Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V

by Orson Scott Card

  Instead she looked at Cooper. The barrister was a pleasant sight indeed. His manner, his dress, his voice, all belonged to a man that Purity thought existed only in a dream. Why was he different from other men who dressed in such a way?

  “You aren’t an ordinary lawyer,” she said to him.

  Cooper looked at her in surprise. And then his surprise turned to dread.

  “I’m not,” he said.

  What was he afraid of?

  “Yes he is,” said Smith.

  “No,” said Cooper. “Ordinary lawyers make a lot of money. I haven’t made a shilling in the past year.”

  “Is that it?” asked Purity. It could be. Barristers did seem a prosperous lot. But no, it was something else. “I think what makes you different is you don’t think you’re better than these others.”

  Cooper looked around at his companions—the smith, the riverman, the French artist, the Black boy—and grinned. “You’re mistaken,” he said. “I’m definitely the better man.”

  The others laughed. “Better at what?” asked Mike Fink. “Whining like a mosquito whenever you see a bee?”

  “I don’t like bees,” said Cooper.

  “They like you.” said Arthur Stuart.

  “Because I’m sweet.” He was joking, but Purity could see that his fear was growing greater. She glanced around, looking for the source of the danger.

  Smith noticed the way she looked around and took it as a sign, or perhaps just a reminder. “Come on now,” said Smith. “Time for us to move on.”

  “No,” said Cooper. Purity could see his resolve harden. He wasn’t just afraid—he was going to act on his fear.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Smith.

  “The girl,” said Cooper.

  “What about her?” demanded Arthur Stuart. He spoke so truculently that Purity expected one of the men to rebuke him. But no, he was treated as if his voice had equal weight in the company.

  “She’s going to get us killed.”

  Now she understood. He was afraid of her. “I’m not,” she said. “I won’t tell anybody he’s a papist.”

  “When they put your hand on the Bible and swear you to tell the truth?” asked Cooper. “You’d send yourself to hell and deny that you know that he’s Catholic?”

  “I am not a good Catholic,” said Audubon modestly.

  “Then you go to hell no matter who’s right,” said Smith. It was a joke, but nobody laughed.

  Cooper still held Purity in gaze, and now it was her turn to be afraid. She had never seen such intensity in a man, except a preacher in his pulpit, during the most fiery part of the sermon. “Why are you afraid of me?” asked Purity.

  “That’s why,” said Cooper.

  “What’s why?”

  “You know that I’m afraid of you. You know too much about what we’re thinking.”

  “I already told you, I don’t know what anybody’s thinking.”

  “What we’re feeling, then.” Cooper grinned mirthlessly. “It’s your knack.”

  “We already said that,” said Fink.

  “What if it is?” Purity said defiantly. “Who’s to say that knacks aren’t gifts from God?”

  “The courts of Massachusetts,” said Cooper. “The gallows.”

  “So she’s got a knack,” said Smith. “Who doesn’t?”

  The others nodded.

  Except Cooper. “Have you lost your minds? Look at you! Talking knowledgeably of knacks! Admitting that Jean-Jacques here is French and Catholic to boot.”

  “But she already knew,” said Audubon.

  “And that didn’t bother you?” said Cooper. “That she knew what she could not possibly know?”

  “We all know things we shouldn’t know,” said Smith.

  “But until she came along, we were doing a pretty good job of keeping it to ourselves!” Cooper rounded on Purity, loomed over her. “In Puritan country, people hide their knacks or they die. It’s a secret they all keep, that they have some special talent, and as soon as they realize what it is they also learn to hide it, to avoid letting anyone know what it is that they do so much better than other people. They call it ‘humility.’ But this girl has been flaunting her knack.”

  Only then did Purity realize what she had been doing. Cooper was right—she had never let anyone see how easily she understood their feelings. She had held it back, remaining humble.

  “By this time tomorrow I expect this girl will be in jail, and in a month she’ll be hanged. The trouble is, when they put her to the question of other witches she’s consorted with, whom do you imagine that she’ll name? A friend? A beloved teacher? She seems to be a decent person, so it won’t be an enemy. No, it’ll be strangers. A papist. A journeyman blacksmith. A barrister who seems to be living in the woods. An American riverman.”

  “I’d never accuse you,” she said.

  “Oh, well, since you say so,” said Cooper.

  Suddenly she was aware of Mike Fink standing directly behind her. She could hear his breathing. Long, slow breaths. He wasn’t even worried. But she knew that he was capable of killing.

  Smith sighed. “Well, Very, you’re a quick thinker and you’re right. We can’t just go on with our journey as if it were safe.”

  “Yes, you can,” she said. “I don’t normally act like this. I was careless. In the surprise of meeting you here.”

  “No,” said Cooper, “it wasn’t meeting us. You were out here walking alone. Oblivious. Blind and deaf. You didn’t hear Al and Arthur splashing like babies in the water. You didn’t hear Mike howling miserable river ballads in his high-pitched hound-dog voice.”

  “I wasn’t singing,” said Mike.

  “I never said you were,” said Cooper. “Miss—what’s your name again?”

  “She never said,” Fink answered.

  “Purity,” she said. “My parents named me.”

  “Miss Purity, why after all these years of living in humility are you suddenly so careless about showing your knack?”

  “I told you, I wasn’t, or I’m not usually, and it’s not a knack anyway, it’s a talent, I’m simply observant, I—”

  “Today,” said Cooper. “This hour. Do you think I’m a fool? I grew up in one of the most witch-ridden parts of England. Not because more people had knacks but because more people were watching for them. You don’t last an hour if you’re careless. It’s a good thing you ran into us and not someone you knew. This place is thick with ministers, and you were going to show your knack no matter whom you met.”

