Heartfire

Chapter 14 -- Revolt

No sooner was Alvin out of the courtroom than he began to run, long loping strides that would carry him to the river. No greensong helped him at first, for the town was too built up. Yet he was scarcely wearied when he reached the place where Arthur, Mike, and Jean-Jacques were just awakening from their late-afternoon naps. For a moment they wanted to show him what Jean-Jacques had painted, but Alvin had no time for that.

"I was in court and I couldn't pay attention to half that folderol, and my mind wandered to Margaret and there she was, her heart beating so fast, I knew something was wrong. She was spelling big letters in midair. Help. And I looked around her and there was Calvin lying on the floor of an attic in Camelot, and he's in a bad way."

Jean-Jacques was all sympathy. "You must feel so helpless, to be so far away."

Mike Fink hooted with laughter. "Alvin ain't all that helpless wherever he is."

"It means we're going to part company with you, Jean-Jacques," Alvin said. "Or rather, some of us are. Arthur, you're coming with me."

Arthur, who had been on tenterhooks waiting to hear the plan, now grinned and relaxed.

"Mike, I'd appreciate it if you'd go on into town and meet Very. He'll have that Purity girl with him, I reckon, or I'll be surprised if he don't. So if you'd tell him that he and you and her and Jean-Jacques here, you should all head for the border of New Amsterdam. I figure we can join up in Philadelphia when I'm done with whatever it is Margaret wants me to do."

"Where?" asked Mike. "Philadelphia's a big place."

"Mistress Louder's rooming house, of course."

"What if she don't got room?"

"Then leave word with her where you'll be. But she'll have room." Alvin turned again to Jean-Jacques. "It's been a pleasure, and I'm proud to know a man with such a knack for painting, but I'm taking Arthur and we got nobody to hold the birds still for you now."

"So what I do now?" said Jean-Jacques. "I make you angry when I kill the bird and stuff it. My career is over if I do not kill the bird."

Alvin looked at Arthur Stuart. "I got to tell you, Arthur, I got no problem with him killing a bird now and then for the sake of folks studying his paintings."

Arthur stood there looking down at the ground.

"Arthur, it ain't like I got a lot of time here," said Alvin.

Arthur looked up at Jean-Jacques, then at Alvin. "I just got to know one thing. Does a bird have a soul?"

"Am I a, how you say, th‚ologien?"

"I just-- if a bird dies, when it dies, when you kill it, what happens to it? Is it completely dead? Or is there some part of it that..."

Arthur stood there with tears beading up on his cheeks. Alvin reached out to hug him, but Arthur pulled away. "I ain't asking for a hug, dammit, I'm asking for an answer!"

"I don't know about that," said Alvin. "What I see is like a little fire inside every living thing. Humans got a big bright one, most of them anyway, but there's fire like that in every animal. The plants, too, only the fire is spread out all through the plant, not just in one place like it is with the animals. Margaret sees something like that, she says, only she don't catch much more than a glimpse of what's in the animals, like the shadow of a fire, if you get my drift. Now is that heartfire a soul? I don't know. And what happens to it after a body dies? I don't know that either. I know it ain't in the body anymore. But I know sometimes the heartfire can leave the body. Happens when I'm doodlebugging, part of it goes out of me. Does that mean that when the body's dead the whole thing can go? I don't know, Arthur. You're asking me what I can't tell you."

"But it might, you can say that, can't you? It might live on, I mean if humans do it, then birds might too, right? Their heartfires may be smaller but that don't mean they'll burn out when they die, does it?"

"I reckon that's good thinking," said Alvin. "I reckon if anybody lives on after death-- and I think they do, mind you, I just ain't seen it-- then why not birds? Heartfire is heartfire, I should think, lessen somebody tells me different. Is that good enough?"

Arthur Stuart nodded. "Then you can kill a bird now and then, if you got to."

Jean-Jacques bowed in salute to Arthur. "I think, Mr. Stuart, that this was the question you really wanted to ask me from the start. Back in Philadelphia."

Arthur Stuart looked a little embarrassed. "Maybe it was. I wasn't sure myself."

Alvin rubbed Arthur's tight-curled hair. Arthur ducked away. "Don't treat me like a baby."

"You don't like it, get taller," said Alvin. "Long as you're shorter than me, I'm going to use your head to scratch an itch whenever I feel like it." Alvin touched the brim of his hat in salute to Mike and Jean-Jacques. "I'll see you in Philadelphia, Mike. And Jean-Jacques, I hope to see you again someday, or at least to see your book."

"I promise you your own copy," said Jean-Jacques.

"I don't like this," said Mike. "I should be with you."

"I promise you, Mike, I'm not the one in danger down there."

