Seventh Son: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume I Read online

  He was so caught up in these thoughts that he didn’t even realize he wasn’t heading for Peter McCoy’s farm downriver, where his bed would be waiting for him in the old log cabin. He was walking back up the slope to the meetinghouse. Not till he lit a couple of candles did he realize that he actually meant to spend the night here. It was his home, these bare wooden walls, as no other place in the world had ever been home to him. The sappish smell was like a madness in his nostrils, it made him want to sing hymns he’d never even heard before, and he sat there humming, thumbing through the pages of the Old Testament without so much as noticing that there were words on the paper.

  He didn’t hear them until they stepped onto the wooden floor. Then he looked up and saw, to his surprise, Mistress Faith carrying a lantern, followed by the eighteen-year-old twins, Wastenot and Wantnot. They were carrying a large wooden box between them. It took a moment before he realized that the box was meant to be an altar. That in fact it was a rather fine altar, the wood was tightly fitted as any master cabinetmaker could manage, beautifully stained. And burnt into the boards surrounding the top of the altar were two rows of crosses.

  “Where do you want it?” asked Wastenot.

  “Father said we had to bring it down tonight, now that the roof and walls were done.”

  “Father?” asked Thrower.

  “He made it for you special,” said Wastenot. “And little Al burnt in the crosses hisself, seeing how he wasn’t allowed down here no more.”

  By now Thrower was standing with them, and he could see that the altar had been lovingly built. It was the last thing he expected from Alvin Miller. And the perfectly even crosses hardly looked like the work of a six-year-old child.

  “Here,” he said, leading them to the place where he had imagined his altar would stand. It was the only thing in the meetinghouse besides the walls and the floor, and being stained, it was darker than the new-wood floor and walls. It was perfect, and tears came to Thrower’s eyes. “Tell them that it’s beautiful.”

  Faith and the boys smiled as broad as could be. “You see he ain’t your enemy,” said Faith, and Thrower could only agree.

  “I’m not his enemy, either,” he said. And he didn’t say: I will win him over with love and patience, but I will win, and this altar is a sure sign that in his heart he secretly longs for me to set him free from the darkness of ignorance.

  They didn’t linger, but headed home briskly through the night. Thrower set his candlestick on the floor near the altar—never on it, since that would smack of Papistry—and knelt in a prayer of thanksgiving. The church mostly built, and a beautiful altar already inside it, built by the man he had most feared, the crosses burnt into it by the strange child who most symbolized the compelling superstitions of these ignorant people.

  “You’re so full of pride,” said a voice behind him.

  He turned, already smiling, for he was always glad when the Visitor appeared.

  But the Visitor was not smiling. “So full of pride.”

  “Forgive me,” said Thrower. “I repent of it already. Still, can I help it if I rejoice in the great work that is begun here?”

  The Visitor gently touched the altar, his fingers seeking out the crosses. “He made this, didn’t he?”

  “Alvin Miller.”

  “And the boy?”

  “The crosses. I was so afraid they were servants of the devil—”

  The Visitor looked at him sharply. “And because they built an altar, you think that proves they’re not?”

  A thrill of dread ran through him, and Thrower whispered, “I didn’t think the devil could use the sign of the cross—”

  “You’re as superstitious as any of the others,” said the Visitor coldly. “Papists cross themselves all the time. Do you think it’s a hex against the devil?”

  “How can I know anything, then?” asked Thrower. “If the devil can make an altar and draw a cross—”

  “No, no. Thrower, my dear son, they aren’t devils, either of them. You’ll know the devil when you see him. Where other men have hair on their heads, the devil has the horns of a bull. Where other men have feet, the devil has the cloven hooves of a goat. Where other men have hands, the devil has the great paws of a bear. And be sure of this: he’ll make no altars for you when he comes.” Then the Visitor laid both his hands on the altar. “This is my altar now,” he said. “No matter who made it, I can turn it to my purpose.”

  Thrower wept in relief. “Consecrated now, you’ve made it holy.” And he reached out a hand to touch the altar.

  “Stop!” whispered the Visitor. Even voiceless, though, his word had the power to set the walls a-trembling. “Hear me first,” he said.

  “I always listen to you,” said Thrower. “Though I can’t guess why you should have chosen such a lowly worm as me.”

  “Even a worm can be made great by a touch from the finger of God,” said the Visitor. “No, don’t misunderstand me—I am not the Lord of Hosts. Don’t worship me.”

  But Thrower could not help himself, and he wept in devotion, kneeling before this wise and powerful angel. Yes, angel, Thrower had no doubt of it, though the Visitor had no wings and wore a suit of clothes one might expect to see in Parliament.

  “The man who built this is confused, but there is murder in his soul, and if he is provoked enough, it will come forth. And the child who made the crosses—he is as remarkable as you suppose. But he is not yet ordained to a life of good or evil. Both paths are set before him, and he is open to influence. Do you understand me?”

  “Is this my work?” asked Thrower. “Should I forget all else, and devote myself to turning the child to righteousness?”

