A Spell for the Revolution (35 page)

“All the more reason never to use it again,” she said. Some of the anger drained out of her. “What happened?”

“He tried to kill me too, but I was able to …” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “… drive him away. Then I hid the house. I knew you could find it if you came back, but he couldn’t. Alex, you can’t mean what you said, about never using the talent again.”

“I haven’t used it since the fall before last except to break the spell that hid our house.”

“But that’s not natural.” He thought about Abby, the young witch back at The Farm. “Doesn’t the talent spill out at night? Don’t you find yourself waking up, floating above your bed?”

“Sleepwalking is all it is,” Alex answered. “And the night fear. Easy enough to understand after some of the cruelty and bloodshed I’ve been witness to.”

“That explanation may answer to some, but I know you aren’t fooled by it. The talent is rooted in our very blood, it’s part of us. To deny your talent is to deny yourself.”

“Sin is part of who we are, but we are taught to deny that.”

“It’s not the same,” Proctor said.

“It’s exactly the same. Suffer not a witch to live—it’s right there in the holy book. God gives us the talent, but it’s only a test. It’s wrong to use it, and God punishes us when we do, killing our families, making us feel hunted. Don’t you think all these men coming after witches are doing holy work?”

“Some of them are witches too,” Proctor said. “They’re doing it because they mean to kill or make slaves of us all, just like the Redcoats. We need your help to stop them.”

She lifted her gun. “I can load and shoot this rifle as fast as any over-mountain man, and I can hit a target as small as a rabbit at three hundred yards better than two of my brothers. I’m doing my part for the war.”

“That’s not the kind of help we need. We have to break the curse. Unless we do, the American army is finished, and the cause of freedom is lost.”

The wind kicked up outside, blowing through the cracks around the doors and windows. Proctor’s skin goose-pimpled.

Alex walked over to the table and chair. She propped her rifle against the wall and sat down, burying her face in her hands. “The curse—are those the spirits I see around my brothers?”

Proctor scraped a chair across the floor, spun it around, and sat down across from her. “Yes.”

“I guess that’s why I came to see you.” She looked up, her eyes full of tears. She took off her hat and pulled at a fistful of her short-cropped hair. “I’ve lost a lot of the sight by not using my talent. But I thought I could see … I don’t know. Around my brothers. All the time.”

“They’re dead men, mostly dead soldiers. Their souls are shackled to every man who enlists in the army. They fill them with fear and drive them to desertion.”

“My brothers are afraid of nothing and would never desert the cause once they decide to fight for it.”

“Then they’ll fit in with General Washington and the
men who’ve stayed with him. And the curse, unable to break their wills, will seek ways to find them dead. I’m sorry.”

“Is this because of Deborah and her mother too?” Her words choked in her throat.

Proctor shook his head softly, and spoke softer still. “No, we’re nothing to the Covenant. They would be doing this regardless. They want to keep the empire alive as a focus, allowing them to draw on the power of men around the globe, in order to cast their spells. They’re killing anyone who might stand in their way. Any witch who doesn’t join them is against them.”

“Miss Cecily joined them,” she said.

Proctor nodded.

“And Lydia too.”

“No, not Lydia. She was Miss Cecily’s slave in more ways than one, body and soul. She’s forced to serve Miss Cecily in spirit, but Cecily also draws on Lydia’s power, adding it to her own. That’s the kind of thing the Covenant does, and it’s wrong.” It’s what Deborah had done too. Had he forgiven her for that yet? Had she forgiven herself?

“Is that why you fight them?” Alex asked.

“As long as there’s breath in my body,” he said. “For that, and for what they did to Deborah’s parents and yours. But everyone who serves them is slave to another. Cecily is bound to a German necromancer, the same way that Lydia is bound to her, and all her power flows into him. I am certain he’s the one who set the curse.”

“Can’t we kill him and break it?”

Proctor thought about the time they’d faced him at Gravesend. He didn’t think he was ready to face the German again, not yet. And there was another problem. “A curse outlives the witch who cast it. As long as its focus remains—a house or a family—the curse continues. From everything Deborah and I could tell, this curse was placed
on the Continental army, and it will last until the army is gone. Or until we find a way to break it.”

