Traitor to the Crown (29 page)

Proctor and Digges jumped over a rail fence and ran through a paved yard that sat above the road. The stench of charred flesh and bone, and the screams of the burning, were the most horrific thing Proctor had ever witnessed. Digges covered his face and said, “Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners …”

The fire raged through the street wherever the river of
spirits flowed. One member of the mob was still throwing things at the retreating soldiers. He stood there with a long iron bar, prying up cobbles while he caught on fire. Another man ran out into the flames to try to retrieve an unbroken barrel. The mother and the little drunk girl were trapped on opposite sides of the street. The little girl tried to run through the flames to reach her mother, and then her mother ran to rescue her and they both fell in the street, rolling in the fire.

Proctor lifted his head toward the skies to call down rain, and then looked around frantically to find the river to divert its waters. Deborah’s lock was crushed tight inside his fist. He drew on all the power he could muster—

—and felt it flow right out of him.

The fires parted. Five figures walked down the middle of the street, untouched by flame.

The man who led them appeared to be ancient. He wore a long gray robe with a ruffled collar. Gray hair tumbled over his shoulders, and he had a neatly trimmed beard. On his right side walked the prince-bishop—Proctor felt an ache in his hand where his finger was missing. He was followed by Cecily, who held up her skirts and watched the fires nervously. On the other side, a man in a priest’s cossack stared at the sky with milky white eyes. He held the hand of a beautiful woman in an exotic dress, who watched the flames with an eagerness opposite Cecily’s fear.

A sixth figure chased after them like a dog, but it stayed within the fire, appearing in the flames on one side and then the other. It started out small, no bigger than a flicker, and grew in size as they passed each burning corpse.

The man in the gray robes paused above the body of the mother and child. He smiled and said, “Perfect.”

“It’s John Dee,” Digges whispered at Proctor’s side.

Proctor wanted an explanation but he was too afraid
to speak. The one called Dee stretched out his left hand, rolled up his sleeve, and drew a circle in the air around the two bodies. Fire sprouted from the circle on the ground. Then he made five quick slashes of his finger. A pentagram flamed into being inside the circle. The two bodies lay at the center of both.

Dee stepped to the point of the star at the head of the bodies. He moved his finger and the woman’s corpse rolled over and flung out its charred arms, Christ-like, one to each point. The little girl lay curled up at her side. The other four witches each stepped to a point.

“My friends,” Dee said. “May we all live to see the second coming. May we all stay young until the end of days. May we all, like Enoch, live to ascend to heaven without dying.”

The blind priest made the sign of the cross on his forehead, his lips, and his heart.

Then they all held out their hands. Though they did not touch, a cold flame leapt from Dee’s left hand and ran around the circle until it returned to him. The light ran down his legs and traced the circle and star on the ground, making them all glow with a flickering blue light.

A flame caught fire in the dead woman’s womb, burning like a hideous candle.

Proctor trembled. Deborah’s lock was clutched in his sweaty palm. He had come all this way to stop the Covenant and their plans. Here they were, here were their plans, and he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t even touch his talent. Everything flowed out of him and into the spell they were about to perform.

This might be his only chance. He had to do something.

Those were powerful witches down there, but they were still men. Proctor had fought and killed ordinary men before. He thrust Deborah’s lock deep into his pocket and drew the small knife that he carried.

Dee began speaking in an alien tongue. The flame twitched and danced. A sound seemed to come from the flame, answering Dee in the same harsh tones.

Proctor decided he would take down Dee first, then the German if he could. He shifted the knife in his hand. He would only have one chance to slash Dee’s throat. The garden fence provided cover, so Proctor crouched along the edge, coming as close to Dee as he could. Hit hard, hit fast, and keep hitting until they don’t get up. That could be Deborah and Maggie lying dead in the street. Proctor would hit Dee very hard.

Dee lifted his hands in the air and chanted his harsh language even louder. The flame grew, rising into the air and opening, like the door to a great furnace.

Proctor checked his grip on the knife and charged Dee.

Dee stopped in mid-sentence.

Proctor’s wrist stopped in midair as if it had been caught in the grip of a very strong man.

