Heartfire

Chapter 9 -- Witch Hunt

Hezekiah Study could not concentrate on the book he was trying to read, or the sermon he needed to write, or even on the pear he knew he ought to eat. There were several bites taken out of it, and he knew he must be the one who had taken them, but all he remembered was fretful, wandering thoughts about everything. Purity, you young fool. He'll come now, don't you know? He'll come, because he always comes, and because your name is on it, and he knows who you are, oh yes, he knows you, he wants your life, he wants to finish the job he started before you were born.

This is how he spent the afternoon, until at last a breeze arose, rattling the papers pinned under the paperweight on his writing desk. A breeze, and a shadow of cloud that dimmed the light in the room, and then the sound he had been waiting for: the trot-trot-trot of a horse drawing a little shay behind it. Micah Quill. Micah the Witcher.

Hezekiah rose and walked to the window. The shay was only just passing on the street below; Hezekiah caught but a glimpse of the face in profile, from above. So sweet and open, so trustworthy-- Hezekiah had once trusted it, believed the words that came out of the shyly smiling mouth. "God will not permit the innocent to be punished," said that mouth. "Only the Lord Savior was foreordained to suffer innocently." The first of a thousand lies. Truth flowed to Micah Quill, was sucked in and disappeared, and emerged again looking ever so much like it used to, but changed subtly, at the edges, where none would notice, so that simple truth became a complicated fabric indeed, one that could wrap you up so tightly and close you off from the air until you suffocated in it.

Micah Quill, my best pupil. He has not come to Cambridge to visit his old schoolmaster, or hear the sermons he now preached on Sundays.

Leaning out his window, Hezekiah saw the shay stop at the main entrance of the orphanage. How like Micah. He does not stop for refreshment after his journey, or even to void his bladder, but goes instead directly to work. Purity, I cannot help you now. You didn't heed my warning.

Purity came into the room, relieved to see that the witcher was not some fearsome creature, some destroying angel, but rather was a man who must have been in his forties but still had the freshness of youth about him. He smiled at her, and she was at once relaxed and comfortable. She was much relieved, for she had feared the torment of conscience it would cost her, to have Alvin Smith, who seemed such a nice man, examined and tried by some monster. Instead the proceeding would be fair, the trial just, for this man had no malice in him.

"You are Purity," said the witcher. "My name is Micah Quill."

"I'm pleased to meet you," said Purity.

"And I to meet you," said Quill. "I came the moment your deposition was sent to me. I admire your courage, speaking up so boldly against a witch so dire."

"He made no threat to me," said Purity.

"His very existence is a menace to all godly souls," said Quill. "You could feel that, even if he uttered no threat, because the spirit of Christ dwells in you."

"Do you think so, sir?" asked Purity.

Quill was writing in his book.

"What do you write, sir?"

"I keep notes of all interviews," said Quill. "You never know what might turn out to be evidence. Don't mind me."

"It's just that... I wasn't giving my evidence yet."

"Isn't that silly of me?" said Quill. "Please, sit down, and tell me about this devil-worshiping slave of hell."

He spoke so cheerfully that Purity almost missed the dark significance of the words. When she realized what he had said, she corrected him at once. "I know nothing of what or how the man worships," said Purity. "Only that he claims to have a witchy knack."

"But you see, Miss Purity, such witchy knacks are given to people only because they serve the devil."

"What I'm saying is I never saw him worship the devil, nor speak of the devil, nor show a sign of wishing to serve him."

"Except for his knack, which of course does serve the devil."

"I never actually saw the knack, either, with my own eyes," said Purity. "I just heard tales of it from the boy who traveled with him."

"Name the boy," said Quill, his pen poised.

"Arthur Stuart."

Quill looked up at her, not writing.

"It is a joke, sir, to name him so, but the joke was made years ago by those who named him. I do not jest with you now."

He wrote the name.

"He's a half-Black boy," she began, "and--"

"Singed in the fires of hell," said Quill.

"No, I think he's merely the son of a White slave owner who forced himself on a Black slave girl, or that's the implication of the story I was told."

Quill smiled. "But why do you resist me?" he said. "You say he's half-Black. I say this shows he was singed by the fires of hell. And you say, no, not at all-- and then proceed to tell me he is the product of a rape of a Black woman by a White man. How could one better describe such a dreadful conception than by saying the child was singed in the fires of hell? You see?"

Purity nodded. "I thought you were speaking literally."

"I am," said Quill.

"I mean, that you literally meant that the boy had been to hell and burned there a little."

"So I say," Quill said, smiling. "I don't understand this constant insistence on correcting me when we already agree."

"But I'm not correcting you, sir."

"And is that statement not itself a correction? Or am I to take it some other way? I fear you're too subtle for me, Miss Purity. You dazzle me with argument. My head spins."

"Oh, I can't imagine you ever being confused by anybody," said Purity, laughing nervously.

