A Spell for the Revolution (29 page)

“I … heard … shouting …”

Deborah dropped her hands to her waist, smoothing her dress over her hips. The bonds dropped from Proctor like severed ropes, and his knees almost buckled before he drew breath and righted himself.

“Everything is fine,” Proctor said. “Just a small family disagreement.”

“Can’t you see you’re disturbing a sick man?” Deborah said. “Leave now.”

“They’re still out there,” Proctor said, softly enough that he hoped only she could hear him. “Bootzamon and the widow’s ghost, Cecily, the German. They’ve got Lydia and that little boy. If we don’t stand against them together, we’ll surely fall to them alone.”

Donnelson slumped back to the bed, gasping in pain. Deborah turned away from Proctor, uprighting her stool and sitting down again.

“I still may be able to help this man,” she said, wiping his brow to cool him. “I know how to heal. I’ll stick to what I know. You should do the same.”

He walked over to the tent and held open the flap. “Funny,” he said, pausing before he went out. “I thought I knew you.”

He lingered a moment, hoping she would do something to change his mind, but she only sat there, back to him, pretending to take care of a man too far gone to help. He slapped the tent shut and stomped off. Let her be that way. If she wanted him to leave her alone, he would.

Nearby, a noncommissioned officer was instructing some of the men as they stored barrels of flour, all the army’s provisions for the remaining winter. “Do you know where I can find General Washington’s headquarters?” Proctor asked.

“At the river,” the veteran said, jerking his thumb. His ghost echoed him, jerking its thumb the same direction. “Out by the Dutchman’s gristmill.”

“Thank you,” Proctor said, tipping his hat. The other man looked at him oddly, and Proctor realized it was a wide-brimmed Quakerish hat. Quakers tipped their hats to no one. He walked away quickly without saying anything instead of trying to repair the fiction. As he followed the
other man’s directions, his head swirled with the thought that if he was done with Deborah, maybe he ought to be done pretending to be a Quaker too. But when he encountered others along the way, he was careful not to take off his hat for them.

He saw the gristmill from the road and then, as he came closer, spied the large, long gambrel-roofed house that flew the flag of the general’s headquarters. He went in the open door and saw a small crowd surrounding a table covered with maps and papers. Colonel Henry Knox, who was taller than Washington and weighed three hundred pounds, filled the space of two men, bookishly holding a page up to his face to read it. Colonel Glover, the wiry-haired sailor from Marblehead, only half the size of Knox, stood on his toes trying to read along with the other man. Their ghosts jostled and fought with each other, though the two men restrained their own tempers to focus on their work. The room felt crowded by the restless spirits clinging to Washington and the other officers, all stirring as if the defeat of the army would mean their freedom.

The men all took their cue from Washington, who, somehow, ignored the great mob chained to him ankle-to-ankle like a line of slaves. Tilghman, bent over a table with the general, saw Proctor and greeted him with the slightest dip of his head before turning back to work.

A slightly built man with a cleft chin and calm, thoughtful eyes leaned against one wall, watching Washington and the others; he looked more like a schoolboy, intent on following a lesson, than an officer, but Proctor recognized him as a lieutenant from the Third Virginia. The ghost that clung to him was that of an old veteran, someone from the wars with the French and the Indians. The ghost also appeared calm and thoughtful, as if death were less of a burden than the one he’d carried during life.

Proctor struggled to recall the officer’s name as he sidled up next to him. “James?”

The man’s ghost thrust out a hand to shove him away. Proctor shivered as the spectral palm passed through him, just as the young man turned.

“Yes, Monroe, James Monroe,” he said.

“Is there any place a fellow might catch a nap?”

“There’s space in the rooms upstairs. But if you’re cold, I’d grab a spot in the second parlor, nearer the fire. Bound to stay warmer there.”

“Kindly appreciated,” Proctor said, marveling how those Virginians always found the northern states so cold. Still, he agreed with Monroe: the fire sounded good. He was weary, and chilled beyond the air by the hovering presence of so many spirits.

He grabbed a quick bite of bread and a pint of watered rum from a sideboard set out to feed the flow of officers who filled the room, and made his way through the downstairs rooms looking for the other parlor. When he found it, there was only one thin officer there, the sharp angles of his knees and elbows hunched over a small folding camp table next to the fire. He was writing intently on a sheet of paper that hung over the edge of his table. Several other pages lay scattered at his feet.

