Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V

by Orson Scott Card

  “There has to be something between murder and innocence. I’ve seen the darkest places in everyone’s heartfire, Denmark. There’s no one who doesn’t have memories he wishes he didn’t have. And there are crimes that arise from—from decent desires gone wrong, from justified passions carried too far. Crimes that began only as mistakes. I’ve learned never to judge people. Of course I judge whether they’re dangerous or not, or whether they did right or wrong, how can anyone live without judging? What I mean is, I can’t condemn them. A few, yes, a few who love the suffering of others, or who never think of others at all, worthless souls that exist only to satisfy themselves. But those are rare. Do you even know what I’m talking about?”

  “I know you scared,” said Denmark. “You talk when you scared.”

  “We’re safe enough here,” said Margaret. “I’m just ... what you did to your wife, Denmark. Do you think I haven’t thought of doing that to someone? An enemy? Someone who I know will someday cause the death of the person I love most, the person I’ve loved my whole life, from childhood up. I know that desperate feeling. You have to stop him. And then you see the chance. He’s helpless. All you have to do is let nature take its course, and he’s gone.”

  “But you call your husband,” said Denmark. “You wave your arms and make letters in the air. Somehow he see that.”

  “So I chose to do the right thing,” she said.

  “Like me,” said Denmark.

  “But maybe I chose too late,” she said.

  Denmark shrugged.

  “Maybe. It ain’t all work out yet.”

  “All these people thirsting for vengeance. What will they choose? When will it be too late for them? Or just in time?”

  A new sound. Marching feet. Margaret ran to the window. The King’s Guard, marching in Blacktown.

  “Damn fool they,” said Gullah Joe. “What we do here in Blacktown? Who we hurt? They scared of us, they no remember they gots them Black people hate them, in they house, they wait down the stair, White man sleep, up the stair they go, cook she got she knife, gardener he got he sickle, butler he break him wine bottle, he got the glass, the edge be sharp. When they blood paint the walls, when they body empty, who the Black man put on that tall hat? Who the Black woman wear the bloody dress?”

  The images were too terrible for Margaret to bear. She had already seen them herself, in the blazing heartfires of angry slaves. What Gullah Joe imagined, she had seen down ten thousand paths into the future. Until Calvin tore up the name-strings, that future hadn’t shown up anywhere. She couldn’t predict it. Calvin had the power to change everything without warning. Margaret was unaccustomed to surprise. She didn’t know how to deal with a situation that she hadn’t had time to watch and think about.

  She walked away, into a corner of the room. She began to pray.

  But she couldn’t keep her mind on the words of her prayer. She kept thinking of Calvin. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about. Wasn’t it just like Cal? Set loose forces that could cause the deaths of thousands of people, and he was going to lie there dying through it all.

  As for Gullah Joe and Denmark, she hadn’t the heart to tell them, but the likeliest future, whether the slave revolt happened or not, was that the King and his men would be looking for the person who planned the revolt. It had to be a conspiracy. It couldn’t be mere chance that in the morning the entire slave population of Camelot was docile, and suddenly by nightfall they were keening and howling in every house. There had to be a plot. There had to be a signal given. It wasn’t hard to find slaves who, under torture, would mention the taker of names. And others who would point him out. The mastermind of the conspiracy, that’s what they’d call him. They’d call it Denmark Vesey’s War, as if it was war to have families murdered in their sleep, and then every third slave in Camelot hanged in retribution, while Denmark Vesey himself would be drawn and quartered, and the pieces of him hung on poles in Blacktown, lest anyone forget.

  She hadn’t the heart to tell him that. Nor did it matter, in the end, for one thing was certain in Denmark’s heartfire: If this happened to him, he would believe that he deserved it, for the sake of what he did to his woman.

  Calvin. Again he kept intruding in her thoughts. Something about Calvin. What? He can’t heal himself, so what is he good for?

  For something that he does know how to do.

  Margaret got up from her prayer and rushed to Gullah Joe. “You’ve done this before, Gullah Joe. I’ve heard the stories, I’ve seen them in the slaves’ memories, legends of the zombi, the walking dead.”

