ALVIN JOURNEYMAN

by Orson Scott Card

  And they heard his song that went unheard by human ears. In the tattered remnants of the ancient woods, in the new growth where a few abandoned fields were four or ten years fallow, they heard him, the last few bison, the still deer, the hunting cats and the sociable coyotes and the timber wolves. The birds above all heard him, and they came first, in twos, in tens, in flocks of hundreds, visiting the town and singing with his music for a while, daybirds coming in the nighttime, until the town was wakened by the din of so many songs all at once. They came and sang an hour and left again, but the memory of their song lingered.

  First the birds, and then the song of coyotes, the howl of wolves, not so near as to be terrifying, but near enough to fill the untuned hearts of most folks with a kind of dread, and they woke with nightsweats. Raccoon prints were all over, and yet there was no tearing or thievery, and no more than the usual number of chickens were taken, though foxfeet had trodden on every henhouse roof. Squirrels a-gathering their nuts ran fearlessly through the town to leave small offerings outside the courthouse. Fish leapt in the Hatrack and in other nearby streams, a silver dance in the sparkling moonlit water, the drops like stars falling back into the stream.

  Through it Alvin slept, and most folks also slept, so only gradually did the word spread that the natural world was all a-flutter, and then only a few began to link it with Alvin being in jail. Logical folks said there couldn’t be no connection. Dr. Whitley Physicker boldly said, when asked (and sometimes when no one asked at all), “I’m the first to say it’s wrong to have that boy locked up. But that doesn’t imply that the swarming of harmless unstinging bees through the town last night meant anything at all except that perhaps this will be a hardish winter. Or perhaps a mild one. I’m not a great reader of bees. But it’s nothing to do with Alvin in jail because nature hardly concerns itself with the legal disputes of human beings!”

  True enough, but, as a lawyer might say, irrelevant. It wasn’t Alvin in jail that disturbed nature, it was Alvin singing in his dreams that drew them. And those few in town who could hear some faint echo of his song—ones like John Binder, for instance, and Captain Harriman, who had heard such silent stirrings all their lives—why, they didn’t wake up to the birdsong and the coyotes yipping and the wolves howling and the patter of squirrel feet on shingles. Those things just fit into their own dreams, for to them it all belonged, it all fit, and Alvin’s song and the natural greensong of the world spoke peace to them deep in their hearts. They heard the rumors but didn’t understand the fuss. And if Drunken Freda drank a little less and slept a little better, who would notice it besides herself?

  Verily Cooper came to Vigor Church the hard way, but then everybody did. What with the town’s reputation for making travelers listen to a hard dark story, it’s no wonder nobody put a stagecoach route there. The railroad wasn’t out that far west yet, but even if it was, it wasn’t likely there’d be a Vigor Station or even a spur. The town that Armor-of-God Weaver once expected to be the gateway to the west was now a permanent backwater.

  So it was railroad—shaky and stinky, but fast and cheap—to Dekane, and stagecoach from there. By sheerest chance, Verily’s route took him right through the town of Hatrack River, where the man he was coming to meet, Calvin’s brother Alvin, was locked up. But this was the express coach and it didn’t stop in Hatrack for a leisurely meal at Horace Guester’s roadhouse, where no doubt Verily would have heard talk that stopped his journey right there. Instead he rode on to Carthage City, changed to a slow coach heading northwest into Wobbish, and then got out at a sleepy little ferry town and bought him a horse and a saddle and a pack mule for his luggage, which wasn’t all that much but more than he wanted to have on the horse he was riding. From there it was a simple matter of riding north all day, stopping at a farmhouse at night, and riding another day until, late in the afternoon, just as the sun was setting, he came to Armor’s general store, where lamps were lit and Verily hoped he might find a night’s lodging.

  “I’m sorry,” said the man at the door. “We don’t take in lodgers—not much call for them in this town. The miller’s family up the road takes in such lodgers as we get, but... well, friend, you might as well come in. Because most of the miller’s family is right here in my store, and besides, there’s a tale they have to tell you before you or they can go to bed tonight.”

