Traitor to the Crown (31 page)

It was over in a moment. All that remained of his focus was a swirl of ash marks in the floor.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Grueby said.

“I can’t touch it,” Proctor said.

“Not with it all burned up like that.”

“No, I can’t touch my talent—it’s as if there’s nothing there.” It wasn’t like when another drew on his talent and he felt it flow away from him. He reached for it and nothing was there. Like a dry well. He turned and ran for the door, but Grueby reached it first and stopped him.

“Before you leave, I’m supposed to tell you about this room,” he said.

“What about it?” demanded Proctor. His pulse raced and he felt sweat beading on his brow.

“This is called the Bloody Tower. Not because of all the blood shed here, though that’s what everybody thinks. It’s called the Bloody Tower because the mortar was mixed with blood, and all the stones are inscribed on the inside with marks that shield against the use of witchcraft.”

“What?”

“This tower was built during the reign of King Henry the Third. The first witchcraft trials in England occurred during the reign of his father, King John, but it grew worse in Henry’s day. There was a pirate, Eustace the monk, who ruled the channel, first serving England, then France, wherever profit or whim suited him. Do you want to hear this?”

“Do I have a choice?” Proctor said, but he knew there was a lesson here about witchcraft and kings. A room where no magic could be performed might be useful in stopping the Covenant, though he wished Gordon had just spoken to him directly.

“Eustace was a necromancer. He used blood magic to make his ship invisible. At this same time, there was a witch who served in the English fleet, a man by the name of Stephen Crabbe. When English ships challenged the French, they could gain no advantage. Their arrows would rain down on the open boats, killing the
Frenchmen, but then before the victory, the English ships would have their hulls shattered, turn by turn, and sink.”

“Eustace and his invisible ship,” Proctor said.

“Exactly,” Grueby answered. “Crabbe, though, he had the vision, just as you and my lord do. Let those who have eyes see, right? He jumped out of his own ship. It looked to the Englishmen around him as if he were walking on water. As he danced over the waves, he swung his ax about him, like a woodcutter in the forest. Men thought him mad.”

“But he wasn’t.”

“No, he walked across Eustace’s deck and killed men right and left, until the spell was broken. Eustace’s last act, before he was beheaded, was to summon demons. The demons came and tore Crabbe to pieces where he stood. But he was a hero. He saved England from a terrible magic.”

“And then King Henry built this tower to protect his throne against similar magic.”

“Right again,” Grueby said, tapping Proctor on the chest. “And now we face a similar situation. An enemy using witchcraft and demons, and Britain’s very survival threatened by our foe across the ocean.”

“A Catholic foe, and the friend of America,” Proctor said.

“There is that,” Grueby answered. “But Gordon feels outnumbered by the Covenant. So he thought that he might use the Tower to help even the odds.”

“What was that ribbon?” Proctor asked.

“It was a token. The embroidery was written in Enochian, the language of angels that Dee and his followers have learned to speak. Members of the Covenant use those tokens to recognize one another.”

“And Gordon has taken me for a member of the
Covenant,” Proctor said. He slapped his forehead and felt the ache slam all the way through his hand. “How stupid am I, really? Be honest.”

“Not so stupid as all that,” Grueby said indifferently. “After what you saw last night, most men wouldn’t be able to think straight. You were sick, and then you didn’t eat right or rest for days. I’ve been exhausted just trying to keep up with you.”

“What’s this then?” Proctor said, taking the pendant in his fist.

“I wouldn’t try to take that off if I were you,” Grueby said.

The warning came too late. Proctor tried to snap the chain, and it wrapped around his throat like one of those snakes that suffocate their prey. Black spots were swimming before his eyes and he was falling toward the floor before he could let go. Grueby caught him and helped him back to his feet.

“I figured you for the type that would have to learn for yourself,” Grueby said.

“Why does it work when other magic doesn’t?” Proctor gasped, his hand at his throat.

“Because there’s almost no magic in the necklace itself, as I understand it,” Grueby said. “Gordon has it all focused in the matching necklace that he wears. This tower aside, he was very concerned that you not notice any spell when you put it on. Try to say your name or explain who you are.”

