Traitor to the Crown The Patriot Witch (32 page)

He continued to look into Deborah's eyes; she continued to look back.

“Your father died of a broken heart,” his mother said. “You were the world to him, Proctor. After you left, whenever he had a lucid moment, he would sit up in his chair and call for you, he would call your name, and it broke his heart that you never came running.”

Her voice cracked, and she started crying pitifully. Proctor felt a lump form in his own throat.

Still, his eyes and Deborah's eyes had not wavered.

“Go home,” Deborah said. Her face was dry now, her voice firm and strong.

She had lost both her parents, to murder and to worse, and their killers were still free. Proctor could have saved them—he was right there at her father's side and had failed him. He swallowed the lump in his throat, wanting to speak, but it stuck there.

“Go home, to the people who love you, who need you,” she said. “It's where you belong. You've earned it.”

“It's the only right thing to do,” his aunt said. “Everyone will understand that you must take care of your family first, no matter what other wars and disturbances are going on. There are plenty of other men who can do the awful fighting.”

Other men to do the awful fighting? Proctor remembered the way Amos's skull appeared behind his flesh, the way the militiamen guarded their posts unaware that they were merely skeletons waiting to discover they were already dead. And he was the only one who could see that. Who could maybe do something about it.

So much more than his family was at stake. And there were no other men.

He reached down and took hold of the handle. Turning, he said to them, “It's not done yet, and there isn't anyone else to see it through.”

“Don't be selfish, boy,” his aunt said.

“Proctor—” His mother's voice quavered.

“I'll come back for you when we're done,” he said, then added, “if I can.”

“Proctor, if you walk out that door,” his mother said, “don't bother to come back. You'll be dead to me. I'll sell the farm—Lucas Bundam is interested in buying it, he came to see me after your father's funeral. I'll have to sell it, to take care of Sarah and myself.”

“I understand,” Proctor said. “You best do what you need to do then.”

“Don't be a fool,” his aunt said. “Here, you've had a hard night, clearly. You're not speaking from reason. Rest until morning, and then it will all look different.”

“It won't look any different in the morning,” he said. “Unless it looks worse.”

He thumbed the latch and cracked the door open.

“I'm sorry, Mother, for letting you down, and for missing Father's funeral. If I don't see you again, I hope you will not think too poorly of me.”

Her hands were balled in fists, hanging like knots on the ends of two thick ropes. “No loving son would ever walk out that door. If you do it—”

Unable to listen to the rest of her threat, not wanting to remember her that way, he walked out the door.

A wail came from the room behind him, followed by the mixed voice of his aunt, trying to calm his mother, and calling back after him.

Deborah was right behind him in the street. He didn't know where he was going, so when he reached the corner he stopped.

“It's not too late to go back,” she told him.

“It was too late to go back the night they sent those men dressed as Indians to kill your father.”

“But
your
father—”

“My father lived a long life and died peacefully in his sleep. Others haven't been—won't be—so fortunate.”

“But your mother needs you, and I know you've always looked to the day when you could claim the farm as your own. This doesn't have to be your responsibility.”

He raised his fist, wanting to punch a sack of grain, even a wall—anything to expel the furious energy built up inside him—and saw the he still had his hat, crumpled in his hand. He'd forgotten to put it on when they left the house, just like Deborah, used to wearing a cap, had forgotten to take hers off inside.

“Those people, whoever they are, who did that to your mother and father, they're evil, Deborah,” he said. “Somebody has to stop them.”

“I will.”

“And you think you can do it alone?”

She paused. “I don't think your help will make any difference in the end.”

“Maybe not,” he admitted, and the need to hit something drained out of him a bit. At least, the need to hit something random. “But all those men out there, Deborah, they don't know that.” He lowered his voice. “Something magic is killing them, but they have no idea, and wouldn't believe it if you told them.”

“But—” she said.

“No, let me finish—they wouldn't believe it, but I know, because of things I've seen. Yeah, I'd like to go back to the farm, and the life I had before. My mother, my aunt, they'll find some way to get by. But now I see there's something bigger, and I have to try to do something about it, even if I fail.”