"And again you feel the need to correct me. Is something troubling you? Is there some reason that you find it impossible to feel comfortable agreeing with me?"

"I'm perfectly comfortable to agree with you."

"A statement which, while sweet of sentiment, does constitute yet another disagreement with my own prior statement. But let us set aside the fact that you are unable to accept a single word I utter at face value. What puzzles me, what I must have your help to clarify, is the matter of some missing information, and some extra information. For instance, your deposition includes several extraneous persons whom no one else has seen. To wit: a lawyer named Verily Cooper, a riverman named Mike Fink, and a half-Black boy named Arthur Stuart."

"But I'm not the only one who saw them," said Purity.

"So the deposition is wrong?"

"I never said in the deposition that I was the only one who saw them."

"Excellent! Who else was there at this witches' sabbath?"

"What witches' sabbath?" Purity was confused now.

"Did you say you stumbled upon this coven of witches as they frolicked naked on the banks of the river?"

"Two of them were bathing, but I saw no sign of anything more dire than that."

"So to you, when witches cavort naked before your eyes, it is innocent bathing?"

"No, I just... I never thought of it as a... it wasn't a worship of any kind."

"But the tossing of the child toward heaven-- a Black child, no less-- and the way the naked man laughed at you, unashamed of his nakedness..."

Purity was sure she had neither spoken of nor written down any such description. "How could you know of that?"

"So you admit that you did not include this vital evidence in your deposition?"

"I didn't know it was evidence."

"Everything is evidence," said Quill. "Beings who frolic naked, laugh at Christians, and then disappear without a trace-- which part of this experience would not be evidence? You must leave nothing out."

"I see that now," said Purity. "I reckon I didn't know what a witches' sabbath might look like, so I didn't know when I saw it."

"But if you didn't know, why would you denounce them?" asked Quill. "You haven't brought a false accusation, have you?"

"No, sir! Every word I said was true."

"Oh, and what about the words you did not say?"

Purity was even more confused. "But if I didn't say them, how can I know which words they are?"

"But you know them. We just discovered them. The fact that it was a pagan bacchanal, with a naked man molesting a naked boy before your eyes--"

"Molest! He only tossed him in the air as a father might toss his own child, or an older brother might toss a younger."

"So you think this might be incest as well?" asked Quill.

"All I ever thought was to report what they said of themselves, that Alvin Smith is the seventh son of a seventh son, with all the knacks that such men are prone to have."

"So you believe the words of the devil concerning this?" asked Quill.

"The words of what devil?"

"The devil who spoke to you and told you that knacks just happen to come to seventh sons of seventh sons, when in fact witchcraft can only be practiced by those who have given themselves over to the service of Satan."

"I didn't understand that," said Purity. "I thought it was the use of hidden powers that was the crime, all by itself."

"Evil is never all by itself," said Quill. "Remember that when you testify you will take an oath with your hand on the sacred scripture, the very word of God under your hand, which is the same as holding Christ by the hand, for he is the very Word. You will give oath to tell the truth, the whole truth. So you must not attempt to withhold any more information as you have been doing."

"But I've withheld nothing! I've answered every question!"

"Again she must contradict the servant of God even when he speaks the plain truth. You withheld the information about pederasty, about the witches' sabbath, about incest-- and you attempted to pretend that this Alvin's hidden powers came naturally from the order in which he was born within his family, even though it is impossible for any such devilish power to come from nature, for nature was born in the mind of God, while witchy powers come from the anti-Christ. Don't you know that it is a terrible sin to bear false witness?"

"I do know it, and I told the truth as I understood it."

"But you understand it better now, don't you?" said Quill. "So when you testify, you will speak truly, won't you, and name things as they truly were? Or do you intend to lie to protect your witch friends?"

"My-- my witch friends?"

"Did you not swear that they were witches? Are you recanting that testimony?"

"I deny that they were friends of mine, not that they were witches."

"But your deposition," said Quill. "You seem to be retreating from that document as fast as you can."

"I stand by every word in it."

"And yet you claim these men were not your friends? You say that they pleaded with you to go with them as they continued their wicked journey through New England. Is this something they would ask of a stranger?"

"It must be so, since I was a stranger to them, and they asked me."

"Beware of a defiant tone," said Quill. "That will not help your cause in court."

"Am I in court? Have I a cause there?"

"Haven't you?" said Quill. "The only thing standing between you and the gallows is this deposition, your first feeble attempt to turn away from evil. But you must understand that the love of Christ cannot protect you when you half-repent."

"Turn away from evil? I have done no evil!"

"All men are evil," said Quill. "The natural man is the enemy of God, that's what Paul said. Are you therefore better than other people?"

"No, I'm a sinner like anyone else."

"So I thought," said Quill. "But your deposition shows that these men called you by name and begged you to go with them. Why would they do that, if they did not count you among their number, as a fellow witch?"

