Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV

by Orson Scott Card

  “Oh, no. I don’t know if Makepeace Smith even knows his old prentice is back in town—though you can bet that if the word reached me that fast, it got to him in half the time! I just know that Makepeace has been bragging so much on how Alvin robbed him that if he don’t serve papers on the boy, everybody’s going to know it was just empty talk. So he’s got to bring the boy to trial, don’t you see?”

  Vilate smiled a little smile to herself.

  “Already planning what you’re going to bring to him in jail?” asked her friend.

  “Or something,” said Vilate.

  Alvin woke from his nap to find Arthur Stuart gone and the room half-dark. The traveling must have taken more out of him than he thought, to make him sleep the afternoon away.

  A knock on the door. “Open up, now, Alvin,” said Horace. “The sheriff’s just doing his job, he tells me, but there’s no way out of it.”

  So it must have been a knock on the door that woke him in the first place. Alvin swung his legs off the bed and took the single step that got him to the door. “It wasn’t barred,” he said as he opened it. “You only had to give it a push.”

  Sheriff Po Doggly looked downright sheepish. “Oh, it’s just Makepeace Smith, Alvin. Everybody knows he’s talking through his hat, but he’s gone and got a warrant on you, to charge you with stealing his treasure trove.”

  “Treasure?” asked Alvin. “I never heard of no treasure.”

  “Claims you dug up the gold digging a well for him, and moved the well so nobody’d know—”

  “I moved the well cause I struck solid stone,” said Alvin. “If I found gold, why would that make me move the well? That don’t even make sense.”

  “And that’s what you’ll say in court, and the jury will believe you just fine,” said Sheriff Doggly. “Everybody knows Makepeace is just talking through his hat.”

  Alvin sighed. He’d heard the rumors flying hither and yon about the golden plow and how it was stolen from a blacksmith that Alvin prenticed with, but he never thought Makepeace would have the face to take it to court, where he’d be proved a liar for sure. “I give you my word I won’t leave town till this is settled,” said Alvin. “But I’ve got Arthur Stuart to look after, and it’d be right inconvenient if you locked me up.”

  “Well, now, that’s fine,” said Doggly. “The warrant says you have a choice. Either you surrender the plow to me for safekeeping till the trials or you sit in jail with the plow.”

  “So the plow is the only bail I can pay, is that it?” asked Alvin.

  “Reckon that’s the long and short of it.”

  “Horace, I reckon you’ll have to look after the boy,” said Alvin to the innkeeper. “I didn’t bring him here to put him back in your charge, but you can see I got small choice.”

  “Well, you could put the plow in Po’s keeping,” said Horace. “Not that I mind keeping the boy.”

  “No offense, Sheriff, but you wouldn’t keep the plow safe a single night,” said Alvin, smiling wanly.

  “Reckon I could do just fine,” said Po, looking a mite offended. “I mean, even if I lock you up, you don’t think I’d let you keep the plow in the cell with you, do you?”

  “Reckon you will,” said Alvin mildly.

  “Reckon not,” said Po.

  “Reckon you think you could keep it safe,” said Alvin. “But what you don’t know is how to keep folks safe from the plow.”

  “So you admit you have it.”

  “It was my journeypiece,” said Alvin. “There are witnesses of that. This whole charge is nonsense, and you and everybody else knows it. But what’ll the charge be if I give you this plow and somebody opens the sack and gets struck blind? What’s the charge then?”

  “Blind?” asked Po Doggly, glancing at Horace, as if his old friend the innkeeper could tell him whether he was having his leg pulled.

  “You think you can tell your boys not to look in the sack, and that’s going to be enough?” said Alvin. “You think they won’t just try to take a peek?”

  “Blind, eh?” said Po.

  Alvin picked up the sack from where it had lain beside him on the bed. “And who’s going to carry the plow, Po?”

  Sheriff Doggly reached out to take it, but no sooner had his hands closed around the sack than he felt the hard metal inside shift and dance under his hands, sliding away from him. “Stop doing that, Alvin!” he demanded.

  “I’m just holding the top of the sack,” said Alvin. “What shelf you going to keep this on?”