“I don’t mind you watching,” Dee said. “You might learn something. But you are forbidden from interrupting us again.”

Proctor rose above the ground, where he dangled helplessly. He floated through the air until he hung in front of Dee. The fire in the air heated his back. He felt as if there were hands trying to reach out of it to grab him. The knife tingled in his palm, the blade twitched, and it turned to a slip of paper, soft and limp. The paper caught fire, curled into ash, and blew away.

“I recognize this one,” the prince-bishop said. “He has something that belongs to me, but I can’t collect it until he dies.”

Cecily’s eyes burned with fury.

“Oh, please, kill him,” said the beautiful woman leading the blind man.

“He also carries something belonging to our dear friend Seraphina,” Dee said. “When I sensed it at first, I
thought maybe she had returned. Instead she sent us this gift.” He stared Proctor in the eye. “Who are you?”

“Your death,” Proctor said, struggling to free himself.

“I think not,” Dee answered. “Death is for ordinary men. Like pain.” Proctor’s right hand rose up against his will and Dee examined the scar of his missing finger. “This is your handiwork, isn’t it, Philipp Adolph?”

“It’s the piece I brought back from America with me two years ago,” the prince-bishop answered.

“Hmm,” said Dee. His eyebrow quirked.

Proctor’s scar split open to the bone, revealing the severed joint. As he grimaced in pain, blood flowed down his hand, dripping onto the point of the star, where it sizzled in the fire.

Dee’s face wore an expression of curious interest. “I wonder,” he said, “what would happen if we peeled it all off.”

“I think it’s me you want,” said Digges’s voice.

“Thomas?” Dee said. He flung Proctor aside, where he smashed into the garden wall. “Thomas Digges. I haven’t seen you since—You’re not my Thomas.”

“I’m his descendant—”

“John,” the blind priest interrupted. “Balfri says that his footman is losing power. Can we finish our work?”

“Yes, of course,” Dee said. Digges flew through the air, crashing into Proctor. They dropped to the ground, groaning in pain.

The five returned to chanting in their strange tongue. Proctor watched them, racking his head for a plan, searching the garden for a weapon. But there was no time to act.

The demon’s head emerged from the flame. It was like the others Proctor had seen, though smaller. Did a different demon signal a new stage of the Covenant’s plans? Did this mean that they had been successful in the attack on The Farm? He could not bring himself to look again at the mother and daughter in the burning circle.

But he did see what the Covenant’s plans were. They needed a sacrifice to bring the demon from the spirit world to this one. A voluntary sacrifice would be much more powerful and binding than one made unwillingly. Thus, with the riots they had arranged for dozens—maybe hundreds—of willing sacrifices. The little girl had run into the fire of her own free will. So had her mother. And with so many people pouring their talent into the purpose of the riots, any spell made with the spirit would have an incredible bond. It would be nearly impossible to break.

The demon squirmed and struggled through the burning gate like an obscene birth. The fire in the star-and-circle writhed like a living thing. The flames still burning in the street around the witches flashed as high as the rooftops.

A large hand fell on Proctor’s shoulder. Another fell on Digges.

“I think it’s past time for us to go,” whispered Gordon’s man, Grueby. “And I do mean now.”

He dragged them away around the corner, where he had a carriage waiting. Proctor had no will to resist. The last thing he saw before the carriage rolled away into the dark was the demon standing free.

Dee said some last word to it, and it ran away into the night.

Proctor did not know whether to be frightened or relieved that it ran away in the direction opposite their own.

The four men gathered in Gordon’s front parlor. In broad daylight, the horrors of the night before seemed more like a nightmare to Proctor. But Gordon’s fawning secretary kept bringing in new reports: thirty-six major fires the night before, more than two hundred men and women killed by the soldiers, possibly hundreds more burned to death in the flames. With the troops guarding the streets and the news of the distillery fire spreading, the city seemed shocked to its senses. No one marched in the streets. The cockades and banners had disappeared.