"It's a blame fool thing to do!" said Mike.

"What, leave you behind?"

"Healing Calvin."

Alvin understood the love that prompted these words, but he couldn't leave the idea unanswered. "Mike, he's my brother."

"I'm more brother to you than he ever was," said Mike.

"You are now," said Alvin. "But there was a time when he was my dearest friend. We did everything together. I have no memories of my childhood without him in them, or scarcely any."

"So why doesn't he feel that way?"

"Maybe I wasn't as good a brother to him as he was to me," said Alvin. "Mike, I'll come back safe."

"This is as crazy as it was you going back to jail."

"I walked out when I needed to," said Alvin. "And now I've got to get moving. I need you to get Jean-Jacques out of New England without getting deported as a Catholic, and Verily and Purity need somebody who isn't ga-ga with love to make sure they eat and sleep."

Arthur Stuart solemnly shook hands with Mike and Jean-Jacques. Alvin hugged them both. Then they took off at a jog, the man leading, the boy at his heels. In a few minutes the greensong had them and they fairly flew through the woods along the river.

"He's coming," said Margaret.

"Where he be, you say?" asked Gullah Joe.

Outside, they heard the sound of galloping horses. The singing and wailing from the slave quarters had grown more intense as the sun set and darkness gathered.

"I can't tell," said Margaret. "He's in the midst of the music. Running. He moves like the wind. But it's such a long way."

"We tell folks what you say," said Denmark, "but this be too hard for them. The anger, it come so fast to them. I hear some talking about killing their White folks tonight in their beds. I hear them say, Kill them the White babies, too, the children. Kill them all."

"I know," said Margaret. "You did your best."

"They be other ones, too," said Gullah Joe. "No name come back a-them. Empty like him. More empty. They die. He kill them."

Margaret looked down at Calvin's body. The young man's breath was so shallow that now and then she had to check his heartfire just to see if he was alive. Fishy and Denmark's woman were tending him now, so Margaret could rest, but what good did washing him do? Maybe they were keeping the fever down. Maybe they were just keeping him wet. They certainly weren't keeping him company, for he had lapsed into unconsciousness hours ago and all his futures had come down to just a handful that didn't lead to a miserable death here, tonight, in this place.

"Why he no fix up, him?" asked Gullah Joe. "He strong."

"Strong but ignorant," said Margaret. "My husband tried to teach him, but he refused to learn. He wanted the results without practicing the method."

"Young," said Gullah Joe.

"I learned when I was young," said Denmark.

"You never be young," said Gullah Joe.

Denmark grimaced at that. "You right, Gullah Joe."

"Your wife," said Margaret.

Denmark looked at the slave woman he had bought and ruined. "She never let me call her that."

"She never told you her name, either," said Margaret.

Denmark shook his head. "I never call her by no slave name. She never tell me her true name. So I got no name for her."

"Would you like to speak that name? Don't you think that in her present state, she'd like to hear someone call her by name?"

"When she be in her right mind she don't want me to," said Denmark.

"Slavery makes people do strange things," said Margaret.

"I never was a slave," said Denmark.

"You were, all the same," said Margaret. "They fenced you around with so many laws. Who is more a slave than the man who has to pretend he's a slave to survive?"

"That didn't make me do that to her."

"I don't know," said Margaret. "Of course you made your own choices. You tried to find a wife in just the way your father did-- you bought one. Then you found yourself in a corner. You thought murder was your only hope. But at the last moment you couldn't do it."

"Not the last moment," said Denmark. "The moment after."

"Yes," said Margaret. "Almost too late."

"Now I live with her every day," said Denmark. "Now who own who?"

"All that anger outside-- what if they kill? Do you think they're murderers?"

"You think they not?" asked Denmark.

"There has to be something between murder and innocence. I've seen the darkest places in everyone's heartfire, Denmark. There's no one who doesn't have memories he wishes he didn't have. And there are crimes that arise from-- from decent desires gone wrong, from justified passions carried too far. Crimes that began only as mistakes. I've learned never to judge people. Of course I judge whether they're dangerous or not, or whether they did right or wrong, how can anyone live without judging? What I mean is, I can't condemn them. A few, yes, a few who love the suffering of others, or who never think of others at all, worthless souls that exist only to satisfy themselves. But those are rare. Do you even know what I'm talking about?"

"I know you scared," said Denmark. "You talk when you scared."

"We're safe enough here," said Margaret. "I'm just... what you did to your wife, Denmark. Do you think I haven't thought of doing that to someone? An enemy? Someone who I know will someday cause the death of the person I love most, the person I've loved my whole life, from childhood up. I know that desperate feeling. You have to stop him. And then you see the chance. He's helpless. All you have to do is let nature take its course, and he's gone."

