Alvin Journeyman

Chapter 15 -- Love

Verily Cooper, doing his best to hide his astonishment, turned languidly to, look at Alvin. Then he raised an eyebrow.

Alvin looked vaguely sad. "It's true she's pregnant," he whispered. "But it ain't true I'm the father."

"Why didn't you tell me if you knew?" Verily whispered.

"I didn't know till she said it. Then I looked and yes, there's a baby growing in her womb. About the size of a nib. No more than three weeks along."

Verily nodded. Alvin had been in jail for the past month, and traveling far from Vigor Church for several months before that. The question was whether he could get the girl to admit under cross-examination that she was barely a month along in her pregnancy.

In the meantime, Daniel Webster had gone on, eliciting from Amy a lurid account of Alvin's seduction of her. No doubt about it, the girl told a convincing story, complete with all kinds of details that made it sound true. It seemed to Verily that the girl wasn't lying, or if she was, she believed her own lies. For a few moments he had doubts about Alvin. Could he have done this? The girl was pretty and desirable, and from the way she talked, she was certainly willing. Just because Alvin was a Maker didn't mean he wasn't a man all the same.

He quickly shook off such thoughts. Alvin Smith was a man with self-control, that was the truth. And he had honor. If he really did such things with this child, he'd certainly marry her and not leave her to face the consequences alone.

It was a measure of how dangerous the girl's testimony was, if she could get Alvin's own attorney to doubt him.

"And then he left you," said Daniel Webster.

Verily thought of objecting, but figured there was no point.

"It was my own fault, I know," said Amy, breaking down again into pathetic tears. "I shouldn't have told my best friend Ramona about Alvin and me, because she mouthed it around to everybody and they didn't understand about our true love and so of course my Alvin had to leave because he has great works to do in the world, he can't be tied down to Vigor Church just now. I didn't want to come here and testify! I want him to be free to do whatever he needs to do! And if my baby grows up without a pa, at least I can tell my child that she comes of noble blood, with Makery as her heritage!"

Oh, that was a nice touch, making her the suffering saint who is content that "her" Alvin is a lying seducing deceiving abandoning bastard-making cradle-robber, because she loves him so.

It was time for cross-examination. This had to proceed delicately indeed. Verily couldn't give a single hint that he believed her; at the same time, he didn't dare to be seen to attack her, because the jury's sympathy was all with the girl right now. The seeds of doubt had to be planted gently.

"I'm sorry you had to come all the way down here. It must be a hard journey for a young lady in your delicate condition."

"Oh, I'm doing all right. I just puke once in the morning and then I'm fine for the rest of the day."

The jury laughed. A friendly, sympathetic, believing laugh. Heaven help me, thought Verily.

"How long have you known you were going to have a baby?"

"A long time," she said.

Verily raised an eyebrow. "Now, that's a pretty vague answer. But before you hear my next question, I just want you to remember that we can bring your mother and father down here if need be, to establish the exact time this pregnancy began."

"Well I didn't tell them till just a few days ago," said Amy. "But I've been pregnant for—"

Verily raised his hand to silence her, and shook his head. "Be careful, Miss Sump. If you think for just a minute, you'll realize that your mother certainly knows and your father probably knows that you couldn't possibly have been pregnant for more than a few weeks."

Amy looked at him in a puzzled way for a long moment. Then dawning realization came across her face. She finally realized:, Her mother would know, from washing rags, when she last menstruated. And it wasn't months and months ago.

"Like I was going to say all along, I got pregnant in the last month. Sometime in the last month."

"And you're sure that Alvin is the father?"

She nodded. But she was no fool. Verily knew she was doing the math in her head. She obviously had counted on being able to lie and say she'd been pregnant for months, since before Alvin left Vigor; when the baby was born she could say it had taken so long because it was a Maker's child, or some such nonsense. But now she had to have a better lie.

Or else she'd been planning this lie all along. That, too, was possible.

"Of course he is," she said. "He comes to me in the night even now. He's really excited about the baby."

"What do you, mean by ‘even now'?" asked Verily. "You know that he's in jail."

"Oh, posh," said Amy. "What's a jail to a man like him?"

Once again, Verily realized that he'd been playing into Webster's hands. Everybody knew Alvin had hidden powers. They knew he worked in stone and iron. They knew he could get out of that jail whenever he wanted.

"Your Honor," said Verily, "I reserve the right to recall this witness for further cross-examination."

"I object," said Daniel Webster. "If he recalls Miss Sump then she's his witness, it won't be cross-examination, and she's not a hostile witness."

"I need to lay the groundwork for further questioning," said Verily.

