Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V (18 page)

Her eyes were on fire and Balzac looked at her with rapt admiration. “I always thought I would experiment with evil, and imagine good because it was easier. Almost you convince me I should do it the other way around.”

Calvin was not so entranced. He knew that this little sermon was directed at him and he didn’t like it. “There’s no such secret that the good people know,” said Calvin. “They just pretend, to console themselves for having missed out on all the fun.”

Margaret smiled at him. “I took these ideas from your own thoughts of only a few minutes ago, Calvin. You know that what I’m saying is true.”

“I was thinking the opposite,” said Calvin.

“That’s what you
thought
you were thinking,” said Margaret. “But you wouldn’t have had to think such thoughts if that was what you really thought about it.”

Balzac laughed aloud, and Calvin joined him—albeit halfheartedly.

“Madame Smith, I could have labored all my days and never thought of a conversation in which someone was able to deliver such a sentence and have it mean anything at all. ‘That’s what you thought you were thinking.’ Delicious! ‘You would not think these thoughts if you really thought what you think you thought.’ Or was it ‘thought you think.’”

“Neither one,” said Margaret. “You are already preparing to misquote me.”

“I am not a journalist! I am a novelist, and I can improve any speech.”

“Improve this,” said Margaret. “You two play your foolish games—Calvin playing at being powerful, Monsieur de Balzac playing at being an artist—but around you here is real life. Real suffering. These Black people are as human as you and me, but they give up their heartfires and their names in order to endure the torment of belonging to other people who despise and fear them. If you can dwell in this city of evil and remain untouched by their suffering, then it is you who are the trivial, empty people. You are able to hold on to your names and heartfires because they aren’t worth stealing.”

With that she rose from the table and left the restaurant.

“Do you think we offended her?” asked Calvin.

“Perhaps,” said Balzac. “But that concerns me a great deal less than the fact that she did not pay.”

As he spoke, the waiter was already approaching them. “Do the gentlemen wish to pay in cash?”

“It was the lady who invited us,” said Balzac. “Did she forget to pay?”

“But she did pay,” said the waiter. “For her own meal. Before you sat down, she wrote us her check.”

Balzac looked at Calvin and burst out laughing. “You should see your face, Monsieur Calvin!”

“They can arrest us for this,” said Calvin.

“But they do not wish to arrest a French novelist,” said Balzac. “For I would return to France and write about their restaurant and declare it to be a house of flies and pestilence.”

The waiter looked at him coldly. “The French ambassador engages us to cater his parties,” he said. “I do not fear your threat.”

A few moments later, up to his arms in dishwater and slops, Calvin seethed in resentment. Of Margaret, of
course. Of Alvin, whose fault it was for marrying her. Of Balzac, too, for the cheerful way he bantered with the Black slaves who would otherwise have done all the kitchen work they were doing. Not that the Blacks bantered back. They hardly looked at him. But Calvin could see that they liked hearing him from the way more and more of them lingered in the room a little longer than their jobs required. While
he
was completely ignored, carrying buckets of table scraps out to be composted for the vegetable garden, emptying pails of dishwater, hauling full ones from the well to be heated. Heavy, sweaty labor, filth on his hands, grime on his face. He thought last night’s urine-soaked sleep was as low as he could get in his life, but now he was doing the work of slaves while slaves looked on; and even here, there was another man that they all liked better than him.

Calvin returned to the kitchen just as a Black man was carrying a stack of clean plates to put back on the shelves. The Black man had just a trace of a smile on his face from something Balzac had said, and it was just too much after all that had happened that night. Calvin got his bug inside the dishes and cracked them all, shattered them in his arms. Shards sprayed out everywhere.

The crashing sound immediately brought the White chef and the overseer, his short, thick rod already raised to beat the slave; but Balzac was already there, throwing himself between the slave and the rod. And it was, truly, a matter of throwing himself, for the slave and the overseer were both much taller than Balzac. He leapt up and fairly clung to the slave like a child playing pick-a-pack.

“No, monsieur, do not strike him, he was innocent. I carelessly bumped into him and dropped all the plates on the floor! I am the most miserable of men, to take a dinner I could not pay for and now I break all these plates. It is my back that deserves the blows!”

“I ain’t going to whip no White man like a buck,” said the overseer. “What do you think I am?”

“You are the arm of justice,” said Balzac, “and I am the heart of guilt.”

“Get these imbeciles out of my kitchen,” said the chef.

“But you are French!” cried Balzac.

“Of course I am French! Who would hire an English cook?”

Immediately Balzac and the chef burst into a torrent of French, some of which Calvin understood, but not enough to be worth trying to hear any more of it. Balzac had taken all the fun out of it, of course, and the slaves were looking at him—sidelong, lest they be caught staring at a White man—as if he were God himself come to lead them out of captivity. Even when Calvin was annoyed and tried to get even a little, it ended up making Balzac look good and Calvin look like nothing.

Lead them out of captivity. God himself. His own thought of a moment before echoed in his mind. Margaret says they’ve lost their names and their heartfires. She hates slavery and wants it done away. They need someone to get their souls back and lead them out of captivity.

Balzac can’t do that for them. What is he? A prawn of a Frenchman with ink on his fingers. But if I free the slaves, what will Alvin be then, compared with me?

For a moment he thought of striking the overseer dead and getting the slaves to run. But where would they run? No, what was needed was a general uprising. And without souls, the Blacks could hardly be expected to have the gumption for any kind of revolt.

So that was the first order of business. Finding souls and naming names.

Alvin didn’t exactly doze off while Arthur Stuart told the story of his life. But his mind did wander.

