A Spell for the Revolution (44 page)

“He’s with me,” Proctor said. He might ruin his own counterfeit as a Quaker, but he wouldn’t wreck Alex’s disguise. “I promised his brothers I’d look after him.”

“I’m the one with the gun,” Alex said. “We’ll see who looks after who.”

Monroe let the matter go. “We’ll be in Captain Washington’s company.”

“William Washington?” asked Proctor. The general’s cousin had been wounded during the battle at Harlem Heights. “Has he returned to duty?”

“You couldn’t keep him out of this fight,” Monroe said.
“We’ll have about forty men, and we’re to move ahead of the main company, securing the road and making sure no travelers go into or out of Trenton.” He glanced at Proctor and Alex one more time. “If anything goes wrong and the Hessians discover us, we’ll be on the sharp edge.”

Alex shielded her face against the raging wind. “It’s hard to imagine anyone leaving their quarters in weather like this.”

“Hopefully, the Hessians are thinking the same thing,” Proctor said.

At that point, Monroe seemed to accept that he could not discourage them. “Let’s go report.”

William Washington was a large man, though not so tall as his cousin, and inclined to fat despite the hardship of the campaign and the scarcity of supplies. He had a round face, and the cold make his cheeks more red than the last time Proctor had seen him. Monroe gave him General Washington’s orders. Captain Washington accepted Proctor and Alex as two more volunteers, much like the Jersey farmers who were going to lead the way across miles of frozen country.

They were the first group to set out. Proctor’s intention to ride Singer quickly faded. The weather, bad enough for the crossing, intensified as though a malevolent will drove it like a pack of dogs against them. They marched uphill into a fierce gale, which hounded them through the bare trunks of the thick woods. Noticing Alex sheltering behind Singer as they walked, Proctor dismounted and used the horse as a moving windbreak.

It proved a wise decision. The trail was steep, and the path icy and uneven, so that they slipped despite going slowly. The storm came at them over the heights like a barrage from battlements, intended to drive back an enemy’s attack. The snow, which had been falling steadily, turning to stinging sleet again and then, for a few agonizing minutes
when they had no place to shelter, into hail that hit them like icy rounds of buckshot.

But the storm could not sustain that fury. Once they crested the hill and turned south, the ice and hail abated. It started to snow again, big, wet flakes like scrapings off a block of ice. In a short while those flakes turned into fat drops. Rain fell, as cold as ice, turning the road to a morass of mud so that they had to make their way single file along the edges. A second group of forty men, many of them local militia, followed behind and found the going no easier.

They came to a crossroads at a little hamlet, where Captain Washington met briefly with the commander of the second group. The other unit took the lower road, toward the river, while Washington led their group eastward. “It’s up to us to cut off the road to Princeton before they send for or receive reinforcements,” Monroe explained.

The British had a large garrison at Princeton. If they came down at the right moment, the Americans would be crushed between the pincers. “Are forty men enough to do that?” Proctor asked.

“They’ll have to be,” he said.

As they continued the march, Alex approached Proctor, lifting her musket just enough to draw his eye. “It’s too wet to fire,” she said under her breath.

Proctor looked around. The other men’s weapons could not be in better condition.

Even if the army failed in its attack on the Hessian units, he dare not fail in his own, private mission. But he would have to get closer to the city before he tried to get inside.

Despite the weather, the roads were busy. The first man they caught was a farm boy about Proctor’s age, sneaking home shamefully after falling asleep at the home of some girl he was courting. The second was a woodcutter old enough to be the first one’s grandfather; he said he was out trying to pick up the windblown branches before some
other fellow got them. The third was a haggard old woman in clothes little better than rags. She said she was a midwife, going to attend a birth, but she stank of witchcraft to Proctor. When she was taken prisoner with the others and forced to join their party, she grew belligerent, hurling epithets and threats of doom at the soldiers, reminding Proctor of Cecily or the widow Nance.

Proctor reached for the knife he carried under his jacket. Alex’s hand, cold even through her gloves, fell on his.

“Careful,” she said. “Sometimes a crone is just a crone.”

It was his fear for Deborah taking hold. He had no idea where she was or what she was doing, whether she was safe or not. “The German is going to attack us again, I can feel it,” he said.