  “I no do that,” said Gullah Joe.

  “I know, you don’t do it on purpose, but there he is, dead but alive. There must be something you have, something in your tools, your powders, that can wake him up. Just for a little while.”

  “Wake him up, then he die faster,” said Gullah Joe.

  “I need him. To save the people he did this to.”

  “He no heal him own body,” said Gullah Joe scornfully.

  “Because he doesn’t know how. But he can do something.”

  Gullah Joe got up and went to his jars. Soon he had a mixture—a dangerous one, to judge from the way he never let any of the powders touch his skin and looked away when mixing so as not to breathe in any of the dust. When it was mixed, he poured it through a hole in a small bellows, then plugged the hole tightly. Even at that, he wetted down cloths for the rest of them to breathe through, in case any dust got loose in the air.

  Then he took the bellows, put the end in one of Calvin’s nostrils, then waxed the other nostril closed. “You,” he said to Denmark. “Hold him mouth closed.”

  “No,” said Denmark. “I can’t do that. That too much like drowning him.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Margaret.

  “What you tell husband then, this go bad?”

  “It’s my fault anyway,” said Margaret. “I told you to do it.”

  “I do it, ma’am,” said Fishy. “I do this.”

  Margaret stepped back. Fishy got one hand under Calvin’s jaw and the other atop his head.

  “I say go, you close him tight the mouth,” said Gullah Joe.

  Fishy nodded.

  “Go.”

  She clamped Calvin’s mouth shut. Calvin feebly resisted, desperate for breath. Nothing came in except a thin stream of air around the nipple of the bellows. Gullah Joe slammed the bellows together just as Calvin inhaled desperately. A cloud of dust emerged from around the bellows. Gullah Joe was ready for it. He picked up a bucket of water and doused Calvin with it, catching and settling the dust at the same time.

  Calvin jerked and twitched violently. Then he sat up, pulling away from Fishy’s grip, tearing the bellows and the wax out of his nostrils. Then he choked and coughed, trying to clear his lungs.

  He looked no healthier. Indeed, patches of his skin were sloughing off, sliding like rotten fruit thrown against a window. But he was alert.

  “Calvin, listen to me,” Margaret said.

  Calvin only choked and gasped.

  “The slaves are about to revolt. It has to be stopped. Alvin’s too far away, I need your help!”

  Calvin wept. “I can’t do nothing!”

  “Wake up!” Margaret shouted at him. “I need you to be a man, for once! This isn’t about you, this isn’t about Alvin, it’s about doing the decent thing for people who need you.”

  Some of what she was saying finally penetrated Calvin’s hazy mind. “Yes,” he said. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Something to take their minds off their anger,” she said. “What we need is a heavy storm. Wind and rain. Lightning!”

  “I can’t do lightning.”

  “How do you know you can’t?”

  “Cause I grew up trying.” He looked down at his hand. The bare bone of one finger was exposed. “Margaret, what’s happening to me!”

  “You were too long out of your body,” she said. “Alvin’s hurrying here to save you.”

  “He don�
��t want to help me, he wants me dead!”

  “Stop thinking about yourself, Calvin!” she said sternly. “I need something that feels like a force of nature.”

  “I can do fires. I can set the city on fire.”

  As he spoke, a couple of tiny flames danced around on the floor beside him.

  “No!” cried Margaret. “Good heavens, are you insane? The slaves will be blamed for setting the fires, it would make everything even worse! Not fire.”

  “I don’t know how anything works,” Calvin said. “Not deep enough to change it. Alvin tried to teach me but all I wanted was the showy stuff.” He wept again. Margaret had to seize his wrists to keep him from rubbing the skin off his face.

  “Get control of yourself,” she said. She turned helplessly to Gullah Joe. “Isn’t there something—”

  Gullah Joe laughed madly. “I tell you! No good this way! Zombi no good! All he think be, I so dead! He be sad, all sad, him.”

  “What about the water?” she asked Calvin. “I know you and Alvin played with water, he told me. Making it splash without throwing in a stone—that’s a game you played. Remember?”

