Traitor to the Crown (13 page)

“Father!” John Quincy said. “Look, it’s Priscilla.”

The boy was bending to pet a thin black cat that rubbed up against his leg. Proctor tensed. Certainly he was imagining things. It couldn’t be …

Adams turned away from supervising the servants’ loading of their baggage. “Priscilla?”

“I called her that because she seems so ancient,” John Quincy said. He lifted the animal and held it up for his father’s inspection. It was unmistakably the same cat as before, with white whiskers and a white streak across its head. “Look, it’s her.”

“Don’t be an enthusiast, John,” Adams chided affectionately. “There are so many cats in Spain that they aren’t
worth remarking. It just happens to resemble every other old black cat.”

John Quincy started to protest, pointing out the mark on its head, but Proctor had walked over for a closer look. As soon as he came near, the cat hissed and squirmed out of the boy’s hands. He and his brother Charles began chasing it around the wheels of the calash.

Proctor felt a familiar tingle run across his skin. The cat must be a familiar, like Bootzamon’s Dickon. Proctor scanned the narrow street and stone houses, the laborers in black wool shifts going about their work, the curious faces under broad-brimmed hats. There was a witch somewhere nearby.

He walked back to Lydia, who stood with their mules. Proctor’s mount nipped at him as he came close, and Proctor missed Singer. He had ridden a thousand miles from Boston to Virginia in a fortnight on that horse. They had been on the road more than a fortnight already and were barely halfway to the French border.

“Looks like the sorginak may be around after all,” Proctor told Lydia under his breath. “I think the cat’s a familiar. Will you keep an eye on it?”

She nodded. “Looks like someone wants to make it easier for me, too.”

The cat had crawled into the calash, where the boys were persuading their father to take it along while the servants braved its claws in an unsuccessful attempt to dislodge it.

“Oh, very well, you may bring it along,” the elder Adams said. “But you must promise not to be upset if it leaps out the first time you rattle over a rock or rut.”

“We won’t,” Charles promised earnestly.

Adams’s servant had just snatched the creature up and it dangled by its scruff, twisting and hissing. Perhaps the cat had just reacted to Proctor the way it would to anyone
that might approach it. “Let it down, Joseph,” Adams said.

Proctor still hoped that the cat would run away. No doubt Adams did as well, but when Joseph dropped it to the ground, it immediately ran back to the boys’ calash and jumped in among their bags. Proctor scanned the street for anyone who might be the creature’s master, but saw no one.

Adams sighed heavily. “I forbid you to think too much about the creature, or become too attached, do you understand me? You must treat her well and see that she is comfortable. But she’s liable to run off again at any time, and you must accept that we will not expend one moment looking for her.”

“Thank you, Father,” John Quincy said. He guided his brother into the carriage and quickly followed him before his father could change his mind. Proctor felt sorry for the boys. They were as bored and exhausted by the journey as anyone. He promised himself to spell the fleas off their sheets and mattresses.

Except that a spell might alert the cat’s master to their presence, if he or she did not already know that Proctor and Lydia were witches.

Adams mounted his mule and encouraged everyone to get moving. The carriages creaked into motion, followed by the gentlemen riders, followed by Proctor and Lydia on their own mules. Soon they were outside the town and into a thicker fog. The damp air settled on Proctor’s skin, raising more ordinary goose bumps.

The air stayed chilled and damp all that day. When they arrived at a town for the night, both the boys had developed colds and could not stop coughing. Proctor and Lydia watched for the cat to slip away, or the master to come find it, but it stayed curled up in the laps of the children. There was a cat on the farm that did the same
thing with Deborah whenever she was the least bit unwell.

Adams would not let Proctor or anyone else come near his sons, but it did no good. By the time they reached the town of Sellada el Camino, which was little more than a roadblock meant to slow down travelers, everyone in Adams’s party had developed a cold.

Another night in a mud-floored house with only coals for warmth and no chimney to let out the smoke could not be good for the boys. Proctor went to the house that lodged Adams and his children, and begged an audience, doing his best to explain to the uncomprehending expression of the Spanish host that he wished to help. The sounds of per sis tent racking coughs came from within. Finally, the host drew Adams to the door. He had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and clutched his ribs as if they ached. “What is it?” Adams gasped out during a lull in his own coughing.

