Heartfire

Chapter 15 -- Fathers and Mothers

Mike Fink and Jean-Jacques Audubon waited a discreet distance away as Hezekiah Study led Verily and Purity through the graveyard. The graves were located in a curious alcove in the wall of the cemetery. Purity knelt at her parents' graves and wept for them. Verily knelt beside her, and after a while she reached for Hezekiah and drew him down with her as well. "You're all I have left of them," she said to Hezekiah. "Since I have no memories of my own, I have to rely on yours. Come with us."

"I'll travel with you as far as Philadelphia," said Hezekiah. "Beyond that I can't promise."

"Once Alvin starts talking about the Crystal City, you'll catch the vision of it," said Verily. "I promise."

Hezekiah smiled ruefully. "Will there be a need for an old Puritan minister?"

"No doubt of it," said Verily. "But a scholar like you-- I think we'll have to tear you away from the things you can learn there in order to get a sermon out of you."

"My heart isn't much in sermonizing anyway," said Hezekiah. "I'm tired of the sound of my own mouth."

"Then don't listen," said Purity. "Why should we miss out on your sermons just because you don't want to hear them?"

They lingered near the graves for some time. Only when they were leaving did it occur to Verily how odd it was to have such an alcove enclosing just those two graves. Otherwise the graveyard walls marked out a simple rectangle.

Hezekiah heard the question and nodded. "Well, you see, when they were buried, the witcher insisted the graves had to be outside the churchyard. Can't have witches in hallowed ground. Then the witchers left, and all the neighbors who knew them and loved them, they tore down the wall at that place, and laid out a new course, and now they're inside the wall of the churchyard after all."

They stood on the south bank of the Potomac, waiting for the ferry to return to their shore to carry them across into the United States-- specifically New Sweden, which despite its name was now almost as thoroughly English-speaking as Pennsylvania. A long-legged waterbird swept down into the water, elegant in its graceful passage from a creature of air to a creature of water.

"Too bad Audubon ain't here to tell us what bird that is," said Alvin.

Arthur Stuart took Margaret by the hand. "You were there," he said. "You know. What kind of bird was it that carried me?"

Margaret looked at him in puzzlement. "What do you mean?"

"I remember flying," said Arthur. "Hour after hour, all the way north. What kind of bird was that?"

"It wasn't a bird," she said. "It was your mother. She knew some of the witchy lore that Gullah Joe uses. She made wings and she flew, carrying you the whole way."

"But I saw a bird," said Arthur.

"You were a newborn," said Margaret. "How could you possibly remember?"

"Wings, so wide," said Arthur. "It was so beautiful to fly. I still dream about it all the time."

"Your mother wasn't a bird, Arthur Stuart," said Margaret.

"Yes she was," said Arthur. "A bird in the air, and then a woman when she came to earth."

Alvin remembered now how a question had nagged at Arthur the whole time he was with Audubon, a question that he could never quite frame in a way to get the answer he needed. Now Alvin had the answer for him. "She is waiting for you, Arthur Stuart," said Alvin. "With wings or without, your mother bird is still alive, waiting for you when the time comes."

Arthur Stuart nodded. "I think you're right," he said. "I feel her sometimes in the sky, so high I can't see her, but she's looking down and she sees me." He looked to Alvin and Margaret for reassurance. "That's not silly, is it?"

"They'd have to have a thousand angels watching her every minute in heaven," said Margaret, "to keep your mama from watching over you."

Arthur Stuart nodded. "When I see her," he said, "that's when I'll find out my true name."

"All names are true on that day," said Alvin. "When we see each other for what we really are."

Margaret said nothing. She took no comfort in thinking of a day of resurrection far in the distant future, for she had never seen that day in any heartfire. All her visions ended, sooner or later, in death. That's what was real to her.

Real and yet not terribly important. She felt her own swelling abdomen, where the baby's tiny heartfire was growing. As long as she had enough time to see this through, to bring this girl into the world and raise her to adulthood, she'd have no complaint when death came for her.

The ferry pulled in and the people from the New Sweden side disembarked noisily. Alvin, Margaret, and Arthur walked back to where Fishy, Gullah Joe, and Denmark and his wife waited for them. Fast as they were traveling, news had already reached them of mass hangings of rebel slaves in Camelot. They feared the worst-- John Calhoun's proposal to hang one in every three. But it turned out to be only twenty.

Only twenty.

In addition, a warrant had been issued for a scoundrel named Denmark Vesey, an illegally freed half-Black who had plotted the whole thing, meeting every slave ship that came to port. Well, that would never happen again. Blacktown was cleaned out and the laws concerning the movements of slaves without their masters were going to be tightened considerably. The days of soft treatment were over for the slaves of the Crown Colonies. They'd learn who was boss.

