Traitor to the Crown The Patriot Witch (16 page)

“Ya, ya, if it vere you, you vould ask Elizabet. But Eliza-bet is not vell, is she, so I cannot ask her.”

She waved them on. Proctor followed Jedediah onto the front porch; the dog lay down beside the step. A girl about fourteen years old, with long reddish brown hair, tipped back on an old chair. She turned her hand, hiding a small knife in her palm. Proctor followed a nervous flick of her eyes and saw the first scratch of a carving on the corner post.

“Why, hello,” she said, putting sugar in her voice the way some folks put it in their tea. “I think maybe my charms worked after all.”

“Thou art here because thy charms worked too well,” Jedediah said grouchily as he pulled open the door.

She shrugged and smiled at Proctor as he went inside. She rose to follow him, but the gray-haired woman yelled for
her. “Alexandra, vere are you? I need your help.” Her shoulders slumped in a sulk, and she went the other direction.

“Are these all witches?” Proctor whispered as they stepped inside.

“What were thou expecting?” Jedediah asked.

“I don't know,” Proctor said. But he was sure it wasn't this.

The room was small but tidy. Lydia crouched by the hearth, using the poker to adjust the new logs on the fire. She clanged the iron back onto the rack and ladled water from the bucket into the cooking pot. There was a daybed against the wall, and a bandaged figure lying in it, and another woman—dark-haired, about thirty, quite beautiful—seated beside her; her dress reminded him of the yellow dress Emily wore to the coffee house in Boston, only much finer.

“It's too warm, you're making it too warm, Lydia,” she said. She had a strong southern accent.
It's too-ah wahm. Yewrah makin it too-ah wahm
. “For God's sake, Lydia, she's been horribly burned. The last thing she needs is more fire.”

“Yes, Missus Cecily.” She scooped water from the bucket to dampen the fire.

“Thou art doing fine, Lydia,” Jedediah said.

“Well, of course she is,” Cecily said. “I don't know what we'd do without her. I swear, she is the pillar of us all. Don't worry about the fire, Lydia dear, it's fine.”

“No, Missus Cecily,” Lydia said and set the bucket down.

“I have been here night and day by our Elizabeth's side while you were gone,” Cecily told Jedediah.

“How is she?”

“Fire cannot keep her down any more than it could destroy the glory of Rome. I have used every healing spell I know—”

“Mm-mmm,” said Lydia, sipping the spoon from the cooking pot. “Needs a pinch of salt.”

“We all have been, to be honest,” Cecily said. She dropped her voice and held her hand to the side of her mouth. “Except
for our young friend from the mountains. If she was my daughter, I would have taught her manners long ago.” Then raising her voice again, she said, “But Magdalena has been ‘vunderful,’ as she would say, and Lydia has been tireless, simply tireless.”

The sheets stirred, and the eyes beneath the bandaged face opened slowly. “What happened to thee?” said a slurred voice.

Jedediah touched his scorched cheek. “Same thing that happened to thou. The widow burned me.”

“Thou foolish, foolish man.”

The old man bristled. “She was escaping. It's not as if I had a choice.”

“That horrible woman escaped?” Cecily asked, looking anxiously to the door and windows.

Elizabeth closed her bandaged fist on the hem of Jedediah's shirt. “Was Deborah hurt?”

“Deborah is safe. But she followed the widow toward Boston, trying to discover her destination.”

The door opened, and the gray-haired woman—Magdalena, Proctor guessed—entered with a small basket of green stems. Alexandra carried the bench and shears.

“Vat is the news?” Magdalena asked.

“It's frightful,” Cecily said. “That horrible woman escaped capture and burned Jedediah—he was lucky to escape with his life. And Deborah, you know how fearless she is, chased after her, la-de-dah—we don't have any idea when she'll return.” Turning to Jedediah, she said, “What if that woman comes after us again?”

Jedediah nodded toward Proctor. “I brought a friend to help protect us.”

“Ma'am,” Proctor said, ducking his head and holding his hat in front of him.

“Thou needn't take thy hat off,” Jedediah snapped, glancing at Lydia. “We're all equal here. There's no need to sir or ma'am anyone either.”

“Yes, sir,” Proctor said.

