Alvin Journeyman

Chapter 17 -- Decisions

Because Calvin used to keep to himself so much in Vigor Church, he always thought of himself as a solitary sort of fellow. Everybody in Vigor who wasn't besotted with Alvin turned out to be pretty much of an idiot, when it came down to it. What did Calvin want with pranks like luring skunks under porches or pushing over outhouses? Alvin had him cut out of anything that mattered, and any other friends he might have had didn't amount to much.

In New Amsterdam and London, Calvin was even more alone, being concentrated as he was on the single-minded goal of getting to Napoleon. It was the same on the streets of Paris, when, he was going around trying to get a reputation as a healer. And once he got the Emperor's attention, it was all study and work.

For a while. Because after a few weeks it became pretty clear that Napoleon was going to stretch out his teaching as long and slow as possible. Why should he do otherwise? As soon as Calvin was satisfied that he had learned enough, he'd leave and then Napoleon would be the victim of gout. Calvin toyed with the idea of putting on some pressure by increasing Napoleon's pain, and with that in mind he went and found the place in the Emperor's brain where pain was registered. He had some idea of using his doodling bug to poke directly into that place of pure agony, and then see if Napoleon didn't suddenly remember to teach Calvin a few things that he'd overlooked till now.

That was fine for daydreaming, but Calvin wasn't no fool. He could do that agony trick once, and get one day's worth of teaching, but then before he next fell asleep, he'd better be long gone from Paris, from France, and from anywhere on God's green Earth where Napoleon's agents might find him. No, he couldn't force Napoleon. He had to stay and put up with the excruciatingly slow pace of the lessons, the sheer repetitiveness. In the meantime, he observed carefully, trying to see what it was Napoleon was doing that Calvin didn't understand. He never saw a thing that made sense.

What was left for him, then, but to try out the things Napoleon had taught him about manipulating other people, and see if he could figure out more by pure experimentation? That was what finally, brought him into contact with other people—the desire to learn how to control them.

Trouble was, the only people around were the staff, and they were all busy. What's worse, they were also under Napoleon's direct control, and it wouldn't do to let the Emperor see that somebody else was trying to win control of his toadies. He might get the wrong idea. He might think Calvin was trying to undermine his power, which wasn't true—Calvin didn't care a hoot about taking Napoleon's place. What was a mere Emperor when there was a Maker in the world?

Two Makers, that is. Two.

Who could Calvin try out his new-learned powers on? After a little wandering around the palace and the government buildings, he began to realize that there was another class of person altogether. Idle and frustrated, they were Calvin's natural subjects: the sons of Napoleon's clerks and courtiers.

They all had roughly the same biography: As their fathers rose to positions of influence, they got sent away to steadily better boarding schools, then emerged at sixteen or seventeen with education, ambition, and no social prestige whatsoever, which meant that most doors were closed to them except to follow in their fathers' footsteps and become completely dependent upon the Emperor. For some of them, this was perfectly all right; Calvin left those hardworking, contented souls alone.

The ones he found interesting were the desultory law students, the enthusiastically untalented poets and dramatists, the gossiping seducers looking around for women rich enough to be desirable and stupid enough to be taken in by such pretenders. Calvin's French improved greatly the more he conversed with them, and even as he followed Napoleon's lessons and learned to find what vices drove these young men, so he could flatter and exploit and control them, he also discovered that he enjoyed their company. Even the fools among them were entertaining, with their lassitude and cynicism, and now and then he found some truly clever and fascinating companions.

Those were the most difficult to win control of, and Calvin told himself that it was the challenge rather than the pleasure of their company that kept him coming back to them again and again. One of them most of all: Honor'. A skinny, short man with prematurely rotten teeth, he was a year older than Calvin's brother Alvin. Honor' was without manners; Calvin soon learned that it wasn't because he didn't know how to behave, but rather because he wished to shock people, to show his contempt for their stale forms, and most of all because he wished to command their attention, and being faintly repulsive all the time had the desired effect. He might start with their contempt or disgust, but within fifteen minutes he always had them laughing at his wit, nodding at his insights, their eyes shining with the dazzlement of his conversation.

Calvin even allowed himself to think that Honor' had some of the same gift Napoleon had been born with, that by studying him Calvin might learn a few of the secrets the Emperor still withheld.

At first Honor' ignored Calvin, not in particular but in the general way that he ignored everyone who had nothing to offer him. Then he must have heard from someone that Calvin saw the Emperor every day, that in fact the Emperor used him as his personal healer. At once Calvin became acceptable, so much so that Honor' began inviting him along on his nighttime jaunts.

"I am studying Paris," said Honor'. "No, let me correct myself—I am studying humankind, and Paris has a large enough sampling of that species to keep me occupied for many years. I study all people who depart from the norm, for their very abnormalities teach me about human nature: If the actions of this man surprise me, it is because I must have learned, over the years, to expect men to behave in a different way. Thus I learn not only the oddity of the one, but also the normality of the many."

"And how am I odd?" asked Calvin.

"You are odd because you actually listen to my ideas instead of my wit. You are an eager student of genius, and I half suspect that you may have genius yourself."

"Genius?" asked Calvin.

"The extraordinary spirit that makes great men great. It is perfect piety that turns men into saints or angels, but what about men who are indifferently pious but perfectly intelligent or wise or perceptive? What do they become? Geniuses. Patron saints of the mind, of the eye, of the mind's eye! I intend, when I die, to have my name invoked by those who pray for wisdom. Let the saints have the prayers of those who need miracles." He cocked his head and looked up at Calvin. "You're too tall to be honest. Tall men always tell lies, since they assume short men like me will never see clearly enough to contradict them."

"Can't help being tall," said Calvin.

"Such a lie," said Honord. "You wanted to be tall when you were young, just as I wanted to be closer to the earth, where my eye could see the details large men miss. Though I do hope to be fat someday, since fatness would mean I had more than enough to eat, and that, my dear Yankee, would be a delicious change. It's a commonplace idea that geniuses are never understood and therefore never become popular or make money from their brilliance. I think this is pure foolishness. A true genius will not only be smarter than everyone else, but will be so clever that he'll know how to appeal to the masses without compromising his brilliance. Hence: I write novels."

Calvin almost laughed. "Those silly stories women read!"

"The very ones. Fainting heiresses. Dullard husbands. Dangerous lovers. Earthquakes, revolutions, fires, and interfering aunts. I write under several noms de plume, but my secret is that even as I master the art of being popular and therefore rich, I am also using the novel to explore the true state of humankind in this vast experimental tank known as Paris, this hive with an imperial queen who surrounds himself with drones like my poor stingless unflying father, the seventh secretary of the morning rotation—you gave him a hotfoot once, you miserable prankster, he wept that night at the humiliation of it and I vowed to kill you someday, though I think I probably won't—I have never kept a promise yet."

