Alvin Journeyman

Chapter 16 -- Truth

When it came Verily's turn to question Vilate, he sat for a moment contemplating her. She was the picture of complacent confidence, with her head just slightly cocked to the left, as if she were somewhat—but not very—curious to hear what he would ask of her.

"Miss Franker, I wonder if you can tell me—when you passed through the wall from the jail, how did you get up to ground level?"

She looked momentarily confused, "Oh, is the jail below ground? Well, I suppose when we went through the wall, we—no, of course we didn't. The jail is on the second floor of the courthouse, and it's about a ten-foot drop to the ground. That was mean of you, to try to trick me."

"My question still stands," said Verily. "That must have been quite a drop, coming through the wall into nothing."

"We handled it gently. We... floated to the ground. It was part of the remarkable experience. If I had known you wanted so much detail, I'd have said so from the start."

"So Alvin... floats."

"He is a remarkable young man."

"I imagine so," said Verily. "In fact, one of his extraordinary talents is the ability to see through hexes of illusion. Did you know that?"

"No, I... no." She looked puzzled.

"For instance, he sees through the hex you use to keep people from seeing that little trick you play with your false teeth. Did you know that?"

"Trick!" She was mortified. "False teeth! What a terrible thing to say!"

"Do you or do you not have false teeth?"

Marty Laws was on his feet. "Your Honor, I can't see what relevancy false teeth have to the case at hand."

"Mr. Cooper, it does seem a little extraneous," said the judge.

"Your Honor has allowed the prosecution to cast far afield in trying to impugn the veracity of my client. I think the defense is entitled to the same latitude in impugning the veracity of those who claim my client is a deceiver."

"False teeth is a bit personal, don't you think?" asked the judge.

"And accusing my client of seducing her isn't?" asked Verily.

The judge smiled. "Objection overruled. I think the prosecution opened the door wide enough for such questions."

Verily turned back to Vilate. "Do you have false teeth, Miss Franker?"

"I do not!" she said.

"You're under oath," said Verily. "For instance, didn't you waggle your upper plate at Alvin when you said that he was a beautiful young man?"

"How can I waggle an upper plate that I do not have?" she said.

"Since that is your testimony, Miss Franker, would you be willing to appear -in court without those four amulets you're wearing, and without the shawl with the hexes sewn in?"

"I don't have to sit here and..."

Alvin leaned over and tugged at Verily's coattail. Verily wanted to ignore him, because he knew that Alvin was going to forbid him to pursue this line any further. But there was no way he could pretend that he didn't notice a movement so broad that the whole court saw it. He turned back to Alvin, ignoring Vilate's remonstrances, and let Alvin whisper in his ear.

"Verily, you know I didn't want—"

"My duty is to defend you as best I—"

"Verily, ask her about the salamander in her handbag. Get it out in the open if you can."

Verily was surprised; "A salamander? But what good will that do?"

"Just get it out in the open," said Alvin. "On a table in the open. It won't run away. Even with the Unmaker possessing it, salamanders are still stupid. You'll see."

Verily turned back to face the witness. "Miss Franker, will you kindly show us the lizard in your handbag?"

Alvin tugged on his coat again. Mouth to ear, he whispered,

"Salamanders ain't lizards. They're amphibians, not reptiles."

"Your pardon, Miss Franker. Not a lizard. An amphibian. A salamander."

"I have no such—"

"Your Honor, please warn the witness about the consequences of lying under—"

"If there's such a creature in my handbag, I don't have any idea who put it there or how it got there," said Vilate.

"Then you won't object if the bailiff looks in your bag and removes any amphibious creatures he might find?"

Overcoming her uncertainty, Vilate replied, "No, not at all."

"Your Honor, who is on trial here?" asked Marty Laws.

"I believe the issue is truthfulness," said the judge, "and I find this exercise fascinating. We've watched you come up with scandal. Now I'll be interested to see an amphibian."

The bailiff rummaged through the handbag, then suddenly hooted and jumped back. "Excuse me, Your Honor, it's up my sleeve!" he said, trying to maintain his composure as he wriggled and danced around.

With a flamboyant gesture, Verily swept his papers off the defense table and pulled it out into the middle of the courtroom. "When you retrieve the little fellow," he said, "set him here, please."