  “I’ve been told of it,” said Verily Cooper, “and I’m not afraid to hear it.”

  “So you came here on purpose?”

  “With those signs on the road, warning travelers away?” Verily stepped through the doorway. “I have a horse and a mule to attend to.”

  His words were heard by the people gathered on stools and chairs and leaning on the store counter. Immediately two young men with identical faces swung themselves over the counter. “I’ve got the horse,” said one.

  “Which gives me the mule—and his baggage, no doubt.

  “And I’ve got the saddle,” said the first. “I think it comes out even. “

  Verily Cooper stuck out his hand in the forthright American manner he had already learned. “I’m Verily Cooper,” he said.

  “Wastenot Miller,” said one of the boys.

  “And I’m Wantnot,” said the other.

  “Puritans, from the naming of you,” said Verily.

  “Not on a bet,” said a thick-bodied middle-aged man who was sitting on a stool in the corner. “Naming babies for virtues ain’t no monopoly of religious fanatics from New England.”

  For the first time Verily felt suspicion in the air, and he realized that they had to be wondering who he was and what his business was here. “There’s not more than one miller in town, is there?” he asked.

  “Only me,” said the thickset man.

  “Then you must be Alvin Miller, Senior,” said Verily, striding up to him and thrusting out his hand.

  The miller took it warily. “You’ve got me pegged, young feller, but all I know about you is that you come here late in the day, nobody knew you was coming, and you talk like a highfalutin Englishman with a lot of education. Had us a preacher here for a while who talked like you. Not anymore though.” And from the tone of his voice, Verily gathered that the parting hadn’t been a pleasant one.

  “My name is Verily Cooper,” he said. “My father’s trade is barrelmaking, and I learned the trade as a boy. But you’re right, I did get an education and I’m now a barrister.”

  The miller looked puzzled. “Barrelmaker to barrister,” he said. “I got to say I don’t rightly know the difference.”

  The man who greeted him at the door helped out. “A barrister is an English lawyer.”

  The dry tone of his voice and the way everyone stiffened up told Verily that they had something against lawyers here. “Please, I assure you, I left that profession behind when I left England. I doubt that I’d be allowed to practice law here in the United States, at least not without some kind of examination. I didn’t come here for that, anyway.”

  The miller’s wife—or so Verily guessed from her age, for she wasn’t sitting by the man—spoke up, and with a good deal less hostility in her voice than her husband had had. “A man comes from England especially to come to the town in America that lives every day in shame. I admit I’m curious, lawyer or no lawyer. What is your business here?”

  “Well, I met a son of yours, I think. And what he told me—“

  It was almost comic, the way they all suddenly leaned forward. “You saw Calvin?”

  “The very one,” said Verily. “An interesting young man.” They reserved comment.

  Well, if there was one thing Verily had learned as a lawyer, it was that he didn’t have to fill every silence with his own speech. He couldn’t be sure of this family’s attitude toward Calvin—after all, Calvin was such an accomplished liar he must have practiced the art here at home before trying to use it to make his way in the world. So he might be hated. Or he might be loved and yearned for. Verily didn’t want to make a mistake.

  Finall
y, predictably, it was Calvin’s mother who spoke up. “You saw my boy? Where was he? How was he?”

  “I met him in London. He has the language and bearing of quite a clever young man. Seems to be in good health, too.”

  They nodded, and Verily saw that they seemed to be relieved. So they did love him, and had feared for him.

  A tall, lanky man of about Verily’s age stretched out his long legs and leaned back on his stool. “I’m pretty near certain that you didn’t come all this way just to tell us Calvin was a-doing fine, Mr. Cooper.”

  “No, indeed not. It was something Calvin said.” Verily looked around at them again, this large family that was at once welcoming and suspicious of a stranger, at once concerned and wary about a missing son. “He spoke of a brother of his.” At this Verily looked at the lanky one who had just spoken. “A son with talents that exceeded Calvin’s own.”