"Lay all you want," said the judge. "You'll have some leeway, but it won't be cross. The witness may step down, but don't leave Hatrack River, please."

Webster stood again. "Your Honor, I have a few questions on redirect."

"Oh, of course. Miss Sump, I beg your pardon. Please remain seated and remember you're still under oath."

Webster leaned back in his chair. "Miss Sump, you say that Alvin comes to you in the night. How does he do that?"

"He slips out of his cell and right through the walls of the jail and then he runs like a Red man, all caught up in... in... Redsong, so he reaches Vigor Church in a single hour and he ain't even tired. No, he is not tired!" She giggled.

Redsong. Verily had had enough conversation with Alvin by now to know that it was greensong, and if he'd really had any intimacy with this girl she'd know that. She was remembering things she'd heard from his lessons months and months ago in Vigor Church, when she went to class with people trying to learn to be Makers. That's all this was—the imaginings of a young girl combined with scraps of things she learned about Alvin. But it might take the golden plow away from him, and perhaps more important, it might send him to jail and destroy his reputation forever. This was not an innocent fib, and for all her pretense at loving Alvin, she knew exactly what she was doing to him.

"Does he come to you every night?"

"Oh, he can't do that. Just a couple of times a week."

Webster was done with her, but now Verily had a couple more questions. "Miss Sump, where does Alvin visit you?"

"In Vigor Church."

"You're only a girl, Miss Sump, and you live with your parents. Presumably you are supervised by them. So my question is quite specific—where are you when Alvin visits you?"

She was momentarily flustered. "Different places."

"Your parents let you go about unchaperoned?"

"No, I mean—we always start out at home. Late at night. Everybody's asleep."

"Do you have a room of your own?"

"Well, no. My sisters sleep in the same room with me."

"So where do you meet Alvin?"

"In the woods."

"So you deceive your parents and sneak into the woods at night?"

The word deceive was a red flag to her. "I don't deceive nobody!" she said, with some heat.

"So they know you're going to the woods alone to meet Alvin."

"No. I mean—I know they'd stop me, and it's true love between us, so I don't sneak out, because Papa bars the door and he'd hear me so I—at the county fair I was able to slip away and—"

"The county fair was in broad daylight, not at night," said Verily, hoping he was right.

"Argumentative!" shouted Webster. But his interruption served not to help the girl but fluster her more.

"If this happens a couple of times a week, Miss Sump, you surely don't depend on the county fair to provide you with opportunities, do you?" asked Verily.

"No, that was just the once, just the one time. The other times..."

Verily waited, refusing to ease her path by filling her long silence with words. Let the jury see her making things up as she went along.

"He comes into my room, all silent. Right through the walls. And then he takes me out the same way, silent, through the walls. And then we run with the Redsong to the place where he gives me his love by moonlight."

"It must be an amazing experience," said Verily. "For have your lover appear at your bedside and raise you up and carry you through the walls and take you silently across miles and miles in an instant to an idyllic spot where you have passionate embraces by moonlight. You're in your nightclothes. Doesn't it get cold?"

"Sometimes, but he can make the air warm around me."

"And what about moonless nights? How do you see?"

"He... makes it light. We can always see."

"A lover who can do the most miraculous things. It sounds quite romantic, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes, it is, very very romantic," said Amy.

"Like a dream," said Verily.

"Yes, like a dream."

"I object!" cried Webster. "The witness is a child and doesn't realize the way the defense attorney can misconstrue her innocent simile!"

Amy was quite confused now.

"What did I say?" she asked.

"Let me ask it very clearly," said Verily Cooper. "Miss Sump, isn't it possible that your memories of Alvin come from a dream? That you dreamed all this, being in love with a strong and fascinating young man who was too old even to notice you?"

Now she understood why Webster had objected, and she got a cold look in her eye. She knows, thought Verily. She knows she's lying, she's not deceived, she knows exactly what she's doing and hates me for tripping her up, even a little. "My baby ain't no dream, sir," she said. "I never heard of no dream as gives a girl a baby."

"No, I've never heard of such a dream, either," said Verily. "Oh, by the way, how long ago was the county fair?"

"Three weeks ago," she said.

"You went with your family?"

Webster interrupted, demanding to know the relevance.

"She gave the county fair as a specific instance of meeting Alvin," explained Verily, when the judge asked. The judge told him to proceed. "Miss Sump," said Verily, "tell me how you got off by yourself to meet Alvin at the fair. Had you already arranged to meet him there?"

"No, it was—he just showed up there."

"In broad daylight. And no one recognized him?"

