Traitor to the Crown (41 page)

The American crew ran across the deck, leaping and cheering and shouting.

Proctor went belowdeck and found that Barry had already heard the good news. Proctor looked him straight in the eye, and said, “Captain, when will we sail for Boston?”

“The instant we’re able to raise sail,” Barry said. “We’ve done all we can on this voyage. The
Lafayette
is lost to us—we won’t find it now. We’ll have to find some way to beat the British with what we have.”

On the morning of June 6, the
Alliance
, battered but not broken, raised sight of Boston Harbor. Proctor’s own heart leapt with hope, and as soon as they were ashore he used the last of his coin to rent ponies for himself and Lydia. They rode through the night, with only the briefest of breaks, passing through Salem and coming to The Farm a day later.

As they crossed the hilltop, Proctor felt the tingle of Deborah’s protective spell. He had a vision that everything was going to be all right. He would touch the charmed gatepost, the veil that hid The Farm would be lifted, and he would find Deborah with Maggie in her arms—no, Maggie would be holding Deborah’s hand, running beside her.

The oak tree stood beside the road the same as it ever
had, marking their gate. He dismounted and put his hand on the gatepost.

The veil lifted.

Beyond the barrier, The Farm lay in ruins. The barn was shattered, the house reduced to its foundations, the gardens choked with weeds.

Proctor collapsed to the ground, sobbing.

He crouched on his knees at the threshold for a long time, his body racked by sobs. He had gone so far to protect his family, he faced horrors he had never imagined for their sake, and he had come home to this. The early-summer sun beat down on him with the harsh, relentless light of truth. He had failed.

After a long while, he felt Lydia’s hand fall on his shoulder.

“Come on,” she said softly. “We best go see what we can learn.”

He rose to his feet, but there was nothing to be learned. The damage had been done a year or more ago, at exactly the time the demon had been sent to possess Deborah. The land still showed signs of being scorched, the earth was churned and abandoned, the buildings were reduced to piles of stick and rubble. Not even the chicken coop had been spared. The remnants of the roof rested on the stone foundation.

Everything that he had built, everything that he had worked for, was destroyed.

He stumbled forward, barely able to take in the destruction. The only things still standing were the chimney from the new addition, the one that Proctor had built, the one that he and Deborah had protected with the spell. A single strip of fertile land ran from the chimney to a solitary tree in the orchard. Maggie’s tree. It had grown so much, he scarcely recognized it.

There were chickens under the roof of the coop. They poked their heads out as Proctor approached, pecking at the grasses along the narrow strip of ground. With Deborah’s protections still in place, no wild dogs or other predators had been able to get in to attack them. A rooster poked its head up and, seeing Proctor and Lydia, began to leap and flap its wings aggressively.

Proctor brushed his hand through the air, using magic to knock the rooster fifty feet away, leaving a trail of feathers behind it. The chickens ran, squawking, and hid.

“Was that necessary?” Lydia asked. The rooster stood up, dazed, and picked at its feathers.

“She’s dead. Don’t you understand? They’re both dead.”

“All dead, you mean,” she said. “If Deborah and Maggie are, then Abigail is too. But we don’t know that any of them are dead yet.”

“Look around—how could she be alive?”

“I see the hearth and Maggie’s tree still standing. Those were the most sacred places on this farm. If they survived, I think Deborah did too.”

“That’s wishful thinking.”

“If you have a choice on how to think, then always choose hope over fear.”

He walked away from her, shaking his head. It was hopeless. He had failed. He had not beaten the Covenant. He had not stopped the demon. Still, he had to know, and the only way he knew how to know was through scrying.

He began picking through the rubble of the house, tossing broken lumber and shingles aside until he found a bowl. It had a chip in the edge but it would do. Carrying it in one hand, he went over to the shattered wall around the well and found the bucket still attached to a rope. The wood was split, and would spill as fast as he could pour, but he dropped it down into the well. It smacked the water and grew much heavier as he hauled
it hand over hand back to the surface. He dumped the water into the bowl before it drained out completely.