  “Big splash,” he said.

  “Yes, that’s right. Make it splash out there. In the river, really big splashes. Slosh the water up on the shore. Make it flood.”

  “All we did was little splashes,” said Calvin.

  “Well this time do a big one!” Margaret shouted, her patience wearing thin. If, in fact, she had any patience left at all.

  “I’ll try, I’ll try, I’ll try.” He cried again.

  “Stop that! Just do it!”

  She felt someone kneel down beside her. Fishy? No, Denmark’s wife. She had a damp cloth. Gently she pressed it against Calvin’s forehead. Then his cheek. She mumbled something unintelligible, but the music of it was calm and comforting. Calvin closed his eyes and began trying to make the water in the river splash.

  Margaret also closed her eyes and cast about for heartfires near the river. She skipped from one to another, up and down the shore, on the north side of the peninsula and the south. No one was looking toward the water. They were all watching inland, fearful of the howling from the slaves.

  Then one of them noticed that the boats were rocking in the water. Masts tipped, then tipped back again. He looked out at the water. Wave after wave was coming, as if from giant stones falling, or perhaps something pulsing deep under the water. Each wave was higher than the one before. They began breaking onto the docks.

  More and more people were seeing the waves now, and those near the water began to run farther inland. The waves were coming up onto the streets, forming rivers that flowed over the cobblestones. Farther inland the water came until it was streaming across the peninsula. Ships battered against the dock and began to break into kindling. People ran screaming through the streets, pounding on doors, begging to be let inside.

  And the slaves also pounded on the doors. Where a moment before all they could think of was murder and vengeance, now in their ground-floor quarters a new passion had taken hold: to get to the first floor before this flood drowned them. Wave after wave swept through the slave quarters. The howling and singing stopped, to be replaced by a cacophony of panicked cries.

  Many of the Whites, seeing the flood, opened the doors and let their slaves, now chastened and afraid, come up to safety. Others, though, kept the doors locked, and more than one discharged a weapon through the door, warning the slaves to stay back.

  There were no more thoughts of killing the White families they worked for. Already the slaves were telling the stories that made sense to them. “God be telling us, Thou shalt not kill, or I send a flood like Noah!” “Lord, I don’t want to die!” Terror took the place of rage, damped it down, swept it out, drowned it, for the moment, at least.

  “Enough,” said Margaret. “You did it, Calvin. Enough.”

  Calvin sobbed in relief. “That was so hard!” He lay back down, rolled over, curled up and wept. Or rather, tried to curl up. As he dragged his legs across the floor, his right foot was pulled away from his body. Margaret gagged at the sight. But Denmark’s woman reached down, picked up the foot, and put it in place at the end of the damaged leg.

  “He just about dead,” said Denmark.

  “No,” moaned Margaret. “Oh, Calvin, not now, not when you finally did something good.”

  “That the best time a-die,” said Fishy helpfully. “You get in heaven.”

  Margaret turned again to Gullah Joe.

  “No look me, you!” he said. “I do all you say, look what happen!”

  “What if he sent out his doodlebug again? Like before? Even if he dies, can’t you hold on to it? Keep it from getting away?”

  “What you think I be? I a witchy man! You want God, him!”

  “You held him captive before. Do it again! Try it!”

  Even as she insisted, she could see the paths of the future change. When she finally saw one in which Calvin was still alive at dawn, she shouted at him, “That’s it! Do that!”

  “Do what?”

  “What you were thinking! Right when I shouted.”

  Gullah Joe threw up his hands in despair, but he set to work, making Denmark and Fishy help him, moving charms into a new circle, then putting an open box in the midst of it. “Tell him go in box. Put him whole self in box.”

  “Did you understand him, Calvin?”

  Calvin moaned in pain.

  “Send out your doodlebug! Let him catch it and save it. It’s your only chance, Calvin! Send your doodlebug to Gullah Joe, go into the box he’s holding. Do it, Calvin!”

