Traitor to the Crown (8 page)

The tree itself seemed to respond to Deborah’s words. The branches twisted upward, turning their leaves, already gold with the season, toward the morning sun.

Magdalena’s fussing had finally turned into a persistent cry. Deborah said, “That’s all, we’re done,” and turned to go get their daughter, but Proctor reached her first. “It may be my last chance to hold her for a while,” he said as he picked her up. She continued to fuss.

“Hold her closer to your body,” Deborah said, pushing his arms up against his chest. “You won’t break her.” She stroked the baby’s head. “You come back soon, and you come back whole. It’s four to six weeks’ sailing either way. I want you back here by spring, in time for planting.”

“I’ll take care of things as swiftly as the circumstances allow,” Proctor said. “And I’ll write to you if I can. You can send letters to me also, care of the American legate in Paris.”

Deborah hated letters. Her mother had taught her that witches should never put anything down in writing, lest it be used against them. “She’s hungry,” Deborah said, taking Maggie from his arms. “I should feed her.”

“I should go pack,” Proctor said, though he lingered by Deborah’s side as he said it.

She reached out and grasped his hand. “I want you to know that you’re ready to face the Covenant. You’ve grown in power, and I trust you to use that power wisely. They don’t know what they’re in for.”

“Brave words.” He hoped they were true. He didn’t
have as much power as Deborah, but he hadn’t had a lifetime of learning to use his talent either.

She let go and pushed him away. “Go already. You can’t harvest the field before you plow it. The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll return.”

He wanted more time, but he was afraid that if he took it, he would lose his resolve to go and instead try to find some way to protect his family here. That way was a trap. He looked up and saw the other two witches standing nearby. “Lydia?” he said.

“I’m ready,” she said.

He took one last look at Maggie suckling. “Then let’s grab our bags and go.”

The road to Boston was barren and unpromising. The sky was an expansive gray slab, spackled along the horizon with brown leaves, among which were scattered a few sere reds and yellows. The ground had not yet frozen, but it was stiff and unyielding. Every clod of mud was hard enough to turn an ankle.

“It’s going to be a harder winter than I thought,” Proctor said.

Lydia was wrapped in a heavy cloak that she held tight around her thin frame. “What you call summer here feels like a hard winter to me.”

“It might be even colder where we’re going,” Proctor said. “I’m sure it won’t be any warmer.”

“Were I looking for someplace to spend the rest of my life, I might take that into consideration,” Lydia said. “But I’m going because there’s a job to do.”

“Just confirming,” he said, but he watched her closely.

Lydia wore her forty years more heavily than she used to, while her clothes hung a little looser. The lines on her face had been etched more by pain than laughter, and the last two years on The Farm could not erase that. When she reached up to pull the hood down around her
face, her sleeves fell to her elbows, revealing arms that looked like corded rope. Nor was she afraid of hard work.

He was glad that she had decided to come.

It was a long walk to Boston in one day, so they spent the night with Quaker friends near Malden and continued on their way the next morning. When they came to Boston, they found more life. Proctor had been to the city before the war started, and it was both the same and completely transformed. They crossed over on the Charlestown ferry, and he led the way through twisting streets, dense with buildings, noting the differences. The main ways were as crowded as ever before, and the mixture of familiar voices and foreign accents the same, but the British Redcoats were absent, replaced by Continental soldiers in blue and buff. Ships still crowded the harbor, their masts and rigging a forest that surrounded the city, but the Union Jack no longer snapped in the wind and the flag of France, a white cross on a blue field, was as common as the banners of the states. Closer to the docks, where the air smelled of fish and garbage and the seagull cries filled the air, merchants sold items imported from halfway around the world—coffee beans, cane sugar, and pimientos—but what they had for sale depended on which British trade ships the American privateers had recently captured. He couldn’t help thinking about the way he had also been transformed by the Revolution. He was both the same as he had always been and yet completely different.

“Proctor?”