Alvin leaned back on his chair, his legs extended, his ankles crossed, looking for all the world like a politician who just won an election. Under his chair, the plow lay still inside its sack.

Alone of all the people in the court, Vilate paid no attention whatever to the salamander. She simply sat as if in a trance; but no, that wasn't it. No, she sat as if she were at a soiree where something slightly rude was being said, and she was pretending to take no notice of it.

Verily had no idea what would come of this business with the salamander, but since Alvin wouldn't let him try any other avenue to discredit Vilate or Amy, he'd have to make it do.

Alvin had been watching Vilate during her testimony—watching close, not just with his eyes, but with his inner sight, seeing the way the material world worked together. One of the first things he marked was the way Vilate cocked her head just a little before answering. As if she were listening. So he sent out his doodlebug and let it rest in the air, feeling for any tremors of sound. Sure enough, there were some, but in a pattern Alvin had never seen before. Usually, sound spread out from its source like waves from a rock cast into a pond, in every direction, bouncing and reverberating, but also fading and growing weaker with distance. This sound, however, was channeled. How was it done?

For a while he was in danger of becoming so engrossed in the scientific question that he might well forget that he was on trial here and this was the most dangerous but possibly the weakest witness against him. Fortunately, he caught on to what was happening very quickly. The sound was coming from two sources, very close together, moving in parallel. As the sound waves crossed each other, they interfered with each other, turning the sound into mere turbulence in the air. When Alvin listened closely, he could hear the faint hiss of the chaotic noise. But in the direction where the sound waves were perfectly parallel, they not only didn't interfere with each other, but rather seemed to increase the power of the sound. The result was that for someone sitting exactly in Vilate's position, even the faintest whisper would be audible; but for anyone anywhere else in the courtroom, there would be no sound at all.

Alvin found this curious indeed. He hadn't known that the Unmaker actually used sound to talk to his minions. He had supposed that somehow the Unmaker spoke directly into their minds. Instead, the Unmaker spoke from two sound sources, close together. Then Alvin had to smile. The old saying was true: The liar spoke out of both sides of his mouth.

Looking with his doodlebug into Vilate's handbag, Alvin soon found the source of the sound. The salamander was perched on the top of her belongings, and the sound was coming from its mouth—though salamanders had no mechanism for producing a human voice. If only he could hear what the salamander was saying.

Well, if he wasn't mistaken, that could be arranged. But first he needed to get the salamander out into the open, where the whole court could see where its speech was coming from. That was when he began to pay attention to the proceedings again—only to discover, to his alarm, that Verily was about to defy him and try to take away Vilate's beautiful disguise. He reached out and tugged on Verily's coat, and whispered a rebuke that was as mild as he could make it. Then he told him to get the salamander out of the bag.

Now, with the salamander in a panic, trapped in the bailiff's dark sleeve, it took Alvin a few moments to get his doodlebug inside the creature and start to help it calm down—to slow the heartbeat, to speak peace to it. Of course he could feel no resistance from the Unmaker. That was no surprise to Alvin. The Unmaker was always driven back by his Making. But he could sense the Unmaker, lurking, shimmering in the background, in the corners of the court, waiting to come back into the salamander so it could speak to Vilate again.

It was a good sign, the fact that the Unmaker needed the help of a creature in order to speak to Vilate. It suggested that she was not wholly consumed by the lust for power or Unmaking, so that the Unmaker could not speak to her directly.

Alvin didn't really know that much about the Unmaker, but with years in which to speculate and reason about it, he had come to a few conclusions. He didn't really think of the Unmaker as a person anymore, though sometimes he still called it "him" in his own thoughts. Alvin had always seen the Unmaker as a shimmering of air, as something that retreated toward his peripheral vision; he believed now that this was the true nature of the Unmaker. As long as a person was engaged in Making, the Unmaker was held at bay; and, in fact, most people weren't particularly attractive to it. It was drawn only to the most extraordinary of Makers—and the most prideful destroyers (or destructively proud; Alvin wasn't sure if it made a difference). It was drawn to Alvin in the effort to undo him and all his works. It was drawn to others, though, like, Philadelphia Thrower and, apparently, Vilate Franker, because they provided the hands, the lips, the eyes that would allow the Unmaker to do its work.

