Traitor to the Crown The Patriot Witch (17 page)

Elizabeth could not find the strength to sit upright again, but she turned her head to watch Deborah. “Do we have any better idea whom she serves?”

“No,” Deborah replied. “We thought it was some gentleman by the name of Nant or Nance. I asked around, when I was searching for her, but no one knew a British officer by that name. The Reverend Emerson and Mister Revere promised to make further inquiries. But we do know something more about her magic.”

Cecily stood up, leaving Elizabeth's side. “What?” she asked eagerly. “What did you learn?”

Magdalena was toweling dry Deborah's feet and applying an ointment to them while she said a spell. Deborah grimaced, leaned back her head.

“She draws power by siphoning it off those around her,” she said. “I had suspected as much, because I felt weaker when I went too close to her.”

“How does she do it?” Cecily said. She reached out to touch Lydia's arm for reassurance; the black woman wore a sickly expression on her face.

Deborah gritted her teeth while Magdalena wrapped one of her feet. Then she said, “She creates a circle without the permission of the other witch. She's powerful enough to do it without contact, although the effort drains her too, once the circle is broken.”

She explained how the widow had drawn on Proctor while he was hiding in the woods, breaking Deborah's binding spell. By the time she finished explaining how Proctor had helped the widow escape by going to her shed, the women were glaring at him. Dusk had fallen; their faces were lit only by the glow from the hearth, giving their expressions a malignant orange cast.

“I didn't do it with the intention of helping her escape,” he said. “I didn't know better. I don't know about circles and siphons and things like that. No one has ever taught me.”

“Vell,” Magdalena said, then shook her head, bundling up the dirty towels and scraps of bandages.

“It seems like you might have learned a lesson the first time she took advantage of you, Mister Brown,” Cecily said.

“Come here,” Elizabeth said, her voice so soft he barely heard it.

He turned and took a step toward the bed. “Yes?”

“Stay here. I will teach thee as soon as I am well.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

She smiled at the
ma'am
, then gave him a single nod and closed her eyes.

Cecily rushed back to her side. “Everyone out. Elizabeth needs her sleep. We must let her rest.”

The women dispersed, quietly going about their different chores, while Deborah limped to the other room and Alexandra
climbed the narrow stairs to the second floor. Proctor stood where he was.

“I have my eye on you, Mister Brown,” Cecily said. “If you have decided to aid this widow, or be a willing part of her circle, I will be the first to know it.”

“You don't have to worry about that,” he said. “But I don't know where I'm supposed to go.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she smiled slowly.

He climbed into the loft of the barn carrying an extra blanket. His ascent of the ladder woke Jedediah, who was already stretched out asleep on his blankets in the straw.

“Was there a problem?” the old man asked with mild amusement in his voice.

“It's a small house, only three rooms, and with so many women there already, there wasn't a bed to spare for me,” Proctor said.

“Mmm-hmm,” Jedediah murmured, rustling the straw as he shifted his bedding over to make room for Proctor. “Thou wilt like it better out here anyway.”

“Why's that?” Proctor said.

“It's much quieter.” He rolled over to go back to sleep.

It was unlikely he'd taken into account his own ferocious snoring. Proctor lay awake a long time, chewing on the end of a straw as he watched the stars through a crack in the board. If these women could be comfortable with the notion of witchcraft, he could find a way to make Emily feel the same way. He grinned in the dark. Emily would like Cecily—he could just hear them comparing fashion, deciding on the best dresses to show off their color and eyes.

He would stay long enough to learn some useful magic, that was decided. And he would have to learn how to control his scrying as well—he didn't want to be misled by it again, the way he had been at Lexington. By the time he'd rolled all these thoughts through his head, he'd flipped over enough times to crush down the straw to make it comfortable. He
spit the chewed piece out of his mouth and pillowed his head on his arm.

A hand on his shoulder was shaking him awake almost as soon as he fell asleep. It was still dark outside.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Time to get to work,” Jedediah said. “Thou art going to help me take care of the chores, right?”

