Traitor to the Crown The Patriot Witch (2 page)

“And end up richer than the richest farmer in Lincoln?” Proctor asked.

Rucke laughed heartily. “Perhaps.” With that, he started in on everything he knew about the business end of beef, from butchering to salting to shipping to markets. Emily seemed pleased. She sneaked smiles at Proctor, which he returned as surreptitiously and enthusiastically as possible. His beer turned out not to be so bitter after all, and before he realized it the pint was gone and he excused himself to visit the necessary house, not just to relieve himself but to relax and collect his wits. If Rucke meant to help him trade beef, Proctor could advance his plan by years, and he and Emily could get married that much sooner. That was even better than making a fortune.

He pushed his way between sharp-elbowed men smoking long-stemmed pipes and junior officers quaffing rum or sipping bowls of chocolate. He smelled the privy as he passed through the back door.

“Look 'ere, it's the runaway apprentice,” said a thick Scots voice behind him. Proctor spun. The four marines had followed him out the door.

“The one too big for his wee jacket,” mocked the huge Scot.

They all laughed, except for Pitcairn, who said, “Bring him to me.”

The huge Scot and another man with bushy red sideburns seized his arms. Proctor was strong—you didn't plow and cut wood and harvest grain without being able to take care of yourself—but he didn't react. The last thing he wanted was to return to Emily and her father after a dunk in the privy.

Pitcairn stepped in close. “Why were you staring at me inside?”

Proctor glanced at the spot on Pitcairn's chest where he thought he'd seen the medallion. “I wondered who you were.”

“He's one of His Majesty's officers,” the big man grunted in his ear. “That's all ye need to ken.”

“You have the general appearance,” Pitcairn said, “and, dare I say, the particular arrogance of many of these so-called Sons of Liberty I've seen around Boston since my arrival.”

“Sons of something is right,” the huge Scot said.

“I'm the son of Prudence Brown, and no one else,” Proctor replied.

“See, he's not shaking or trying to bargain for his freedom,” Pitcairn told the others, almost respectfully. He pulled off his gloves. To Proctor, he said, “I want to show you something. A friendly demonstration.”

Proctor tried to pull his arm free, on the chance he could escape inside, but the big man tightened his hold. The other grabbed his right arm with a grip like iron.

“William,” Pitcairn said to the fourth marine, the pink-cheeked officer in the brand-new coat, who had so far avoided Proctor. He bore a striking resemblance to the older man, with a similar widow's peak and aquiline nose—very likely they were father and son. “Be so good as to lend me your knife.”

“Sir?” William seemed surprised.

“Your knife,
damn
it.”

He reached inside his jacket and unsheathed six inches of steel. Proctor struggled to get away, but the huge Scot behind him clamped one hand over his mouth and squeezed him in a one-armed bear hug that pinned his left arm at his waist.

With a nervous glance at Proctor, William flipped the knife in his hand and passed it hilt-first to his father. Pitcairn pressed the tip into his thumb until it drew blood, then held up his bloody thumb for Proctor to see.

“Don't worry,” he said. “The knife is for you to use.”

Fear knotted Proctor's stomach. He struggled to get away without striking the huge Scot or doing anything more to provoke the marines. He looked at William, who dropped his gaze and stepped away.

A cold smile crossed Pitcairn's lips. He pried Proctor's hand open and pressed the hilt into his palm, then squeezed Proctor's fingers closed around it. The marine with the red whiskers chuckled as he clamped his rough fist over Proctor's hand. The knife edge gleamed in the sunlight.

Pitcairn licked the blood off his thumb and held his arms open nonchalantly, stepping closer.

Twisting his head from side to side, Proctor tried to talk through the big Scot's suffocating paw. He tried to push himself away, but his toes barely touched the ground. No jury would convict him for attacking a British officer, not under these circumstances—but he doubted any jury would believe his version of events.

Pitcairn nodded to his men. The big Scot held him tight as Red-whiskers pulled Proctor's arm back and thrust the blade at Pitcairn's stomach. Proctor struggled to divert it, but the knife was already moving toward the officer's white waistcoat.

