The Crystal City: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume VI Read online

  There was food at noon, but this, too, was strange and unfamiliar. A thin flat bread like a flapjack, only thinner, smeared with a spicy paste that might have contained mashed beans but then might not. It was good, though. Burned a little, and drinking water didn’t help, but they had some pawpaw fruit sliced up in a basket and a bite of that took away the sting. And after a while he got used to the burning and kind of liked it.

  After the meal, Alvin went walking to try to orient himself. He found that the whole troop followed him along like children in a small town, following a stranger. He wasn’t sure whether they were protecting him or keeping watch to make sure he didn’t run away or were simply curious what he’d do next.

  He found that they were on a wide, flat island near the right bank of the Mizzippy. The fog, which was on their side of the river, ended at the shoreline, sharp as butter cut with a knife. And canoes were drawn up on the shore of the river channel that separated the island from the main shore. So these men weren’t prisoners here. Alvin was relieved at that. He imagined, though, that choosing this big island as their dwelling place might have been some kind of compromise that Tenskwa-Tawa reached between those reds who didn’t want to make any exceptions to the law that only reds could live west of the river, and those that believed runaway slaves were in a different category from white men with guns and axes.

  Tenskwa-Tawa arrived that afternoon with a great deal of to-do. All of a sudden a whole passel of reds started hooting and hollering like they was going to war—Alvin had heard that sound before, when he was taken captive by warriors, before the Mizzippy was set as a dividing line. It was a terrible sound, and for a moment he wondered whether the reds on this shore had been using their years of peace to prepare for bloody war. But then he realized that the hooting and ululating was the red equivalent of yee-haw, hosanna, huzzah, hallelujah, and hip-hip-hooray.

  Tenskwa-Tawa emerged from the woods on the far shore of the channel, and the reds surrounded him and led him down to a large canoe. They carried him so he wouldn’t even get his feet wet and set him in the canoe, then leapt in and paddled furiously so he shot across the water like a skipped stone. Then he was lifted up again and carried to shore and set down right in front of Alvin.

  So there was Alvin, with twenty-five black men forming a semi-circle behind him, and Tenskwa-Tawa, with about as many red men forming a semi-circle behind him.

  “Is this what it looks like,” said Alvin, “when the King of England meets the King of France?”

  “No,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “Not enough guns, not enough clothes.”

  Which was true. Though compared to the black men, the reds looked like they was pretty bundled up, since there were whole stretches of their bodies here and there covered with deerskin or cloth. If I dressed like that, thought Alvin, I’d be roasted with sunburn and ready to serve.

  “I’m glad you came,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “I also wanted to talk to you.”

  “About these fellows?” asked Alvin.

  “Them? They’re no bother. As long as they sleep on this island, they move freely on the shore. That’s where their farms are. We’ll be sorry to see them go, when you take them.”

  “I didn’t have no plans to take them,” said Alvin.

  “But they’re determined to become soldiers to fight for you and kill all your enemies. That’s why they have to sleep on this island. Because they refuse to give up war.”

  Alvin was baffled. “I got no enemies.”

  Tenskwa-Tawa barked out a laugh.

  “I mean, none that warriors can fight.”

  “It’s so strange,” said Tenskwa-Tawa, “hearing black men speak a red language like they were born to it. The language they speak is not all that different from Navaho, which I had to learn because that tribe was less inclined to give up war than most. It seemed they hadn’t quite finished exterminating the Hopi and didn’t want to give up killing till the job was done.”

  “So it hasn’t been easy, getting all the reds to take the oath against war.”

  “No,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “Nor to get the young men to join the oath when they come of age. There’s still a lot of playing at war among the young, and if you try to stop it, they just sneak off and do it. I think we’ve been breeding our boys for war for too many generations for it to disappear from our hearts overnight. Right now the peace holds, because there are enough adults who remember all the killing—and how badly we were defeated, time after time. But there are always those who want to go across the river and fight to take our lands back and drive all the white devils into the sea.”

  “There are plenty of white folks as dream of getting through the fog and taking possession of these lands, too,” said Alvin.

  “Including your brother,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.

  Alvin tried to think which of his brothers had ever said any such fool thing. “They’re all farmers or millers or whatnot in Vigor Church,” said Alvin. “Except Calvin.”

  “That’s the one,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “It’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  He turned to the reds who were with him and spoke a few words, then spoke in a different language to the blacks. Alvin was stunned but delighted when the two groups immediately intermingled and started up two games of cards and some dice-throwing.

  “Don’t tell me them cards is printed on your side of the river,” said Alvin.

  “Those black fellows you sent me had them,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “They play betting games, but their money is pebbles. Whoever wins the most struts for an hour, but the next time they play, they all start even again.”

  “Sounds civilized.”

  “On the contrary,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “It sounds like childish savages.”

  His grin had a bit of old pain in it, but Alvin understood. “Well, we white devils would simply regard it as a golden opportunity, and we’d play them with tokens representing all their property and then cheat till we had it all.”

  “Whereupon we red devils would kill most of you and torture the rest to death because of the power that we could draw from the pain.” He held up a hand. “This is what I wanted to talk to you about. Until your brother sailed for Mexico it was not your business, but now it is.”

