A Spell for the Revolution (40 page)

Deborah waved a ribbon around Cecily and repeated the verse about God as their shield. “And if your master does send anyone for you, that will keep them from seeing your spark.”

The hate in Cecily’s eyes turned to despair.

“You must take the fourth seat in the carriage,” Deborah told Lydia. “Given your injury, it will be best for you.”

“This is nothing,” Lydia said. “Not after the way you and Miss Magdalena did your medicine on me. But I’m not letting Cecily out of my sight. That woman is plain evil. She’s done evil to me, and done evil to those children, and I plan to keep an eye on her until she can’t do nobody no harm no more.”

So it was settled. Deborah took the last seat in the calash and Lydia sat in the front of the wagon, across from Cecily, just like a guard on a prisoner. Proctor rode the horse that he had borrowed from the army, and they all set out through the deserted streets of Philadelphia in the hour before dawn. They left the city and took the country road north for the long, tedious ride through the bitter, lip-cracking, finger-numbing cold.

By midday the children were bored and restless, and Magdalena chased them out of the carriage. At first they rode on the bench with Ezra, then they ran up and rode on the bench with Abby and Alex. And then Zoe insisted that Proctor let them take turns riding on the horse with him.

It was late in the day, and they were passing through woods. The trees shielded them from the wind, but the parade moved slowly. Cecily’s horse and Proctor’s mount were both played out. Cecily’s horse was worse, and the carriage had fallen a way behind. Only Singer had any bounce left in her step.

Zoe sat in front of Proctor, with his coat wrapped around her. “This has been about the best Christmas ever,” she said wistfully.

Proctor laughed, though the cold made his lips split to do it. “How can you say that?”

“Usually it’s a bunch of us sitting around, listening to boring sermons and singing boring songs.” She grinned. “This has been interesting.”

He grinned back at her.

William sat on the wagon, squeezed between Alex and Abigail. “Zoe, I’m freezing,” he said. His teeth were chattering.

“Here, I’ll take you both back to the carriage,” Proctor said, leading his horse over to the wagon. Cecily glared at him, but her disguise as an old hag made her almost pitiful. Proctor stretched out his arm and William clung to it, clambering onto the horse, which staggered under the
extra weight, near spent. Singer tossed her head, showing off that she could pull all night.

Proctor walked the horse back to the calash. Inside, the women huddled in blankets, Sukey and Esther sitting opposite Magdalena and Deborah. They scooted aside to let the children squeeze in between their legs. Esther reached down to rub their shoulders.

Deborah unwrapped the scarf from her face. “How much farther is it?” she asked.

Proctor pointed to smoke rising, black just beyond the trees. “Over there, I’d say. Less than a mile. Do we have a plan?”

“We have a spell,” Deborah said.

“If we can hold enough power, it should work,” Sukey said. The tip of her long nose was turning blue from the cold, but she seemed too excited to notice. “We can hold that much power, don’t you think, Esther dear?”

“We can do it,” Esther said firmly.

Magdalena nodded in approval. “Deborah has formed a good spell. She learned much during these past few months.”

“Proctor always had good suggestions,” Deborah said. He felt a bit of pride that she would praise his talent. He’d had some good ideas when they were trying to break the curse.

Magdalena patted Deborah’s knee with a gnarled, liver-spotted hand. “Not in magic,” she said. “You have always had a gift for that. What you’ve learned these past few months is humility, how to trust the wisdom of others.”

Proctor held his breath, expecting Deborah to explode the way she would have six months before. Instead, she lowered her eyes and murmured, “I think that’s what I said.”

Magdalena snorted, either in disbelief or laughter. Proctor turned his horse away before anything else could be
said—compliments from Deborah would never come much better than that, and he wanted to enjoy it for a moment.

“Hey,” Ezra said. He sat steady on the seat of the calash as it bounced over the frozen roads. “If we’re so close to the army’s camp, why aren’t we raising any sails on the horizon?”

“Because there’s no ocean and no ships?” He was still feeling light-headedly hopeful.

Ezra frowned in reply. “You know what I mean. There are no soldiers on the roads, no wagons, no horses.”

