Heartfire

Chapter 11 -- Decent Men

So this was what it came to, after all these years at the bar, as lawyer and as judge: John Adams had to sit in judgment in Cambridge over a witch trial. Oh, the ignominy of it. For a time he had been something of a philosopher, and caused an international incident over his involvement in the Appalachee Revolution. He had spoken for union between New England and the United States, daring the Lord Protector to arrest him for treason. He had called for a ban on trade with the Crown Colonies as long as they trafficked in slaves, at the very time that his fellow New Englanders were loudly calling for the right to enter into such trade. There wasn't a question of import in New England since the 1760s that John Adams hadn't been a part of. He had even founded a dynasty, or so it seemed, now that his boy John Quincy was governor of Massachusetts and chairman of the New England Council. And for the past fifteen years he had distinguished himself as a jurist, winning at last the love of his fellow Yankees when he refused an appointment to the Lord Protector's Bench in England, preferring to remain "among the free men of America."

And now he had to hear a witch trial. The toadlike witcher, Quill, ad come to see him when he arrived in Cambridge last night, reminding him that it was his duty to uphold the law-- as if John Adams needed prompting in his duty from the likes of Quill. "I have not exceeded the law in any respect," said Quill, "as you'll see even from the testimony of the witches, unless they lie."

"God help us if a witch should tell a lie," John had murmured. Quill missed the irony entirely and took the answer as an affirmation. Well, that was fine. John didn't mind if he went away happy, as long as he went away.

John should have died last year, when he got the grippe. He had it on the best authority that the Boston papers had all planned on a double-page spread for his obituary. That was precisely the space devoted to the eulogy of the last Lord Protector to shuffle off his mortal coil. It was good to be considered at a level with rulers and potentates, even though he had never quite succeeded in joining New England to the United States, making it impossible for him to play a role in that extraordinary experiment. Instead he remained here, among the good people of New England, whom he truly loved like brothers and sisters, even though he longed now and then to see a face that didn't look like every other face.

Witch trials, though-- it was an ugly thing, a holdover from medieval times. A shame on the face of New England.

But the law was the law. An accusation had been made, so a trial would have to be held, or at least the beginning of one. Quill would have his chance to get some poor wretch hanged-- if he could do it without violating the prerogatives of the bench or pushing the powers of the law beyond their statutory and natural limits.

Now at breakfast John Adams sat with his old pupil, Hezekiah Study. I adhere to a double standard, John admitted to himself. Quill's visit to me last night I thought highly improper. Hezekiah's visit, equally intended to influence my judgment in this case, I plan to enjoy. Well, any fool can be consistent, and most fools are.

"Cambridge is not what it used to be," said John to Hezekiah. "The students don't wear their robes."

"Out of fashion now," said Hezekiah. "Though if anyone had known you were coming, they might have put the robes back on. Your opinion on the subject is well known."

"As if these boys would so much as part their hair for a relic like me."

"A holy relic, sir?" asked Hezekiah.

John grimaced. "Oh, so I'm to be called 'sir' by you?"

"I was your student. You gave me Plato and Homer."

"But you wanted Aristophanes, as I recall." John Adams sighed. "You must realize, all my peers are dead. If I'm to have anyone on this earth call me John, it will have to be a friend who once called me 'sir' because of my seniority. We should have a new social rule. When we reach fifty, we're all the same age forever."

"John, then," said Hezekiah. "I knew God had heard my prayer when I learned that it was you and no other who drew this case."

"One judge is coughing his life out into bloody handkerchiefs and the other is burying his wife, and you think this is how God answers your prayers?"

"You weren't due, and here you are. A witch trial, sir. John."

"Oh, now you've knighted me. Sir John." He wanted to laugh at the idea of his ever being the answer to someone's prayer. Since his own prayers seemed rarely to be answered, it wouldn't be quite fair of God, would it, to play him as the prize in someone else's game of piety.

"I know how you feel about witches," said Hezekiah.

"You also know how I feel about the law," said John. "I may disbelieve in the crime, but that doesn't mean I'll have any bias in the handling of the case." Oh, let's stop the pretense that the question has come up casually. "What's your interest in it? Didn't you used to defend these cases, back when you were a lawyer?"

"I was never a good one."

John heard the pain in his voice. Still haunted after all these years? "You were an excellent lawyer, Hezekiah. But what is a lawyer against a superstitious, bloody-minded mob?"

Hezekiah smiled wanly. "I assume you know that the blacksmith's lawyer was arrested last night."

