Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV Read online

“How did you know there was a leak on my ship?” asked the captain.

  “You’re an Englishman,” said Calvin. “You don’t believe in what I can see and do.”

  “Nevertheless, I believe in what I can see, and there was nothing natural about that leak.”

  “I’d say them rats might have been doing it. Good thing for you they all left your ship.”

  “Rats and leaks,” said the captain. “What do you want, boy?”

  “I want to be called a man, sir,” said Calvin. “Not a boy.”

  “Why do you wish harm to me and my ship? Has someone of my crew done you an offense?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Calvin. “I reckon you’re not such a fool as to blame the one as told you you had a leak.”

  “I’m also not such a fool as to think you knew of anything you didn’t have the power to cause or cure at will. Were the rats your doing as well?”

  “I was as surprised as you were by their behavior,” said Calvin. “Didn’t seem natural, all them rats rushing onto a sinking ship. But then they seemed to come to their senses and leave again. Every single rat, I daresay. Now, that would be an interesting voyage, wouldn’t it—to cross the ocean without any loss of your food supply to the nibbling of rats.”

  “What do you want from me?” asked the captain.

  “I stopped to do you a favor, with no thought of benefit to my own self,” said Calvin, trying to sound like an educated Englishman and knowing from the expression on the captain’s face that he was failing pathetically. “But it happens that I am in need of first-class passage to Europe.”

  The captain smiled thinly. “Why in the world would you want to book passage on a leaking ship?”

  “But sir,” said Calvin, “I’ve got a sort of knack for spotting leaks. And I can promise you that if I were aboard your ship, during the whole voyage there’d be not a single leak, even in the stoutest storm.” Calvin had no idea whether he could keep a ship tight during all the stresses of a storm at sea, but odds were that he’d never have to find out, either.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” said the captain, “but am I to guess that if I take you on my ship, first class, without your paying a farthing, I’ll find no problem with leaks and not a rat on my ship? While if I refuse, I’ll find my ship at the bottom of the harbor?”

  “That would be a rare disaster,” said Calvin. “How could such a well-made ship possibly sink faster than your boys could pump?”

  “I saw how the leak moved from place to place. I saw how strangely the rats behaved. I may not believe in your American knacks, but I know when I’m in the presence of unaccountable power.”

  Calvin felt pride flush through his body like ale.

  Suddenly he felt the barrel of a pistol just under his breastbone. He looked down to see that the captain had somehow come up with a weapon.

  “What’s to stop me from blowing a hole in your belly?” asked the captain.

  “The likelihood of your dancing on the end of an American rope,” said Calvin. “There ain’t no law against knacks here, sir, and saying that somebody was doing witchery ain’t cause enough to kill him the way it is in England.”

  “But it’s to England you’re going,” said the captain. “What’s to stop me from taking you on my ship, then having you arrested the moment you step ashore?”

  “Nothing,” said Calvin. “You could do that. You could even kill me in my sleep during the voyage and cast my body overboard into the sea, telling all the others that you had to dispose of the body of a plague victim as quickly as possible. You think I’m a fool, not to think of that stuff?”

  “So go away and leave me and my ship alone.”

  “If you killed me, what would keep the planks from pulling free of the beams of your boat? What would stop your boat from turning into scraps of lumber bobbing on the water?”

  The captain eyed him curiously.

  “First-class passage is ludicrous for you. The other first-class passengers would snub you at once, and no doubt they’d assume I’d brought you aboard as my catamite. It would ruin my career anyway, to permit an uncouth, unlettered ruffian like you to sail among my gentle passengers. To put it plainly, young master, you may have power over rats and planks, but you have none over rich men and women.”

  “Teach me,” said Calvin.

  “There aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the week.”

  “Teach me,” said Calvin again.

  “You come here threatening me with destruction of my ship by the evil powers of Satan, and then dare to ask me to teach you to be a gentleman?”

  “If you believed my powers were from the devil,” said Calvin, “then why didn’t you once say a prayer to ward me off?”