Proctor couldn’t answer him immediately. The faint image of a skull had formed behind Adams’s face. It shimmered and faded, but before it was gone it reminded Proctor sharply of the widow Nance’s spell during the siege of Boston that had brought sickness on the militiamen surrounding the city.

“Perhaps Lydia can help you,” Proctor said when he found his tongue again. “She’s nursed many people back to health before. I’m sure she can ease your discomfort.”

He was careful not to refer to her as a slave, but Adams could not let it pass. “I will not benefit from slave labor,” he said. “It offends the principles of freedom on which our nation is founded. I’m sure we’ll improve when we reach better dwellings in the city of Burgos tomorrow. Good night, Mister—”

Another burst of coughing interrupted him before he could finish, but he covered his mouth and closed the door on Proctor anyway.

“It’s not a natural sickness,” Proctor told Lydia when he rejoined her. He described what he had seen and how it resembled the widow’s spell at the beginning of the war. “I think I’ve learned enough from Deborah to undo the spell, especially before it’s had too many days to do its work,” he said. “But you’re a better healer than I am.”

“I’ll need to get close to the children and the others to do it.”

“And we need to catch that cat,” Proctor said. “Perhaps we can learn something from it, whether its master appears or not.”

The next day did not give them any opportunity to approach Adams. He climbed into the calash that morning with his boys, pulled the canopy shut, and forbade anyone’s approach. Proctor’s last glimpse of them was the cat curled in a blanket on John Quincy’s lap, smiling as if it had just eaten a juicy mouse.

Proctor and Lydia were forced to ride in the bitter weather. A constantly changing mix of rain and snow soaked through their clothes, which then stiffened with the cold. The other members of Adams’s party, especially the servants relegated to riding mules after days in the calashes, were sullen and ignored any attempts at conversation.

Proctor shared their mood. It improved slightly when Burgos appeared on the road ahead of them. The river that split the city was crossed by several impressive bridges. Even from a distance, Proctor saw the ruins of a castle, the spires of numerous iglesias, and the compounds of several large monasteries, all within the small compass of the city.

When they arrived at their destination, which was, supposedly, the best tavern to be had, his hopes fell again. There was again no chimney, which left the rooms smoky despite the petty heat offered by a brass pan of coals. The sound of the children, coughing until they were near to
vomiting, echoed through the building. Proctor found Adams at a table, making notes in his diary to calculate the remainder of their journey. He wadded a handkerchief in his free hand and covered his mouth with it as he wrote. The image of bones showed through the backs of his hands.

“Mister Adams,” Proctor said. “Whether you approve or not, Lydia is a skilled healer. For your children’s sake, please let her see if she can ease their coughing.”

Adams looked up from writing, his eyes red-rimmed and watery. He was coughing too hard to answer, so he waved Proctor on, giving him permission to try.

Lydia went to the boys’ room, which had a stone floor for the mattress they shared. Mr. Thaxter and Joseph were there. Proctor talked with them about the city and its churches, distracting them while Lydia watered down a cup of wine and heated it over the coals. She offered each boy a sip, touching his hand and saying a healing spell as she helped him hold the cup. When she was done, she heated undiluted wine for the men, making excuses to touch their hands and say a similar spell.

Proctor turned to the boys. Charles had fallen asleep as soon as his coughing stopped. It seemed almost too easy.

“Where has your cat got to?” Proctor asked. “Priscilla, right?”

John Quincy wrapped the blanket up to his chin. “Father said we must leave her outside. She is a hunter, or she would never have grown so old, and she can fend for herself.”

“He’s very wise, your father,” Proctor said.

“She tries to sneak in the kitchen door, Joseph told me,” John Quincy said. “If you see her, will you make sure she has a warm place to sleep tonight?”

“I will,” Proctor said.

When he and Lydia stopped in the hall, she shook her
head. “It was a poor prayer,” she said, referring to the spell she had broken. “Like the imitation of a better prayer, heard once, a long time ago. I had no trouble with it.”