The old sailor had a point, but Proctor wasn’t convinced. “Maybe it’s because it’s Christmas?”

“Maybe it’s because their Christmas present was, they all went home? What if there’s no more army to save?” He licked his lips nervously and rubbed his chin. “Whatever it is, something don’t feel watertight to me.”

Proctor looked ahead at the smoke. There were maybe one or two fires going, but not a camp of two thousand men. Noticing that worried him too.

“Pick up the speed,” he said, kicking his horse to the lead.

Singer lurched forward, yanking the wagon along, and the calash rattled after. They covered the last mile in the darkness, finding nothing they expected—no sentries, no songs, nothing.

They entered the camp only to find it empty. The tent flaps hung open, the horses were gone, even the equipment and artillery were missing. The fires had burned down to coals.

“You’re too late,” crowed a harsh voice.

Proctor wheeled his horse. A veteran in a worn uniform sat in the doorway of a tent with a whiskey jug at his side, a pamphlet in his hand, and the bloody-bandaged stump of an amputated leg propped up on a stool. His face twitched at invisible twinges of pain—invisible unless you could see the sadistic ghost of a backcountry Loyalist, dead from
some wasting disease, as he danced around the soldier and stabbed him repeatedly with his hunting knife. Every time the spirit blade pierced a joint or muscle, the ghost cackled in delight.

The sight was extraordinarily unsettling, but not as much as the empty camp. If the army had been dispersed, it would be impossible to break the curse on all of them. “Have they been sent home?” Proctor asked, dismounting from his horse.

“Home?” The man laughed, his unshaven face broken by another wince. “No, son—they’ve gone to take back Trenton from the Hessians.”

Trenton? So Washington was crossing the Delaware …

“Where is everyone?” Deborah asked, hopping from the calash before it came to a complete stop. Behind her, the children’s eyes were wide as they stared at the veteran and his ghost. William started to say something—it was possible he hadn’t been around cursed American soldiers until now—but Esther shushed him and held the children back with her big arms.

“The army is making a surprise attack on the Hessians in Trenton,” Proctor explained. His head was spinning. Washington must know that if he didn’t do anything, the remaining bulk of his army would disperse in the next few days as their enlistments ended, and then the war would be lost. If he attacked Trenton, and they were beaten, the war would probably still be lost, so they’d be no worse off. But if they attacked Trenton and won …

Men would be inspired. Most would reenlist. The Revolution would still have a chance. Proctor took Deborah aside. “We have to break this curse
right now,”
he said. “To give the army an even chance in the attack.”

Deborah nodded. “Where can we set up?”

Proctor turned back to the wounded soldier. “We’ve been riding all day in the cold. Where can we stretch our legs and warm up?”

“Take your pick of the fires,” he said. “We ain’t got no particular use for them tonight.”

“We’ll use that fire over there,” Deborah said, pointing to a muddy spot trampled out of the snow in the middle of the camp. She turned to the wagon. “We won’t find a better focus than the camp where they’ve been living. Magdalena, will you set up our circle around that fire?”

The old woman nodded and climbed stiffly out of the carriage. “Sukey, you’ll help me,” she said.

“Ezra,” Deborah said. “Gather wood and build up the flame.”

“There’s a pile over thataway,” the old soldier suggested, pointing the way between some tents.

“Abby, can you lend a hand?” Ezra asked.

“Of course,” she said, and Alex added, “I’ll come too,” and the three of them took off. Lydia climbed out of the farm cart, and stood guard over Cecily.

“You—” the soldier said to Proctor, pointing to the retreating form of Alex, “and that other young fellow might still catch up with the troops if you hurry. They’ve just gone a few miles upriver to the ferry.”

Proctor nodded absently. “Maybe after we get the women settled and, um, say our Christmas prayers.”

“Isn’t it a bit late for that?” the soldier said, twitching as the ghost stabbed his amputated leg another time.

“Not yet, but it will be if we don’t hurry quick,” Proctor said.

Magdalena, hobbling along on her cane, directed Sukey as she poured out a circle of salt around the fire. Inside the circle, she built a star, with the fire at its center. The wood gatherers returned and, stepping carefully over the lines, built up the flame in the center. Then, at Magdalena’s direction, they built smaller fires, in the place of candles, at each point of the star. Deborah walked around the circle and lit them from her fingertips.