Proctor grabbed the top branch of the downed tree and dragged it clear of the woods. He dropped it and paused to mop the sweat off his forehead.

“A trunk that big, I'd have to hitch Mary up to move it,” Jedediah said. Mary was the name of his horse.

“Nah, it's been down a long time, mostly dry. It's light enough to shift.”

“Maybe,” Jedediah said, handing Proctor an ax.

From this spot on the hillside, he could see all fifty-one acres of The Farm occupying two low hills between the swamp and the woods. The buildings and gardens and fields were laid out neatly, and kept in working order; but the sun was bad, the soil was poor, and the pasture pushed up rocks faster than grass.

“You'll never get rich on this farm,” Proctor said.

“Worldly riches may be a wall that keeps us from the wealth of heaven,” Jedediah said.

“I don't even think you need an enchantment to hide this place. I could live my whole life within a mile of here and never look at it twice.”

“Elizabeth says that's why her great-grandparents chose it, right after the witches were hanged at Salem.” He tilted his chin, indicating the town nearby to the east.

“They've been at this a long time, then?”

“I reckon the Quaker Highway got its start right here.”

“So witches from Massachusetts come through here and are sent somewhere else for safety?”

“Yes, and witches from elsewhere come north. Elizabeth, and her mother and grandmother before her, have trained witches to use their powers quietly, both for their own safety and for the safety of their communities. In the time I've lived here, I've seen dozens pass through, though we have more now than ever before.”

“Any men among them?” Proctor asked.

“Well, there's thee.”

Proctor turned his head and spit. “Any idea when she'll start lessons again?”

“Any day now I'm sure,” Jedediah said. He carried his ax around to the other side of the tree. “Will thou help me cut this tree, friend? Or dost thou expect the wood to split itself?”

Proctor hefted the ax and fell into rhythm with Jedediah, each blow falling in turn to hew the trunk in half. It'd be nice, Proctor thought, if there were a way to do it with magic instead.

So far he'd seen very little in the way of magic.

His first week on The Farm, Elizabeth had been recovering from her burns, and all the women tended to her, lending their efforts to help her heal. For that week and the next, Jedediah kept Proctor busy with all the neglected tasks that could use two sets of hands—fixing the barn roof, rebuilding the chicken coop, digging a new spot for the necessary house.

By the third week, Proctor had been ready to leave. If he was going to work this hard, it might as well be on his own farm. Then a messenger came from the Reverend Emerson. Emerson apologized for his absence, but the siege in Boston and the rebellion against British rule occupied all his energy. He had been able to find out nothing more about the widow, except that she was somewhere in Boston. The messenger brought a letter for Cecily, from her family, and she promptly sat down and wrote one in return.

The messenger also carried a note for Proctor: Emerson
wanted Proctor to know that his parents were well, and that young Arthur Simes was helping out with their day-today work on the farm. He praised Proctor for his devotion to the patriot cause and encouraged him to learn anything he could that would help them down the road. Emerson's note concluded by promising that the messenger would deliver any letters Proctor had written to his parents.

Only Proctor hadn't written any. His father was beyond the reach of correspondence, and his mother—had she forgiven Proctor yet, for wanting to learn more about his talent, for turning to someone else besides her for that information? He tried to imagine his mother at a place like The Farm and couldn't do it. A secret shared with anyone outside the family would no longer be a secret to her.

While the messenger waited, Proctor penned a short note to his mother, telling her that he was serving the patriot cause and doing well. He could be reached through the Reverend Emerson. Don't worry about him. He couldn't say more than that without lying or betraying The Farm's secrets, and he couldn't bring himself to do either.

He almost left with the messenger, but Elizabeth had come to him and promised to teach him more about scrying and his talent as soon as she had recovered from her burns. Still, despite Emerson's encouragement and Elizabeth's promises, Proctor wondered about his father's health, and whether his mother could forgive him, and if Arthur knew not to plant corn at the lower end of the field because rain settled there and it tended to rot. If his lessons in magic did not start soon, Proctor would leave The Farm. He did not fit in here, even though all the others were witches like himself.