Purity was stunned. How could this have happened? She was the accuser, wasn't she? And yet here she sat denounced by a witcher. "Sir, is it not as likely to be a sign that I was not among their number, and that they wished to persuade me?"

"But you do not describe a scene of seduction," said Quill. "You do not tell us how the devil stood before you, his book open, waiting to write your name in it the moment you say that you consent."

"Because he did not do that," said Purity.

"So it was not a seduction, and the devil did not entice you to love and serve him."

Purity remembered how she felt in the presence of Verily Cooper, the desires that washed over her when she saw how handsome he was, when she heard the clear intelligence of his speech.

"You are blushing," said Quill. "I see that the spirit of God is touching you with shame at what you have withheld. Speak, and clear your conscience."

"I didn't think it was anything," said Purity. "But yes, I did for a moment feel enticed by one of Alvin's companions, the lawyer named Verily Cooper. I thought of it only as the feelings a girl my age might easily have toward a handsome man of good profession."

"But you did not have those feelings toward a man of good profession," said Quill. "You had them toward a man that you yourself have called a witch. So now the picture is almost complete: You came upon a witches' sabbath, unspeakable incestuous debauchery taking place between a naked man and a naked boy on the riverbank, and another witch caused you to feel sexual desire for him, and then they invite you to join them on their evil passage through New England, and at the end of this you dare to tell me they had no reason to think you might go along with them?"

"How can I know what reasons they had?"

Quill leaned across the table, his face full of love and sympathy toward her. "Oh, Miss Purity, you don't have to hide it any longer. You have kept the secret for so long, but I know that long before you were brought to that witches' sabbath, you were keeping your powers hidden, the powers the devil gave you, concealing them from everyone around you, but secretly using them to gain advantage over your neighbor."

Tears started flowing down Purity's cheeks. She couldn't help it.

"Doesn't it feel better to tell the truth? Don't you understand that telling the truth is how you say no to Satan?"

"Yes, I have a knack," said Purity. "I have always been able to sense what a person feels, what they're about to do."

"Can you tell what I am about to do?"

Purity searched his face, searched her own heart. "Sir, I truly do not know you."

"Thus the devil leaves you to fend for yourself in the hour of your need. Oh, Miss Purity, the devil is a false friend. Reject him! Turn away from him! Cease this pretense!"

"What pretense? I have confessed all!"

"Again she contradicts me. Don't you understand that as long as you are contradicting me, the spirit of the devil is in you, forcing you to contend against those who serve God?"

"But I don't know what more to confess."

"Who told you the witches' sabbath was to be held there on the riverbank that day?"

"No one told me," said Purity. "I told you, I was walking along the path."

"But is it your custom to walk along the river at that time of day?"

"No. No, I just read something in the library that made me think."

"What was it you read?"

"Something about... witchcraft."

Quill nodded, smiling. "Now, didn't that feel better?"

Purity did not know what it was that should have felt better.

"You were thinking of your evil pact with Satan, and suddenly you found yourself walking along the river. Perhaps you flew, perhaps you walked-- I hardly think that matters, though it is possible you flew without knowing that you flew-- most people fly to the witches' sabbath, often upon a broom, but I will not deny that some might walk. However it happened, you suddenly found yourself in the midst of a debauch so foul it shocked even a hardened witch such as yourself, and you longed to be cleansed of your deep wickedness, for having met souls even more lost than you, you remembered to fear God and so you came back with a story. It was still full of lies and you still left out much, but the key was there: You said the word witch, and you named a name. That is the beginning of redemption, to name the sin and repudiate the seducer."

Though many of his statements were not at all the way she remembered it happening, nevertheless, the end of his statement was true. How could she not have seen it before? She was led there, and probably by the devil. And hadn't she be filled with such terrible emotions that they had to warn her to be careful or she'd get herself denounced as a witch? Yes, she was one of them, they recognized her as one of them, and instead of accusing them, she should have accused herself. The beginning of redemption. "Oh, I want to have the love of God again. Will you help me, Mr. Quill?"

He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. "Miss Purity, I come to you with the kiss of fellowship, as the Saints greeted each other in days of old. Deep inside you is a Christian soul. I will help you waken the Christian within you, and get shut of the devil."

Weeping now, she clutched his hands within hers. "Thank you, sir."

"Let us begin in earnest, then," said Quill. "In your fear you first named only strangers, people passing through. But you have been a witch for many years, and it is time for you to name the witches of Cambridge."

She echoed him stupidly. "Witches of Cambridge?"

"It's been many, many years since this part of Massachusetts has had a witch trial. Witchery and witchism are thick here, and with your repentance we have a chance to root them out."

"Witchism?"

