why are the sorginak to be feared? Does he say?”

“I suppose they are to be feared because they do what all witches do everywhere—they worship Satan and fight the will of God.”

Proctor opened his mouth to argue and then snapped it shut. He thanked Adams for his information and then joined Lydia to make arrangements for their own rooms for the night.

“What was he saying?” she asked.

“There are witches among us,” Proctor said.

She shouldered her own pack and lifted Proctor’s. “What are the chances?”

“Flying witches,” he said.

“If that were possible, we’d be in Paris already.”

“I hope he’s right,” Proctor said. “Because if there are witches about—other witches—maybe it’s the connection we need to find the Covenant.”

The next morning when Proctor went out to mount their mules and carriages, Adams and the other travelers stood in the cold light, scratching their newest flea and bedbug bites. They had purchased their own mattresses, pillows, and sheets, lugging them from one town to the next, but it only reduced the problem rather than eliminating it. As soon as Proctor had the chance, he meant to rid their bedding of vermin.

He looked west, in the direction of home, but a cold fog obscured even a glimpse of the mountains or any perception of distance. Perhaps weeks in this harsh landscape had hardened him. In truth, he felt only a regret that Adams’s sons suffered with him.