Vilate would say something, and then sip her tea, glancing up from the cup now and then to nod or murmur something. “Mm-hm”; “I know”; “Isn’t it just awful?”—as if the salamander was saying something.
But the salamander didn’t say nothing. Didn’t even look at her, most of the time, though truth to tell you never quite knew for sure what a salamander was looking at, because if one eye was looking there, the other might be looking here, and how would you know? Still and all, Arthur was pretty sure it looked right at him. Knew he was there. But didn’t seem to get alarmed or nothing, so Arthur just kept on looking and listening.
“A man shouldn’t trifle with a lady’s affections,” she was saying. “Once a man goes down that road, the lady has a right to protect herself as best she can.” Another sip. Another nod. “Oh, I know. And the worst of it is, people are going to think so badly of me. But everyone knows that Alvin Smith has hidden powers. Of course I couldn’t help myself.”
Another sip. And then, abruptly, tears streamed out of her eyes.
“Oh, my dear, dear soul, my friend, my beloved trusted friend, how can I do this? I really do care for the boy. I really do care for him. Why oh why couldn’t he have loved me? Why did he have to spurn me and make me do this?”
And so it went. Arthur wasn’t no dummy. He knew right off that Vilate Franker was planning some kind of devilment against Alvin, and he sort of hoped she might mention what it was, though that wasn’t too likely, since all she talked about was how bad she felt and how she hated to do it but it was a lady’s right to defend her honor even though it might involve giving the appearance of having no honor but that’s why it was so good having such a good, true, wonderful friend.
Ah, the tears that flowed. Ah, the sighs. Ah, the quart of tea she consumed while Arthur leaned on the sill, watching, listening.
Oddly, though, as soon as the tears were done, her face just went clean. Not a streak. Not a trace of redness around the eyes. Not a sign that she had even shed a tear.
The tea eventually took its toll. Vilate slid her chair back and rose to her feet. Arthur knew where the privy was; he immediately jumped from the rain barrel and ran around the front of the house before the door even opened leading out to the back. Then, knowing she couldn’t possibly hear the bell, he opened the post office door, went inside, clambered over the counter, and made his way into the kitchen from the front of the house. There was the salamander, licking a bit of tea that had spilled from the saucer. As Arthur entered, the salamander lifted its head. Then it scurried back and forth, making a shape on the table. One triangle. Another triangle crossing it.
A hex.
Arthur moved to the chair where Vilate had been sitting. Standing, his head was just about at the height her head was at when she was seated. And as he leaned over her chair, the salamander changed.
No, not really. No, the salamander disappeared. Instead, a woman was sitting in the chair across from him.
“You’re an evil little boy,” the woman said with a sad smile.
Arthur hardly even noticed what she said. Because he knew her. It was Old Peg Guester. The woman he called Mother. The woman who was buried under a certain stone marker on the hill behind the roadhouse, near his real mother, the runaway slave girl he never met. Old Peg was there.
But it wasn’t Old Peg. It was the salamander.
“And you imagine things, you nasty boy. You make up stories.”
Old Peg used to call him her “nasty boy,” but it was a tease. It was when he repeated something someone else had said. She would laugh and call him nasty boy and give him a hug and tell him not to repeat that remark to anyone.
But this woman, this pretend Old Peg, she meant it. She thought he was a nasty boy.
He moved away from the chair. The salamander was back on the table and Old Peg was gone. Arthur knelt by the table to look at the salamander at eye level. It stared into his eyes. Arthur stared back.
He used to do this for hours with animals in the forest. When he was very little, he understood them. He came away with their story in his mind. Gradually that ability faded. Now he caught only glimmers. But then, he didn’t spend as much time with animals anymore. Maybe if he tried hard enough...
“Don’t forget me, salamander,” he whispered. “I want to know your story. I want to know who taught you how to make them hexes on the table.”
He reached out a hand, then slowly let a single finger come to rest on the salamander’s head. It didn’t recoil from him; it didn’t move even when his finger made contact. It just looked at him.