  “If you seem too devoted, his parents will reject you. Rather you should conduct your ministry as you have planned. But in your heart, you’ll bend everything toward this remarkable child, to win him to my cause. Because if he does not serve me by the time he’s fourteen years of age, then I’ll destroy him.”

  The mere thought of Alvin Junior being hurt or killed was unbearable to Thrower. It filled him with such a sense of loss that he could not imagine a father or even a mother feeling more. “All that a weak man can do to save the child, I will do,” he cried, his voice wrung almost to a scream by his anguish.

  The Visitor nodded, smiled his beautiful and loving smile, and reached out his hand to Thrower. “I trust you,” he said softly. His voice was like healing water on a burning wound. “I know you will do well. And as for the devil, you must feel no fear of him.”

  Thrower reached for the proffered hand, to cover it with kisses; but when he should have touched flesh, there was nothing there, and in that moment the Visitor was gone.

  9

  Taleswapper

  THERE WAS ONCE A TIME, Taleswapper well remembered, when he could climb a tree in these parts and look out over a hundred square miles of undisturbed forest. A time when oaks lived a century or more, with ever-thickening trunks making mountains out of wood. A time when leaves were so thick overhead that there were places where the forest ground was bare from lack of light.

  That world of eternal dusk was slipping away now. There still were reaches of primeval wood, where Red men wandered more quietly than deer and Taleswapper felt himself to be in the cathedral of the most well-worshipped God. But such places were so rare that in this last year of wandering, Taleswapper had not journeyed a single day in which he could climb a tree and see no interruption in the forest roof. All the country between the Hio and the Wobbish was being settled, sparsely but evenly, and even now, from his perch atop a willow at the crest of a rise, Taleswapper could see three dozen cookfires sending pillars of smoke straight up into the cold autumn air. And in every direction, great swatches of forest had been cleared, the land plowed, crops planted, tended, harvested, so that where once great trees had shielded the earth from the sky’s eye, now the stubbled soil was naked, waiting for winter to cover its shame.

  Taleswapper remembered his vision of drunken Noah. He had
engraved it for an edition of Genesis for Scottish rite Sunday schools. Noah, nude, his mouth lolling open, a cup half-spilled still dangling from his curled fingers; Ham, not far off, laughing derisively; and Japheth and Shem, walking backward to draw a robe over their father, so they would not see what their father had exposed in his stupefaction. With an electric excitement, Taleswapper realized that this, now, is what that prophetic moment foreshadowed. That he, Taleswapper, perched atop a tree, was seeing the naked land in its stupor, awaiting the modest covering of winter. It was prophecy fulfilled, a thing which one hoped for but could not expect in one’s own life.

  Or, then again, the story of drunken Noah might not be a figure of this moment at all. Why not the other way around? Why not cleared land as a figure for drunken Noah?

  Taleswapper was in a foul mood by the time he reached the ground. He thought and thought, trying to open his mind to see visions, to be a good prophet. Yet every time he thought he had got something firm and tight, it shifted, it changed. He thought one thought too many, and the whole fabric came undone, and he was left as uncertain as ever before.

  At the base of the tree he opened his pack. From it he took the Book of Tales that he had first made for Old Ben back in ’85. Carefully he unbuckled the sealed portion, then closed his eyes and riffled the pages. He opened his eyes and found his fingers resting among the Proverbs of Hell. Of course, at a time like this. His finger touched two proverbs, both written by his own hand. One meant nothing, but the other seemed appropriate. “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.”

  Yet the more he tried to study out the meaning of that proverb at this moment, the less connection he saw, except that it included mention of trees. So he tried the first proverb after all. “If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.”

  Ah. This was speaking to him, after all. This was the voice of prophecy, recorded when he lived in Philadelphia, before he ever began his journey, on a night when the Book of Proverbs came alive for him and he saw as if in letters of flame the words that should have been included. That night he had stayed up until dawn’s light killed the fires of the page. When Old Ben came thumping down the stairs to grouch his way in for breakfast, he stopped and sniffed the air. “Smoke,” he said. “You haven’t been trying to burn down the house, have you, Bill?”

  “No sir,” answered Taleswapper. “But I saw a vision of what God meant the Book of Proverbs to say, and wrote them down.”

  “You are obsessed with visions,” said Old Ben. “The only true vision comes not from God but from the inmost recesses of the human mind. Write that down as a proverb, if you want. It’s far too agnostic for me to use it in Poor Richard’s Almanac.”

  “Look,” said Taleswapper.

  Old Ben looked, and saw the last flames as they died. “Well, now, if that’s not the most remarkable trick to do with letters. And you told me you weren’t a wizard.”

  “I’m not. God gave this to me.”

  “God or the devil? When you’re surrounded by light, Bill, how do you know whether it’s the glory of God or the flames of hell?”

  “I don’t know,” said Taleswapper, growing confused. Being young then, not yet thirty, he was easily confused in the presence of the great man.

  “Or perhaps you, wanting truth so badly, gave it to yourself.” Old Ben tilted his head to examine the pages of Proverbs through the lower lenses of his bifocals. “The letters have been burned right in. Funny, isn’t it, that I’m called a wizard, who am not, and you, who are, refuse to admit it.”

  “I’m a prophet. Or—want to be.”