  The lanky one hooted and several others chuckled. “Don’t go telling us no stories!” he said. “Calvin wouldn’t never speak of Alvin that way!”

  So the lanky one wasn’t Alvin Junior after all. “Well, let’s just say that I read between the lines, so to speak. You know that in England, the use of hidden powers and arcane arts is severely punished. So we Englishmen remain quite ignorant of such matters. I gathered, however, that if there was one person in the world who could teach me how to understand such things, it might well be Calvin’s brother Alvin.”

  They all agreed with that, nodding, some even smiling.

  But the father remained suspicious. “And why would an English lawyer be looking to learn more about such things?”

  Verily, to his own surprise, was at a loss for words. All his thought had been about finding Alvin the miller’s son—but of course they would have to know why he cared so much about hidden powers. What could he say? All his life he had been forced to hide his gift, his curse; now he found he couldn’t just blurt it out, or even hint.

  Instead, he strode to the counter and picked up a couple of large wooden spools of thread that were standing there, presumably so that customers could reel off the length of thread they wanted and wind it onto a smaller spool. He put the ends of the spools together, and then found the perfect fit for them, so that no man could pull them apart.

  He handed the joined spools to the miller. At once the man tried to pull them apart, but he didn’t seem surprised when he failed, He looked at his wife and smiled. “Lookit that,” he said. “A lawyer who knows how to do something useful. That’s a miracle.”

  The spools got passed around, mostly in silence, until they got to the lanky young man leaning back on his stool. Without a moment’s reflection, he pulled the spools apart and set them on the counter. “Spools ain’t no damn good stuck together like that,” he said.

  Verily was stunned. “You are the one,” he said. “You are Alvin.”

  “No, sir,” said the young man. “My name is Measure, but I’ve been learning somewhat of my brother’s skill. That’s his main work these days, is teaching folks how to do the same Makering stuff that he does, and I reckon I’m learning it about as good as anybody. But you—I know he’d want to meet you.”

  “Yes,” said Verily, making no effort to hide his enthusiasm. “Yes, that’s what I’ve come for. To learn from him—so I’m glad to hear that he wants to teach.”

  Measure grinned. “Well, he wants to teach, and you want to learn. But I got a feeling you two are going to have to do each other a different kind of service before that can happen.”

  Verily was not surprised. Of course there would be some kind of price, or perhaps a test of loyalty or trustworthiness. “I’ll do whatever it takes to have a Maker teach me what my gift is for and how to use it well.”

  Mrs. Miller nodded. “I think you just might do,” she said. “I think perhaps God brought you here. “

  Her husband snorted.

  “It would be enough if he brought you to teach my husband manners, but I fear that may be beyond even the powers of a benevolent God,” she said.

  “I hate it when you talk like old Reverend Thrower,” said the miller grumpily.

  “I know you do, dear,” said his wife. “Mr. Cooper, suppose you did need to practice law, not in Wobbish, but in the state of Hio. How long would it take you to prepare to take the test?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It depends on how far American legal practice has diverged from English common law and equity. Perhaps only a few days. Perhaps much longer. But I assure you, I didn’t come here to practice law, but rather to study higher laws.”

  “You want to know why you found us all down here at Armor’s store?” asked the miller. “We were having a meeting, to try to figure out how to raise the money to hire us a lawyer. We knew we needed a good one, a first-rate one, but we also knew that some rich and secret group in Carthage had already hired them the best lawyers in Hio to work against us. So the question was, who could we hire, and how in the world could we pay him? My wife thinks God brung you, but my own opinion is that you brung your own self, or in another way of looking at it, my boy Alvin brung you. But who knows, I always say. You’re here. You’re a lawyer. And you want something from Alvin.”

  “Are you proposing an exchange of services?” asked Verily.

