Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V (22 page)

Peaseman sighed. “Sir, do you have a plow like the one she describes?”

“You can search my sack,” Alvin answered. “In fact, I’d take it kindly if someone would carry it along, as it has my hammer and tongs, which is to say it holds my livelihood as a journeyman smith. It’s yonder on the far side of the fallen maple.”

One of the men went and hefted the bag.

“Open it!” cried Purity. “That’s the one the plow was in.”

“Ain’t no plow in that sack, gold or iron or bronze or tin,” said Alvin.

“He’s right,” said the man with the sack. “Just hammer and tongs. And a loaf of dry bread.”

“Takes an hour of soaking before it can be et,” said Alvin. “Sometimes I think my tongs might soften up faster than that old hardtack.”

The men laughed a little.

“And so the devil deceives you bit by bit,” said Purity.

“Let’s have no more of that talk,” said Peaseman. “We know you accuse him, so there’s no need to belabor it. There’s no plow in his sack and if he walks along peaceful, there’s no need to tie him.”

“And thus he leadeth them carefully down to hell,” said Purity.

Peaseman showed wrath for the first time, walking boldly to her and looking down at her from his looming height. “I say enough talk from you, miss, while we lead the prisoner back to Cambridge. Not one of us likes to hear you saying
we
are deceived by Satan.”

Purity wanted to open her mouth and berate all the men for letting this slick-talking “country bumpkin” win them over despite her having named him for a servant of hell. But she finally realized that she could not possibly persuade them, for Alvin would simply continue to act innocent and calm, making her look crazier and crazier the angrier she got.

“I’ll stay and search for the plow,” she said.

“No, miss, I’d be glad if you’d come along with us now,” said Peaseman.

“Someone needs to look for it,” she said. “His confederates are no doubt skulking nearby, waiting to retrieve it.”

“All the more reason that I won’t let you stay behind alone,” said Peaseman. “Come along now, miss. I speak by the authority of the village now, and not just by courteous request.”

This had an ominous ring to it. “Are you arresting
me
?” she asked, incredulous.

Peaseman rolled his eyes. “Miss, all I’m doing is asking you to let me do my work in the manner the law says I should. By law and common sense I can’t leave you here exposed to danger, and with a prisoner who can’t be tied I need to keep these men with me.” Peaseman looked to two of his men. “Give the young lady your arms, gentlemen.”

With exaggerated courtesy, two of the men held their arms to her. Purity realized that she had little choice now. “I’ll walk of myself, please, and I’ll hold my tongue.”

Peaseman shook his head. “That was what I asked
many minutes and several long speeches ago. Now I ask you to take their arms and argue no further, or the next step will not be so liberal.”

She hooked her hands through the crooks of their elbows and miserably walked along in silence, while Alvin talked cheerily about the weather, walking freely ahead of her on the path. The men laughed several times at his wit and his stories, and with every step she tasted the bitterness of gall. Am I the only one who knows the devil wears a friendly face? Am I the only one who sees through this witch?

“What is it that you think you’re looking for?” asked Honoré. They had spent the heat of the day on the docks and were dripping with sweat. It was getting on toward evening without a sign of relief from the heat.

“Souls,” said Calvin. “In particular, the theft of souls.”

They stood in the scant shade of a stack of empty crates, watching as a newly arrived ship was moored to the dock. Honoré sounded testy. “
If
the transaction I saw on the docks has something to do with missing heartfires—which are
not
souls as the priests describe them—then it was not theft at all. The dolls were freely given.”

“Sometimes theft doesn’t look like theft. What if they think they’re lending them, but they can’t get them back? What about that?”

“And what if you are getting us in the path of something dangerous? Did you think of
that
?”

Calvin grinned. “We can’t get hurt.”

“That statement is so obviously false that it is not worth answering,” said Honoré.

“I don’t think you understand what I can do,” said Calvin.

A gangplank was run up from the dock to a gap in the ship’s gunwale.

“These are a filthy-looking crew, don’t you think? Portuguese, perhaps?”

“If I decide you and I aren’t going to get hurt, we won’t,” said Calvin.

“Oh, so you can read minds like your sister-in-law?”

“Don’t have to read minds when you can melt the knife right out of a man’s hand.”

“But Monsieur le Genius, not all knives are seen in advance.”

“I see ’em.”

“Nothing ever surprises you?”

Before Calvin could get farther than the first sound of the word
nothing
, Honoré slapped him on the back of the head. Calvin staggered forward and whirled around, holding his neck. “What the hell do you think that proved!”

“It proved that you
can
be harmed.”

“No, it proved you can’t be trusted.”

“You see my point?” said Honoré. “It is when you feel safe that you are most vulnerable. And since you are stupid enough to feel safe all the time, then you are vulnerable all the time.”

Calvin’s eyes became narrow slits. “I didn’t feel safe all the time. I felt safe with
you
.”

“But lately we have been together all the time.” Honoré grinned again. “You
are
safe from me. I am not the proud owner of any useful knack and I carry no weapon and I am too busy studying humanity to bother harming any individual human. But being safe
from
me does not mean you are safe
with
me.”

“Don’t lecture me, you French fart.”

“You praise me too much. Garlic, wine, onion soup,
rich cheese, these combine to make the fart française the best of all possible farts. Voltaire said so.”

Calvin didn’t laugh. “Look,” he said. “Look at that slave. Got nothing to do.”

“You have a sharp eye. He is waiting.”

“Is he your man?”

“I observe what men
do
. I do not pretend to be able to tell whether two Black men, one seen from behind, the other from the face, both from a distance, and their clothes identical to the costume of half the slaves in Camelot, are in fact the same man.”