"When do you write? You're here all the time." Calvin gestured to include the environs of the government buildings.

"How would you know, when you aren't here all the time? By night I pass back and forth between the grand salons of the cream of society and the finest brothels ever created by the scum of the earth. And in the mornings, when you're taking emperor lessons from M. Bonaparte, I hole up in my miserable poet's garret—where my mother's housekeeper brings me fresh bread every day, so don't weep for me yet, not until I get syphilis or tuberculosis—and I write furiously, filling page after page with scintillating prose. I tried my hand at poetry once, a long play, but I discovered that by imitating Racine, one learns primarily to become as tedious as Racine, and by studying MoliŠre, one learns that MoliŠre was a lofty genius not to be trifled with by pathetic young imitators."

"I haven't read either of them," said Calvin. In truth he had never heard of either one and only deduced that they were dramatists from the context.

"Nor have you read my work, because in fact it is not yet genius, it is merely journeyman work. In fact I fear sometimes that I have the ambition of a genius, the eye and ear of a genius, and the talent of a chimneysweep. I go down into the filthy world, I come up black, I scatter the ashes and cinders of my research onto white papers, but what have I got? Paper with black marks all over it." Suddenly he gripped Calvin's shirtfront and pulled him down until they were eye to eye. "I would cut off my leg to have a talent like yours. To be able to see inside the body and heal or harm, give pain or relieve it—I would cut off both legs." Then he let go of Calvin's shirt. "Of course, I wouldn't give up my more fragile parts, for that would be too great a disappointment to my dear Lady de Berny. You will be discreet, of course, and when you gossip about my affair with her you will never admit you heard about it from me."

"Are you really jealous of me?" asked Calvin.

"Only when I am in my right mind," said Honor', "which is rare enough that you don't yet interfere with my happiness. You are not yet one of the major irritations of my life. My mother, now—I spent my early childhood pining for some show of love from her, some gentle touch of affection, and instead was always greeted with coldness and reproof. Nothing I did pleased her. I thought, for many years, that it was because I was a bad son. Then, suddenly, I realized that it was because she was a bad mother! It wasn't me she hated, it was my father. So one year when I was away at school, she took a lover—and she chose well, he is a very fine man whom I respect greatly—and got herself impregnated and gave birth to a monster."

"Deformed?" asked Calvin, curious.

"Only morally. Otherwise he is quite attractive, and my mother dotes on him. Every time I see her fawning on him, praising him, laughing at his clever little antics, I long to do as Joseph's brothers did and put him in a pit, only I would never be softhearted enough to pull him out and sell him into mere slavery. He will also probably be tall and she will see to it he has full access to her fortune, unlike myself, who am forced to live on the pittance my father can give me, the advances I can extort from my publishers, and the generous impulses of the women for whom I am the god of love. After careful contemplation, I have come to the conclusion that Cain, like Prometheus, was one of the great benefactors of humankind, for which of course he must be endlessly tortured by God, or at least given a very ugly pimple in his forehead. For it was Cain who taught us that some brothers simply cannot be endured, and the only solution is to kill them or have them killed. Being a man of lazy disposition, I lean toward the latter course. Also one cannot wear fine clothes in prison, and after one is guillotined for murder, one's collars never stay on properly; they're always sliding off to one side or the other. So I'll either hire it done or see to it he gets employed in some miserable clerical post in a far-off colony. I have in mind Reunion in the Indian Ocean; my only objection is that its dot on the globe is large enough that Henry may not be able to see the entire circumference of his island home at once. I want him to feel himself in prison every waking moment. I suppose that is uncharitable of me."

Uncharitable? Calvin laughed in delight, and regaled Honor' in turn with tales of his own horrible brother. "Well, then," said Honor', "you must destroy him, of course. What are you doing here in Paris, with a great project like that in hand!"

"I'm learning from Napoleon how to rule over men. So that when my brother builds his Crystal City, I can take it away from him."

"Take it away! Such shallow aims," said Honor'. "What good is taking it away?"

"Because he built it," said Calvin, "or he will build it, and then he'll have to see me rule over all that he built."

"You think this because you are a nasty person by nature, Calvin, and you don't understand nice people. To you, the end of existence is to control things, and so you will never build anything, but rather will try to take control of what is already in existence. Your brother, though, is by nature a Maker, as you explain it; therefore he cares nothing about who rules, but only about what exists. So if you take away the rule of the Crystal City—when he builds it—you have accomplished nothing, for he will still rejoice that the thing exists at all, regardless of who rules it. No, there is nothing else for you to do but let the city rise to its peak—and then tear it down into such a useless heap of rubble that it can never rise again."

Calvin was troubled. He had never thought this way, and it didn't feel good to him. "Honor', you're joking, I'm sure. You make things—your novels, at least."

"And if you hated me, you wouldn't just take away my royalties—my creditors do that already, thank you very much. No, you would take my very books, steal the copyright, and then revise them and revise them until nothing of truth or beauty or, more to the point, my genius remained in them, and then you would continue to publish them under my name, causing me to be shamed with every copy sold. People would read and say, ‘Honor' de Balzac, such a fool!' That is how you would destroy me."

"I'm not a character in one of your novels."

"More's the pity. You would speak more interesting dialogue I you were."

"So you think I'm wasting my time here?"

"I think you're about to waste your time. Napoleon is no fool. He's never going to give you tools powerful enough to challenge his own. So leave!"

"How can I leave, when he depends on me to keep his gout from hurting? I'd never make it to the border."

"Then heal the gout the way you used to heal those poor beggars—that was a cruel thing for you to do, by the way, a miserable selfish thing, for how did you think they were going to feed their children without some suppurating wound to excite pity in passersby and eke out a few sous from them? Those of us who were aware of your one-man messianic mission had to go about after you, cutting off the legs of your victims so they'd be able to continue to earn their livelihood."

Calvin was appalled. "How could you do such a thing!"

Honor' roared with laughter. "I'm joking, you poor literal-minded American simpleton!"

"I can't heal the gout," said Calvin, coming back to the subject that interested him: his own future.

"Why not?"

"I've been trying to figure out how diseases are caused. Injuries are easy. Infections are, too. If you concentrate, anyway. Diseases have taken me weeks. They seem to be caused by tiny creatures, so small I can't see them individually, only en masse. Those I can destroy easily enough, and cure the disease, or at least knock it back a little and give the body a chance to defeat it on its own. But not all diseases are caused by those tiny beasts. Gout baffles me completely. I have no idea what causes it, and therefore I can't cure it."

