Traitor to the Crown (33 page)

No one walked toward him, not this way, not in this country.

“Who in the damned hell are you?” he demanded.

“My name is Deborah Brown,” she said. “And I’ve been summoned.”

It was the middle of the night. Proctor still had not grown accustomed to his imprisonment, and not even the luxurious bed that Grueby had delivered for him could tempt him to sleep. So he was awake and pacing when he heard a distant door creak, followed a short time later by the soft pad of footsteps outside his door.

A key snapped into the lock, tumblers turned, and the door opened. A hooded man stood there in a heavy cloak, his features lit by the light of a candle atop a heavy candlestick.

“May I help you?” Proctor asked. Although the better question was: will you help me?

The man pulled the hood off his head. He had a round face with a somewhat dull but pugnacious appearance. His cheeks were chapped red from exposure to the wind, and Proctor imagined him as a rather single-minded gardener. He went to take a step across the threshold and stopped.

The demon sat on the man’s shoulder, with one hand thrust wrist-deep into his skull. Its face was a twin to the candle’s fire, the emotions jumping across it as quick as a flame. It was the demon that Dee and his followers had released during the fires of the riots. It would be invisible to anyone not practiced in the spirit world, but Proctor could see it.

He retreated to the back wall of his cell. He couldn’t face the creature without his power. He would be helpless
if it wanted to possess him. He looked around frantically for a weapon and saw none.

But the demon wasn’t interested in entering the room. It glanced at the walls where the wards were hidden, and it hissed and bared its teeth and tried to pull its host back. The man started to sweat and his hands to shake. When he spoke, he stammered.

“L-l-leave me al-l-lone, you p-p-petty vile thing.”

Despite the uncertain delivery of his words, he spoke with the confidence of a man who expected to be obeyed. The demon shrank at his command. Proctor rose from his spot against the wall and came forward. Maybe this man could help him. As he stepped forward into the light, the man startled.

“You—you’re not Lord Gordon.”

Proctor was almost too stunned to react. “No, I’m not! You can see that?” He held out his hands in supplication. “Please—tell someone. Help me get out of here.”

“I w-w-wanted Gordon,” the man said. He jerked the hood up over his head and then slammed the door shut.

Proctor threw himself against the wood as the key turned in the lock. “No, please—I can help you just as much as Gordon.” He pounded on the door with his fists. “I can help you more! Come back! Don’t leave me here.”

He pounded and called until the guard came down the hall. “What’s with all the noise in there? Other people are trying to sleep.”

“Who was that? Who just came to see me?”

“There’s been nobody here,” he said. He voice softened now that Proctor had stopped screaming and pounding. “You were dreaming, having nightmares. It happens often to men their first weeks here. It will get better.” He kicked the door. “Now go back to bed and leave the night to sleep in peace.”

Proctor could not fall asleep. He was fairly certain that he had just met King George.

*   *  *

“They hanged more of the rioters,” the guard said.

Proctor stared out the window at the tower walls, but said nothing. Weeks had passed and he was still in prison.

“Don’t you want to know who?” the guard asked. “They’re hanging because of you.”

“They’re hanging because of their own bad decisions.” Proctor held on to the bars as if he were holding on to the truth of that statement.

“I suppose you’re right,” the guard said. “Today they hanged a simpleton, a fellow from some village outside the city. He was the one who carried Gordon’s flag. He murdered a man in front of Parliament.”

Barnaby? Proctor shook his head in denial. Barnaby was a kind soul, harmless.

“Oh, and they hanged some black men too. Or two black men and a black woman.”

Proctor spun around. “Who? Who was she?”

“The woman? How should I know? She never gave her name, but there were enough witnesses who saw her during the riots to convict her. She was outside the distillery when it burned. God, that was a horror. Why does it matter to you?”

Proctor ran to the door to grab the man and shake him, but he stopped short. “What did she look like?”

The guard laughed and shut the door. “What do they all look like? She was black.”

Proctor’s head sunk. He had failed.