  The captain glared at him for a moment, then smiled, grimly but not without genuine mirth. “Touché,” he said.

  “Whatever the devil that means,” said Calvin.

  “It’s a fencing term,” said the captain.

  “I must’ve put up ten miles of fences in my life,” said Calvin. “Post and rail, stone, wire, and picket, every kind, and I never heard of no tooshay.”

  The captain’s smile broadened. “There is something attractive in your challenge. You may have some interesting . . . what do you call them . . . knacks? But you’re still a poor boy from the farm. I’ve taken many a peasant lad and turned him into a first-rate seaman. But I’ve never taken a boy who wasn’t a gentleman born and turned him into something that could pass for civilized.”

  “Consider me the challenge of your life.”

  “Oh, believe me, I already do. I haven’t altogether decided not to kill you, of course. But it seems to me that since you mean to cause me trouble anyway, why not accept the challenge and see if I can work a miracle just as inexplicable and impossible as any of the nasty pranks you’ve played on me this morning?”

  “First class, not steerage,” Calvin insisted.

  The captain shook his head. “Neither one. You’ll travel as my cabin boy. Or rather, my cabin boy’s boy. Rafe is a good three years younger than you, I imagine, but he knows from birth all that you are so desperate to learn. With you to help him, perhaps he’ll have enough free time to teach you. And I’ll oversee you both. On several conditions, though.”

  Calvin didn’t see as how the captain was in much of a position to set conditions, but he listened civil-like all the same.

  “No matter what powers you have, survival at sea depends on instant and perfect obedience from everyone on board the ship. Obedience to me. You know nothing of the sea and I gather you don’t care about learning seamanship, either. So you will do nothing that interferes with my authority. And you will obey me yourself. That means that when I say piss, you don’t even look for a pot, you just whip it out and pee.”

  “In front of others, I’ll do a fine show of obedience, unless you command me to kill myself or some such foolishness.”

  “I’m not a fool,” said the captain.

  “All right, I’ll do like you say.”

  “And you’ll keep your mouth shut until you learn—in private—to talk in some way approximating gentlemanly speech. Right now if you open your mouth you confess your low origins and you will embarrass yourself and me in front of my crew and the other officers and passengers.”

  “I know how to keep my mouth shut when I need to.”

  “And when you reach England, our deal is done and you leave no curse on my ship.”

  “Now you’ve asked too much,” said Calvin. “What I need is your introduction to other high-class people. And passage to France.”

  “To France! Aren’t you aware that England is at war with France?”

  “You have been ever since Napoleon conquered Austria and Spain. What’s that to me?”

  “In other words, reaching England doesn’t mean I’ll be rid of you.”

  “That’s right,” said Calvin.

  “So why don’t I just kill myself now and spare myself all this adventu
re before you send me to an early grave?”

  “Because them as is my friends will prosper in this world and there ain’t nothing much bad that can happen to them.”

  “And all I have to do is maintain my status as your friend, is that it?”

  Calvin nodded.

  “But someday, isn’t it going to occur to you that if the only reason I’m kind to you is out of terror that you’ll destroy my ship, I’m not really your friend at all?”

  Calvin smiled. “That just means you’ll have to try extra hard to convince me that you really mean it.”

  The officer who had first heard Calvin’s message now approached the captain diffidently. “Captain Fitzroy,” he said. “The leaking seems to have stopped, sir.”

  “I know,” said the captain.

  “Thank you sir,” said the officer.

  “Get everyone back to work, Benson,” said the captain.

  “Some of the American stevedores and sailors won’t get back on that ship no matter what we say, sir.”

  “Pay them off and hire others,” said the captain. “That will be all, Benson.”

  “Yes sir.” Benson turned around and headed back toward the gangplank.

  Calvin, in the meantime, had heard the air of crisp command in Captain Fitzroy’s voice and wondered how a man could learn to use his voice like a sharp hot knife, slicing through other men’s will like warm butter.