“What are you doing?” Lydia asked.

“The only thing I know how to do,” he said. The thing he should have done a long time ago. Scrying was his only natural talent, the only thing he could do that he had not learned from Deborah or because of her.

He carried the bowl full of water over to the fallen coop, and reached under the roof looking for a nest. The chickens pecked at his hand, and it stung, but he reached around until he felt eggs in a nest. He scooped one up, felt it warm in his palm, and pulled out his hand.

A flap of skin fell loose and blood streamed over his thumb and wrist.

Once, to gain the foresight, he would have had to perform an elaborate ritual in preparation.

Not so today. He would have answers if he had to grab the future by the throat and wring them free.

With that thought in his head, he lifted the egg over the bowl and crushed it in his fist. The yolk squirted out of the shell, splashing water over the sides. Pieces of shell and egg ran down his arm.

Blood dripped off his hand, three droplets, framing the egg.

The vision hit him like a waking dream.

A huge brick mansion, like the homes of London, but set in a broad plantation at twilight. He recognized slaves in the yard, and a field planted with tobacco. Somewhere in the South, maybe Virginia.

The doors opened to the mansion. John Dee, with his gray hair and pointed beard, with his long, gray robes and ruffled collar, walked out of the house and down the broad staircase to the lawn. He was followed by the prince-bishop and Cecily, and by other witches that Proctor had seen in London.

But he didn’t even notice them, so full of anger was he at Dee.

He launched himself toward the wizard, intending to kill him. A field of spears surrounded him. He lifted the spears into the air and hurled them at Dee, chasing along behind them to see the job done.

That’s when Deborah appeared, wrapped in shimmering light, like a creature made as much of spirit as of flesh. She stepped in front of Dee and put up a protective shield, knocking the spears to the ground.

Proctor skidded to a stop.

Deborah?
She had been taken by Balfri after all. It was almost a relief to know.

“What did you see?” Lydia asked.

The heat of the sun, the clucking of the chickens, the sharp pain in his hand, all rushed over him, bringing him back to the present.

His fist was still raised in the air. He flung the bits of the egg aside. His knees wanted to buckle but he would not fall another time.

“What did you see?” Lydia repeated.

“My last chance to stop this evil,” he said. “I won’t fail again.”

He turned and walked back toward the gate, wiping his hands clean on his thighs.

It was the third week of October, and bright red and orange trees stood out among the green during daylight. At night, everything blurred to gray, with the crisp, decaying smells of autumn mixed with the fecund scent of the swamp. Proctor, expecting weather like he knew in Massachusetts, was dressed for warmth, with a broad-brimmed black hat borrowed from a Quaker, and a long black coat. Over the past few months, his beard had also grown thick. But the Virginia temperatures never came close to frost, even at night, and the extra clothes only served to set him apart from the group of partisans that he and Lydia had joined.

Two dozen men and women followed a narrow trail through a swamp. They were only one day away from the new moon, so the road was dark. The stars stood out vividly against the night, and the Milky Way drew its band of pale light across the sky, but it wasn’t enough to reach the ground below, where everyone was a shadow.

Proctor and Lydia had been traveling with this group for a few days now. They were mostly black, mostly runaway slaves, but they had fallen in with the poor whites and Indians who scavenged a living off the land.

Now and then, the wind played tricks and carried the sound of cannon fire to them from across the broad river.

The sound was music to Proctor’s ears. George Washington had led the American army and their French allies
in a forced march with few supplies down from the North. They had penned Cornwallis up against the water at Yorktown and battered him mercilessly. It was a desperate gamble: without the supplies from the
Lafayette
, the Americans might have only one chance to beat the British. But Washington had taken that chance without blinking.

Proctor tried to keep himself ready when his own chance came.

One of the black men turned and said, “Things are going bad at Yorktown.”

“I was lucky to escape,” said one of the other men, a runaway slave. “Swam across the river at night. Thirty of us went there from the plantation, and twenty were dead from the pox before I escaped. It was so bad, the dogs waited outside the surgeon’s tent to eat men’s arms and legs as fast as the doctor cut them off—”

“That’s enough of that story, Jacob,” one of the women said. “We’ve heard it enough times now.”