Proctor's forearm felt as if it had slammed into stone. The tip of the blade snapped off, flying away to nick the sleeve of Proctor's jacket.

Pitcairn stood there with his arms still open, one eyebrow curled up like a question mark.

Proctor panted through the big hand clamped over his mouth. What had just happened?

The circle of light glowed at Pitcairn's throat again. Proctor detected the outline of a chain at his neck and a medallion of some sort under his shirt.

Pitcairn pried the knife out of Proctor's hand and returned it to William. “I'll replace it with a better one,” he promised.

“There's no need, sir,” William mumbled.

The big Scot released Proctor from his bear hug and shoved him aside.

The door opened behind them, and Hannah stuck her head out into the alley. Seeing the expression on Proctor's
face, she glanced quickly up at the marines and said, “Has there been some trouble here?”

“No, ma'am,” Proctor said. He tugged his coat back into place. “These gentlemen were just giving me a demonstration in the superiority of London knives.”

She looked puzzled. Major Pitcairn said, “We were trading opinions. We both learned a few things.”

“As long as all the gentlemen are satisfied and none of the other customers are disturbed,” she said, and then she tossed a plate of bones and garbage over the side of a small fence, where a pig roused itself from muddy slumber and starting rooting through it.

The door closed behind her. Pitcairn studied Proctor judiciously. “It's essential for you colonials to realize that you can't hurt us.”

“I had no desire to hurt you,” Proctor snapped. He would have added
before
, but he was still shaky.

“You're full of spirit, but that spirit ought to be aimed against the French and Spaniards and other godless papists, not against your fellow Englishmen.”

“My father fought against the French in the last war,” Proctor said. “We're not afraid of a fight.”

“Don't be so eager for one either,” Pitcairn replied. “You are fools to think that you're better off without the empire. Spread that word among your fellows.”

The big marine shoved Proctor aside, and the four of them peeled away to exit through the gate. Proctor turned away to go inside when a hand gripped his arm. It was William, the young officer, and he held his other hand open in a gesture of peace.

“The knife was just tinfoil,” he whispered.

Proctor snorted in disbelief. “Tinfoil?”

“Yes, that's all,” he said. “A joke, no harm done.”

Proctor shrugged his arm free from William's grip. “No, no harm done.”

“We're all one people, Englishmen, no matter which side of the ocean saw our birth. There's no need for us to start fights with one another.”

For people who didn't want a fight, they did an awful lot of provocation. “I don't recall starting anything,” Proctor said. “Now, if you'll excuse me.”

His blood was still racing as he returned to the coffee-house, squeezing up against the wall to let another man pass on his way to the privy. He threaded his way through the crowd and returned to the table where Emily sat alone.

“Where were you so long?” she asked. “And what's the matter? You look upset.”

He slid into his seat. “I'm fine.”

She reached under the table, her fingers finding his hand. He was looking over his shoulder at the back door when he felt her give his hand a little squeeze. “I think Daddy likes you,” she said.

“Of course he likes me.”

He had answered more than half distracted, still trying to understand what he had just witnessed. He realized he'd made a mistake the instant Emily's hand yanked free of his. She pushed her chair back and sat up straight.

“It's nice to see that you're not
too
full of yourself,” she said. “Humility is such a rare trait in young men.”

“I'm sorry, Emily, it's just … just …”

“Just what, Mister Brown? Spit it out.”

“It's just that it wasn't a tinfoil knife.” There. He'd spit it out.

“What are you talking about?”

“The knife that British marine had, it wasn't tinfoil.” It had nothing to do with the knife, Proctor realized. Major Pitcairn had been wearing a protective charm about his throat. That's what Proctor had seen. It shone actively anytime the major was threatened, even by so little as a bump in the street. “It was magic.”

“Magic?” Emily's face was puzzled, as though she were trying to figure out if he was joking.

Proctor opened his mouth, but no explanation formed on his lips. He'd said too much.

“Hannah said she saw you talking to Major Pitcairn,” Rucke interrupted, returning to the table with a plate of roasted chicken, which he thumped down on the table. “Dig in. She thought there might have been a problem, but I see that you're fine.”

