A Spell for the Revolution (6 page)

Proctor lurched through the door and grabbed his musket from its spot at his workbench. It was a Brown Bess that had been passed down from one hand to the next since the war with the French and their Indian allies more than twenty years before—a good, reliable gun. He slung his hunting bag over his shoulder and began loading the weapon as he turned back.

He hoped, if there was an attack, it was just the one man. Unless the man on the horse was a diversion. Other assassins would come at them from behind, across the pasture with the broken fence.

That thought raced through his head as he rammed the shot down the barrel and ran outside.

In the yard just past the well, the rider loomed over Deborah. He was pulling his sword from its sheath. Deborah took a step back, glancing over at Proctor. Her hand was in her pocket, clutching her protective charm.

If he brought the rider down with one shot, he could reload while he rushed out to block the next attack from the fence. Proctor lifted the barrel, aimed, and—

The musket jerked up into the air as he squeezed the trigger, discharging harmlessly. It had been magic, an invisible hand, that ruined his aim. The horse tossed its head and took a few steps back. Raising his gun like a club, Proctor started forward.

Only to be stopped by the sight of Deborah. She stood there, with her arm outstretched, palm open. She was the one who had deflected his shot.

“Proctor,” she said. “It’s our friend.”

At first the phrase meant nothing to him. She was a
Quaker and called everyone
friend
, even some people who weren’t. Then he heard the rider speak.

“I’m glad to see you’re ready to defend yourselves.”

Relief flushed through Proctor, and for a moment he thought he might topple over. “Paul Revere.”

Before the Revolution, Paul Revere had been one of the guides on the Quaker Highway, the secret network of ministers and others across New England that helped move accused witches to places of safety. Revere belonged to the Masons, the Sons of Liberty, and served on the colonial committees for intelligence and alarms, which was how he’d come to ride a horse out to Concord the year before to warn that the Redcoats were coming. Revere knew everyone worth knowing and any news they might want to know.

He sat comfortably in the saddle, his round face tan from a summer spent out in the sun. He wore the blue jacket of a Continental army officer, something new since the last time Proctor had seen him.

The door to the house opened. Ezra stood there, shoved forward by Magdalena. The faces of the other students were pressed to the window. “Is everything all right?” Ezra asked.

“There’s no alarm,” Deborah answered. “This is our old friend. Give us a moment with him, please.”

The corners of Revere’s eyes crinkled. “So, Mr. Brown, you mistook me for a Redcoat? I should be glad your aim has worsened in the past year.”

Proctor leaned on the gun to steady himself. “I didn’t recognize you in your new duds.”

Revere ran a quick thumb down the buff-colored trim on the lapel. “You like them?”

“Eh, they’re all right,” Proctor said drily.

Revere laughed and showed Proctor and Deborah the hilt of his officer’s sword. “You behold the Continental army’s most newly commissioned captain. Although I expect to be a colonel by Christmas.”

“Congratulations,” Deborah said.

“It seems like a prodigal use of your talents,” Proctor added, thinking of Dr. Joseph Warren, the best physician in Massachusetts, who’d been killed right before Proctor’s eyes defending the barricade at Bunker Hill. “Plenty of other fellows can stop a musket ball.”

Revere dismounted with ease and tied the horse up near the trough. “I’ll be working with artillery. It’s a continuation of the gunpowder research I did for General Washington over the past year.”

Proctor had seen General Washington once, during the siege of Boston, though he’d never met him. But Revere tossed his name off with the familiarity of a neighbor or near acquaintance.

“You didn’t come all the way up from Boston just to brag about your commission,” Deborah said. “You’ve got better audiences than us for that.”

Revere held out an open hand. “I would have sent you a letter, but—”

Proctor winced, knowing what was coming next.

“Absolutely not,” Deborah said. “You know what we do here. We must never write anything down, give no one any way to find us or ‘prove’ we’re witches. That rule has preserved our lives for four-score years.”

“I understand,” Revere conceded. “But with the war heating up again, I may not always be able to get away.”

“Then you’ll have to send word by a friend of a friend, the way we have always done,” Deborah said.

“You’re running out of friends,” Revere said. “Bowditch is dead—”

“Dead?” asked Proctor.

“Of an apoplexy,” Revere said. “Happened without warning. Cartland’s son took over his section of the highway, but he was killed at the battle of Trois Rivières. And Whitcomb has gone missing, didn’t return from his trip to the Ohio country.”

“There’s always the Reverend Emerson,” Deborah said.

Revere shook his head. “Emerson is going to serve as a volunteer pastor at Fort Ticonderoga. He won’t be available for the duration of the campaign.”

“Good news for the soldiers at Ticonderoga, but bad news for us,” Proctor said. All of it was bad news for them. He hoped that it was coincidental, but what he had seen at Alexandra Walker’s farm worried him. Her family had also been guides, just like Bowditch, Cartland, and Whitcomb.

“I’ve heard much about the witchcraft of the Indians in that part of New York,” Deborah said. “Perhaps Emerson can find out something for us.”

“Perhaps,” Revere conceded. “But my point is, our options for communication may become very limited. The war is heating up again, what with Howe landing his troops in New York—”

“Wait a minute,” Proctor said. “Howe did what?”

Revere looked at him as if he were senseless. “Have you not heard? How removed from the world are you here?”

“Like a papist monastery,” Proctor said.

Revere took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his balding forehead. “Admiral Howe has landed his brother’s army on Staten Island. Thirty thousand men.”

“That’s half again as many soldiers as Washington has in the whole army,” Proctor said.

“Do the British hate us so much, that so many of them want to come here to fight us?” Deborah asked.

Revere sat on the edge of the well and splashed water on his face. “They’re not all British,” he said. “Many of them, maybe half, are battle-tested mercenaries from Germany. Mostly Hessians.”