What Alvin guessed, but could not know, was that the people to whom the Unmaker appeared most clearly had a kind of power over it. That the Unmaker, having been drawn into relations with them, could not suddenly free itself. Instead, it acted out the role that its human ally had prepared for it. Reverend Thrower needed an angelic visitor that was ripe with wrath—so that was what the Unmaker became for him. Vilate needed something else. But the Unmaker could not withhold itself from her. It could not sense that there was danger in being exposed, unless Vilate sensed that danger herself. And since Vilate was unable to be rational enough to know there even was a salamander-s- omething Alvin had learned from Arthur Stuart's report—there was a good chance that the Unmaker could be led to expose itself to the whole courtroom, as long as Alvin worked carefully and took Vilate by surprise.

So he watched as the bailiff finally took the calm—well, calmer, anyway—salamander from the collar of his shirt, whither it had fled, and set it gently on the table. Gradually Alvin withdrew his doodlebug from the creature, so that the Unmaker could come back into possession of it. Would it come?

Would it speak again to Vilate, as Alvin hoped?

It did. It would.

The column of sound arose again.

Everyone could see the salamander's mouth opening and closing, but of course they heard nothing and so it looked like the random movements of an animal.

"Do you see the salamander?" asked Verily.

Vilate looked quizzical. "I don't understand the question."

"On this table in front of you. Do you see the salamander?"

Vilate smiled wanly. "I think you're trying to play with me now, Mr. Cooper."

A whisper arose in the courtroom.

"What I'm trying to do," said Verily, "is determine just how reliable an observer you are."

Daniel Webster spoke up. "Your Honor, how do we know there isn't some trick going on that the defense is playing? We already know that the defendant has remarkable hidden powers."

"Have patience, Mr. Webster," said the judge. "Time enough for rebuttal on redirect."

In the meantime, Alvin had been playing with the double column of sound coming from the salamander and leading straight to Vilate. He tried to find some way to bend it, but of course could not, since sound must travel in a straight line—or at least to bend it was beyond Alvin's power and knowledge.

What he could do, though, was set up a counterturbulence right at the source of one of the columns of sound, leaving the

other to be perfectly audible, since there would be no interference from the column Alvin had blocked. The sound would still be faint, however; Alvin had no way of knowing whether it could be heard well enough for people to understand it. Only one way to find out.

Besides, this might be the new thing he had to Make in order to get past the dark place in his heartfire where Peggy couldn't see.

He blocked one of the columns of sound.

Verily was saying, "Miss Franker, since everyone in the court but you is able to see this salamander—"

Suddenly, a voice from an unexpected source became audible, apparently in midsentence. Verily fell silent and listened.

It was a woman's voice, cheery and encouraging. "You just sit tight, Vilate, this English buffoon is no match for you. You don't have to tell him a single thing unless you want to. That Alvin Smith had his chance to be your friend, and he turned you down, so now you'll show him a thing or two about a woman scorned. He had no idea of your cleverness, you sly thing."

"Who is that!" demanded the judge.

Vilate looked at him, registering nothing more than faint puzzlement. "Are you asking me?" she said.

"I am!" the judge replied.

"But I don't understand. Who is what?"

The woman's voice said, "Something's wrong but you just stay calm, don't admit a thing. Blame it on Alvin, whatever it is."

Vilate took a deep breath. "Is Alvin casting some kind of spell that affects everyone but me?" she asked.

The judge answered sharply. "Someone just said, ‘Blame it on Alvin, whatever it is.' Who was it that said that?"

"Ah! Ah! Ah!" cried the woman's voice—which was obviously coming from the salamander's mouth. "Ah! How could he hear me? I talk only to you! I'm your best friend, Vilate, nobody else's! They're trying to trick you! Don't admit a thing!"

"I... don't know what you mean," said Vilate. "I don't know what you're hearing."

"The woman who just said, ‘Don't admit a thing,'" said Verily. "Who is that? Who is this woman who says she's your best friend and no one else's?"

"Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!" cried the salamander.