  “Not really,” Measure interrupted, rising from his stool. Verily had always thought of himself as rather a tall man, but this young farmer fairly towered over him. “Alvin would teach you for free, if you want to learn. The thing is, you pretty much got to do us that legal service before Alvin can take you on as a pupil. That’s just the way it is. “

  Verily was baffled. Either it was barter or it wasn’t.

  The storekeeper spoke up from behind him, laughing. “We’re all talking at each other every whichaway. Mr. Cooper, the legal service we need from you is to defend Alvin Junior at his trial. He’s in jail over in Hatrack River, charged with stealing a man’s gold and my guess is they’re going to pile on a whole bunch of other charges, too. They’re out to put that boy in prison for a long time, if not hang him, and you coming along here just now—well, you got to see that it looks mighty fortunate to us.”

  “In jail,” Verily said.

  “In Hatrack River,” said Armor.

  “I just rode through there not a week ago.”

  “Well, you passed by the courthouse where they got him locked up.”

  “Yes, I’ll do it. When is the trial?”

  “Oh, pretty much whenever you want. The judge there is a friend of Alvin’s, as are most of the townfolk, or most of them as amount to much, anyway. They can’t just let him go, much as they’d like to. But they’ll delay the trial as long as you need to get admitted to the bar.”

  Verily nodded. “Yes, I’ll do it. But... I’m puzzled. You have no idea whether I’m a good lawyer or not.”

  Measure hooted with laughter. “Come on, friend, you think we’re blind? Look at your clothes! You’re rich, and you didn’t get that way from barrelmaking.”

  “Besides,” said Armor, “you have that English accent, those gentlemanly airs. The jury in Hatrack River will mostly be on Alvin’s side. Everything you say is going to sound powerful clever to them.”

  “You’re saying that I don’t actually have to be very good. I just have to be English, an attorney-at-law, alive, and present in the courtroom.”

  “Pretty much, yep,” said Armor.

  “Then you have an attorney. Or rather, your son does. If he wants me, that is.”

  “He wants to get out of jail and have his name cleared,” said Measure solemnly. “And he wants to teach folks how to be Makers. I think you’ll fit right in with what he wants.”

  “Come here!” The command came from Mrs. Miller, and Verily obediently walked to her. She reached out and took his right hand and held it in both of hers. “Mr. Verily Cooper,” she said, “will you be a true friend to my son?”

  He realized that it was an oath she was asking for, an oath with his whole heart in it. “Yes, ma’am. I will
be his true friend.”

  It wasn’t quite silence that followed his promise. There was the sound of breaths long pent being released. Verily had never been the answer to anyone’s heartfelt wish before. It was rather exhilarating. And a bit terrifying, too.

  Wastenot and Wantnot came back in. “Horse and mule are unloaded, fed, watered, and stabled.”

  “Thank you,” said Verily.

  The twins looked around. “What’s everybody grinning for?”

  “We got us a lawyer for Alvin,” said Measure.

  Wastenot and Wantnot grinned, too. “Well, heck, then let’s go home to bed!”

  “No,” said the miller. “One more item of business we got to do.”

  At once the cheerful mood faded.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Cooper,” said the miller. “We have a tale to tell you. A sad one, and it ends with all the men of this town, except Armor here, and Measure—it ends with all of us in shame.”

  Verily sat down to listen.

  Chapter 13 -- Maneuvers

  Vilate brought him another pie. “I couldn’t finish the last one,” Alvin said. “You think my stomach is a bottomless pit?”

  “A man of your size and strength needs something to keep the meat on his bones,” said Vilate. “And I haven’t figured out yet how to make half a pie.”

  Alvin chuckled. But as she slid the pie under the iron-barred door of the cell, Alvin noticed that she had some new hexes on her, not to mention a come-hither and a beseeching. Most hexes he recognized right off—he’d made a few of them in his own time, for protection or warding, and even for concealment and mildness of heart, which made for a deeper kind of safety but were much harder to make. What Vilate had today, though, was beyond Alvin’s ken. And since they probably wouldn’t work on him, or not too well, he couldn’t rightly tell what they’d be for. Nor could he ask her.