“Order,” Gordon’s secretary said. “Very soon, we’ll have restored order to London. Your example during all this crisis has finally—”

“Get out,” Gordon said, slamming the door behind the secretary as he shoved him out the door. He wore ordinary clothes of plain black and white. He had ripped a hole in his linen shirt but refused to replace it. He had cut his hair short also, and had not shaved for several days.

“If I could just have my clothes back,” Proctor said. It felt like the meanest vanity to want his own clothes back after what he had witnessed, but he was tired of the plaid and velvet. He sat in Gordon’s large, overstuffed chair, where he had fallen asleep for a short while after their return. He had his hand bandaged where Dee had torn his scar open. The cook had set a side table for breakfast before Gordon chased her and the servants out too: there
was oatmeal with sweet cream, smoked herrings, beef tongue with horse radish sauce, and rashers of bacon, all arrayed in front of a mound of several types of bread and flanked by bowls of orange marmalade, butter, and jam. A pot of tea stood at the ready, filling the room with its distinct scent. Proctor had no stomach for any of it. None of them did, not even Gordon.

“Grueby, Mister Brown’s clothes?” Gordon asked as he paced to the window.

“Terribly sorry, sir,” he said. “Not sure what could have happened to them. I’ll make inquiries among the staff.”

“If you could just get me something, anything else to wear,” Proctor offered.

“Of course,” Gordon said. He paced away from the window to a little side table. “Grueby?”

“Sir?”

“Tell me again what you witnessed.”

“I followed Mister Brown and Mister Digges when they left the house. I lost track of them for a bit when the army got between us, but found them again in the middle of the fire outside Langdale’s distillery. Five of the twelve were there. Mister Brown attacked them.”

“I’ve already told you all this,” Proctor said.

“Yes, I know,” Gordon said. To Grueby, “Pray, continue.”

“In my estimation, the attack was equal parts brave and useless. Mister Brown was summarily dismissed from the proceedings, and the good doctor finished his handiwork. He released the very sort of creature you hoped to stop.”

“Do we know where it went?” asked Proctor.

“No,” Gordon admitted. “And it may take some time for me to find out its purpose, not to mention stop it. I wanted to thank you for your courage,” he said, opening
a drawer in the table and withdrawing a small jewelry box. The lid on the box opened silently on its hinge, and Gordon removed a small pendant on a gold chain made of many delicate links. A cameo pendant hung from the end of the chain. Gordon brought the image to his mouth and kissed it. He whispered something to the chain and then held out the necklace to Proctor. “Go on, bend your neck just one time.”

“Isn’t that what the executioner says?” Proctor asked. But he sat up straight in the chair and bent forward.

Gordon draped the chain over Proctor’s neck. “This is more valuable than any clothes. Thank you for serving on our behalf.”

“You’re welcome,” Proctor said, feeling that he ought to do or say more. But his thoughts were elsewhere. “About the Covenant?”

“Yes,” Gordon said, pacing back to the window. “A covenant is a bond, is it not? A promise. The Covenant was formed as a promise binding several powerful talents together in a shared purpose. Ultimately, the leader gathered twelve of them together, although each of those gathered their own disciples.”

“You know them,” Proctor said.

“I know some of them.” He continued to stare pensively out the window. “The German is the former prince-bishop of Würzburg, Philipp Adolph von Ehrenberg. He held that post for almost a decade in the early sixteen hundreds—”

Proctor shook his head. “That’s over a hundred years ago.”

“A hundred and fifty,” Gordon said. “I believe he served from 1620 to 1630 or thereabouts. But why do you act surprised? You already knew that he was very old from your previous encounter with him. You know that immortality is the Covenant’s goal.”

“I’m still surprised by it,” Proctor said. “I know that the prince-bishop killed another witch, a man named Rotenhahn.”

“During his brief reign, he killed a thousand people,” Gordon said. He shrugged. “Some were witches, some weren’t. But the prince-bishop had discovered necromancy and was learning the ways of power. By the end of his reign, there was an execution every other day—they were beheaded, hanged, and burned alive. No one was spared, not women nor children. Noblemen and beggars alike were killed, priests and mayors were executed, all in an attempt to draw power from death. He killed so many that he built a furnace big enough to burn the bodies.”