Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V (27 page)

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 common—but 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. Verily 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.