Honord shook his oversized head. "Calvin, you have such native talents, but they have been bestowed unworthily upon you. When I say you must heal Napoleon, of course I don't care whether you actually cure the gout. It isn't the gout that bothers him. It's the pain of the gout. And you already cure that every day! So cure it once and for all, thank Napoleon kindly for his lessons, and get out of France as quickly as possible! Have done with it! Get back about your life's work! I'll tell you what—I'll even pay your passage to America. No, I'll do more. I'll come with you to America, and add the study of that astonishingly crude and vigorous people to my vast store of knowledge about humankind. With your talent and my genius, what is there we couldn't accomplish?"

"Nothing," said Calvin happily. He was especially happy because not five minutes before, Calvin had decided that he wanted Honor' to accompany him to America, and so by the tiniest of gestures, by certain looks and signs that Honor' was never aware of, he caused the young novelist to like him, to be excited by the work that Calvin had to do, and to want so much to be a part of it that he would come home to America with him. Best of all, Calvin had brought it off so skillfully that Honor' obviously had no idea that he had been manipulated into it.

In the meantime, Honor"s idea of curing Napoleon's pain once and for all appealed to him. That place in the brain where pain resided still waited for him. Only instead of stimulating it, all he had to do was cauterize it. It would not only cure Napoleon's gout, but would also cure all other pains, he might feel in the future.

So, having thought of it, having decided to do it, that night Calvin acted. And in the morning, when he presented himself to the Emperor, he saw at once that the Emperor knew what he had done.

"I cut myself this morning, sharpening a pen," said Napoleon. "I only knew it when I saw the blood. I felt no pain at all."

"Excellent," said Calvin. "I finally found the way to end your pain from gout once and for all. It involved cutting off all pain for the rest of your life, but it's hard to imagine you'd mind."

Napoleon looked away. "It was hard for Midas to imagine that he would not want everything he touched to turn to gold. I might have bled to death because I felt no pain."

"Are you rebuking me?" said Calvin. "I give you a gift that millions of people pray for—to live a life without pain—and you're rebuking me? You're the Emperor—assign a servant to watch you day and night in order to make sure you don't unwittingly bleed to death."

"This is permanent?" asked Napoleon.

"I can't cure the gout—the disease is too subtle for me. I never pretended to be perfect. But the pain I could cure, and so I did. I cured it now and forever. If I did wrong, I'll restore the pain to you as best I can. It won't be a pleasant operation, but I think I can get the balance back to about what it was before. Intermittent, wasn't it? A month of gout, and then a week without it, and then another month?"

"You've grown saucy."

"No sir, I merely speak French better, so my native sauciness can emerge more clearly."

"What's to stop me from throwing you out, then? Or having you killed, now that I don't need you anymore?"

"Nothing has ever stopped you from doing those things," said,Calvin. "But you don't needlessly kill people, and as for throwing me out—well, why go to the trouble? I'm ready to leave. I'm homesick for America. My family is there."

Napoleon nodded. "I see. You decided to leave, and then finally cured my pain."

"My beloved Emperor, you wrong me," said Calvin. "I found I could cure you, and then decided to leave."

"I still have much to teach you."

"And I have much to learn. But I fear I'm not clever enough to learn from you—the last several weeks you have taught me and taught me, and yet I keep feeling as if I have learned nothing new. I'm simply not a clever enough pupil to master your lessons. Why should I stay?"

Napoleon smiled. "Well done. Very well done. If I weren't Napoleon, you would have won me over completely. In fact, I would probably be paying your passage to America."

"I was hoping you would, anyway, in gratitude for a painfree life."

"Emperors can't afford to have petty emotions like gratitude. If I pay your passage it's not because I'm grateful to you, it's because I think my purpose will be better served with you gone and alive than with you, say, here and alive or, perhaps, here and dead, or the most difficult possibility, gone and dead." Napoleon smiled.

Calvin smiled back. They understood each other, the Emperor and the young Maker. They had used each other and now were done with each other and would cast each other aside—but with style.

"I'll take the train to the coast this very day, begging your consent, sir."

"My consent! You have more than my consent! My servants have already packed your bags and they are doubtless at the station as we speak." Napoleon grinned, touched his forelock in an imaginary salute, and then watched as Calvin rushed from the room.

Calvin the American Maker and Honor' Balzac the annoyingly ambitious young writer, both gone from the country in the same day. And the pain of the gout now gone from him.

I'll have to be careful getting into the bath. I might scald myself to death without knowing it. I'll have to get someone else to climb into the water before me. I think I know just the young servant girl who should do it. I'll have to have her scrubbed first, so she doesn't foul the water for me. It will be interesting to see how much of the pleasure of the bath came from the slight pain of hot water. And was pain a part of sexual pleasure? It would be infuriating if the boy had interfered with that. Napoleon would have to have him hunted down and killed, if the boy had ruined that sport for him.

It didn't take long for the ballots to be counted in Hatrack River—by nine PM Friday, the elections clerk announced a decisive victory countywide for Tippy-Canoe, old Red Hand Harrison. Some had been drinking all through the election day; now the likker began to flow in earnest. Being a county seat, Hatrack drew plenty of farmers from the hinterland and smaller villages, for whom Hatrack was the nearest metropolis, having near a thousand people now; it was swollen to twice that number by ten in the evening. As word came in from each of the neighboring counties and from some across river that Tippy-Canoe was winning there, too, guns were shot off and so were mouths, which led to fisticuffs and a lot of traffic into and out of the jail.

Po Doggly came in about ten-thirty and asked Alvin if he'd mind too much being put on his own parole to go spend the night in the roadhouse—Horace Guester was standing bail for him, and did he give his solemn oath etcetera etcetera because the jail was needed to hold drunken brawlers ten to a cell. Alvin took the oath and Horace and Verily escorted him through back lots to the roadhouse. There was plenty of drinking and dancing downstairs in the common room of the roadhouse, but not the kind of rowdiness that prevailed at rougher places and out in the open, where wagons filled with likker were doing quite a business. Horace's party, as always, was for locals of the more civilized variety. Still, it wouldn't do no good for Alvin to show his face there and get rumors going, especially since there was bound to be some in the crowds infesting Hatrack River as wasn't particular friends of Alvin's—and a few that was particular friends of Makepeace's. Not to mention them as was always a particular friend of any amount of gold that might be obtained by stealth or violence. It was up the back stairs for Alvin, and even then he stooped and had his face covered and said nary a word the whole jaunt.