“Hey,” the soldier said to Proctor. “How’d she strike that fire so fast?”

“She keeps her tinder dry,” Proctor said. “Can I help you inside—?”

But the soldier grabbed a nearby crutch and pushed himself up off his stool for a better look, spilling his pamphlet onto the ground. Proctor picked it up, intending to hand it back to the soldier, but as the soldier hopped toward the fire, Proctor shoved the folded pamphlet into his back pocket and moved to stop the other man.

“You don’t need that many fires,” the soldier said, nervously, angrily. He looked worried about the flames spreading to the camp. “One will keep you just as warm.”

His ghost, aware that the witches could see him, inflicted cruel wounds against the other man’s spirit. Deborah had looked up at him in annoyance, but, seeing the ghost twist its knife into the man’s shoulder and elbow, her expression changed to one of compassion.

Reaching out her hand, she grabbed the ghost by the wrist—its eyes went wide—and held its blade short. You could see the soldier’s face relax as pain he expected to come, didn’t. The ghost tried to pull away in fear of her.

“I am a healer,” Deborah said quietly. “If you let me see to my sisters, and friends, that we may warm ourselves, and say a prayer for the army on this Christmas night, I will come to you afterward and see if I can ease your pain.”

The soldier nodded numbly and, with a shiver, turned back to his tent.

Deborah held on to the ghost. It struggled to get away from her, to return to the soldier it was bound to, but she held tightly to its wrist. With her other hand, she took hold of the spectral knife; pulling slowly, like toffee, she separated the spirit blade from the spirit. She held it for a second, and then it faded away like mist in the sun.

She released the ghost, but now it was the one who trembled
and twitched. It held up its hands to placate her, retreating at once to the side of the soldier.

“How did you—?” Proctor started to ask.

“Come, we’d best hurry,” she said.

All the little fires were burning now. She placed Magdalena at one point of the star, then Sukey, Esther, Abby, and Ezra at the others.

“Where do you want me?” Proctor asked.

“At my side,” Deborah said. “I expect some of the spirits, freed from their hosts, may try to attack us. As we complete the circle, I want you to stay at my right hand as my shield.”

“And do what if they come?” he asked.

“Whatever you must do to gain me time to finish,” she said.

Proctor nodded and quickly scanned the camp. The two children stood with Lydia, over by the cart. Alex stood with them, her rifle over her shoulder. The soldier sat in his tent nearby. They would have to help him remember things differently once they were done.

“We’re going to do a very similar prayer to the one that Proctor and I tried on All Hallows’ Eve,” Deborah said. “But this time, as I chant each line of the prayer, I want all of you to recite the phrase from Exodus,
Let my people go
. Are we ready?”

“I’m no Moses, ma’am, meaning no offense,” Ezra said. “Are you sure that’s the chorus we ought to be reciting?”

“Are you an American, Ezra?” Deborah asked.

“Rhode Islander by birth,” he said.

“This war—not only our war for independence, but the war the Covenant makes on us to prevent it—means we are all one people now. Americans are your people. We—not me, not our group here, but all of us, Americans—we need you to recite that chorus and mean it. Can you do that?”

Proctor didn’t expect the old sailor to agree so easily, but her tone brought out in him the ship-born habit of obedience.
He ducked his head and touched his brow, saying, “Yes, ma’am, when you put it that way, my duty couldn’t be clearer. Let my people go, just like in Exodus.”

“Good,” Deborah said. “Then we’re ready.”

Or as ready as they were likely to be. Proctor checked over his shoulder to see if the ghosts were already attacking him.

Deborah began to pace counterclockwise around the circle.

“Wherewith ye there hunt the souls to make them fly, and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly,” she said.

“Let my people go,” came the response.

“Because with lies ye have made the hearts of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and have strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way.”

“Let my people go.”

Something was happening. Proctor could feel the invisible flow of power as Deborah paced around the circle, connecting all the witches together.

“Therefore ye shall see no more suffering, for in the name of the Lord, I will deliver my people out of your hand.”