“Must I?” Proctor asked.

“I figure you will, sooner or later. But the effects are the same.”

“So this makes me look like Gordon, and Gordon look like me?”

“Near enough. I should go get the rest of your possessions. You’re going to be here for a long time.”

“Not damned likely,” Proctor said.

“That’s what they all say when they enter the Bloody Tower,” Grueby said. “I heard those were Sir Walter Raleigh’s exact words as well. But to be blunt, this here’s a prison, and you should plan on staying for a while.”

He turned to go. “Wait,” Proctor said.

Gordon’s servant stopped.

“You saw me. I heard you tell Gordon how I attacked the Covenant. If you’ve been following me, you know that they’re my enemy, too, and I’ll do anything I can to destroy them.”

“That might be.”

“It is! So why would you help lock up an ally? Why would you help put away the one man you can trust to help your lord’s cause?”

Grueby shrugged indifferently. “Because I was told to.”

“And you always do what you’re told?”

The stoic thought about it for a moment. “Depends on who does the telling. And what they tell me to do. And if I feel like doing it. But yes, almost always.”

He left the cell, closing the door behind him. Proctor ran through the two rooms, looking out over the river on one side and the courtyard garden on the other. Gordon’s carriage was rolling away, with Gordon still inside it.

Proctor ran to the door and found it unlocked. He opened it and ran down the steps. The guards waiting at the bottom caught him by either arm. When he tried to tell them who he really was, the necklace constricted around his throat at once.

He came to as they were laying him on the floor of his cell. He looked up to see one of them swirling a finger at the side of his head.

“His secretary warned the warden,” the guard whispered.
“This one’s gone a little mad. He’ll bear close watching.”

They left the room, locking the door behind them.

Proctor went over to the window and kicked the chair. There was no way he was going to stay in prison for any length of time.

One hundred hooves trotted along the road lined on either side by live oaks. The green uniforms of the British Legion had been faded by seasons of weather and wear, matching the leaves still clinging to the trees in November. The hard black caps on the heads of the men were marred by months of woods and war.

Banastre Tarleton, leading his men from the front, glimpsed a splash of red from the corner of his eye and turned in his saddle to see what it might be. But by the time he cranked his head around, the color was gone.

He heard a boy’s chuckle and decided that he was imagining things. There were no boys in his cavalry, and his men had no reason to chuckle.

The battle at Waxhaws had been an overwhelming victory against a superior force, but ever since then Tarleton and his men had been hard-pressed by southern partisans, men little better than outlaws, who attacked in the twilight and faded back into the swamps. Rumors of one such force had been little more than another wild goose chase, which was no more than Tarleton expected. More than likely, the partisans had hoped to draw the legion away from the plantation they occupied. The autumn harvest was in, and soldiers on either side needed food and fodder to get through the coming winter.

The road opened out on a plantation up ahead, the place locals called Big Home. Size was the only thing that distinguished it. In every other particular, from its rough
wood to its brutish proportions, it resembled the rude shacks that seemed to be dropped at random throughout this wild, unsettled, and unsettling country. Tarleton was ready to welcome anything, adapt any tactic, that would bring an end to this rebellion and allow him to return home to the civilized parlors, theaters, and clubs of London.

He felt an urge that made him want to turn away from the road and face toward London. That was strange. He’d left men here—

“Go on,” whispered a voice. “Go on to the Big Home.”

Tarleton noticed that the horses had all slowed to a walk. “Let’s go,” he said angrily, and kicked his own horse forward, expecting the others to follow him.

This plantation was protected by luck or something. Despite the ruthless foraging by armies on both sides, no one had plundered it. Even with no man at home to protect it—the owner had died recently—it had remained untouched.

Well, that wouldn’t last.

The rest of the legion was spread out across the grounds of the plantation, their horses in the pasture, soldiers taking their ease on the broad porch. His men were good, loyal men, who fought hard for him. They, too, deserved peace and a chance to reclaim the homes and lives stolen from them by the rebel rabble.

