Traitor to the Crown (11 page)

“You still need to eat that sludge,” Proctor told Jack.

“What do you think I put in your grog?” he grumbled, then walked away.

Proctor smiled and sat on the chicken coop. The hen ruffled her feathers, squawking at him. The chill air settled around him as he savored the grog. No taste of sludge.

For the next two weeks, the ship limped slowly eastward. Proctor took regular shifts on both pumps, keeping the water flowing smoothly before the box could be blocked. There were cheers when land was sighted, but
not from Adams. Proctor thought he had the most to cheer about, with his children aboard. He followed Adams when he went to complain to the captain. Lydia followed him.

“—is it true that we’re going to put into a Spanish port?” Adams asked. “That’s a disaster.”

“A disaster is what happens if we don’t put in at the nearest port,” the captain said.

But for once Proctor found himself agreeing with Adams. He had no money left. He had expected to borrow in Paris with Tallmadge’s letters to Franklin. Those wouldn’t help them in Spain at all. Adams faced a very similar problem.

“I don’t know how we’ll get to France,” Proctor told Lydia. “If we wait for them to fix the ship, I don’t know how we’ll eat.”

“We can walk or beg if we must,” she said.

“It might come to that.”

Still, when the ship raised land and came into the shipbuilders’ wharves at Ferrol on Spain’s northern coast, Proctor’s relief was genuine and unblemished. The crew stopped pumping as soon as they tied up, and the ship responded by starting to sink. Proctor was standing on deck with the other passengers, who momentarily ceased sorting out their travel options to watch the ship’s steady descent in place and decide whether they should make a desperate leap to the docks. While they argued, a crewman popped his head out of the hatch and called to the officers.

“Il y a plus de deux mètres d’eau dans la cale!” Crewmen ran to the hold while others went to man the pumps.

“What did he say?” Proctor asked.

“I think he said there’s almost seven feet of water in the hold,” Adams answered. He stared at Proctor for a moment, as if wondering who he was, but then, as if struck by the enormity of the news, he continued. “And that’s in
less than an hour. We barely escaped with our lives. If even a mild storm had followed the first, it would have carried us to a grave beneath the waves.”

Exactly what the Covenant had hoped for or even intended. “Thank God they didn’t think you worth a little more effort,” Proctor murmured.

Adams’s brow furrowed as he overheard Proctor’s comment. Without another word, he turned away to gather his sons and servants.

But Proctor was too lost in thought to give it more than passing notice. The essential thing was this: the Covenant had failed, and though Adams was a thousand miles from Paris, he was not yet dead.

“What’s troubling you, Master Brown?” Lydia asked.

“We’re a thousand miles from Paris, with no idea how to find the Covenant from here.” It was early December, and his plan to find and finish the Covenant quickly so he could return home to Deborah and Maggie had already gone astray.

“I wouldn’t trouble about that too much,” Lydia said. “If it’s anything like home, I expect they’ll find us.”

At first, Proctor and Lydia stayed aboard the frigate while the crew and shipbuilders undertook repairs to fix the leak. He offered the excuse that they intended to continue to France when the ship resumed sail, the same excuse that Adams offered as he stayed aboard the vessel, and it allowed Proctor to stay close to him. But as soon as the crew stopped pumping, the ship took on water.
La Sensible
would not continue on to any other port soon.

Adams and his entourage disembarked and took lodgings in town. Proctor and Lydia could not afford to follow him, and as word came back after a week that Adams had hired a train of mules to begin the overland route to France, Proctor grew desperate.

“Just go and ask him for help,” Lydia said.

“I can’t do that,” Proctor replied.

“Certain men have a need to appear great by helping out others, and by doing favors that leave men in their debt,” Lydia said. “I saw it when I was in the Carolinas. Adams wants other men to see him as a great man.”

“All that may be true,” Proctor said. “But the attitudes of Massachusetts are very different from those of the Carolinas. New Englanders put a value on Independence and self-reliance.”