Up in Horace's own bedroom, where Arthur Stuart and Measure already had cots, Alvin paced the room, touching the walls, the soft bed, the window as if he had never seen such things before. "Even cooped up in here," said Alvin, "it's better than a cell. I hope never to be back in such a place again."

"Don't know how you've stood it this far," said Horace. "I'd go plain bonkers in a week."

"Who's to say he didn't?" said Measure.

Alvin laughed and agreed with him. "I was crazy not to let Verily go with his plans—I know that," said Alvin.

"No, no," said Verily. "You were right, you came through in your own defense."

"But what if I hadn't figured out how to let the salamander's voice be heard? I've been thinking about that ever since yesterday. What if I hadn't done it? They was all talking like I could do anything, like I could fly or do miracles on the moon just by thinking about it. I wish I could. Sometimes I wish I could. It's still nip and tuck with the jury, ain't it, Verily?"

Verily agreed that it was. But they all knew that he wasn't likely to get convicted of anything now—assuming, of course, that the shelf of rock was still there in the spot Hank Dowser marked for a well. The real damage was to his good name. The real damage was to the Crystal City, which now would be harder to build because of all them stories going around about how Alvin Smith seduced young girls and old women and walked through walls to get to them. Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, "Where there's smoke there's fire," when the saying should have been, "Where there's scandalous lies there's always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence."

The whooping and hollering in the street, with youngsters or drunken oldsters riding their horses at a breakneck speed up and down until Sheriff Doggly or some deputy could either stop the horse or shoot it, that guaranteed no sleep for anyone, not early, anyway. So they were all still awake, even Arthur Stuart, when two more men came into the common room of the roadhouse, looking wore out and dirty from hard travel. They waited at the counter, nursing a mug of cider each, till Horace came downstairs to check on things and recognized them at once. "Come on up, he's here, he's upstairs," whispered Horace, and the three of them was up the stairs in a trice.

"Armor," said Alvin, greeting him with a brotherly hug. "Mike." And Mike Fink got him a hug as well. "You picked a good night to return."

"We picked a damn good night," said Fink. "We was afraid we might be too late. The plan was to take you out of the jail and hang you as part of the election night festivities. Glad the sheriff thought ahead."

"He just needed the space for drunk and disorderly," said Alvin. "I don't think he had any inkling about no plot."

"There's twenty boys here," said Fink. "Twenty at least, all of them well paid and likkered up. I hope well enough paid that they're really likkered up so they'll just fall down, puke, and,go to sleep, and then slink off home to Carthage in the morning."

"I doubt it," said Measure. "I been caught up in plots against Alvin before. Somebody once pretty much took me apart."

Fink looked at him again. "You wasn't so tall then," he said. "I was plain ashamed of what I done to you," he said. "It was the worst thing I ever done."

"I didn't die," said Measure.

"Not for lack of trying on my part," said Fink.

Verily was baffled. "You mean this man tried to kill you, Measure?"

"Governor Harrison ordered it," said Measure. "And it was years ago. Before I was married. Before Alvin came here to Hatrack River as a prentice boy. And if I recall aright, Mike Fink was a little prettier in those days."

"Notin my heart," said Frank. "But I bore you no malice, Measure. And after Harrison had me do that to you, I left him, I wanted no truck with him. It don't make up for nothing, but it's the truth, that I'm not a man who'd let such as him boss me around, not anymore. If I thought you was the type of man to get even, I wouldn't run, I'd let you do it. But you ain't that kind of man."

"Like I said," Measure answered, "no harm done. I learned some things that day, and so did you. Let's have done with that now. You're Alvin's friend now, and that makes you my friend as long as you're loyal and true."

There were tears in Mike Fink's eyes. "Jesus himself couldn't be more kind to me, and me less deserving."

Measure held out his hand. Mike took and held it. Just for a second. Then it was done, and they set it behind them and went on.

"Found out a few things," said Armor-of-God. "But I'm glad Mike was with me. Not that he had to do any violence, but there was a couple of times that some fellows didn't take kindly to the questions I was asking."

"I did throw a fellow into a horsetrough," said Fink, "but I didn't hold him under or nothing so I don't think that counts."

Alvin laughed. "No, I reckon that was just playing around."

"It's some old friends of yours behind all this, Alvin," said Armor-of-God. "The Property Rights Crusade is mostly Reverend Philadelphia Thrower and a couple of clerks opening letters and mailing out letters. But there's some money people behind him, and he's behind other people who need money."

"Like?" asked Horace.

"Like one of his first and longest and loyalest contributors is a fellow name of Cavil Planter, who once owned him a farm in Appalachee and still clings to a certain cachet like it was gold bullion," said Armor-of-God, with a glance at Arthur Stuart.

Arthur nodded. "You're saying that's the white man as raped my mama to make me."

"Most likely," said Armor-of-God.

Alvin stared at Arthur Stuart. "How do you know about such things?"

"I hear everything," said Arthur Stuart. "I don't forget none of it. People said things about that stuff when I was too young to understand it, but I remembered the words and said them to myself when I was older and could understand them."

"Damn," said Horace. "How was Old Peg and me supposed to know he'd be able to figure it out later?"

"You did nothing wrong," said Verily. "You can't help the knacks your children have. My parents couldn't predict what I'd do, either, though heaven knows they tried. If Arthur Stuart's knack let him learn things that were painful to know, then I'd also have to say his inward character was strong enough to deal with it and let him grow up untroubled by it."

"I ain't troubled by it, that's true," said Arthur Stuart. "But I'll never call him my pa. He hurt my mama and he wanted to make a slave of me, and that's no pa." He looked at Horace Guester. "My own Black mama died trying to get me here, to a real pa and to a ma who'd take her place when she died."

Horace reached out and patted the boy's hand. Alvin knew how Horace had never liked having the boy call him his father, but it was plain Horace had reconciled himself to it. Maybe it was because of what Arthur just said, or maybe it was because Alvin had taken the boy away for a year and Horace was realizing now that his life was emptier without this half-Black mixup boy as his son.

"So this Cavil Planter is one of the money men behind Thrower's little group," said Verily. "Who else?"

"A lot of names, we didn't get but a few of them but it's prominent people in Carthage, and all of them from the proslavery faction, either openly or clandestine," said Armor. "And I'm pretty sure about where most of the money's going to."

"We know some of it went to pay Daniel Webster," said Alvin.

"But a lot more of it went to help with White Murderer Harrison's campaign for president," said Armor.

They fell silent, and in the silence more gunshots went off, more cheering, more galloping of horses and whooping.and hollering. "Tippy-Canoe just carried him another county," said Horace.

"Maybe he won't do so well back east," said Alvin.

"Who knows?" said Measure. "I can guarantee you he didn't get a single vote in Vigor Church. But that ain't enough to turn the tide."