Quill hadn't seen fit to mention this little ploy, but John had learned it from the sheriff. "I can see it now. Lawyer after lawyer steps forth to defend this man, only to be accused, each in turn, and locked away. Thus the trial continues till all the lawyers are in jail."

Hezekiah smiled. "There are those who would regard that as the best of all possible outcomes."

John chuckled with him, then sighed. "Don't worry, Hezekiah. I won't have defense attorneys locked up in order to bolster the witchers' case. You shouldn't be talking to me about this, though."

"Oh, I knew what you'd do about that," said Hezekiah. "If Quill thought he could get away with that-- well, you'll see when you meet the lawyer. He has Quill by the character!"

"That would be a slippery place to try to hold him."

"No, it wasn't the lawyer. It was another matter I wanted to bring to your attention."

"Bring it in open court then, Hezekiah."

"I can't. And it's not evidentiary, anyway."

"Then tell me afterward."

"Please don't torment me, friend," said Hezekiah. "I wouldn't attempt anything unethical. Trust me enough to hear me out."

"If it's about the case..."

"It's about the accuser..."

"Who will also be a defendant in her own trial."

"She'll not be tried," said Hezekiah. "She's cooperating with Quill. So this can have no compromising effect on an action in court."

"Don't blame Quill for her. She came up with this accusation on her own."

"I know, sir. John. But she's not your normal accuser. Her parents were hanged for witches when she was a newborn. Indeed, her father took the drop, as they say, before she was even born, and her mother but weeks afterward. She found it out only a few days ago, and it put her in such a state that--"

"That she brought false accusation against a stranger?" John grimaced. "You have a fleck of yolk on your chin."

Hezekiah dabbed at it with his napkin. "I think the accusation is not false," said Hezekiah.

John glared at him. "I'm glad you didn't say anything to compromise this blacksmith's case."

"I don't mean that it's objectively true, I mean that she's being forthright. Her intent is pure. She believes the charge."

John rolled his eyes. "So how many should I hang for one girl's superstition?"

Hezekiah looked away. "She's not superstitious, sir. She's a sweet girl, good-hearted, and very bright. She's been studying with me, and sitting in on lectures."

"Oh, right. The girl and her professors. That's why Harvard got raided by the tithingmen and half the faculty hauled off for questioning."

"She didn't initiate that, sir. She refuses to accuse any but the original defendants."

"Till that rope-happy ghoul runs her into the ground."

"You should have heard the blacksmith's lawyer accuse Quill of using torture. Out on the common in front of everybody." Hezekiah smiled at the memory. "He held the strings and Quill danced for the crowd."

John liked the image as much as Hezekiah did, but he was a judge, and the first skill he had perfected was the ability to remain solemn and suppress even so much as a twinkle in his eye. "So you're here to tell me that this girl, this Purity, means well as she tries to get this young man hanged."

"I mean to say it isn't a case of vengeance for spurned love, or any such thing as are usually at the heart of witch trials."

"Then what is it? Since we both know..." John glanced around and lowered his voice. "That the one certainty in this trial is that there are no witches."

"The boy was full of brag about some knack or other. All she knows is what he told her, or someone in his party. But she believed it. She's doing this because she must believe in the law that hanged her parents. If she did not believe that the law was right, then the sheer injustice of it would drive her mad."

"Oh, now, Hezekiah. 'Drive her mad'? Have you been reading sensational novels?"

"I mean it quite literally. She has a deep faith in the goodness of our Christian community. If she thought her parents were falsely accused and hanged for it--"

"Who were her parents? Is it a case I..." And then, doing the arithmetic in his head-- the girl's age, that many years ago-- he realized whose daughter she was. "Oh, Hezekiah. That case?"

Tears spilled from Hezekiah's eyes. "What I wanted you to know, John, was that the one who seems to be the accuser is merely the last victim of that wretched affair."

John answered gently. "New England is a lovely place, Hezekiah. We have our share of hypocrisy, of course, but generally we face up to our sins and the frailty of human nature, and confess our wrongs right smartly. But this one-- how did it ever go that far?"

"You didn't see what I saw, John," said Hezekiah.

"No, don't tell me. You need no excuse, my friend. You stood alone."

"I couldn't... I could not."

John laid his hand over Hezekiah's. "Thus we take a good breakfast and render it indigestible," he said. "Come, now, there's no blame attached to you."

"Oh, but there is."

"So you're defending her, to make up for it?"

