Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V (24 page)

“Let’s take my dear brother-in-law out into the garden for our chat,” said Margaret.

Balzac nodded, clearly relieved that she had so readily grasped the situation.

The garden lay in the hot deep shadow the house cast in the afternoon. With no one nearby to overhear, Margaret listened as Balzac poured out his story; even as he spoke, she followed the same events in his memory. The day on the docks; the unloading of the slaves; the waterboy named Denmark; the little bits of knotted this-and-that which were handed over or spat into the dipper; Calvin following Denmark with his doodlebug.

“I warned him,” said Balzac. “He wouldn’t listen.”

“He never has,” said Margaret.

“Never?” asked Balzac. “I thought you hadn’t met him till this week.”

“It is my misfortune to be deeply acquainted with everyone I meet,” said Margaret. “Calvin is not a prudent man. Nor are you.”

“As a pebble is to the moon, so is my imprudence compared to Calvin’s,” said Balzac.

“When you’re dying of the disease that you call ‘English’ and the English call ‘French,’ when your mind is failing you, when you are blind and decaying, you will
not be able to remember thinking of your imprudence as a slight thing,” said Margaret.

“Mon dieu,” said Balzac. “Have I heard my fate?”

“A very likely ending to your life,” said Margaret. “Many paths lead there. But then, there are also many paths on which you are more prudent with the company you keep.”

“What about luck?” asked Balzac.

“I’m not much of a believer in luck,” said Margaret. “It wasn’t luck that lost our friend Calvin his soul.”

“How
could
it be lost, if the devil already had it?” Balzac was only half joking.

“What do I know of souls?” said Margaret. “I’ve been trying to understand what it is that the slaves in this city have given up. In Appalachee they don’t do this, and I wonder if it’s because they have some hope of escape. Whereas here, hope is nonexistent. Therefore, to remain alive, they must hide from their despair.”

“Calvin wasn’t despairing.”

“Oh, I know,” said Margaret. “Nor did he provide his captor with bits of string and whatnot. But then, those devices may be the Blacks’ way of accomplishing what Calvin can do on his own, by his inborn knack: to separate some part of himself from his body.”

“I am persuaded. But what part? And how can we get it back?”

Margaret sighed. “Monsieur Balzac, you seem to think I am a better person than I really am. For I am still quite uncertain whether I wish to help Calvin recover himself.” She looked at Calvin’s empty face. A fly landed on his cheek and walked briefly into and out of his nostril. Calvin made no move to brush it away. “The slaves function better than this,” said Margaret. “And yet he seems not to be suffering.”

“I understand,” said Balzac, “that the better one knows Monsieur Calvin, the more one may wish to leave him in this docile state. But then, you must consider a few other things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, I am no blood kin of this man, and feel no responsibility for him. You, however, are his sister-in-law. Therefore, I can and will walk away from this garden without him. What will you do with the body? It still breathes—there are those who might criticize you for burying it, though I would never speak ill of you for such a decision.”

“Monsieur Balzac, you should consider a few things yourself.”

“Such as?” Balzac echoed her with a smile.

“Such as, you have no idea how much of our conversation Calvin is overhearing, however inattentive he might seem. The slaves hear what is said to them. Furthermore, there is no place on this earth where you could go that Calvin could not find you to wreak whatever vengeance he might wish to exact from you.”

Balzac deflated slightly. “Madame, you have caught me in my deception. I would never leave my dear friend in such a state. But I hoped that a threat to leave you responsible for him might persuade you to help me save him, for I have no idea how to find where his soul is kept, or how to free it if I find it.”

“Appeals to decency work much better with me than threats of inconvenience.”

“Because you are a woman of virtue.”

“Because I am ashamed to appear selfish,” said Margaret. “There is no virtue that cannot be painted as a vice.”

“Is that so? I have never found a need to do that. Painting vices as virtues, now, that is my expertise.” Balzac grinned at her.

“Nonsense,” said Margaret. “You name virtues and vices for what they are. That is your knack.”

“I? Have a knack?”

“What were the last things Calvin said?”