"The belief system surrounding witchery, which protects it and allows it to flourish. I'm sure you've heard these lies. The claim that knacks are natural or even a gift from God-- this clearly is a satanic lie designed to keep people from getting rid of witchcraft. The claim that knacks don't exist-- absurdly, that is what many supposedly wise men claim! --that also provides a shelter under which the covens can remain safe to work their evil. It is well known that while many witchists are simply echoing the beliefs of strong-willed people around them, others are secret witches, pretending to disbelieve in witchery even as they practice it. These are terrible hypocrites who must be exposed; and yet often they are the most attractive or interesting of the witchists, keeping you from recognizing their true nature. Can you think of any who speak this way?"

"But I can't imagine any of them are witches," said Purity.

"That's not for you to decide, is it?" said Quill. "Name the names, and let me examine them. If they're witches, I'll have it out of them eventually. If they're innocent, God will preserve them and they'll go free."

"Then let God show them to you."

"But I am not the one being tested," said Quill. "You are. This is your chance to prove that your repentance is real. You have denounced the stranger. Now denounce the snake in our own garden."

She imagined herself naming names. Whom would she denounce? Emerson? Reverend Study? These were men she loved and admired. There was not witchery in them, nor witchism either.

"All I know of witchcraft is my own knack," she said. "That and the men I already denounced."

Suddenly tears appeared in Quill's eyes. "Now Satan fears that his whole kingdom in this land is in jeopardy, and he terrifies you and forbids you to speak."

"No sir," said Purity. "Honor forbids me to name those who are not witches and who to my knowledge have done only good in the world."

"So you are the judge?" whispered Quill. "You dare to speak of honor? Let God judge them; you have only to name them."

Now she remembered Reverend Study's admonition. Why did I ever speak at all? Is this where it always leads? I cannot be considered pure unless I falsely accuse others?

"There are no other witches but myself, as far as I know," she said.

"I ask for witchists, too, remember," said Quill. "Come now, child, don't fall back into the cruel embrace of Satan out of a misplaced sense of loyalty. If they are Christians, Christ will keep them safe. And if they are not Christians, then do you not better serve them and the world at large by exposing them for what they are?"

"You twist everything I say," she said. "You'll do the same to them."

"I twist things?" said Quill. "Are you now denying your confession of witchcraft?"

For a moment she wanted to say yes, but then remembered: The only people ever hanged as witches were those who confessed and then either did more witchcraft-- or recanted their confession.

"No sir, I don't deny that I'm a witch. I just deny that I ever saw anyone from Cambridge do anything that I might call witchery or even... witchism."

"It's not a good sign when you lie to me," said Quill. "I believe you attend a class taught by one Ralph Waldo Emerson."

"Yes," she said, hesitantly.

"Why are you so reluctant to tell the truth? Is Satan stopping your mouth? Or is that how these other witches punish you for your honesty, by stopping up your mouth when you try to speak? Tell me!"

"Satan isn't stopping my mouth, nor any witch."

"No, I can see the fear in your eyes. Satan forbids you to confess the names, and even frightens you into denying that he is threatening you. But I know how to get you free of his clutches."

"Can you drive out the devil?" she asked.

"Only you can drive out the devil within you," said Quill, "by denouncing Satan and those who follow him. But I will help you shake off the fear of Satan and replace it with the fear of God by mortifying the flesh."

Now she understood. "Oh, please sir, in the name of God, I beg you, do not torture me."

"Oh really," he said impatiently. "We're not the Spanish Inquisition, now, are we? No, the flesh can be mortified better through exhaustion than through pain." He smiled. "Oh, when you're free of this, when you can stand before this community of Saints and declare that you have named all of Satan's followers here, how happy you will be, filled with the love of Christ!"

She bowed her head over the table. "Oh God," she prayed, "what have I done? Help me. Help me. Help me."

Waldo Emerson saw the men at the back of the classroom. "We have visitors," he said. "Is there something in the teachings of Thomas Aquinas that I can explain to you, goodmen?"

"We're tithingmen of the witch court of Cambridge," they said.

Waldo's heart stopped beating, or so it seemed. "There is no witch court in Cambridge," he said. "Not for a hundred years."

"There's a witch girl naming other witches," said the tithingman. "The witcher, Micah Quill, he sent us to fetch you for examination, if you be Ralph Waldo Emerson."

The students sat like stones. All but one, who rose to his feet and addressed the tithingmen. "If Professor Emerson is accused of witchery then the accuser is a liar," he said. "This man is the opposite of a witch, for he serves God and speaks truth."

It was a brave thing the boy had done, but it also forced Emerson's hand. If he did not immediately surrender himself, the tithingmen would be taking along two, not just one. "Have done," Waldo told his students. "Sit down, sir." Then, walking from his rostrum to the tithingmen, he said, "I'm happy to go with you and help you dispel any misconception that might have arisen."

"Oh, it's no misconception," said the tithingman. "Everyone knows you're a witchist. It's just a matter of whether you do so as a fool or as a follower of Satan."

"How can everyone know that I'm a thing which I never heard of until this moment?"

"That's proof of it right there," said the tithingman. "Witchists are always claiming there's no such thing as witchism."