A fresh grave stood in a little cemetery just outside the entrance of the plantation. The rebel general, Richard Richardson. He’d had the cowardice to die of natural causes a month ago, before Tarleton could hunt him down and kill him. It seemed too convenient to be true, but when the legion had alighted unannounced on Richardson’s home, his wife was in her widow’s dress and his children, especially his ten-year-old son, seemed genuinely grieved. More so than Tarleton had been at the age of nineteen when his own father died.

“Captain Kinlock,” Tarleton said as he dismounted by the house. “Did any rebels appear while we were gone?”

“Not one, Colonel,” Kinlock said.

“We didn’t see any either,” Tarleton admitted, handing his horse off to one of his men. “It was a feint, meant to draw us out from the plantation. What do you think they want here?”

“Same as we do, I reckon—fresh grain, a good meal, supplies.”

“Chasing a fox through the swamp is a losing venture. So maybe it’s better to sit on the hen house and wait for the fox to appear.”

Kinlock grinned. “And here we sit.”

Tarleton studied Richardson’s grave. “This was the house of one of their most respected generals. You don’t think there’s anything else here?”

“Lost pride, perhaps,” Kinlock said.

“Perhaps,” Tarleton answered.

But as he climbed the steps of the house, he had a different thought in mind. There was something about Richardson’s widow that made him uneasy. She was hiding something. It might be as simple as the family silver, but his instinct told him it was something bigger.

He kicked open the front door, making sure his boot left a big black scrape across the wood. Inside, a girl gasped in shock, only to have someone quickly shush her.

“Is my dinner ready?” he yelled. The words echoed through the big, hollow rooms.

He made his voice as imperious and grating as possible. An angry woman or furious child was likely to say things in temper that they would otherwise hold secret. Men would do the same, but there were no men on the farm. All the more reason to suspect a connection to the rebel partisans.

Richardson’s widow, wearing a black dress as simple as an ordinary death, appeared in the doorway. She was
preternaturally calm as always. Tarleton dearly wanted to find some way to rattle her cage and uncover her secrets.

“The gentlemen may be served in the dining room,” she said.

Kinlock and Tarleton’s other officers smirked at being called gentlemen. They were anything but gentlemen and they knew it. But they followed her into the dining room.

“James,” Tarleton called, looking into rooms and around the corners of doors. “Where’s James?”

The widow stopped and turned around. James was her ten-year-old son, the one so upset by his father’s death.

“I sent him to his room. He was misbehaving.”

Tarleton threw his arms open in an extravagant gesture of disbelief. “How, madame, may a boy his age misbehave? Everything they do at that age is the outgrowth of their natural curiosity and desire. I want him. Fetch him to me.”

He expected her to balk, like a horse approaching a bad jump.

But, calm as ever, she ducked her head. “As you wish, sir. James, come here please.”

His head appeared over the railing on the landing of the stairs. He was a handsome boy, with intelligent features set in a face framed by curly hair and a cleft chin. “Yes, Mother.”

“Colonel Tarleton requests the plea sure of your company for dinner,” she said.

“But I already ate my—”

His mother’s stern look conveyed an unmistakable message.

“Yes, Mother, I’ll be right down.”

The Richardsons’ dining room was a plain rectangle of whitewashed plaster of uneven application. The table filled the room so near to its edges that there was little room for servants to pass behind the officers, much less
for each of them to be waited on individually. Kinlock and the others didn’t expect it, so it was not a problem, but it only served to reinforce Tarleton’s impression that he was in a wilderness that wore its civilization like a borrowed overcoat that might be reclaimed at any moment.

Tarleton took his place at the head of the table, while his officers took the other seats. The last chair, at the end opposite Tarleton, sat empty. For a moment, Tarleton thought he glimpsed a blond boy sitting there in a red coat. Then he looked again and the boy was gone.

James appeared in the doorway in a clean shirt and jacket. Inwardly, Tarleton approved. The boy had the makings of a gentleman at least.

“Come here and stand at my side, James,” Tarleton said.