“What are you doing indoors?” he whispered. “You don’t like it indo ors. You want to be outside. Near the water. In the mud. In the leaves. With bugs.”
It was the kind of thing Alvin did, murmuring to animals, suggesting things to them.
“I can take you back to the mud if you want. Come with me, if you want. Come with me, if you can.”
The salamander raised a foreleg, then slowly set it down. One step closer to Arthur.
And from the salamander he thought he felt a hunger, a desire for food, but more than that, a desire for... for freedom. The salamander didn’t like being a prisoner.
The door opened.
“Why, Arthur Stuart,” said Vilate. “Imagine you coming to visit.”
Arthur had sense enough not to jump to his feet as if he was doing something wrong. “Any letters for Alvin?” he asked.
“Not a one.”
Arthur didn’t even mention the salamander, which was just as well, because Vilate never even looked at it. You’d think that if a lady was caught with a live salamander—or even a dead one, for that matter—on her kitchen table, she’d at least offer some explanation.
“Want some tea?” she asked.
“Can’t stay,” said Arthur.
“Oh, next time then. Give Alvin my love.” Her smile was sweet and beautiful.
Arthur reached out his hand, right in front of her, and touched the salamander’s back.
She didn’t notice. Or at least she gave no sign of noticing.
He moved away, backed out of the room, hopped the counter, and ran out the front door, hearing the bell ring behind him as he went.
If the salamander was a prisoner, who had captured it? Not Vilate—the salamander was making hexes to fool her into seeing somebody there. Though Arthur was willing to bet that it wasn’t Old Peg Guester that Vilate saw. But the salamander wasn’t fooling her out of its own free will, because all it wanted was to be free to go back to being an ordinary salamander again.
He’d have to tell Alvin about this, that was sure. Vilate was planning to do something rotten to him, and the salamander that walked out hexes on the kitchen table, it had something to do with the plot.
How could Vilate be so stupid that she didn’t even see me touching her salamander? Why didn’t she get upset when she saw me in the kitchen when she got back from the privy?
Maybe she wanted me to see the salamander. Or maybe someone else wanted me to see it.
Wanted me to see Mother.
For a moment, walking along the dusty main street of Hatrack River, he lost control of himself, almost let himself cry thinking about Mother, thinking about seeing her sitting across from him. It wasn’t real, he told himself. It was all fakery. Humbug. Hoaxification. Whoever was behind all this was a liar, and a mean liar at that. Nasty boy indeed. Evil boy. He wasn’t no evil boy. He was a good boy and the real Peg Guester would know that, she wouldn’t say nothing like that to him. The real Peg Guester would hug him up tight and say, “My good boy, Arthur Stuart, you are my own good boy.”
He walked it off. He walked the tears right out of his eyes, and when the sad feelings went away, another feeling came in its place. He was plain mad. Got no right making him see Mama. Got no right. I hate you, whoever you are, making me see my Mama calling me names like that.
He trotted up the stairs into the courthouse. The only good thing about Alvin being in jail was that Arthur
Stuart always knew where he was.
It was hard for Napoleon to believe that he had once come this close to killing the American boy Calvin. Hard to remember how frightened he had been to see the boy’s power. How for the first few days, Napoleon had watched him closely, had hardly slept for fear that the boy would do something to him in the night. Remove his legs, for instance. That would be a cure for the gout! It only occurred to him because of the number of times he had wished, in the throes of agony, that in one of his battles a cannonball had severed his leg. Stumping around on sticks couldn’t be worse than this. And the boy brought such relief. Not a cure... but a cessation of the pain.
In exchange for that, Napoleon was content to let Calvin manipulate him. He knew who was really in control, and it wasn’t an upstart, ignorant American boy. Who cared if Calvin thought he was clever, doling out a day’s relief from pain in exchange for another lesson on how to govern men? Did he really imagine Napoleon would teach him anything that would give him the upper hand? On the contrary, with every hour, every day they spent together, Napoleon’s control over a boy who could have been uncontrollable grew stronger, deeper. And Calvin had no idea.