Hezekiah shook his head. "I've looked after her all her life. It's my penance. To stay here, in obscurity. There's blood on my hands. I won't have more. The young lawyer who's languishing in the jail, he's the one. When you let him out, when he defends his friend, see if he doesn't give you a way to resolve the whole matter. All I ask is that you not bring charges against the accuser."

"This English barrister can do it, but not you?"

"I took a vow most solemnly before heaven."

"And deprived the New England bar of an honest man. The bench as well. You should be in robes like mine, my friend."

Hezekiah brusquely wiped the tears from his cheeks. "Thank you for seeing me, John. And for treating me as a friend."

"Now and always, Hezekiah. Will I see you at the trial?"

"How could I bear that, John? No. God bless you, John. He brought you here, I know it. Yes, I know you think God is a watchmaker who installed an infinite spring--"

"A quotation I never said, though it's much attributed to me--"

"I heard the words from your lips."

"Stir your memory, and you'll recall that I was quoting the line in order to refute it! I'm no deist, like Tom Jefferson. That's his line. It's the only God he's willing to worship-- one who has closed up shop and gone away so there's no risk of Tom Jefferson being contradicted when he spouts his nonsense about the 'rational man.' Him and his wall of separation between church and state-- such claptrap! Such a wall serves only those who want to keep God on the far side of it, so they can divide up the nation without interference."

"I'm sorry to have brought your old nemesis into this."

"You didn't," said John. "I did. Or rather, he did. You'd think that he'd stop getting under my skin, but it galls me that his little country is going to be part of the United States, and mine isn't."

"Isn't yet," said Hezekiah.

"Isn't in my lifetime," said John, "and I'm selfish enough to wish I could have lived to see it. The United States needs this Puritan society as a counter-influence to Tom Jefferson's intolerantly secular one. Mark my words, when a government pretends that it is the highest judge of its own actions, the result is not freedom as Jefferson says, but chaos and oppression. When he shuts religion out of government, when men of faith are not listened to, then all that remains is venality, posturing, and ambition."

"I hope you're wrong about that, sir," said Hezekiah. "Many of us look to the United States as the next stage of the American experiment. New England has come this far, but we are stagnant now."

"As this trial proves." John sighed. "I wish I were wrong, Hezekiah. But I'm not. Tom Jefferson claims to stand for freedom, and charges me with trying to promote some kind of theocracy or aristocracy. But there is no freedom down his road."

"How can we know that, sir?" said Hezekiah. "No one has ever been down this road?"

"I have," said John, and regretted it at once.

Hezekiah looked at him, startled, but then smiled. "No matter how precise your imagination, sir, I doubt it will be accepted as evidence."

But it wasn't imagination. John had seen. Had seen it as clearly as he saw Hezekiah standing before him now. It was a sort of vision that God had vouchsafed to him all his life, that he could see how power flowed and where it led, in groups of men both large and small. It was a strange and obscure sort of vision, which he could not explain to anyone else and had never tried, not even to Abigail, but it allowed him to chart a course through all the theories and philosophies that swirled and swarmed throughout the British colonies. It had allowed him to see through Tom Jefferson. The man talked freedom, but he could never quite bring himself to free his slaves. Abolitionists criticized him for hypocrisy, but they missed the point. He wasn't a lover of freedom who had neglected to free his slaves; he was a man who loved to control other people, and did it by talking about freedom. Jefferson had stood naked in front of the world when he tried to silence his critics with the Alien and Sedition Acts almost as soon as Appalachee won its freedom from the Crown. So much for his love of freedom-- you could have freedom of speech as long as you didn't use it to oppose Jefferson's policies! Yet as soon as the acts were repealed-- after years of hounding Jefferson's enemies into silence or exile-- people still talked about him as the champion of liberty!

John Adams knew Tom Jefferson, and that's why Tom Jefferson hated John Adams, because John really was what Jefferson only pretended to be: a man who loved freedom, even the freedom of those who disagreed with him. Even Tom Jefferson's freedom. It made them unequal in battle. It handed the victory to Jefferson.

"Are you all right, sir?" asked Hezekiah.

"Just fighting over old battles in my mind," said John. "It's the problem with age. You have all these rusty arguments, and no quarrel to use them in. My brain is a museum, but alas, I'm the only visitor, and even I am not terribly interested in the displays."

Hezekiah laughed, but there was affection in it. "I would love nothing better than to visit there. But I'm afraid I'd be tempted to loot the place, and carry it all away with me."

To John's surprise, Hezekiah's words brought tears to his eyes. "Would you, Hezekiah?" He blinked rapidly and his eyes cleared. "You see, now, you've moved this old man with your kindness. You found the one bribe I'm susceptible to."