He felt Lydia’s hand on his forearm and jerked to a stop as a carter with a wagonload of firewood clattered past.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Just thinking about where we need to go.” He pointed to the long wharf extending out into the harbor and the
dozens of masts and hulls that lined it. “It should be one of the ships out there.”

Their destination, the French frigate
La Sensible
, was all the way out at the end. It was more than a hundred feet in length, as long as the British ships of the line that Proctor had seen sailing around Manhattan, but sleeker, with only two decks instead of three. It was painted black, with a yellow band around the gun deck and ports for sixteen cannons.

“This is promising,” Proctor told Lydia. “This could outrun any ship big enough to beat it, and beat any ship fast enough to catch it. Must be why they named it
Sensible.
”

“You think the Covenant will attack it during the crossing?” Lydia asked.

“The British will, if they get a chance,” Proctor said. “But yes, if the Covenant is committed to stopping the Revolution, they’re likely to do something to stop Adams, who is authorized to negotiate that peace.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Lydia said. “We might be attacked even before we land in France.”

“It’s not too late to change your mind,” he said. “You can go back to Deborah. She’d welcome you.”

“I’m not afraid,” Lydia said. “I’m just wondering what else I hadn’t thought of yet.”

“You and me, both of us,” Proctor said.

They walked down to the gangplank and looked up at a deck crowded with several hundred people. Casks of fresh water dangled overhead as sailors lifted them by ropes from the dock to the hold. Other sailors climbed in the rigging and among the furled sails. A group of passengers stood at the railing arguing with the ship’s captain. One of the passengers was a man of average height and stout girth, with a balding head shaped like a cannonball onto which human features had been impressed. He kept slipping into halting French while the French
officer answered in fractured English. Neither tactic seemed to make either speaker better understood.

Proctor stepped aside to let Lydia lead the way up the gangplank.

“Don’t be stupid,” she snapped under her breath. She yanked his bag out of his hand and carried it as well as her own. “If I’m going to be your slave, you will ignore me except to tell me what to do. You will never step out of the way to let me go first.”

That was something he hadn’t thought of right there. He was taken aback by her vehemence, and it was hard to fight his own nature, but he could see what she meant. “I’ll remember that.”

“See that you do,” she said quietly but fiercely. “And don’t look at me that way.”

He waited while a mob of laughing dockmen, loads on their shoulders, surged around them and stomped up the sagging gangplank to the deck. “What way?”

“As if I’m an equal, as if I’m someone you’ve offended.” She kept her voice low and her eyes averted. “I’m not a person to you and you can’t treat me like one or you’ll put us in danger.”

“I’ve seen men treat their slaves like people. Washington has a servant, William Lee—”

“You’re not Washington,” Lydia interrupted. “And you don’t know near as much as you think. A ship is a small town, where every word that is spoken is heard and every action observed. If anyone suspects I’m not your slave, they may—” She hesitated, and Proctor could see that she did not wish to put into words something bad that had happened to her before. “They may kidnap me as an escapee when we get ashore and then resell me,” she said finally. “And I will not be put on the block. So I must have no more feelings in your mind than your cattle.”

He started to protest, then turned away without uttering the apology already formed on his lips.

“Good,” she whispered tensely.

He felt foolish, but also properly chastened. They were heading into an unknown and dangerous situation. It would be foolish to add another danger to the stew. He walked up the plank without looking back, though it galled him to do so. He could tell from the slight sway of the plank that Lydia followed him.

The captain was a dignified man who gave the impression of a beaked nose framed by a powdered wig, with rows of white curls that hung over his ears like furled sails. He wore the smart red uniform and dark blue jacket of the French navy. Proctor expected to wait until he was finished talking with the other passengers, but the captain excused himself and turned to speak to the newcomers.

“Captain Chavagne, commanding
La Sensible
, what may I help you?”

The loud, round gentleman with the cannonball head blustered impatiently, but the captain ignored him. Proctor presented his letters of introduction. He would have to use his and Deborah’s savings to pay for their passage, but the letters would bring him money in Paris, and Tallmadge would see that he was reimbursed when he returned.