Waldo faced his students, who had either turned in their seats to face him, or were standing beside their chairs. "This is today's puzzle," he said. "If the act of denial can be taken as proof of the crime, how can an innocent man defend himself?"

The tithingmen caught him by the arms. "Come along now, Mr. Emerson, and don't go trying any philosophy on us."

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it," said Waldo. "Philosophy would be wasted against such sturdy-headed men as you."

"Glad you know it," said the tithingman proudly. "Wouldn't want you thinking we weren't true Christians."

They had Alvin in irons, which he thought was excessive. Not that it was uncomfortable-- it was a simple matter for Alvin to reshape the iron to conform with his wrists and ankles, and to cause the skin there to form calluses as if they had worn the iron for years. Such work was so long-practiced that he did it almost by reflex. But the necessity to be inactive during the hours when he could be observed made him weary. He had done this before-- and without the irons-- for long weeks in the jail in Hatrack River. Life was too short for him to waste more hours, let alone days or weeks, growing mold in a prison cell and weighed down by chains, not when he could so easily free himself and get on about his business.

At sundown, he sat on the floor, leaned back against the wooden side wall of the cell, and closed his eyes. He sent out his doodlebug along a familiar path, until he found the dual heartfire of his wife and the unborn daughter that dwelt within her. She was already heading for her writing table, aware through long custom that because Alvin was farther east, sundown came earlier to him. She was always as impatient as he was.

This time there was no interruption from visitors. She commiserated with him about the chains and the cell, but soon got to the matter that concerned her most.

"Calvin's doodlebug has been stolen," she said. "He had sent it forth to follow the man who collects the names and some part of the souls of Blacks arriving at the dock." She told him of Calvin's last words to Balzac before all his will seemed to depart from his body. "First, I must know how much of his soul remains with his body. It is different from the slaves, for he seems to hear nothing and has to be led. His bodily functions also are like an infant's, and Balzac and their landlord are equally disgusted at the result, though the slaves clean him without complaint. Is this reversible? Can we communicate with him to learn his whereabouts? I have searched this city all the way up the peninsula, and find no collection of heartfires and no sign of Calvin's. It has been hidden from me; I pray it is not hidden from you."

Alvin had no need to write or even formulate his answers. He knew that she could find all his ideas in his heartfire moments after he thought of them and they fell into his memory. The kidnapped doodlebug-- Alvin had never worried about that. His fears had always been that something awful might happen to his body while he wandered. But in his experience, his body remained alive and alert, and whenever anything in his environment changed-- his eyes detecting movement, his ears hearing some unexpected sound-- his attention would be drawn back into his body.

His attention, and therefore his doodlebug. That's what the doodlebug was, really-- his full attention. That's what was missing from Calvin. Even when things happened around his body, happened to his body, he could not bring his attention back to it. His body was no doubt sending him frantic signals demanding his attention.

The slaves, on the other hand, couldn't possibly have surrendered their attention to the man named Denmark. What they gave up was their passion, their resentment, their will to freedom. And their names.

That was an important conclusion: There was no reason to think that this Denmark fellow had Calvin's name. In fact, what he probably had was a net of hexwork that contained the free portion of separated souls. He might not even be aware that Calvin's doodlebug had got inside. The hexes caught him automatically, like the workings of an engine. The hexwork also served to hide the soulstuff that it contained. Calvin could not see out, and could not be seen inside.

But the hexes could be seen. Margaret could not possibly find them, since she saw only heartfires, and if a man knew how to hide heartfires from her, he could certainly hide his own heartfire so she could not discover the man who knew the secret.

"Is he hiding from me?" she wrote.

He doesn't know you exist. He's hiding from everybody.

"How could Calvin be captured, when he didn't make the little knotted things the slaves made?"

I don't know the workings of Black powers, but my guess is that each slave put his own name and all his fears and hatred into the knotwork. They needed the knots in order to lift this part of their souls out of their bodies. Calvin needed no such tool.

"They had to do a Making?" she wrote.

Yes, he thought, that's what it was. A Making. Whether it was the power of Whites or Reds or Blacks, that's what it came down to: connecting yourself to the world around you by Making. Reds made the connection directly-- that connection was their Making, the link they forged between man and animal, man and plant, man and stone. Blacks made artifacts whose only purpose was power-- poppets and knotted strings. Whites, however, spent their lives making tools that hammered, cut, tore at nature directly, and only in the one area that they called their knack did they truly make that link. Yet they did make that connection. They were not utterly divorced from the natural world. Though Alvin could imagine such men and women, never feeling that deep, innate connection, never seeing the world change by the sheer action of their will in harmony with that part of nature. How lonely they must be, to be able to shape iron no other way than with hammer and anvil, fire and tongs. To make fire only by striking flint on steel. To see the future only by living day to day and watching it unfold one path at a time. To see the past only by reading what others wrote of it, or hearing their tales, and imagining the rest. Would such people even know that nature was as alive and responsive as it is? That hidden powers move in the world-- no, not just in the world, they move the world, they are the world at its foundation? How terrible it would be, to know and yet not touch these powers at any point. Only the bravest and wisest would be able to bear it. The rest would have to deny the hidden powers entirely, pretend they did not exist.

