For a moment, her eyes looked heavy and sad, as if she saw some awful pain and suffering in his future. Or was it in her own?
Then she shook it off as if it was just the shadow of a cloud passing over her and now the sun was back. Or as if she had decided to live a certain life, no matter what the cost of it, and now would no longer dread what couldn't be helped. She smiled, and tears ran down her cheeks. “You don't know what you're doing, Alvin, but I'm proud and glad to have your love, and I'll be your wife.”
Alvin turned to face the others, and in a loud voice he cried, “She said yes! Judge! Somebody stop the judge from leaving! He's got him one more job to do!” While Peggy went off to find her father and drag him back so he could give her away properly, Verily Cooper fetched the judge.
On the way over to where Alvin waited, the judge put a kindly arm across Verily's back. “My lad, you have a keen mind, a lawyer's mind, and I approve of that. But there's something about you that sets a fellow's teeth on edge.”
“If I knew what it was, sir, you may be sure that I'd stop.”
“Took me a while to figure it out. And I don't know what you can do about it. What makes folks mad at you right from the start is you sound so damnably English and educated and fine.”
Verily grinned, then answered in the vernacular accent he had grown up with, the one he had spent so many years trying to lose. “You mean, sir, that if I talks like a common feller, I'll be more likable?”
The judge whooped with laughter. “That's what I mean, lad, though I don't know as how that accent is much better!”
And with that they reached the spot where the wedding party was assembled. Horace stood beside his daughter, and Arthur Stuart was there as Alvin's best man.
The judge turned to Sheriff Doggly. “Do the banns, my good sir.”
Po Doggly at once cried out, “Is there a body here so foolish as to claim there's any impediment to the marriage of this pair of good and godly citizens?” He turned to the judge. “Not a soul as I can see, Judge.”
So Alvin and Peggy were married, Horace Guester on one side, Arthur Stuart on the other, all standing there in the open on the grounds of the smithy where Alvin had served his prenticehood. Just up the hill was the springhouse where Peggy had lived in disguise as a schoolteacher; the very springhouse where twenty-two years before, as a five-year-old girl, she had seen the heartfires of a family struggling across the Hatrack River in flood, and in the womb of the mother of that family there was a baby with a heartfire so bright it dazzled her, the like of which she'd never seen before or since. She ran then, ran down this hill, ran to this smithy, got Makepeace Smith and the other men gathered there to race to the river and save the family. All of it began here, within sight of this place. And now she was married to him. Married to the boy whose heartfire shone like the brightest star in her memory, and in all her life since then.
There was dancing that night at Horace's roadhouse, you can bet, and Alvin had to sing his song five more times, and the last verse thrice each time through. And that night he carried his Margaret– his now, and he was hers– in those strong blacksmith's arms up the stairs to the room where Margaret herself had been conceived twenty-eight years before. He was awkward and they both were shy and it didn't help that half the town was charivareeing outside the roadhouse halfway till dawn, but they were man and wife, made one flesh as they had so long been one heart even though she had tried to deny it and he had tried to live without her. Never mind that she had seen his grave in her mind, and herself and their children standing by it, weeping. That scene was possible in every wedding night; and at least there would be children; at least there would be a loving widow to grieve him; at least there would be memory of this night, instead of regretful loneliness. And in the morning, when they awoke, they were not quite so shy, not quite so awkward, and he said such things to her as made her feel more beautiful than anyone who had ever lived before, and more beloved, and I don't know who would dare to say that in that moment it wasn't the pure truth.
Chapter 18 – Journeys
Two days later they were ready to light out. They made no secret about the carriage Armor-of-God hired in Wheelwright, ready to take them off the ferry as soon as they crossed the Hio. That would be enough to decoy the stupid ones. As for the clever ones, well, Mike Fink had his own plan, and even Margaret allowed as how it might well work.