Once the stories crossed the Potomac, however, they changed. The facts were the same, but now the story was told with growing anger. Even Blacks want to be free, that's what the Northerners said. Whatever they might have planned, they didn't kill a single White. And now the Crown Colonies are cracking down even harder on these poor souls. Enough. The line had to be drawn. No slavery in the western territories. And no more rights for Slave Finders in the United States. Repudiate the treaty. If the Congress we've got won't do it, then we'll elect one that will. Never again will a human being on northern territory be the property of another man. People might not know it yet, but this was the rumor of war, and soon enough these seeds would bear fruit. Margaret had spent many months trying to forestall it. Now she knew that war was the only hope of ending slavery. Dreadful as it might be, it was a war that had to be fought. And here in New Sweden, the chatter of war was from the right side. It was her people talking.

Overhearing such conversation at a roadside inn, where the whole party could sit at a table together, Black, White, and all in between, led Denmark to lean back in his chair, fold his hands behind his head, and say, "It be good to be home!"

All along the road, Alvin worked steadily at trying to heal the damage to Denmark's wife. Margaret assured him that all her memories were still in her heartfire, somewhere, hidden from Margaret because they were hidden from the woman herself. It was slow, meticulous work, healing only a few nerves at a time, a few tiny regions of the brain. But they could all see the improvement in her. She limped less and less. Her hands became more deft. Her speech became clearer. She remembered more and more.

There came one morning when she woke up screaming from a terrible dream. Fishy was with her, but Denmark soon came at a run. When he entered the room, his wife looked up at him and said, "I dream you try a-kill me!"

Weeping, Denmark confessed his terrible sin to her, and begged forgiveness. "I not that man no more," he said.

That healing, too, would be long and slow.

The journey that Alvin had made in one night, running with the greensong to carry him along, took them more than a week at their leisurely pace. But it ended at last, on a familiar street in Philadelphia. Arthur Stuart recognized the rooming house and ran on ahead. Soon Mike Fink rushed out into the street to greet them, followed more slowly but no less happily by Verily, Purity, and Hezekiah. And when Alvin came into the house, there was Mistress Louder, covered in flour but not to be restrained from hugging him. She immediately adopted Margaret as her favorite daughter, and fussed over the unborn baby so much that Alvin joked that Mistress Louder thought she was the mother.

Alvin and Margaret were given the best room, the one with a balcony overlooking the garden. They sat there that first evening, taking in the peace of their first night together in so long that Alvin marveled aloud that the child had ever managed to get itself conceived.

"Let's not be apart again like that," said Margaret.

"Well, not to point the finger, but you were traveling as much as me."

"Never again," said Margaret. "You won't be rid of me."

Alvin sighed. "I never want to be rid of you, but I also want the baby to be safe. I'll take you home-- Hatrack or Vigor Church, whichever you want-- but I've got to go to a place in Tennizy calling itself Crystal City."

"Take me with you."

"And run the risk of you giving birth on the road? No thanks," said Alvin.

Margaret sighed. "All this wandering, all this separation, and what have we accomplished? The war is still coming. And you still don't know how to use that plow of yours, or what the Crystal City really is, or how to build it."

"I know a few things, though," said Alvin. "And maybe the main reason for all this travel wasn't the tasks we had in mind. Maybe it was those folks in the other rooms. Denmark and Gullah Joe and Fishy and Denmark's lady-- I think we'll get them all to the Crystal City, in the end. And Purity and Hezekiah-- I think they'll come along, too."

"And Calvin," said Margaret. "He's changed."

"Couldn't bring himself to travel with us, though."

"I think he's ashamed of what his carelessness set off back in Camelot," said Margaret. "But he's steadier. His heartfire has a lot of paths that lead somewhere. And..."

"And?"

She brought his hand up to her mouth and kissed it. "And maybe I have other reasons to look into the future with more hope."

"I reckon now he owes his life to me, somewhat, he's got to think different."

"Well, don't count on gratitude. It's the most fleeting of all human virtues. The change in him has to run deeper than that. I think it was when he raised that wave to stop the slave revolt from happening. Thousands of lives were saved when he did that."

Alvin chuckled.

"Why are you laughing?"

"Well, I was on the road, but I was looking ahead. I saw him trying to make a splash in the water, like the old game we played. But he was so weak, he wasn't up to it, he couldn't concentrate."

"So you did it," said Margaret.

"It wasn't easy even for me," said Alvin, "and I was healthy and experienced."

"Well, don't tell him that he didn't make that flood."

Alvin laughed. "And take away his one memory of doing something heroic? Not likely."

They sat a while longer in silence. Then Margaret patted her belly and sighed.

"What?"

"I was just thinking how much my mother would have loved to be here. She set such store by babies. Lost a couple before I came along and managed to live through infancy."

"But your mother is here," said Alvin. He reached over and laid his hand on her chest, over her heart. "Every heartbeat, she put it there, she heard those heartbeats in the womb, month after month. She's in your heartfire now, as you were in hers. That doesn't go away just because of a little thing like death."

She smiled at him. "I imagine you're right, Al. You usually are."

He kissed her. They sat there a little while longer, till the mosquitoes drove them back inside. They fell asleep clinging to each other, and even in their sleep they kept reaching out to touch each other, for fear that one might have slipped away in the night. Miraculously, they were still there in the morning, touching, breathing, hearts beating together; heartfires bright; lives entwined.