A Spell for the Revolution (31 page)

“Yes, I am a friend,” he said.

“Am I wrong to assume you are looking for Miss Deborah, the Quaker nurse?”

Proctor’s heart leapt up. “Yes! Have you seen her?”

“Yes, sir,” the slave said, calmly removing his white gloves and folding them into his pocket. “She left shortly before you arrived, helping one of the sick men along to the bridge.”

“Thank you kindly,” Proctor said. “If I find her, may I tell her who I am to thank for the news?”

“Caesar, sir,” the slave said. By mutual unspoken consent,
he and Proctor hurried to the gate. As they went, Caesar stooped to pick up a musket that had been dropped. “Tell her not to worry ’bout me none,” he said. “Tell her I gone over to the British side to be a free man.”

He spied a powder horn and flints among the scattered items, stopping to retrieve those too.

Proctor opened his mouth to argue, then shut it again. “I’ll tell her that, Caesar,” he said finally. “But if you stay with the American side, you’ll have your freedom too.”

Caesar looked away and laughed. “Someday, maybe. But why wait for freedom someday when I can have my freedom today? That’s what Howe promises.” He turned his face back to Proctor. “You give my best to Miss Deborah now. She’s a true friend to slaves, but no friend to slavery.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“She spoke a word or two. Said I could trust you, if you came this way.”

Proctor stopped and shook his head. He was never going to understand Deborah. She’d been drawing on his talent, making his power a slave to hers, for months, but now she was against slavery. Proctor thrust out his hand. After hesitating a moment, Caesar took it and they gave each other one solid shake.

“Good luck to you then,” Proctor said.

“Next time you see me coming, keep your head down, sir,” Caesar said.

“I’ll do that, friend.”

They went separate directions. Caesar turned toward the advancing British lines, walking with his head held high and an eagerness to his step. Proctor watched him go for a second, then checked the sky. Somewhere behind the heavy blanket of clouds, the sun had passed noon. There would be an early nightfall today. He set a quick pace the way he had just come, back toward the Hackensack River and their last bridge to freedom. Inwardly, he swore at himself
for wasting time. He must have just missed Deborah originally, when he cut over the fields and away from the road. Now while he ran through debris abandoned by the army as it fled, he didn’t know where he’d find her again. She could have been forced to leave the road for the same reasons he had, and there would be no signposts to point her way.

He had almost caught up with the drunken stragglers when he heard a loud huzzah and the rattle of drums behind him. It brought back the rush and fear he had experienced at Lexington, during the battle that started the Revolution. Only this time, instead of British Redcoats, German jaegers, mercenaries, their green jackets brilliant against the brown-and-gray landscape, crested the road behind them. It would be nothing for them to overtake the last remnants of the Continental army and defeat it. The Americans had already done half their work for them, leaving a trail of plunder like bread crumbs along the road.

The non-uniformed rabble ahead of Proctor broke in a panic, shouting, shoving men aside and trampling one another in their mad rush to escape. The cursed spirits shackled to their flesh displayed everything from despair to glee. He hurried after them, taking frequent glances over his shoulder. He watched the enemy soldiers enter Fort Lee.

The fort on Brooklyn Heights, White Plains, Fort Washington, and now Fort Lee: one after another, every American stronghold had fallen. With every fall, there were fewer men left to fight.

He looked ahead, at the men fleeing across the wet winter landscape in bare feet and shirtsleeves. It scarcely seemed to matter if the Hessian mercenaries overtook them—they were already defeated. No wonder so many of the spirits were gleeful; Proctor bet that the condition of their curse was nearly fulfilled. When the American army was no more, they would be free to go on to heaven or hell, each as his due.

As the mob cleared, Proctor spied two figures struggling arm in arm along the edge of the road, resuming their journey now that the panicked soldiers had passed. He came closer, confirming his first impression. It was Deborah, acting as a human crutch for a soldier. The soldier limped along, his ghost driving a spectral bayonet into his leg with each game step, drawing a grimace and beads of sweat along his forehead.

Deborah, slight compared with the soldier she supported, poured her magic into him, trying to heal him a little bit with each breath. But it was a fight between her and the spirit, and the spirit was slowly winning. If the soldier fell down, and the advancing jaegers bayoneted him when they passed, as they had so many other wounded, the spirit would be freed.

“Here, let me help,” Proctor said, coming up beside them.

“Proctor?” Deborah flinched at the sight of him. Her voice was strained from the physical effort she expended, and from the magical effort she drew on as well. He stepped in to take her place, but she turned her shoulder to block him. “I wouldn’t want to steal anything from you again, not even your labor.”

“That’s the point. You can’t steal it if it’s freely given.” He reached out again. “Here, I want to help.”

“Why must you always be so obstinate?” she murmured.

“Why do you always resort to flattery?”

She scowled at him but moved aside, permitting him to take her place.

With Proctor’s support, the wounded soldier didn’t have to put any weight on his bad leg and they began to make swifter progress. The hairs on the back of Proctor’s neck prickled as the soldier’s spirit tried to shove him away. It wasn’t as powerful as the one in the tent that had tried to yank out his own soul; in fact, he noticed little more than a chill against his skin. But the cursed souls had clearly
grown more aggressive. For months, they had been content to torment their hosts. Now Proctor felt himself regularly assaulted by them. They could sense that the end was near, and grew stronger and bolder as they drove their hosts out of the conflict.

The three of them—Deborah, Proctor, and the soldier—continued down the road more easily, if not more swiftly. Deborah continued to try to heal the man, touching his arm as if to steady him, but really to murmur prayers to keep his spirit from causing greater pain. All three continued to look behind them. Though part of the enemy forces had broken off to take the fort, others continued after them.