“Do you mind if I come in?” Proctor asked.

The other man continued scratching words on the paper. Without looking up, he said, “Suit yourself. This is a country for free men.”

“Thank you,” Proctor said.

He had gone in and taken one of the other cane-bottomed chairs against the wall before he realized the other man had no apparent ghost. Somehow he had escaped the curse.

“Do you serve in the army?” Proctor asked.

The man finished what he was writing, held the sheet up to the fire to read it, then set it on the floor next to the others. “Aide-de-camp to General Greene,” he said, taking another
sheet of paper and sharpening his quill before continuing his composition.

Proctor didn’t understand it. How did this one man escape the curse? He was studying the man and thinking about this when a new voice showed at the door.

“Mind if I join you gentlemen?”

James Monroe stood there, trailing his gaunt, angry spectral veteran from the French wars. Proctor had liked the warmth of the room, and he braced for a wave of cold as the cursed man entered. Also, Monroe’s spirit was the most aggressive he’d seen, the first to try to actually attack him.

“Suit yourself,” the writer answered, hunched over his table again. “This is a country for free men.”

Monroe lifted his foot to step through the door.

And froze.

The moment he passed the barrier, a spirit rose up out of the writer’s body, the shining figure of a woman, almost too bright to be seen. This was no thin, sexless angel: she was full-hipped, with rounded belly. Wings of pale fire, feathered with tiny dancing flames, unfolded from her back, and she snapped her hand toward the door as if swatting a fly.

Monroe’s ghost recoiled as if the swat had hit him and had burned. Instantly it began tugging and pulling Monroe, trying to escape the room the way a whipped dog might flee its attacker.

Monroe cleared his throat. “No, I can see you are working. I’m sure it’s important. I’ll leave you to it.”

The writer finished his sentence, dipped his pen in the ink, and paused a moment while a fat drop of liquid fell from the tip back into the bottle. “I’m very obliged to your kindness.”

Monroe spun on his heel, leaving the doorway empty as he proceeded to another room. Proctor watched him go, tracing the vivid relief in the aspect of the ghost. When he
turned back, the writer’s spirit had disappeared. The man continued writing, as if oblivious to everything that had just transpired.

Well, they were all oblivious to what was transpiring. They felt the effects, but—unless they had the secret talent shared by Deborah and Proctor—couldn’t see the cause.

Proctor put another log on the fire and stirred the coals. He was sick of this struggle, tired of the ghosts that haunted every step of the army. It was too much to face, too hopeless.

Yet here was a soldier, a commissioned officer and aide to General Greene, who was untouched. As far as Proctor could tell, the man had no natural gift, no direct control over magic, yet somehow he had a powerful protection against the curse. A powerful protector.

When the other man finished writing another sheet and set it aside, Proctor cleared his throat. “I believe we’ve met, but I can’t recall your name.”

The other man smiled, as if he had heard that before. “Tom Paine,” he said.

“Pleased to meet you. My name’s Proctor Brown.”

Paine waited a moment. “Common sense.”

Every time he used the false name, he was afraid someone would catch him, still, even after so many months. Licking his lips, he said, “I’m sorry, but that’s my name. I’m not sure how it’s common sense.”

Paine tapped his chest. “No, I wrote
Common Sense.”

Proctor stared at him blankly.

“The pamphlet, arguing for American independence—”

Suddenly it clicked for Proctor. “Oh, you’re Thomas Paine, the man who wrote
Common Sense!
Of course. Last year, before the Declaration of Independence. Now you’re an aide to General Greene.”

Paine stared at Proctor as if he were dim-witted. When he spoke again, it was slowly, with more emphasis on each
word. “Yes, that’s exactly as I told you. Now, if you don’t mind, I should get back to writing.”

He took a clean sheet of paper and smoothed it across the tiny desk. He dipped his quill and had it poised over the blank sheet.

“What’re you writing?” Proctor asked.

A fat blob of black ink dripped onto the page. Paine grabbed a rag and was quick to blot it up. “I’ve been trying to write something new to inspire the soldiers and citizens of this great country to greater sacrifice in the hour of its need.”