"But you call your husband," said Denmark. "You wave your arms and make letters in the air. Somehow he see that."

"So I chose to do the right thing," she said.

"Like me," said Denmark.

"But maybe I chose too late," she said.

Denmark shrugged.

"Maybe. It ain't all work out yet."

"All these people thirsting for vengeance. What will they choose? When will it be too late for them? Or just in time?"

A new sound. Marching feet. Margaret ran to the window. The King's Guard, marching in Blacktown.

"Damn fool they," said Gullah Joe. "What we do here in Blacktown? Who we hurt? They scared of us, they no remember they gots them Black people hate them, in they house, they wait down the stair, White man sleep, up the stair they go, cook she got she knife, gardener he got he sickle, butler he break him wine bottle, he got the glass, the edge be sharp. When they blood paint the walls, when they body empty, who the Black man put on that tall hat? Who the Black woman wear the bloody dress?"

The images were too terrible for Margaret to bear. She had already seen them herself, in the blazing heartfires of angry slaves. What Gullah Joe imagined, she had seen down ten thousand paths into the future. Until Calvin tore up the name-strings, that future hadn't shown up anywhere. She couldn't predict it. Calvin had the power to change everything without warning. Margaret was unaccustomed to surprise. She didn't know how to deal with a situation that she hadn't had time to watch and think about.

She walked away, into a corner of the room. She began to pray.

But she couldn't keep her mind on the words of her prayer. She kept thinking of Calvin. As if she didn't have enough to worry about. Wasn't it just like Cal? Set loose forces that could cause the deaths of thousands of people, and he was going to lie there dying through it all.

As for Gullah Joe and Denmark, she hadn't the heart to tell them, but the likeliest future, whether the slave revolt happened or not, was that the King and his men would be looking for the person who planned the revolt. It had to be a conspiracy. It couldn't be mere chance that in the morning the entire slave population of Camelot was docile, and suddenly by nightfall they were keening and howling in every house. There had to be a plot. There had to be a signal given. It wasn't hard to find slaves who, under torture, would mention the taker of names. And others who would point him out. The mastermind of the conspiracy, that's what they'd call him. They'd call it Denmark Vesey's War, as if it was war to have families murdered in their sleep, and then every third slave in Camelot hanged in retribution, while Denmark Vesey himself would be drawn and quartered, and the pieces of him hung on poles in Blacktown, lest anyone forget.

She hadn't the heart to tell him that. Nor did it matter, in the end, for one thing was certain in Denmark's heartfire: If this happened to him, he would believe that he deserved it, for the sake of what he did to his woman.

Calvin. Again he kept intruding in her thoughts. Something about Calvin. What? He can't heal himself, so what is he good for?

For something that he does know how to do.

Margaret got up from her prayer and rushed to Gullah Joe. "You've done this before, Gullah Joe. I've heard the stories, I've seen them in the slaves' memories, legends of the zombi, the walking dead."

"I no do that," said Gullah Joe.

"I know, you don't do it on purpose, but there he is, dead but alive. There must be something you have, something in your tools, your powders, that can wake him up. Just for a little while."

"Wake him up, then he die faster," said Gullah Joe.

"I need him. To save the people he did this to."

"He no heal him own body," said Gullah Joe scornfully.

"Because he doesn't know how. But he can do something."

Gullah Joe got up and went to his jars. Soon he had a mixture-- a dangerous one, to judge from the way he never let any of the powders touch his skin and looked away when mixing so as not to breathe in any of the dust. When it was mixed, he poured it through a hole in a small bellows, then plugged the hole tightly. Even at that, he wetted down cloths for the rest of them to breathe through, in case any dust got loose in the air.

Then he took the bellows, put the end in one of Calvin's nostrils, then waxed the other nostril closed. "You," he said to Denmark. "Hold him mouth closed."

"No," said Denmark. "I can't do that. That too much like drowning him."

"I'll do it," said Margaret.

"What you tell husband then, this go bad?"

"It's my fault anyway," said Margaret. "I told you to do it."

"I do it, ma'am," said Fishy. "I do this."

Margaret stepped back. Fishy got one hand under Calvin's jaw and the other atop his head.

"I say go, you close him tight the mouth," said Gullah Joe.

Fishy nodded.

"Go."

She clamped Calvin's mouth shut. Calvin feebly resisted, desperate for breath. Nothing came in except a thin stream of air around the nipple of the bellows. Gullah Joe slammed the bellows together just as Calvin inhaled desperately. A cloud of dust emerged from around the bellows. Gullah Joe was ready for it. He picked up a bucket of water and doused Calvin with it, catching and settling the dust at the same time.

