A Spell for the Revolution (13 page)

They crept forward slowly until they came to another road. Nearby, someone coughed and cursed the wet. More British sentries, to judge by the sound of his voice. Other voices joined him.

“What are we waiting for?” asked one voice. “They can surrender in the rain just as easily as when it stops.”

“Maybe General Howe doesn’t want to get wet when he accepts this upstart Washington’s sword.”

“No,” said a third, gruffer voice. “This weather is perfect. We want to break their spirits before they surrender. Let ’em watch a few more of their friends die in the mud, let ’em be cold and hungry. These colonists, they’ve never known nothing but luxury and ease. When they see what war’s really like, they’ll break and that’ll be an end to their rebellions.”

Proctor started forward, not with any specific idea of showing them what luxury and ease had done for him, but just out of anger. Deborah gripped his arm and stopped him.

“They’re right about one thing,” she said.

“What’s that?” he snapped.

“The plan is to break the army’s spirit so there will be no more rebellion. Whatever the Covenant is planning, they’ll set it into motion here.”

Proctor glanced ahead through the rain again. Maybe she was right. But he couldn’t imagine what the Covenant’s plan might be. They’d used sickness to weaken the siege at
Boston. What could they use here that would be more powerful?

Proctor waited until the rain came down thick again, driving the sentries back under shelter. Then he wrapped one arm around Deborah’s waist and dashed over the road, half carrying her with him and dropping her on the other side.

“I feel like a sack of meal,” she whispered

“I’m hungry enough, I wish you were a sack of meal,” he said, feeling the pangs in his stomach. A hill rose in front of them. Hastily thrown-up defenses topped the hill, similar to the fort at Bunker Hill. Hats and muskets peeked out along the barrier—it was thick with defenders. “You go first,” he said.

“What?”

“They won’t shoot a woman.” As she started toward the steep embankment, he muttered, “I hope.”

He followed Deborah, steadying her as she climbed the hill. At the steepest part of the slope, he pushed ahead, offering her a hand up. They were right at the top when a musket poked out over the muddy rampart. Sometimes he hoped for too much.

But the musket was followed by a hat with a drooping brim. The brim spilled water as the head beneath it leaned toward them, and the man offered them his free hand. He pulled Deborah over the rough wall first, then reached back for Proctor. Proctor rolled across the rampart and landed on his back.

The soldier clearly hadn’t shaved in several days. His eyes were rimmed with red, as if it had been even longer since he’d slept, and he had an almost haunted look about him. “You folks are running the wrong direction,” he said in a slight Virginian accent. “All you civilians were supposed to go over the wall the other way.”

“I never was one to follow others much,” Proctor said as he stood up.

“Keep your voices and your heads down,” the soldier said.

Proctor dropped into a crouch and scanned the length of the wall. There was only one man every twenty or thirty feet. The rest of the “defenders” were hats on sticks and muskets propped over the barricade.

“On second thought,” the soldier said. “Maybe you should just come with me.” He exchanged gestures with the next man in line, indicating that he was going.

Deborah looked at Proctor questioningly, but he shook his head. As the soldier led them away from the fort and down toward the shore, Deborah leaned in close to Proctor. “There’s something wrong here,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said. “Where are all the soldiers?”

“That’s not what I mean,” she said.

Now that she had mentioned it, though, he became aware of the same thing: it was a sensation he had felt on their trip through the woods—a prickling of the skin, a distant chill, a creeping sense of fear. He had thought it was just a reaction to seeing the man who reminded him of Bootzamon.

He was watching her face when he tripped over something, and their guide said, “Careful now. You don’t want to look too close.”

Proctor glanced down at his feet and jumped back. The thing he had tripped over was a dead man’s leg.

And not just one dead man, but dozens, perhaps hundreds, lined up in a row on the hill behind the rampart. They lay face up, some with arms across their chests, others with arms at their sides, their eyes closed, their eyes open, their mouths closed, their lips parted in pain or prayer. Some had ragged holes in their chests, some their faces ruined, and some were missing limbs. None had weapons or anything to cover their heads. Proctor saw now where all the extra muskets and hats had come from.

“Deborah, don’t look,” he said.

She had stepped close to his side. “I’ve seen it already.”

Their guide had gone on ahead of them. He waved them to follow. “You don’t want to stay up there, miss. Come this way.”

They stepped carefully around the bodies and crossed to a slight rise where they could look across the East River. The rain had thinned to a mere lace of drizzle. A mile away, across the water, the low, dark outline of New York City shouldered its way through the mist. In front of the city, the choppy water, blue-gray flecked with white, was broken by the dark shape of a dozen small boats, moving in both directions, struggling against the current to keep to a straight line.

Directly in front of Deborah and Proctor, the land sloped down sharply to the river. The shore was crowded with thousands of Continental soldiers. They were dressed in a motley of uniforms—some wearing their farm clothes, some wearing finely tailored jackets, and some wearing peacoats more suited to the sea. Many were bandaged, or leaning on crutches, and showed other signs of recent injury. All were covered in mud. The slope, from the fort all the way down to the shore, was a pig’s wallow of mud. Heavy cannons mired too deep to move lay stuck in the hillside, abandoned.

Despite the rain and the mud and their wounds, the soldiers stood in orderly lines. The rear ranks faced outward, toward the fort, braced for the inevitable British attack.

The silence struck Proctor with more force than the sight of all the dead bodies. The soldiers waited without banter or protest, standing quietly in line for their turn to embark into boats as varied in origin and condition as their uniforms. When they boarded, they did so with a minimum of sound, soft steps muffled by the sound of the water. Even the boats made little noise as they came toward shore: the oarlocks were padded, and the sailors dipped and pulled
the oars with such deliberate skill that even the splashes sounded ordinary.