"Nobody saw him but me. That's a fact. That's—it's a thing he can do."

"Yes, we're beginning to realize that when it comes to spending time with you, Alvin Smith can and will do the most amazing, miraculous things," said Verily.

Webster objected, Verily apologized, and they went on. But Verily suspected that he was on a good track here. The way Amy made her story so believable was by adding detail. When it came to the events that didn't happen, the details were all dreamy and beautiful—but she wasn't just making them up, it was clear she had really had such dreams, or at least daydreams. She was speaking from memory.

But there must be another memory in her mind—the memory of her time with the man who was the true father of the child she carried. And Verily's hunch was that her mention of the county fair, which didn't fit in at all with the pattern she had established for her nighttime assignations with Alvin, was tied in with that real encounter. If he could get her drawing on memory with this one...

"So only you could see him. I imagine that you went off with him? May I ask you where?"

"Under the flap of the freak show tent. Behind the fat lady."

"Behind the fat lady," said Verily. "A private place. But... why there? Why didn't Alvin whisk you away into the forest? To some secluded meadow by a crystal stream? I can't imagine it was very comfortable for you—in the straw, perhaps, or on the hard ground, in the dark."

"That's just the way Alvin wanted it," she said. "I don't know why."

"And how long did you spend there behind the fat lady?"

"About five minutes."

Verily raised an eyebrow. "Why so hasty?" Then, before Webster could object, he plunged into his next question. "So Alvin escaped from the Hatrack County jail in broad daylight, journeyed all the way to Vigor Church on the far side of the state of Wobbish from here, in order to spend five minutes with you behind the fat lady?"

Webster spoke up again. "How can this young girl be expected to know the defendant's motivations for whatever bizarre acts he performs?"

"Was that an objection?" asked the judge.

"It doesn't matter," said Verily. "I'm through with her for now." And this time he let a little contempt into his voice. Let the jury see that he no longer had any regard for this girl. He hadn't destroyed her testimony, but he had laid the groundwork for doubt.

It was three in the afternoon. The judge adjourned them for the day.

Alvin and Verily had supper in his cell that night, conferring over what was likely to happen the next day, and what had to happen in order to acquit him. "They actually haven't proved anything about Makepeace," said Verily. "All they're doing is proving you're a liar in general, and then hoping the jury will think this removes all reasonable doubt about you and the plow. The worst thing is that every step of the way, Webster and Laws have played me like a harp. They set me up, I introduced an idea they were hoping I'd bring up in my cross-examifiation, and presto! There's the groundwork for the next irrelevant, character-damaging witness."

"So they know the legal tricks in American courts better than you do," said Alvin. "You know the law. You know how things fit together."

"Don't you see, Alvin? Webster doesn't care whether you're convicted or not—what he loves is the stories the newspapers are writing about this trial. Besmirching your reputation. You'll never recover from that."

"I don't know about never," said Alvin.

"Stories like this don't disappear. Even if we manage to find the man who impregnated her—"

"I know who it was," said Alvin.

"What? How could you—"

"Matt Thatcher. He's a couple of years younger than me, but all us boys knew him in Vigor. He was always a rapscallion of the first stripe, and when I was back there this past year he was always full of brag about how no girl could resist him. Every now and then some fellow'd have to beat him up cause of something he said about the fellow's sister. But after last year's county fair, he was talking about how he drove his tent spike into five different girls, in the freak show tent behind the fat lady."

"But that was more than a year ago."

"A boy like Matt Thatcher don't got much imagination, Verily. If he found himself a spot that worked once, he'll be back there. For what it's worth, though, he never did name any of the girls he supposedly got last year, so we all figured he just found the spot and wished he could get himself some girl to go with him there. I just figure that this year he finally succeeded."

Verily leaned back on his stool, sipping his mug of warm cider. "The thing that puzzles me is, Webster must have found Amy Sump when he visited in Vigor Church long before I got there. Before the county fair, too. She must not have been pregnant when he found her."

Alvin smiled and nodded. "I can just imagine him telling Amy's parents, ‘Well it's a good thing she's not with child. Though if she were, I dare say Alvin's wandering days would be over.' And she listens and goes and gets herself pregnant with the most willing but stupid boy in the county."

Verily laughed. "You imitate his voice quite well, sir!"

"Oh, I'm nothing at imitations. I wish you could have heard Arthur Stuart back in the old days. Before..."

"Before?"

"Before I changed him so the Finders couldn't identify him."

"So you didn't just subvert their cachet. You changed the boy himself."

"I made him just a little bit less Arthur and a little bit more Alvin. I'm not glad of it. I miss the way he could make hisself sound like anybody. Even a redbird. He used to sing right back to the redbird."

