THE CRYSTAL CITY Read online

"I smell the stink," said the boy. "Like folks here just spill their privy pots onto the ground."

  "The soil wagons don't come here," said Alvin. "What choice they got?"

  "Don't feel no power, me," said Arthur Stuart.

  "And yet you're talking like the French of this place. 'Don't feel no power ... me?' "

  "That don't mean nothing, you know I pick up what I hear."

  "You're hearing them, then. All around you."

  "This be blacktown, massa," said Arthur Stuart, affecting the voice of a slave. "This be no Veel Francezz."

  "French slaves run away as sure as Spanish ones, or slaves of Cavaliers."

  Now black children were coming out of the houses, their mothers after them, tired women with sad eyes. And men who looked dangerous, they began to follow like a parade. Until they came to a woman sitting by a cookfire. Not a fat woman, but not a thin one, either. Voluptuous as the earth, that's what she was, but when she looked up from the fire she smiled at Alvin like the sun. How old was she? Could have been twenty from the smooth bronze skin. Could have been a hundred from the wise and twinkling eyes.

  "You come to see La Tia," she said.

  A smaller woman, French by the look of her, came forward from behind the fire. "This be the Queen," she said. "You bow now."

  Alvin did not bow. Nothing in La Tia's face suggested that she wanted him to.

  "On your knees, white man, you want to live," said the French woman sharply.

  "Hush now, Michele," said La Tia. "I don't want no kneeling from this man. I want him to do us a miracle, he don't have to kneel to me. He come when I call him."

  "Everybody have to come, you call them," said Michele.

  "Not this one," said La Tia. "He come, but I don't make him. All I do is make him hear me. This one choose to come."

  "What do you want?" asked Alvin.

  "They gonna be burning here in Barcy," said the woman.

  "You know that for sure?" asked Alvin.

  "I hear that. Slaves listen, slaves talk. You know. Like in Camelot."

  Alvin remembered the capital city of the Crown Colonies, and how rumors traveled through the slave community faster than a boy could run. But how could she know that he had been there?

  "I had your skin on that bread," she said. "Most gals like me, they don't see it, so small that skin. But I see it. I got you then. While the fire burn, I got whatever you have in there. I see your treasure."

  She could see more in his heartfire than Alvin could see in hers. All he could see was the health of her body, and some strong fears, but also an intense sense of purpose. But what the purpose was, he couldn't know. Once again, his knack was not as much as he needed it to be, and it stung.

  "Don't you fret, mi hijo," she said. "I ain't gonna tell. And no, I don't mean that thing you got in your poke. That ain't your treasure. That belongs to its own self. Your treasure is in a woman's womb, far away and safe."

  To hear it in words like that, from a stranger, stabbed him in the heart. It brought tears to his eyes, and a weakness, almost a giddiness to his head. Without thinking, he sank to his knees. That was his treasure. Alt the lives he had failed to save in Barcy, they were that one life, the child who had died those years ago. And his redemption, his only hope, his-yes, his treasure-it was the new child that was so far away, and beyond his reach, in someone else's charge.

  "Get up," whispered Arthur Stuart. "Don't kneel to her."

  "He don't kneel to me," said La Tia. "He kneel to his love, to the saint of love. Not Lord Valentine, no, not him. The saint of a father's love, St. Joseph, the husband of the Holy Mother. To him he kneeling. That be so, no?"

  Alvin shook his head. "I'm kneeling because I'm broke inside," he whispered. "And you want this broke man to do something for you, and there's nothing I can do. The world is sicker every day and I got no power to heal the world."

  "You got the power I need," said La Tia. "Maria de los Muertos, she tell me. You make her mother whole, she."

  "You're not sick," said Alvin.

  "The whole of Barcy, she be sick," said La Tia. "You live in a house about to die from that sick. This blacktown, she about to die. The French people of Barcy, they be about to die. The sick of angry people, the sick of stupid people all afraid. Gotta have somebody to blame. That be you and that crazy Moose and Squirrel. That be me and all us who keep Africa alive, we. That be all them French folk like Maria de los Muertos and her mama. What they gonna do when the mob decides to blame the fever on somebody and burn it out? Where they gonna go?"

