Seventh Son ttoam-1 Page 9

  “Well, it's good she's a righteous helpmeet for her husband,” said Reverend Thrower.

  “We're helpmeets for each other,” said Armor-of-God, “and don't you forget it.”

  He said it with a smile, and Thrower smiled back, but the minister was a little disappointed that Armor was so henpecked that he had to admit right out in the open that he wasn't in charge of his own business or his own home. But what could one expect, considering that Eleanor had grown up in that strange Miller family? The oldest daughter of Alvin and Faith Miller could hardly be expected to bend to her husband as the Lord intended.

  The venison, however, was the best that Thrower had ever tasted. “Not gamy a bit,” he said. “I didn't think wild deer could taste like this.”

  “She cuts off the fat,” said Armor, “and throws in some chicken.”

  “Now you mention it,” said Thrower, “I can taste it in the broth.”

  “And the deer fat goes into the soap,” said Armor. “We never throw anything away, if we can think of any use for it.”

  “Just as the Lord intended,” said Thrower. Then he fell to eating. He was well into his second bowl of stew and his third slice of bread when he made a comment that he thought was a jesting compliment. “Mrs. Weaver, your cooking is so good that it almost makes me believe in sorcery.”

  Thrower was expecting a chuckle, at the most. Instead, Eleanor looked down at the table just as ashamed as if he had accused her of adultery. And Armor-of-God sat up stiff and straight. “I'll thank you not to mention that subject in this house,” he said.

  Reverend Thrower tried to apologize. “I wasn't serious about it,” he said. “Among rational Christians that sort of thing is a joke, isn't it? A lot of superstition, and I–”

  Eleanor got up from the table and left the room.

  “What did I say?” Thrower asked.

  Armor sighed. “Oh, there's no way you could know,” he said. “It's a quarrel that goes back to before we were married, when I first come out to this land. I met her when she came with her brothers to help build my first cabin– the soapmaking shed, now. She started to scatter spearmint on my floor and say some kind of rhyme, and I shouted for her to stop it and get out of my house. I quoted the Bible, where it says, You shall not suffer a witch to live. It made for a right testy half hour, you may be sure.”

  “You called her a witch, and she married you?”

  “We had a few conversations in between.”

  “She doesn't believe in that sort of thing anymore, does she?”

  Armor knitted his brows. “It ain't a matter of believing, it's a matter of doing, Reverend. She doesn't do it anymore. Not here, not anywhere. And when you– sort of halfway accused her of it, well, it made her upset. Because it's a promise to me, you see.”

  “But when I apologized, why did she–”

  “Well, there you are. You have your way of thinking, but you can't tell her that come-hithers and herbs and incantations got no power, because she's seen some things herself that you can't just explain away.”

  “Surely a man like you, well read in the scripture and acquainted with the world, surely you can convince your wife to give up the superstitions of her childhood.”

  Armor gently laid his hand on Reverend Thrower's wrist. “Reverend, I got to tell you something that I didn't think I'd ever have to tell a grown man. A good Christian refuses to allow that stuff in his life because the only proper way to bring the hidden powers into your life is through prayer and the grace of the Lord Jesus. It ain't because it doesn't work.”

  “But it doesn't,” said Thrower. “The powers of heaven are real, and the visions and visitations of angels, and all the miracles attested in the scripture. But the powers of heaven have nothing at all to do with young couples falling in love, or curing the croup, or getting chickens to lay, or all the other silly little things that the ignorant common people do with their so-called hidden wisdom. There's not a thing that's done by doodlebugging or hexing or whatever that can't be explained by simple scientific investigation.”

  Armor didn't answer for the longest while. The silence made Thrower quite uncomfortable, but he had no idea what more he could say. It hadn't occurred to him before that Armor could possibly believe in such things. It was a startling perspective. It was one thing to abstain from witchery because it was nonsense, and quite another to believe in it and abstain because it was unrighteous. It occurred to Thrower that this latter view was actually more ennobling: for Thrower to disdain witching was a matter of mere common sense, while for Armor and Eleanor it was quite a sacrifice.

  Before he could find a way to express this thought, however, Armor leaned back on his chair and changed the subject entirely.

  “Reckon your church is just about done.”

  With relief, Reverend Thrower followed Armor onto safer ground. “The roof was finished yesterday, and today they were able to clap all the boards on the walls. It'll be watertight tomorrow, with shutters on the windows, and when we get them glazed and the doors hung it'll be tight as a drum.”

  “I've got the glass coming by boat,” said Armor. Then he winked. “I solved the problem of shipping on Lake Erie.”

  “How did you manage that? The French are sinking every third boat, even from Irrakwa.”

  “Simple. I ordered the glass from Montreal.”

  “French glass in the windows of a British church!”