Calvin jerked and twitched violently. Then he sat up, pulling away from Fishy's grip, tearing the bellows and the wax out of his nostrils. Then he choked and coughed, trying to clear his lungs.

He looked no healthier. Indeed, patches of his skin were sloughing off, sliding like rotten fruit thrown against a window. But he was alert.

"Calvin, listen to me," Margaret said.

Calvin only choked and gasped.

"The slaves are about to revolt. It has to be stopped. Alvin's too far away, I need your help!"

Calvin wept. "I can't do nothing!"

"Wake up!" Margaret shouted at him. "I need you to be a man, for once! This isn't about you, this isn't about Alvin, it's about doing the decent thing for people who need you."

Some of what she was saying finally penetrated Calvin's hazy mind. "Yes," he said. "Tell me what to do."

"Something to take their minds off their anger," she said. "What we need is a heavy storm. Wind and rain. Lightning!"

"I can't do lightning."

"How do you know you can't?"

"Cause I grew up trying." He looked down at his hand. The bare bone of one finger was exposed. "Margaret, what's happening to me!"

"You were too long out of your body," she said. "Alvin's hurrying here to save you."

"He don't want to help me, he wants me dead!"

"Stop thinking about yourself, Calvin!" she said sternly. "I need something that feels like a force of nature."

"I can do fires. I can set the city on fire."

As he spoke, a couple of tiny flames danced around on the floor beside him.

"No!" cried Margaret. "Good heavens, are you insane? The slaves will be blamed for setting the fires, it would make everything even worse! Not fire."

"I don't know how anything works," Calvin said. "Not deep enough to change it. Alvin tried to teach me but all I wanted was the showy stuff." He wept again. Margaret had to seize his wrists to keep him from rubbing the skin off his face.

"Get control of yourself," she said. She turned helplessly to Gullah Joe. "Isn't there something--"

Gullah Joe laughed madly. "I tell you! No good this way! Zombi no good! All he think be, I so dead! He be sad, all sad, him."

"What about the water?" she asked Calvin. "I know you and Alvin played with water, he told me. Making it splash without throwing in a stone-- that's a game you played. Remember?"

"Big splash," he said.

"Yes, that's right. Make it splash out there. In the river, really big splashes. Slosh the water up on the shore. Make it flood."

"All we did was little splashes," said Calvin.

"Well this time do a big one!" Margaret shouted, her patience wearing thin. If, in fact, she had any patience left at all.

"I'll try, I'll try, I'll try." He cried again.

"Stop that! Just do it!"

She felt someone kneel down beside her. Fishy? No, Denmark's wife. She had a damp cloth. Gently she pressed it against Calvin's forehead. Then his cheek. She mumbled something unintelligible, but the music of it was calm and comforting. Calvin closed his eyes and began trying to make the water in the river splash.

Margaret also closed her eyes and cast about for heartfires near the river. She skipped from one to another, up and down the shore, on the north side of the peninsula and the south. No one was looking toward the water. They were all watching inland, fearful of the howling from the slaves.

Then one of them noticed that the boats were rocking in the water. Masts tipped, then tipped back again. He looked out at the water. Wave after wave was coming, as if from giant stones falling, or perhaps something pulsing deep under the water. Each wave was higher than the one before. They began breaking onto the docks.

More and more people were seeing the waves now, and those near the water began to run farther inland. The waves were coming up onto the streets, forming rivers that flowed over the cobblestones. Farther inland the water came until it was streaming across the peninsula. Ships battered against the dock and began to break into kindling. People ran screaming through the streets, pounding on doors, begging to be let inside.

And the slaves also pounded on the doors. Where a moment before all they could think of was murder and vengeance, now in their groundfloor quarters a new passion had taken hold: to get to the first floor before this flood drowned them. Wave after wave swept through the slave quarters. The howling and singing stopped, to be replaced by a cacophony of panicked cries.

Many of the Whites, seeing the flood, opened the doors and let their slaves, now chastened and afraid, come up to safety. Others, though, kept the doors locked, and more than one discharged a weapon through the door, warning the slaves to stay back.

There were no more thoughts of killing the White families they worked for. Already the slaves were telling the stories that made sense to them. "God be telling us, Thou shalt not kill, or I send a flood like Noah!" "Lord, I don't want to die!" Terror took the place of rage, damped it down, swept it out, drowned it, for the moment, at least.

"Enough," said Margaret. "You did it, Calvin. Enough."

Calvin sobbed in relief. "That was so hard!" He lay back down, rolled over, curled up and wept. Or rather, tried to curl up. As he dragged his legs across the floor, his right foot was pulled away from his body. Margaret gagged at the sight. But Denmark's woman reached down, picked up the foot, and put it in place at the end of the damaged leg.