They never understood, none of them. They all thought they served Napoleon out of love and admiration, or out of greed and self-interest, or out of fear and discretion. Whatever motive drove them, Napoleon fed it, got control of it. Some were impelled by shame, and some by guilt; some by ambition, some by lust, some even by their excess of piety—for when the occasion demanded, Napoleon could convince some spiritually starved soul that he was God’s chosen servant on Earth. It wasn’t hard. None of it was hard, when you understood other people the way Napoleon did. They gave off their desires like sweat, like the smell of an athlete after the contest or a soldier after a battle, like the smell of a woman—Napoleon didn’t even have to think, he simply said the word, the exact words they needed to hear to win them to him.
And on those rare occasions when someone was immune to his words, when they had some sort of protective amulet or hex, each one more clever than the last—well, that’s what guards were for. That’s why there was a guillotine. The people knew that Napoleon was not a cruel man, that few indeed were ever punished under his rule. They knew that if a man was sent to the guillotine, it was because the world would be better off with that particular mouth detached from those lungs, with those hands unconnected to that head.
Calvin? Ah, the boy could have been dangerous. The boy had the power to save himself from the guillotine, to stop the blade from striking his neck. The boy might have been able to prevent anything that didn’t come as a complete surprise. How would the Emperor have defeated him? Perhaps a little opium to dull him; he had to sleep sometime. But it didn’t matter. No need to kill after all. Only a little study, a little patience, and Napoleon had him.
Not as his servant—no, this American boy was clever, he was watching for that, he was careful not to allow himself to succumb to any attempt by Napoleon to turn him into a slave, into one of those servants who looked at their Emperor with adoring eyes. Now and then Napoleon made a remark, a sort of feint, so Calvin would think he was fending off the Emperor’s best strokes. But in fact, Napoleon had no need for this boy’s loyalty. Just his healing touch.
This boy was driven by envy. Who would have guessed it? All that innate power, such gifts from God or Nature or whatever, and the boy was wasting it all because of envy for his older brother Alvin. Well, he wasn’t about to tell Calvin he had to stop letting those feelings control him! On the contrary, Napoleon fed them, subtly, with little queries now and then about how Alvin might have done this or that, or comments about how awful it was having to put up with younger brothers who simply haven’t the ability to measure up to one’s own ability. He knew how this would rankle, how it would fester in Calvin’s soul. A worm, twisting its way through the boy’s judgment, eating tunnels in it. I have you, I have you. Look across the ocean, your gaze fixed upon your brother; you might have challenged me for the empire here, for half the world, but instead all you can think about is some useless fellow in homespun or deerskin or whatever who can make polished stone with his bare hands and heal the sick.
Heal the sick. That’s the one that Napoleon was working on now. He knew perfectly well that Calvin was deliberately not healing him; he also knew that if Calvin ever got the idea that Napoleon was really in command, he’d probably flee and leave him with the gout again. So he had to keep a delicate balance: Taunt him because his brother could heal and he couldn’t; at the same time, convince him that he’d already learned all the Emperor had to teach, that it was just a matter of practice now before he was as good at controlling other men.
If it worked out well, the boy, filled with confidence that he had squeezed the last drop of knowledge from Napoleon’s mind, would finally show off that he was a match for his brother after all. He would heal the Emperor, then leave the court at once and sail back to America to challenge his brother—to attempt, using Napoleon’s teachings, to get control over him.
Of course, if he got there and nothing he learned from the Emperor worked—well, he’d be back for vengeance! But Napoleon really was teaching him. Enough to play on the weaknesses of weak men, the fears of fearful men, the ambitions of proud men, the ignorance of stupid men. What Calvin didn’t notice was that Napoleon wasn’t teaching him any of the truly difficult arts: how to turn the virtues of good men against them.