"My best friend?" asked Vilate. Suddenly her face was a mask of terror—except for her mouth, which still wore a pretty grin. Sweat beaded on her forehead. On impulse, Verily strode to her and took hold of her shawl. "Please, Miss Franker, you seem overwarm. Let me hold your shawl for you."

Vilate was so confused she didn't realize what he was doing until it was done. The moment the shawl came from her shoulders, the smile on her mouth disappeared. In fact, the face that everyone knew so well was gone, replaced by the face of a middle-aged woman, somewhit wrinkled and sunburnt; and most remarkable of all, her mouth was wide open and inside it, the upper plate of her false teeth were clicking up and down, as if she were raising and lowering it with her tongue.

The buzz in the courtroom became a roar.

"Verily, dammit," said Alvin. "I told you not to—"

"Sorry," said Verily. "I see you need that shawl, Miss Franker." Quickly he replaced it.

Aware now of what he had done to her, she snatched the shawl close to her. The clicking false teeth were imme diately replaced by the same lovely smile she had worn before, and her face was again thin and young.

"I believe we have some idea of the reliability of this witness," said Verily.

The salamander cried out, "They're winning, you foolish ninny! They trapped you! They tricked you, you silly twit!"

Vilate's face lost its composure. She looked frightened. "How can you talk like that to me," she whispered.

Vilate wasn't the only one who looked frightened. The judge himself had shrunk back into the far corner of his space behind the bench. Marty Laws was sitting on the back of his chair, his shoes on the seat.

"To whom are you speaking?" asked the judge.

Vilate turned her face away from judge and salamander both. "My friend," she said. "My best friend, I thought." Then she turned to the judge. "All these years, no one else has ever heard her voice. But you hear her now, don't you?"

"I do," said the judge.

"You're telling them too much!" cried the salamander. Was its voice changing?

"Can you see her?" asked Vilate, her voice thin and quavering. "Do you see how beautiful she is? She taught me how to be beautiful, too."

"Shut up!" cried the salamander. "Tell them nothing, you bitch!"

Yes, the voice was definitely lower in pitch now, thick in the throat, rasping.

"I can't see her, no," said the judge.

"She's not my friend, though, is she," said Vilate. "Not really."

"I'll rip your throat out, you..." The salamander let fly with a string of expletives that made them all gasp.

Vilate pointed at the salamander. "She made me do it! She told me to tell those lies about Alvin! But now I see she's really hateful! And not beautiful at all! She's not beautiful, she's ugly as a... as a newt!"

"Salamander," said the judge helpfully.

"I hate you!" Vilate cried at the salamander. "Get away from me! I don't want to see you ever again!"

The salamander seemed poised to move—but not away from her. It looked more as if it meant to spring from the table, leap the distance between it and Vilate, and attack her as its hideous voice had threatened.

Alvin was searching carefully through the salamander's body, trying to find where and how the Unmaker had control of it. But however it was done, it left no physical evidence that Alvin could see. He realized, though, that it didn't matter. There were ways to get a person free of another person's control—an off-my-back hex. Couldn't it work for the salamander, if it was perfectly done? Alvin marked out in his mind the exact spots on the table where the hex would need to be marked, the order of the markings, the number of loops that would have to be run linking point to point.

Then he sent his doodlebug into that part of the salamander's brain where such sense as it had resided. Freedom, he whispered there, in the way he had that'animals could understand. Not words, but feelings. Images. The salamander seeking after food, mating, scampering over mud, through leaves and grass, into cool mossy stone crevices. Free to do that instead of living in a dry handbag. The salamander longed for it.

Just do this, said Alvin silently into the salamander's mind. And he showed it the loops to make to get to the first mark.

The salamander had been poised to leap from the table. But instead it ran the looping pattern, touched one toe on the exact point; Alvin made it so the toe penetrated the wood just enough to make a mark, though no human eye could have seen it, the mark was so subtle. Scamper, loop, mark, and mark again. Six tiny prickings of the table's surface, and then a bound into the middle of the hex.

And the Unmaker was gone.

The salamander raced in a mad pattern, too fast to follow clearly; ran, then stopped stockstill in the middle of the table.

