Traitor to the Crown The Patriot Witch (38 page)

The cheer rose in Proctor's throat and escaped the lips of others. But Putnam and others were there to shout it down.

“Don't be fools,” Putnam raged. “They'll take our measure with their cannonades and march again against us before an hour's passed.”

Tobias's jaw hung open for a long second. “But they can't stand against us. We whipped 'em.”

“They can and they will,” Proctor said, having been among them such a short time before. He tousled the boy's head and was glad he'd given him the ball.

“Take a drink, if you have water,” one of the captains shouted. “And if you have food or water, share it with those who don't.”

A long day, then. Just like the day at Lexington.

“Sir,” a voice said nearby. “Sir?”

“Yes?” Proctor turned and saw a young black man in better clothes than he'd ever owned himself.

“I saw you helping the wounded. Some of us are acting as orderlies, and wondered if you could give us a hand.”

“Of course,” he said.

Dr. Warren knelt beside a bloody man, knotting a tourniquet on a wounded leg to stem the flow of blood. A dozen
others were bleeding and groaning nearby. Others lay senseless, like the man Proctor had pulled away.

“What is the butcher's charge so far?” Putnam asked.

Warren lifted his fair face. “Two, maybe three dozen dead. That many more wounded. Some won't make it.” He patted the man on the leg and indicated that he should get on one of the carts.

“We gave as good as we got,” Putnam said. “That last fire raked them. They were dragging dozens away with them.”

“Yes,” Warren said, moving on to the next man. “Can I have a compress for this chest wound?”

Proctor stood nearest the pile of lint and bandages. He grabbed some of each and handed them to Warren, who applied a compress to stanch the flow of blood.

“They're forming up to make another assault,” someone cried from the wall.

Farther down the line, someone yelled, “Here they come again.”

“We'll take 'em this time,” the curly-haired boy said, his drum slung over his shoulder.

“That's right, Toby,” Will said. His cap was off when he stopped to muss the boy's hair, and Proctor saw the family resemblance at once.

At the same instant, a cannonball whistled over the battlements, struck Will, and knocked him over the drummer. His face and chest were a bloody mass.

“William?” the boy said, his eyes as wide as shillings as he squirmed free. “William?”

“Here,” Proctor said, pulling him out of the way.

“They've found our range too,” Putnam said. “Back to the wall.”

Warren watched the death of Tobias's brother, his face registering no more than a clinical curiosity. He crouched over a different wounded man who was fighting to control the spasms of pain. Warren grabbed Proctor's hand and pressed it into the man's wound.

“Hold that here, hard, even if he complains, until the wound stops bleeding,” he said.

“I promise I won't complain,” the injured man gasped, “as long as the bleeding stops.”

Warren smiled and gently squeezed the man's shoulder. To the black man, he said, “Gather the wounded and help them retreat. Have them make their way to Cambridge.”

“Sir.”

Warren wiped his hands clean on a rag and picked up his musket. As he returned to defend the wall, Proctor wished more than ever that he had one more lead charm.

“Back to the wall,” someone yelled. “Where's the drum?”

The curly-haired boy was still standing there in shock. At another call for the drum, he began a trembling beat. He closed his eyes, avoiding the sight of all the dead and wounded, and the beat grew stronger.

The officers were shouting at the men to hold their fire until the Redcoats reached fifty yards or less.

Proctor looked down, seeing the blood soak through the lint pad that he pressed into the man's wound. Lifting one hand, he shook a drop from his fingertips onto the soil. He held an image in his head, of Redcoats falling, their officers cut down, their will to fight fading—

The black orderly returned. “Can you move?”

“Me?” Proctor asked, shaken from his spell.

“I think he means me,” the wounded man said. “And yeah, I'd rather be gone if the Redcoats come over the wall.”

“Can you help me get him into the wagon?” the orderly asked Proctor.

When they had moved him and the cart rolled off, Proctor turned to the wall. The triple line of Redcoats marched resolutely up the long slope while shells fell with greater intensity among the colonial defenders.

Proctor looked around for another injured man; his eyes fell on the body of Tobias's brother, Will.