"Can't you change him back? Now that he has the official court decision, he can never be hauled into court again."

"Change him back? I don't know. It was hard enough changing him the first time. And I don't think I remember well enough how he used to be."

"The cachet has the way he used to be, doesn't it?"

"But I don't have the cachet."

"Interesting problem. Arthur doesn't seem to mind the change, though, does he?"

"Arthur's a sweet boy, but what he doesn't mind now he might well come to mind later, when he's old enough to know what I done to him." Alvin was drumming on his empty dish now. Clearly his mind kept going back to the trial. "I got to tell you, it's only going to get worse tomorrow, Verily."

"How so?"

"I didn't understand it till now, till what Amy said about me sneaking out of jail and all. But now I know what the plan is. Vilate Franker came in here covered with hexes, maneuvered me close enough to her that the same hex worked on me, too—an overlook-me, and a right good one. Then in comes Billy Hunter, one of the deputies, and when he looks in the cell, he doesn't see anybody at all. He, runs off and gets the sheriff, and when he comes back, Vilate's gone but here I am, and I tell them I been nowhere, but Billy Hunter knows what he saw—or didn't see—and they're going to bring him into court, and Vilate too. Vilate too."

"So they'll have a witness to corroborate that you have indeed left your cell during your incarceration here."

"And Vilate's likely to say anything. She's a notorious gossip. Goody Trader plain hates her, and so does Horace Guester. She also thinks of herself as quite a beauty, though those particular hexes don't work on me no more. Anyway Arthur Stuart saw her..."

"I was here when Arthur told you about her. About the salamander."

"That ain't no regular salamander, Verily. That's the Unmaker. I've met it before. Used to come on me more directlike. A shimmering in the air, and there it was. Trying to take me over, rule me. But I wouldn't have it, I'd make something—a bug basket—and he'd go away. Nowadays I'd be more likely to make up some silly rhyme or song and commit it to memory to drive him back. But here's the thing—the Unmaker has a way of being different things to different people. There was a minister in Vigor Church, Reverend Philadelphia Thrower; he saw the Unmaker as an angel, only it was a kind of terrible angel, and one time—well, it doesn't matter. Armor-of-God saw it, not me. With Vilate the Unmaker's got that salamander doing some kind of hexery that makes Vilate see... somebody. Somebody who talks to her and tells her things. Only that somebody is really speaking the words of the Unmaker. You know what Arthur Stuart saw. Old Peg Guester, the woman who was the only mother he knew. The Unmaker appears as somebody you can trust, somebody who fulfills your most heartfelt dream, but in the process he perverts everything so that without quite realizing it, you start destroying everything and everybody around you. This whole thing, you don't have to look toward Webster to find the conspiracy. The Unmaker is all the connection they need. Putting together Amy Sump and Vilate Franker and Makepeace Smith and Daniel Webster and... not one of them thinks he's doing something all that awful. Amy probably thinks she really loves me. Maybe so does Vilate. Makepeace has probably talked himself into believing the plow really belongs to him. Daniel Webster probably believes I really am a scoundrel. But..."

"But the Unmaker makes everything work together to undo you."

Alvin nodded.

"Alvin, that makes no sense," said Verily. "If the Unmaker's really out to Unmake everything, then how can he put together such an elaborate plan? That's a kind of Making, too, isn't it?"

Alvin lay back on the cot and whistled for a moment. "That's right," he said.

"The Unmaker sometimes Makes things, then?"

"No," said Alvin. "No, the Unmaker can't Make nothing. Can't. He just takes what's already there in twists and bends and breaks it. So I was wrong. The Unmaker's working on all these people, but if it's all fitting together into a plan, then somebody's planning it. Some person."

Verily chuckled. "I think we already have the answer," he said. "Your speculation about Daniel Webster. He discovers Amy Sump as he searches in Vigor Church for any kind of dirt about you. She wasn't part of any plan, just a girl who started pretending that her daydreams were true. But then he puts into her head the idea of getting pregnant and the idea of testifying against you to clip your wings and force you to come home. She works out the rest herself, her own plan—the Unmaker doesn't have to teach her anything. Then Daniel Webster comes here to Hatrack and of course he meets the town gossip as he searches for dirt about you here. Vilate Franker barely knows you, but she does know everybody else's story, and they converse many times. He happens to let slip how Amy Sump's story will just sound like the imaginings of a dreamy but randy young girl unless they can get some kind of evidence that you actually do leave your cell. And then Vilate comes up with her own plan and the Unmaker just sits back and encourages her."

