Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V (15 page)

He stopped.

“The City,” he finally said.

“Why not say it?” said Purity. “The City of God.”

Cooper and Smith looked at each other, and Purity could see that both of them were filled with the pleasure of having understood something. “See?” said Cooper.

“We’ve already learned something, just by having Miss Purity with us.”

“What did you learn?” demanded Arthur Stuart.

“That maybe the Crystal City has another name,” said Smith.

“Crystal City?” asked Miss Purity.

Cooper looked at Smith for permission. Alvin glanced at each of them in turn, until at last his gaze lingered on Purity herself. “If you think she’s all right,” said Alvin.

“I know she is,” said Cooper.

“Got a couple of minutes?” Alvin asked Purity.

“More like a couple of hours,” said Mike Fink.

“Maybe while you talk and talk I bath in the river,” said Audubon.

“I’ll keep watch,” said Fink. “I fell in enough rivers in my time without getting nekkid to do it on purpose.”

Soon Purity, Smith, Cooper, and Arthur Stuart were sitting in the tall soft grass on the riverbank. “I got a story to tell you,” said Alvin. “About who we are and what we’re doing here. And then you can decide what you want to do about it.”

“Let me tell it,” demanded Arthur Stuart.

“You?” asked Alvin.

“You always mix it up and tell it back end to.”

“What do you mean, ‘always’? I hardly tell this story to anybody.”

“You ain’t no Taleswapper, Alvin,” said Arthur Stuart.

“And you are?”

“At least I can tell it front to back instead of always adding in stuff I forgot to tell in the proper place.”

Alvin laughed. “All right, Arthur Stuart,
you
tell the story of my life, since you know it better than I do.”

“It ain’t the story of your life anyway,” said Arthur Stuart. “Cause it starts with Little Peggy.”

“‘Little’ Peggy?” asked Alvin.

“That’s what her name was
then
,” said Arthur.

“Go ahead,” said Alvin.

Arthur Stuart looked to the others. Cooper and Purity both nodded. At once Arthur Stuart bounded to his feet and walked a couple of paces away. Then he came back and stood before them, his back to the water, and with boats sailing along behind him, and the summer sun beating down on him while his listeners sat in the shade, he put his hands behind his back and closed his eyes and began to talk.

Margaret did not waste time worrying about when—or if—her promised audience with the Queen might happen. Many of the futures she found in other people’s heartfires led to such a meeting, and many more did not, and in neither case did she see such an audience leading to the prevention of the bloody war she dreaded.

In the meantime, there were plenty of other activities to fill her time. For she was finding that Camelot was a much more complicated place than she had expected.

During her childhood in the North she had learned to think of slavery as an all-or-nothing proposition, and in most ways it was. There was no way to half-permit it or half-practice it. Either you could be bought and sold by another human being or you couldn’t. Either you could be compelled to labor for another man’s profit under threat of death or injury, or you couldn’t.

But there were cracks in the armor, all the same. Slave owners were not untouched by the normal human impulses.
Despite the most stringent rules against it, some Whites did become quite affectionate in their feelings toward loyal Blacks. It was against the law to free a slave, and yet the Ashworths weren’t the only Whites to free some of their slaves and then employ them—and not all those manumitted were as old as Doe. It might be impossible to attack the institution of slavery in the press or in public meetings, but that did not mean that quiet reforms could not take place.

She was writing about this in a letter to Alvin when someone knocked softly at her door.

“Come in?”

It was Fishy. Wordlessly she entered and handed Margaret a calling card, then left almost before the words “Thank you, Fishy” were out of Margaret’s mouth. The card was from a haberdasher in Philadelphia, which puzzled her for a moment, until she thought to turn it over to reveal a message scrawled in a careless childish hand:

Dear Sister-in-law Margaret,

I heard you was in town. Dinner? Meet me downstairs at four
.

Calvin Miller

She had not thought to check his heartfire in many days, being caught up in her exploration of Camelot society. Of course she looked for him at once, his distinctive heartfire almost leaping out to her from the forest of flames in the city around her. She never enjoyed looking into his heartfire because of all the malice that was constantly harbored there. Her visits were brief and she did not look deep. Even so, she immediately knew about his liaison with Lady Ashworth, which disgusted her, despite her long experience with all the sins and foibles known to humankind. To use his knack to provoke the woman’s lust—how was that distinguishable from rape? True, Lady Ashworth could have shouted for her slaves to cast him from the house—the one circumstance in
which slaves were permitted to handle a White man roughly—but Lady Ashworth was a woman unaccustomed to feeling much in the way of sexual desire, and like a child in the first rush of puberty she had no strategies for resistance. Where the patterns of society kept girls and boys from being alone together during that chaotic time, preventing them from disastrous lapses in self-control, Lady Ashworth, as an adult of high station, had no such protection. Her wealth bought her privacy and opportunity without giving her any particular help in resisting temptation.

The thought crossed Margaret’s mind: It might be useful to know of Lady Ashworth’s adultery.

Then, ashamed, she rejected the thought of holding the woman’s sin against her. Margaret had known of other people’s sins all her life—and had also seen the terrible futures that would result if she told what she knew. If God had given her this intense knack, it was certainly not so that she could spread misery.

And yet... if there was some way that her knowledge of Calvin’s seduction of Lady Ashworth might help prevent the war...

How bitter it was that the most guilty party, Calvin, was untouchable by shame, and therefore could not have his adultery used against him, unless Lord Ashworth was a champion dueler (and even then, Margaret suspected that in a duel with Calvin, Lord Ashworth would find that his pistol would not fire and his sword would break right off). But that was the way of the world—seducers and rapists rarely bore the consequences of their acts, or at least not as heavily as the seduced and the broken-spirited.