And then he realized: That's what the witchcraft laws are. An attempt to shut off the hidden powers and drive them away from the lives of men.

"At least the witchcraft laws admit that hidden powers exist," wrote Margaret.

With that, Alvin realized the full import of what Verily was attempting. It would be good to strike down the witchery laws, but only if it led to an open acknowledgment that knacks were good or evil only according to the use made of them.

"Verily's strategy is to make the whole idea of witchcraft look foolish."

Well, it is foolish, thought Alvin. All the images of the devil that he had heard of were childish. What God had created was a great Making that lived of itself and contained lesser beings whom he tried to turn into friends and fellow Makers. The enemy of that was not some pathetic creature giving a few lonely, isolated people the power to curse and cause misery. The enemy of Making was Unmaking, and the Unmaker wore a thousand different masks, depending on the needs of the person he was attempting to deceive.

I wonder what form the Unmaker takes to bring this witcher fellow along?

"Some men need no deception to serve him," wrote Margaret. "They already love his destructive work and engage in it freely of their own accord."

Are you speaking of this Quill fellow? Or of Calvin?

"No doubt they both believe they serve the cause of Making."

Is that true, Margaret? Aren't you the one who told me that however much a man might lie to himself, at the core of him he knows what he truly is?

"In some men the truth lies hidden so deeply that they see it again only at the last extremity. Then they recognize that they have known it all along. But they see the truth only at the moment when it is too late to seize upon it and use it to save themselves. They see it and despair. That is the fire of hell."

All men deceive themselves. Are we all damned?

"They cannot save themselves," she wrote. "That does not mean they cannot be saved."

Alvin found that comforting, for he feared his own secrets, feared the place in himself where he had hidden the truth about his own motives when he killed the Finder who murdered Margaret's mother. Maybe I can open up that door and face the truth someday, knowing that I might still be saved from that hard sharp blade when it pierces my heart.

"Calvin's need for redemption is more dire than yours right now."

I'm surprised you want to save him. You're the one who tells me he'll never change.

"I tell you I've seen no change in any of his futures."

I'll search for him. For the hexes that hide him. I can see what you cannot. But what about Denmark? Can't you find him when he walks the streets, and learn the truth?

"He is also guarded. I can find him on the street, and his name is carried with him, so he hasn't parted with that part of his heartfire. Nevertheless, he has no knowledge, no memory of where he takes the knotwork and whom he gives it to. There are blank places in his memory. As soon as he leaves the docks with a basket of souls, he remembers nothing until he wakes up again. I could follow him, with eyes instead of doodlebug..."

No! No, don't go near him! We know nothing of the powers at work here. Stay away and cease to search. Who knows but what some part of yourself goes forth from your body, too, when you do your torching? If you were captive as well it would be too much for me to bear.

"We are all captives, aren't we?" she wrote. "Even the baby in my womb."

She is no captive. She is home in the place she wants most to be.

"She chooses me because she knows no other choice."

In due time she'll eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For now, she is in the garden. You are paradise. You are the tree of life.

"You are sweet," she wrote. "I love you. I love you."

His own love for her swept over him, filling his eyes with tears and his heart with longing. He could see her set down the pen. No more words would appear on the paper tonight.

He lay there, sending forth his doodlebug. He found Purity easily. She was awake in her cell, weeping and praying. He stifled the vindictive thought that a sleepless night was the least she owed him. Instead, he entered her body and found where the fluids were being released that made her heart beat faster and her thoughts race. He watched her calm down, and then kindled the low fires of sleep in her brain. She crawled into bed. She slept. Poor child, he thought. How terrible it is not to know what your life is for. And how sad to have found such a destructive purpose for it.

Verily Cooper left Arthur Stuart, Mike Fink, and John-James Audubon in a small clearing in a stand of woods well north of the river and far from the nearest farmhouse. Arthur was making some bird pose on a branch-- Audubon discoursed about the bird but it never made it into Verily's memory. It was a daring thing he was going to try. He had never knowingly attempted to defend a man he knew was guilty. And Alvin was, under New England law, guilty indeed. He had a knack; he used it.

But Verily thought he knew how witch trials were run. He had read about them in his mentor's law library-- surreptitiously, lest anyone wonder why he took interest in such an arcane topic. Trial after trial, in England, France, and Germany, turned up the same set of traditional details: curses, witches appearing as incubi and succubi, and the whole mad tradition of witches' sabbaths and powerful gifts from the devil. Witchers asserted that the similarity of detail was proof that the phenomenon of witchcraft was real and widespread.