The words felt bitter on his tongue as soon as he spoke them. Proctor put a value on Independence and self-reliance. He had begged Emily Rucke, his former fiancée, for help in New York City after the fire, and he wasn’t
sure he could bring himself to beg anyone for help again. He felt worse for taking charity than he did for going without.

“When you come up with a different plan, you let me know,” Lydia said and stomped away. It was the least servile she’d pretended to be since they left Boston. Proctor didn’t realize how much he’d missed the old Lydia until that moment.

Of course, she was right. He had to swallow his pride and go beg Adams for the favor of accompanying him to Paris.

The diplomat had been meeting with the dignitaries of the city, making his name and status known to anyone who might help him, and taking tours of such sights as the city offered. Proctor and Lydia went ashore and began inquiring after Adams. The answers led them toward the church of San Julian and its twin bell towers rising over the surrounding rooftops. The modest church, like many of the houses around it, seemed relatively new, and leaned toward a simple and functional design of stone and plaster. The two towers framed an entrance of three plain arches. The windows on either side of the arches and above them were squares of plain glass instead of the gaudy colored illustrations he had heard so often described. In all, the exterior could have been a meeting-house in Boston.

“It’s not what I was expecting,” Proctor told Lydia as they leaned against the cool stone wall opposite the entrance to the church. “I thought there would be more popery.”

“Popery?” she asked.

“Gilded idols and graven images, that sort of thing, I suppose,” he said. “I expected big statues of Our Lord, and carvings of Mary, draped in gold and jewels, with people kissing their marble feet.”

“You sound disappointed,” she observed.

He considered his reaction. “You realize that you are in a foreign country when the things you are sure of turn out to be untrue.”

“Then we are, all of us, always in a foreign country.”

“Perhaps,” he admitted, though the thought unsettled him.

Even though it was December, the leaves had not yet been visited by frost. Men, women, and children alike wandered the rocky, muddy streets barefoot and in short leggings. The people were dark-haired and dark-skinned, not as much as Lydia, but enough to look different to Proctor. Men and women alike wore their dark hair in plaits down their backs, reaching the waists of some men and the knees of some of the women. Proctor stood out as a foreigner, just like the men in Adams’s party or the French officers. Despite the differences, when Proctor saw a young couple strolling past the church, with the wife carrying an infant no older than Maggie, he felt a kinship to them and a sharp desire to be home.

The young man stepped away from his wife to say something in Spanish to a hunchbacked old woman lingering on the doorsteps of the church. She was wearing a ratty black robe, little better than rags, even by the poor standards of the country. Lank strands of loose white hair spilled out of her hood. She answered him angrily in a different language, flicking her hands at him and turning her back. He shoved her away from the church doors, shouting at her as he drove her down the street.

Proctor stepped away from the wall, intending to intervene, but Lydia put a hand on his arm and he stopped. “What?”

“You can’t solve every problem,” she said.

“But what he did, that wasn’t right,” he said.

“It’s what happens to old women,” she said, a little bitterly. “I’ve seen old slave women given their ‘freedom’ when they’re too old to work, turned away from the
plantations they served their whole lives. They have to live in the woods and the swamps, taking such charity as the other slaves can spare. If they show up in public, they’re driven away. They call them witches and conjure-women, whether they are or not. It’s the way of the world.”

His jaw tightened. “Is that what you expected to happen to you?”

She glanced down and turned away.

“You can’t think we’d do that to you, turn you off The Farm?”

“It is harder than I expected, pretending to be a slave again,” she said, still not meeting his eyes. “I thought that bending my neck was my first nature, but when I put it on again it fits me like a pair of outgrown shoes, all pinched and hurting.”

“So you understand why I don’t think that man should be allowed to beat that old woman?”

“I understand that if you don’t catch Mr. Adams and convince him to take us to France, we’ll never do what we need to do to protect your wife and child, we won’t be able to save the Revolution, and we’ll never get home again. Look, there he is, and you would have missed him.”

The door to the church was pushed open, and Adams emerged with his two sons. He was followed by an entourage that included a priest, several local officials, and some French naval officers. Proctor hopped across the street, slowing down to appear casual. “Mr. Adams, what a coincidence. It’s good to see you again.”