"So the plan is all coming from Daniel Webster, only he doesn't even know it," said Alvin. "He wishes for something, and then it just happens to come true."

"Don't give him too much credit for integrity," said Verily. "I suspect this is a method he's been using for a long time, wishing for some key piece of evidence, and then trusting in his client or one of his client's friends to come up with the testimony that he needs. He never quite soils his hands, but the effect is the same. Yet nothing can ever be proven—"

The outer door opened, and Po Doggly came in with Peggy Larner. "Sorry to interrupt your supper and confabulation, gendemen," said the sheriff, "but something's come up. You got you a visitor with special circumstances, he's come a long way but he can only come in and see you after dark and I'm the only guard as can let him in, on account of he already sat me down and told me a tale."

Alvin turned to Verily. "That means it's someone from home. Someone besides Armor-of-God. Someone who's under the curse."

"He shouldn't be under it," said Peggy. "If it weren't for his grand gesture of including himself in a curse he didn't personally deserve."

"Measure," said Alvin. To Verily he explained, "My older brother."

"He's coming," said the sheriff. "Arthur Stuart's leading him in with his hat low and his eyes down so he won't see anybody who doesn't already know the story. Doesn't want to spend all night telling folks about the massacre at Tippy-Canoe. So the doors will be open here, but I'll still be outside, watching. Not that I think you'd try to escape, Alvin."

"You mean you don't think I've been making twice-a-week trips to Vigor Church?"

"For that girl? I don't think so." With that, Doggly walked out, leaving the outer door open.

Peggy came on in and joined Alvin and Verily inside Alvin's cell. Verily stood up to offer her his stool, but with a gesture she declined to sit.

"Howdy, Peggy," said Alvin.

"I'm fine, Alvin. And you?"

"You know I never did any of those things she said," he told her.

"Alvin," she said, "I know that you did find her attractive. She saw that you paid her a little special attention. She began to dream and wish."

"So you're saying it's my fault after all?"

"It's her fault that dreams turned into lies. It's your fault that she had hopeless dreams like that in the first place."

"Well why don't I just shoot myself before I ever look at a woman with desire? It always seems to turn out pretty lousy when I do."

She looked as if he slapped her. As usual, Verily felt a keen sense of being left out of half of what went on in Alvin's life. Why should it bother him so much? He wasn't here, and they were under no obligation to explain. Still, it was embarrassing. He got up. "Please, I'll step outside so you can have this conversation alone."

"No need," said Peggy. "I'm sure Arthur is almost here with Measure by now."

"She doesn't want to talk to me," said Alvin to Verily. "She'll try to get me acquitted because she wants to see the Crystal City get built, only she can't offer me a lick of help in trying to figure out how to build it, seeing as how I don't know and she seems to know everything. But just cause she wants me acquitted doesn't mean she actually likes me or thinks I'm worth spending time with."

"I don't like being in the middle of this," said Verily.

"You're not," said Peggy. "There's no ‘this' to be in the middle of."

"There never was no ‘this,' either, was there?" asked Alvin.

Verily was quite sure he had never heard a man sound so miserable.

Peggy took a moment to answer. "I'm not—there was and is a—it hasn't a thing to do with you, Alvin."

"What doesn't have a thing to do with me? My still being crazy in love with you after a whole year with only one letter from you, and that one as cold as you please, like I was some kind of scoundrel you still had to do business with or something? Is that the thing that doesn't have anything to do with me? I asked you to marry me once. I understand that things have been pretty bleak since then, your mother getting killed and all, that was terrible, and I didn't press you, but I did write to you, I did think about you all the time, and—"

"And I thought of you, Alvin."

"Yes, well, you're a torch, so you know I'm thinking about you, or you do if you care to look, but what do I know when there's no sign from you? What do I know except what you tell me? Except what I see in your face? I know I looked in your face that night in the smithy, I looked in your eyes and I thought I saw love there, I thought I saw you saying yes to me. Did I make that up? Is that the ‘this' that there isn't one of?"

Verily was thoroughly miserable, being forced to be a witness of this scene. He had tried to make his escape before; now it was clear they didn't want him to go. If only he knew how to disappear. How to sink through the floor.

It was Arthur who saved him. Arthur, with Measure in tow; and, just as the sheriff had said, Measure had his hat so low and his head bent so far down that he really did need Arthur Stuart to lead him by the hand. "We're here," said Arthur. "You can look up now."

Measure looked up. "Al," he said.

"Measure!" Alvin cried. It took about one stride each, with those two long-legged men, for them to be in each other's embrace. "I've missed you like my own soul," said Alvin.