Indeed, one of their favorite ploys was to alarm the jury with statements like, "If this has all been happening under your very noses in this village, imagine what is happening in the next village, in the whole county, all over England, throughout the world!" They were forever citing "leading authorities" who estimated that, judging from the numbers of known witches actually brought to trial, there "must be" ten thousand or a hundred thousand or a million witches.

"Suspect everybody," they said. "There are so many witches it is impossible that you don't know one." And the clincher: "If you ignore small signs of witchcraft then you are responsible for permitting Satan to work unhindered in the world."

All this might have had some meaning if it weren't for one simple fact: Verily Cooper had a knack, and he knew that he had never had any experience of Satan, had never attended a witches' sabbath, had not left his body and wandered as an incubus to ravish women and send them strange dreams of love. All he had done was make barrels that held water so tightly that the wood had to rot through before the joints would leak. His only power was to make dead wood live and grow under his hands. And he had never used his knack to harm a living soul in any way. Therefore, all these stories had to be lies. And the statistics estimating the number of uncaught witches were a lie based upon a lie.

Verily believed what Alvin believed: that every soul was born with some connection to the powers of the universe-- perhaps the powers of God, but more likely the forces of nature-- which showed up as knacks among Europeans, as a connection to nature among the Reds, and in other strange ways among the other races. God wanted these powers used for good; Satan would of course want them used for evil. But the sheer possession of a knack was morally neutral.

The opportunity was here not just to save Purity from herself, but also to discredit the entire system of witch trials and the witchery laws themselves. Make the laws and the witnesses so obviously, scandalously, ludicrously false that no one would ever stand trial for the crime of witchcraft again.

Then again, he might fail, and Alvin would have to get himself and Purity out of jail whether she liked it or not, and they'd all hightail it out of New England.

Cambridge was a model New England town. The college dominated, with several impressive buildings, but there was still a town common across from the courthouse, where Alvin was almost certainly imprisoned. And, to Verily's great pleasure, the witcher and the tithingmen were running both Alvin and Purity. A crowd surrounded the commonbut at a safe distance-- as Alvin was forced to run around in tight circles at one end of the meadow and Purity at the other.

"How long have they been at it?" Verily asked a bystander.

"Since before dawn without a rest," said the man. "These are tough witches, you can bet."

Verily nodded wisely. "So you know already that they're both witches?"

"Look at 'em!" said the bystander. "You think they'd have the strength to run so long without falling over if they weren't?"

"They look pretty tired to me," said Verily.

"Ayup, but still running. And the girl's a brought-in orphan, so it's likely she had it in her blood anyway. Nobody ever liked her. We knew she was strange."

"I heard she was the chief witness against the man."

"Ayup, but how would she know about the witches' sabbath iffen she didn't go to it her own self, will you tell me that?"

"So why do they go to all this trouble? Why don't they just hang her?"

The man looked sharply at Verily. "You looking to stir up trouble, stranger?"

"Not I," said Verily. "I think they're both innocent as you are, sir. Not only that, but I think you know it, and you're only talking them guilty so no one will suspect that you also have a knack, which you keep well-hidden."

The man's eyes widened with terror, and without another word he melted away into the crowd.

Verily nodded. It was a safe enough thing to charge, if Alvin was right, and all folks had some kind of hidden power. All had something to hide. All feared the accusers. Therefore it was good to see this accuser charged right along with the man she accused. Hang her before she accuses anybody else. Verity had to count on that fear and aggravate it.

He strode out onto the common. At once a murmur went up-- who was the stranger, and how did he dare to go so close to where the witcher was running the witches to wear them down and get a full confession out of them?

"You, sir," said Verily to the witcher. He spoke loudly, so all could hear. "Where is the officer of the law supervising this interrogation?"

"I'm the officer," said the witcher. He spoke just as loudly-- people usually matched their voices to the loudest speaker, Verily found.

"You're not from this town," Verily said accusingly. "Where are the tithingmen!"

At once the dozen men who had formed watchful rings around both Alvin and Purity turned, some of them raising their hands.

"Are you men not charged with upholding the law?" demanded Verily. "Interrogation of witnesses in witch trials is to take place under the supervision of officers of the court, duly appointed by the judge or magistrate, precisely to stop torture like this from taking place!"

The word torture was designed to strike like a lash, and it did.

"This is not torture!" the witcher cried. "Where is the rack? The fire? The water?"

Verily turned toward him again, but stepped back, speaking louder than before. "I see you are familiar with all the methods of torture, but running them is one of the cruelest! When a person is worn down enough, they'll confess to... to suicide if it will end the torment and allow them to rest!"

It took a moment for the surrounding crowd to understand the impossibility of a confession of suicide, but he was rewarded with a chuckle. Turn the crowd; everyone who ended up on the jury would know of what was said here today.