And then, suddenly, the intelligence seemed to go out of its movements. It no longer looked at Vilate. No longer looked at anyone in particular. It nosed across the table. Not certain yet whether the spell that bound the creature was done or not, no one moved toward it. It ran down the table leg, then scurried straight toward Alvin. It nosed the sack under his chair that contained the plow. It ran inside the sack.

Consternation broke out in the courtroom. "What's happening!" cried Marty Laws. "Why did it go in that sack!"

"Because it was spawned in that sack!" cried Webster. "You can see now that Alvin Smith was the source of all this mischief! I have seen the face of the devil and he sits cocky as you please in yonder chair!"

The judge banged with his gavel.

"He's not the devil," said Vilate. "The devil wears a much more lovely face than that." Then she burst into tears.

"Your honor," said Webster, "the defendant and his lawyer have turned this court into a circus!"

"Not until after you turned it into a cesspool of scandalous lies and filthy innuendoes!" Verily roared back at him.

And as he roared, the spectators burst into applause.

The judge banged the gavel again. "Silence! Come to order, or I'll have the bailiff clear the court! Do you hear me?"

And, after a time, silence again reigned.

Alvin bent over and reached into the sack. He took out the limp body of the salamander.

"Is it dead?" asked the judge.

"No, sir," said Alvin. "She's just asleep. She's very, very tired. She's been rode hard, so to speak. Rode hard and given nothing to eat. It ain't evidence of nothing now, Your Honor. Can I give her to my friend Arthur Stuart to take care of till she has her strength back?"

"Does the prosecution have any objection?"

"No, Your Honor," said Marty Laws.

At the same time, Daniel Webster rose to his feet. "This salamander never was evidence of anything. It's obvious that it was introduced by the defendant and his lawyer and was always under their command. Now they've taken possession of an honest woman and broken her! Look at her!"

And there sat beautiful Vilate Franker, tears streaming down her smooth and beautiful cheeks.

"An honest woman?" she said softly. "You know as well as I do how you hinted to me about how you needed corroboration for that Amy Sump girl, how if you just had some way of proving that Alvin did indeed leave the jail, then she would be believed and no one would believe Alvin. Oh, you sighed and pretended that you weren't suggesting anything to me, but I knew and you knew, and so I learned the hexes from my friend and we did it, and now there you sit, lying again."

"Your Honor," said Webster, "the witness is clearly distraught. I can assure you she has misconstrued the brief conversation we had at supper in the roadhouse."

"I'm sure she has, Mr. Webster," said the judge.

"I have not misconstrued it," said Vilate, furious, whirling on the judge.

"And I'm sure you have not," said the judge. "I'm sure you're both completely correct."

"Your Honor," said Daniel Webster, "with all due respect, I don't see-"

"No, you don't see!" cried Vilate, standing up in the witness box. "You claim to see an honest woman here? I'll show you an honest woman!"

She peeled her shawl off her shoulders. At once the illusion of beauty about her face disappeared. Then she reached down and pulled the amulets out of her bodice and lifted their chains from around her neck. Her body changed before their eyes: Now she was not svelte and tall, but of middle height and a somewhat thickened middle-aged body. There was a stoop to her shoulders, and her hair was more white than gold. "This is an honest woman," she said. Then she sank down into her seat and wept into her hands.

"Your Honor," said Verily, "I believe I have no more questions for this witness."

"Neither does the prosecution," said Marty Laws.

"That's not so!" cried Webster.

"Mr. Webster," said Marty Laws quietly, "you are discharged from your position as co-counsel. The testimony of the witnesses you brought me now seems inappropriate to use in court, and I think it would be prudent of you to retire from this courtroom without delay."

A few people clapped, but a glare from the judge quieted them.

Webster began stuffing papers into his briefcase. "If you are alleging that I behaved unethically to any degree—"

"Nobody's alleging anything, Mr. Webster," said the judge, "except that you have no further relationship with the county attorney of Hatrack County, and therefore it's appropriate for you to step to the other side of the railing and, in my humble opinion, to the other side of the courtroom door."

Webster rose to his full height, tucked his bag under his arm, and without another word strode down the aisle and out of the courtroom.

On his way out, he passed a middle-aged woman with brown-and-grey hair who was moving with some serious intent toward the judge's bench. No, toward the witness stand, where she stepped into the box, put her arm around Vilate Franker's shoulders, and helped the weeping woman rise to her feet. "Come now, Vilate, you did very bravely, you did fine, we're right proud of you."