He grabbed the body by the feet and he dragged it out of
the way, where the defenders would not trip over him. When he dropped it, he dipped his fingers in his blood and cast it upon the ground.

“Let his death hold hallow here,” he whispered, and he held an image in his head, reversing the widow's spell.

A few hairs tingled on the back of his arm.

He ran to the wall, where another dead man lay hanging half over the ramparts. Musket balls whizzed past his head from the advancing British line as he climbed up to retrieve the body. The men there nodded to him, shifting their small cannonade to break the line ahead and cover Proctor.

The other defenders saw what he was doing and helped him lift the body down. A thick man, with shoulders like wooden blocks, had tears on his face as he dropped the dead man's weight into Proctor's arms. “His name was Matthew, and he was the finest tip-cat player in Menotomy.”

The men nodded respectfully to Proctor as he carried Matthew away and lay him beside Will.

Once again, he pressed his fingers into the hole in the dead man's chest and shook blood onto the ground, saying, “Hallow this ground.”

He closed his eyes and imagined the widow's spell reversed.

His hair stood on end, from his wrists to his shoulders, but the sensation faded instantly.

The first volley of the British had turned into a steady fire by the time Proctor laid the third body next to the first two. The militia had their heads down against the swarm, waiting while their officers peered over the wall, marking the advance of the British. Although shells rained down on them, the men held their positions.

This was not the running fight outside Lexington, where men knew the ground better, and fought from behind cover against an enemy surrounded on every side.

“Return fire!”

The British advance up the long slope was less than fifty
yards from the wall. The colonials rose to aim. As the fire flashed and the shots went off, the man with the block shoulders fell, hit by a British round.

A few yards away, another man flew backward. Men were falling all along the line.

The survivors kept their heads down, reloading, and as soon as the next British round was fired, they popped up over the wall to take aim and shoot back.

Proctor ran to Block-shoulders, who'd taken a round in his hand. His musket was smashed, the end of his right arm a ruined mess. He was groaning, kicking the ground as he tried to tie off his arm one-handed.

“Let me do that for you,” Proctor said. He took the handkerchief from the man's left hand and pulled the torn sleeve down over the smashed stump.

“God help me, that hurts,” the man grunted.

Proctor nodded, unable to speak. He racked his brain for a healing spell, something useful he might have learned from Deborah's mother, but there was nothing to do except knot the tourniquet as tight as he could. There was blood everywhere now; his arms covered with it, the men were covered with it, the ground soaked with it.

“What's that?” Block-shoulders asked, his voice shaking.

Proctor looked at him, puzzled, still trying to remember something useful.

“What you just said, as you shook your hand to the ground? It sounded like
hallow this ground
.”

Proctor's skin tingled over his whole body and all his hair stood on end. He felt the magic surge through him, as sure and powerful as it had ever been. He had reached the point where he was praying without thinking. There was so much blood on the ground, he had a constant focus for his spell.

“It was a prayer,” he said, pulling the man to his feet and dragging him back from the line. “A prayer for all of us.”

Block-shoulders grunted in reply, but he was wobbly on his feet, dizzy from loss of blood and pain. When they got
to the back of the lines, there were no more carts left for the wounded.

The curly-haired drummer boy stood there, beside the wheel ruts, his drum across his shoulder, his drumsticks hanging down to the ground. He saw Proctor, and he said, “I wish I had never signed up to volunteer.”

“We needed your drumming,” Proctor said.

“My brother's dead.” He swallowed hard. “And Mister Silsbee got hit too, shot in his face, he's gone.”

“I want you to help me,” Proctor said. “Can you do something to help me?”

The boy started to shake his head—

“This man's lost a lot of blood, he's a bit dizzy. Can you take him by his good hand and lead him back to Cambridge? Make sure he gets to someplace safe.”

“But I have to stay to beat the drums, so the men know what to do—”

“The men here know what to do from this point onward,” Proctor said. “You've done your duty. Now you can help in other ways.”

Block-shoulders stirred himself enough to speak. “I might have to lean on you a bit, to steady myself.”