"It wasn't flattery, sir."

"I know," said John. "It was honor. May God forgive me, but I've never been able to purge my heart of the desire for it."

"There's no sin in it, John. The honor of good men is won only by goodness. It's how the children of God recognize each other. It's the feast of love."

"Maybe God did bring me here," said John. "In answer to my own prayers."

"Maybe that's how God works," said Hezekiah. "We pray for a messenger from God-- who knows but what the messenger also prayed for a place to take his message?"

"What does that make me, an angel?"

"Wrestle with Jacob. Smite his thigh. Leave him limping."

"Once your allusions were all to Homer and the Greek playwrights."

"It's the Bible now," said Hezekiah. "I have more to fear from death than you do."

"But longer to wait before it comes," said John ruefully.

Hezekiah laughed, shook John's hand, and left the table. John sat back down, tucked in, and finished. The meeting had been more emotional than John had expected, or than he cared for, truth be known. Emotions had a way of filling you up and then what did you do with them? You still had to go on about your life.

Except for Hezekiah Study. He had not gone about his life. His life had ended, all those years ago, back in Netticut, on the end of a couple of ropes.

And my life? When did it end? Because it has ended, I see that now. I'm like Hezekiah. I took a turn, or didn't take a turn; I stopped, or failed to stop. I should have been something else. I should have been president of a fledgling nation of free men. Not a judge at a witch trial. Not a stout little man eating the dregs of his breakfast alone at table in a boardinghouse in Cambridge, waiting for Tom Jefferson, damn him, to die, so I can have the feeble satisfaction of outliving that bastard son of Liberty.

Oh, Tom. If only we could have been friends, I could have changed you, you could have changed me, we could have become in reality the statesmen you pretend to be and I wish I were.

Purity could hardly sleep all night. It was unbearable, yesterday, the running, running, running. And yet she bore it. That's what surprised her. She sweated and panted but she kept on and on and on, and all the while she ran there was a kind of music in the back of her mind. As soon as she tried to listen to it, to find the melody of it, the sound retreated and all she could hear then was the throbbing of her pulse in her head, her own panting, her feet thudding on the grassy ground. But then she'd stagger a few steps and the music would come back and it would sustain her and...

She knew what it was. Hadn't Arthur Stuart talked about how Alvin could run and run with the greensong he learned from that Red prophet? Or was it Ta-Kumsaw himself? It didn't matter. Alvin was using his witchery to sustain her and she wanted to scream at him to stop.

But she had learned a little between yesterday and today. Quill had taught her. Everything she said got twisted. She had never mentioned Satan, had never even thought of him, but somehow her meeting with Alvin and his friends on the banks of the river had turned into a witches' sabbath, and Alvin swimming in the river with Arthur Stuart had been turned into incestuous sodomy. And she finally realized what should have been obvious all along-- what Reverend Study had tried to warn her about-- that whatever fault there might be in Alvin Smith, it was nothing compared to the terrible evil that resulted from denouncing him as a witch. What would happen if she cried out what was in her heart? "Stop it! Stop witching me to keep running!" It would only make things worse.

Is this what happened to my parents?

Gradually, as the day wore on, she had begun to notice something else. It was Quill who was filled with fear and rage, his mind alert to take anything that happened and turn it into proof of the evil he was looking for. Quill looked at Purity with fascination and loathing, a combination she found fearful and disturbing. But Alvin Smith, he was as cheerful toward her today as he ever was on the riverbank. Not a complaint toward her for getting him locked up. And yes, he used his witchery, or so it seemed to her, but he did it out of genuine kindness toward her. That was the truth-- by her own knack she knew it. He was a little impatient with her, but he bore her no ill will.

Now, as the day of her testimony loomed, she did not know what to do. If she bore witness against Alvin now, telling the simple truth, Quill would make it seem as though she was holding back. She could imagine the questioning. "Why are you refusing to mention the witches' sabbath?"

"There was no witches' sabbath."

"What about the naked debauchery between this man and this half-White boy who is said to be as it were his own son?"

"They played in the river, that's all."

"Ah, they played in the river, a naked man, a naked boy, they sported in the river, is that your testimony?" Oh, it would be awful, every word twisted.

Simpler by far to confess to a lesser crime: I made it up, Your Honor, because they frightened me by the riverbank and I wished them to see what it felt like. I made it up because I had just learned my parents were hanged for witchcraft and I wanted to show how false accusations are too readily believed.