“How is it going?” Proctor asked

Paine held the blemished sheet up to the light and frowned. “Roughly. All inkspots and letters crossed out as soon as they’re written. But that’s the way of it. Sometimes the road to the right phrase leads through a thicket of wrong words.”

“The way the path to peace and freedom leads through war and sacrifice.”

“Well, yes,” Paine said, now clearly annoyed with Proctor. “I’d best return to work. Don’t let me disturb you any further.”

While they talked, Proctor had been studying Paine closely for some clue to his protection, or protector, but he saw none. He only had the image, seared into his head, of the fiery-winged woman standing in the way of the cursed spirit. Paine began writing again. Proctor decided to approach the question directly. He waited until Paine held his pen above his ink, and then spoke.

“Do you believe in angels?”

Paine lifted his head, as if surprised to find Proctor still there. “I beg your pardon.”

“Do you believe in angels?”

Paine sat up straight, squared his shoulders, and faced Proctor directly. “If this is about the passage I wrote in
Common Sense
, I stand by every word of what I said. Call
me atheistic or vilify me by any name you choose, but I still contend that this country will never be strong so long as it gives primacy to any one religion over another. If we all held the same faith, there would be no opportunity for virtue in any of us.”

“What?” asked Proctor.

“Huh,” grunted Paine.

“So you’re not—” Paine started at the same second Proctor said, “I wasn’t—”

They both stopped.

“Angels,” Proctor said. “I only wondered if you had ever experienced something you might describe as a divine presence.”

Paine’s mouth, creased in anger, softened at the corners, and then the ghost of a smile played across his lips. “Yes, I have known an angel.”

Proctor shot forward in his seat. “Really?”

The other man laughed. “Mary, my wife. If there are such things as angels, then she was of their kind, bright and glorious, and left for a foundling with her dull parents.”

Disappointment welled up in Proctor: Paine was speaking metaphorically when he spoke literally. The habit of empathy made him ask, “What happened to her?”

Pleasure disappeared from Paine’s face. “She died giving birth to our first child.”

The two men were silent for a moment. Paine leaned back in his chair and looked into the fire, rubbing his chin with his writing hand. Proctor awaited signs of the angel’s return, wondering if naming her would call her, but nothing showed. He had the impression that she only acted when Paine was in danger, as when someone with the curse came too close. If it was his wife, she may have had the talent herself—many women who did had trouble conceiving, or passed away in childbirth. Deborah said that was the first thing that drew so many witches to midwifery. If she
did have the talent, she might have attached herself to her husband on purpose, as a way of staying with him.

“She was a Quaker like you,” Paine offered.

The voice startled Proctor out of his deep reverie, and then his reaction was amplified by his own uncertainty. Wasn’t he pretending to be a Quaker anymore? Where did things stand with him and Deborah?

Paine saw his reaction. “It was not my intention to give offense. If I’ve misjudged you by your clothes …”

“No, you’ve not misjudged me, friend,” Proctor said quickly. “You’re a writer, are you not? You choose a cover for your book to reflect the interior, and good men do the same.”

“Just remember, friend,” Paine replied. “If God could clothe the world in myriad colors, as varied as all the flowers of the fields, as bright as the birds of the forest, then it can be no sin for you to wear something more cheerful than brown and black.”

Proctor laughed aloud at that, and it was as if the act of laughing caused him to let down the dam of his defenses, so that the weariness he’d been feeling flooded over him again. He hid a yawn behind his hand. When it had passed, he lifted his head to Paine. “Will it bother you if I sleep on the floor for a while?”

“Not at all, it’s a free country,” Paine said, with considerably more warmth than he had used earler.

Proctor rose. “I’ll go over there against the wall, out of your way.”

“No, here by the fire, where it’s warmest,” Paine said, rising to gather his papers. “You’ll sleep better, and I think I’m done for now.”

There were a couple of threadbare blankets folded on another chair in the corner. Proctor took them to a spot on the floor near the fire, used one for a pillow, pulled the other to his chin. He shifted a few times, then lay there with his eyes closed but unable to fall asleep. He was thinking
about Deborah, about his decision to stop their charade. All he had left to do was choose whether to stay with the army awhile longer, or head back to The Farm to rejoin the others.