Traitor to the Crown The Patriot Witch (39 page)

Kneeling in the churned earth, next to Amos's dead body, Proctor lowered his head and folded his hands. He prayed. He prayed that it was worth it, all these deaths, all the suffering. He prayed that these were birth pangs, delivering a world where greater peace was possible. Because he did not know if he could keep on going in the old world anymore.

He lifted his head. “His mother makes flatcakes for me. How am I going to tell her about this?”

Warren picked up Amos's loaded musket and thrust it into Proctor's hand. “You'll find the words when you need them, but it'll have to wait. The time has come to put your other talents to use.”

Proctor's hands closed around the musket stock and barrel. “Yes, sir,” he said, and together they crouched back to the barricade.

The instant the next British volley whistled overhead, Proctor and the others lifted their muskets over the wall, took aim, and—

Something gold caught Proctor's eye as he fired. He jerked his barrel toward it but a moment too late.

Major Pitcairn led the marines straight toward their position. He still had the protective charm the widow had given him. It wasn't a coin, or a faint shimmer now; instead, it
blinked at Proctor like the eye of some malignant giant, caught on a chain.

A hand on his collar pulled him down as the next British volley fired.

“You might want to reload,” Warren suggested, jamming his ramrod into his barrel.

Proctor reached for his flint bag—and realized he didn't have it. He reached over and grabbed Amos's horn and bag. He was still pouring powder into the firing pan when the men around him looked over the wall and shot again.

“Thirty yards away and fixing bayonets,” a man yelled.

“That was my last round,” Arthur said. “I think I'll be going.” He nodded to Proctor, then hunkered off.

“Me too,” said the first man, and others followed.

“God be with you,” Warren said as he reloaded. He and Proctor and Peter Salem were among the last men defending that part of the wall. “One more round,” he said.

A British volley cracked and Proctor lifted his musket and aimed for Pitcairn. From the corner of his eye, he saw British soldiers down everywhere, their lines as broken as the lines of the colonial defenders.

As he sighted down the musket, he saw a bright spot of Amos's blood on the end of the barrel.

He thought back to the counterspell Deborah had taught them on The Farm, the one that turned a spell with bad intentions back on itself. There could be no intentions worse than the widow's. With the blood for a focus, he formed the thought of the widow's spell in his head, just as Deborah had done.

“An eye for an eye,” he whispered. “Reverse the widow's spell.”

He squeezed the trigger. Fire erupted from the barrel.

The wind whipped away the smoke from his gun and he saw Pitcairn's sleeve torn. Pitcairn stopped, fingers on the bloody wound, as red as his jacket. He seemed surprised.

Proctor ducked his head again.

His spell had worked. He had, at least, broken the widow's protective spells. Pitcairn could be hurt. He took another shot from Amos's bag and lifted the horn to pour.

But there was no powder left.

He looked over the wall, hoping to see the British charge broken. Pitcairn had been wounded—he had to know his spell no longer protected him. But he still marched at the front of the line, his sword drawn and raised above his head, urging his men onward.

Warren and Salem were both loading their weapons. Salem tilted his head toward Pitcairn. “I've been saving my last round for him.”

“Really?” Proctor asked.

“Naw,” Salem replied as he put his ramrod away and jabbed a thumb toward one of the dead bodies. “But I saw him on the field at Lexington. He's got too many airs to suit me.”

He rose up behind the bulwark, aimed, and shot. Pitcairn fell, his sword spinning in an arc through the air away from his hand. A cry went up from his troops as he went down and Proctor saw his son William, the young officer who'd tried to make amends to him outside the coffee house in Boston, rush to his father's side.

Warren tugged at their shoulders. “Well done, men. We're out of powder—it's time to go.”

Proctor nodded, relief washing through him. They had paid a terrible price, but he had broken the widow's spell. What ever was settled on that hill today was settled by men, and not by witchcraft.

They were four steps away from the wall when another volley cracked behind them. Proctor ducked as the shots zinged past them. Warren lurched a step ahead.

“Oh,” he said. “That's not good.”

He pitched forward, head turned to the side, eyes already empty.

Salem kept running. Proctor hesitated for a moment,
then chased after him. They were the last stragglers, racing to the narrow road that led across the Charlestown Neck.

They stopped there, protected by a wall of hay bales, and looked back down the double slope to see the tiny figures of the Redcoats climbing over the redoubts.

Salem shook his head, disappointed. “A couple more rounds per man would have made all the difference,” he said. “It's a shame we had to lose this one.”

“I'm not sure we did lose,” Proctor answered, seeing the carnage among the Redcoats. A trail of bodies led down the slopes to the bay, and the trampled grass was slick with blood. The soldiers occupied the redoubts, but their enemy had fled before them, able to fight another day. “What's the name of that hill anyway?”