Proctor went back to the window. A group of ravens perched on the tower wall, dropping into the yard to feed. A black shape flew over the rooftops. The other birds flapped their wings and called to it, and it swooped in to join them.

“Hallo, you’re a devil, you’re a saucy devil. Hallo.”

Barnaby’s raven, with its master dead, had sought someplace else to live.

“Hallo, you’re a devil.”

Proctor ran to the window and screamed. “Be quiet! All of you be quiet!”

The noise disturbed the ravens, who lifted into the air, wings flapping, but then settled back down again. Barnaby’s raven strutted across the yard in front of them, tilting his head at Proctor’s window.

Hallo, you’re a devil.

He had come to accept that this was no mistake, no nightmare. He was trapped here, by the power of the world and the power of magic both. No one would come to admit their mistake. No one would come to save him. He had to escape, not just for his own sake, but for his wife and daughter. Because there might still be a chance to help his country.

Proctor walked to the center of the room and knelt down by the floor. He could see faint marks of ash where the last of Deborah’s hair had burned away when his focus was destroyed.

He tore open the scab that had formed where Dee peeled back the scar on his finger. Pain shot through his hand, but he gritted his teeth, and as the blood flowed over the raw bone of his knuckle, he smeared it along the lightest and faintest of the ash marks. With his thumb, he rubbed it into the stone, holding in his mind the image of Deborah—the sharp intelligence of her eyes, the reluctant smile on her lips, the flower that she’d tuck behind an ear and then forget.

“This is my blood,” he said. “Shed for you.”

The dark stain on the dark stone stared back at him like a frowning mouth, bloody and mute. He reached up and tried to remove the necklace, and immediately it choked him until he let it go again, and fell to the floor, panting for breath.

*   *  *

Day after day, Proctor stood at the barred window and studied the grounds, the austere strength of the high White Tower, the sturdy presence of the thick walls, the stagnant odor of the moat. He could hear conversations in the room below his, where the Bloody Tower’s other prisoner was kept. His appetite faded and he ate only the amount necessary to keep going and gave the rest to other prisoners who couldn’t afford their meals, or sent it to the poorer families who lived inside the Tower walls.

Grueby, come to check on him each day, frowned at the unfinished plates of food. “We’re working to delay the trial as long as possible,” he said. “To let the memory of the riots fade some in the city’s memory. But that delay won’t last forever. You should keep your health up.”

“So I can walk to the scaffold under my own power?” Proctor asked.

“If you must face the hangman, you should face him like a gentleman,” Grueby said. “But I do not expect it to come to that. The guards say that no one unexpected comes to visit you.”

“Some friends of Gordon come from time to time, but if I try to tell them who I am or what has happened, they treat me like I’m raving and beat a hasty retreat,” he said, remembering the number of times he had choked and collapsed. “Must be the ‘fits.’”

“You have poor friends who would leave you here,” Grueby answered.

“I have excellent friends,” Proctor said. “But they have no idea where I am.”

“I could take letters perhaps,” Grueby replied.

“Give me the money and I will purchase what I need from the warden,” Proctor said.

Grueby said, “I don’t want to trouble you. I will buy it myself and return with it sometime. In the meantime, you should take your exercise out in the gardens.”

“I have been told there’s a fee for that as well,” Proctor said.

“The more money they think a man has, the more they try to get out of him,” Grueby answered. “I’ll talk to the warden and see what can be done.”

Proctor watched him as he left. He had a routine, where he stopped and checked in with the warden, the guards, the other staff. Using them to spy on Proctor, no doubt. But what was he looking for? And if Proctor gave it to him, would they let him free?

One of the servants brought word that His Lordship, George Gordon, was permitted to walk in the Tower grounds while under guard. The guards were for his own protection, as there was still much hard feeling about the riots and their aftermath.

On his first day in the gardens, the guards were talking about the news from America. Generally, the guards didn’t speak to the prisoners directly, not in public. But if there was news they thought the prisoners would like to know, they would share it with one another so the prisoner could overhear.