Because the tithingmen were looking away, both Alvin and Purity had staggered and dropped to their knees. Now they both knelt on all fours in the grass, panting, heads hanging like worn-out horses.

"Don't let them rest!" the witcher cried frantically. "You'll set the whole interrogation back by hours!"

The tithingmen looked to their rods and switches, which they used to goad the runners, but none moved toward the two victims.

"At last you remember your duty," said Verily.

"You have no authority here!" cried the witcher. "And I am an officer of the court!"

"Tell me then the name of the magistrate here in Cambridge who appointed you."

The witcher knew he'd been caught exceeding his authority, since he had none until the local judge called for his services, and so he did not answer Verily's challenge directly. "And who are you?" the witcher demanded. "From your speech you're from England-- what authority do you have?"

"I have the authority to demand that you be clapped in irons yourself if you cause these two souls to be tortured for one more moment!" cried Verily. He knew the crowd was spellbound, watching the confrontation. "For I am Alvin Smith's attorney, and by torturing my client without authority, you, sir, have broken the Protection Act of 1694!" He flung out an accusing finger and the witcher visibly wilted under his accusation.

Verily was growing impatient, however, for the plan wasn't to win a petty victory here on the common. Was Purity so tired she couldn't lift her head and see who was speaking here?

He was about to launch into another tirade, during which he would wander closer to Purity and stand her up to face him if need be, but finally she recognized him and eliminated the need.

"That's him!" she cried.

The witcher sensed salvation. "Who? Who is he?"

"The English lawyer who was traveling with Alvin Smith! He's a witch too! He has a knack with wood!"

"So he was also at the witches' sabbath!" cried the witcher. "Of course Satan quotes the law to try to save his minions! Arrest that man!"

Verily immediately turned to the crowd. "See how it goes! Everyone who stands up for my client will be accused of witchcraft! Everyone will be clapped into jail and tried for his life!"

"Silence him!" cried the witcher. "Make him run along with the others!"

But the tithingmen, who reluctantly took Verily by the elbows because he had been accused, had no intention of doing any more running, now that it had been called torture and declared to be illegal. "No more running today, sir," said one of them. "We'll have to hear from the judge before we let you do such things again."

As a couple of tithingmen helped Purity stagger toward the courthouse, she whimpered when she came near Verily. "Don't bring me near him," she said. "He casts spells on me. He wants to come to me as an incubus!"

"Purity, you poor thing," Verily said. "Hear yourself spout the lies this witcher has taught you to tell."

"Speak no word to her!" cried the witcher. "Hear him curse her!"

To the tithingmen, Verily wryly muttered, "Did that sound like a curse to you?"

"No muttering! Keep still!" screamed the witcher.

Verily answered the witcher loudly. "All I said was, to a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail!"

Some people understood at once and chuckled. But the witcher was not one for irony. "A satanic utterance! Hammers and nails! What have you cursed me with? Confess your meaning, sir!"

"I mean, sir, that to those who profit from witch trials, every word sounds like a curse!"

"Get him out of here with his filthy lies and innuendoes!"

The tithingmen dragged him and Alvin off to the courthouse, to cells far from each other, but they were near each other several times, and though they didn't speak, they traded glances, and Verily made sure Alvin saw him grinning from ear to ear. This is working exactly as I wanted, Verily was saying.

Alone in his cell, though, Verily lost his smile. Poor Purity, he thought. How deeply had this witcher twisted her mind? Was her integrity so tied up in knots that she was no longer capable of seeing how she was being manipulated? Somewhere along the line, she had to realize that the witcher was using her.

Let it be soon, thought Verily. I don't want Alvin to have to wait long in this jail.

Hezekiah Study had already packed his bag for an extended stay with his niece in Providence when he heard the shouting on the common and leaned out his window to listen. He watched the English lawyer embarrass Micah Quill, manipulating the master manipulator until Hezekiah wanted to cheer. His heart sank when Purity denounced the lawyer-- and, indeed, she had spoken of a lawyer in Alvin Smith's party right from the start-- but the lawyer managed to plant seeds of doubt in every onlooker's mind all the same. To Hezekiah Study, it was the first time he'd ever seen the early stages of a witch trial without dread and despair seizing his heart. For the English lawyer was grinning like a schoolboy who doesn't mind the punishment because it was worth it to put the rock through the schoolmaster's window.

He's in control of this, thought Hezekiah.

His better sense-- his bitter experience-- answered: No one's ever in control of a witch trial except the witchers. The man is grinning now, but he'll not grin in the end, with either the rope around his neck or his decency stripped from him.

Oh, God, let this be the day at last when the people finally see that the only ones serving the devil at these trials are the witchers!

And when his prayer was done, he came away from the window and unpacked his bag. Come what may, this trial was going to be fought with courage, and Hezekiah Study had to stay. Not just to see what was going to happen, but because this young lawyer would not stand alone. Hezekiah Study would stand with him. He had that much hope and courage left in him, despite all.