"Goody Trader," Vilate murmured, "I'm so ashamed."

"Nonsense," said Goody Trader. "We all want to be beautiful and truth to tell, I think you still are. Just—mature, that's all."

The spectators I watched in silence as Goody Trader led her

erstwhile rival from the courtroom.

"Your Honor," said Verily Cooper, "I think it should be clear to everyone that it is time to return to the real issue before the court: We have been distracted by extraneous witnesses, but the fact of the matter is that it all comes down to Makepeace Smith and Hank Dowser on one side, and Alvin Smith on the other. Their word against his. Unless the prosecution has more witnesses to call, I'd like to begin my defense by letting Alvin give his word, so the jury can judge between them at last."

"Well said, Mr. Cooper," said Marty Laws. "That's the real issue, and I'm sorry I ever moved away from it. The prosecution rests, and I think we'd all like to hear from the defendant. I'm glad he's going to speak for himself, even though the constitution of the United States allows him to decline to testify without prejudice."

"A fine sentiment," said the judge. "Mr. Smith, please rise and take the oath."

Alvin bent over, scooped up the sack with the plow in it, and hoisted it over his shoulder as easy as if it was a loaf of bread or a bag of feathers. He walked to the bailiff, put one hand on the Bible and raised the other, sack and all. "I do solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me God," he said.

"Alvin," said Verily, "just tell us all how this plow came to be."

Alvin nodded. "I took the iron my master gave me—Makepeace, he was my master in those days—and I melted it to the right hotness. I'd already made my plow mold, so I poured it in and let it cool enough to strike off the mold, and then I shaped and hammered and scraped all the imperfections out of it, till near as I could tell it had the shape of a plow as perfect as I could do it."

"Did you use any of your knack for Making as you did it?" asked Verily.

"No sir," said Alvin. "That wouldn't be fair. I wanted to earn the right to be a journeyman smith. I did use my doodlebug to inspect the plow, but I made no changes except with my tools and my two hands."

Many of the spectators nodded. They knew something of this matter, of wanting to do something with their hands, without the use of the extraordinary knacks that were so common in this town these days.

"And when it was done, what did you have?"

"A plow," said Alvin. "Pure iron, well shaped and well tempered. A good journeyman piece."

"Whose property was that plow?" asked Verily. "I ask you not as an expert on law, but rather as the apprentice you were at the time you finished it. Was it your plow?"

"It was mine because I made it, and his because it was his iron. It's custom to let the journeyman keep his piece, but I knew it was Makepeace's right to keep it if he wanted."

"And then you apparently decided to change the iron."

Alvin nodded.

"Can you explain to the court your reasoning on the matter?"

"I don't know that it could be called reasoning, rightly. It wasn't rational, as Miss Larner would have defined it. I just knew what I wanted it to be, really. This had nothing to do with going from prentice to journeyman smith. More like going from prentice to journeyman Maker, and I had no master to judge my work, or if I do, he's not yet made hisself known to me."

"So you determined to turn the plow into gold."

Alvin waved off the idea with one hand. "Oh, now, that wouldn't be hard. I've known how to change one metal to another for a long time—it's easier with metals, the way the bits line up and all. Hard to change air, but easy to change metal."

"You're saying you could have turned iron to gold at any time?" asked Verily. "Why didn't you?"

"I reckon there's about the right amount of gold in the world, and the right amount of iron. A man doesn't need to make hammers and saws, axes and plowshares out of gold—he needs iron for that. Gold is for things that need a soft metal."

"But gold would have made you rich," said Verily,

Alvin shook his head. "Gold would have made me famous. Gold would have surrounded me with thieves. And it wouldn't have got me one step closer to learning how to be a proper Maker."

"You expect us to believe that you have no interest in gold?"

"No sir. I need money as much as the next fellow. At that time I was hoping to get married, and I hardly had a penny to my name, which isn't much in the way of prospects. But for most folks gold stands for their hard labor, and I don't see how I should have gold that didn't come from my hard labor, too. It wouldn't be fair, and if it's out of balance like that, then it ain't good Making, if you see my point."