“But she’s not,” Alex said.

After a moment’s pause, he withdrew his hand and thrust it into his pocket again for warmth. As they continued walking, he looked east. Dawn was starting to show on the horizon, like a redheaded child rising from the dark blankets of his bed. Any minute could bring an alarm.

Ahead of them, dogs started barking angrily. Dogs had barked at them from a distance all night, but it had been one or two, and their voices curious. This sounded like a hunter’s kennel loosed on a fox. A large house sat beside the road just ahead of them. A lantern lit the window, and a door banged open.

“For God’s sake,” yelled the man. “Stay off the road, damn you! If you won’t go back to Hesse, at least go back to Trenton and give me a single night’s decent sleep.”

Through these and other words, it became clear that the man thought they were either a British or Hessian force, both of which had frequently been on patrol of late. This was the crossroads they’d been aiming for, the road connecting Trenton to Princeton. When Washington finally conveyed their true nature to him, the man immediately ran to silence his dogs. He grabbed a coat before he rejoined
them, maybe taking it for granted they would hold him prisoner.

“The name’s John Riker,” he said. “Doctor John Riker. I’ll come along, if you allow. Maybe I can help some poor fellow.”

“You could help a poor fellow now with a bite of warm food,” Monroe said.

Riker nodded and went inside to order his servant to prepare something. Outside, Washington ordered the men to set up barricades across the roads. While the men went to work in the tapering rain, dragging fallen trees and borrowed wagons into place to block passage, Proctor took Alex and drifted away from the others. If he was going to sneak into town, he’d have to do it soon before it got too light or the shooting started.

“If anyone asks,” he told Alex. “I rode back to Washington to report.”

“You can’t just leave me here!”

“I have to,” he said. “If we both go, it’d be too suspicious. Once you enter the town, come find me.”

“How will I find you?”

He didn’t have time to fashion a finding charm, and he wasn’t sure she would use magic in any case, despite what she’d allowed him to do in the boat at the crossing. “Look for the loudest commotion,” he told her.

He took Singer aside, into the trees, and mounted her back. The horse seemed to welcome either the warmth or presence of a rider again. With Proctor bent low to her neck, she took off through the woods, finding a trail easily with sure steps.

The smell of cheap tobacco braced him for an attack.

“You are indeed persistent, aren’t you?” said the hollow, oddly accented voice from the trees behind him.

Proctor twisted in the saddle, bringing Singer around. The red coal appeared first, bright as a small sun against the dark background of the woods. The figure of the scarecrow
Bootzamon stepped out of the woods. In the dawn light, Proctor could see that the raggedy clothes were different than in Virginia or New York, less elegant and more decayed perhaps, but once again he had a cockfeather in his cap.

“I assumed you’ve raised the alarm among the Hessians,” Proctor said. Could he escape Bootzamon and get back to the advance party to warn them? Would General Washington change his plan now even if the Hessians had been warned?

Bootzamon did a jaunty side-step to flank Proctor. “Why would you assume I’ve raised any kind of alarm for anyone?” He plucked at his sodden waistcoat with a gloved hand. Damp straw spilled from his jacket cuff. “You’ll find it hard to set anything on fire tonight.”

“When did I ever set anything on fire—?” Proctor asked.

From the corner of his eye, he spied a ball of flame missile toward him. He tumbled off Singer to dodge it, got tangled in the reins, and was dragged through the snow. Another missile burst in front of the horse, showering her face with sparks. Proctor untangled himself and rolled free as Singer reared, whinnying in terror. The scarecrow form of the widow Nance jumped out of the trees in front of the horse. As Proctor staggered to his feet, Singer dashed off into the woods in fear.

“I wasn’t actually speaking to you,” Bootzamon said.

“I should have killed you the first time I saw you,” Nance sneered at Proctor, words pouring like maggots out of her feedsack mouth. The pipe stuck in her inhuman face, shifting from side to side. “I should have slit your throat in Boston and bled you instead of that little blond boy.”

She summoned pinecones to her hand from the forest floor and flung them at him, one after another. Each one sparked in the air and then drowned in wet smoke before it reached Proctor. He batted them aside, until Nance
stopped where she stood and screamed, a disembodied sound like the wind between rocks.