Alex seemed to shrink as they spoke. She looked like a young girl again, not even twenty, one who’d lost her parents and seen too many other people die violently and now faced the loss of even her brothers, the last friends and protectors she had in the world.

“I need your help to break the curse,” Proctor said.

She shook her head. “I can’t help you.”

“We’ll need a circle, as big as we can make it, to draw enough power to break this necromancer’s power.”

“And who do you have for this circle? You and me?”

“We’ll go get Deborah.” As he said it, he knew it was true. Alex had lost all confidence in her talent, and didn’t want to use it. But with the three of them—with Deborah, frankly, since she was the most powerful of them—they might be able to draw enough talent to break the curse.

“You, me, and Deborah?” Alex said, with a snort of miserable laughter. “The three of us?”

Proctor leaned forward. The three of them might be able to do it. “Yes.”

“That’s no circle, it’s a triangle. If this German necromancer has Cecily and Lydia and whoever else he has enslaved—I’m right in assuming he has other witches to draw on?”

“Yes,” Proctor admitted weakly.

“Then the three of us can’t draw enough power to break that. Cecily alone nearly killed us all.”

“Alex, please—”

“No! It’s foolish and plain wrong. I’m sorry I was ever drawn into this. I’m sorry for what happened to Deborah. But I won’t use my talent again, not ever.”

“Then there’s nothing anyone can do to help your brothers,” Proctor said.

Her eyes flashed anger at him. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything the door flew
open. Alex instantly grabbed her hat and pulled it down over her head, hiding her face. She stood up and slammed her chair against the wall, grabbing her rifle.

The figure coming through the door scarcely seemed to notice. His long, intelligent face was worried, distracted. It was Tom Paine. “There you are.”

Proctor stood, ending up beside Alex, who couldn’t rush out the door until the other man moved. “It’s good to see you again, friend. What can I do for you?”

“You’ve already done it,” Paine said, approaching Proctor. Alex started to leave, but Proctor grabbed her arm and held her. “You found me the paper I needed to write my latest pamphlet. I’ve just come from Philadelphia, where, after more struggle than I expected, it’s been typeset for printing. I could never have finished it if I hadn’t written so much that first night. I felt a great spirit guiding my hand.”

“I’m glad to have helped,” Proctor said, holding on tight as Alex tried to pull her arm free without making a scene. “But you’ve already thanked me for that. You didn’t need to come find me again.”

Paine snapped his fingers as if trying to recall something. “It was your friend,” he said. “That very pleasant young woman.”

Proctor dropped Alex’s arm and grabbed Paine’s hand. “Deborah?”

“Yes, that’s her name,” he said. “I saw her in Philadelphia, in an upholstery shop of all places.”

Deborah was still alive. Thank God. “Is she well?”

“She is, and she asked about you, or I would never have recognized her.”

“Where is she?”

“John Ross’s shop, on Mulberry Street, between Second and Third, close to the waterfront. His wife Betsy is a Friend, but also a friend to liberty, like you.” Paine turned toward the door. “I have to go report to General Greene. Philadelphia is ready to quit the fight, if we don’t do something
to change their hearts at once. But I wanted to find you and let you know Deborah was well and asking after you.”

“You’ve done me a greater favor than you know,” Proctor said.

“As you did for me,” Paine replied. He dashed out the door as fast as he’d entered it, forgetting to close it as he left.

Alex stood there rubbing her arm. “You didn’t have to hold me so tight,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. It felt like the only thing he had said to her since she arrived.

“You were very worried about Deborah,” Alex said. “You didn’t even know where she was.”

“No, I didn’t,” he admitted.

“Do you think she can break the curse on my brothers? I don’t want to see them hurt by this. They’re all the family I have left.”

“If anyone can help them, it’s Deborah.”

“She’ll have to do it without me,” Alex said. “I’ll go with you to find her, but I won’t touch the talent again, not for anything.”

