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

  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?”

  Alvin explained things as best he could—the yellow fever, how Alvin had been healing as many people as he could. The rumors about the orphanage. Jim Bowie’s little mob. La Tia and the desire of the oppressed people of Barcy to get out before the bloodshed began.

  “So, what’ll it be? Take all these boats?”

  “We don’t have a lot of sailors among the French and the slaves and the free blacks and the orphans,” said Alvin.

  “We could persuade the crews to stay with them.”

  “La Tia has some idea of my parting the river. Like Moses and the Red Sea. Only I guess it would be more like Joshua and the crossing of the Jordan. How the water piled up on the righthand side as the Israelites crossed over to the western shore.”

  “And you don’t want to do that.”

  “Makes no sense,” said Alvin. “First, that’s a lot of water, and it would have to go somehow. No doubt it would end up flooding the whole city, which wouldn’t exactly
make things better. And when we got to the other side, what’s there? Fog and swamp. And some mighty suspicious reds who won’t be glad to see us. And let’s not forget, several thousand people to feed.”

  Calvin nodded. “I ain’t too surprised, Al. I mean, everybody else has a plan, but you can see how they’re all fools and their plans are no damn good.”

  Alvin knew that if he called Calvin on trying to pick a fight, the boy would look at him with big innocent eyes and say, Whatever do you mean, Al? They are all fools and their plans are no damn good.

  “They ain’t fools,” said Alvin. “Especially considering I didn’t have no plan at all. Until I was on the way here, and I remembered something I saw Tenskwa-Tawa do.”

  “Oh, yeah, Lolla-Wossiky, that old one-eyed likkered-up red.”

  To speak of the great Prophet that way made Alvin’s blood boil, but he said nothing.

  “Of course I suppose he doesn’t drink much now,” said Calvin. “And didn’t you fix his eye? Course, we don’t know what all he’s doing on the other side of the fog. Maybe they’re brewing good old corn mash and getting drunk every Thursday.” He laughed at his own humor.

  Alvin didn’t.

  “Oh, you old stick-in-the-mud,” said Calvin. “Everything’s serious with you.”

  Just the people that I love, thought Alvin. But he didn’t say anything more about that. “What I saw Tenskwa-Tawa do,” said Alvin, “was mix his blood with water and turn it into something solid.”

  Calvin nodded. “I don’t know about red knacks.”

  “They don’t have knacks,” said Alvin. “They sort of draw their powers from nature.”

  “Now, that’s plain dumb,” said Calvin. “We’re all human, aren’t we? Reds can marry whites, can’t they? So what would their children have, half a knack? What would half a knack look like? And they could half draw their power from nature?”

  “Here I thought you didn’t know about red knacks,” said Alvin, “and you turn around and insist that their knacks are just like ours.”

  “Well, if you’re going to be quarrelsome,” said Calvin, “I’m gonna be sorry I came.”

  That would make two of us, Alvin refrained from saying.

  “So you think you can do this thing old Lolla-Wossiky did,” said Calvin. “And then what? You make the river solid? Like a bridge, and the rest of the water flows under it?”

  “All the other problems are still there,” said Alvin. “No, I was thinking something about Lake Pontchartrain.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Just north of the city. A huge briny lake, but it’s shallow. Good for catching shrimp and crawfish, and there’s a ferry across it, but it doesn’t get used much, because there’s nothing worth going to on the other side. Most folks either take a boat upriver or a ship downriver. But at least on the other side of Pontchartrain there’s farms and food and shelter and no angry reds wondering what we’re doing coming across into their land.”

  “But there’s a whole passel of angry farmers wondering why you’re bringing three thousand people, including free blacks and runaway slaves, right through their cotton plantations,” said Calvin.

  Now this was an argument worth having, thought Alvin. Not just fight-picking, but something that actually mattered.

  “Well,” said Alvin, “I reckon if we had thirty runaways folks might get angry with us. But we come across with three thousand, and I reckon they might decide against fighting us and just feed us and hurry us on our way.”

  “They might,” said Calvin. “Or they might send for the King’s soldiers to come and teach you proper discipline.”

  “And the King’s soldiers might find us in a fog somewhere,” said Alvin.

  “Aha,” said Calvin. “I knew that fog would turn up as your idea.”

  “I thought you wanted me to include your ideas in this plan,” said Alvin, grinning because it was either that or punch the boy’s nose.

  “As long as you remember they’re mine,” said Calvin.

  “Cal,” said Alvin, “ideas aren’t like land or poems or babies or something. If you tell me an idea, and I like it, then it’s my idea too, and still yours, and it also belongs to everybody else on God’s green earth who thinks it’s a good one.”

  “But I thought of it first,” said Calvin.

  “Well, Cal, if we’re getting sticky about it, when it comes to fog, I reckon God thought of it long before you and me was born.”

  “And I guess you’re gonna make me whip up all this fog while you get to do the glamorous stuff with the water.”