“I could make some snowballs for you to throw, if you think they’d work better,” Proctor said. He stepped sideways to prevent Bootzamon from sneaking up behind him.

Nance reacted with rage and flung herself at Proctor. Her scarecrow body slammed into him like a wet straw mattress, smelling of dust and mold and smoke. Her soft fists battered at him, while the ends of his hairs began to sizzle and curl with heat. She was trying to set him on fire!

He grabbed one of her arms and spun in a circle, tossing her at a tree. She slammed into the trunk and crumpled to the ground. Snow fell off the branches and covered her. Her head popped up out of the snow, pipe clamped in her teeth, and shook it off.

“Why aren’t you attacking him?” she yelled at Bootzamon.

“But you’re doing so well,” he said.

Proctor had two choices: he could either run or attack. If he ran, they would be behind him, and they could chase faster and kill quicker than he wanted to think about. So when Nance spoke to Bootzamon, he charged her. He slipped as he ran over the snowy ground, but he stretched out his arm as he fell and snatched the pipe from her mouth.

“Damn you,” she cried. She stretched out her hand, like a falconer calling to her bird.

The pipe tried to leap from Proctor’s grasp but he squeezed his fist around it and ran away from her. The pipe yanked at his arm, like a big dog trying to break its leash, but he held on tight.

“Give that to me,” she demanded, rising from the snow like an angel of wrath.

“Give it to you or what, you’ll threaten to kill me? You’ve already played that card.” He circled as he spoke, keeping both Nance and Bootzamon in his sight. He tried
to break the pipe in his hand, but it was unnaturally strong, bound together perhaps by the same magic that animated Nance’s scarecrow form.

“Give it to me or I’ll strip the skin from your meat a few inches at a time, you stupid boy.”

She advanced on him, but she was wary of coming within his grasp now, so she spoke words in a language he couldn’t understand, summoning the pipe back to her. It leapt about as if alive, twisting and yanking his hand to escape. He closed both hands about it to hold it tighter, one fist around the bowl and one around the stem, but still it pulled his arms straight out in front of him in its desire to return to her. Unable to take another step back, he dug in his heels and held on to it like a man trying to control a wild horse.

“I’ll take that now,” she said, snapping her hand in the air as if yanking it from his grasp.

Proctor gritted his teeth, refusing to let go, even if it yanked his arms out of joint. He felt a great pull and then a tiny snap as the force of her own magic broke the bowl and stem in two.

“That’s not good,” Nance said, and then she collapsed in a pile of rags and cast-offs.

Proctor fell back, sprawling in the snow. He dropped the broken pipe and scrambled to his feet at once, braced for the attack from Bootzamon.

“She’s not dead, you realize,” Bootzamon said, walking toward Proctor. His feet left no mark in the snow. “Her soul is still shackled to our master. He’ll make another body, sacrifice another foal, breathe her into life again.”

“I’ve noticed how hard you are to get rid of,” Proctor said.

“Rotenhahn,” Bootzamon said.

The word meant nothing to Proctor. He looked about for a weapon, anything to strike Bootzamon with. He
might not be able to kill him, but he could slow him down again.

Bootzamon lunged at Proctor, laughed when he jumped, and stopped short, stalking him slowly, keeping pace step by step with Proctor as he tried to get away.

“Rotenhahn was my name,” Bootzamon said. “I’ve been so long outside my own flesh that I had stopped using it.”

“It’s a good name,” Proctor said uncertainly. He spied Singer in the woods and wondered if he could trick Bootzamon to within kicking distance of her again.

“I was a canon at the cathedral in Bonn,” Bootzamon said. “I was a witch, but only because the talent came upon me, breaking in on my will like a thief entering a house at night. I didn’t know what was happening to me, didn’t know how to control it. The good people of the city, my own friends, even my family, beheaded me and burned my body.”

“You need better friends,” Proctor said. He had a large branch in his hand now.

“But my master, the prince-bishop, was there, and trapped my soul. I discovered later that he had arranged for the witch hunt so that he might trap many of our souls to do his bidding. He was new at necromancy then, and it took him numerous attempts to master the skill. It turned out that he had to visit me in jail beforehand and mark me as his own in order to harvest me. Put down that cudgel.”