  “An American church,” said Armor. “And Montreal's a city in America, too. Anyway, the French may be trying to get rid of us, but in the meantime we're a market for their manufactured goods, so the Governor, the Marquis de la Fayette, he doesn't mind letting his people turn a profit from our trade as long as we're here. They're going to ship it clear around and down into Lake Michigan, and then barge it up the St. Joseph and down the Tippy-Canoe.”

  “Will they make it before the bad weather?”

  “I reckon so,” said Armor, “or they won't get paid.”

  “You're an amazing man,” said Thrower. “But I wonder that you have so little loyalty to the British Protectorate.”

  “Well, you see, that's how it is,” said Armor. “You grew up under the Protectorate, and so you still think like an Englishman.”

  “I'm a Scot, sir.”

  “A Brit, anyway. In your country, everybody who was even rumored to be practicing the hidden arts got exiled, right away, hardly even bothered with a trial, did they?”

  “We try to be just, but the ecclesiastical courts are swift, and there is no appeal.”

  “Well, now, think about it. If everybody who had any gift for the hidden arts got shipped off to the American colonies, how would you ever see a lick of witchery while you were growing up?”

  “I didn't see it because there's no such thing.”

  “There's no such thing in Britain. But it's the curse of good Christians in America, because we're up to our armpits in torches, doodlebugs, bog-stompers and hexifiers, and a child can't hardly grow to be four feet tall without bumping headlong into somebody's go-away or getting caught up in some prankster's speak-all spell, so he says everything that comes to mind and offends everybody for ten miles around.”

  “A speak-all spell! Now, Brother Armor, surely you can see that a touch of liquor does as much.”

  “Not to a twelve-year-old boy who never touched a drop of liquor in his life.”

  It was plain that Armor was talking from his own experience, but that didn't change the facts. “There is always another explanation.”

  “There's a powerful lot of explanations you can think up for anything that happens,” said Armor. “But I tell you this. You can preach against conjuring, and you'll still have a congregation. But if you keep on saying that conjuring don't work, well, I reckon most folks'll wonder why they should come all the way to church to hear the preaching of a plumb fool.”

  “I have to tell the truth as I see it,” said Thrower.

  “You may see that a man cheats in his business, but you don't have t
o name his name from the pulpit, do you? No sir, you just keep giving sermons about honesty and hope it soaks in.”

  “You're saying that I should use an indirect approach.”

  “That's a right fine church building, Reverend Thrower, and it wouldn't be half so fine if it wasn't for your dream of how it ought to be. But the folks here figure it's their church. They cut the wood, they built it, it's on common land. And it'd be a crying-shame if you were so stubborn that they up and gave your pulpit to another preacher.”

  Reverend Thrower looked at the remnants of dinner for a long time. He thought of the church, not unpainted raw lumber the way it was right now, but finished, pews in place, the pulpit standing high, and the room bright with sunlight through clean-glazed windows. It isn't just the place, he told himself, but what I can accomplish here. I'd be failing in my Christian duty if I let this place fall under the control of superstitious fools like Alvin Miller and, apparently, his whole family. If my mission is to destroy evil and superstition, then I must dwell among the ignorant and superstitious. Gradually I will bring them to knowledge of the truth. And if I can't convince the parents, then in time I can convert the children. It is the work of a lifetime, my ministry, so why should I throw it away for the sake of speaking the truth for a few moments only?

  “You're a wise man, Brother Armor.”

  “So are you, Reverend Thrower. In the long run, even if we disagree here and there, I think we both want the same thing. We want this whole country to be civilized and Christian. And neither one of us would mind if Vigor Church became Vigor City, and Vigor City became the capital of the whole Wobbish territory. There's even talk back in Philadelphia about inviting Hio to become a state and join right in, and certainly they'll make such an offer to Appalachee. Why not Wobbish someday? Why not a country that stretches from sea to sea, White man and Red, every soul of us free to vote the government we want to make the laws we'll be glad to obey?”

  It was a good dream. And Thrower could see himself within it. The man who had the pulpit of the greatest church in the greatest city of the territory would become the spiritual leader of a whole people. For a few minutes he believed so intensely in his dream that when he thanked Armor kindly for the meal and stepped outside, it made him gasp to see that right now Vigor Township consisted entirely of Armor's big store and its outbuildings, a fenced common with a dozen sheep grazing on it, and the raw wood shell of a big new church.

  Still, the church was real enough. It was almost ready, the walls were there, the roof was on. He was a rational man. He had to see something solid before he could believe in a dream, but that church was solid enough now, and between him and Armor they could make the rest of the dream come true. Bring people to this place, make this the center of the territory. This church was big enough for town meetings, not just church meetings. And what about during the week? He'd be wasting his education if he didn't start a school for the children hereabouts. Teach them to read, to write, to cipher, and, above all, to think, to expunge all superstition from their minds, and leave behind nothing but pure knowledge and faith in the Savior.

  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 misunde
rstand 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.

  Chapter Nine – 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.