Elizabeth began to wheeze, shaking her cot. Cecily started, as if panicked, and checked the woman's head and hands to see if she was fine. It took Proctor a second to realize she was laughing.

“Mm-hmm,” said Lydia, rising. “Mister Longshanks is going to fit in here, jest fine.”

“Mister Longshanks's proper name is Proctor Brown,” Jedediah said. “He's a minuteman from Lincoln. Our friend Emerson sent him to us for a time.”

Elizabeth had stopped laughing. She grunted as she made an effort to sit. “Proctor, is it?”

“Yes, ma—” He caught himself and stopped. “Yes, it is.”

“Come nearer.”

He glanced over his shoulder to see what he should do. Cecily frowned—he was certain she was attempting to discourage him—but the others watched him expectantly, waiting to see what he did.

He stepped closer.

Elizabeth reached out with her right arm, which was wrapped in bandages down to her palm. Her blistered fingers shook as she stretched them toward him. Then her fingers touched him and clamped down on him like a vise.

The sensation was the opposite of the experience he'd had when the widow had grabbed him. He felt as though light poured into, fountained into him, until he wanted to burst. Surprised, he dropped his hat to the floor.

Elizabeth nodded and let go.

He bent to pick up his hat, but the girl Alexandra nabbed it first, smiling as she handed it back.

“Thou have the talent,” Elizabeth said. “A flame shines strongly in thee.”

“Ah, I thought there was something hot about him,” Alexandra murmured.

Proctor swallowed and looked around again at the faces staring at him intently. To take his secret, the one his
mother said would kill him, and have it discussed in the open felt … wrong. “I guess I do.”

“That can't be true,” Cecily said finally, with a forced laugh.

“It is,” Elizabeth affirmed. “Thou should try to sense it thyself. Thou could do it if thou tried diligently.”

Cecily blushed. “Oh, not me.”

“He takes the talent from his mother,” Jedediah said. “She's practiced her whole life in secret, undetected—”

“I should ask him those questions,” Elizabeth interrupted. “I understand it better.”

Jedediah hesitated, then nodded. “I best go see to the animals.”

Proctor turned to follow him out of reflex. A young man didn't stay alone in the company of so many women.

“Stay here,” Elizabeth commanded; at the same instant Jedediah told him, “Elizabeth will want thee to stay here.”

“I've fed and watered the pigs already,” Lydia interjected. “And I let the lambs out to the pasture behind the barn. Nimrod has been watching them.”

“Thank you,” Jedediah said as he left.

“Thou take the talent from thy mother?” Elizabeth asked.

“Just like Jedediah said. She's never told anyone about it but me, and she didn't tell me much.”

“Oh, the poor dear,” Cecily said. “I would have simply wilted away without Lydia to sustain me.” She patted Elizabeth's hand. “Until I joined you, I mean.”

“What is thy talent?” Elizabeth asked. “How did it manifest?”

“Scrying,” Proctor answered. He felt like he had to force the word past his lips; but it was so much easier to speak of it now than it had been to explain it to Emily. “A few years ago, I saw something, a death, before it happened. My mother explained it to me, told me I had a talent, then told me I had to keep it secret.”

Elizabeth nodded, then leaned back on her bed, exhausted
from her effort. “We'll have no secrets here among us, is that clear?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he answered.

Lydia snorted at the sound of
ma'am
.

“If you don't mind me asking, what is this place?” he asked quickly, to cover up his mistake. He swung out his hat to encompass the room. “Why are all of you here?”

“Ve come here to learn,” Magdalena said.

“To learn what?” Proctor asked. Could they teach him how to make protective medallions, or create the illusion of changing shapes?

“To learn everything,” Cecily insisted. “Elizabeth is simply the best teacher—”

“Please,” Elizabeth protested.

“No, you know it's true. Elizabeth knows more than anyone about our sort of talents and how to use them.”

“And how to keep us safe,” Alexandra added.

“Safe?” he asked.

Elizabeth was too weak to do anything but speak; he had to lean forward to hear her voice. “Talents manifest themselves in specific ways. Someone who is unprepared can be a danger to themselves and to those around them.”

“How?”

“I had an older cousin,” the auburn-haired girl Alexandra said. “She started hearing voices in her head, when she was still a little girl. Her mother didn't understand what was happening, didn't want to listen to my mother.”

“What happened?”

