Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V

by Orson Scott Card

  How could Alvin turn good men away from an evil path? How could he get them to ignore the Unmaker and take away its power to herd them?

  Alvin sent his doodlebug into the village of Cambridge. Into the houses of families, listening for voices, voices of children. He needed the sound of a child in distress, but quickly realized that in a good Puritan town, children were kindly treated and well watched-out-for. He would have to do a little mischief to get the sound.

  A kitchen. A three-year-old girl, watching her mother slice onions. The mother leaned forward on her chair. It was a simple matter for Alvin to weaken the leg and break the chair under her. With a shriek she fell. Alvin took care to make sure no harm befell her. What he wanted was from the child, not from her. And there it was. The girl cried out : “Mama!”

  Alvin captured the sound, the pattern of it in the air. He carried it, strengthened it, the quivering waves; he layered them, echoed them, brought some slowly, some quickly in a complicated interweave of sound. It was very hard work, and took all his concentration, but finally he brought the first copy of the girl’s cry to the tithingmen.

  “Mama!”

  They turned at once, hearing it as if in the near distance, and behind them, away from the river.

  Again, fainter: “Mama!”

  At once the tithingmen turned, knowing their duty. Searching for witches was their duty, but the distress of a child calling for her mother clearly was more important.

  They plunged right into the Unmaker, and of course it chilled their hearts with fear, but at that moment Alvin brought them the girl’s cry for yet a third and last time, so when fear struck them, instead of making them recoil it made them run even faster toward the sound. The fear turned from a sense of personal danger into an urgent need to get to the child because something very bad was happening to her—their fear became, not a barrier, but a spur to greater effort.

  For a while the Unmaker tried to stay with them, trying out other emotions—anger, horror—but all its efforts worked against its own purpose. It couldn’t understand what Alvin was relying on: the power of decent men to act against their own interest in order to help those who trusted them. The Unmaker understood how to make men kill in war. What it could not comprehend was why they were willing to die.

  So the tithingmen hunted fruitlessly in the woods and meadows, trying to find the girl whose voice they had heard, until finally they gave up and headed into town to try to find out which child was missing and organize a search. But all the children were in their places, and, despite some misgivings—they had all heard the voice, after all—they went about their ordinary business, figuring that if there needed to be a witch hunt, tomorrow would do as well as today.

  On the riverbank, Arthur and Mike and Jean-Jacques had no idea that the Unmaker had been stalking them.

  In his cell, Alvin wanted only to lie back and sleep. That was when the sheriff came for him, to bring him into the court for his arraignment.

  Verily had only a few minutes to confer with Alvin before the arraignment began, and always with the sheriff present, so there couldn’t be much candor—but such was the rule with witch trials, so no potions or powders could be passed between them, or secret curses spoken. “No matter how it seems, Alvin, you must trust me.”

  “Why? How is it going to seem?”

  “The judge is John Adams. I’ve been reading his writings and his court cases, both as lawyer and as judge, since I first began the study of law. The man is decent to the core. I had no knowledge of his ever doing a witch trial, though, and so I had no idea of his position on them. But when I came out of jail this morning, I was met by a fellow who lives here—”

  “No need for names,” said Alvin.

  Verily smiled. “A fellow, I say, who’s made some study of witch law—in fact that’s his name, Study—and he tells me that Adams has never actually rendered a verdict in a witchery case.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There’s always been some defect in the witchers’ presentation and he’s thrown the whole thing out.”

  “Then that’s good,” said Alvin.

  “No,” said Verily. “That’s bad.”

  “I’d go free, wouldn’t I?”

  “But the law would still stand.”

  Alvin rolled his eyes. “Verily, I didn’t come back here to try to reform New England, I came in order to—”

  “We came to help Purity,” said Verily. “And all the others. Do you know what it would mean, if the law itself were found defective? Adams is a man of weighty reputation. Even from the circuit bench of Boston, his decisions would be looked at carefully and carry much precedence in England as well as in America. The right decision might mean the end of witch trials, here as well as there.”

  Alvin smiled thinly. “You got too high an opinion of human nature.”

  “Do I?”

  “The law didn’t make witch trials happen. It was the hunger for witch trials that got them to make up the law.”

  “But if we do away with the legal basis—”

  “Listen, Verily, do you think men like Quill will flatout disappear just cause witchery ain’t there to give them what they want? No, they’ll just find another way to do the same job.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “If it ain’t witchcraft, they’ll find new crimes that work just the way witchcraft does, so you can take ordinary folks making ordinary mistakes or not even mistakes, just going about their business, but suddenly the witcher, he finds some wickedness in it, and turns everything they say into proof that they’re guilty of causing every bad thing that’s been going wrong.”

  “There’s no other law that works that way.”

  “That’s because we got witch laws, Very. Get rid of them, and people will find a way take all the sins of the world and put them onto the heads of some fellow who’s attracted their attention and then destroy him and all his friends.”

  “Purity isn’t evil, Alvin.”

  “Quill is,” said Alvin.

