Dead Man's Reach (33 page)

Some in the throng shouted at the lone soldier, daring him to use his weapon.

“Fire!” several called. “Damn you, fire!”

They pelted him, and swarmed near him, only to retreat again as the man jabbed his bayonet at them. Other spectators pleaded with the man to hold his fire, and with the boys who were molesting him to leave off and let the man be.

A disturbance to the west, back toward Murray's Barracks, attracted Ethan's notice.

Shouts of “Make way! Make way” echoed off shop fronts and homes, and several more soldiers, grenadiers, judging by the high, bear-fur hats that they wore, hurried past him, no doubt intent on giving aid to their solitary comrade. They pushed through the onlookers, making no effort to be gentle about it. A few slashed with their bayonets at those they passed, drawing cries of pain and outrage, and more than a bit of blood.

They joined the young man in front of the Customs House, and leveled their weapons. With them was an officer Ethan remembered from eighteen months before, when he was hired by the Customs Board to learn what had befallen the sailors and soldiers aboard HMS
Graystone
, a sloop that had sailed into Boston Harbor as part of the occupying fleet.

He remembered the army captain's name as Preston—Thomas Preston. He was tall, gaunt, with a rough, sallow face and a manner to match. But he acted with practiced efficiency, barking orders to the men so that they positioned themselves in a tight arc at the mouth of the narrow lane between the Customs House and the Royal Exchange tavern. Once they were set to his satisfaction, he paced in front of his men, eyeing the mob with manifest uneasiness. They were still only ten or so, including the captain, against a mob many times larger.

The boys and men gathered around the Customs House gave no indication that the appearance of more armed men had done anything to cool their appetite for confrontation. If anything, the arrival of the men, and the manner in which they had forced themselves through the crowd, had further inflamed the passions of those surrounding them.

Ethan wanted to be away and quickly. But he had yet to find Diver, and he feared leaving his friend to whatever plans Ramsey had for him. His fears only increased when he recognized several of the men standing with Preston from the brawl at Gray's Rope Works a few days before.

He sensed that Preston wished to lead the men away, back toward Murray's Barracks. But the crowd, which had advanced and retreated like the tide, pressed forward again, blocking their way.

“Damn you, you sons of bitches, fire!” a voice rang out. “You can't kill us all!”

“Fire and be damned!” called another.

Preston raised his hands and spoke to the young men closest to the soldiers, his voice raised.

“Go home now, lads!” he said. “Lest there be murder done!”

His words were met with jeers and more taunts. Snowballs and ice rained down on the captain and his men. Some in the crowd were close enough to Preston and his men to strike the barrels of the soldiers' muskets with their sticks. Ethan heard the ring of wood on steel.

From the near side of King Street, closer to the Town House, came more voices, some shouting that a magistrate had come to disperse the mob. And Ethan did see one skulking figure who dodged salvos of ice chunks and ran away down Pudding Lane.

Turning back toward the Customs House, Ethan caught sight of a familiar face: youthful, framed by dark curls. He stood a good deal closer to the soldiers than did Ethan, in the middle of King Street, a few yards behind a tall mulatto man.

“Diver!” Ethan called.

His friend showed no sign that he had heard.

But someone did, and it seemed that this was what Ramsey and whoever was working with him had been awaiting.

The spell that roared in the stone and ice beneath his feet dwarfed even the most powerful of the conjurings Ethan had sensed in recent days. He glanced to his right for confirmation of what he already knew. The conjuring had come from him. Reg stood beside him.

“Diver!” Ethan shouted again, panicked now.

Diver turned, searching for the person who had called to him.

Ethan called his name a third time and waved his hand over his head.

Diver's face brightened. Ethan was sure his friend thought he had come for the assembly rather than for anything having to do with him. He didn't care.

He started to wend his way through the crowd, even as Diver took a step toward him. As he walked, using the herbs in his pocket, Ethan cast a calming spell like the one he had used on Jimmy Fleming a couple of days before. He might as well have thrown handfuls of sand at an advancing tide. His spell hummed in the street, but it was nothing compared to the conjuring he had felt moments ago. It had no discernible effect on the mob or the soldiers.