“You saying it’s him?”

Honoré sighed. “I say I cannot tell.”

“Then just say it. Don’t get into those damned fancy orations.”

Honoré ignored him. Staggering and squinting, their backs bent, their eyes searching, the first Blacks were appearing on the deck. “It
is
a slave ship.”

“Well we knew that,” said Calvin.

“We ‘knew’ it about three other ships today that had no slaves aboard.”

“We knew this was a slave ship because look at the White men on the deck with padded sticks. They wouldn’t need those to load crates.”

“If only I were as clever as you,” said Honoré.

The Black they had been looking at before, who might or might not be the one Honoré had seen taking puppets, came forward with two buckets of water and a basket. His head down, so as not to look any of the White dock-workers in the eye, he said something to the dock foreman, who waved him over to the foot of the gangplank.

“No, you dumb buck!” The foreman’s voice carried clear over to where Calvin and Honoré were waiting. “Wait back there! If you start backing them up on the gangplank then they crowd each other right off into the water! Stupid, stupid, stupid.” By the time he was through with his list of stupids, the Black man with the
buckets had bowed and ducked his head long enough to get to the indicated waiting place.

“He knew,” said Honoré.

“What did he know?”

“He knew where to stand,” said Honoré. “He was already walking there before the man pointed.”

“Why would he get the foreman angry?”

“He got the foreman to think he was stupid,” said Honoré.

“The foreman started out thinking he was stupid. They think
all
Black people are stupid.”

“Do they?” said Honoré. “They think some are more stupid than others.”

The first slaves, hobbled and joined by ankle chains, staggered and clanked down the gangplank, then headed straight for the water. There was a great deal of spilling and quiet cursing from the waterboy. Calvin used his doodlebug to get a closer view. Sure enough, each slave was handing over some small item, made of scraps of cloth and splinters of wood and bits of iron.

“He’s our man,” said Calvin. “But what made you think those were dolls they were handing over?” asked Calvin.

“I got a good look at only one. It was larger than the others. It was a doll.”

“Well the others aren’t.”

“But they are something, am I right?”

“Oh, they’re something all right. Wish I could ask them what it is. How they get powers into those things.”

“What
are
they, if they aren’t dolls?”

“They’re nothing. I mean they don’t look like anything. Knotted cloth, strings, threads, iron, wood, bits of this and that. No two alike.”

“Ah, for the knack of your brother’s wife.”

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

“But is it not ironic that we spend all day watching and waiting, and now that we have found this man, we
still have no idea what he’s doing, but
she
already knows?”

“What makes you think she knows anything?” demanded Calvin.

“Because she can see into that man’s heartfire. She has watched us all day, and the moment we saw
him
, she could hop over and look inside him and know it all.”

“Damn,” said Calvin, looking at Honoré with annoyance. “Don’t go telling me you can
feel
when she’s looking at you?”

“I didn’t have to
feel
anything,” said Honoré. “I knew she would because she was curious. She would see in our heartfires that we were going to search for this man, so she would watch us. Obvious.”

“To you.”

“Of course to me. I am the world’s leading authority on the behavior of human beings.”

“In your opinion.”

“But you see, I am the kind of man who always thinks he is the best in the world at whatever he does. So are you. It is one of the ways we are alike.”

Calvin grinned. “Damn right.”

“The difference between us is that I am correct in that opinion.”

Calvin’s eyes squinted again. “Someday I’m not’ going to pretend I think you’re joking when you say things like that.”

“What will you do to punish me, make me wake up under a hedge with a terrible headache and my clothing covered with urine?”

The women were coming down now, naked to the waist and roped, not chained together, though the ropes had chafed their wrists and ankles enough to draw blood.

“Your brother’s wife already knows the name of this bringer of water, and where he lives, and what he had for breakfast,” said Honoré.

“Yeah, well, we’ll know soon enough.”

“Do you think he won’t notice two White men following him?”

Calvin grinned wickedly. “Like I said,
I
can do everything that needs doing. I can follow him without him seeing us or knowing he was followed.”

“Using your doodoobug?”

“Doodlebug.”

“But you do not know all the hidden powers this Black man might have. How do you know he won’t catch your doodlebug and hold it captive?”

Calvin started to scoff at this idea, but then grew solemn. “You know, I’d be a fool to think he’s not dangerous just cause he acts dumb around the foreman.”

“You are learning to be suspicious! I am proud of you!”

“But my doodlebug doesn’t have to ride inside him or anything like that.”

“Good,” said Honoré. But he could see that Calvin was worried now.

Every single one of the newly arrived slaves had something to give the man. The women were not as trusting as the men. They didn’t have them in their hands or the scant clothing they wore—they spat these things from their mouths into the dipper. “Some of them have two,” said Calvin. “Two thingamajigs.” When there was something in the dipper, the waterboy always put it into the right-hand bucket. He was building up quite a collection in there.

Last in line were a dozen or so good-sized children, looking far more terrified and weak than the adults. None of them had anything for the waterboy.

“The women who had two,” said Honoré.

“Yes,” said Calvin. “For the children.”

In the midst of serving them, the waterboy clumsily knocked over the right-hand bucket, spilling water over the hot boards of the dock. He served the rest of the children from the other one. When the last was served, they saw why he had spilled the important pail, for one
of the sailors snatched up the bucket that still had water and dashed it onto the back of the last child. This was uproariously funny to the White stevedores. While they laughed, the waterboy knelt, scooped everything out of the other bucket, and tucked it into the small basket he carried.