"It's out of our hands for now," said Alvin. "Presidents ain't forever."

"I think what's important here," said Verily, "is that the same people whose candidate for president just won the election are also out to get you killed, Alvin."

"I'd think about lying low for a while," said Measure.

"I been lying low," said Alvin. "I had about all the low-lying I can stand."

"Being in jail so's they know right where you be ain't lying low," said Mike Fink. "You got to be where they don't think to look for you, or where if they do find you they can't do nothing to hurt you."

"The first place I can think of that fills those requirements is the grave," said Alvin, "but I reckon I don't want to go there yet."

There was a soft rap on the door. Horace went to it, whispered, "Who's there?"

"Peggy," came the answer. He opened the door and she came in. She looked around at the assembled men and chuckled. "Planning the fate of the world here?"

Too many of them remembered what happened the last time they met together for her casual tone to be easily accepted. Only Armor and Fink, who weren't there in Alvin's cell that night, greeted her with good cheer. They filled her in on all that had happened, including the fact that Harrison's election was taken for a sure thing all along the route from Carthage City to Hatrack.

"You know what I don't think is fair?" said Arthur Stuart. "That old Red Hand Harrison is walking around with blood dripping off'n him and they made him president, while Measure here has to stay half-hid and all them other good folks daresn't leave Vigor Church cause of that curse. It seems to me like the good folks is still punished and the worsest one got off scotfree."

"Seems the same to me," said Alvin. "But it ain't my call."

"Maybe it ain't and maybe it is," said Arthur Stuart.

They all looked at him like he was a mess on the floor. "How is it Alvin's call?" asked Verily.

"That Red chief ain't dead, is he?" said Arthur Stuart. "That Red prophet what put the curse on, right? Well, him as puts on a curse can take it off, can't he?"

"Nobody can talk to them wild Reds no more," said Mike Fink. "They fogged up the river and nobody can get across. There ain't even no trade with New Orleans no more, damn near broke my heart."

"Maybe nobody can get across the river," said Arthur Stuart. "But Alvin can."

Alvin shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "I don't think so. Besides, I don't know if Tenskwa-Tawa's going to see things the same way as us, Arthur. He might say, The White people of America are bringing destruction on themselves by choosing White Murderer Harrison to be their leader. But the people of Vigor Church will be saved from that destruction because they respected the curse I gave them. So he'll say the curse is really a blessing."

"If he says that," said Measure, "then he ain't as good a man as I thought."

"He sees things a different way, that's all," said Alvin. "I'm just saying you can't be sure what he'll say."

"Then you can't be sure either," said Armor-of-God.

"I'm thinking something, Alvin," said Measure. "Miss Larner here told me somewhat about how she and Arthur figured out there's a lot of people with sharp knacks in this place. Maybe drawn here cause you was born here, or cause you made the plow here. And there's all them people you've been teaching up in Vigor, folks who maybe don't got so sharp a knack but they know the things you taught them, they know the way to live. And I also have my own idea that maybe the curse forced us all to live together there, so we had to get along no matter what, we had to learn to make peace among ourselves. If the curse was lifted from the folks of Vigor Church, them as wanted to could come here and teach them as has the knacks. And teach, them meantime how to live together in harmony."

"Or folks from here could go there," said Alvin. "Even if the curse ain't lifted."

Measure shook his head. "There's like a hundred people or more in Vigor Church who's already trying to follow the Maker way. Nobody here even knows about it, really. So if you said to the folks in Vigor, please come to Hatrack, they'd come; but if you said to the folks in Hatrack, please come to Vigor, they'd laugh."

"But the river's still fogged up," said Mike, Fink, "and the curse is still on."

"If it comes to that," said Miss Larner, "there might be another way to talk to Tenskwa-Tawa without crossing the river."

"You got a pigeon knows the way to the Red Prophet's wigwam?" asked Horace, scoffing.

"I know a weaver," said Miss Larner, "who has a door that opens into the west, and I know of a man named Isaac who uses that door." She looked at Alvin, and he nodded.

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Measure, "but if you think you can talk to Tenskwa-Tawa, then I hope you'll do it. I hope you will."

"I will for you," said Alvin. "For your sake and the sake of my family and friends in Vigor Church, I'll ask even though I fear the answer will be worse than no."

"What could be worse than no?" asked Arthur Stuart.

"I could lose a friend," said Alvin. "But when I weigh that friend against the people of Vigor and the hope that they might help teach other folks to be Makers and help build the Crystal City—then I don't see as how I've got no choice. I was a child when I went there, though, to that weaver's house." He was silent for a moment. "Miss Larner knows the way, if she'll guide me there." It was his turn to look at her, waiting. After a moment's hesitation, she nodded.

"One way or another, though," said Verity Cooper, "you will leave this place as soon as the trial's over."

"Win or lose," said Alvin. "Win or lose."

"And if anybody tries to stop him or harm him, they'll have to deal with me first," said Mike Fink. "I'm going with you, Alvin, wherever you go. If these people have the president in their pocket, they're going to be all the more dangerous and you ain't going nowhere without me to watch your back."

"I wish I was younger," said Armor-of-God. "I wish I was younger."

"I don't want to travel alone," said Alvin. "Rut there's work to be done here, especially if the curse is lifted. And you have responsibilities, too, you married men. It's only the single ones, really, who are free to wander as I'll have to wander. Whatever I find out at the weaver's house, whatever happens when and if I talk to Tenskwa-Tawa, I still have to learn how to build the Crystal City."

"Maybe Tenskwa-Tawa can tell you," said Measure.

"If he knows, then he could have told me back when you and I was boys and in his company," said Alvin.

"I'm unmarried," said Arthur Stuart. "I'm coming with you."

"I reckon so," said Alvin. "And Mike Fink, I'll be glad of your company, too."

"I'm not married either," said Verily Cooper.

Alvin looked at him oddly. "Verily, you're already a dear friend, but you're a lawyer, not a woodsman or a wandering tradesman or a river rat or whatever the rest of us are."

"All the more reason you need me," said Verily. "There'll be laws and courts, sheriffs and jails and writs wherever you go. Sometimes you'll need what Mike Fink has to offer. And sometimes you'll need me. You can't deny me, Alvin Smith. I came all this way to learn from you."

"Measure knows all I know by now. He can teach you as well as I can, and you can help him."

Verily looked at his feet for a moment. "Measure's learned from you, and you from him, since you're brothers and have been for a long time. May it not be taken as an offense, I beg you, if I say that I'd be glad of a chance to learn from, you directly for a while, Alvin. I mean to belittle no one else by saying that."