Balzac held still a moment, his eyes closed. “In Blacktown,” he said. “‘Junk hanging all over the
place,’ he said. Oh, and a moment before that he mentioned going through a door. So perhaps that’s inside. Yes, in a house, because I remember him saying, ‘Only one other heartfire in the house.’ And then the last thing he said was, ‘That’s
bright
.’”

“A light,” said Margaret. “A house with one other heartfire in it. Besides the one belonging to this Denmark fellow. And something bright. And then he was taken.”

“Can you find it?” asked Balzac.

Margaret didn’t answer. Instead she looked doubtfully at Calvin. “Do you suppose he’s incontinent?”

“Pardon?” asked Balzac.

“I’m speculating on the best place to take him. I think he should stay with you.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“If he has trouble dealing with urination and defecation, I believe it will cause less scandal for you to help him.”

“I admire your prudence,” said Balzac. “I suppose I must also provide him with food and drink.”

Margaret opened the purse tucked into her sleeve and handed a guinea to Balzac. “While you tend to his physical needs, I will find his doodlebug.”

Balzac tossed the guinea into the air and caught it. “Finding it is one thing. Will you bring it back?”

“That is beyond my power,” said Margaret. “I carry well-made hexes, but I don’t know how to make them. No, what I will do is find where he is and discover who is detaining him. I suspect that in the process I will find the souls of the slaves of Camelot. I will learn how the thing is done. And when I am armed with information...”

Balzac grimaced. “You will write a treatise on it?”

“Nothing so useless as that,” said Margaret. “I’ll tell Alvin and see what he can do.”

“Alvin! Calvin’s life depends upon the brother he hates above all other persons on earth?”

“The hate flows in only one direction, I fear,” said
Margaret. “Despite my warnings, Alvin seems unable to realize that the playmate of his childhood has been murdered by the man who usually dwells in this body. So Alvin insists on loving Calvin.”

“Doesn’t it make you weary? Being married to such a lunatic?”

Margaret smiled. “Alvin has made me weary all my life,” she said.

“‘But’... no, let me say it for you ... ‘But the weariness is a joy, because I have worn myself out in his service.’”

“You mock me.”

“I mock myself,” said Balzac. “I play the clown: the man who pretends to be so sophisticated that he finds kindly sentiment amusing, when the reality is that he would trade all his dreams for the knowledge that a woman of extraordinary intelligence felt such sentiments for him.”

“You create yourself like a character in a novel,” said Margaret.

“I have bared my soul to you and you call me false.”

“Not false. Truer than mere reality.”

Balzac bowed. “Ah, madame, may I never have to face critics of such piercing wisdom as yourself.”

“You are a deeply sentimental man,” said Margaret. “You pretend to be hard, but you are soft. You pretend to be distant, but your heart is captured over and over again. You pretend to be self-mockingly pretentious, when in fact you know that you really are the genius that you pretend to be pretending to be.”

“Am I?” asked Balzac.

“What, haven’t I flattered you enough?”

“My English is not yet perfect. Can the word ‘flattery’ be used with the word ‘enough’?”

“I haven’t flattered you at all,” said Margaret. “On every path of your future in which you actually begin to write, there comes from your pen such a flood of lives
and passions that your name will be known for centuries and on every continent.”

Tears filled Balzac’s eyes. “Ah, God, you have given me the sign from an angel.”

“This is not the road to Emmaus,” said Margaret.

“It was the road to Damascus I had in mind,” said Balzac.

She laughed. “No one could ever strike you blind. You see with your heart as truly as I do.”

Balzac moved closer to her, and whispered. No, he formed the words with his lips, counting on her to understand his heart without hearing the sound. “What I cannot see is the future and the past. Can I have my freedom from Calvin? I fear him as I fear no other living man.”

“You have nothing to fear from him,” said Margaret. “He loves you and wants your admiration more than that of any man but one.”

“Your husband.”

“His hatred for Alvin is so intense he has no real hate left over for you. If he lost your admiration, it would be a mere fleabite compared to losing hope of Alvin’s respect.”

“And what is that compared to my fleabite? A bee sting? A snakebite? An amputation?”

Margaret shook her head. “Now you
are
reaching for flattery. Take him home, Monsieur Balzac. I will try to find his heartfire somewhere in a house in Blacktown.”

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.”