The soldier stopped walking and shoved Proctor away. He leaned against a fencepost, his face red and lined with pain. Tears rolled down his cheeks, though he had not uttered a word of complaint.

“You two go on without me,” he said. “You know what they’ll do when they catch up to us.”

“We wouldn’t dream of abandoning you,” Deborah said. But she glanced over her shoulder as she said it. The rumors were that the Hessians killed stragglers when they found them, and the British soldiers did worse to the women they captured.

“You must abandon me, Miss Walcott, for your own sake. You done a good job nursing me, and if I was to keep the leg, it’d be because of your care. But there’s no more to done for it now, and you must go. It’s every man and woman for hisself.”

Proctor wrapped his arm around the man and practically lifted him off his feet. “We’re no nation if we act that way,” he said. “We’ll escape together or not at all.”

“It might be not at all,” the soldier said, his voice strained.

“Not if I have any say in it,” Proctor said, setting a quick pace down the road again.

Deborah’s eyes met his, and he saw the gratitude in them.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Let us talk less,” he replied. “And walk more.”

They hobbled along as the enemy forces advanced steadily behind them without gaining. Bearing the weight of the wounded soldier on his shoulder, feeling the man’s heavy breathing in his ear, and smelling his sickly sweat, the distance seemed to pass beneath Proctor’s feet like water moving through a mill wheel, constant motion without any progress.

But that was merely an illusion. Soon the thin gray curtains of drizzle parted, and the long low house of Washington’s headquarters emerged into view.

“Come on, we’re almost there,” Proctor said.

“Almost where?” Deborah asked.

“The bridge and the ferry are just ahead up here. Once we cross the river—”

“Once we cross the river,” interrupted the wounded soldier, “we still got nowhere to go.”

The cursed spirit hung arms over his shoulders. It tilted his face up to Proctor and cackled silently.

Proctor felt a light pressure on his arm and jumped, but it was only Deborah. Whether she was trying to reassure him or herself, he couldn’t say. Then he followed the line of her gaze and realized they were both past reassuring.

Hundreds of men were lined up, waiting their turn to cross the Hackensack River. With the cursed spirits attacking them in a frenzy, they would surely have broken and run if not for the calm example of General Washington watching over them.

Washington’s calm demeanor was the mystery.

Thirteen cursed spirits were shackled to him now. They attacked him like an angry mob eager for a lynching. They swarmed around the neck and flanks of his horse, leaping, tearing, and pulling at him. As hand after invisible hand sank into his living flesh, he must have been pierced by a thousand painful icicles. And then there was the mounting sense of fear and panic that came with the spirits attacking you. Even one of them drove Proctor mad. He could not imagine a dozen more.

Washington’s horse felt their presence too, shifting nervously from foot to foot, tossing her head, her skin twitching. Breath frosted from her nostrils each time she snorted, not because the temperature was dropping so fast, though it was dropping, but because the presence of so many spirits chilled the air that much.

Despite all this, Washington sat straight in the saddle. He looked irritated at the horse, frustrated with the retreat,
and angry to be surprised again by the British. But somehow, through force of will, he mastered his feelings as he organized another orderly retreat. The men around him, seeing his example, tried to do the same as they waited their turn to cross.

William Lee, Washington’s stocky, round-faced slave, galloped up on his mount, hooves tossing mud as he pounded past the ranks of men. He leaned his red-turbaned head in close to Washington to report, and Washington’s gaze turned back down the road toward Fort Lee.

“They’ve stopped marching,” the wounded soldier said.

They had! A few green coats of Hessian scouts were visible in the distance, but the main body had stopped advancing. It made no sense to Proctor—they could overrun the Americans and destroy their forces in a short battle. The Americans were unprepared physically or spiritually for a protracted fight.

Maybe that was the point. Why fight when the Americans were already beaten?

“Maybe they’ve stopped, but we haven’t,” Proctor said. He heaved the wounded soldier over to the line waiting to cross the small bridge.

Deborah followed after, but her face was pale and her step uncertain.

“What’s wrong?” Proctor asked.

“It’s too much,” she whispered, casting glances at the men around them. She didn’t mention the curse, but she didn’t need to. It was visible in the men, even to those who were blind to the powers of magic. Their faces were drawn, their eyes full of fear. Every third man looked ready to bolt.

Proctor knew exactly how she felt. He’d felt the same way, hopeless and helpless, and he had seen someone who changed his mind. “There’s an officer in Greene’s command who’s protected.”

“One man …,” Deborah said.

“If we understand his secret, we’ll have the solution.”

Then they were pressed into the mob of soldiers crossing the bridge, pulled along with them to resist being crushed in their wake. The water churned beneath the bridge, sending up eddies of cold air, though that was not what made Deborah and Proctor shiver. The shivers came from the dozens of invisible hands that pinched, prodded, gripped, and groped them.

On the far shore, they would have broken free of the other soldiers and set their own pace, but it was easier to be pulled along by the current, pieces of flotsam in the river of refugees. Washington was one of the last to cross, just as he had been at Brooklyn. The sound of hoofbeats in the mud prompted Proctor to move to the side of the road in time to see Washington and his officers hurry past them to the head of the column.

With the thick clouds overhead and the lateness of the year, night fell early while they were still on the road. Proctor was practically carrying the wounded soldier along; the man’s leg wound had started seeping blood again. Deborah’s constant attempts to pour strength into the man’s spirit were having a diminishing effect. The cursed spirit draped across his shoulders whispered in his ear at all her efforts, draining his will as fast as she could lend to it.

“How much farther must we go on?” Deborah asked.