“Not even if it touches you?”

She didn’t answer that.

Proctor looked out the window at the sky. They could travel for a couple of hours yet tonight, be halfway there by morning. He grabbed his bag from under the table and slung it over his shoulder. “Do you need to tell your brothers that you’re going?”

“If I do, they won’t let me go,” she said. “Not without explaining, and I don’t think I want to explain the curse to them. So the sooner we leave, the better.”

He nodded. “If you meet me at the edge of camp, just past the smithy, in half an hour’s time, I’ll have supplies and a horse. Can you ride double?”

“If you’ve got a horse that will carry us,” she said. “If
you don’t, I’ve walked a few hundred miles already. I can walk a few more.”

“It might come to that,” he admitted. Two horses would be impossible, and even one might be difficult. It made him wish for Singer, who’d been so indefatigable on the trip to Virginia and whom he’d left behind in Massachusetts.

Looking either direction to make sure she wasn’t seen, Alex stepped out the door and dodged behind the next house. Proctor watched to make sure she was headed in the right direction before he followed her.

The air was cold and dry on his lungs as he stepped outside, and he squinted against the bite of the wind and the brightness of the sun on the snow. He stopped by stores and talked the quartermaster’s aide into giving him a few extra measures of biscuit and salted meat. “We’re short of couriers, so we’re taking important letters to Philadelphia.”

“What about the regular couriers?” the quartermaster asked. “They just left this morning.”

“It’s a critical letter, and can’t wait until tomorrow,” Proctor said. He was thinking about a spell he might use to persuade the quartermaster’s aide, but the man recognized his face from Washington’s headquarters and served out the supplies.

He stopped at the stable, hoping for similar results. “I’ve got letters to—”

“That’s the mount over there,” the stable boy said as he shoveled the stall. “Don’t push it too hard and it’ll be fine.”

The horse was clearly intended for someone else, but Proctor didn’t stop to explain. Instead he moved quickly, before the other rider showed or the stable boy realized he wasn’t the right courier. It didn’t matter what the other man’s message was: Proctor’s mission was more vital to the success of the army, even if no one knew it.

Leading the horse out of the stable, he swung into the saddle and directed it around to one of the back streets. A
new group of carriages and wagons waited on the main road, visible between the houses. One of the horses was a sturdy bay, reminding him again of Singer. Even the way the horse tossed her head and looked smartly around was similar. But it was only a trick of desire, seeing what he wanted to see.

He leaned forward and patted the heavy gelding on its neck. This was the horse he had, and it was big enough and strong enough to carry two of them to Philadelphia, which was all they needed. Although he hoped to reach Alex unseen, luck brought Colonel Tilghman hurrying down the street just as Proctor passed. Tilghman, recognizing Proctor, waved him to stop.

Proctor briefly flirted with the notion of riding past Tilghman as if he didn’t see him, but the officer stepped into the road to block his progress.

“Yes?” Proctor said.

“You’re lucky I caught you,” Tilghman said, tilting his head up and shielding his face from the wind with a gloved hand. “Some fellow just stopped by headquarters looking for you. I told him you were around. I didn’t realize you were leaving.”

He must’ve meant Paine, although Proctor was sure Tilghman should recognize Paine. “He already found me,” Proctor said.

Tilghman looked puzzled, as if this wasn’t possible. He checked over his shoulder at headquarters, expecting to see Paine there perhaps, and then let it go. “Ah, good,” he said. “Where are you headed?”

No reason to lie. He’d be back soon enough, if it all worked out. “To Philadelphia. Someone saw my sister there, and I mean to go see how she’s doing.”

“Of course,” Tilghman said. Even the officers and enlisted men took leave to see their families. “We’ll see you soon.”

“As fast as I can return,” he promised.

Alex waited for him behind the smithy, just as they had planned. She had her arms wrapped tight around herself, looking small and cold. “What took you so long?” she asked.

“Someone was looking for me,” Proctor said. He pulled her up in front of him. They set out on the hard mud of the frozen road at a pace the horse could keep for hours.