"He just about dead," said Denmark.

"No," moaned Margaret. "Oh, Calvin, not now, not when you finally did something good."

"That the best time a-die," said Fishy helpfully. "You get in heaven."

Margaret turned again to Gullah Joe.

"No look me, you!" he said. "I do all you say, look what happen!"

"What if he sent out his doodlebug again? Like before? Even if he dies, can't you hold on to it? Keep it from getting away?"

"What you think I be? I a witchy man! You want God, him!"

"You held him captive before. Do it again! Try it!"

Even as she insisted, she could see the paths of the future change. When she finally saw one in which Calvin was still alive at dawn, she shouted at him, "That's it! Do that!"

"Do what?"

"What you were thinking! Right when I shouted."

Gullah Joe threw up his hands in despair, but he set to work, making Denmark and Fishy help him, moving charms into a new circle, then putting an open box in the midst of it. "Tell him go in box. Put him whole self in box."

"Did you understand him, Calvin?"

Calvin moaned in pain.

"Send out your doodlebug! Let him catch it and save it. It's your only chance, Calvin! Send your doodlebug to Gullah Joe, go into the box he's holding. Do it, Calvin!"

Panting shallowly, Calvin complied as best he could. Gullah Joe kept tossing a fine powder into the circle. It wasn't till the tenth throw that he shouted. "You see that? Part him go in! Look a-that!"

Another cast of the powder, and this time Margaret also saw the spark.

"All bright him! Inside, go all inside!"

"Do it, Calvin. Your whole attention, put it inside that box. Everything that's you, into the box!"

He stopped moaning. He rolled onto his back, his eyes staring straight up.

"He's done all he can do!" cried Margaret. "He's exhausted."

"He dead," said Fishy.

Gullah Joe slammed the lid on the box, turned it upside down, and sat on it.

"You hatching that?" asked Fishy.

"Inside circle, inside my hair." Gullah Joe grinned. "This time he no get out!"

"All right, Alvin," Margaret murmured. "Come quickly."

She leaned back against Denmark's wife, who knelt behind her like a cushion. "I'm so tired," she said.

"We all sleep now," said Denmark.

"Not me," said Gullah Joe.

Margaret closed her eyes and looked out into the city again. The water was calm again and the panic had died down, but the revolt was over for the night. Killing had been driven out of the hearts of the Blacks.

But now the thought of killing was showing up in other hearts. Whites were rushing to the palace, demanding that someone find out who started the plot. It had to be a plot, all the slaves starting up at once. Only the miraculous intervention of the waves had saved them. Do something, they demanded. Catch the ringleaders of the revolt.

And King Arthur listened. He called in his advisers and listened to them. Soon there were questioners in the streets, directing groups of soldiers as they gathered Blacks for questioning.

How long? thought Margaret. How long before Denmark Vesey's name comes up?

Long before dawn.

Margaret rose to her feet. "No time for rest now," she said. "Alvin will come here. Tell him what you've done. Don't harm Calvin's body in any way. Keep it as fresh as you can."

Gullah Joe rolled his eyes. "Where you go?"

"It's time for my audience with the King."

Lady Ashworth spent the entire rebellion throwing up in her bedroom. The flood, too. For her husband had found out about her liaison with that boy-- slaves who had once been docile now suddenly seemed to take relish in sowing dissension between her and Lord Ashworth. In vain did she plead that it was only once, in vain did she beg for forgiveness. For an hour she sat in the parlor, trembling and weeping, as her husband brandished a pistol in one hand, a sword in the other, one of which he would set down from time to time in order to take another swig of bourbon.

It was only the howling of the slaves that broke off his drunken, murderous, suicidal ranting. This was one house where none of the Blacks wanted to brave a crazed White man with a gun, but he was all for shooting them anyway if they didn't shut up and stop all that chanting and moaning. As soon as he left her alone, Lady Ashworth fled to her room and locked the door. She threw up so abruptly that she didn't have time to move first-- her vomit was a smear down the door and onto the floor beneath it. By the time the flood came she had nothing left to throw up, but she kept retching.

With the Blacks terrified and Lady Ashworth indisposed, the only person able to answer Margaret's insistent ringing at the door was Lord Ashworth himself, who stood there drunken and disheveled, the pistol still in his hand, hanging by the trigger. Margaret immediately reached down and took the gun away from him.

"What are you doing?" he demanded. "That's my gun. Who are you?"

Margaret took in the situation with a few probes into his heartfire. "You poor stupid man," she said. "Your wife wasn't seduced. She was raped."

"Then why didn't she say so?"

"Because she thought it was a seduction."

"What do you know about any of this?"

