IGMS Issue 2 (5 page)

"Not now. I will explain all later."

Al-Ashmar helped Rabiah through the grate, but before he could take the first of the steps down, Rabiah turned Al-Ahmar around and wrapped her arms around him.

"Thank you for my life," she said.

He freed himself from her embrace and pulled her toward the stairs. "Thank me when you have your new one."

Al-Ashmar knew they would have to leave for foreign lands, but it couldn't be helped. He hadn't expected this change in fortune, but neither had he expected his wife to die or to raise seven children on his own. He would take what fate gave him and deal with it as best he could.

With Rabiah.

Yes, with Rabiah it will all be just a little bit easier.

[Part of the Alvin Maker series, this story falls chronologically between
Heartfire
and
The Crystal City
.]

Alvin watched as Captain Howard welcomed aboard another group of passengers, a prosperous family with five children and three slaves.

"It's the Nile River of America," said the captain. "But Cleopatra herself never sailed in such splendor as you folks is going to experience on the
Yazoo Queen
."

Splendor for the family, thought Alvin. Not likely to be much splendor for the slaves -- though, being house servants, they'd fare better than the two dozen runaways chained together in the blazing sun at dockside all afternoon.

Alvin had been keeping an eye on them since he and Arthur Stuart got here to the Carthage City riverport at eleven. Arthur Stuart was all for exploring, and Alvin let him go. The city that billed itself as the Phoenicia of the West had plenty of sights for a boy Arthur's age, even a half-black boy. Since it was on the north shore of the Hio, there'd be suspicious eyes on him for a runaway. But there was plenty of free blacks in Carthage City, and Arthur Stuart was no fool. He'd keep an eye out.

There was plenty of slaves in Carthage, too. That was the law, that a black slave from the South remained a slave even in a free state. And the greatest shame of all was those chained-up runaways who got themselves all the way across the Hio to freedom, only to be picked up by Finders and dragged back in chains to the whips and other horrors of bondage. Angry owners who'd make an example of them. No wonder there was so many who killed theirselves, or tried to.

Alvin saw wounds on more than a few in this chained-up group of twenty-five, though many of the wounds could have been made by the slave's own hand. Finders weren't much for injuring the property they was getting paid to bring on home. No, those wounds on wrists and bellies were likely a vote for freedom before life itself.

What Alvin was watching for was to know whether the runaways were going to be loaded on this boat or another. Most often runaways were ferried across river and made to walk home over land -- there was too many stories of slaves jumping overboard and sinking to the bottom with their chains on to make Finders keen on river transportation.

But now and then Alvin had caught a whiff of talking from the slaves -- not much, since it could get them a bit of lash, and not loud enough for him to make out the words, but the music of the language didn't sound like English, not northern English, not southern English, not slave English. It wasn't likely to be any African language. With the British waging full-out war on the slave trade, there weren't many new slaves making it across the Atlantic these days.

So it might be Spanish they were talking, or French. Either way, they'd most likely be bound for Nueva Barcelona, or New Orleans, as the French still called it.

Which raised some questions in Alvin's mind. Mostly this one: How could a bunch of Barcelona runaways get themselves to the state of Hio? That would have been a long trek on foot, especially if they didn't speak English. Alvin's wife, Peggy, grew up in an Abolitionist home, with her Papa, Horace Guester, smuggling runaways across river. Alvin knew something about how good the Underground Railway was. It had fingers reaching all the way down into the new duchies of Mizzippy and Alabam, but Alvin never heard of any Spanish- or French-speaking slaves taking that long dark road to freedom.

"I'm hungry again," said Arthur Stuart.

Alvin turned to see the boy -- no, the young man, he was getting so tall and his voice so low -- standing behind him, hands in his pockets, looking at the
Yazoo Queen
.

"I'm a-thinking," said Alvin, "as how instead of just looking at this boat, we ought to get on it and ride a spell."

"How far?" asked Arthur Stuart.

"You asking cause you're hoping it's a long way or a short one?"

"This one goes clear to Barcy."

"It does if the fog on the Mizzippy lets it," said Alvin.

Arthur Stuart made a goofy face at him. "Oh, that's right, cause around you that fog's just bound to close right in."

"It might," said Alvin. "Me and water never did get along."

"When you was a little baby, maybe," said Arthur Stuart. "Fog does what you tell it to do these days."

"You think," said Alvin.

"You showed me your own self."

"I showed you with smoke from a candle," said Alvin, "and just because I
can
do it don't mean that every fog or smoke you see is doing what I say."

"Don't mean it ain't, either," said Arthur Stuart, grinning.

"I'm just waiting to see if this boat's a slave ship or not," said Alvin.

Arthur Stuart looked over where Alvin was looking, at the runaways. "Why don't you just turn them loose?" he asked.

"And where would they go?" said Alvin. "They're being watched."

"Not all that careful," said Arthur Stuart. "Them so-called guards has got jugs that ain't close to full by now."

"The Finders still got their sachets. It wouldn't take long to round them up again, and they'd be in even more trouble."

"So you ain't going to do a thing about it?"