  The sheriff leaned down. “I’m trying not to listen, boys, but you know it’s a crime to speak ill of a witcher. This Quill, he takes it as evidence that Satan’s got you by the short hairs, begging your pardon.”

  “Thank you for the reminder, sir,” said Verily. “My client didn’t mean it quite the way it sounded.”

  The sheriff rolled his eyes. “From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t matter much how it sounds when you say it. What matters is how it sounds when Quill repeats it.”

  Verily grinned at the sheriff and then at Alvin.

  “What are you smiling at?” asked Alvin.

  “I just got all the proof I need that you’re wrong. People don’t like the way the witch trials work. People don’t like injustice. Strike down these laws and no one will miss them.”

  Alvin shook his head. “Good people won’t miss them. But it wasn’t good people as set them up in the first place. It was scared people. The world ain’t steady. Bad things happen even when you been careful and done no wrong. Good people, strong people, they take that in stride, but them as is scared and weak, they want somebody to blame. The good people will think they’ve stamped out witch trials, but the next generation they’ll turn around and there they’ll be again, wearing a different hat, going by a different name, but witch trials all the same, where they care more about getting somebody punished than whether they’re actually guilty of anything.”

  “Then we’ll stamp them out again,” said Verily.

  Alvin shrugged. “Of course we will, once we figure out what’s what and who’s who. Maybe next time the witchers will go after folks with opinions they don’t like, or folks who pray the wrong way or in the wrong place, or folks who look ugly or talk funny, or folks who aren’t polite enough, or folks who wear the wrong clothes. Someday they may hold witch trials to condemn people for being Puritans.”

  Verily leaned over and whispered into Alvin’s ear. “Meaning no disrespect, Al, it’s your wife who can
see into the future, not you.”

  “No whispering,” said the sheriff. “You might be giving me the pox.” He chuckled, but there was just a little bit of genuine worry in his voice.

  Alvin answered Verily out loud. “Meaning no disrespect, Very, it don’t take a knack to know that human nature ain’t going to change anytime soon.”

  Verily stood up. “It’s time for the arraignment, Alvin. There’s no point in our talking philosophy before a trial. I never knew till now that you were so cynical about human nature.”

  “I know the power of the Unmaker,” said Alvin. “It never lets up. It never gives in. It just moves on to other ground.”

  Shaking his head, Verily led the way out of the room. The sheriff, tightly holding the end of Alvin’s chain, escorted him right after. “I got to say, I never seen a prisoner who cared so little about whether he got convicted or not.”

  Alvin reached up his hand and scratched the side of his nose. “I’m not all that worried, I got to admit.” Then he put his hand back down.

  It wasn’t till they were almost in the courtroom that the sheriff realized that there was no way the prisoner could have got his hand up to his face with those manacles on, chained to his ankle braces the way they were. But by then he couldn’t be sure he’d actually seen the young fellow scratch his nose. He just thought he remembered that. Just his mind playing tricks on him. After all, if this Alvin Smith could take his hands out of iron manacles, just like that, why didn’t he walk out of jail last night?

  12

  Slaves

  “You must take care of him,” said Balzac.

  “In a boardinghouse for ladies?” asked Margaret.

  Calvin stood there, his unblinking gaze focused on nothing.

  “They have servants, no? He is your brother-in-law, he is sick, they will not refuse you.”

  Margaret did not have to ask him what had precipitated his decision. At the French embassy today Balzac received a letter from a Paris publisher. One of his essays on his American travels had already appeared in a weekly, and was so popular that the publisher was going to serialize the rest of them and then bring them out as a book. A letter of credit was included. It was enough for a passage home.

  “Just when you start earning money from your writing about America, you’re going to leave?”

  “Writing about America will pay for leaving America,” said Balzac. “I am a novelist. It is about the human soul that I write, not the odd customs of this barbaric country.” He grinned. “Besides, when they read what I have written about the practice of slavery in Camelot, this will be a very good place for me to be far away.”

  Margaret dipped into his futures. “Will you do me one kindness, then?” she asked. “Will you write in such a way that when war comes between the armies of slavery and of liberty, no government of France will be able to justify joining the war on the side of the slaveholders?”

  “You imagine my writing to have more authority than it will ever have.”

  But already she saw that he would honor her request, and that it would work. “You are the one who underestimates yourself,” said Margaret. “The decision you made in your heart just now has already changed the world.”

  Tears came to Balzac’s eyes. “Madame, you have give me this unspeakable gift which no writer ever get: You tell me that my imaginary stories are not frivolous, they make life better in reality.”

  “Go home, Monsieur de Balzac. America is better because you came, and France will be better when you return.”

  “It is a shame you are married so completely,” said Balzac. “I have never loved any woman the way I love you in this moment.”

  “Nonsense,” said Margaret. “It is yourself you love. I merely brought you a good report of your loved one.” She smiled. “God bless you.”

  Balzac took Calvin’s hand. “It does me no good to speak to him. Tell him I did my best but I must to go home.”

  “I will tell him that you remain his true friend.”

  “Do not go too far in this!” said Balzac in mock horror. “I do not wish him to visit me.”