Adams’s round face turned to Proctor in surprise, a mixture of recognition and confusion written on his features. “And you are?”

“Proctor Brown, sir. Your fellow passenger from the
Sensible
.”

“You remember him, Father,” John Quincy said. “He worked more shifts at the pumps than any of us.”

“Ah, well, yes, thank you for that,” Adams said. “How may I help you?”

Proctor stood up straight and clasped his hands behind his back. “As you may know, it will be some months before the
Sensible
resumes her journey to France. I hear that you are traveling over the mountains in order to get there sooner. I was hoping that I might be able to join you.”

“It is reported to be a difficult journey. The governor of Galicia himself warned me not to take my children along because of the danger …”

While he was speaking, a cat appeared out of an alley, a thin black thing with white whiskers and a streak of white fur along its head. It ran straight for the children. Charles and John Quincy bent to pet it, and it purred enthusiastically as it swirled around their ankles. The elder Adams trailed off, annoyed, and a tingle of anxiety shot through Proctor.

“I think I would be a great addition to your journey, surely in no more danger than anyone else, and quite able to help if the need arose.”

“What?” Adams said. “Oh, yes, of course you could. No doubt. How is your Spanish and your French?”

“I have neither,” Proctor admitted. “It is one reason why I’m eager to join the company of someone like yourself, more capable of communication with the local peoples.”

Adams’s face grew less enthusiastic. “If you know Latin, then Sobrino’s Spanish dictionary should provide you with an able vocabulary with only a few weeks’ application.”

“Father,” John Quincy interrupted. “May we bring the cat along with us? Look how thin she is—we could feed her scraps from our own meals.”

“In a moment,” Adams said, still watching his son.

“I’m afraid I don’t know Latin either,” Proctor said. “But I have letters permitting me to draw on funds once I reach Paris, and will gladly repay you the cost of mules and board for the journey—”

Adams started at Proctor’s voice. “I’m sorry, but did you say that you were expecting me to pay for your transportation?”

“I would repay you in full. I can show you my letters.” He could show Adams his letters again, as he had already presented them once on the ship. He had his hand in his pocket for the letters, and his fingers fell around the lock of Deborah’s hair. The spell that he had used to make Adams forget him had worked too well. Maybe a different setting would erase the effect.

Adams held out his hand to forestall the letters. “Forgive me for being blunt, but I don’t know you. It would be a dereliction of my responsibility to the government I represent to use its hard-raised funds to support a private citizen on the promise of repayment. If you can acquire funds and join us on your own account, that would be one thing, but under the circumstances—”

The cat was vigorously rubbing against the ankles of Charles and John Quincy, and nipping at their fingertips. “Father—”

“I’m sorry, but we can take on no strays!”

The boys’ faces fell, and Adams winced at seeing their expression. But Proctor understood that the words were intended for him. “Please, sir, I beg you—”

“It doesn’t become a healthy young man to beg,” Adams said. “Nor does it reflect well on our young nation, which must learn to stand on its own two feet and contribute to the well-being of the community of nations of which we hope and expect to be a part. Please leave the cat behind, boys.”

Adams turned and led his children away. Lydia came
up and stood behind Proctor as the rest of the group followed Adams in a slow trickle down the street. “You did the right thing,” she said.

“I did not do it successfully,” he said. His heart fell as he thought about Deborah and Maggie. He was a thousand miles away from taking his next step to finding the Covenant and defeating their plans. “How do you feel about walking to Paris?”

“It’s better than swimming,” she mumbled. “Which is what I thought we might be faced with, when the ship was sinking.”

“Monsieur Brown?”

They turned at the voice. Proctor did not recognize the gentleman at first, until he imagined a uniform filling out the man’s spare form, and a cockade and wig framing the beaked nose. “Captain Chavagne,” he said, bowing his head.

“I could not help but overhear the difficulty of your situation,” the captain said. “Since we did not deliver you as agreed, I am afraid that we cannot keep any payment.” He reached out for Proctor’s hand, and Proctor felt the hard coin-filled knot of his purse pressed into his palm.