"Take me to your wife at once, sir!"

"Get out of my house!"

"Very well," said Margaret. "You leave me no choice. I will be forced to report to the press that a trusted officer of the King has had a liaison for the past two years with the wife of a certain plantation owner in Savannah. Not to mention the number of times he has accepted the hospitality of slaveowners who make sure he doesn't have to sleep alone. I believe sexual congress between White and Black is still a crime in this city?"

He backed away from her, raising his hand to point the gun at her, until he remembered that she had his pistol. "Who sent you?" he said.

"I sent myself," she said. "I have urgent business with the King. Your wife is in no condition to take me. So you'll have to do it."

"Business with the King! You want him to throw me out of office?"

"I know the ringleader of the slave revolt!"

Lord Ashworth was confused. "Slave revolt? When?"

"Tonight, while you were threatening to kill your wife. She's a shallow woman, Lord Ashworth, and she has a mean streak, but she's more faithful to your marriage than you are. You might take that into account before you terrify her again. Now, will you take me to the King or not?"

"Tell me what you know, and I'll tell him."

"An audience with the King!" demanded Margaret. "Now!"

Lord Ashworth finally stumbled into the realization that he had no choice. "I have to change clothes," he said. "I'm drunk."

"Yes, by all means, change." Lord Ashworth staggered from the room.

Margaret strode into the house, calling out as she went. "Doe! Lion! Where are you?"

She didn't find them till she opened the door down to the ground floor. Half soaked in floodwater, the slaves were as frightened and miserable a group as she had ever seen. "Come upstairs now," she said. "Lion, your master needs help dressing himself. He's very drunk, but I have the gun." She showed him the pistol. Then, certain that Lion had no murder in his heart, she handed the gun to him. "I suggest you lose this and then don't find it for a few days." He carried the gun upstairs with him, only dropping it into his pocket at the last minute.

"You sure he don't kill the master?" asked Doe.

"Doe, I know you're a free woman, but can you go to Lady Ashworth? As a friend. No harm will come to you from it. She needs comforting. She needs you to tell her that the man who had the use of her was more than a trickster. He forced her against her will. If she doesn't remember it that way, it just proves how powerful he is."

Doe looked studious. "That a long message, ma'am," she said.

"You remember the sense of it. Find your own words."

King Arthur and his council had been meeting for an hour before Lord Ashworth finally bothered to show up, and it was obvious he had been drinking. It was rather shocking and would have been a scandal on any other night, but all the King could think about was that finally he was here, perhaps he could break the impasse over what to do. Hotheaded John Calhoun was all for hanging one out of every three slaves as an example. "Make them think twice before they plot again!" On the other hand, as several of the older men reminded him, one didn't seize one-third of the city's most valuable property and destroy it, just to make a point.

Lord Ashworth, however, did not seem interested in the argument. "I have someone to see you," he said.

"An audience! At a time like this!"

"She claims to know about the conspiracy."

"We know about it already," said the King. "We have soldiers searching for the hideout right now. If they're wise, they'll drown themselves in the river before they let us take them."

"Your Majesty, I beg you to hear her."

The intensity of his tone, despite his drunkenness, was sobering. "All right, then," said the King. "For my dear friend."

Margaret was ushered in, and she introduced herself. Impatiently, the King got to the point at once. "We know all about the conspiracy. What can you possibly add to what we know?"

"What I know is that it wasn't a conspiracy, it was an accident."

She poured out the story, keeping it as close to the truth as possible without announcing just how powerful Calvin was before, and how helpless he had become. A young White man of her acquaintance noticed a man taking something from each slave that disembarked. It turned out that they were charms that held the slaves' true names, along with their anger and their fear. Tonight there had been an accident that destroyed the name-strings, and the slaves suddenly found themselves filled with the long-hidden rage. "But the flood frightened it out of them, and you'll have no rebellion now."

"Claptrap," said Calhoun.

Margaret looked at him coldly. "The tragedy of your life, sir, is that despite all your ambition, you'll never be king."

Calhoun turned red and started to answer, but the King raised a hand to silence him. He was quite a young man, perhaps younger than Margaret and there was an air of quiet assurance about him that she rather liked, especially since he seemed interested in what she had said. "All I want to know," he said, "is the name of the one they call the taker of names."

"But you already know it," she said to him. "Several witnesses have told you about Denmark Vesey."

"Ah, but we know about him because of excellent investigative work. How do you know?"

"I know that he's innocent of any ill intent," she said.

A man handed the King a paper. "Ah, here it is," the King said. "Your name is Margaret Smith, yes? Married to an accused slave thief. And you're here in Camelot to meddle in our ancient practice of servitude. Well, tonight we've seen where leniency takes us. Do you know how many slaves told us about plans to kill entire White families in their sleep? And now I find that there's a White woman intimately involved with the conspirators."