Friends came to the roadhouse all that evening to bid goodbye. Alvin and Peggy and Arthur were well known to them all; Armor-of-God had a few friends here, from business traveling; and Verily had made some new friends, having been the spokesman for the winning side in a highly emotional trial. If Mike Fink had local friends, they weren't the sort to show up in Horace Guester's roadhouse; as Mike confided to Verily Cooper, his friends were most of them the very men Alvin's enemies had hired to kill him and take the plow once he got out on the road tomorrow.
When the last soul had left, Horace embraced his daughter and his new son-in-law and the adopted son he had helped to raise, shook hands with Verily, Armor, and Mike, and then went about as he always did, dousing the candles, putting the night log on the fire, checking to make sure all was secure. As he did, Measure helped the travelers, make their way, lightly burdened, quietly down the stairs and out the back, finding the path with only the faintest sliver of moon. Even at that, they walked at first toward the privy, so that anyone casually glancing wouldn't think a thing amiss, unless they noticed the satchel or bag each one carried. Meantime, Measure kept watch, in case someone else was thinking to snatch Alvin that night while he was relieving himself. He kept watch even though Peggy Larner– or was it Goody Smith now? –assured him that not a soul was watching the back of the house.
“All my teaching is in your hands now, Measure,” Alvin whispered as he was about to step off the back porch into the night. “I leave you behind this time again, but you know that we set out on the real journey together as true companions, and always will be to the end.”
Measure heard him, and wondered if Peggy maybe whispered to him something she had seen in his heartfire, that Measure worried lest Alvin forget how much Measure loved him and wanted to be on this journey by his side. But no, Alvin didn't need Peggy to tell him he had a brother who was more loyal than life and more sure than death. Alvin kissed his brother's cheek and was gone, the last to go.
They met up again in the woods behind the privy. Alvin went about among them, calming them with soft words, touching them, and each time he touched them they could hear it just a little clearer, a kind of soft humming, or was it the soughing of the wind, or the call of a far-off bird too faint to hear, or perhaps a distant coyote mumbling in its sleep, or the soft scurry of squirrel feet on a tree on the next rise? It was a kind of music, and finally it didn't matter what it was that produced the sound, they fell into the rhythm of it, all holding each other's hands, and at the head of the line, Alvin. They moved swift and sure, keeping step to the music, sliding easily among the trees, making few sounds, saying nothing, marveling at how they could have walked past these woods before and never guessed that such a clear and well-marked path was here, except when they looked back, there was no path, only the underbrush closed off again, for the path was made by Alvin's progress in the midst of the greensong, and behind his party the forest relaxed back into its ordinary shape.
They came to the river, where Po Doggly waited, watching over two boats. “Mind you,” he whispered, “I'm not sheriff tonight. I'm only doing what Horace and I done so many times in the past, long before I had me a badge– helping folks as ought to be free get safe across the river.” Po and Alvin rowed one of them and Mike and Verily the other, for though he was unaccustomed to such labor, no wooden oar would ever leave a blister on Verily's hands. Silently they moved out across the Hio. Only when they got to the middle did anyone speak. Peggy, controlling the tiller, whispered to Alvin, “Can we talk a little now?”
“Soft and low,” said Alvin. “And no laughing.”
&
nbsp; How had he known she was about to laugh? “We passed a dozen of them as we walked through the woods, all of them asleep, waiting for first light. But there's none on the opposite shore, except the heartfire we're looking for.”
Alvin nodded, and gave a thumbs up to the men in the other boat.
They skirted the shore on the Appalachee side for about a quarter mile before coming to the landing site they looked for. Once it had been a putting-in place for flatboats, before the Red fog on the Mizzipy and the new railroad lines slowed and then stopped most of the flatboat traffic. Now an elderly couple lived there mostly from fishing and an orchard that still produced, poorly, but enough for their needs.
Dr. Whitley Physicker was waiting in the front yard of that house with his carriage and four saddled horses; he had insisted on buying or lending them himself, and refused any thought of reimbursement. He also paid the old folks who lived there for the annoyance of having visitors arrive so late at night.
