The Necromancer (30 page)

Corwin brought his hand to his mouth as he gazed at the fl oor pensively.

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“What is it, George?” Hathorne asked.

“Well...,” he said hesitantly, looking up. “Are you sure you want to hold the burning in the Town Common?”

“Most sure. The wind blows too fi ercely on Gallows Hill to hold it there. We would never be able to ignite the pyre.

I think it would be far more to our advantage to hold it in the Common, in any case. More people shall be able to witness the execution. A much wiser choice by far, I’m certain.”

Corwin nodded and sipped his ale. He had a dark, gloomy feeling about tomorrow’s execution. He felt uneasy about everything since Blayne’s failed hanging. He knew something wasn’t right.

*****

The bolt slid back and clicked into place, and the

dungeon door swung open. Corwin and Parris walked sullenly down to Ambrose’s cell, and Corwin opened the door.

Ambrose sat in the corner of the cell, shackled, shrouded in shadow, still wearing the black robe he wore when he was captured.

“Come, Blayne,” Corwin said. “The time is come to send your damned soul to Hell.”

Ambrose didn’t move. Corwin stormed over to him

and hauled him to his feet by the shackles which bound his wrists behind his back, making Ambrose grunt. He glared at Corwin, then smirked knowingly.

Ambrose still looked somewhat drained from

Odara’s attack, and also from his imprisonment. His hair was disheveled, his eyes sunken and dark, his face gaunt. But he still had power. He could tell Corwin sensed it, too. Even if he couldn’t sense it, he surely knew, now that he had foiled their attempts to hang him.

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“There are worse fates than mine, George.” Corwin’s face slackened slightly, and Ambrose’s smirk curled into a smile. “Let us make haste to the pyre,” Ambrose said lowly, nodding slightly. “There are sufferings to delight in. I would not wish to deprive you by time spent in idle discussion when you could be learning of pain.”

“You are mad,” Parris whispered.

Ambrose laughed heartily. Corwin shoved him out of his cell, and they proceeded to the Town Common.

*****

It was a cold but calm November morning, the sky

overcast in a uniform fi eld of dark gray. Corwin and Parris, accompanied by two guards, walked Blayne through the tight mob of spectators lining the streets. The people parted in front of them, creating a path to the Common. Some of them shrank away upon seeing Ambrose; some cried and shrieked when he looked at them; but most clamored for his death, and a few even mustered up enough courage to spit in his face and curse him.

Up ahead, in the center of the Common, stood

the scaffold and pyre. Before it stood the grave fi gure of Judge Hathorne; behind it the stocks and their prisoners: the perpetually intoxicated Nathan Prynne and a lesser known personality, a young strumpet named Rachel Moore, who had attempted to seduce the wrong man and was now being punished for her sins.

Susanna, Roger, Edward, and Thea stood amongst the throng and watched as Ambrose was led to the pyre.

“Are you certain you feel well enough, child,” Thea said, reaching across Roger and lightly touching Susanna’s wrist.

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“Yes,” Susanna replied. “I am feeling quite fi t, only a bit tired.”

“Roger,” Thea said, looking up at him. “The poor child seems weak. Perhaps we should see her home.”

Roger turned to Susanna. She did look pale.

“Susanna—”

“No,” she said, cutting him off. “I am well. I must stay.

Please. I need to see it ended.” She clasped his arm urgently, clinging to his sleeve. Her eyes pleaded for his approval.

“When the whole event has passed, I will return home and rest.”

Roger studied her for a few moments and realized it would be fruitless to attempt to persuade her otherwise.

“Not one minute later,” he consented reluctantly.

“Thank you,” she said, embracing his arm and

cuddling her head against it. She gazed across Thea to Edward and smiled. He smiled back, then returned his attention to the men approaching the pyre.

*****

Milton Ramsey’s black eyes peered wildly over the

bandage strip which was wrapped around his head to mend his broken nose. His ribs were sore, and he still ached all over where the creature had attacked him, but he felt well enough to avenge his boy.