"And yet you did transform the plow into gold, didn't you?"

"Only as a step along the way," said Alvin.

"Along the way to what?"

"Well, you know. To what the witnesses all said they seen. This plow ain't common gold. It moves. It acts. It's alive."

"And that's what you intended?"

"The fire of life. Not just the fire of the forge."

"How did you do it?"

"It's hard to explain to them as don't have the sight of a doodlebug to get inside things. I didn't create life inside it that was already there. The bits of gold wanted to hold the shape I'd given them, that plow shape, so they fought against the melting of the fire, but they didn't have the strength. They didn't know their own strength. And I couldn't teach them, either. And then all of a sudden I thought to put my own hands into the fire and show the gold how to be alive, the way I was alive."

"Put your hands into the fire?" asked Verily.

Alvin nodded. "It hurt something fierce, I'll tell you."

"But you're unscarred," said Verily.

"It was hot, but don't you see, it was a Maker's fire, and finally I understood what I must have known all along, that a Maker is part of what he Makes. I had to be in the fire along with the gold, to show it how to live, to help it find its own heartfire. If I knew exactly how it works I could do a better job of teaching folks. Heaven knows I've tried but ain't nobody learned it aright yet, though a couple or so is getting there, step by step. Anyway, the plow came to life in the fire."

"So now the plow was as we have seen it—or rather, as we have heard it described here."

"Yes," said Alvin. "Living gold."

"And in your opinion, whom does that gold belong to?"

Alvin looked around at Makepeace, then at Marty Laws, then at the judge. "It belongs to itself. It ain't no slave."

Marty Laws rose to his feet. "Surely the witness isn't asserting the equal citizenship of golden plows."

"No. sir," said Alvin. "I am not. It has its own purpose in being, but I don't think jury duty or voting for president has much to do with it."

"But you're saying it doesn't belong to Makepeace Smith and it doesn't belong to you either," said Verily.

"Neither one of us."

"Then why are you so reluctant to yield possession of it to your former master?" asked Verily.

"Because he means to melt it down. He said as much that very next morning. Of course, when I told him he couldn't do that, he called me thief and insisted that the plow belonged to him. He said a ourneyman piece belongs to the master unless he gives it to the journeyman and, I think he said, ‘I sure as hell don't!' Then he called me thief."

"And wasn't he right? Weren't you a thief?"

"No sir," said Alvin. "I admit that the iron he gave me was gone, and I'd be glad to give that iron back to him, fivefold or tenfold, if that's what the law requires of me. Not that I stole it from him, mind you, but because it no longer existed. At the time, of course, I was angry at him because I was ready to be a journeyman years before, but he held me to all the years of the contract anyway, pretending all the time that he didn't know I was already the better smith—"

Among the spectators, Makepeace leapt to his feet and shouted, "A contract is a contract!"

The judge banged the gavel.

"I kept the contract, too," said Alvin. "I worked the full term, even though I was kept as a servant, there wasn't a thing he could teach me after the first year or so. So I figured at the time that I had more than earned the price of the iron that was lost. Now, though, I reckon that was just an angry boy talking. I can see that Makepeace was within his rights, and I'll be glad to give him the price of the iron, or even make him another iron plow in place of the one that's gone."

"But you won't give him the actual plow you made."

"If he gave me gold to make a plow, I'd give him back as much gold as he gave me. But he gave me iron. And even if he had a right to that amount of gold, he doesn't have the right to this gold, because if it fell into his hands, he'd destroy it, and such a thing as this shouldn't be destroyed, specially not by them as has no power to make it again. Besides, all his talk of thief was before he saw the plow move."

"He saw it move?" asked Verily.

"Yes sir. And then he said to me, ‘Get on out of here. Take that thing and go away. I never want to see your face around here again.' As near as I can recall them, those were his exact words, and if he says otherwise then God will witness against him at the last day, and he knows it."

Verily nodded. "So we have your view on it," he said. "Now, as to Hank Dowser, what about the matter of digging somewhere other than the place he said?"

"I knew it wasn't a good place," said Alvin, "But I dug where he said, right down till I reached solid stone."

"Without hitting water?" asked Verily.