The captain stared at the letter, concentration written in the crease of his brow, then folded the papers and snapped them back to Proctor’s open hand. “The ship is too full already. Are not you certainment—another ship?”

“I must be aboard this ship to France,” Proctor said.

“The young gentleman does not want to come,” the captain asserted, looking over Proctor’s shoulder at Lydia. “By His Majesty’s decree, no slave may enter France. To do so may mean the slave will be taken away.”

Lydia tensed noticeably at this last sentence. Proctor had never heard of the decree, and wasn’t sure how they could enforce it. He knew that other Americans had taken their slaves with them to Paris. “We do not plan to stay in the country. We will enter and leave. I’m sure it will be fine.”

The captain sighed. “I would like to help you,” he said. “But I cannot offer you the berth I possesses not. There is no place for you to sleep.”

“There is no problem,” Proctor said. He jingled a purse full of coin. “I’ll sleep anywhere there’s a spot for me, on the deck if I must.”

The captain raised a dark eyebrow that stood out in sharp contrast with his powdered hair. He took the purse from Proctor’s hand, peered inside, and pocketed it. “Very well.”

Proctor realized he had made another error, revealing himself to be neither a gentleman nor a man used to owning slaves. Men of that class demanded a certain level of luxury just as a factor of their status. Proctor had reacted out of reflex—after all the hardship he’d seen soldiers endure during the war, it seemed selfish and indulgent to insist on luxuries. He tried to cover up his error by changing the subject. “If that’s settled, you could help me by directing me to Mister John Adams.”

“I’m John Adams,” the round gentleman said. Proctor realized that the group of passengers were the men attached to his mission and other hangers-on. “I hope you’ll oblige by introducing yourself—hold on there.”

“Yes, monsieur?” Captain Chavagne replied, caught in the act of trying to slip away.

“We are not resolved on this question. Tomorrow is the Sabbath, and thus not a fit day for travel. Can we not delay our departure one more day and set sail on Monday?”

The captain shrugged. “If God does not wish us to sail on the Sabbath, then He should suspend the tides.”

Adams sighed in defeat as the Frenchman walked away, then turned back to Proctor. Proctor offered him the letter of introduction prepared by Tallmadge. Adams unfolded it and began to read. “You know the Chevalier de la Luzerne?” he asked incredulously as he scanned the page.

“I met him but once, while I was in service to General Washington.”

Adams folded the letter and returned it to Proctor. “And what employment do you expect to find in Paris?”

“I was a secretary in General Washington’s headquarters during the campaign of ’seventy-six,” Proctor said. “Do you have need of one?”

A plain man with a pinched face and a shabby suit pushed forward. “His Excellency already employs a capable and experienced secretary, and one with a whole hand I might add.”

Adams motioned the other man to silence. “You seem like a good Massachusetts man,” he said to Proctor.

“Born outside Concord, late of Salem, lived my whole life here,” Proctor answered.

“Excellent,” Adams said. “You must admit that men of our state have taken the lead in the fight for freedom, from the battle at Lexington right down to today.”

“That’s true …” Proctor wasn’t sure what Adams was getting at, but he felt confident he wouldn’t like it.

“Perhaps you can explain this to me,” Adams said. “It does not seem to me that the passion for freedom can burn as strongly in the breasts of men who deprive their fellow men of freedom.” He held an open palm in the direction of Lydia, inviting an explanation. “What has been your experience?”

The worst part was that Proctor shared Adams’s feelings
on slavery but dared not let on. This was the crux of his problem, ever since he had been drawn into the society of witches some four years before: he was always pretending to be someone he was not.

But he remembered Lydia’s warning and knew that now was not the time to change that.

“I don’t know if I care for your implication,” he said, trying to sound like an affronted young man of class. “It has been my experience that the men from our southern states are every bit as ardent in their love of freedom as are we men from Massachusetts, and are as equally willing to sacrifice their all to achieve it. Or are you trying to imply otherwise? Your own words would cast doubt on men like Washington, Jefferson, and even Franklin.”