He had a man with him– Arthur Stuart recognized him at once and called him by name. John Binder smiled shyly and shook hands all around, as did Whitley Physicker. “I'm not much for rowing, at my age,” Dr. Physicker explained. “So John, being as trustworthy a man as ever there was, agreed to come along, asking no questions. I suppose all the questions he didn't ask are answered now.”
Binder smiled and chuckled. “Reckon so, all but one. I heard about how you was teaching folks about Makery away out there in Vigor Church, and I hoped you might teach some of it here. Now you're going.”
Alvin reassured him. “My brother is holed up in the roadhouse. Nobody's to know he's there, but if you go to Horace Guester and tell him I sent you, he'll let you go up and talk to Measure. There's a hard tale he'll have to tell you–”
“I know about the curse.”
“Well good,” said Alvin. “Cause once that's done, he can teach you just what I was teaching in Vigor Church.”
Po Doggly and John Binder pushed the boats off the shore before the others were even mounted on their horses or properly seated in the carriage; Whitley Physicker waved from Binder's boat. Alvin shook hands with the old couple, who had got up from their beds to see them off. Then he climbed up into the front seat of the carriage with Margaret; Verily and Arthur sat behind. Armor and Mike rode two of the horses; Verily's horse and the horse that Alvin and Arthur would ride together were tied to the back of the carriage.
As they were about to leave, Mike brought his horse– stamping and fuming, since Mike was a sturdy load and not much of a horseman– beside the carriage and said to Alvin, “Well this plan worked too well! I was looking forward to scaring some poor thug half to death before the night was through!”
Peggy leaned over from the other side of the front seat and said, “You'll get your wish about a mile up the road. There's two fellows there who saw Dr. Physicker's carriage come here this afternoon and wondered what he was doing with four horses tied behind. They're just keeping watch on the road, but even if they don't stop us, they'll give the alarm and then we'll be chased instead of getting away clean.”
“Don't kill them, Mike,” said Alvin.
“I won't unless they make me,” said Mike. “Don't worry, I ain't loose with other folks' lives no more.” He rode to Armor, gave him the reins, and said, “Here, bring this girl along with you. I do better on my feet for this kind of work.” Then he dismounted and took off running.
Near as I can gather from Mike Fink's tale of the event– and you got to understand that a fellow who wants his story to be truthful has to allow for a lot of brag before deciding what's true in a tale of Mike Fink's heroic exploits– those two smarter-than-normal thugs was dozing while sitting with their backs to opposite sides of the same stump when all of a sudden they both felt their arms pretty near wrenched right out of their sockets and then they were dragged around, grabbed by the collars, and smacked together so hard their noses bled and they saw stars.
“You're lucky I took me a vow of nonviolence,” said Mike Fink, “or you'd be suffering some pain right now.”
Since they were already suffering something pretty excruciating, they didn't want to find out what this night-wandering fellow thought of as pain. Instead, they obeyed him and held very still as he tied their hands to a couple of lengths of rope, so that the one man's right hand was tied on one end of a rope that held the other man's left, with about two feet of rope between them; and the same with their other two hands. Then Fink made them kneel, picked up a huge log, and laid it down across the two lengths of rope that joined them. What he could lift alone they couldn't lift together. They just knelt there as if they were praying to the log, their hands too far apart even to dream of untying their bonds.
“Next time you want gold,” said Fink, “you ought to get yourself a pick and shovel and dig for it, stead of lying in wait in the night for some innocent fellow to come by and get himself robbed and killed.”
“We wasn't going to rob nobody,” burbled one of the men.
“It's a sure thing you wasn't,” said Fink, “cause any man ever wants to get at Alvin Smith has to go through me, and I make a better wall than window, I'll tell you that right now.”