  “Oh, shut up, boy,” said Doggly. “I’ll let you keep it in the cell. But if you plonk somebody over the head with that thing and make an escape, I’ll find you and the charge won’t be no silly tale from Makepeace Smith, I promise you.”

  Alvin shook his head and smiled.

  Horace laughed out loud. “Po, if Al wanted to escape from your jail, he wouldn’t have to do no head plonking.”

  “I’m just telling you, Al,” said the sheriff. “Don’t push your luck with me. There’s a outstanding extradition order from Appalachee about standing trial for the death of a certain dead Slave Finder.”

  Suddenly Horace’s genial manner changed, and in a quick movement he had the sheriff pressed into the doorjamb so tight it looked like it might make a permanent difference in his posture. “Po,” said Horace, “you been my dearest friend for many a year. We done in the dark of night what would get us kilt for doing in daylight, and trusted each other’s life through it all. If you ever bring a charge or even try to extradite this boy for killing the Slave Finder who killed my Margaret in my own house, I will do a little justice on you with my own two hands.”

  Po Doggly squinted and looked the innkeeper in the eye. “Is that a threat, Horace? You want me to break my oath of office for you?”

  “How can it be a threat?” said Horace. “You know I meant it in the nicest possible way.”

  “Just come along to jail, Alvin,” said Doggly. “I reckon if the town ladies don’t have meals for you, Horace here will bring you roadhouse stew every night.”

  “I keep the plow?” asked Alvin.

  “I ain’t coming near that thing,” said the sheriff. “If it’s a plow. If it’s gold.” Doggly gestured him to pass through the door and come into the hall. Alvin complied. The sheriff followed him down the narrow hall to the common room, where about two dozen people were standing around waiting to see what the sheriff had been after. “Alvin, nice to see you,” several of them greeted him. They looked kind of embarrassed, seeing how Alvin was in custody. “Not much of a welcome, is it?” said Ruthie Baker, her face grim. “I swan, that Makepeace Smith has bit himself a tough piece of gristle with this mischief.”

  “Just bring me some of them snickerdoodles in jail,” said Alvin. “I been hankering for them the whole way here.”

  “You can bet the ladies’ll be quarreling all day about who’s to feed you,” said Ruth. “I just wish dear old Peg had been here to greet you.” And she burst into quick, sentimental tears. “Oh, I wish I didn’t cry so easy!”

  Alvin gave her a quick hug, then looked at the sheriff. “She ain’t passing me no file to saw the bars with,” he said. “So is it all right if I . . .”

  “Oh, shut up, Alvin,” said Sheriff Doggly. “Why the hell did you even come back here?”

  At that moment the door swung open and Makepeace Smith himself strode in. “There he is! The thief has been apprehended at last! Sheriff, make him give me my plow!”

  Po Doggly looked him in the eye. Makepeace was a big man, with massive arms and legs like tree trunks, but when the sheriff faced him Makepeace wilted like a flower. “Makepeace, you get out of my way right now.”

  “I want my plow!” Makepeace insisted—but he backed out the door.

  “It ain’t your plow till the court says it’s your plow, if it ever does,” said the sheriff.

  Horace Guester chimed in. “It ain’t your plow till you show you know how to make one just like it.”

  But Alvin h
imself said nothing to Makepeace. He just walked on out of the roadhouse, pausing in the doorway only to tell Horace, “You let Arthur Stuart visit me all he wants, you hear?”

  “He’ll want to sleep right in the cell with you, Alvin, you know that!”

  Alvin laughed. “I bet he can fit right through the bars, he’s so skinny.”

  “I made those bars!” Makepeace Smith shouted. “And they’re too close together for anyone to fit through!”

  Ruth Baker shouted back, just as loudly. “Well, if you made those bars, little Arthur can no doubt bend them out of the way!”

  “Come on now, folks,” Sheriff Doggly said. “I’m just making a little arrest here, so stand clear and let me bring the prisoner on through. While you, Makepeace, are exactly three words away from being arrested your own self for obstructing justice and disturbing the peace.”