“I bumped into the major again,” Proctor said. “We talked about London and steel.”

“Good.” Rucke squeezed his large body into his seat. “That's a smart lad. Always make use of all your connections. If you can sell beef to the beefeaters, you're well on your way to making your fortune.” He cleared his throat. “Emily tells me you serve in the colonial militia.”

“Not just the militia, Daddy, but the minutemen,” Emily said. Though her voice was cooler than it had been before.

“I don't understand the difference,” Rucke said.

“The minutemen are required to do additional training,” Proctor explained. “We have to be able to scout trails, run longer distances, reload and fire faster. And we have to be ready to fight at a moment's alarm.”

“It sounds like the sort of foolishness that takes time away from honest work,” Rucke said. “And it's the kind of thing that the rabble-rousers in this colony—Otis, Adams, Hancock, their sort—are using to raise up the folks against the royal governor. I'm concerned that you would be part of that, Brown.”

Though she sat perfectly primly, Emily pressed her toe against Proctor's foot to let him know this was an important question to her father.

Proctor pulled a drumstick off the chicken, tearing off a piece of the meat. “My father served in the militia, during
the last war with the French and their Indian allies. They didn't have the minutemen then, but he was a ranger, which is similar. If I'm going to do anything, I want to do it to the best of my abilities, just like he did. And he'd be disappointed in me if I didn't do my duty to the colony as he had done. So that's one reason.”

“And the other?” Rucke asked, following Proctor's example and tearing off the other drumstick.

Proctor put the meat in his mouth and chewed it a moment to give himself time to think. He swallowed, saying, “All the men in my community belong to the militia. Not just in Lincoln, but in Concord and Lexington, and all the towns around. So it's a great means to reinforce connections. That's how I came to find out that old man Leary was interested in selling his farm.”

Rucke chewed on his own food before he finally nodded, if not in approval then at least in understanding. Emily relaxed, taking her foot off Proctor's.

“When you get ready to move your cattle toward Boston market,” Rucke said, “you might want to begin by contacting a man named Elihu Danvers. Danvers has a house near the mouth of the river, across from Cambridge. Though he's no great sailor anymore, he moves goods around the bay—”

As he continued with his advice, Proctor grinned at Emily around his mouthful of chicken. Of course her father liked him.

She smiled back, but with tighter lips; beneath that smile lingered worry over his unexplained comment about magic.

Eventually, Proctor would have to figure out a way to explain the magic. He wouldn't be able to keep it secret from her, not if they were going to be together. He reached under the table, wiped his fingers on his breeches, and then stretched his arm to try to touch her hand. A huge ripping
sound stopped Rucke in the middle of his description of the harbor shipping lanes.

“What was that?” he said.

Proctor looked over his shoulder at the torn seam in his linen jacket and sighed. “That is what happens when you grow more than you expected.”

Proctor dreamed he heard a gunshot and it woke him, or else a gunshot stirred him from his dreams.

Either way, he lay half awake in bed. The full moon was past its apex, shining down through the gap in his curtains, so it was a few hours before the break of dawn. He thought of Emily and the next chance he might have to see her. As he tugged up the wool blankets and rolled over to go back to sleep, a horse galloped down the Concord Road. The hoofbeats grew closer, and a voice shouted across the spring fields.

“The regulars are coming! The regulars are coming!”

The Redcoats were marching.

Sleep sloughed off him. When Proctor had returned from Boston a few days ago, his militia captain had passed the word to be ready. The Redcoats were planning on taking the supplies from the armory in Concord. Proctor jumped from bed and dressed in an instant, tugging suspenders over his shoulders as the door creaked open below. He ducked his head when he came to the narrow steps and ran downstairs. Outside, the chickens cackled in their coop.

A candle flickered in the kitchen. His father sat shut-eyed in the corner, propped in a high-backed chair, wrapped in blankets. Light snagged on the pale scar across his forehead from when he'd been scalped and left for dead during the French and Indian wars.

There'd be no chance of anything like that to night. The
regular army and the colonial militia, they were all Englishmen at root. A show of force would remind the royal governor of that, just as it had in February at Salem.