The most hilarious thing was that Calvin was surrounded by the very best men, the most difficult ones that Napoleon had won over. The Marquis de La Fayette, for instance—he was the servant who bathed the boy, just as he bathed the Emperor. It would never occur to Calvin that Napoleon would keep his most dangerous enemies near him, oblivious to how he humiliated them. If Calvin only understood, he would realize that this was real power. Evil men, weak men, fearful men—they were so easy to control. It was only when men of virtue fell under Napoleon’s control that he felt at last the confidence to reach for power, to unseat the king and take his place, to conquer Europe and impose his peace upon the warring nations.
Calvin never sees that, because he is himself a fearful and ambitious man, and does not realize that others might be fearless and generous. No wonder he resents his older brother so much! From what Calvin said of him, it seemed to Napoleon that Alvin would be a very difficult case indeed, a very hard one to break. In fact, knowing that Calvin’s brother existed was enough to cause Napoleon to hold off on his plan of building up his armies in Canada with an eye to conquering the three English-speaking nations of America. No reason to do anything to make Alvin Smith turn his eyes eastward. That was a contest Napoleon did not want to embark on.
Instead he would send Calvin home, armed with great skill at subversion, deception, corruption, and manipulation. He’d have no control over Alvin, of course, but he would surely be able to deceive him, for Napoleon well knew that just as evil, weak, and fearful people saw their own base motives in other people’s actions, so also the virtuous tended to assume the noblest of motives for other people’s acts; why else were so many awful liars so successful at bilking others? If good people weren’t so trusting of bad ones, the human race would have died out long ago—most women never would have let most men near them.
Let the brothers battle it out. If anyone can get rid of the threat of this Alvin Smith, it’s his own brother, who can get close to him—not me, with all my armies, with all my skill. Let them fight.
But not until my leg is healed.
“My dear Leon, you mustn’t drift off with the covers down like that.”
It was La Fayette, checking on him before sleep. Napoleon let the fellow pull his blanket up. It was a coolish night; it was good to have such tender concern from a loving man of great responsibility, dependability, creativity. I have in my hands the best of men, and under my thumb the worst of them. My record is much better than God’s. Clearly the old fellow chose the wrong son to make his only begotten. If I’d been in Jerusa
lem in the place of that dullard Jesus, I’d never have been crucified. I would have had Rome under my control in no time, and the whole world converted to my doctrine.
Maybe that’s what this Alvin was—God’s second try! Well, Napoleon would help with, the script. Napoleon would send Alvin Smith his Judas.
“You need your sleep, Leon,” said La Fayette.
“My mind is so full,” said Napoleon.
“Of happy things, I pray.”
“Happy indeed.”
“No pain in your leg? It’s good to have that American boy here, if he keeps you from that dreadful suffering.”
“I know that when I’m in pain I’m so difficult to live with,” said Napoleon.
“Not at all, never. Don’t even think it. It’s a joy to be with you.”
“Do you ever miss it, my Marquis? The armies, the power? Government, politics, intrigues?”
“Oh, Leon! How could I miss it? I have it all through you. I watch what you do and I marvel. I never could have done so well. I’m at school with you every day; you are the superb master.”
“Am I?”
“The master. The master of all is my dear Leon. How truly they named your house in Corsica, my dear. Buona Parte. Good parts. You are truly the lion of good parts.”
“How sweet of you to say so, my Marquis. Good night.”
“God bless you.”
The candle retreated from the room, and moonlight returned its dim light through the curtains.
I know you’re studying me, Calvin. Sending your doodling bug, as you so quaintly call it, into my legs, to find the cause of the gout. Figure it out. Be as smart as your brother about this one thing, so I can finally get rid of you and the pain both.
Verily had known debased men in his life; he had been offered large sums of money to defend one now and then, but his conscience was not for sale. He remembered one of them who, thinking that his minions had not been clear about just how much money he was offering, came to see Verily in person. When he finally realized that Verily was not simply holding out for a higher price, he looked quite hurt. “Really, Mr. Cooper, why isn’t my money as good as anyone else’s?”
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