  “So he really has joined up with them fools,” said Alvin.

  “The Mexica have been a problem for us. There’s a wide desert between our lands and theirs, but it’s not as clear a wall as this river. There are plenty of tribes that live in those dry lands, and plenty of trade and travel back and forth, and stories about how the Mexica rose up against the Spanish and drove them out, except the five thousand they kept for sacrifice, one a day, his heart ripped out of his living body.”

  “Doesn’t sound like your kind of people,” said Alvin.

  “They live a different way. We remember well when their ancestors came down from the north, a fierce people who spoke a language different from all others. The Navaho were the last wave, the Mexica the first, but they did not trust in the greensong. They took their powers from the pain and blood of their enemies. It’s a way of power that was practiced among our peoples, too. The Irrakwa league was notorious for it, and you had a run-in, I think, with others who loved bloodshed and torture. But always we could set it aside and get back into the music of the living land. These reds can’t, or don’t try, which amounts to the same. And they scoff at my teaching of peace and send threatening embassies demanding that we supply them with white men to sacrifice or they’ll come and take captives from our people.”

  “Have they done it yet?”

  “All threats, but we hear from other tribes farther south that once that threat is given, it’s only a matter of time before it’s carried out.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Not a fog,” said Tenskwa-Tawa wryly. “Not enough moisture in that high desert air, and besides, they’d just torture somebody and draw power from his pain, enough to dispel whatever I put in their way.”

  “So…if that ain�
�t your plan…”

  “We live in harmony with the earth,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “They soak their earth in blood. We believe that with a little encouragement, we can waken the giant that sleeps under their great city of Mexico.”

  Alvin was baffled. “There’s real giants? I never knowed that.”

  Tenskwa-Tawa looked pained. “Their city is built right on top of an upwelling of hot flowing rock. It hasn’t broken through in many years, but it’s growing restless, with all the killing.”

  “You’re talking about a volcano.”

  “I am,” said the prophet.

  “You’re going to do to them what was done to Pompeii.”

  “The earth is going to do it.”

  “Ain’t that kind of like war?” asked Alvin.

  Tenskwa-Tawa sighed. “None of us will raise a weapon and strike down a man. And we’ve sent them due warning that their city will be covered with fire if they don’t stop their evil sacrificing of human beings and set free all the tribes they rule over by fear and force.”

  “So this is how you wage war now,” said Alvin.

  “Yes,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “We’d be at peace with every people on earth, if they’d let us. As long as we don’t come to love war, or to use it in order to rule over others, then we are still a peaceful people.”

  “So I take it the Navaho weren’t just persuaded to take the oath of peace.”

  “They had a long period of drought, where the only rain that fell was on Hopi fields.”

  “I reckon that got the message to them.”

  “Alvin,” said Tenskwa-Tawa, “I don’t have to justify our actions to you, do I?”

  “No sir,” said Alvin. “It just sounds like your brother’s way, to fight like that. I just thought of you as being—more patient, I guess.”

  “Because we bore the slaughter of our friends and loved ones at Tippy-Canoe.”

  “Yes. You let them slaughter you till they grew sick of murder.”

  “But what should we do with people who never grow sick of it?” asked Tenskwa-Tawa.

  “So white folks ain’t all bad, is what you’re saying.”

  “The gods of the Mexica are thirsty for blood and hungry for pain. White folks generally want to get rich and be left alone. While they’re killing you, the motive doesn’t make that much difference. But most white people don’t think of war and slaughter as the goal—just the means.”

  “Well, don’t that just put us in a special place in hell.”

  “Alvin, we’re going to do what we’re going to do. In fact, it’s already under way, and we can’t control it or stop it now. The forces beneath the earth are vast and terrible and it has taken all our wise men and women of every tribe many months to teach the earth what we need it to do in the city of Mexico.”

  “And you needed to tell me because Calvin is headed right into it.”

  “It would grieve me to cause the death of your own brother.”

  “Trouble is,” said Alvin, “there’s no time in recorded history when Calvin has actually done what I wanted when I wanted him to.”

  “I didn’t think it would be easy. I only knew that you would not forgive me if I didn’t warn you and give you a chance to try.”

  Alvin sighed and sat down. “I wish I were a boy again.”

  “With the Unmaker dropping roof beams on your head and sending preachers to bleed you to death under the guise of surgery?”

  “At least then it was only me I was trying to save. I can’t go follow Calvin to Mexico and try to bring him back, because I got me five thousand or so runaway slaves and refugee Frenchmen from Barcy that I got to find a place for.”

  Tenskwa-Tawa motioned with his arm to indicate the island where they were sitting. “If you think you can fit five thousand here, you’re welcome to it. But only the runaway slaves. My people wouldn’t bear it to have these white Frenchmen you speak of living on our land.”

  “No,” said Alvin. “I reckon not.”

  “Canada is not such a lovely place that we trust the French to be kinder and less bloody than the English or the Spanish.”

  “We got some of them, too,” said Alvin. “Poor folks who threw in their lot with us. But we don’t want to live here.”

  “Good,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “Because it would be beyond my power to persuade the nations to let you.”