Another object flew from the crowd toward the soldiers, spinning end over end, arcing high over the street, white, shining with moonlight. At first Ethan thought it a large piece of ice; a second later he realized it was a short, thick cudgel.

It seemed to descend slowly, guided by some unseen hand. Ethan watched it tumble toward the ground and then hit the musket of the soldier standing at the far left of the formation Preston had arranged.

The soldier staggered and fell, but immediately scrambled to his feet.

“Damn you, fire!” he shouted at his comrades.

And aiming his weapon he did just that.

The report sounded flat, muffled. Had Ethan not seen flame leap from the muzzle of his weapon, he would have doubted what he heard and questioned the source of the cloud of gray smoke that hung around the grenadier, a pale halo.

Everyone on the street froze, most seeming as incredulous as Ethan. A soldier had fired into the crowd. Ethan saw no sign that anyone had been hit, and after that initial silence, men and boys hurled more taunts at the men and again urged them to fire. A few lunged at the soldiers, and a scuffle broke out between Preston and a man Ethan didn't know. Others swung their sticks at the soldiers, baiting them once more. More people called on the men to fire.

Perhaps it was the spell Ramsey had cast using Ethan's power. Perhaps it was the mere fact that one of their own had already fired a shot. But this time the soldiers under Preston's command took up the challenges flung at them by the mob.

Musket fire crackled like a raging blaze. Flames belched from the barrels of the weapons and more smoke rose into the night air.

The mob erupted with cries and shouts—not taunts this time, but terror and pain.

Ethan looked for Diver once more, but could hardly see for the tumult that surrounded him. The crowd, which only moments before had pressed in on the soldiers in front of the Customs House, now dispersed, running in every direction. A few fearless souls continued to harass the soldiers, pressing toward them again, even as the men reloaded their weapons and raised them once more.

Dodging those who fled, Ethan pushed toward the middle of the frozen street. He had only taken a few steps, though, when he slowed and then halted again, his head spinning. A man—actually he looked to be little more than a boy—lay near the edge of the street, a torrent of blood from his chest darkening the ice. Ethan started toward this figure, but then spotted another nearby. This second man bled profusely from wounds to his hip and side.

Men had gathered next to both of the wounded, but they did not appear to know what to do for them. Several of those running from the scene were shouting for surgeons, so perhaps help would arrive soon. In the meantime, however, Ethan noticed more people moving past with bloody wounds. One man had been shot in the arm. He trudged alone past where Ethan stood, clutching his injury, blood running through his fingers. Another man was supported by two friends, having been struck in the thigh.

Ethan forced himself into motion. He had to find Diver. He had taken only a few steps when he halted again, the blood draining from his cheeks. A short distance from the man bleeding from his hip and thigh lay a third man, facedown.

“No,” Ethan said, the word coming out as might a grunt after a blow to the gut. This man was long of limb with dark, unruly hair.

Ethan ran toward him, his feet slipping on the ice so that he sprawled to the ground beside the figure. He faltered for an instant, then lifted the man to examine his face.

His relief was tempered by his horror. It was not Diver. This lad was several years younger than Ethan's friend. He, too, had been struck in the chest as well as in the shoulder. In the pale moonlight, the snow and ice beneath him appeared black and slick with his blood.

Ethan laid him down again and stood, scanning the street for Diver, and eyeing the soldiers as well. He was far closer to them now, and directly in their line of sight. They had their muskets held ready, and Ethan knew that if they fired again, he would be fortunate to survive.

“Diver!” he called.

“Ethan.”

The reply came from ahead of him and slightly to his right. His friend's voice sounded weak, strained. Ethan's heart began to labor.
Not Diver, too.

“Where are you?”

A prone figure stirred, raised a hand before letting it drop again. Ethan ran to him.

Diver lay on his side, breathing heavily, his eyes squeezed shut. Blood pooled in the crusted snow beneath him.