  “I would say you’ve already caused me more trouble than you’re worth,” said Captain Fitzroy. “And I personally doubt that you have it in you to learn to be a gentleman, though heaven knows there are plenty that have the title who are every bit as ignorant and boorish as you. But I will accept your coercive agreement, in part because I find you fascinating as well as despicable.”

  “I don’t know what all them words mean, Captain Fitzroy, but I know this—Taleswapper once told us how when kings have bastards, the babies get the last name ‘Fitzroy.’ So no matter what I am, your name says you’re a son of a bitch.”

  “In my case, the great-great-grandson of a bitch. The second Charles sowed his wild oats. My great-great-grandmother, a noted actress of semi-noble origins, entered into a liaison with him and managed to get her child recognized as royal before the parliament deprived him of his head. My family has had its ups and downs since the end of the monarchy, and there have been Lords Protector who thought that our association with the royal family made us dangerous. But we managed to survive and even, in recent years, prosper. Unfortunately, I’m the younger son of a younger son, so I had the choice of the church or the army or the sea. Until meeting you, I did not regret my choice. Do you have a name, my young extortionist?”

  “Calvin,” he said.

  “And are you of such a benighted family that you have but the one name to spend as your patrimony?”

  “Maker,” said Calvin. “Calvin Maker.”

  “How deliriously vague. Maker. A general term that can be construed in many ways while promising no particular skill. A Calvin of all trades. And master of none?”

  “Master of rats,” said Calvin, smiling. “And leaks.”

  “As we have seen,” said Captain Fitzroy. “I will have your name enrolled as part of the ship’s company. Have your gear aboard by nightfall.”

  “If you have someone follow me to kill me, your ship—”

  “Will dissolve into sawdust, yes, the threat has already been made,” said Fitzroy. “Now you only have to worry about how much I actually care for my ship.”

  With that, Fitzroy turned his back on Calvin and headed up the gangplank. Calvin almost made him slip and take a pratfall, just to pierce that dignity. But there was a limit, he knew, to how far he could push this man. Especially since Calvin hadn’t the slightest idea how to carry out his threat to make the ship fall apart if they killed him. Either he could make the ship leak or stop leaking, but either way he had to be there and alive to do it. If Fitzroy ever realized that his worst threats were pure bluff, how long would he let Calvin live?

  Get used to it, Calvin, he told himself. Plenty of people have wanted Alvin dead, too, but he got through it all. We Makers must have some kind of protection, it’s as simple as that. All of nature is looking out for us, to keep us safe. Fitzroy won’t kill me because I can’t be killed.

  I hope.

  8

  Leavetaking

  For some reason Alvin’s classroom of grownup women just wasn’t going well today. They were distracted, it seemed like, and Goody Sump was downright hostile. It finally came to a head when Alvin started working with their herb boxes. He was trying to help them find their way into the greensong, the first faintest melody, by getting their sage or sorrel or thyme, whatever herb they chose, to grow one specially long branch. This was something Alvin reckoned to be fairly easy, but once you mastered it, you could pretty much get into harmony with any plant. However, only a couple of the women had had much success, and Goody Sump was not one of them. Maybe that was how come she was so testy—her laurel wasn’t even thriving, let alone showing lopsided growth on one branch.

  “The plants don’t make the same music they did back when the Reds were tending the woods,” Alvin said. He was going to go on and explain how they could do, in a small way, what the Reds did large, but he didn’t get a chance, because that was the moment Goody Sump chose to erupt.

  She leapt from her chair, strode over to the herb table, and brought her fist right down on top of her own laurel, capsizing the pot and spattering potting soil and laurel leaves all over the table and her own dress. “If you think them Reds was so much better why don’t you just go live with them and carry off their daughters to secret randy views!”

  Alvin was so stunned by her unprovoked rage, so perplexed by her inscrutable words, that he just looked at her gape-mouthed as she pulled what was left of her laurel out of what was left of the soil, pulled off a handful of leaves, and threw them in his face, then turned and stalked out of the room.