With sick dread, Margaret saw herself playing the leading role in some nasty futures in the King's heartfire. She hadn't bargained on this. She should have probed into her own future before coming to the King with wild-sounding stories about Blacks giving up their names voluntarily, for safekeeping, and then getting them back suddenly. "You must admit it sounds like a fable," the King explained kindly.

"Your Majesty," said Margaret, "I know that there are those who urge you to punish this revolt with brutality. You may think this is necessary to make your subjects feel secure in their homes, but Your Majesty, extravagant measures like the one Mr. Calhoun proposes will only bring greater danger down upon you."

"It's hard to imagine a more heinous danger than our servants turning their knives on us," said Calhoun.

"What about war? What about bloody, terrible war, that kills or injures or spiritually maims a generation of young men?"

"War?" asked the King. "Punishing revolt will lead to war?"

"The rhetoric surrounding the issue of whether the western territories of Appalachee will be slave or free is already out of hand. A wholesale slaughter of innocent Black men and women will outrage and unify the people of the United States and Appalachee, and stiffen their resolve that slavery will have no place among them."

"Enough of this," said the King. "All you have succeeded in proving to me is that you are part of a conspiracy that must include at least one of the servants in the palace. How else could you know what John Calhoun's proposal is? As for the rest, when I need advice from an abolitionist woman on affairs of state, you're the very person I'll call upon."

"Your Majesty," said Calhoun, "it's obvious this woman knows far more about the conspiracy than she's letting on. It would be a mistake to let her leave so easily."

"What I know is that there is no conspiracy," said Margaret. "By all means, arrest me, if you're prepared to bear the outcry that would follow."

"If we hang one slave in three, no one will be asking around about you." said Calhoun. "Now arrest her!"

This last order was flung at the soldiers standing at the door. At once they strode in and took Margaret by the arms.

"She'll confess soon enough," said Calhoun. "In treason cases, they always do."

"I don't like knowing about things like that," said the King.

"Neither do I," said another man's voice. It took a moment for them to realize that it wasn't one of the King's advisers who spoke.

Instead, it was a tall man dressed like a workingman on holiday-- clothes that were meant to be somewhat dressy, but succeeded only in looking vaguely pathetic and ill-fitting. And beside him, a half-Black boy two-thirds grown.

"How did you get in here!" cried several men at once. But the stranger answered not a word. He walked up to Margaret and kissed her gently on the lips. Then he looked steadily into the gaze of one of the soldiers holding her by the arm. Shuddering, he let go of her and backed away. So did the other soldier.

"Well, Margaret," said the man, "it looks like I can't leave you alone for a few minutes."

"Who are you?" asked the King. "Her foreign-policy adviser?"

"I'm her husband, Alvin Smith."

"It was thoughtful of you to show up just as we've arrested your wife. No doubt you're part of the conspiracy as well. As for this Black boy-- it's not proper to bring your slave into the presence of the King, especially one too young to have been reliably trained."

"I came here to try to keep you from making the mistake that will eventually take you off your throne," said Margaret. "If you don't heed the warning, then I at least am blameless."

"Let's get her out of here," said Calhoun. "We've got hours of work ahead of us, and it's obvious she needs to be interrogated as a member of the conspiracy. Her husband, too, and this child."

Margaret and Alvin looked at each other and laughed. Arthur, on the other hand, was too busy gazing at the magnificence of the council room to care much about what was going on. He didn't really notice the King until now, when Alvin pointed him out. "There you are, Arthur Stuart. That's the man you were named for. The King of England, in exile in the Crown Colonies. Behold the majesty of the crownŠd head."

"Nice to meet you, sir," said Arthur Stuart to the King.

Calhoun's outrage reached a new level. "You dare to mock the King in this fashion? Not to mention naming a Black child after him in the first place."

"Since you've already got me hanged in your mind," said Alvin, "what harm will it do if I compound the crime?"

"Compound nothing, Alvin," Margaret said to him. "He's been warned that if he takes retribution against this revolt that didn't even happen, killing slaves without reference to guilt or innocence, it will lead to war."

"I have no fear of war," said Arthur Stuart. "That's when kings get to show their mettle."

"You're thinking of chess," said Margaret. "In war, everyone has their chance to bleed." She turned to Alvin. "My message was delivered. It's out of my hands. And your brother needs you."

Alvin nodded. He turned to the company surrounding him. "Gentlemen, you may return to your deliberations. I ran down here from New England this afternoon and I have no more time to spend with you. Good evening."

Alvin took Arthur by one hand and Margaret by the other. "Make way please," he said.