  "What do you think I can do? I got no control over the mob."

  "You know what I want, you."

  "I don't."

  "You maybe don't know you know, but you got them words burnt in your heart by your mama all them years ago, when you little, you. 'Let my people go.' "

  "I'm not Pharaoh and this ain't Egypt."

  "Is too Egypt and I reckon you ain't Pharaoh, you Moses."

  "What do you want, a plague of cockroaches? Barcy already got that, and nobody cares."

  "I want you to part the sea and let us across on dry land in the dark of night."

  Alvin shook his head. "Moses did that by the power of God, which I ain't got. And he had someplace to go, a wilderness to be lost in. Where can you go? All these people. Too many."

  "Where you send them slaves you set free from the riverboat?"

  That flat out stunned Alvin. There was no way that story could be known here in the south. Was there?

  Alvin turned and looked at Arthur Stuart.

  "I didn't tell nobody," said Arthur. "You think I'm crazy?"

  "You think I need somebody tell me?" said La Tia. "I saw it inside you, all on fire, you. Take us across the river."

  "But you ain't talking about no two score slaves here, you talking about blacktown and the orphanage and-French-town? You know how many that is?"

  "And all the slaves as want to go," said La Tia. "In the fog of night. You make the fog come into Barcy from off the river. You let us all gather in the fog, you take us across the river. You got red friends, you take us safe to the other side."

  "I can't do it. You think I can hold back the whole Mizzippy? What do you think I am?"

  "I think you a man, he want to know why he alive," said La Tia. "He want to know what his power be for. Now La Tia tell you, and you don't want to know after all!"

  "I'm not Moses," said Alvin. "And you ain't the Lord."

  "You want to sec a burning bush?" asked La Tia.

  "No!" said Alvin. She might be able to conjure up some kind of fireworks, but he didn't want to see it. "And it wouldn't work to cross the river anyway. How would we feed the people on the far bank? It's swamp there, mud and snakes and gators and skeeters, just like here. Ain't no manna in the wilderness there. My friends among the reds are far to the north. It can't be done. Least of all by me."

  "Most of all by you," said La Tia.

  They stood there in silence for a moment.

  Arthur Stuart spoke up. "Usted es tia de quien?"

  "I don't speak no Spanish, boy," said La Tia. "They call me La Tia cause them Spanish people can't say my Ibo name."

  "We don't say her name neither," said the smaller woman. "She be our Queen, and she say, Let my people go, so you do it, you."

  "Hush, child," said La Tia. "You don't tell a man like this what to do. He already want to do it. So we help him find his courage. We tell him, go to the dock and there he find him hope this morning. There he find a brother like Moses did, make him brave, give him trouble."

  "Oh good," said Alvin. "More trouble." But he knew that he would do her bidding-go to the dock, at least, and see what her prophecy might mean.

  "Tonight at first dark, there be fog," said La Tia. "You make fog, everybody know to come."

  "Come where?" said Alvin. "Don't do it. We can't cross the river."

  "We leave this place one way," said La Tia, "or we leave it another, we."

  As they hurried away, with blacks wat
ching them on either hand, Arthur Stuart asked, "She mean what I thought she meant?"

  "They're going to leave or they're going to die trying," said Alvin. "And I can't say they're wrong. Something ugly's building up in this city. They were itching for war before this yellow fever. Steve Austin's been gathering men who like to fight. And there's no shortage of others who'll fight when they're afraid. They all mean to have some killing, and La Tia's right. There's no staying here, not for any of the people they might turn on. If I find a way to get Papa Moose and his family out of Barcy, they'll turn on the free blacks or the French."

  "How about a hurricane? You done a flood to stop the slave revolt in Camelot, but I think this time you could do it with wind and rain," said Arthur Stuart.

  "You don't know what you're asking," said Alvin. "A bad blow in this place, and we'd kill the very folks we ought to save."

  Arthur Stuart looked around him. "Oh," he said. "I guess they're all pretty much on low ground."

  "Reckon so."