Then he jogged back to the road, waved to the others, and waited for them to come alongside so he could mount his horse. In a couple of minutes it was done, and they rode briskly south along a lacework of roads that would completely bypass Wheelwright– including the fancy carriage waiting all day empty by the river, until Horace Guester crossed over, got in the carriage, and used it to shop for groceries in the big-city market that was Wheelwright's pride and joy. That's when the ruffians knew they had been fooled. Oh, some of them lit out in search of Alvin's group, but they had a whole day's head start, or nearly so, and not a one of them found anything except a couple of men kneeling before a log with their butts in the air.
* * *
All the way to the coast, Calvin expected to be accosted by Napoleon's troops, the carriage blown to bits with grapeshot or set afire or some other grisly end. Why he expected Napoleon to be ungrateful he didn't know. Perhaps it was simply a feeling of general unease. Here he was, not yet twenty years old, and already he had moved through the salons of London and Paris, had spent hours alone discussing a thousand different things with the most powerful man in the world, had learned as many of the secrets of that powerful man as he was likely ever to tell, spoke French if not fluently then competently, and through it all had remained aloof, untouched, his life's dream unchanged. He was a Maker, far more so than Alvin, who remained at the rough frontier of a crude upstart country that couldn't properly call itself a nation; who had Alvin known, except other homespun types like himself? Yet Calvin felt vaguely afraid at the thought of going back to America. Something was trying to stop him. Something didn't want him to go.
«It is nerves,» said Honor‚. «You will face your brother. You know now that he is a provincial clown, but still he remains your nemesis, the stick against which you must measure yourself. Also you are traveling with me, and you are constantly aware of the need to make a good impression.»
«And why would I need to impress you, Honor‚?»
“Because I am going to write you into a story someday, my friend. Remember that the ultimate power is mine. You may decide what you will do in this life, up to the point. But I will decide what others think of you, and not just now but long after you're dead.”
“If anyone still reads your novels,” said Calvin.
“You don't understand, my dear bumpkin. Whether they read my novels or not, my judgment of your life will stand. These things take on a life of their own. No one remembers the original source, or cares either.”
“So people will only remember what you say about me– and you they won't remember at all.”
Honord chuckled. “Oh, I don't know about that, Calvin. I intend to be memorable. But then, do I care whether I'm remembered? I think not. I have lived without the affection of my own mother; why should I crave the affection of str
angers not yet born?”
“It's not whether you're remembered,” said Calvin. “It's whether you changed the world.”
«And the first change I will make is: They must remember me!» Honor‚'s voice was so loud that the coachman slid open the panel and inquired whether they wanted something from him. «More speed,» cried Honor‚, «and softer bumps. Oh, and when the horses relieve themselves: Less odor.»
The coachman growled and closed the panel shut.
“Don't you intend to change the world?” asked Calvin.
“Change it? A paltry project, smacking of weak ambition and much self-contempt. Your brother wants to build a city. You want to tear it down before his eyes. I am the one with vision, Calvin. I intend to create a world. A world more fascinating, engrossing, spellbinding, intricate, beautiful, and real than this world.”
“You're going to outdo God?”
“He spent far too much time on geology and botany. For him, Adam was an afterthought– oh, by the way, is man found upon the Earth? I shall not make that mistake. I will concentrate on people, and slip the science into the cracks.”
“The difference is that your people will all be confined to tiny black marks on paper,” said Calvin.
“My people will be more real than these shallow creatures God has made! I, too, will make them in my own image– only taller– and mine will have more palpable reality, more inner life, more connection to the living world around them than these mud-covered peasants or the calculating courtiers of the palace or the swaggering soldiers and bragging businessmen who keep Paris under their thumbs.”
“Instead of worrying about the emperor stopping us, perhaps I should worry about lightning striking us,” said Calvin.
It was meant as a joke, but Honor‚ did not smile. «Calvin, if God was going to strike you dead for anything, you'd already be dead by now. I don't pretend to know whether God exists, but I'll tell you this– the old man is doddering now! The old fellow talks rough but it's all a memory. He hasn't the stuff anymore! He can't stop us! Oh, maybe he can write us out of his will, but we'll make our own fortune and let the old boy stand back lest he be splashed when we hurtle by!»
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