"I've missed you too, you ugly scrawny jailbird," said Measure. And in that moment, Verily felt such a pang of jealousy that he thought his heart would break. He was ashamed of the feeling as soon as he was aware of it, but there it was: He was jealous of that closeness between brothers. Jealous because he knew that he would never be that close to Alvin Smith. He would always be shut out, and it hurt so deeply that for a moment, he thought he couldn't breathe.

And then he did breathe, and blocked that feeling away in another part of himself where he didn't have to stare it in the face.

In a few minutes the greetings were over, and they were down to business. "We found out Amy was gone and it didn't take no genius to figure out where she went. Oh, at first the rumor was she got pregnant at the county fair and was sent off to have the baby somewhere, but we all remembered the tales she told about Alvin and Father and I went to her pa and got it out of him right quick, that she was off to testify in Hatrack. He didn't like it much, but they're paying them and he needs the money and his daughter swears it's true but you could tell looking at him that he don't believe her lies either. And in fact as we were leaving he says, When I find out who it was got my daughter pregnant I'm going to kill him. And Pa says, No you ain't. And Mr. Sump he says, I am so because I'm a merciful man, and killing him's kinder than making him marry Amy."

They all laughed at that, but in the end they knew it wasn't exactly funny.

"Anyhow, Eleanor says, Amy's best friend is that mouse of a girl Ramona and I'm going to get the truth out of her."

Alvin turned to Verily. "Eleanor's our sister, Armor-of-God's wife."

Another reminder, that he wasn't inside this circle. But also a reminder that Alvin thought of him and wanted to include him.

"So Eleanor gets Ramona and sets her down inside that hex you made for her in the shop, Alvin, the one that makes liars get so nervous, only I don't know as how it was really needed. Eleanor says to her, Who's the father of Amy's baby, and Ramona says, How should I know? only it's a plain lie, and finally when Eleanor won't let up, Ramona says, Last time I told the truth it only caused Alvin Maker to have to run away cause of Amy's lies, but she swore it was true, she swore it and so I believed her but now she's saying it was Alvin got her pregnant and I know that's not true cause she got into the freak show tent with—"

Alvin held up his hand. "Matt Thatcher?"

"Of course," said Measure. "Why we didn't just castrate him along with the pigs I don't know."

"She saw them or is it hearsay?" asked Verily.

"Saw them and stood guard where they went under the tent and heard Amy cry out once and heard Matt panting and then it was done and she asked Amy what it was like and Amy looked positively stricken and says to her, It's awful and it hurts. Ramona's got no doubt Amy was a virgin up till then, so all the other stories is lies."

"She's not competent to testify about Amy's virginity," said Verily, "but she'd still be a help. It would take care of the pregnancy and make it plain that Amy is something of a liar. Reasonable doubt. How long will it take to get her down here?"

"She's here," said Peggy. "I got her to the roadhouse and Horace Guester's feeding her."

"I want to talk to her tonight," said Verily. "This is good. This is something. And until now, we had nothing."

"They have nothing," said Peggy. "And yet..."

"And yet they'd convict me if they voted right now, wouldn't they?" Alvin asked.

Peggy nodded. "I thought they knew you better."

"This is all so extraneous to Makepeace's assertions," said Verily. "None of this would have been permitted in an English court."

"Next time somebody tries to get me arrested for larceny and a crazy girl claims to be pregnant by me, I'll arrange to have it tried in London," said Alvin, grinning.

"Good idea," said Verily. "Besides, we have a much higher grade of crazy girls in England."

"I'm going to testify," said Peggy.

"I don't think so," said Alvin.

"You aren't a witness of anything," said Verily.

"You saw how the rules go in this court," said Peggy. "You can work me in."

"It won't help," said Verily. "They'll chalk it up to your being in love with Alvin."

Alvin sighed and lay back on his cot.

"No they won't," said Peggy. "They know me."

"They know Alvin, too," said Verily.

"Don't mean to contradict you, sir," said Arthur Stuart, "but everybody knows Miss Larner here is a torch, and everybody knows that before she tells a lie, you can boil an egg in a pan of snow."

"If I testify, he won't be convicted," said Peggy.

"No," said Alvin. "They'll drag you through the mud. Webster doesn't care about convicting me, you know that. He only wants to destroy me and everybody near me, because that's what the people who hired him want."

"We don't even know who they are," said Verily.

"I don't know their names, but I know who they are and what they want. To you it looks as though Amy's testimony is a sidetrack, but it's Amy's testimony they wanted. And if they could get testimony about me and Peggy in the smithy on the night the plow was made—"

"I'm not afraid of their calumnies," said Peggy.