“The voices told her to go drown herself.” She looked away, twisting the end of her hair around a finger. “So she filled her rocks with pockets and went down to the millpond.”

“The voices told her to drown her little brother first,” Cecily whispered to Proctor. “She did that too. It was such a tragedy, you have no idea.”

“A necrovocative can hear the voices of the dead,” Elizabeth explained.

Magdalena grunted in disapproval. She carried her basket of elderberry stems to a table with a mortar and pestle.

“The dead can be as capricious and misguided as the living,” Elizabeth said. “Without proper training, her cousin had no skill to shut out those voices. Thou can imagine what happens when someone is born with a talent for fire.”

Proctor shivered. Had his mother known that, and kept it from him when he asked? She knew more than she told him, he was certain. “A man could burn himself up.”

“Yes,” Cecily said, patting Elizabeth's arm. “It's too bad that didn't happen to the widow when she was young.”

Elizabeth winced. “No—we'll wish harm on no one, but will pray that she turns away from the fire, which consumes, and toward the Light, which illuminates. I believe that, what ever her reasons, she can be saved.”

Out in the yard, the dog barked cheerfully. “What happens to those who scrye?” Proctor asked.

Elizabeth closed her eyes. “It is easy for them to be misled by their visions, pulled down a path toward darkness.”

“Men often become gamblers, I am told,” Cecily said, smoothing the sheets around the other woman. “Testing their luck until it runs out and they get shot or go broke or something terrible like that. Are you a gambler, Mister Brown?”

“Voresight tempts men to try to cheat de vill of Gott,” Magdalena said in clear disapproval, waving a pith-covered pestle at him.

Proctor remembered the scrying he'd done before mustering at Lexington, and the way he'd been wrong about what it meant, about what would happen before the British marched back to Boston. “And how do we know the will of God?” Proctor asked.

The door banged open.

Deborah stepped inside and slammed it shut again. She had dark circles beneath her eyes, and her clothes were covered with dust. Looking at Proctor, she said, “I could see the two of you when you left the main road. If you ever looked over your shoulder even once to see if someone was following you, I could have ridden home the rest of the way in that cart. Can someone help me with my shoes? My feet are bloody tatters.”

She limped over to the chair and fell backward into it. Lydia brought over her bucket and sat at Deborah's feet while Cecily gave her instructions on bathing wounds. Magdalena emptied her pestle, pulled down a bound bunch of mint stems hanging above the worktable, and began crushing them in the bowl.

Proctor ended up standing next to Alexandra in the corner. She crossed her arms and gnawed idly on a fingernail.

“How did you happen to come here?” Proctor asked.

“I drew too much attention to myself by casting love potions.” She leaned in close to Proctor so that their shoulders brushed. “Pastor Woodburn accused me of witchcraft, which was fair enough, although I don't think he'd have made so much trouble about it, only his son was involved. He accused me of cavorting with the devil, and denounced me from the pulpit, and that very night I was met outside the house by two women from the next county over, and before I knew it I was walking away with them.”

“That seems odd.”

“Almost all the women in my family have the Irish powers, which is what we call them. There was the problem with my cousin, just a year before. In any case, my mother told me I had to go away for a while, so I went. It was exciting at first, seeing new places, moving in secret. But I was on the road north for weeks, moving mostly at night, never staying at anyone's house more than a day, hardly getting to know anyone. Many were Quakers, but coming up through Pennsylvania,
there was even a free black family that put me up for the night.”

“And then you ended up here?”

“I ended up here about ten days ago, right before the widow attacked.”

Deborah was soaking her feet in a pan of water, redolent of mint, describing her pursuit of the widow.

“—I had great luck at first, telling people I was trying to find my addled aunt. They were extraordinarily helpful, many of them having seen her pass, a stranger crossing fields in the morning mist. She was in such a hurry to return to the safety of Boston that she made little or no effort to cover her trail. But in Charlestown, only an hour behind her, I lost her. She simply vanished. I searched for her for another whole day without finding her or anyone who had seen her. I'm sure she made her way into Boston.”

“But isn't Boston under siege?” Cecily asked. “How could she get past the soldiers?”

“A woman may pass where a man may not,” Deborah said. “And old women are, in particular, as you know, largely invisible to men.”

Magdalena made a snorting sound.