“Cornwallis has turned up the heat in the colonies,” the guard said. “Ever since they captured the American army at Charleston, it’s been one victory after another. They could crush the rebellion by Christmas.”

“It’s not all Cornwallis,” the second guard replied. “I read that most of it is Colonel Banastre Tarleton. He defeated a force twice his own size at a place called Wax-haws, and he’s had victories in every other place that he’s faced the enemy.”

“I met him once at Oxford,” the first guard said. “And I wasn’t that impressed. Something must have got into him since he went to America.”

“What ever got into him knows how to fight,” the second guard said. “He’s got Washington’s army on the
run. It’ll take longer than Christmas, I suspect, but it will get done—”

They spoke in more details about the war in America, and Proctor grew increasingly anxious. Had the plans of the Covenant succeeded so quickly? How had the war, a stalemate when he left, shifted so suddenly and decisively toward the English? He suspected that the answer involved black magic, and was not the doing of the English at all.

His walk brought him to the farthest part of the gardens from his room. He reached up and grabbed the necklace, expecting he could break the spell that hid his identity.

He woke up on the grass, with the guards splashing water in his face.

There had been so much blood shed within these walls that the power of the spell, centered in his room, extended as far as the grounds.

“Your strength will come back in time,” they said. “Fresh air and exercise, that’s all you need.”

He needed more than that, but maybe it was a start.

The Tower was a city within the city, a complex of twenty towers built over centuries, surrounded by a wall and moat. To escape, he needed to get out of his room, which he had done. Then he needed to escape his own guards, which he had confidence he could do. Then he had to pass a series of gates and walls and a moat, all guarded, and where he would be refused passage at each point. Once he had escaped the walls, he would be loose in London, without resources or allies. All alone, he would have to find the Covenant and defeat their plan before returning to America to make sure that Deborah and Maggie were safe.

If he tried to think about all of it, he was overwhelmed. So he would have to take it one step at a time. He was
walking in the garden one day still early in the summer, followed by a pair of fusiliers and lost in thought about how to solve this problem, when he felt something heavy bump his hand. He turned, expecting a dog, and jumped. It was a lion, with a huge mane and powerful shoulders. Proctor had never seen such a creature before, like a cat, or a panther, but as big as a black bear. He tossed his head and made a sound between a roar and a bark.

“He’s just looking for something to eat,” one of his guards explained.

“And if I don’t have any?” Proctor said.

“He might decide you are something to eat,” the guard replied.

“How much would he have to pay for me?” Proctor asked. “It might be worth the price.”

He meant to ask how much he could get for just a hand or a foot when he saw a familiar face walking across the yard. Thomas Digges, wrapped in a heavy coat, glanced once at Proctor and then quickened his pace. Proctor took after him.

“Don’t run away, you’ll only agitate him,” the guard called.

Proctor glanced back and saw the lion bounding alongside him. He stopped, startled, and the lion turned just as quick and batted at him with a front paw. The guards ran into its way, threatening it with their guns, and it backed down. Proctor thought he might use the moment as a distraction, but other guards came to separate him and the lion, and both were watched just as closely. They called for the animal keepers, who came out with some freshly butchered meat to draw the lion away.

“Can I pet him?” Proctor asked.

“Sure, go on,” his guard said. “He’s a good-natured cat, but it’s best not to excite him. When the children come to see him, we always make sure he’s well fed and
sleepy first. And we have them keep their distance. He’s never bitten anyone who matters.”

Proctor stroked his hand deep through the lion’s mane. “There was a man crossing the garden,” he said. “Where was he going?”

“I don’t know,” said the first guard.

“He must be visiting the American,” said the second.

“There’s an American in the Tower?” Proctor asked, continuing to pet the lion.

“Henry Laurens,” said the first guard. “Don’t you read the news? He was sent as a diplomat to the Netherlands, but we caught him on the way. It’s why we’ve gone to war with the Dutch. We’re not allowed to let him speak to anyone, except those approved through diplomatic channels, but there are plenty enough of those come to visit him.”