"It ain't calumnies I'm talking about, it's the plain truth," said Alvin. "I was naked, we was alone in the smithy. Can't help what conclusions folks draw from that, and so I won't have you getting on the stand and all that story coming out in the papers in Carthage and Dekane and heaven knows where else. We'll do it another way."

"Ramona will be a help," said Verily.

"Not Ramona either," said Alvin. "It does no good to have one friend betray another for my sake."

The others were flabbergasted.

"You got to be joking!" cried Measure. "After I brought her all the way here? And she wants to testify."

"I'm sure she does," said Alvin. "But after the papers are through hacking at Amy, how will Ramona feel then? She'll always remember that she betrayed a friend: That's a hard one. It'll hurt her. Won't it, Peggy?"

"Oh, you actually want my advice about something?"

"I want the truth. Fve been telling the truth, and so have you, so just say it."

"Yes," said Peggy. "It would hurt Ramona greatly to testify against Amy."

"So we won't do it," said Alvin. "Nor do I want to see Vilate humiliated by having her hexes removed. She sets a store by being taken for beautiful."

"Alvin," said Verily, "I know you're a good man and wiser than me, but surely you can see that you can't let courtesy to a few individuals destroy all that you were put here on this earth to do!"

The others agreed.

Alvin looked as miserable as Verily had ever seen a man look, and Verily had seen men condemned to hang or burn. "Then you don't understand," he said. "It's true that sometimes people have to suffer to make something good come to be. But when I have it in my power to save them from suffering it, and bear it myself, well then that's part of what I do. That's part of Making. If I have it in my power, then I bear it. Don't you see?"

"No," said Peggy. "You don't have it in your power."

"Is that the honest torch talking? Or my friend?"

She hesitated only a moment. "Your friend. This passage in your heartfire is dark to me."

"I figured it was. And I think the reason is because I got to do some Making. I got to do something that's never been done before, to Make something new. If I do it, then I can go on. If I don't, then I go to jail and my path through life takes another course."

"Would you go to jail?" asked Arthur Stuart. "Would you really stay in prison for years and years?"

Alvin shrugged. "There are hexes I can't undo. I think if I was convicted, they'd see to it that I was bound about like that. But even if I could get away, what would it matter? I couldn't do my work here in America. And I don't know that my work could be done anywhere else. If there's any reason to my life at all, then there's a reason I was born here and not in England or Russia or China or something. Here's where my work's to be done."

"So you're saying that I can't use the two best witnesses to defend you?" asked Verily.

"My best witness is the truth. Somebody's going to speak it, that's for sure. But it won't be Miss Larner, and it won't be Ramona."

Peggy leaned down and looked Alvin in the eye, their faces not six inches apart. "Alvin Smith, you wretched boy, I gave my childhood to you, to keep you safe from the Unmaker, and now you tell me I have to stand by and watch you throw all that sacrifice away?"

"I already asked you for the whole rest of your life," said Alvin. "What do I want with your ruin? You lost your childhood for me. You lost your mother for me. Don't lose any more. I would have taken everything, yes, and given you everything too, but I won't take less because I can't give less. You'll take nothing from me, so I'll take nothing from you. If that don't make sense to you then you ain't as smart as you let on, Miss Larner."

"Why don't those two just get married and make babies?" said Arthur Stuart. "Pa said that."

Her face stony, Peggy turned away from them. "It has to be on your terms, doesn't it, Alvin. Everything on your terms."

"My terms?" said Alvin. "It wasn't my terms to say these things to you in front of others, though at least it's my friends and not strangers who have to hear them. I love you, Miss Larner. I love you, Margaret. I don't want you in that courtroom, I want you in my arms, in my life, in all my dreams and works for all time to come."

Peggy clung to the bars of the jail, her face averted from the others.

Arthur Stuart walked around to the outside of the cell and looked guilelessly up into her face. "Why don't you just marry him instead of crying like that? Don't you love him? You're real pretty and he's a good-looking man. You'd have damn cute babies. Pa said that."

"Hush, Arthur Stuart," said Measure.

Peggy slid down until she was kneeling, and then she reached through the bars and took Arthur Stuart's hands. "I can't, Arthur Stuart," she said. "My mother died because I loved Alvin, don't you see? Whenever I think of being with him, it just makes me feel sick and... guilty... and angry and..."

"My mama's dead too, you know," said Arthur Stuart. "My Black mama and my White mama both. They both died to dave me from slavery. I think about that all the time, how if I'd never been born they'd both still be alive."