“Diver…”

“It hurts, Ethan. It hurts more than anything.”

The wound was on his arm. Seeing this, Ethan let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. His relief was short-lived, however. Diver was bleeding profusely; his teeth chattered and his entire body seemed to be quaking.

Ethan helped him lie down on his back. Diver gritted his teeth and let out a low, quavering moan.

For the second time in less than an hour, Ethan laid his hands on someone he loved and whispered a healing spell. “
Remedium ex cruore evocatum.
”

He kept his hands over the wound for several seconds, but nothing seemed to happen. Blood continued to pulse from the ravaged arm at an alarming rate, running over his fingers and soaking his breeches.

“Damn,” he said through clenched teeth.

“What?” Diver asked.

Ethan didn't answer. Pulling his hands away, he bent to inspect Diver's injury more closely, and nearly vomited in response to what he saw. The arm was a mess. The musket ball appeared to have splintered the bone, so that shards of it were embedded in the surrounding muscle. And he could tell as well that the ball had severed the artery. That was why it bled so.

“Ethan?”

The wound was beyond his talents as a healer, and his friend was bleeding out before his eyes. Ethan could let him die, or he could do the one thing he knew would save Diver's life, though at a potential cost that sent a shudder through his body.

He hesitated for all of two seconds.

He didn't know any better way to do what he had in mind, and so he cast a fire spell, aiming it at the artery and sourcing it in Diver's blood. His conjuring pounded in the lane, and he smelled flesh burn as his spell cauterized the wound.

Diver screamed. When he could speak again, he said, “What … what did you do?”

“I've stopped the bleeding,” Ethan said, the words scraped from his throat. “But we need to get you to a surgeon.”

He pulled off his scarf and, as gently as he could, made a sling of it, to keep the arm immobile. As he did, he took a moment to survey the scene before him, and to try to get his bearings.

The tall mulatto man he had spotted ahead of Diver before the shooting began lay near the soldiers, unmoving, the blood on his chest shining in the moonlight. A second man, no more than two or three feet away from the first, had been struck in the head. Ethan thought he must have died before he hit the ground. Long had he expected that the occupation of his city would lead to bloodshed and even death, but never had he imagined a scene like this.

Tearing his gaze away from the dead men, he looked to the south, considering what options he had. Dr. Church's house was too far from here. He wasn't sure he could carry Diver such a distance, and he didn't know how long his cauterization would hold. But there was another doctor to whom he could take his friend.

“Am I dying?” Diver asked, his voice faint.

“Not tonight, you're not,” Ethan said. “You'll be back in the Dowser sipping ales with me before you know it.”

A grimace flitted across the young man's face and was gone; Ethan thought he was trying to smile.

“I'm cold, Ethan. I can't feel my hands.”

“Which is why I need to get you to a surgeon, straight away.”

“All right.”

“I have to lift you, and it's going to hurt.”

Diver gave a slight nod.

Ethan slipped his arms under his friend's back and legs and lifted him into his arms.

Diver gasped. “Oh, God! Oh, God, Ethan, that hurts!”

“I know,” Ethan said, rasping the words as he struggled to his feet. He nearly fell, but righted himself and staggered toward the Town House. He glanced at the clock tower; it was a few minutes before ten o'clock. He wondered whether Kannice had awakened yet.

Once past the Town House, Ethan followed Queen Street to Brattle. For once, he cared not a whit about walking past Murray's Barracks. Let one of the soldiers accost him. Let Morrison show his face. Ethan would incinerate with a thought anyone who troubled him this night.

Reaching Hanover Street, his bad leg aching, his breath coming now in great gasps, he walked past several doors until he reached a modest home on the left. Even as he approached the front door, however, he heard quick footsteps behind him. He spun, the words of a shatter spell on his lips.

But the man striding in his direction was none other than the one he had sought in coming here.

“Doctor Warren!”

The doctor hardly spared Ethan a glance, so intent was he on Diver.

“He was on King Street?” the doctor asked.

“Aye, and was struck in the arm.”