  White faces watched them from the windows of poor shacks in Frenchtown, too. La Tia's words had gone out already. They were all looking to Alvin to save them, and he didn't know how.

  Story of my life, thought Alvin. Expectations built up all around me, but I got neither the power nor the wisdom to fulfil any of them. I can make a man's knife disappear and I can melt the chains off a bunch of slaves but it's a drop of blood in a bucket of water, you can't even find it, let alone draw it out again.

  Drop of blood in a bucket of water.

  He remembered how Tenskwa-Tawa made a whirlwind on a lake, put his blood into the waterspout, and saw the future in the walls of it as he and Alvin rose up in the air inside.

  He remembered that it was in the visions inside that column of swilling water that he saw the Crystal City for the first time. Was it something in the distant past, or something in the future? What mattered was not that dream of what might have been. It was the process by which Tenskwa-Tawa shaped the water to the form he wanted, and held it there, seeming to whirl at great speed, but really holding absolutely still.

  Blood in the water, and a whirlwind, and walls as clear and smooth as glass.

  5

  Crystal Ball

  LONG BEFORE HE reached the dock, Alvin began to scan the heartfires of the throngs of people ahead of him. He could not see into them the way Margaret could, knowing things about them, their past, their future. But he could see whose heartfire burned bright, and whose merely smoldered hot and dark; who was strong and who was weak, who fearful and who courageous.

  There were many that he recognized, having been in town for so many weeks. He easily found Steve Austin and Jim Bowie, not together at the moment, and not really much alike. He knew Austin was a dreamer, Bowie a killer. The dreamers always seem to think their dream is worth the price that others will pay. They also delude themselves that they will control whatever evil they use to try to bring about their dream.

  But soon his reflections on Austin and Bowie were stopped cold by a bright familiar heartfire that was just about the last one he expected-or wanted-to find here in Barcy.

  His younger brother Calvin.

  Calvin had been the closest companion of Alvin's childhood. They had been inseparable, and whatever Alvin did, Calvin had to try. Alvin, for his part, rarely succumbed to the temptation to tease his brother, but instead included him and watched over him.

  What neither had counted on was Calvin's jealousy. He, too, was a seventh son of a seventh son-though Calvin was seventh only because the firstborn, Vigor, had died in crossing the river Hatrack on the very day, in the very hour that Alvin was born. So whatever gifts were conferred by that powerful position of birth, Calvin's were never as great as Alvin's.

  But to have a knack that was less than Alvin's was no great disappointment, surely-most human beings suffered from the same deficiency. And Calvin's were remarkable enough.

  The problem was that Calvin had never worked at his knack. He had expected to be able to do whatever Alvin did, and when he couldn't, he grew sullen and angry. Angry at Alvin, which was ridiculous and unfair, Alvin thought. And said.

  Calvin didn't have much of an ear for argument or criticism. He couldn't bear it, and avoided it, and so the brothers who once had been close had spent the last few years with little contact. It didn't help that Margaret disliked Calvin. Or perhaps not that-perhaps she merely feared him, and didn't want him to be near Alvin.

  And yet here Calvin was. The coincidence was too pointed. Calvin had probably been sent here. And the only person likely to do such a sending was Margaret. Had she decided that Calvin's presence was actually good for Alvin right now? More likely she through it necessary to accomplish whatever her purpose was.

  As he drew nearer to the dock, Alvin felt the moment when Calvin noticed his heartfire. There was a quickening in his heart. The old love still burned there. Calvin might be annoying, disappointing, and sometimes even a bit frightening. He might have done some dark deeds that made his heartfire seem hooded and flickery sometimes. But he was still that young boy that Alvin delighted in through the best hours of his childhood, before he understood the dark enemy that sought his life.

  Before Calvin began to be seduced by that same enemy.

  So Alvin's pace quickened through the crowded streets, and he jostled people now and then, though none thought to challenge him once they saw his height and the size of his blacksmith's shoulders.

  Behind him Arthur Stuart trotted to keep up. "What is it? What's happening?"