"Arthur Stuart, I can't just pry the manacles off every slave in the South."

"I seen you melt iron like it was butter," said Arthur Stuart.

"So a bunch of slaves run away and leave behind puddles of iron that was once their chains," said Alvin. "What do the authorities think? There was a blacksmith snuck in with a teeny tiny bellows and a ton of coal and lit him a fire that het them chains up? And then he run off after, taking all his coal with him in his pockets?"

Arthur Stuart looked at him defiantly. "So it's all about keeping you safe."

"I reckon so," said Alvin. "You know what a coward I am."

Last year, Arthur Stuart would have blinked and said he was sorry, but now that his voice had changed the word "sorry" didn't come so easy to his lips. "You can't heal everybody, neither," he said, "but that don't stop you from healing
some
."

"No point in freeing them as can't stay free," said Alvin. "And how many of them would run, do you think, and how many drown themselves in the river?"

"Why would they do that?"

"Because they know as well as I do, there ain't no freedom here in Carthage City for a runaway slave. This town may be the biggest on the Hio, but it's more southern than northern, when it comes to slavery. There's even buying and selling of slaves here, they say, flesh markets hidden in cellars, and the authorities know about it and don't do a thing because there's so much money in it."

"So there's nothing you can do."

"I healed their wrists and ankles where the manacles bite so deep. I cooled them in the sun and cleaned the water they been given to drink so it don't make them sick."

Now, finally, Arthur Stuart looked a bit embarrassed -- though still defiant. "I never said you wasn't
nice
," he said.

"Nice is all I can be," said Alvin. "In this time and place. That and I don't plan to give my money to this captain iffen the slaves are going southbound on his boat. I won't help pay for no slave ship."

"He won't even notice the price of our passage."

"Oh, he'll notice, all right," said Alvin. "This Captain Howard is a fellow what can tell how much money you got in your pocket by the smell of it."

"
You
can't even do that," said Arthur Stuart.

"Money's his knack," said Alvin. "That's my guess. He's got him a pilot to steer the ship, and an engineer to keep that steam engine going, and a carpenter to tend the paddlewheel and such damage as the boat takes passing close to the left bank all the way down the Mizzippy. So why is he captain? It's about the money. He knows who's got it, and he knows how to talk it out of them."

"So how much money's he going to think
you
got?"

"Enough money to own a big young slave, but not enough money to afford one what doesn't have such a mouth on him."

Arthur Stuart glared. "You don't own me."

"I told you, Arthur Stuart, I didn't want you on this trip and I still don't. I hate taking you south because I have to pretend you're my property, and I don't know which is worse, you pretending to be a slave, or me pretending to be the kind of man as would own one."

"I'm going and that's that."

"So you keep on saying," said Alvin.

"And you must not mind because you could force me to stay here iffen you wanted."

"Don't say 'iffen,' it drives Peggy crazy when you do."

"She ain't here and you say it your own self."

"The idea is for the younger generation to be an improvement over the older."

"Well, then, you're a mizzable failure, you got to admit, since I been studying makering with you for lo these many years and I can barely make a candle flicker or a stone crack."

"I think you're doing fine, and you're better than that, anyway, if you just put your mind to it."

"I put my mind to it till my head feels like a cannonball."

"I suppose I should have said, Put your heart in it. It's not about
making
the candle or the stone -- or the iron chains, for that matter -- it's not about
making
them do what you want, it's about
getting
them to do what you want."

"I don't see you setting down and
talking
no iron into bending or dead wood into sprouting twigs, but they do it."

"You may not see me or hear me do it, but I'm doing it all the same, only they don't understand words, they understand the plan in my heart."

"Sounds like making wishes to me."

"Only because you haven't learned yourself how to do it yet."

"Which means you ain't much of a teacher."

"Neither is Peggy, what with you still saying 'ain't'."

"Difference is, I know how
not
to say 'ain't' when she's around to hear it," said Arthur Stuart, "only I can't poke out a dent in a tin cup whether you're there or not."

"Could if you cared enough," said Alvin.

"I want to ride on this boat."

"Even if it's a slave ship?" said Alvin.

"Us staying off ain't going to make it any less a slave ship," said Arthur Stuart.

"Ain't you the idealist."

"You ride this
Yazoo Queen
, Master of mine, and you can keep those slaves comfy all the way back to hell."

The mockery in his tone was annoying, but not misplaced, Alvin decided.

"I could do that," said Alvin. "Small blessings can feel big enough, when they're all you got."

"So buy the ticket, cause this boat's supposed to sail first thing in the morning, and we want to be aboard already, don't we?"

Alvin didn't like the mixture of casualness and eagerness in Arthur Stuart's words. "You don't happen to have some plan to set these poor souls free during the voyage, do you? Because you know they'd jump overboard and there ain't a one of them knows how to swim, you can bet on that, so it'd be plain murder to free them."

"I got no such plan."

"I need your promise you won't free them."

"I won't life a finger to help them," said Arthur Stuart. "I can make my heart as hard as yours whenever I want."

"I hope you don't think that kind of talk makes me glad to have your company," said Alvin. "Specially because I think you know I don't deserve it."