  “Arrest me!” cried Makepeace.

  “Now you’re just one word away,” said Sheriff Doggly. “Come on, any word will do. Say it. Let me lock you up, Makepeace. You know I’m dying to.”

  Makepeace knew he was. He clamped his mouth shut and took a few steps away from the roadhouse porch. But then he turned to watch, and let himself smile as he saw Alvin getting led away down the street toward the courthouse, and the jail out back.

  11

  Jail

  Calvin’s French was awful—but that was hardly his worry. Talking he had done in England, and plenty of it, until he learned to imitate the cultured accents of a refined gentleman. But here in Paris, talking was useless—harmful, even. One did not become a figure of myth and rumor by chatting. That’s one thing Calvin had learned from Alvin, all right, even though Alvin never meant to teach it. Alvin never tooted his own horn. So every Tom, Dick, and Sally tooted it for him. And the quieter he got, the more they bragged on him. That was what Calvin did from the moment he arrived in Paris, kept his silence as he went about healing people.

  He had been working on healing—like Taleswapper said, that was a knack people would appreciate a lot more than a knack for killing bugs. No way could Calvin do the subtle things that Alvin talked about, seeing the tiny creatures that spread disease, understanding the workings of the little bits of life out of which human bodies were built. But there were things within Calvin’s grasp. Gross things, like bringing the edges of open wounds together and getting the skin to scar over—Calvin didn’t rightly understand how he did it, but he could sort of squinch it together in his mind and the scarstuff would grow.

  Getting skin to split, too, letting the nasty fluids spew out—that was impressive indeed, especially when Calvin did it with beggars on the city streets. Of course, a lot of the beggars had phony wounds. Calvin could hardly heal those, and he wouldn’t make himself many friends by making the painted scars slide off beggars’ faces. But the real ones—he could help some of them, and when he did, he was careful to make sure plenty of people could see exactly what happened. Could see the healing, but could not hear him brag or boast, or even promise in advance what would happen. He would make a great show of it, standing in front of the beggar, ignoring the open hand or the proffered cup, looking down instead at the wound, the sore, the swelling. Finally the beggar would fall silent, and so would the onlookers, their attention at last riveted on the spot that Calvin so intently watched. By then, of course, Calvin had the wound clearly in mind, had explored it with his doodling bug, had thought through what he was going to do. So in that exact moment of silence he reached out with his bug and gave the new shape to the skin. The flesh opened or the wound closed, whatever was needed.

  The onlookers gasped, then murmured, then chattered. And just when someone was about to engage him in conversation, Calvin turned and walked away, shaking his head and refusing to speak.

  The silence was far more powerful than any explanation. Rumors of him spread quickly, he knew, for in the cafe where he supped (but did no healing) he heard people speaking of the mysterious silent healer, who went about doing good as Jesus did.

  What Calvin hoped would not get spread about was the fact that he wasn’t exactly healing people, except by chance. Alvin could get into the deep hidden secrets of the body and do real healing, but Calvin couldn’t see that small. So the wound might drain and close, but if there was a deep infection it would come right back. Still, some of them might be healed, for all he knew. Not that it would really help them—how would they beg, without a wound? If they were smart, they’d get away from him before he could take away the coin they used to buy compassion. But no, the ones with real injury wanted to be healed more than they wanted to eat. Pain and suffering did that to people. They could be wise and careful when they felt fine. Add a little pain to the mix, though, and all they wanted was whatever would make the pain go away.

  It took a surprisingly long time before one of the Emperor’s secret police came to see him. Oh, a gendarme or two had witnessed what he did, but since he touched no one and said nothing, they also did nothing, said nothing to him. And soldiers—they were beginning to seek him out, since so many veterans had injuries from their days in service, and half the cripples Calvin helped had old companions from the battle lines they went to see, to show the healing miracle that Calvin had brought them. But no one with the furtive wariness of the secret police was ever in the crowd, not for three long weeks—weeks in which Calvin had to keep moving his operation from one part of the city to another, lest someone he had already healed come back to him for a second treatment. What good would all this effort do if the rumor began to get about that the ones he healed didn’t stay healed?