He slowly threaded his way through the crowd,

searching for the witch-bitch Susanna Harrington. He hadn’t been well enough to attend the hanging, but he had heard about its failure. He had also heard about the Harrington girl’s acquittal of all charges of malefi c magic and traffi c with the Devil. What outrage! Timothy still suffered in the grip of demonomania, and now one of those damned servants of 276

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Satan had been allowed freedom. Well, he was still weak, but not so weak he could not see true justice prevail. He was here today, and he wasn’t going to allow anything to go wrong this time. No. In fact, everything was going to be perfect. He would make it so.

He picked Susanna out of the crowd and began

to ease his way up behind her. He drew his dagger from its scabbard.

*****

Corwin shoved Ambrose through the mob toward

the pile of branches, twigs, and junk lumber that was heaped up against the stake to a height of seven or eight feet. A plank was propped against it, leading from the ground to the stake.

Ambrose felt a churning in his stomach. He hadn’t been able to experience this in visions. In fact, he hadn’t had any visions.

Much of his power had abandoned him, and with it the ability to foresee. Nevertheless, nothing—he knew—could prepare him for this. Noth...

A face in the crowd hooked his gaze. Jessica, cloaked and peering at him furtively from under a large black hood, advanced toward him. Ambrose smiled.

Corwin shoved him again. Ambrose stood fi rm and turned. Corwin gave him another shove, forcing him to look ahead. He glanced to his right. Jessica was closer now and moving more swiftly toward him.

As they emerged from the crowd, Corwin pushed

him into the clearing surrounding the pyre. Jessica ran up to him, threw her hands up to his face, holding it with splayed fi ngers, and kissed him savagely, passing something large from her mouth to his. Ambrose knew the taste well. It was opium, and judging by the size of it, it was all that had remained in the box he kept on the dresser in his room. It would be more than enough. When the fi re roasted his fl esh he would feel nothing.

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“Seize her!” Hathorne barked, extending his arm and pointing accusingly at Jessica.

The hangman, Jeremiah Brown, lunged at her from

the mob. She responded by plunging a dagger in his throat. He recoiled as she yanked it out of him, his mouth falling open in shock and horror, his hands gripping his neck, blood running between his fi ngers. He slumped back into the crowd and to the ground. Gasps and screams from the rabble polluted the air.

Jessica ran, but there was nowhere to go. People were everywhere, people she knew—not one of them her ally.

A man leapt in front of her, blocking her way. She turned, but another man stepped forward, and another. She was surrounded, and they were converging on her. She turned around and around and around. A gust of wind blew her hood off and messed up her hair, whisking it across her face like limp straw.

She searched for a way out of this predicament, but all her exits were clotted with people, and those exits were growing denser. In moments, any hope of her escape would be thwarted. She knew that very well. She scanned about for the sparsest collection of people and ran toward them, swiping the dagger in broad strokes before herself.

Isaac Goodale, Ambrose’s closest neighbor, who

at one time held only the highest praise for the Reverend Blayne, reached out at her in an attempt to snatch the knife away from her, but he was too old and slow. The bloody blade swept down at him in a swift, crisp arc and diced off the fi rst two digits of his index and middle fi ngers, and sliced into the others. Isaac cried out and shrank away from her, nursing his hand.

Two more men charged at her from behind. She

swung around as if she had seen them coming and threw her 278

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armed hand up at the fi rst man’s face. A spray of blood shot out and was taken by the wind as a chunk of his nose soared into the crowd behind him and thumped lightly as it struck a young girl’s chest and fell to the ground. He doubled over holding his face and groaning as the girl screamed and clawed at the people surrounding her.

Jessica turned to the other man, but he was already upon her. He tackled her, and they crashed to the ground. She swung her arm over his shoulder and stabbed him in the back.

He arched up, his face fi xed in a rictus of pain, and fastened his fi ngers to her throat and squeezed. She stabbed him again, harder this time. The blade disappeared into his back up to the hilt. A hollow groan exited the man’s mouth. His body convulsed and became rigid, then fell limp and heavy on his murderer.