"No offense taken," said Measure. "If you hadn't said it, I would have."

"These three then to go with me on the long road," said Alvin. "And Miss Larner to go with me as far as Becca Weaver's house."

"I'll go too," said Armor-of-God. "Not the whole road, but as far as the weavers. So I can bring back word about what Tenskwa-Tawa says. I hope you'll forgive my presumption, but I crave the chance to be the one as brings the good news to Vigor Church, if they're set free."

"And if they're not?"

"Then they need to learn that too, and from me."

"Then our plans are laid, such as they are," said Alvin.

"All except how to get out of Hatrack River alive, with all these thugs and ruffians about," said Verily Cooper.

"Oh, me and Armor already got that figured out," said Mike Fink. with a grin. "And we pretty much won't have to beat nobody to a pulp to do it, neither, if we're lucky."

There was such glee in Mike Fink's face when he said it, though, that more than one of the others wondered whether Mike really thought it would be good luck not to have to pulverize somebody. Nor were a few of them altogether sure that they didn't wish to do a little pulp-beating themselves, if push came to shove.

Fink and Armor-of-God were about to head downstairs with Horace then, to freshen up from their journey before he put them to bed in his attic, a good clean space but one he never rented out, just in case of late-night sudden visitors like these, when Measure called out, "Mike Fink."

Fink turned around.

"There's a story I got to tell you before I go to sleep tonight," he said.

Fink looked puzzled for a moment.

"Measure's under the curse," said Armor-of-God. "He's got to tell you or he'll go to bed with bloody hands."

"I came this close to being under the curse myself," said Fink. "But you? How did you get under it?"

"He took it on himself," said Miss Larner. "But that doesn't mean the same rules don't apply."

"But I already know the story."

"That'll make the telling of it easier," said Measure. "But I got to do it."

"I'll come back up when I've peed and et," said Fink. "Begging your pardon, ma'am."

There they were, then, looking at each other, Alvin and Peggy—but once again with Verily Cooper, Arthur Stuart, and Measure looking on.

"Don't the two of you get tired of playing out your scenes in front of an audience?"

"There's no scene to play," said Miss Larner.

"Too bad," said Alvin. "I thought this was the part of the play where I says to you, ‘I'm sorry,' and you says to me—"

"I say to you, There is nothing to be sorry for."

"And I say to you, Is so. And you say, Is not. Is so, Is not, Is so, back and forth till we bust out laughing."

At which she burst out laughing.

"I was right, you didn't need to testify," Alvin said.

Her face went stern at once.

"Hear me out, for Pete's sake, cause you were right too, if it came right down to it, it wasn't my place to tell you whether or not you could testify. It's not my decision whether you get to make this sacrifice or that one, or whether it's worth it. You decide your own sacrifices, and I decide mine. Instead of me bossing you about it, I should have just asked you to hold off and see if I could manage without. And you would have said yes. Wouldn't you."

She looked him in the eye. "Probably not," she said. "But I should have."

"So maybe we ain't so bullheaded after all."

"The day after—no, two days later—that's when we're not so bullheaded."

"That'll do, if we just stay friends till we soften up a little."

"You're not ready for married life, Alvin," said Miss Larner. "You still have many leagues to travel, and until you're ready to build the Crystal City, you have no need of me. I'm not going to sit home and pine for you, and I'm not going to try to tag along with you when the companions you need are men like these. Speak to me when your journey's done. See if we still need each other then."

"So you admit we need each other now."

"I'm not debating with you now, Alvin. I concede no points to you, and petty contradictions will not be explained or reconciled."

"These men are my witnesses, Margaret. I will love you forever. The family we make together, that will be our best Making, better than the plow, better than the Crystal City."

She shook her head. "Be honest with yourself, Alvin. The Crystal City will stand forever, if you build it right. But our family will be gone in a few lifetimes."

"So you admit we'll have a family."

She grinned. "You should run for office, Alvin. You'd lose, but the debates would be entertaining." She was turning toward the door when it opened without a knock. It was Po Doggly, his eyes wide. He scanned the room till he saw Alvin. "What are you doing sitting there like that, and not a gun in the room!"

"I wasn't robbing any of them, and they wasn't robbing me," said Alvin. "We didn't think to bring guns along."

"There was a break-in at the jail. A man claiming to be Amy Sump's father riled up the crowd and about thirty men broke into the courthouse and overpowered Billy Hunter and took away his keys. They hauled every damn prisoner out of there and started beating on them till they told which one of them was you. I got there before they killed anybody and I run them off all right, but they can't get far from town in one night and I don't know but what somebody's going to tell them where you are so I want you to sleep with guns tonight."

"Don't worry about it," said Miss Larner. "They won't come here tonight."

Po looked at her, then at Alvin. "You sure?"

"Don't even post a guard, Po," said Miss Larner. "It will only draw attention to the roadhouse. The men hired to kill Alvin are all cowards, really, so they had to get drunk in order to make the attempt. They'll sleep it off tonight."

"And go away after that?"

"Make sure the trial is well guarded, and after that if Alvin is acquitted he'll leave Hatrack and your nightmares will be over."

"They broke into my jail," said Doggly. "I don't know who your enemies are, boy, but if I was you I'd get rid of that golden plow."

"It ain't the plow," said Alvin. "Though some of them probably thinks it is. But plow or no plow, the ones as want me dead would be sending boys like those after me."

"And you, really don't want my protection?" asked Doggly.

Both Alvin and Miss Larner agreed that they did not.

When Po made his good-byes and was ready to leave, Miss Larner slipped her arm through his. "Take me downstairs, please, and on to the room I'm sharing with my new friend Ramona." She gave not so much as a backward glance at Alvin.

Measure hooted once after the door was closed. "Alvin, is she testing you? Just to make sure that you'll never turn wifebeater, no matter what the provocation?"

"I got a feeling I ain't seen provocation yet." But Alvin was smiling when he said it, and the others got the idea he didn't mind the idea of sparring with Miss Larner now and then—sparring with words, that is, words and looks and winks and nasty grins.

After the candles were doused and the room was dark and still, with all of them in bed and wishing to sleep, Alvin murmured: "I wonder what they meant to do to me."

Nobody asked who he meant; Measure didn't have to. "They meant to kill you, Alvin. Does it matter what method they used? Hanging. Burning alive. A dozen musket balls. Do you really care which way you die?"

"I'd like to have a corpse decent-looking enough that the coffin can be open and my children can bear to look at me and say good-bye to me."

"You're dreaming then," said Measure. "Cause even right now I don't know how no wife and children could bear to look at you, though I daresay they'll say good-bye readily enough."