  “I don’t know,” said Alvin. “I’ve never covered a city in fog. And you’ve never mixed blood and water and turned it into glass. So if we both just do the thing we already know how…”

  Calvin laughed and shook his head. “So you’ve got my part all figured out.”

  “Tell you what,” said Alvin. “I’ll do the fog and the water, and you can get back on the boat and go live your own life as you’ve been doing for the past six years.”

  “So you don’t need me,” said Calvin. “I guess Peggy was wrong again.”

  “There’s parts of you I need, all right,” said Alvin. “The part that wants to use his knack to help get a bunch of innocent or at least mostly innocent people out of Barcy before the killing starts, I need that. But the part of you that wants to pick fights with me and distract me from what I’ve got to do, that part can go stick its head up a horse’s butt.”

  Calvin just laughed. “I bet the horse would like that even less than me.”

  “You’re right,” said Alvin. “I was forgetting that horses got rights, too.”

  “Ease up, old Al,” said Calvin. “Don’t you know when a body’s teasing you?”

  “I reckon I do,” said Alvin. “You think you’re a quick dog teasing a slow bull. But what you don’t seem to realize is, sometimes the dog ain’t that quick and the bull ain’t that slow.”

  “Threatening me?” said Calvin.

  “Reminding you that I don’t got all the patience in the world.”

  “Don’t even have patience enough for me? Your beloved little brother?”

  “A man could have eight barrels full of patience for you, Cal, and you’d just have to keep goading him till you saw what happened when it turned out he needed nine.”

  “Sometimes I rile people, I admit it,” said Calvin. “But so do you.”

  “I reckon I do,” said Alvin, thinking of Jim Bowie.

  “So you’ll make a bridge over this Paunchy Train?”

  “I thought you spoke French.”

  “Paunchy Train is supposed to be French?” Calvin laughed. “Oh…oh, now I get it. Pont Chartrain.”

  He said it with an exaggerated French accent so his mouth looked all pursed up like he’d just et a persimmon.

  Alvin couldn’t help himself. He put on his dumb American act. “Pone Shot Train? I just can’t ever hold my mouth right to speak them hard French words.”

  It was like the best of the old times, tossing words back and forth. “That was the best French accent I ever heard from a journeyman blacksmith.”

  “Aw shucks, Cal,” said Alvin. “I reckon you done made me want to haul my poke over to Paree.”

  “Iffen you wash yourself proper, I’ll take you to meet Bonaparte himself,” said Calvin.

  “No thanks,” said Alvin. “I met him once and I’m done with him.”

  All at once the playfulness fled from Calvin’s face and Alvin could see his heartfire flare with anger. “Oh, excuse me, I forgot you already did everything long before little Calvin come along.”

  “Oh, don’t be a…”

  “Don’t be a what? What were you going to call me, big brother?”

  “I met him when I was a kid, and I didn’t like him. You met him, and apparently you did. What of it? He was here in America. It was before he overthrew the monarchy. What am I supposed to do, pretend that I didn’t meet him, just so you don’t get provoked? Are you the only one ent
itled to have met famous people?”

  “Oh, just shut up,” said Calvin, and he stalked off in another direction.

  Since Calvin was perfectly capable of finding Alvin’s heartfire whenever he wanted, Alvin didn’t fret about it. He just headed home, wishing that Margaret had decided that he needed a different helper. Like, say, Verily Cooper—there was a good man, and he didn’t pick foolish fights. Or Measure. Alvin could have used any of his brothers better than Calvin.

  But the truth was, Alvin had no idea whether he could sustain a good fog and do the thing with the water, not at the same time—not reliably. Promising as Arthur Stuart was, he was still flailing about with makery, and Alvin would be lucky if he could teach Arthur to raise steam from a teapot, let alone a full-fledged fog. So he needed Calvin. A good thick fog wouldn’t be just to hide them on the other side. It would cover the whole city tonight. It would keep people from finding them till they were all across the lake and safely gone.

  Margaret was right to send him, and Alvin would just have to swallow hard and not let Calvin make him mad.

  Arthur Stuart’s big accomplishment of the day was coming up with fifteen cloth bags that the older children could use to carry food for the journey. Papa Moose and Mama Squirrel were supervising the loading of the bags, arguing back and forth about what they’d need. Papa Moose was determined that they should carry spare clothing, while Mama Squirrel wanted nothing but food.

  “They’ll get hungry before they get nekkid,” she said.

  “But no matter how much we carry with us, we’ll run out of food soon, and if we’re going to have to forage or buy food anyway, we might as well carry spare clothing so the children don’t have to travel in rags.”

  “If we can afford to buy food we can afford to buy clothes, and we’ll need the food first.”

  “We can pick food off trees and glean it out of fields.”

  “Well, if you’re talking about stealing, Papa Moose, we can take clothes off clotheslines.”

  “If we’re lucky enough to find clothes that fit.”

  “There’s not a child in this house who fits the same clothes for six months in a row.”