  Panting shallowly, Calvin complied as best he could. Gullah Joe kept tossing a fine powder into the circle. It wasn’t till the tenth throw that he shouted. “You see that? Part him go in! Look a-that!”

  Another cast of the powder, and this time Margaret also saw the spark.

  “All bright him! Inside, go all inside!”

  “Do it, Calvin. Your whole attention, put it inside that box. Everything that’s you, into the box!”

  He stopped moaning. He rolled onto his back, his eyes staring straight up. “He’s done all he can do!” cried Margaret. “He’s exhausted.”

  “He dead,” said Fishy.

  Gullah Joe slammed the lid on the box, turned it upside down, and sat on it.

  “You hatching that?” asked Fishy.

  “Inside circle, inside my hair.” Gullah Joe grinned. “This time he no get out!”

  “All right, Alvin,” Margaret murmured. “Come quickly.”

  She leaned back against Denmark’s wife, who knelt behind her like a cushion. “I’m so tired,” she said.

  “We all sleep now,” said Denmark.

  “Not me,” said Gullah Joe.

  Margaret closed her eyes and looked out into the city again. The water was calm again and the panic had died down, but the revolt was over for the night. Killing had been driven out of the hearts of the Blacks.

  But now the thought of killing was showing up in other hearts. Whites were rushing to the palace, demanding that someone find out who started the plot. It had to be a plot, all the slaves starting up at once. Only the miraculous intervention of the waves had saved them. Do something, they demanded. Catch the ringleaders of the revolt.

  And King Arthur listened. He called in his advisers and listened to them. Soon there were questioners in the streets, directing groups of soldiers as they gathered Blacks for questioning.

  How long? thought Margaret. How long before Denmark Vesey’s name comes up?

  Long before dawn.

  Margaret rose to her feet. “No time for rest now,” she said. “Alvin will come here. Tell him what you’ve done. Don’t harm Calvin’s body in any way. Keep it as fresh as you can.”

  Gullah Joe rolled his eyes. “Where you go?”

  “It’s time for my audience with the King.”

  Lady Ashworth spent the entire rebellion throwing up in her bedroom. The flood, too. For her husband had f
ound out about her liaison with that boy—slaves who had once been docile now suddenly seemed to take relish in sowing dissension between her and Lord Ashworth. In vain did she plead that it was only once, in vain did she beg for forgiveness. For an hour she sat in the parlor, trembling and weeping, as her husband brandished a pistol in one hand, a sword in the other, one of which he would set down from time to time in order to take another swig of bourbon.

  It was only the howling of the slaves that broke off his drunken, murderous, suicidal ranting. This was one house where none of the Blacks wanted to brave a crazed White man with a gun, but he was all for shooting them anyway if they didn’t shut up and stop all that chanting and moaning. As soon as he left her alone, Lady Ashworth fled to her room and locked the door. She threw up so abruptly that she didn’t have time to move first—her vomit was a smear down the door and onto the floor beneath it. By the time the flood came she had nothing left to throw up, but she kept retching.

  With the Blacks terrified and Lady Ashworth indisposed, the only person able to answer Margaret’s insistent ringing at the door was Lord Ashworth himself, who stood there drunken and disheveled, the pistol still in his hand, hanging by the trigger. Margaret immediately reached down and took the gun away from him.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded. “That’s my gun. Who are you?”

  Margaret took in the situation with a few probes into his heartfire. “You poor stupid man,” she said. “Your wife wasn’t seduced. She was raped.”

  “Then why didn’t she say so?”

  “Because she thought it was a seduction.”

  “What do you know about any of this?”

  “Take me to your wife at once, sir!”

  “Get out of my house!”

  “Very well,” said Margaret. “You leave me no choice. I will be forced to report to the press that a trusted officer of the King has had a liaison for the past two years with the wife of a certain plantation owner in Savannah. Not to mention the number of times he has accepted the hospitality of slaveowners who make sure he doesn’t have to sleep alone. I believe sexual congress between White and Black is still a crime in this city?”

  He backed away from her, raising his hand to point the gun at her, until he remembered that she had his pistol. “Who sent you?” he said.