“Proctor,” Deborah said, “I understand. I just wanted to say—”

Another voice across the street called, “Proctor?”

Someone stepped from the shadows. The silhouette was familiar, but he couldn't put a name to it. He stepped protectively closer to Deborah.

“Oh my God, Proctor, that
is
you.”

Her voice trailed off as she came nearer. A young woman in clothes as girlish as Deborah's were boyish, her dark curls spilling from under her cap.

“Emily,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Father received a letter from Captain Danvers. It said you had been smuggled into Boston. I knew your aunt lived here, so I came looking for you. I know it's after curfew, but—”

“Oh,” Deborah said in a small voice, the pieces finally clicking together. “You're Emily Rucke.”

Emily didn't hear her. Words were tumbling out of her mouth. “—I haven't been able to stop thinking about you, Proctor, not for a single day. I don't ever want to go that long without seeing you again.”

Deborah stepped quietly away from him.

“Deborah?” he said.

Proctor never finished his explanation. Half a dozen men ran out of the darkness at them. The screams of the young women were cut off by rough hands. A stave glanced off the side of Proctor's head. He swung back, feeling one satisfying impact of his fist with someone's face before the other staves hit him, and then the fists, until he was compliant enough to let them gag him and bind his wrists and throw him into a carriage.

Deborah's body slammed into his. He twisted, trying to pry himself upright, but they were wedged between the two seats. Someone grabbed their legs and folded them inside, them slammed the door.

He was bent in half, with Deborah's elbows in his ribs. She tried to rise, crushing his chest and shoving the breath from his lungs. He groaned through his gag and she stopped. He sucked air through his nose and tried to think clearly, find some way out.

Outside the carriage, a man spoke to Emily. “Miss, you were mistaken, this isn't your friend.”

“But I saw—”

“What you saw was a rebel spy, pretending to be someone your father knows. But he is nothing of the sort. He's a cold-blooded murderer who killed two of His Majesty's soldiers on a farm outside Salem.”

The voice sounded familiar to Proctor, but he couldn't place it. Something about the tone or tenor of it had changed.

“But the other boy, he called him Proctor—that's Proctor Brown, I know him.”

“Shh, now, miss, you want to keep your voice down. It's dark out, isn't it?”

“But—”

“You don't know what or who you saw, not in the dark, not truly.”

There were other ways to reshape memory, and not all of
them were magic. Proctor began to shift and twist away from Deborah. If he could just free his legs—

“He looked like the Proctor I know.”

“Only because you wanted him to be your friend, Miss Rucke. In reality, he is an evil man, abusing your friend's good name to take advantage of your father's reputation.”

Proctor tried to shout through the gag,
“Emily, it's me,”
but his words were unintelligible.

“My father received a letter,” Emily said. “From Captain Danvers—that's how I knew to come looking for him.”

“I'm afraid this murderer deceived Captain Danvers too.”

“If I could just see him in person—”

Yes, thought Proctor. He tried to shout again, and kicked his feet against the sides of the coach to draw her attention. Deborah grunted as he kneed her accidentally.

“I'm sorry, miss, but he's too dangerous.”

The door swung open, and a fist came at him like a blacksmith's hammer. He twisted his head from side to side to avoid it, but one blow clipped his jaw, sent his head cracking into the edge of the seat.

“—see, if he was your friend, would he be fighting that way? No, he does that because he's a spy and he knows the penalty for spies is hanging.”

A hand slapped a horse's rump, the wheels creaked, and the carriage lurched into motion. Proctor struggled one last time to scream out around his gag.

“—Duncan will escort you back to your father's house. A young lady such as yourself shouldn't be out after curfew—”

The voices faded in the distance, hidden by the steady clop of hooves as the carriage rolled through Boston's streets. He stopped struggling and fell still, except to continue panting through his nose. The tight confines of the carriage pressed in on three sides. He was suddenly aware of the weight of Deborah's body on top of him, the way her legs were tangled in his, and the faint scent of rosewater on her throat.