  Margaret shrugged. “If he does, you’ll deal with him.”

  Balzac bowed over her hand and kissed it. Then he took off at a jaunty pace along the sidewalk.

  Margaret turned to Calvin. She could see that he was pale, his skin white and patchy-looking. He stank. “This won’t do,” she said. “It’s time to find where they’ve put you.”

  She led the docile shell of a man into the boarding-house. She toyed with the idea of leaving him in the public room, but imagined what would happen if he started breaking wind or worse. So she led him up the stairs. He climbed them readily enough, but with each step she had to pull him on to the next, or he’d just stand there. The idea of completing the whole flight of stairs in one sweep was more than his distracted attention could deal with.

  Fishy was in the hall when Margaret reached her floor. Margaret was gratified to see that as soon as Fishy recognized who it was, she shed the bowed posture of slavery and looked her full in the eye. “Ma’am, you can’t bring no gentleman to this floor.”

  Margaret calmly unlocked her door and pushed Calvin inside as she answered. “I can assure you, he’s not a gentleman.”

  Moments later, Fishy slipped into the room and closed the door behind her. “Ma’am, it’s a scandal. She throw you out.” Only then did she look at Calvin. “What’s wrong with this one?”

  “Fishy, I need your help. To bring this man back to himself.” As briefly as she could, she told Fishy what had happened with Calvin.

  “He the one send my name back to me?”

  “I’m sure he didn’t realize what he was doing. He’s frightened and desperate.”

  “I don’t know if I be hating him,” said Fishy. “I hurt all the time now. But I know I be hurting.”

  “You’re a whole woman now,” said Margaret. “That makes you free, even in your slavery.”

  “This one, he gots the power to put all the names back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The Black man who take the names, I don’t know his name. Be maybe I know his face, iffen I see him.”

  “And you have no idea where they take the names?”

  “Nobody know. Nobody wants to. Can’t tell what you don’t know.”

  “Will you help me find him? From what Balzac said, he lurks by the docks.”

  “Oh, it be easy a-find him. But how you going a-stop him from killing you and me and the White man, all three?”

  “Do you think he would?”

  “A White woman and a White man who know that he gots the names? He going a-think I be the one a-tell you.” She drew a finger across her throat. “My neck, he cut that. Stab you in the heart. Tear him open by the belly. That’s what happen to the ones who tell.”

  “Fishy, I can’t explain it to you, but I can assure you of this—we will not be taken by surprise.”

  “I druther be surprise iffen he kill us,” said Fishy. She mimed slitting her own throat again. “Let him sneak up behind.”

  “He won’t kill us at all. We’ll stand at a distance.”

  “What good that going a-do us?”

  “There’s much I can learn about a man from a distance, once I know who he is.”

  “I still gots a room to finish cleaning.”

  “I’ll help you,” said Margaret.

  Fishy almost laughed out loud. “You the strangest White lady.”

  “Oh, I suppose that would cause comment.”

  “You just set here,” said Fishy. “I be back soon. Then I be on your half-day. They have to let me go out with you.”

  * * *

  Denmark spent a fruitless morning asking around about a White man who suddenly went empty. He’d knock on a door, pretending to be asking for work for a nonexistent White master—just so the slave who talked to him had a story to tell when somebody asked them who was at the door. The slaves all knew who Denmark was, of course—nobody was more
famous among the Blacks of Camelot than the taker of names. Unless it was Gullah Joe, the bird man who flew out to the slaveships. So there wasn’t a soul who didn’t try to help. Trouble was, all these people with no name, they had no sharp edge to them. They vaguely remembered hearing this or that about a White man who was sick or a White man who couldn’t walk, but in each case it turned out to be some old cripple or a man who’d already died of some disease. Not till afternoon did he finally hear a story that sounded like it might be what he needed.

  He followed the rumor to a cheap boardinghouse where yes, indeed, two White men had shared a room, and one of them, the Northerner, had taken sick with a strange malady. “He eat, he drink, he pee, he do all them thing,” said the valet who had cared for their room. “I change him trouser three times a day, wash everything twice a day.” But they had left just that morning. “French man, he gots a letter, he pack up all, take away that empty man, now they be both all gone.”

  “Did he say where he taking the sick man?” asked Denmark.

  “He don’t say nothing to me,” said the valet.

  “Does anybody know?”

  “You want me to get in trouble, asking question from the White boss?”

  Denmark sighed. “You tell him that Frenchman and that Northerner, they owe my master money.”

  The valet looked puzzled. “Your master dumb enough a-lend them money?”

  Denmark leaned in close. “It’s a lie,” he said. “You say they owe my master money, then the White boss tell you where they gone off to.”

  It took a moment, but finally the valet understood and retreated into the house. When he came back, he had some information. “Calvin, he the sick man, he gots a sister-in-law here. At a boardinghouse.”

  “What’s the address?”

  “White boss don’t know.”

  “White boss hoping for a bribe,” said Denmark.

  The valet shook his head. “No, he don’t know, that the truth.”

  “How’m I going to find her with no address?”