She had almost resolved on this course of action when the key turned in the lock and the door opened and there stood Quill, his face warm and smiling, filled with love. To her it looked like hate, and now she could see what somehow had eluded her before: Quill wanted her to die.

How could she have missed it? It was her knack, to see what people intended, what they were about to do. Yet she saw no further than his smile the first time they met, saw nothing but his genuine love and sympathy and concern for her. How could her knack have failed her?

Was it what Quill had said to her, in one of his many rambling discourses on Satan? That Satan was not loyal and did not uphold his disciples?

Why, then, would she see the truth now?

Or was it the truth? Was Satan now deceiving her into thinking she saw hatred where love truly existed?

There was no way out of this circle of doubt. There was no firm ground to hold to. Alvin Smith, who admitted to witchery, was kind and forgiving to her though she did him great harm. Quill, who was the servant of God in opposing witchery, twisted every word she said to make her bear false witness against Smith and his friends. And now he seemed to want her to hang. That was how it seemed. Could the truth be so simple? Was it possible that things were exactly as they seemed?

"I know what you're thinking," said Quill softly.

"Do you?" she murmured.

"You're thinking that you want to recant your testimony against Alvin Smith and make the whole trial go away. I know you're thinking that because everybody does, just before the trial."

She said nothing. For she could sense the malice coming from him like stink from an untended baby.

"It wouldn't go away," said Quill. "I already have your testimony under oath. All that would happen is that perjury would be added to your crimes. And worse-- having repented, you would be seen to have returned to Satan, trying to conceal his acts. Indeed, you already seemed to be concealing the other witches in Cambridge. You could not have expected to protect your friends and incriminate only the strangers, could you? Were you that naive? Were you so caught up in the snares and nets of Satan that you believed you could hide from God?"

"I've hidden nothing." Even as she said it, she knew the futility of denial.

"I have here a list of the professors and lecturers at Cambridge who are known to create an atmosphere of hostility toward faith and piety in their classrooms. You are not alone in denouncing them-- my colleagues and I have compiled this list over a period of years. Emerson, for instance, scoffs at the very idea of the existence of witches and witchery. You like Emerson, don't you? I've heard that you were especially attentive in spying outside his classroom."

"It wasn't spying, I was given the right to listen," said Purity.

"You heard him," said Quill. "But my question is, did you see him? At a witches' sabbath?"

"I never saw a witches' sabbath, so how could I have seen him at one?"

"Don't chop logic with me," whispered Quill. "The syllogism is false because your testimony has been false. You told me about one witches' sabbath yourself."

"I never did."

"The debauchery," he whispered. "The crimes against nature."

She looked him boldly in the face, seeing his lust for her blood so strongly depicted in the fire of his face, the tension of his body that she would not have needed a knack to detect it. "You are the one who hates nature," she said. "You are the enemy of God."

"Feeble. I advise against your using that line in court. It will only make you look stupid and I answer it so easily."

"You are the enemy of goodness and decency," she said, speaking more boldly now, "and insofar as God is good, you hate God."

"Insofar as? The professors have taught you well. I think your answer, despite your attempts to deceive, has to be 'yes' to the question of whether you saw Emerson at a witches' sabbath."

"I say no such thing."

"I say that by using professorial language in the midst of a satanic denunciation of my role in God's service, your true spirit, held a helpless prisoner by Satan, was trying to send me a coded message denouncing Emerson."

"Who would believe such nonsense?"

"I'll say it in a way the court can understand," said Quill. He checked off Emerson's name. "Emerson, yes. One of Satan's spies, caught. Now look at the other names."

"Coded message," she said contemptuously.

"What you don't understand is that your very sneer shows your contempt for holiness. You hate all things good and decent, and your scornfulness proves it."

"Go away."

"For now," said Quill. "Your arraignment is this morning. The judge wants to hear you when Alvin Smith makes his plea."

But she was not fooled. Her knack was too trustworthy for her to doubt what she saw now.

"You're such a bad liar, Quill," she said. "The judge never needs to have a witness at the arraignment. I'll be there because I'm to be arraigned as well."

Quill was face-to-face with her again at once. "Satan whispered that lie to you, didn't he."

"Why would you say that?"

"I saw it," he said. "I saw him whisper to you."

"You're insane."

"I saw you looking at me, and in a sudden moment you were told something that you hadn't known before. Satan whispered."

Had he seen it? Was it his knack to see other knacks working?

No. It was his knack to find the useful lie hidden inside every useless truth. He had simply seen the transformation in her facial expression when she understood the truth about his intentions.