Dinner would be at four o’clock. Only a couple of hours away. Fishy had not waited for a return message, and in all likelihood Calvin wasn’t waiting either. Either she would meet him or she would not—and indeed, his heartfire showed him unconcerned. It was only a whim for him to meet her. His purpose was as much to find
out who she was as to cling to her skirts in order to get in to see the King.

And even the wish to meet King Arthur contained no plan. Calvin knew Napoleon—this exiled king would not impress him. For a moment Margaret wondered if Calvin planned to kill King Arthur the way he had murdered—or, as Calvin thought of it,
executed
—William Henry Harrison. But no. His heartfire showed no such path in his future, and no such desire in his heart at present.

But that was the problem with Calvin’s heartfire. It kept changing from day to day, hour to hour. Most people, limited as they were by the circumstances of their lives, had few real choices, and so their heartfires showed futures that followed only a handful of probable paths. Even powerful people, like her husband Alvin, whose powers gave him countless opportunities, still had their futures sorted into a wider but still countable number because their character was predictable, their choices consistent.

Calvin, on the contrary, was whim-driven to a remarkable extent. His attachment to this French intellectual had shaped his life lately, because Balzac had a firm character, but once Calvin’s futures diverged from Balzac’s, they immediately branched and rebranched and forked and sprayed into thousands, millions of futures, none more likely than the others. Margaret could not possibly follow them all and see where they led.

It was in Alvin’s heartfire, not Calvin’s, that she had seen Alvin’s death caused by Calvin’s machinations. No doubt if she followed every one of the billion paths of Calvin’s future she would find almost as many different ways for Calvin to achieve that end. Hatred and envy and love and admiration for Alvin were the one consistency in Calvin’s inconstant heart. That he wished harm for Alvin and would eventually bring it to pass could not be doubted; nor could Margaret find any likely, way to prevent it.

Short of killing him.

What is happening to me? she wondered. First I think of extortion by threatening to expose Lady Ashworth’s sin, and now I actually think of murdering my husband’s brother. Is the mere exposure to Calvin a temptation? Does his heartfire influence mine?

Wouldn’t that be nice, to be able to blame Calvin for my own failings?

One thing Margaret was sure of: The seeds of all sins were in all people. If it were not so, how would it be virtue when they refrained from acting on those impulses? She did not need Calvin to teach her to think of evil. She only needed to be frustrated at her inability to change events, at her helplessness to save her husband from a doom that she so clearly saw and that Alvin himself seemed not to care about. The desire to force others to bend or break to her will was always there, usually hidden deeply enough that she could forget she had that wish within her, but occasionally surfacing to dangle the ripe fruit of power just out of her reach. She knew, as few others did, that the power to coerce depended entirely on the fear or weakness of other human beings. It was possible to use coercion, yes, but in the end you found yourself surrounded only by the weak and fearful, with all those of courage and strength arrayed against you. And many of your strong, brave enemies would match you in evil, too. The more you coerced others, the sooner you would bring yourself to the moment of your doom.

It would even happen to Napoleon. Margaret had seen it, for she had examined his hot black heartfire several times when she was checking on Calvin during his stay in France. She saw the battlefield. She saw the enemies arrayed against him. No coercion, not even fueled by Napoleon’s seemingly irresistible knack, could build a structure that would last. Only when a leader gathered willing followers who shared his goals could the things he created continue after his death. Alexander proved
that when his empire collapsed in fragments after his death; Charlemagne did little better, and Attila did worse—
his
empire evaporated upon his death. The empire of the Romans, on the other hand, was built by consensus and lasted two thousand years; Mohammed’s empire kept growing after his death and became a civilization. Napoleon’s France was no Rome, and Napoleon was no Mohammed.

But at least Napoleon was trying to create something. Calvin had no intention of building anything. To make things was his inborn knack, but the desire to build was foreign to his nature; the persistence to build was contrary to his temperament. He was weak himself, and fearful. He could not bear scorn; he feared shame more than death. This made him think he was brave. Many people made that mistake about themselves. Because they could stand up to the prospect of physical pain or even death, they thought they had courage—only to discover that the threat of shame made them comply with any foolish command or surrender any treasure, no matter how dear.

Calvin, what can I do with you? Is there no way to kindle true manhood in your fragile, foolish heart? Surely it’s not too late, even for you. Surely in some of the million divergent paths of your heartfire there is one, at least, in which you find the courage to admit Alvin’s greatness without fearing that others will then scorn you for being weaker. Surely there’s a moment when you choose to love goodness for its own sake, and cease to care about what others think of you.

Surely, in any heap of straw, there is one strand which, if planted and tended, watered and nurtured, will live and grow.

Honoré de Balzac trotted along behind Calvin, growing more annoyed by the moment. “Slow down, girder-legs, you will wear me down to a stub trying to keep up with you.”

“You always walk so slow,” said Calvin. “Sometimes I got to stride out or my legs get jumpy.”

“If your legs are jumpy then jump.” But the argument was over—Calvin was walking more slowly now. “This sister-in-law of yours, what makes you think she’ll pay for dinner?”

“I told you, she’s a torch. The Napoleon of torches. She’ll know before she comes downstairs to meet us that I don’t have a dime. Or a shilling. Whatever they call it here.”

“So she’ll turn around and go back upstairs.”

“No,” said Calvin. “She’ll want to meet me.”

“But Calvin, my friend, if she is a torch then she must know what is in your heart. Who could want to meet you then?”

Calvin rounded on him, his face a mask of anger. “What do you mean by that?”