"I expect they were going to hang me," said Alvin. "If you ever see folks about to hang me, don't waste your time or risk your life trying to save me. Just come along after they've given up on me so you can get me on home."

"So you got no fear of the rope," said Measure.

"Nor fear of drowning or suffocation," said Alvin. "Nor falling. I can fix up breaks and make the rocks soft under me. But fire, now. Fire and beheading and too many bullets, those can take me right off. I could use some help if you see them going at me like that."

"I'll try to remember that," said Measure.

Monday morning behind the smithy, everyone was gathered by ten o'clock; but from dawn onward, heavily armed deputies were on guard all around the site. The judge arranged things so the whole jury could see, as well as Marty Laws, Verily Cooper, Alvin Smith, Makepeace Smith, and Hank Dowser. "This court is now in session," said the judge loudly. "Now, Hank Dowser, you show us the exact place you marked."

Verily Cooper spoke up. "How do we know he'll mark the same place?"

"Cause I'll dowse it again," said Hank Dowser, "and the same spot will still be best."

Alvin spoke up then. "There's water everywhere here. There's not a place you can pick where there won't be water if you just go far enough down."

Hank Dowser whirled on him and glared. "There it is! He's got no respect for any man's knack except his own! You think I don't know there's water most everywhere? The question is, is the water pure? Is it close to the surface? That's what I find—the easy dig, the clean water. And I'll tell you, by the use of hickory and willow wands, that the water is purest here, and closest to the surface here, and so I mark this spot, as I would have more'n a year ago! Tell me, Alvin Journeyman, if you're so clever, is this or is it not the same spot I marked, exactly?"

"It is," said Alvin, sounding a little abashed. "And I didn't mean to imply that you weren't a real dowser, sir."

"You didn't exactly mean not to imply it either, though, did you!"

"I'm sorry," said Alvin. "The water is purest here, and closest to the surface, and you truly found it twice the same, the exact spot."

The judge intervened. "So after this unconventional courtroom exchange, which seems appropriate to this unconventional courtroom, you both agree that this is the spot where Alvin says he dug the first well and found nothing but solid impenetrable stone, and where it is Makepeace's contention that there was no such stone, but rather a buried treasure which Alvin stole and converted to his own use while telling a tale of turning iron into gold."

"For all we know he hid my iron underground here!" cried Makepeace.

The judge sighed. "Makepeace, please, don't make me send you to jail again."

"Sorry," muttered Makepeace.

The judge beckoned to the team of workingmen he'd arranged to come do the digging. Paying them would come out of the county budget, but with four diggers it couldn't take long to prove one or the other right.

They dug and dug, the dirt flying. But it was a dryish dirt, a little moist from the last rain which was only a week ago, but no hint of a watery layer. And then: chink.

"The treasure box!" cried Makepeace.

A few moments later, after scraping and prying, the foreman of the diggers called out, "Solid stone, your honor! Far as we can reach. Not no boulder, neither—feels like bedrock if'n I ever saw it."

Hank Dowser's face went scarlet. He muscled his way to the hole and slid down the steep side. With his own handkerchief he brushed away the soil from the stone. After a few minutes of examination, he stood up. "Your Honor, I apologize to Mr. Smith, as graciously, I hope, as he just apologized to me a moment ago. Not only is this bedrock—which I did not see, for I have never found such a sheet of water under solid stone like this—but also I can see old scrape marks against the stone, proving to me that the prentice boy did dig in this spot, just as he said he did, and reached stone, just as he said he did."

"That don't prove he didn't find gold along the way!" cried Makepeace.

"Summations to the jury!" the judge called out.

"In every particular that we could test," said Verily Cooper, "Alvin Smith has proven himself to be truthful and reliable. And all the county has to assail him is the unproven and unprovable speculations of a man whose primary motive seems to be to get his hands upon gold. There are no witnesses but Alvin himself of how the gold came to be shaped like a plow, or the plow came to be made of gold. But we have eight witnesses, not to mention His Honor, myself, and my respected colleague, not to mention Alvin himself, all swearing to you that this plow is not just gold, but also alive. What possible property interest can Makepeace Smith have in an object which clearly belongs to itself and only keeps company with Alvin Smith for its own protection? You have more than a reasonable doubt—you have a certainty that my client is an honest man who has committed no crime, and that the plow should stay with him."

It was Marty Laws' turn then. He looked like he'd had sour milk for breakfast. "You've heard the witnesses, you've seen the evidence, you're all wise men and you can figure this out just fine without my help," said Laws. "May God bless your deliberations."

"Is that your summing up?" demanded Makepeace. "Is that how you administer justice in this county? I'll support your opponent in the next local election, Marty Laws! I swear you haven't heard the end of this!"

"Sheriff, kindly arrest Mr. Makepeace Smith again, three days this time, contempt of court and I'll consider a charge of attempted interference with the course of justice by offering a threat to a sitting judge in order to influence the outcome of a case."

"You're all ganging up against me! All of you are in this together! What did he do, Your Honor, bribe you? Offer to share some of that gold with you?"

"Quickly, Sheriff Doggly," said the judge, "before I get angry with the man."

When Makepeace's shouting had died down enough to proceed, the judge asked the jury, "Do we need to traipse on back to the courtroom for hours of deliberation? Or should we just stand back and let you work things out right here?"

The foreman whispered to his fellow jurors; they whispered back. "We have a unanimous verdict, Your Honor."

"What say you, etcetera etcetera?"

"Not guilty of all charges," said the foreman.

"We're done. I commend both attorneys for fine work in a difficult case. And to the jury, my commendation for cutting through the horse pucky and seeing the truth. Good citizens all. This court stands adjourned until the next time somebody brings a blame fool charge against an innocent man, at least that's what I'm betting on." The judge looked around at the people, who were still standing there. "Alvin, you're free to go," he said. "Let's all go home."

Of course they didn't all go; nor, strictly speaking, was Alvin free. Right now, surrounded by a crowd and with a dozen deputies on guard, he was safe enough. But as he gripped the sack with the plow inside, he could almost feel the covetings of other men directed toward that plow, that warm and trembling gold.

He wasn't thinking of that, however. He was looking over at Margaret Larner, whose arm was around young Ramona's waist. Someone was speaking to Alvin-it was Verily Cooper, he realized, congratulating him or something, but Verily would understand. Alvin put a hand on Verily's shoulder, to let him know that he was a good friend even though Alvin was about to walk away from him. And Alvin headed on over to Miss Larner and Ramona.

At the last moment he got shy, and though he had his eyes on Margaret all the way through the crowd, it was Ramona he spoke to when he got there. "Miss Ramona, it was brave of you to come forward, and honest too." He shook her hand.