  And then they emerged from the street and saw the endless row of ships and riverboats tied up along the dock, the stevedores loading and unloading, the cranes lifting and lowering, the passengers milling about-few arriving, many leaving-the vendors shouting and pushing, the thieves and whores skulking and strutting, and in the midst of them all, standing alone and gnawing on a baguette, was Calvin.

  He had finally reached his adult height. Not as tall as Alvin, but lankier, so he looked more like a tall man, while Alvin looked like a big one. His hair was light in the sunshine. And his eyes twinkled when he saw Alvin approaching.

  "What are you doing here, you great oaf!" cried Alvin, reaching out to embrace his brother.

  Calvin laughed and hugged him back. "Came to save you from some dire peril, I gather, though your wife wasn't more specific than that."

  "It's good to have you here," said Alvin. "Even if neither of us has any idea why we're here."

  "Oh, I know why we're here," said Calvin. "I just don't know why Peggy sent us."

  "So ... are you going to tell me?"

  "We're here because it's time for us to get over petty jealousies and work together to really change the world."

  They hadn't been talking for a whole minute, and already Alvin was grinding his teeth a little. Petty jealousies? Calvin was the only one who had ever been jealous, and Calvin was the one who decided to leave Vigor Church and head off for wherever he'd been-France and England, Alvin knew, and Camelot, and Philadelphia once, and a lot of other places that he didn't have any idea of. Calvin was the one who decided to stop working on trying to train his knack, who had to learn everything on his own.

  Apparently he'd learned it all and was ready to take his place as Alvin's equal. But Alvin had no delusion that they'd be working together. Calvin would cooperate if he felt like it, and not, if he felt like not.

  And when he really bollixed it up, Alvin would step in to try to undo whatever madness Calvin had gotten into.

  No, no, that's not fair. Give the kid a chance.

  The man, I mean.

  Or maybe that's what I mean.

  "All right," said Calvin. "Maybe we aren't over our petty jealousies."

  Alvin realized that he'd left Calvin's declaration unanswered. "What jealousies?" he said. "I was just trying to think how best to divide our labors."

  "Why not think out loud?" asked Calvin. "Then maybe I'll have a chance to think of an idea, instead of just waiting for
yours."

  He said it with a smile, but Alvin almost laughed in reply. So much for petty jealousies being put behind them.

  "Where's that French fellow you were traveling with a few years back?"

  "Balzac?" said Calvin. "Back in France, writing subversive novels that make Napoleon look like an ass."

  "And Napoleon permits it?"

  "We don't know yet. Balzac hasn't actually published any of it."

  "Is it any good?"

  "You'd have to decide that for yourself," said Calvin.

  "I don't read French," said Alvin.

  "Too bad," said Calvin. "That's where all the interesting writing is going on right now."

  Go ahead, thought Alvin. Assert your superiority. You are my superior when it comes to speaking French, and I don't mind. Good manners would suggest you not rub my nose in it. But then, you think I always rub my skill at makery in your face, so ... fair is fair.

  "Hungry?" asked Alvin.

  "I ate on the boat," said Calvin. "In fact there wasn't much else to do but eat. Nothing but fog on the river."

  "Didn't it stay to the western shore?"

  Calvin laughed. "Every now and then I'd play around with it a little. Whip up a little extra fog using the river water. Surround the boat in fog. I suppose we looked strange to anybody on shore. A little cloud floating down the river with the sound of a steam engine coming from it."

  Alvin felt the familiar contempt rise in him. Calvin persisted in using his knack for foolishness and showing off.

  Not that Alvin didn't know a little bit about the impulse. But at least he tried to control it. At least Alvin was ashamed when he caught himself showing off. Calvin reveled in it. He seemed oblivious to Alvin's scorn. Or maybe it was Alvin's scorn that he wanted to provoke. Maybe he wanted a quarrel.

  And maybe he'd get one. But not over this, and not right now. "Sounds fun," he said.

  Calvin looked at him with amusement. "I guess you've never whipped up a little fog?"

  "From time to time," said Alvin. "And cleared some away, when I found the need."

  "Some noble cause, I'm sure," said Calvin. "So, what dire problem are you working on saving, and what part do you think I'll play in it?"