“This is the whole of the American army?” Deborah asked Proctor in a whisper.

“Yes,” he said.

“May the Light shine on us,” she whispered.

Proctor couldn’t imagine what the Covenant could do that would be worse than this. All the British soldiers had to do was march through the dark, come over the undefended ramparts, and pin the Americans on the beach. That would be the end of independence.

“May the Light shine,” Proctor said. “But not until we’ve all crossed safely.”

“That’s not what I’m referring to,” Deborah said, in a small, frightened voice.

Deborah stared back, across the row of dead bodies, to the rampart beyond. Bits of mist or fog seeped over the wall.

“Don’t you feel it?” she asked.

Her voice was so low he had to lean forward to hear her, and the act of falling silent, of listening to the quiet, allowed him to feel the very thing she mentioned.

Something moved in the air. It feathered across his skin, chilling him. But it moved opposite the direction of the wind coming off the water, which tugged at the coats and cloaks and banners around him.

Voices murmured in his ears. Yet the men around him were quiet, even the wounded men, not daring to cough.

“This is no natural fog,” Proctor said softly.

“No, it is not,” she agreed.

The fog marched over the walls, creeping at the pace of a funeral procession. It slid down the slope, over the bodies of the dead. It wrapped around Proctor, sending an unnatural shiver through his skin. He saw the same thing happen to Deborah. Then it slipped past them and flowed into the lines of the living soldiers, where it lingered.

Deborah half closed her eyes and shuddered. When she opened them again, she said, “Do you see it now?”

“The fog?”

“Close your eyes, and look with your spirit.”

He closed his eyes halfway, just as she had shown him. He shivered again, but this time it was not from the cold.

The fog that advanced over the rampart was formed of ghosts, the souls of the men killed in battle. Their spirit forms were horribly wounded, disfigured by the same blows that killed their physical bodies. They crept like a mob across the battlefield, cuffing themselves to the living.

Nearby, a wounded man, his chest bandaged and his arm bound up, sat with his back against a cannon stuck in the mud. Above him on the hillside, a single ghost detached itself from the mob. It wore a hunting shirt, draped in tatters over its shattered ribs. It flowed down the hill and crawled up onto the cannon like a cat about to pounce on its prey.

“Deborah …,” Proctor said.

She shook her head numbly. She had no better idea of what to do than he did.

The ghost dropped off the cannon and into the body of the wounded soldier. Immediately he clutched his chest and went into convulsions. When he tried to rise, his wound burst and blood poured out through his bandages.

Deborah held her elbows tight to her sides, her hands up covering her mouth.

Proctor stepped close to block her view.

Then, as he watched, the spirit of the hunter rose from the body of the dead man. It dragged along a new ghost, one with its chest wrapped in bandages and its face contorted in pain. They hung in the air together for a moment, then flowed off in different directions toward other living men.

“What is this?” Proctor said in a quiet voice.

“It’s a curse,” she whispered. “This is the Covenant’s plan. This is why they needed that orphan with the talent.”

He glanced around, but no one else seemed to notice what they noticed. “Why are we the only ones who can see it?”

“Because it’s done with magic, and we’re the only ones who have the talent to see that,” she said.

The ghosts continued to come over the ramparts as they
watched, hundreds, even thousands of them. Some were clearly Hessians and Redcoats. Some were women and children.

“Why are they not all soldiers?” he asked.

“The necromancer who did this uses whatever materials he has to hand, I think.” She watched the ghost of a baby squirm by, squalling and miserable. “See how we’re not affected. It’s meant for the army. He wants to break the spirit of the army so there can never be another rebellion.”

“But that wounded soldier who died—?”

“I think he was so near death already, it was easy for the ghost to drag him over to the other side.”

“This is … it’s …” He couldn’t find the right words for something so wrong. “We have to do something.”

“You can come with me,” the soldier said behind them.

Proctor jumped at the voice. Spinning around, he saw the unshaven, hollow-eyed soldier who’d helped them over the rampart. He was haunted too. The ghost of a Redcoat missing its right arm at the elbow followed behind him.

“I’m sorry,” Deborah said.

“I said, you can come with me,” the soldier said, twitching as the ghost tried to turn his head to show him the stump. “The genr’l will see you now.”

All the officers were busily engaged, keeping the men in order as they boarded the boats. One man on horseback rode up and down the muddy beach, checking on the officers.

Proctor had seen George Washington once before, from a distance, during the siege of Boston, but it didn’t prepare him for the man up close. As the general approached on the sorrel horse, it took Proctor a moment to realize how big both were. Washington stood well over six feet tall, but he looked even taller in the saddle because he was so lean. The sorrel shared his proportions. He moved so easily on the horse’s back, with so little obvious communication,
that the two appeared to be fused together. He seemed a giant among men.

Washington took off his hat the moment he saw Deborah and ducked his head to her. He had thick brown hair, pulled back in a bow. His face was sun-darkened, more like the farmers Proctor knew than the gentlemen he’d met. His high forehead gave the impression of deep intelligence.

“My apologies for the inhospitable condition of our present habitation, ma’am,” Washington said, in the same tone he might use to greet an unannounced but welcome guest to his home. His face was neatly shaven and his demeanor was perfectly calm, even relaxed, despite the weariness and tension all around him.

Washington’s stillness attracted a ghost whose shattered body had been rent by musket balls and chain shot. It wore the neat uniform of a Virginia gentleman, but there was no way to tell who it may have been—the lower half of its face was gone. It climbed over the back of the horse, making the sorrel stamp its feet and try to move away. Washington stilled the animal with the slightest pressure of his knees. But it gave the ghost a chance to fasten on to Washington’s shoulder.