“Cornwallis still has a chance if the British fleet arrives,” another said.

“Banastre Tarleton holds Gloucester Point, this side of the river,” said another slave. “That man fights like the devil himself had a lash at his back.”

“What battles has he won lately?” said the woman. “None, that’s how many.”

“He hasn’t had a chance to fight. You wait and see.”

Proctor listened to them talk and tried to adjust to the difference. For these men and women, a British victory held out some small promise of freedom. Few of them expected the British to keep their promises to runaway slaves, but they had made the promises. No matter what happened in the war, they were sure to lose. Proctor knew the feeling. “Where’s this plantation you were telling me about, Jacob?” he asked.

“Hard to tell, not being on the road and all, but it’s not much farther, I’m sure,” he said. “Just past the crossroads.”

Proctor had seen at least a hundred plantations, most in the twilight at dawn or dusk, or by the light of the moon at night, from the safety of ditches and trees, from the cover of the slave quarters at night. Since June, he’d been searching for the plantation he’d seen in the scrying. He’d been down the coast of Mary land and Virginia, all the way to North Carolina, inland along the rivers and back again.

“The big house is just ahead,” said one of the Indians, a fisherman in a soft hat and oft-mended clothes. His skin was darker and his eyes folded at the corners, or Proctor would have taken him for just another poor white. In the moonless night, it was impossible to tell his race at all.

They came to a road and walked along the verge. Lanterns glowed in the distance, and Proctor’s hope grew. He knew he would find the plantation, if only because he had scryed it. But he felt like he was close.

A hundred yards farther on, as the trees opened up and he saw the plantation in full, he shook his head and stopped. “That’s not it.”

Greek columns lined a broad porch, even with the ground, nothing like the place he’d seen in his vision.

The leaders of their little group withdrew into the woods off the road and whispered among themselves. Proctor sat apart from the rest, his arms resting on his knees. He could see them looking at him from time to time, a half turn of the head or a quick glance over a shoulder. A mockingbird leapt from shrub to tree to fallen log, imitating several other birds in quick succession.

“You aren’t what you seem to be, are you?” Proctor said as the large bird emitted the call of a tiny wren.

At the sound of his voice, Lydia rose and came over to
his side. “They aren’t trying to exclude you from the discussion,” she said.

Proctor waved off the apology with a small motion of his hand. “I know they don’t trust me because I’m white,” he said.

“They don’t trust you because you look and act like a crazy man,” Lydia said.

He let that sink in. “Maybe I am.”

“Some of them think you’re a hoodoo man or a powwow man.”

They weren’t wrong, but he had not used his talent among them. “Is that what they say?”

“No, it’s what they don’t say, and the questions they ask me,” she said.

“I understand. I can go on by myself. I’ve dragged you far enough.”

“I haven’t come for you,” she said. “I’ve come for Deborah’s sake, and Maggie’s, and Abigail’s.”

“You may not like what we find,” he said.

“Somebody’s got to be there to remember them,” she said.

The group of runaways and freemen rose and walked over to Proctor. The fisherman spoke for them. “The men here are divided. Some want to join the British garrison at Gloucester Point. They think that Tarleton will keep on fighting, and that the British ships will come, and they will have their freedom. Others want to turn around and go west to join the Cherokee in the mountains, though that is a long, hard journey, over land that I will not travel.”

That urge for freedom. Proctor could see Lydia tense, ready to go either direction.

“I would not put any trust in the British,” Proctor said. “Go west to the Cherokee, but don’t stop there. Go farther west if you can.”

Some of the men and women nodded among themselves. They had been thinking the very same thing.

Jacob stepped forward. “There’s one more plantation, it might be the one you described. If we go back to the crossroads and follow it around to the river’s edge, we’ll come to it.”

Proctor would visit every plantation in America if he had to, but there was no reason to drag these other people along. “How do you know of it?” he asked.