"That's right. So then I went to where I knew I should have dug in the first place, and I put the well there. And it's drawing pure water even today, I hear tell."

"So Mr. Dowser was simply wrong."

"He wasn't wrong that there was water there," said Alvin. "He just didn't know that there was a shelf of rock and the water flowed under it. Bone dry above. That's why it was a natural meadow—no trees grew there, then or now, except some scrubby ones with shallow roots."

"Thank you very much," said Verily. Then, to Marty Laws: "Your witness."

Marty Laws leaned forward on his table and rested his chin on his hands. "Well, I can't say as how I have much to ask. We've got Makepeace's version of things, and we've got your version. I might as well ask you, is there any chance that you didn't actually turn iron into gold? Any chance that you found the gold in that first hole you dug, and then shaped it into a plow?"

"No chance of that, sir," said Alvin.

"So you didn't hide that old iron plow away in order to enhance your reputation as a Maker?"

"I never looked for no reputation as a Maker, sir," said Alvin. "And as for the iron, it ain't iron anymore."

Makepeace nodded. "That's all the questions I've got."

The judge looked back at Verily, "Anything more from you?"

"Just one question," said Verily. "Alvin, you heard the things Amy Sump said about you and her and the baby she's carrying. Any truth to that?"

Alvin shook his head. "I never left the jail cell. It's true that I left Vigor Church at least partly because of the stories she was putting out about me. They were false stories, but I needed to leave anyway, and I hoped that with me gone, she'd forget about dreaming me into her life and fall in love with some fellow her own age. I never laid a hand on her. I'm under oath and I swear it before God. I'm sorry she's having trouble, and I hope the baby she's carrying turns out fine and strong and makes a good son for her."

"It's a boy?" asked Verily.

"Oh yes," said Alvin. "A boy. But not my son."

"Now we're finished," said Verily.

It was time for final statements, but the judge didn't give the word to begin. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a long moment. "Folks, this has been a strange trial, and it's taken some sorry turns along the way. But right now there's only a few points at issue. If Makepeace Smith and Hank Dowser are right, and the gold was found not made, then I think it's fair to say the plow is flat out Makepeace's property."

"Damn straight!" cried Makepeace.

"Bailiff, take Makepeace Smith into custody please," said the judge. "He's spending the night in jail for contempt of court, and before he can say another word I'll inform him that every word he says will add another night to his sentence."

Makepeace nearly burst, but he didn't say another word as the bailiff led him from the courtroom.

"The other possibility is that Alvin made the gold out of iron, as he says, and that the gold is something called ‘living gold,' and therefore the plow belongs to itself. Well, I can't say the law allows any room for farm implements to be self-owning entities, but I will say that since Makepeace gave Alvin a certain weight of iron, then if Alvin made that iron disappear, he owes Makepeace the same weight of iron back again, or the monetary equivalent in legal tender. This is how it seems to me at this moment, though I know the jury may see other possibilities that escape me. The trouble is that right now I don't know how the jury can possibly make a fair decision. How can they forget all the business about Alvin maybe or maybe not having scandalous liaisons? A part of me says I ought to declare a mistrial, but then another part of me says, that wouldn't be right, to make this town go through yet another round of this trial. So here's what I propose to do. There's one fact in all of this that we can actually test. We can go out to the smithy and have Hank Dowser show us the spot where he called for the well to be dug. Then we can dig down and see if we find either the remnants of some treasure chest—and water—or a shelf of stone, the way Alvin said, and not a drop of water. It seems to me then we'll at least know something, whereas at the present moment we don't know much at all, except that Vilate Franker, God bless her, has false teeth."

Neither the defense nor the prosecution had any objections.

"Then let's convene this court at Makepeace's smithy at ten in the morning. No, not tomorrow—that's Friday, election day. I see no way around it, we'll have to do it Monday morning. Another weekend in jail, I'm afraid, Alvin."

"Your Honor," said Verily Cooper. "There's only the one jail in this town, and with Makepeace Smith forced to share a cell in the same room with my client—"

"All right," said the judge. "Sheriff, you can release Makepeace when you get Alvin back over there."

"Thank you, Your Honor," said Verily.

"We're adjourned till ten on Monday." The gavel struck and the spectacle ended for the day.