Ramona beamed, but she was also alittle upset and nervous. "That whole thing with Amy was my fault I think. She was telling me those tales about you, and I was doubting her, which only made her insist more and more. And she stuck to it so much that for a while I believed maybe it was true and that's when I told my folks and that's what started all the rumors going, but then when she went with Thatch under the freak show tent and she comes out pregnant but babbling about how it was you got her that way, well, I had my chance then to set things straight, didn't I? And then I didn't get to testify!"

"But you told my friends," said Alvin, "so the people who matter most to me know the truth, and in the meantime you didn't have to hurt your friend Amy." In the back of his mind, though, Alvin couldn't shake the bitter certainty that there would always be some who believed her charges, just as he was sure that she would never recant. She would go on telling those lies about him, and some folks at least would go on believing them, and so he would be known for a cad or worse no matter how clean he lived his life. But that was spilled milk.

Ramona was shaking her head. "I don't reckon she'll be my friend no more."

"But you're her friend whether she likes it or not. So much of a friend that you'd even hurt her rather than let her hurt someone else. That's something, in my book."

At that moment, Mike Fink and Armor-of-God came up to him. "Sing us that song you thought up in jail, Alvin!"

At once several others clamored for the song—it was that kind of festive occasion.

"If Alvin won't sing it, Arthur Stuart knows it!" somebody said, and then there was Arthur tugging at his arm and Alvin joined in singing with him. Most of the jury was still there to hear the last verse:

I trusted justice not to fail. The jury did me proud. Tomorrow I will hit the trail, And sing my hiking song so loud, It's like to start a gale!

Everybody laughed and clapped. Even Miss Larner smiled, and as Alvin looked at her he knew that this was the moment, now or never. "I got another verse that I never sung to anybody before, but I want to sing it now," he said. They all hushed up again to hear:

Now swiftly from this place I'll fly, And underneath my boots, A thousand lands will pass me by, Until we choose to put down roots, My lady love and I.

He looked at Margaret with all the meaning he could put in his face, and everybody hooted and clapped. "I love you, Margaret Larner," he said. "I asked you before, but I'll say it again now. We're about to journey together for a ways, and I can't think of a good reason why it can't be our honeymoon journey. Let me be your husband, Margaret. Everything good that's in me belongs to you, if you'll have me."

She looked flustered. "You're embarrassing me, Alvin," she murmured.

Alvin leaned close and spoke into her ear. "I know we got separate work to do, once we leave the weavers house. I know we got long journeys apart."

She held his face between her hands. "You don't know what you might meet on that road. What woman you might meet and love better than me."

Alvin felt a stab of dread. Was this something she had seen with her torchy knack? Or merely the worry any woman might feel? Well, it was his future, wasn't it? And even if she saw the possibility of him loving somebody else, that didn't mean he had to let it come true.

He wrapped his long arms around her waist and drew her close, and spoke softly. "You see things in the future that I can't see. Let me ask you like an ordinary man, and you answer me like a woman that knows only the past and the present. Let my promise to you now keep watch over the future."

She was about to raise another objection, when he kissed her lightly on the lips. "If you're my wife, then whatever there is in the future, I can bear it, and I'll do my best to help you bear it too. The judge is right here. Let me begin my life of new freedom with you."

For a moment, her eyes looked heavy and sad, as if she saw some awful pain and suffering in his future. Or was it in her own?

Then she shook it off as if it was just the shadow of a cloud passing over her and now the sun was back. Or as if she had decided to live a certain life, no matter what the cost of it, and now would no longer dread what couldn't be helped. She smiled, and tears ran down her cheeks. "You don't know what you're doing, Alvin, but I'm proud and glad to have your love, and I'll be your wife."

Alvin turned to face the others, and in a loud voice he cried, "She said yes! Judge! Somebody stop the judge from leaving! He's got him one more job to do!" While Peggy went off to find her father and drag him back so he could give her away properly, Verily Cooper fetched the judge.

On the way over to where Alvin waited, the judge put a kindly arm across Verily's back. "My lad, you have a keen mind, a lawyer's mind, and I approve of that. But there's something about you that sets a fellow's teeth on edge."

"If I knew what it was, sir, you may be sure that I'd stop."

"Took me a while to figure it out. And I don't know what you can do about it. What makes folks mad at you right from the start is you sound so damnably English and educated and fine."

Verily grinned, then answered in the vernacular accent he had grown up with, the one he had spent so many years trying to lose. "You mean, sir, that if I talks like a common feller, I'll be more likable?"

The judge whooped with laughter. "That's what I mean, lad, though I don't know as how that accent is much better!"

And with that they reached the spot where the wedding party was assembled. Horace stood beside his daughter, and Arthur Stuart was there as Alvin's best man.

The judge turned to Sheriff Doggly. "Do the banns, my good sir."

Po Doggly at once cried out, "Is there a body here so foolish as to claim there's any impediment to the marriage of this pair of good and godly citizens?" He turned to the judge. "Not a soul as I can see, Judge."

So Alvin and Peggy were married, Horace Guester on one side, Arthur Stuart on the other, all standing there in the open on the grounds of the smithy where Alvin had served his prenticehood. Just up the hill was the springhouse where Peggy had lived in disguise as a schoolteacher; the very springhouse where twenty-two years before, as a five-year-old girl, she had seen the heartfires of a family struggling across the Hatrack River in flood, and in the womb of the mother of that family there was a baby with a heartfire so bright it dazzled her, the like of which she'd never seen before or since. She ran then, ran down this hill, ran to this smithy, got Makepeace Smith and the other men gathered there to race to the river and save the family. All of it began here, within sight of this place. And now she was married to him. Married to the boy whose heartfire shone like the brightest star in her memory, and in all her life since then.

There was dancing that night at Horace's roadhouse, you can bet, and Alvin had to sing his song five more times, and the last verse thrice each time through. And that night he carried his Margaret—his now, and he was hers—in those strong blacksmith's arms up the stairs to the room where Margaret herself had been conceived twenty-eight years before. He was awkward and they both were shy and it didn't help that half the town was charivareeing outside the roadhouse halfway till dawn, but they were man and wife, made one flesh as they had so long been one heart even though she had tried to deny it and he had tried to live without her. Never mind that she had seen his grave in her mind, and herself and their children standing by it, weeping. That scene was possible in every wedding night; and at least there would be children; at least there would be a loving widow to grieve him; at least there would be memory of this night, instead of regretful loneliness. And in the morning, when they awoke, they were not quite so shy, not quite so awkward, and he said such things to her as made her feel more beautiful than anyone who had ever lived before, and more beloved, and I don't know who would dare to say that in that moment it wasn't the pure truth.