  As soon as she was gone, Alvin tried to make a joke out of it. “I reckon there’s some folks as don’t take natural to agriculture.” But hardly anybody laughed.

  “You got to overlook her behavior, Al,” said Sylvy Godshadow. “A mother’s got to believe her own daughter, even if everybody else knows she’s spinning moonbeams.”

  Since Goody Sump had five daughters, and Alvin had heard nothing significant about any of them lately, this information wasn’t much help. “Is Goody Sump having some trouble at home?” he asked.

  The women all looked around at each other, but not a one would meet his eyes.

  “Well, it looks to me like everybody here knows somewhat as hasn’t yet found its way to my ears,” said Alvin. “Anybody mind explaining?”

  “We’re not gossips,” said Sylvy Godshadow. “I’m surprised you’d think to accuse us.” With that, she stood up and started for the door.

  “But I didn’t call nobody a gossip,” said Alvin.

  “Alvin, I think before you criticize others, you’d comb the lice out of your own hair,” said Nana Pease. And she was up and off, too.

  “Well, what are the rest of you waiting for?” said Alvin. “If you all wanted a day off of class, you only had to ask. It’s a sure thing I’m done for the day.”

  Before he could even get started sweeping up the spilt soil, the other ladies had all flounced out.

  Alvin tried to console himself by muttering things he’d heard his own father mutter now and then over the years, things like “Women” and “Can’t do nothing to please ’em” and “Might as well shoot yourself first thing in the morning.” But none of that helped, because this wasn’t just some normal display of temper. These were levelheaded ladies, every one of them, and here they were up in arms over plain nothing, which wasn’t natural.

  It wasn’t till afternoon that Alvin realized something serious was wrong. A couple of months ago, Alvin had asked Clevy Sump, Goody Sump’s husband, to teach them all how to make a simple one-valve suction pump. It was part
of Alvin’s idea to teach folks that making is making, and everybody ought to know everything they can possibly learn. Alvin was teaching them hidden powers of Making, but they ought to be learning how to make with their hands as well. Secretly Alvin also hoped that when they saw how tricky and careful it was to make fine machinery like Clevy Sump did, they’d realize that what Alvin was teaching wasn’t much harder if it was harder at all. And it was working well enough.

  Except that today, after the noon bread and cheese, he went on out to the mill to find the men gathered around the wreckage of the pumps they’d been making. Every one of them was broke in pieces. And since the fittings were all metal, it must have took some serious work to break it all up. “Who’d do a thing like this?” Alvin asked. “There’s a lot of hate goes into something like this” And thinking of hate, it made Alvin wonder if maybe Calvin hadn’t come back secretly after all.

  “There’s no mystery who done it,” said Winter Godshadow. “I reckon we ain’t got us a pump-making teacher no more.”

  “Yep,” said Taleswapper. “This looks like a specially thorough way of telling us, ‘Class dismissed.’ ”

  Some of the men chuckled. But Alvin could see that he wasn’t the only one angry at the destruction. After all, these pumps were nearly completed, and all these men had put serious work into making them. They counted on them at their own houses. For many of them, it meant the end of drawing water, and Winter Godshadow in particular had got him a plan to pipe the water right into the kitchen, so his wife wouldn’t even have to go outdoors to fetch it. Now their work was undone, and some of them weren’t taking kindly to it.

  “Let me talk to Clevy Sump about this,” said Alvin. “I can’t hardly believe it was him, but if it was, whatever’s the problem I bet it can be set to rights. I don’t want none of you getting angry at him before he’s had his say.”

  “We ain’t angry at Clevy,” said Nils Torson, a burly Swede. His heavy-lidded gaze made it clear who he was angry at.

  “Me?” said Alvin. “You think I done this?” Then, as if he could hear Miss Larner’s voice in his ear, he corrected himself: “Did this?”