  “What we need,” said Alvin, “is safe passage.”

  “To where?”

  “North. Along the edge of the river. North till we’re across the river from the United States. Or, more particularly, the free state of Noisy River. Won’t do to cross back into slave territory.”

  “Five thousand people,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “Eating what?”

  Alvin grinned. “Whatever the land and the kindness of your hearts will provide them.”

  “Five thousand people leave a scar on the land when they pass through.”

  “It’s harvest season,” said Alvin. “Fields coming ripe, fruit on the trees. Are times so hard this side of the river that you can’t spare enough for folks escaping from bondage and oppression?”

  “It would take a great amount of effort,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “We aren’t like you. We don’t grow the food here and then carry it on wagons or trains or barges to sell it there. Each village grows its own food, and only when famine strikes in one place is food brought from another.”

  “Well, wouldn’t you say that five thousand people with no land or food is kind of a walking famine?”

  Tenskwa-Tawa shook his head. “You’re asking something very hard. And not just for those reasons. What does it tell all the whites of the United States and the Crown Colonies when five thousand runaway slaves cross over the river despite the fog and then emerge again five hundred miles north?”

  “I didn’t think of that.”

  “We’ll have them trying to cross into our land by the boatload.”

  “But they won’t make it.”

  “The fog is fog,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “We instill it with fear, yes, but those with enough greed or rage can overcome that fear. A few try every year, and of those few, now and then a man makes it over.”

  “What do you do with them?” asked Alvin.

  “They wear hobbles and work with the women until they find it in their hearts to take the oath of peace and live among us.”

  “Or what, you send them back?”

  “We never let anyone go back.”

  “Except me.”

  “And these twenty-five black men. You can take them with you whenever you want. Because they won’t tell tales of this paradise just waiting for the right army to come and drive out the heathen, unarmed savages.”

  “So maybe we got to make the crossing so spectacular that nobody thinks they could do it in a boat.”

  Tenskwa-Tawa laughed. “Oh, Alvin, you have a showman’s heart.”

  “You’ve put on a couple of spectacles in your day, old friend.”

  “I suppose if it looks like a miracle, the United States Army and the Royal Army won’t think they can do the same. The only flaw in your idea, Alvin, is that your crossing of Lake Pontchartrain was pretty much a miracle, and that didn’t stop them from sending an army in pursuit of you.”

  “Once I took down the bridge,” said Alvin, “they didn’t try to cross the lake.”

  Tenskwa-Tawa shook his head. “I have a war on my hands with the Mexica, and now I have to help you pull off a miraculous crossing of the Mizzippy, putting the great peaceful nation at risk.”

  “Hey, that goes both ways,” said Alvin. “Here I am trying to save five thousand runaways and you up and tell me my brother is heading into the mouth of a volcano that you can’t stop.”

  “Isn’t it good we like each other so much,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.

  “You taught me everything I know,” said Alvin.

  “But not everything I know.”

  “And I gave you back your eye.”

  “And healed my heart,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “But
you’re a lot of bother all the same.”

  11

  Flood

  After the second night, word went on ahead of them and it got harder. Mistress Cottoner didn’t talk, La Tia said so, but her son did. And the people at the second house, Arthur Stuart had to use makery to seal the doors and windows of a room in their house so they couldn’t get out, because they wouldn’t calm down, they kept screaming, It’s our life you’re taking, you’re making us poor, you have no right, these slaves are ours, until Marie wanted to fill their mouths with cotton, all the cotton that had ever been picked by their slaves, just stuff it down their mouths until they were as fat and soft as the huge pillows they slept on while their slaves slept on hard boards and straw in filthy rat-infested cabins.

  As filthy and rat-infested as the cabin her mother had made her grow up in back in Swamptown. Only her mother wasn’t a slave. We’re finer people than these scum, her mother would say. We’re Portuguese royalty, only Napoleon drove us out and forced us into exile in Nouveau Orleans and then he sold it to the Spanish so that we could never go home. Because you are the granddaughter of a duke, and he was the son of a king, and you should be married to at least a count, so you must learn fine manners and speak French and English very well and learn how to curtsey and stand straight and…

  And then Marie got old enough to understand that not everybody could see into people’s bodies and feel whether they were sick and whether they would die of it. And all of a sudden her mother’s story changed. Your father was a great wizard, she said. A maker, they call such a man here. Facteur. Createur. He could carve a bird out of wood and breathe on it and it would fly away. And you have some of his gift, and some of mine, because my talent is love, I love people, my dear Marie, you have that love and it lets you see inside their hearts, and the power from your father lets you see their death because that is the ultimate power, to stare death in the face and be unafraid.

  Her mother, such a storyteller. That was when Marie knew that her mother’s stories were all lies. In Portugal her name had been Caterina, and they called her Rina for short. When she came to Nouveau Orleans they made a joke of it and called her Rien, which was French for “nothing.” Or even “de rien,” which was what the French said after “merci,” so it was like the English “you’re welcome.” Because now Marie understood that her mother was a prostitute, and not an expensive one, either, and her father had probably been a customer, back in the days before she had a hex against pregnancy that worked.