“You can leave your drum, I'll look out for it,” Proctor said.

“Well, all right, then,” the boy said. He lifted the strap over his head, dropped the drum, and took Block-shoulders by the hand. They fell in beside another pair, one man dragging his leg, limp and bloody, helping another whose head was wrapped in a dripping rag, all part of a train of wounded.

Proctor spun back toward the fighting. He shook the blood from his hand and ran to help another man tie off his wounds.

That one hobbled away, using his musket for a crutch.

He pulled another dead man off the wall.

The shooting stopped; even the cannons were still. Proctor
looked up, stunned by the silence. The cloud of smoke from Charlestown rose up to the sky, casting a dark haze over the sun. The sound of gulls crying from the bay floated up the hillside.

Proctor saw some of the Concord men, resting with their backs against the ramparts. Thirsty, out of breath, he went and sat with them. “I think it worked,” he said.

“What worked?” Amos Lathrop asked.

Proctor started from his seat. “Hello, Amos.”

“You seem surprised to see me,” he said. And Proctor was. There was no skull grinning at him behind Amos's familiar face this time, no skeleton moving rotted flesh. “What worked?”

Proctor couldn't answer that his spell had worked. “Our defense of the hill.”

Peter Salem grunted skeptically. “Maybe it did, and maybe it didn't.”

A distant cannon boomed and a shot sailed over their heads and down the length of the rampart, thumping into the wall. The men sat up.

“They lower the angle on that, and bring it around a bit more, and it'll clear the length of this line,” Amos said.

Proctor felt a pain in his heart. Maybe Salem was right, maybe it hadn't worked.

“How much powder do you have left?” Amos asked.

“One round,” said Arthur Simes. Proctor hadn't even recognized him, he was so different from the boy he'd seen on Lexington Green.

Amos shook his head and said, “Me too.”

“I've got a few rounds left,” Dr. Warren said nearby.

The cannon boomed again and another shot sailed over their heads; a bit lower this time, it bowled down a group of men farther down the wall.

One of the captains came running from Putnam's command position, pausing to speak to the nearby cannon crew.
A few seconds later, he crouched by the Concord men. “They're coming back for a third try. We're going to break open the shot canisters and distribute the powder.”

“How much?”

“Maybe another round apiece,” the captain said, and he ran to the next group.

The cannon crew already had their cartridge box open and a canister cracked. They were doling out powder to the first men there with their horns. The Concord men rose to get a measure.

Dr. Warren stayed behind with Proctor. “I've seen what you've been doing.”

Proctor thought only of the spell he'd been trying to work. It was odd—he'd spent his whole life hiding his talent, following his mother's example. And he felt no shame or fear anymore. “I don't even know if it made any difference.”

“It made all the difference to the men you helped,” Warren said, and Proctor realized he was talking about the wounded. “You have a skill for it.”

Proctor looked at the bloodstains on his hands, so different from the kind of blood he thought he'd have on his hands, and shook his head. “I guess I have several skills I never expected to have.”

“The only thing harder than staying on the front line is returning to it over and over, the way you've done today,” Warren said.

There was a volley from the slope and the thud of lead rounds smacking the wall. It seemed like such a fragile barrier. The other men crouched back into position with their extra measure of powder.

“This is it, men,” Warren told them. “They won't have the stomach for a fourth charge up that hill.”

“And we won't have powder to shoot them if they do,” Amos said, drawing an unexpected smile from Proctor.

Another volley fired from a bit closer, and more lead pocked into the dirt and wood. There was the sound of
shots popping from the colonial line now. “How close are they?” Arthur asked.

“Hold a moment longer,” Warren said.

“I'll see,” Amos said, peeking over the barricade. The shot hit him in the forehead, knocking his hat off and throwing him back, his arms and legs twisted all wrong.

“Amos!” Proctor grabbed his shirt to drag him to safety. He had him ten feet back from the wall when he tripped and fell. He scrambled to his knees, reaching for Amos, and stopped. The body lay exactly where he had dropped it. Nothing in the world, no medicine or witchcraft, could help Amos now.