The men blocking his path didn't move.

And then, suddenly, they did. Or rather, their feet did, sliding right out from under them. Alvin took another stride toward the door.

The King drew a sword. So did the other men, though they had to get them from the wall where they hung during the meeting. And two guards by the door drew pistols.

"Really, Your Majesty," said Alvin, "the essence of courtesy is that one must allow one's guests to leave."

Before he finished talking, he already reached out to change the iron in the swords and the pistols. To their horror, the armed men found their weapons dissolving and dribbling into pools of cold wet iron on the floor. They dropped their weapons and recoiled.

"What are you, sir!" cried the King.

"Isn't it obvious?" said Calhoun. "It's the devil, the devil's dam, and their bastard son!"

"Hey," protested Arthur Stuart. "I may be a bastard, but I'm not their bastard."

"Sorry we have to be on our way so quickly," said Alvin. "Have a nice future, Your Majesty." With that, Alvin reached down, pulled the lockset out of the massive door, and then pushed gently on it, making it fall away from its dissolving hinges and land with a crash on the floor outside the council room. They walked away unmolested.

The stink of Calvin's dead body filled the attic when Margaret led Alvin and Arthur into the place. Alvin went at once to the corpse and knelt by it, weeping. "Calvin, I came as fast as I could."

"You want to cry," said Denmark, "cry for the dead."

"I already explained to him about holding Calvin's heartfire in the box," Margaret said.

"I can't repair the body without the heartfire in it," said Alvin. "And it can't hold the heartfire until it's repaired."

"Do both at once," said Margaret. "You can do it, can't you, Gullah Joe? Feed the heartfire back into the body, bit by bit?"

"You lose you mind?" asked Gullah Joe. "How many miracle you want tonight?"

"I'll just do my best," said Alvin.

He worked on Calvin's body for three hours. No sooner did he start in on one repair than the one he just completed started to decay again. Working steadily and methodically, though, he was able to get the heart and brain back into working order. "Now," he said.

Gullah Joe slid off the box, carried it close to Calvin's body, and opened it.

Alvin and Margaret both saw the heartfire leap into the body. The heart beat convulsively. Once. Twice. Blood moved through the collapsing arteries. Alvin paid no heed to that problem-- it was the lungs he had to repair now, quickly, instantly. But with the heartfire inside the body, it became far easier, for now he could make a pattern and the body would imitate it, passing the information along through the living tissues. A half-ruined diaphragm contracted, then expanded the lungs. The blood that pumped feebly through the body now bore steadily increasing amounts of oxygen.

That was only the beginning. Dawn had fully come before Alvin's work was done. Calvin breathed easily and normally. The flesh had healed, leaving no scars. He was as clean as a newborn.

"What I see this night," said Gullah Joe. "What god you be?"

Alvin shook his head. "Is there a god of weariness?"

Someone started pounding on the door downstairs.

"Ignore them," said Margaret. "There are only two of them. They won't break in until there are more soldiers to back them up."

"How long do we have?" asked Alvin.

"Not long," said Margaret. "I suggest we leave now."

"Is there no rest for the devil?" asked Alvin.

"You a devil too?" asked Gullah Joe.

"That was a joke," said Alvin. "Margaret, who are these people?"

"Time enough to explain on the road." Margaret turned to the others. "It's not safe for you to stay here, Denmark, Gullah Joe. Come away with us. Alvin can keep you safe until you're in the North, out of this miserable place." She turned to Fishy and Denmark's wife. "You aren't in the same danger, but why should you stay? We'll take you north with us. If you like, you can go on to Vigor Church. Or Hatrack River." Margaret looked at Gullah Joe and smiled. "I'd like to see what all the knackish folk in Hatrack River would make of you."

Denmark tugged at Alvin's sleeve. "What you done for your brother. Raise him from the dead. What about my wife?" He brought her forward.

Alvin closed his eyes and studied her for a few moments. "It's an old injury, and it's all connected with the brain. I don't know. Let's get away from here, and when we're safely in the North, I'll do what I can."

They all agreed to come along. What choice did they have? "Can't you take all us?" asked Fishy. "All the slave in this place, take us!"

Margaret put her arm around Fishy. "If it was in our power, we'd take them. But such a large group-- who would take so many thousands of free Blacks all at once? We'd bring them north, only to have them turned away. You we can bring with us."

Fishy nodded. "I know you mean to do good. It never be enough."

"No," said Margaret. "Never enough. But we do our best, and pray that in the long run, it will be enough."

Alvin knelt again by Calvin, shook him gently, woke him. Calvin opened his eyes and saw Alvin. He laughed in delight. "You," he said. "You came and saved me."