“It seemed that way to me too, with even the little I know about healing,” he said. It nagged at him. If these were the same people who had sent a demon after his wife and child, why were they making such a poor effort here? “Let’s see if we can find Priscilla.”

They stopped to leave a cup of warmed spiced wine for Adams, telling him it would ease his coughing. Lydia laid a sympathetic hand on his wrist and said she was praying for him. He was so absorbed in his notes that he returned a perfunctory “thank you” and went back to work. Proctor led her through the kitchen.

“The boy says the cat’s been trying to sneak in this door,” Proctor said. “Do you think you can catch it?”

“Easier than you could catch a cold,” she said.

He frowned at her, but waited until she was in position by the door, then reached out with his long arm and pushed it open. The black cat darted through the gap before he was ready for it.

Lydia’s hand snapped out lightning-fast and caught the cat by its neck.

The creature howled in fury, twisting and slashing with front claws and back. But Lydia held it at arm’s length while Proctor pinned its back legs in one hand and its front legs in another. Its howl changed to a cry that was almost human in its misery and pitifulness. It was a skinny thing, its legs barely more than bone, and its bones barely more than sticks. Proctor doubted it weighed much more than a kitten.

“Now what do we do?” Lydia asked.

“We can take it to our room and—”

He stopped in mid-sentence because the cat suddenly grew ten times heavier. He and Lydia were pulled toward
each other as the cat’s sudden weight dragged it to the ground, but neither one of them let go. Not even when it started to grow and transform in their hands. As they held tight, the squirming, struggling creature turned into an old woman in a raggedy black dress. Strands of lank white hair escaped from her hood. She writhed and slapped at them, speaking in a strange language neither of them understood.

Proctor had a firm grip on her shoulder and arm, which felt as fragile and brittle as the cat. Lydia let go and glanced around, expecting someone to answer the old woman’s cries for aid.

“What do we do?” she asked.

Proctor clamped a hand over the old woman’s mouth, wincing as she bit him. “There was an empty stall in the stables—”

“Let’s go,” Lydia said, banging the door open.

The old woman kicked and scratched as Proctor dragged her out the door and through the alley, but she was thin and weak, frail to the point that Proctor feared she might break in half if they shoved her too hard. The mules flicked their ears as Proctor and the old woman passed them. Lydia followed behind, scattering the straw over the marks created by the old woman’s dragging heels.

The new location had the smell of manure and the buzz of flies, guaranteeing, he hoped, some greater measure of privacy. “We have to question her,” Proctor said. “But I have no idea what she’s saying.”

Lydia stood by the stall door, biting her lip. “I know a prayer …”

The old woman bit Proctor’s hand again, the soft spot between his thumb and forefinger. If she’d had a few more teeth, it might have hurt enough to let go. “I’m listening.”

“I learned it from observing Miss Cecily,” Lydia said.

That explained her hesitation. “Your intention is not to do harm, it is to stop harm.”

The old woman struggled harder, thrashing her legs and scratching at Proctor’s hand, trying desperately to pull it away from her mouth. The mules shifted uncomfortably at the struggle.

Lydia covered her ears with her hands. Proctor thought it was to shut out what he was saying, but then he could feel her working a spell. The old woman stopped her struggles and watched Lydia with wide eyes. When Lydia reached out and touched the old woman’s ears, she began to tremble in Proctor’s grip. Then Lydia touched Proctor’s ears and he felt a piercing sting.

Maybe there was something to the idea that some magic was by its very nature evil, regardless of intention.

Lydia bowed her head and folded her hands together. “Dear Father, let us by the manifestation of the Spirit be given to us to profit withal, to the understanding of tongues, that we may know what this woman says, and that she may understand us, that we may ease her fright and discover her purpose.”

The old woman’s body began to shake with sobs. Proctor let go of her mouth, though he was ready to cover it again the instant she started to scream or cry for help.

“Please don’t hurt me,” the woman said, her voice little more than a whisper. It was odd: her words still sounded strange and foreign, but Proctor found he understood them. “Don’t hurt me.”