She squirmed out from beneath him and rolled onto her belly. As she pushed herself up to her hands and knees a man jabbed a musket in her back.

“You best stay down, Miss,” the man said. “I do not believe it is my place to take a life, even one as wretched as yours be, but if you move, I will kill you.”

Jessica peered through her dangling hair at the dagger still sticking out of the dead man’s back. No doubt she knew she would be executed for her crimes. It was inevitable.

However, whether she was executed at the hands of this man or the fl ames of the pyre was her choice.

She rolled onto her back and knocked the musket

barrel off her. It discharged into the ground. She grabbed her dagger and wrenched it free. As she rose to her feet, a shot blared out followed by two more. All three rounds hit her square in the chest, but she remained standing as if she hadn’t been hit at all. She glanced at her chest. Blood was there, blood of her victims’ and hers.

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She turned to the fi rst musketeer, raised the knife high above her head and screaming furiously, attacked him.

A volley of shots was fi red from behind her by half a dozen men holding muskets and pistols. Two hit her high in the back, making little impression on her. The third blew out her left knee, causing it to buckle and sending her down. The fourth struck her in the center of the small of the back and shattered her spine. The fi fth went wide and knocked out the two front teeth of old Mr. Hanford’s open mouth before cracking the back of his skull and killing him. The sixth ripped through Jessica’s ear, taking half of it off before slamming into Katherine Martin’s forehead and sending her back wide-eyed and open-mouthed into the arms of her loving son Bernard.

Jessica collapsed into the musketeer’s arms, but he didn’t catch her. He stepped aside and allowed her fall dead at his feet.

*****

“Glory be,” Thea said.

“There be no glory in murder, Mother.”

“Certainly not.”

Several men carried the corpses of the innocent away.

Two others picked up Jessica and brought her to the pyre and bound her to the stake. When they were fi nished, Corwin shoved Ambrose forward and guided him up the plank to where the two men waited. They fastened him to the stake next to Jessica’s body, walked back down the plank, and carried it away as Hathorne once again read the charges against him.

“Ambrose Blayne, you have been found guilty of

witchcraft, conjuring, traffi cking with the Devil and his infernal legions, and murder. Of this there can be no doubt. You have mocked God and the faith of our people by adorning yourself in the robes of a reverend. There could be no fouler creature 280

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on all the earth than you. Therefore, having shunned death on Gallows Hill—thus further yielding evidence of your guilt—

you shall be burned at the stake till you are dead and the ashes of your body are blown to the four winds. It is my sincerest hope never again to lay mine eyes on such a dirty beast as you.

Amen.”

Hathorne nodded solemnly to two men holding

blazing torches. They stuck the torches in the pile of wood and ignited the pyre, the fi re catching rapidly in the light breeze.

*****

Milton held the dagger close to his chest as he stepped forward, not once taking his eyes off Susanna. Only two people stood between her and him now. He raised the dagger over his right shoulder and pushed them away with his left arm as he brought the knife down hard and fast, screaming,

“Witch!”

Susanna turned around and fell back when she saw the blade rushing to meet her face. It nicked her shoulder as she crashed into a few men, knocking a couple of them down with her.

Milton raised the dagger again and dove at her, but Roger caught him and blocked the blow with his good arm.

“Witch!” Milton cried. “Damned witch! You’re killing my boy! You’re killing my boy!”

He struck out wildly with the knife and was kicking himself free of Roger’s grip. Edward seized him, but he had the strength of a madman and would not be stopped.

“How are you, child?” Thea asked as she helped

Susanna to her feet. Susanna trembled, but she nodded.

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“Witch! You’re killing my boy! You’re killing my boy!

Kill you! I shall kill you for hurting my Timothy! I will kill you!

Kill you!”

*****

“This is not over, Hathorne,” Ambrose yelled

drunkenly. “This is not the end. This is but the beginning!”

Hathorne turned away from the commotion in the

crowd and stared at Ambrose as the burning wood crackled and popped and smoked.

“May your soul—have you a soul—be sent straight