"Satan has never told me anything," she said.

"But you already told me about your knack," he answered with a smile. "Don't recant-- it will go hard with you."

"Maybe I have a talent for seeing other people's intentions," she said defiantly. "That doesn't mean it comes from Satan!"

"Yes," he said. "Use that line in court. Confess your sin and then deny that it's a sin. See what happens to you under the law." He reached out and touched her hand, gently, caressingly. "God loves you, child. Don't reject him. Turn away from Satan. Admit all the evil you have done so you can prove you have left it behind you. Live to let your womb bear children, as God intended. It's Satan, not God, who wants you twitching at the end of a rope."

"Yes," she said. "That much is true. Satan your master wants me dead."

He winked at her, got up, and went to the door. "That's good. Keep that up. That'll get you hanged." And he was gone, the door locked behind him.

She shook with cold as if it weren't summer with the heat already oppressive this early in the morning. Everything was clear to her now. Quill came here ready to do exactly what he had done-- take a simple accusation of the use of a knack, and turn it into a story about Satan and gross perversions. He knew he had to do this because honest people never told stories about Satan. He knew that she would not name others she saw at witches' sabbaths because there were never any such conclaves, and all such denunciations had to be extracted through whatever torture the law would allow. Witchers did what Quill did because if they did not do it, no one would ever be convicted of trafficking with Satan.

This was how her parents died. Not because they really did have knacks that came from Satan, but because they would not play along with the witchers and join them in persecuting others. They would not confess to falsehood. They died because the City of God tried so hard to be pure that it created its own impurity. The evil the witchers did was worse than any evil they might prevent. And yet the people of New England were so afraid that they might not live up to the ideals of Puritanism that they dared not speak against a law that purported to protect them from Satan.

I believed them. They killed my parents, raised me as an orphan, tainted with the rumor of evil, and instead of denouncing them for what they had done to me, I believed them and tried to do the same thing to someone else. To Alvin Smith, who did me no harm.

Purity threw herself to her knees and prayed. 0 Father in heaven, what have I done, what have I done.

Alvin finished the piss-poor breakfast they served to prisoners in the jail, then lay back on his cot to survey the people that he cared about. Far away in Camelot, his wife and their unborn daughter thrived. In Vigor Church, his mother and father, his brothers and sisters, all were doing well, none sick, none injured. Nearby, Verily was being let out of his cell. Alvin tracked him for a while, to be sure that he was being released. Yes, at the door of the courthouse they turned him loose to go find his own breakfast.

Out on the riverbank, Arthur Stuart and Mike Fink were fishing while Audubon was painting a kingfisher in the early-morning light. All was well.

It was only by chance that Alvin noticed the other heartfires converging on the river. He might not even have noticed them, in his reverie about eating fish just caught from the river, roasted over a smoky fire, except that something was wrong, some indefinable change in the world his doodlebug passed through. A sort of shimmering in the air, a feeling of something that loomed just out of sight, trembling on the verge of visibility.

Alvin knew what he was seeing. The Unmaker was abroad in the world.

Why was the Unmaker coming out in the open with the tithingmen? There had been no sign of the Unmaker lingering around Quill, who was clearly a lover of destruction.

Of course the very question contained its own answer. The Unmaker didn't have to emerge where people served its cause willingly, knowingly. Eagerly. Quill wasn't like Reverend Thrower. He didn't have to be lied to. He loved being the serpent in the garden. He would have been disappointed if he couldn't get the part. But the tithingmen were decent human beings and the Unmaker had to herd them.

Which was, quite literally, what it was doing. Quill had asked them to go searching for a witches' sabbath. They set out with no particular destination, except a vague idea that since Purity had spoken of encountering Alvin's party on the riverbank, that might be a good area to explore. Now, whenever they turned away from Arthur and Mike and Jean-Jacques, they stepped into the Unmaker's influence and they became uneasy, vaguely frightened. It made them turn around and walk quite briskly the other way. Closer to Alvin's friends.

Well, thought Alvin, this looks like a much better game if played by two.

His first thought was to bring up a fog from the river, to make it impossible for them to find their way. But he rejected this at once. The Unmaker could herd them whether they could see their way or not. The fog would only make it look more suspicious-sounding, more like witchery, when they recounted their story later. Besides, fog was made of water, and water was the element the Unmaker used the most. Alvin wasn't altogether certain that his control was so strong, especially at a distance, that he could count on keeping the Unmaker from subverting the fog. Someone might slip and die, and it would be blamed on witchery.