“But we’re safe here, in Boston, and north of Boston?” Deborah asked.

“We’re not safe anywhere if they overrun General Washington,” Proctor said.

Revere nodded his agreement. “As soon as the weather’s right, they’ll attack Long Island or Manhattan. We knew the blow was coming, even before the Declaration of Independence was published. But it takes so much time to move messages, much less men, across the ocean.” He paused, then looked at Proctor and Deborah. “Is there any chance we’ll be able to count on your people for aid?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Proctor said.

Deborah said, “No, no chance at all.”

Revere sipped another ladle of water, looking over the rim of the bowl at the two of them. Finally, he lowered it and said, “Which is it?”

“One army will have to take care of the other,” Deborah said. She glanced over her shoulder at the house. “We’re preparing to face the Covenant, and I can tell you, we’re not ready.”

“None of us is ready,” Revere answered. “But we all do what we can, to the best of our abilities. Do we know any more about our enemy yet?”

“We know that if the Continental army is defeated, then they’ve achieved their goal,” Proctor said, more to answer Deborah than Revere.

Deborah slashed her hand through the air, in firm negation. “The witches we faced last year, the widow and that southern woman”—Deborah never spoke of Cecily by name—“they had incredible power. They could control what we saw, making our own eyes lie to us. They could make thousands sick with a single spell. They could animate the dead.” She looked suddenly lost and fragile, and her voice dropped to a near whisper. “I don’t have that kind of power yet. These others that we’ve gathered for training, they don’t have that kind of power either.”

“And let us hope they never do,” Revere said. “Those are evil powers and should never be used.”

“Exactly,” Deborah said.

“Which is all the more reason we need your defenses,” he said compellingly. “General Washington can find a way to beat the British and their mercenaries, but only if his men are well enough to fight. He can’t defeat another witch’s spell.”

Proctor could see why some men decided it would be easier to kill all witches than sort out the good from the bad. “We’re doing what we can,” he said. “We’ve had trouble gathering even the witches we know. The Covenant is sending its agents to capture or kill all our friends and allies.”

“And still you will not act?” Revere said incredulously.

“We act every day that we stay in safety here, preparing to meet those who wish us harm,” Deborah snapped.

Proctor wasn’t convinced they were doing the right thing. Why stay here in hiding while the Covenant hunted down their friends? Better to go out and find them, destroy them where they were.

Revere, however, decided not to argue the point further. “I’ll give you my bit of news, in hopes that it will help you on several fronts, both in gathering students and finding our secret enemies. There’s an orphan.”

The word froze Deborah, who was an orphan now. Proctor stepped over to her side and let his arm dangle where the edge of his hand grazed hers.

“An apprentice-aged lad, about eleven or twelve,” Revere said. “He’s named William Reed, and strange things have been happening around him. His neighbors call him haunted, but it may be your sort of gift he has.”

“Where?” Proctor asked.

“Down on the western tip of Long Island, southeast of Brooklyn, at a town called Gravesend,” Revere said.

“What sort of strange things?” Deborah asked.

Revere rubbed the back of his neck. “A wagon broke and fell on his neighbor, pinning him to the road, but this boy lifted it by himself, preserving the neighbor’s legs, if not his life. Sometimes lamps go out mysteriously; others flash on with no agency or explanation. Stones have been seen to float around him.”

Proctor leaned on his musket for balance. If the boy was an orphan, he might have no idea what was happening to him or why. He could be terrified.

“That’s hardly proof that it’s his gift,” Deborah said.

“No,” agreed Revere. “But the parties interested in him point in that direction.”

“What do you mean?” Proctor said.

“Less than a week ago, a certain Cecily Sumpter Pinckney was in New York City, asking questions about the boy and looking for someone to lead her to him.”

Deborah’s hand pulled away from Proctor and darted into the pocket where she kept her focus.

“So if you plan to retrieve this boy, you may want to go before General Washington’s troops engage Howe’s army,” Revere continued. “And if she’s planning some kind of witchcraft, it’d be best to take the powder from her gun before she fires.”

Proctor agreed. He didn’t want to see Cecily doing to anyone else what she’d done to Lydia. “Can we invite you inside?” he asked. “It’s a bit early for supper, but we’ll feed you well enough if you’ll wait.”

“Thank you, but no,” Revere said. In one smooth motion, he remounted his horse. “It’s a big war, and I’ve other folks to visit yet this evening, especially if progress here is slower than we hoped. I have to report back to Boston the morning after tomorrow.”

“God speed,” Deborah said.

Revere turned the horse toward the invisible gate, pausing to tug his cap back tightly on his head. “And to you, also, if you go to Long Island.”

With a tap of his heels into the flanks of his horse, he headed away. He was nearly to the gate when he turned and came back.

“I almost hate to mention this,” he said. “But I saw the oddest thing in the woods on my approach here. At first I thought it a scarecrow, but who puts a scarecrow under the trees, away from any crops? So I took him for a beggar.”

Bootzamon. Proctor gripped his musket in both hands and felt his teeth grind together.

“You know who I’m describing?” Revere said.

“We do,” Deborah replied with a forced smile. “And it’s nothing for you to worry about. Thank you again for going out of your way to see us.”

He tipped his hat and rode away. When he passed the gatepost, his image scattered like a reflection in a pool of water shattered by a rain of stones.

Proctor frowned and felt the scab on his cheek crack. He turned to Deborah to ask her what she thought about Bootzamon.

She stared after Revere. “Another orphan,” she growled.

“So who was that?”

Proctor and Deborah spun as they heard the question. Ezra had taken a step off the porch. His voice was tense, and a large mallet dangled from his strong right hand.

“That was Paul—”