“Which one?” Salem said. “Breed's Hill or Bunker Hill?”

A cannonball smashed into the wall of bales, showering them with bits of hay, and they both ducked, covering their heads. When they looked up, Salem tipped his hat to Proctor, then ran to join the rest of the retreating colonists.

Proctor lingered a moment longer, trying to pick out Amos's body or Warren's among the scene below. But the walls were jumbled, and with the Redcoats milling about, he couldn't tell where he'd fought or which bodies were theirs.

“Never mind,” he said to no one in particular, answering his own question. “It doesn't make a difference.”

Proctor spent the rest of the day behind the colonials' fallback line in Cambridge, waiting for the next wave of the British assault, but it never came.

That night he went to work, helping the wounded where he could. Though he knew no healing spells, he changed dressings and prayed for every injured man he met.

A week later, with no further British advance, he sought out Elihu Danvers, hoping to find a way back into Boston. He wasn't sure if he was looking for Deborah or his mother.

“The British won the battle but they've lost the will to fight,” Danvers said between puffs on his pipe. “They sacrificed almost a thousand men to take that hill, and all their best officers killed. A few more victories like that, and they're done for.”

Proctor sat at his table while Mrs. Danvers stirred the cooking pot and the smallest children aimed sticks at each other, pretending to be minutemen and Redcoats.

“And no,” Danvers said. “I can't arrange for you to go back into the city. They're so frightened now, they've shut it up tighter than a nun's drawers.”

Mrs. Danvers smacked him on the back of his head. His pipe popped out of his mouth, and he caught it in his hand. He put it back to his lips and blew a ring of smoke after her.

“If you're worrying about a certain relative,” Danvers said, “I wouldn't. With the siege on, the British are eager to
let anyone out of the city who wants out, so long as they've no value as a hostage.”

Neither his mother nor Deborah had any value as a hostage, not to anyone but him. Emily could go anytime she wanted, if she made up her mind where she wanted to go.

Mrs. Danvers served him a bowl of pork and beans, flavored with molasses. His favorite meal. He thanked her and laid into it with gusto.

That night he set out for home.

The roads were full of men, coming from every colony in New En gland. Word had it that there would soon be forty thousand men to shut up Boston. The war was just beginning.

He wandered by back roads, carrying the musket and bag he had taken from Amos, and thinking about his talent, and what it meant. His mother was right about one thing: there would never be any place for it in the open. But that didn't mean there wasn't any place for it. Even Emily, who had feared his talent at first, had come looking for him, ready to make peace with it. That was something to think on. Maybe there wouldn't be any more witch hangings. Maybe someday, there wouldn't be a need for the Quaker Highway anymore.

But there would always be a need for someone to train witches. No one should ever be left as he had been, ignorant of his heritage, without knowledge or guidance for his talent.

It was midmorning when he cut across the rocky fields toward the familiar farm house.

She stood waiting for him at the front door. He paused below the step and bit his cheek to keep from smiling.

“What took you so long?” Deborah asked, hands in her dress pockets. After all they'd been through, he expected her to appear older, harder. More like her mother, or his. But a softness touched her eyes and a slight smile turned the corners of her lips.

He looked off in the other direction. “Didn't you see me coming?”

“I might have scryed it,” she said. She pulled her hand from her pocket and opened it to reveal a speckled egg.

He laughed and followed her inside.

Proctor Brown urged his horse into the shallows and forded the Potomac River an hour before sunset. Water splashed up and soaked his shoes; after ten days in the saddle, with his stockings almost as stiff as his legs, he hardly noticed wet shoes. If he found the Walker farm tonight, he'd have a chance to dry off and clean up. Assuming he was welcome.

The jarring lunge up the far bank reminded him that he was more accustomed to being behind a horse, hitched to a cart or plow, than on top of one. He grunted, shifting weight from his sorest parts to those parts almost as sore. A day of rest could be a good thing. It might take that long to convince Alexandra Walker to return with him to The Farm outside Salem, Massachusetts. It depended on how vividly she remembered the assassins sent to kill them during her last visit.

Proctor wanted her help, in case the killers came again. It took a witch to defeat witchcraft, and Alexandra was stronger and more experienced than any of the other witches he'd been able to find this past year.

When they reached the road, Proctor's sturdy little bay mare turned toward the smoke and rooftops a mile away. “No, Singer, the other way,” he said.

With a weary toss of her head, Singer circled onto the cart road that led south into the Shenandoah Valley. Even this late in the day, the August air lay on them like a damp wool blanket, one that had been warmed by a fire and
filled with biting insects. Land stretched out around them, lush and green, all the way to the mountains.