  Then at last a man came, a middle-sized man of bourgeois clothing and modest demeanor, but Calvin saw the tension, the watchfulness—and, most important, the brace of pistols hidden in the pockets of his coat. This one would report to the Emperor. So Calvin made quite sure that the secret policeman was in a good position to see all that transpired when he healed a beggar. Nor did it hurt that even before the silence fell and he did the healing, everyone was murmuring things like, “Is he the one? I heard he healed that one-legged beggar near Montmartre,” though of course Calvin had never even attempted to heal someone with a missing limb. Even Alvin might not be able to do something as spectacular as that. But it didn’t hurt that such a rumor was about. Anything to get him into the presence of the Emperor, for everyone knew that he suffered agonies from the gout. Pain in the legs—he will bring me to him to end the pain in his legs. For the pain, he’ll teach me all he knows. Anything to remove the pain.

  The healing ended. Calvin walked away, as usual. To his surprise, however, the secret policeman left by quite another route. Shouldn’t he follow me? Whisper to me that the Emperor needs me? Would I come and serve the Emperor? Oh, but I’m not sure I can be of help. I do what I can, but many wounds are stubborn and refuse to be fully healed. Oh, that’s right, Calvin meant to promise nothing. Let his deeds speak for themselves. He would make the Emperor’s leg feel better for a while—he was sure he could do that—but no one would ever be able to say that Calvin Miller had promised that the healing would be permanent, or even that there would be any kind of healing at all.

  But he had no chance to say these things, for the secret policeman went another way.

  That evening, as he waited for his supper at the cafe, four gendarmes came into the cafe, laughing as if they had just come off duty. Two went toward the kitchen—apparently they knew someone there—while the other two jostled, clumsy and laughing, among the tables. Calvin smiled a moment and then looked out the window.

  The laughing stopped. Harsh hands seized his arms and lifted him out of his chair. All four gendarmes were around him now, not laughing at all. They bound his wrists together and hobbled his legs. Then they half-dragged him from the cafe.

  It was astonishing. It was impossible. This had to be a response to the report of the secret policeman. But why would they arrest him? What law had he broken? Was it simply that he spoke English? Surely they understood the difference between
an Englishman and an American. The English were still at war with France, or something like war, anyway, but the Americans were neutral, more or less. How dare they?

  For a moment, painfully hobbling along with the gendarmes at the too-brisk pace they set for him, Calvin toyed with the idea of using his Makering power to loose the bonds and stand free of them. But they were all armed, and Calvin had no desire to tempt them to use their weapons against an escaping prisoner.

  Nor did he waste effort, after the first few minutes, trying to persuade them that some terrible mistake was underway. What was the point? They knew who he was; someone had told them to arrest him; what did they care whether it was a mistake or not? It wasn’t their mistake.

  Half an hour later, he found himself stripped and thrown into a miserable stinking cell in the Bastille.

  “Welcome to the Land of the Guillotine!” croaked someone farther up the corridor. “Welcome, O pilgrim, to the Shrine of the Holy Blade!”

  “Shut up!” cried another man.

  “They sliced through another man’s neck today, the one who was in the cell you’re in now, new boy! That’s what happens to Englishmen here in Paris, once somebody decides that you’re a spy.”

  “But I’m not English!” Calvin cried out.

  This was greeted with gales of laughter.

  Peggy set down her pen in weariness, closed her eyes in disgust. Wasn’t there some kind of plan here? The One who sent Alvin into the world, who protected him and prepared him for the great work of building the Crystal City, didn’t that One have some kind of plan? Or was there no plan? No, there had to be some meaning in the fact that this very day, in Paris, Calvin was locked up in prison, just as Alvin was in prison in Hatrack River. The Bastille, of course, was a far cry from a second-story room in the back of the courthouse, but jail was jail—they were both locked in, for no good reason, and with no idea of how it would all come out.

  But Peggy knew. She saw all the paths. And, finally, she closed up her pen, put away the papers she had been writing on, and got up to tell her hosts that she would have to leave earlier than she expected. “I’m needed elsewhere, I think.”