He shifted his shoulders, pushed his head back, and turned his neck so that he could see her face. The gag was drawn so tight it cut gouges in her cheeks. Her eyes were wide with apprehension.

They bumped along, their faces inches apart, unable to speak. The pace of the carriage slowed—too soon! Proctor had no chance to think of escape, to conjure a way free. He chafed his cheek on the edge of the seat, trying to loosen his gag, but to no avail. He couldn't pull out of his bonds, so he felt around for Deborah's hands, trying to undo hers. She grasped the idea at once, and rolled to the side to try to do the same for him.

The hooves clopped slower but with more determination. The carriage tilted uphill, and Deborah rolled back onto Proctor, dislodging his fingers almost as soon as they found purchase in her knots. She shifted from side to side, scooting down for a better position. Her hand slipped past his ropes and closed around his fingers.

The door opened and a man reached in, grabbing her by the back of her collar and yanking her out. A moment later, hands grabbed Proctor by his ankles and dragged him half out of the vehicle before fists closed on his vest and jerked him to his feet.

They were near the summit of the largest hill in Boston, Beacon Hill. A low stone wall stretched along the road. The wooden fence that lined the wall was smashed; only a few broken pickets remained, sharp and stark, atop the stone.

Behind the fence rose the largest mansion Proctor had ever seen. Brown stone walls rose three stories, fortresslike. Shutters hung open, exposing shattered windows with a few shards of glass standing like the pickets on the wall. An empty balcony with an iron railing extended over the main entrance like an abandoned watchtower.

He turned to find Deborah, relieved to see her silhouette standing but a few feet away. She was hunched forward a bit, but otherwise appeared unharmed.

One of their captors held a lantern, the light moving as he walked around the coach. As this source of illumination fell on Deborah's face, it revealed a streak of bright blood pouring from her nose, staining the rag that filled her mouth. She was struggling to breathe.

He started toward her instinctively.

A man behind him grabbed his jacket, pulling him short. A hard shove sent him toward the tall wooden gate that hung broken on its hinges.

“That rebel John Hancock, he don't have much use for it now, so we thought we'd borrow it,” one man taunted Proctor, chuckling.

“Shut your mouth and take them to the cabin out back,” the familiar voice said. It was less respectful than it had been to Emily, and Proctor almost felt he could place it. It was too dark to see the man's face. Three or four others were similarly hidden by shadow. The man who held the lantern was thick-featured, with piggish eyes, a stranger to Proctor.

Using hands and sticks, the men shoved Proctor and Deborah up the steps in front of the house; herded by blows and cuffs like dumb animals, they stumbled around the main house and its wings, past the huge carriage house, and across the gardens to a few small cabins.

The man with the lantern led them to the first of these and opened the door. Proctor ducked his head as he passed through the low frame into the single room, and Deborah followed. Mud caulked the log walls, all of it dull brown in the lantern light. The room was empty, even the cold, ashy hearth, but the room still felt close and stifling.

A man put his hand in Deborah's back and shoved her across the small room—she tried to cushion herself with her bound arms, but she banged into the wall and fell toward the floor.

Proctor lowered his shoulder and slammed the culprit into the door frame. He brought one of his knees up into the man's groin and watched him double over.

The second beating was worse. He dropped his chin to his chest, tried to cover his face, but in an instant he was on the ground, with shoes pounding his thighs and back and shoulder.

“Hold off that, you fools,” called the familiar voice, and the man waded in, tossing others aside. “Nance wants this pair, and Nance'll have 'em.”

The door closed before Proctor could roll over for a look at his face. He and Deborah were alone in the dark cabin.

Deborah crawled over to him, gripped her gag with her bound hands, and, with a suppressed grunt, pulled it over her chin. “Are you all right?”

His reply was muffled until she removed his gag the same way. “Been better,” he said between deep breaths.

They worked at the knots for what felt like hours, not daring to speak, twitching at every sound at the door or outside. The air changed outside as they worked; the sky shone through chinks of missing mud.