He couldn’t help hearing how Arthur Stuart’s voice didn’t change when he spoke. No one else would have remarked upon it, but Alvin still remembered how, when Arthur Stuart was younger, he could mimic other folks’ voices perfectly. No matter how high or low the voice, no matter what accent or speech impediment it had, no matter how whispery or booming it might be, it came easily from the boy’s mouth.

And then came the Slave Finders, with a sachet containing pieces of Arthur’s hair and body taken when he was first born. They had the knack of knowing when a person matched up with a sachet, and there was no hiding from them, they could smell like bloodhounds. So Alvin took the boy across the Hio River, and there on the Appalachee side he made a change in the deepest heart of the tiniest parts of Arthur’s body. Not a large
change, but it was enough that Arthur no longer matched up with his own sachet. Alvin took him down under the water to wash away the last traces of his old skin. And when he came up out of the water, Arthur was safe. But he had lost his knack for doing voices.

Ain’t that the way of it? thought Alvin. I try to help, and I take away as much as I give. Maybe that’s how God set up the world, so nobody could get no special advantages. You get a miracle and you lose something ordinary that you miss from then on. Some angel somewhere measures out the joy and misery, and whatever your portion, you get it no matter what you do.

Suddenly Alvin was filled with loneliness. Silly to feel that way, he knew, what with these good companions alongside him. But somewhere down south there was his wife who was also his teacher and his guardian, the bright pair of eyes that watched him from infancy on, even though she was scarcely more than a baby herself when she started. Margaret. And in her womb, the start of the next generation. Their firstborn daughter.

And, thinking of them, he began to seek for them. He wasn’t like Margaret, able to leap from heartfire to heartfire with a thought, able to see just by having the wish to see. He had to send his doodlebug out, fast, faster, racing across the map of America, down the coast, passing heartfires of every living thing, through fields and bright green forests, over rivers, across the wide Chesapeake. He knew the way and never got lost. Only in the city of Camelot itself did he have to search, looking for the paired heartfires that he knew so well, that he sought out every night.

Found. Mother and the tiny heartfire of their developing daughter. He could not see into heartfires the way Margaret could, but he could see into the body. He could tell when Margaret was speaking but had no notion what was said. He could hear the heartbeat, feel the breathing, tell if she was upset or calm, but he could not know why.

She was eating. She was tense, her muscles held rigid, her attitude wary. Two companions at dinner. One of them unfamiliar to him. The other...

What was Calvin doing across a table from Margaret?

At once Alvin did a closer check on his wife and baby. Nothing interfering with the baby in the womb—her heartbeat was regular, she showed no distress.

Of course not. Why should he even imagine that Calvin posed any threat to his family? Calvin might be a strange boy, plagued with jealousy and quick to wrath, but he wasn’t a monster. He didn’t hurt people, beyond hurting their feelings. No doubt his fear came from Margaret’s constant warnings about how Calvin was going to get him killed someday. If he posed any danger to Margaret or the baby, she’d know long beforehand and would take steps to stop him.

Calvin and Margaret dining together. That bore thinking about. He could hardly wait for Margaret to get some time alone and write to him.

Then he got to thinking about Margaret and how he missed her and what it might be like, the two of them settling down without feeling the weight of the world on their shoulders, spending their time raising children and working to make a living. No Unmaker to be watched for and fended off. No Crystal City to be built. No horrible war to be avoided. Just wife, children, husband, neighbors, and in time grandchildren and graveyards, joy and grief, the rising and falling floods and droughts of the river of life.

“You fall asleep, Alvin?” asked Verily.

“Was I snoring?” asked Alvin.

“Arthur finished his tale. Your life story. Weren’t you listening?”

“Heard it all before,” said Alvin. “Besides, I was there when it happened, and it wasn’t half so entertaining to live through as the tale Arthur makes of it.”

“The question is whether Miss Purity wants to be one of our company,” said Verily.

“Then why are you asking
me
?” said Alvin.

“I thought you might help us listen to her answer.”

Alvin looked at Purity, who blushed and looked away.

Arthur Stuart glared at Verily. “You accusing Miss Purity of lying?”

“I’m saying,” said Verily, “that if she believed your story, then she might fear the great power that Alvin has within him, and so she might give the answer that she thinks will keep her safe, instead of the answer that corresponds to her true inclinations.”

“And I’m supposed to know whether she’s telling the truth or not?” asked Alvin.

“Her heart isn’t made of wood,” said Verily, “so
I
can’t tell if it beats faster or slower when she answers.”

“She’s the one with the knack to tell what people feel,” said Alvin. “Margaret’s the one as sees into folks’ heartfire. Me, I just fiddle with stuff.”

“You are too modest,” said Purity, “if what your disciples say is true.”

That perked Alvin right up. “Disciples?”

“Isn’t that what you are? The master and his disciples, wandering about in the wilderness, hoping to recruit another.”

“To me it looks more like a lost man and his friends, who are willing to be lost with him till he finds what he’s looking for,” said Alvin.

“You don’t believe that,” said Purity.

“No,” said Alvin. “They’re my friends, but that’s not why they’re here. They’re fellow dreamers. They want to see the Crystal City as much as I do, and they’re willing to travel hundreds of miles to help me find it.”

Purity smiled faintly. “The Crystal City. The City of God. I wonder who it is you’ll end up hanging, since you can’t very well hang witches.”

“Don’t plan on hanging anybody,” said Alvin.

“Not even murderers?” said Purity.

Alvin shrugged. “They get themselves hung no matter where they go.”

“Once you have the gallows, you’ll find new reasons to hang people from it.”

“Why are you being so spiteful?” asked Verily. “New England hasn’t added a capital crime in the two hundred years since it was founded. And some former capital crimes haven’t led to the gallows in a century. You have no reason to think that a decent society will go mad with the power to kill.”