  “If one of your prophecies comes true, Bill Blake, then I’ll believe it, but not until.”

  In the years since then, Taleswapper had searched for the fulfilment of even one prophecy. Yet whenever he thought he had found such a fulfilment, he could hear Old Ben’s voice in the back of his mind, providing an alternate explanation, scoffing at him for thinking that any connection between prophecy and reality could be true.

  “Never true,” Old Ben would say. “Useful—now, there’s something. Your mind might make a connection that is useful. But true is another matter. True implies that you have found a connection that exists independent of your apprehension of it, that would exist whether you noticed it or not. And I must say that I have never seen such a connection in my life. There are times when I suspect that there are no such connections, that all links, bonds, ties, and similarities are creatures of thought and have no substance.”

  “Then why doesn’t the ground dissolve beneath our feet?” asked Taleswapper.

  “Because we have managed to persuade it not to let our bodies by. Perhaps it was Sir Isaac Newton. He was such a persuasive fellow. Even if human beings doubt him, the ground does not, and so it endures.” Old Ben laughed. It was all a lark to him. He never could bring himself to believe even his own skepticism.

  Now, sitting at the base of the tree, his eyes closed, Taleswapper connected again: The tale of Noah with Old Ben. Old Ben was Ham, who saw the naked truth, limp and shameful, and laughed at it, while all the loyal sons of church and university walked backward to cover it up again, so the silly truth would not be seen. Thus the world continued to think of the truth as firm and proud, never having seen it in a slack moment.

  That is a true connection, thought Taleswapper. That is the meaning of the story. That is the fulfilment of the prophecy. The truth when we see it is ridiculous, and if we wish to worship it, we must never allow ourselves to see it.

  In that moment of discovery, Taleswapper sprang to his feet. He must find someone at once, to tell of this great discovery white he still believed it. As his own proverb said, “The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.” If he did not speak his tale, it grew dank and musty, it shrank inside him, while with the telling the tale stayed fresh and virtuous.

  Which way? The forest road, not three rods off, led toward a large white church with an oak-high steeple—he had seen it, not a mile away, while up the tree. It was the largest building Taleswapper had seen since he last visited in Philadelphia. Such a large building for people to gather in implied that folks in this part of the land felt they had plenty of room for newcomers. A good sign for an itinerant teller of tales, since he lived by the trust of strangers, who might take him in and feed him when he brought nothing with him to pay with, except his book, his memory, two strong arms, and sturdy legs that had carried him ten thousand miles and were good for at least five thousand more.

  The road was rutted with wagon tracks, which meant it was often used, and in the low places it was firmed up with rails, making a good strong corduroy so that wagons wouldn’t mire in rain-soaked soil. So this was on its way to being a town, was it? The large church might not mean openness at all—it might speak more of ambition. That’s the danger of judging anything, thought Taleswapper: There are a hundred possible causes for every effect, and a hundred possible effects from every cause. He thought of writing down that thought, but decided against it. It had no traces on it save the prints of his own soul—neither the marks of heaven nor of hell. By this he knew that it hadn’t been given to him. He had forced the thought himself. So it couldn’t be prophecy, and couldn’t be true.

  The road ended in a commons not far from a river. Taleswapper knew that from the smell of rushing water—he had a good nose. Around the commons were scattered several buildings, but the largest of all was a whitewashed clapboard two-story building with a small sign that said “Weaver’s.”

  Now when a house has a sign on it, Taleswapper knew, that generally means the owners want people to recognize the place though they’ve never been shown the way, which is the same as to say that the house is open to strangers. So Taleswapper went right up and knocked.

  “Minute!” came a shout from inside. Taleswapper waited on the porch. Toward one end were several hanging baskets, with the long leaves of various herbs dangling. Taleswapper recognized many of them as being useful in various arts, such as healing, fin
ding, sealing, and reminding. He also recognized that the baskets were arranged so that, seen from a spot near the base of the door, they would form a perfect hex. In fact, this was so pronounced an effect that Taleswapper squatted and finally lay prone on the porch to see it properly. The colors daubed on the baskets at exactly the correct points proved that it was no accident. It was an exquisite hex of protection, oriented toward the doorway.

  Taleswapper tried to think of why someone would put up such a powerful hex, and yet seek to conceal it. Why, Taleswapper was probably the only person around likely to feel the whiff of power from something as passive as a hex, and so be drawn to notice it. He was still lying there on the floor, puzzling about it, when the door opened and a man said, “Are you so tired, then, stranger?”

  Taleswapper leapt to his feet. “Admiring your arrangement of herbs. Quite an aerial garden, sir.”

  “My wife’s,” said the man. “She fusses over them all the time. Has to have them just so.”

  Was the man a liar? No, Taleswapper decided. He wasn’t trying to hide the fact that the baskets made a hex and the trailing leaves intertwined to bind them together. He simply didn’t know. Someone—his wife, probably, if it was her garden—had set up a protection on his house, and the husband didn’t have a clue.

  “They look just right to me,” said Taleswapper.

  “I wondered how someone could arrive here, and me not hear the wagon nor the horse. But from the looks of you, I’d guess you came afoot.”