What did the tithingmen care about? They were good men who served their community, to keep it safe from harm and to keep the peace among neighbors and within family. When a couple quarreled, it was a tithingman who went to them to help them iron it out, or to separate them for a time if that was needed. When someone was breaking the sumptuary laws, or using coarse language, or otherwise offending against the standards that helped them all stay pure, it was a tithingman who tried, peacefully, to persuade them to mend their ways without the need of dire remedies. It was the tithingmen who kept the work of the courts to a minimum.

And a man didn't last long as a tithingman in a New England town if he fancied himself to be possessed of some sort of personal authority. He had none. Rather he was the voice and hands of the community as a whole, and a soft voice and gentle hands were preferred by all. Anyone who seemed to like to boss others about would simply be overlooked when the next round of tithingmen were chosen. Sometimes they realized that they hadn't been called on for many years, and wondered why; some even humbly asked, and tried to mend their ways. If they never asked, they were never told. What mattered was that the work be done, and done kindly.

So these were not cudgel-wielding thugs who were being herded toward the riverbank. Not like the Finders who came after Arthur Stuart back in Hatrack River, and were perfectly happy to kill anyone who stood violently against them. Not even like Reverend Thrower, who was somewhat deceived by the Unmaker but nevertheless had a zeal to pursue "evil" and root it out.

How could Alvin turn good men away from an evil path? How could he get them to ignore the Unmaker and take away its power to herd them?

Alvin sent his doodlebug into the village of Cambridge. Into the houses of families, listening for voices, voices of children. He needed the sound of a child in distress, but quickly realized that in a good Puritan town, children were kindly treated and well watched-out-for. He would have to do a little mischief to get the sound.

A kitchen. A three-year-old girl, watching her mother slice onions. The mother leaned forward on her chair. It was a simple matter for Alvin to weaken the leg and break the chair under her. With a shriek she fell. Alvin took care to make sure no harm befell her. What he wanted was from the child, not from her. And there it was. The girl cried out : "Mama!"

Alvin captured the sound, the pattern of it in the air. He carried it, strengthened it, the quivering waves; he layered them, echoed them, brought some slowly, some quickly in a complicated interweave of sound. It was very hard work, and took all his concentration, but finally he brought the first copy of the girl's cry to the tithingmen.

"Mama!"

They turned at once, hearing it as if in the near distance, and behind them, away from the river.

Again, fainter: "Mama!"

At once the tithingmen turned, knowing their duty. Searching for witches was their duty, but the distress of a child calling for her mother clearly was more important.

They plunged right into the Unmaker, and of course it chilled their hearts with fear, but at that moment Alvin brought them the girl's cry for yet a third and last time, so when fear struck them, instead of making them recoil it made them run even faster toward the sound. The fear turned from a sense of personal danger into an urgent need to get to the child because something very bad was happening to her-- their fear became, not a barrier, but a spur to greater effort.

For a while the Unmaker tried to stay with them, trying out other emotions-- anger, horror-- but all its efforts worked against its own purpose. It couldn't understand what Alvin was relying on: the power of decent men to act against their own interest in order to help those who trusted them. The Unmaker understood how to make men kill in war. What it could not comprehend was why they were willing to die.

So the tithingmen hunted fruitlessly in the woods and meadows, trying to find the girl whose voice they had heard, until finally they gave up and headed into town to try to find out which child was missing and organize a search. But all the children were in their places, and, despite some misgivings-- they had all heard the voice, after all-- they went about their ordinary business, figuring that if there needed to be a witch hunt, tomorrow would do as well as today.

On the riverbank, Arthur and Mike and Jean-Jacques had no idea that the Unmaker had been stalking them.

In his cell, Alvin wanted only to lie back and sleep. That was when the sheriff came for him, to bring him into the court for his arraignment.

Verily had only a few minutes to confer with Alvin before the arraignment began, and always with the sheriff present, so there couldn't be much candor-- but such was the rule with witch trials, so no potions or powders could be passed between them, or secret curses spoken. "No matter how it seems, Alvin, you must trust me."

"Why? How is it going to seem?"

"The judge is John Adams. I've been reading his writings and his court cases, both as lawyer and as judge, since I first began the study of law. The man is decent to the core. I had no knowledge of his ever doing a witch trial, though, and so I had no idea of his position on them. But when I came out of jail this morning, I was met by a fellow who lives here--"

"No need for names," said Alvin.

Verily smiled. "A fellow, I say, who's made some study of witch law-- in fact that's his name, Study-- and he tells me that Adams has never actually rendered a verdict in a witchery case."