Peggy shook her head. "I know you think of that, Arthur, but you mustn't. They want you to be happy."

"I know," said Arthur Stuart. "I ain't as smart as you, but I know that. So I do my best to be happy. I'm happy most of the time, too. Why can't you do that?"

Alvin whispered an echo to his words. "Why can't you do that, Margaret?"

Peggy raised her chin, looked around her. "What am I doing here on the floor like this?" She got to her feet. "Since you won't take my help, Alvin Smith, then I've got work to do. There's a war in the future, a war over slavery, and a million boys will die, in America and the Crown Colonies and even New England before it's done. My work is to make sure those boys don't die in vain, to make sure that when it's over the slaves are free. That's what my mother died for, to free one slave. I'm not going to pick just one, I'm going to save them all if I can." She looked fiercely at the men who watched her, wide-eyed. "I've made my last sacrifice for Alvin Smith—he doesn't need my help anymore."

With those words she strode to the outer door.

"I do so," murmured Alvin, but she didn't hear him, and then she wag gone.

"If that don't beat all," said Measure. "I ask you, Alvin, why didn't you just fall in love with a thunderstorm? Why don't you just go propose to a blizzard?"

"I already did," said Alvin.

Verily walked to the door of the cell. "I'm going to interview Ramona tonight in case you change your mind, Alvin," he said.

"I won't," said Alvin.

"I'm quite sure, but other than that there's nothing else I can do." He debated saying the next words, but decided that he might as well. What did he have to lose? Alvin was going to go to prison. And Verily's journey to America was going to turn out to have been in vain. "I must say thalt I think you and Miss Larner are a perfect match. The two of you together must have more than seventy percent of the world's entire store of stupid bullheadedness."

It was Verily's turn to head for the outer door. Behind him as he left, he heard Alvin say to Measure and Arthur: "That's my lawyer." He wasn't sure if Alvin spoke in pride or mockery. Either way, it only added to his despair.

Billy Hunter's testimony was pretty damaging. It was plain that he liked Alvin well enough and had no desire to make him look bad. But he couldn't change what he saw and had to tell the truth—he'd looked into the jail and them was nowhere Alvin and Vilate could have hidden.

Verily's cross-examination consisted merely of ascertaining that when Vilate entered the cell, Alvin was definitely there, and that the pie she left behind tasted right good. "Alvin didn't want it?" asked Verily.

"No sir. He said... he said he sort of promised it to an ant."

Some laughter.

"But he let you have it anyway," said Verily.

"I guess so, yes."

"Well, I think that shows that Alvin is unreliable indeed, if he can't keep his word to an ant!"

There were some chuckles at Verily's attempt at humor, but that did nothing to ameliorate the fact that the prosecution had cut into Alvin's credibility, and rather deeply at that.

It was Vilate's turn then. Marty Laws laid the groundwork, and then came to the key point. "When Mr. Hunter looked into the jail and failed to see you and Alvin, where were you?"

Vilate made a great show of being reluctant to tell. He was relieved to see, however, that she wasn't quite the actress Amy Sump had been, perhaps because Amy half-believed her own fantasies, while Vilate... well, this was no schoolgirl, and these were no fantasies of love. "I should never have let him talk me into it, but... I've been alone too long."

"Just answer the question, please," asked Laws.

"He took me through the wall of the jail. We passed through the wall. I held his hand."

"And where did you go?"

"Fast as the wind we went—I felt as though we were flying. For a time I ran beside him, taking strength from his hand as he held mine and led me along; but then it became too much for me, and I, fainting, could not go on. He sensed this in that way of his and gathered me into his arms. I was quite swept away."

"Where did you go?"

"To a place where I've never been."

There were some titters at that, which seemed to fluster her a little. Apparently she was not aware of her own double entendre—or perhaps she was a better actress than Verily thought.

"By a lake, Not a large one, I suppose—I could see the far shore. Waterbirds were skimming the lake, but on the grassy bank where we... reclined... we were the only living things. This beautiful young man and I. He was so full of promises and talk of love and..."

"Can we say he took advantage of you?" asked Marty.

"Your Honor, he's leading the witness."

"He did not take advantage of me," Vilate said. "I was a willing participant in all that happened. The fact that I regret it now does not change the fact that he did not force me in any way. Of course, if I had known then how he had said the same things, done the same things with that girl from Vigor Church..."

"Your Honor, she has no pergonal knowledge of—"

"Sustained," said the judge. "Please limit your responses to the questions asked."

Verily had to admire her skill. She managed to sound as if she were defending Alvin rather than trying to destroy him. As if she loved him.