In truth, it was the most unsettlingly diverse group of people Proctor had ever known. Elizabeth's whole life was witchcraft and the Quaker Highway. She scarcely knew anyone in the community beyond The Farm, though she knew other witches in all the colonies and across the frontier. Her talent was healing, and though her left arm had been badly
burned, with her hand hooked back on itself so that it would never be useful again, she had prevented any infection. Her other burns were improving better than Proctor could have ever imagined.

The only woman older than Elizabeth was German-speaking Magdalena Stolzfus, a dour powwow woman from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who dressed so plainly—no buttons on her clothes, only simple hooks—she made Quakers look ostentatious. Despite belonging to some small religious group that rejected contact with the outside world, she had made several trips to The Farm over the years to improve her skills at healing. Alexandra Walker whispered a rumor to Proctor that Magdalena had breathed life back into a stillborn baby; the creature that survived had no soul, and a few years later she had to smother it. She had come to The Farm because of the murder.

Proctor never knew when to believe Alexandra, who was just fourteen, loose-limbed and quick to laugh or climb a tree. She liked rumors and anything the least bit scandalous, and had been sent to The Farm from the mountains of western Virginia because she used her talents to cause mischief. She complained to Proctor that she was there not to learn how to do things, but to learn how not to do them. The other women, especially Cecily, tried to keep her on a short leash.

Cecily Sumpter Pinckney would have had them all on leashes if she had her way. She reminded Proctor of Emily in some ways—petite, beautiful, sure of her place in the world. But Cecily was more than that; she was the kind of lady who dressed daily in the type of finery that Proctor had only seen once before on the governor's wife. She wore emerald rings, and an ivory cameo pendant, even when she attended to her chores, though Proctor came to realize that while Cecily talked about her share of The Farm's work as though she did it, all her time was spent attending to Elizabeth. The real labor was done by Lydia.

Lydia was Cecily's slave. According to Alexandra, Lydia had been Cecily's nanny on her childhood plantation in South Carolina. The two of them discovered their talents together. The other residents on The Farm tried to treat Lydia like an equal, but she steadfastly kept her head down and served Cecily without complaint, doing the chores assigned to both of them, often leaving her too exhausted to learn anything from their lessons.

The lessons were taught by Deborah, at least while Elizabeth recovered from her burns. Deborah still disliked Proctor for the widow's escape, and she arranged the lessons so he missed them. She had been on The Farm the longest, had been trained as Elizabeth's assistant. She knew so much about binding spells and other nonhealing magic that it sometimes made the others anxious, especially Jedediah.

Jedediah lacked any talent for witchcraft, but he worked as a trailblazer for the Quaker Highway and kept The Farm running. The latter was easier now that he had Proctor's help, as he did on this day, when they were cutting up dead trees to restock their firewood supply.

By the time they were finished, Proctor was shoulder-sore, with the calluses raw on his hands and a powerful appetite growing inside him. He returned to the house, grateful to see that the trestle table had been set up in the yard and laden with food. Someone had taken time to decorate it with bright arrangements of cut flowers.

Deborah came out of the house with a bowl of buttered greens and placed them among the flowers.

“Are you sure that's going to be enough?” Proctor asked, trying to make friendly conversation with her.

“Who knows? We have to cook more since you came. You eat twice as much as anyone else.”

She stalked off immediately. Proctor put his hands to his mouth and called after her. “Maybe that's 'cause I do twice as much of the work.”

Alexandra, standing nearby, overheard him. Swinging
her arms randomly from side to side she said, “She's a bit full of herself sometimes, ain't she?”

He shrugged, to say yes without saying yes.

Her eyes sparked. “Watch this. She won't feel so proud in a minute.”

Hands behind her back, she strolled over to the house. As Deborah banged out the door with another plate, Alexandra whistled a series of notes and spun her finger in the air.

The bottom of Deborah's skirt rippled as if there were a sudden breeze. She stopped without turning around. Then a dust devil spun on the ground from her feet back to Alexandra, and—with a sound like the wind catching a sail—her skirt blew up, lifting the hem to the top of her head.