"What does that mean?"

"There's always been some defect in the witchers' presentation and he's thrown the whole thing out."

"Then that's good," said Alvin.

"No," said Verily. "That's bad."

"I'd go free, wouldn't l?"

"But the law would still stand."

Alvin rolled his eyes. "Verily, I didn't come back here to try to reform New England, I came in order to--"

"We came to help Purity," said Verily. "And all the others. Do you know what it would mean, if the law itself were found defective? Adams is a man of weighty reputation. Even from the circuit bench of Boston, his decisions would be looked at carefully and carry much precedence in England as well as in America. The right decision might mean the end of witch trials, here as well as there."

Alvin smiled thinly. "You got too high an opinion of human nature."

"Do I?"

"The law didn't make witch trials happen. It was the hunger for witch trials that got them to make up the law."

"But if we do away with the legal basis--"

"Listen, Verily, do you think men like Quill will flat-out disappear just cause witchery ain't there to give them what they want? No, they'll just find another way to do the same job."

"You don't know that."

"If it ain't witchcraft, they'll find new crimes that work just the way witchcraft does, so you can take ordinary folks making ordinary mistakes or not even mistakes, just going about their business, but suddenly the witcher, he finds some wickedness in it, and turns everything they say into proof that they're guilty of causing every bad thing that's been going wrong."

"There's no other law that works that way."

"That's because we got witch laws, Very. Get rid of them, and people will find a way take all the sins of the world and put them onto the heads of some fellow who's attracted their attention and then destroy him and all his friends."

"Purity isn't evil, Alvin."

"Quill is," said Alvin.

The sheriff leaned down. "I'm trying not to listen, boys, but you know it's a crime to speak ill of a witcher. This Quill, he takes it as evidence that Satan's got you by the short hairs, begging your pardon."

"Thank you for the reminder, sir," said Verily. "My client didn't mean it quite the way it sounded."

The sheriff rolled his eyes. "From what I've seen, it doesn't matter much how it sounds when you say it. What matters is how it sounds when Quill repeats it."

Verily grinned at the sheriff and then at Alvin.

"What are you smiling at?" asked Alvin.

"I just got all the proof I need that you're wrong. People don't like the way the witch trials work. People don't like injustice. Strike down these laws and no one will miss them."

Alvin shook his head. "Good people won't miss them. But it wasn't good people as set them up in the first place. It was scared people. The world ain't steady. Bad things happen even when you been careful and done no wrong. Good people, strong people, they take that in stride, but them as is scared and weak, they want somebody to blame. The good people will think they've stamped out witch trials, but the next generation they'll turn around and there they'll be again, wearing a different hat, going by a different name, but witch trials all the same, where they care more about getting somebody punished than whether they're actually guilty of anything."

"Then we'll stamp them out again," said Verily.

Alvin shrugged. "Of course we will, once we figure out what's what and who's who. Maybe next time the witchers will go after folks with opinions they don't like, or folks who pray the wrong way or in the wrong place, or folks who look ugly or talk funny, or folks who aren't polite enough, or folks who wear the wrong clothes. Someday they may hold witch trials to condemn people for being Puritans."

Verily leaned over and whispered into Alvin's ear. "Meaning no disrespect, Al, it's your wife who can see into the future, not you."

"No whispering," said the sheriff. "You might be giving me the pox." He chuckled, but there was just a little bit of genuine worry in his voice.

Alvin answered Verily out loud. "Meaning no disrespect, Very, it don't take a knack to know that human nature ain't going to change anytime soon."

Verily stood up. "It's time for the arraignment, Alvin. There's no point in our talking philosophy before a trial. I never knew till now that you were so cynical about human nature."

"I know the power of the Unmaker," said Alvin. "It never lets up. It never gives in. It just moves on to other ground."

Shaking his head, Verily led the way out of the room. The sheriff, tightly holding the end of Alvin's chain, escorted him right after. "I got to say, I never seen a prisoner who cared so little about whether he got convicted or not."

Alvin reached up his hand and scratched the side of his nose. "I'm not all that worried, I got to admit." Then he put his hand back down.

It wasn't till they were almost in the courtroom that the sheriff realized that there was no way the prisoner could have got his hand up to his face with those manacles on, chained to his ankle braces the way they were. But by then he couldn't be sure he'd actually seen the young fellow scratch his nose. He just thought he remembered that. Just his mind playing tricks on him. After all, if this Alvin Smith could take his hands out of iron manacles, just like that, why didn't he walk out of jail last night?