  Purity was confused. Was he right? Was that why she had fled the college, because she knew that her knack could no longer be hidden?

  But why couldn’t it be hidden now? What was driving her to reveal it?

  “I believe you may be right,” she said. “I thank you for waking me up to what I was doing. You have nothing to fear now. I’m going to be careful now.”

  “Good enough for me,” said Smith.

  “No, it isn’t,” said Cooper. “Al, I yield to you on most things, but not on something that’s going to get us caught up in some witch trial.”

  Smith laughed. “I’ve done my time setting around waiting for lawyers. There ain’t no jail can hold me or any of my friends.”

  “Yes, there is,” said Cooper. “It’s six feet long, and they nail it shut and bury it.”

  They all looked thoughtful. Except Arthur Stuart. “So what are you going to do to her?” he demanded. “She ain’t done nothing wrong.”

  “She hain’t done nothing,” said Mike Fink.

  Arthur looked at the river rat like he was crazy. “How can you correct me? You’re even wronger than I was!”

  “You left out the h in haint.”

  “I won’t be accused myself, and I won’t accuse you,” said Purity.

  “I think you will,” said Cooper. “I think you want to die.”

  “Don’t be absurd!” she cried.

  “More specifically, I think you want to be hanged as a witch.”


  For a moment she remained poised, meaning to treat this idea with the scorn it deserved. Then the image of her parents on a gallows came to her mind. Or rather, she admitted that it was already in her mind, that it was an image that had dwelt with her ever since she made the connections and realized how they had died. She burst into tears.

  “You got no right to make her cry!” shouted Arthur Stuart.

  “Hush up, Arthur,” said Smith. “Verily’s right.”

  “How do you know this?” said Audubon.

  “Look at her.”

  She was sobbing so hard now that she could hardly stand. She felt long, strong arms around her, and at first she tried to flinch away, thinking it was Mike Fink seizing her from behind; but her movement took her closer to the man who was reaching for her, and she found herself pressed against the fine suit of the barrister, his arms holding her tightly.

  “It’s all right,” said Cooper.

  “They hanged my mother and father,” she said. Or tried to say—her voice could hardly be understood.

  “And you just found out,” said Cooper. “Who told you?”

  She shook her head, unable to explain.

  “Figured it out for yourself?” said Cooper.

  She nodded.

  “And you belong with them. Not with the people who killed them and put you out to an orphanage.”

  “They had no right!” she cried. “This is a land of murderers!”

  “Hush,” said Cooper. “That’s how it feels, but you know it isn’t true. Oh, there are murderers among them, but that’s true everywhere. People who are glad to denounce a neighbor for witchcraft—to settle a quarrel, to get a piece of land, to show everyone how righteous and perceptive they are. But most folks are content to live humbly and let others do the same.”

  “You don’t know!” she said. “Pious killers, all of them!”

  “Pious,” said Cooper, “but not killers. Think about it, just think. Every living soul has some kind of knack. But how many get hanged for witchcraft? Some years maybe five or six. Most years none at all. The people don’t want to surround themselves with death. It’s life that they want, like all good people everywhere.”

  “Good people wouldn’t take me away from my parents!” Purity cried.

  “They thought they were doing good,” said Verily. “They thought they were saving you from hell.”

  She tried to pull away from him. He wouldn’t let her.

  “Let me go.”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Besides, you have nowhere to go.”

  “Let her go if she wants,” said Arthur Stuart. “We can get away from here. Alvin can start up the greensong and we’ll run like the wind and be out of New England before she tells anybody anything.”

  “That ain’t the problem,” said Smith. “It’s her. Very’s worried about keeping her from getting herself killed.”

  “He doesn’t need to worry,” Purity said. This time when she pulled away, Cooper let her. “I’ll be fine. I just needed to tell somebody. Now I have.”

  “No,” said Cooper. “It’s gone. You’re not afraid of death anymore, you welcome it, because you think that’s the only way you can get home to your family.”

  “How do you know what I think?” she said. “Is that your knack? I hope not, because you’re wrong.”

  “I didn’t say you were thinking those things. And no, that’s not my knack at all. But I’m a barrister. I’ve seen people at the most trying moments of their lives. I’ve seen them when they’ve decided to give up and let the world have its way. I recognize that decision when I see it. You’ve decided.”

  “What if I have?” she asked defiantly. “And anyway I haven’t, so it doesn’t matter.”

  Cooper ignored her. “If we leave her here, she’ll die, sooner or later. She’ll do it just to prove she’s part of her family.”

  “No I won’t,” said Purity. “I don’t even know for sure that that’s what happened to them. I think the evidence points that way, but it’s a slender arrow indeed.”

  “But you want it to be true,” said Cooper.

  “That’s silly! Why would I want that!”

  Cooper said nothing.

  “I don’t hate it here! People have been kind to me. Reverend Study arranged to let me use the Harvard library. I get to listen to the lectures. Not that it will ever amount to anything.”

  Cooper smiled ever-so-slightly.

  “Well, what can it amount to?” Purity demanded. “I’m a woman. Either I’ll marry or I won’t. If I marry, I’ll be raising children. Maybe I’ll teach them to read before they get to school. But I won’t be the one who gets to teach them Latin and Greek. They’ll get their Caesar and their Tully and their Homer from someone else. And if I don’t marry, the best I can hope for is to be kept on as a matron in the orphanage. Children are the only people who’ll ever hear my voice.”

  “Ain’t nothing wrong with children,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “That’s not what she means anyway,” said Cooper.

  “Don’t you dare interpret me anymore!” Purity cried. “You think you know me better than you know yourself!”

  “Yes, I think I do,” said Cooper. “I’ve been down the same road.”

  “Oh, were you an orphan? As a barrister, did they make you work with children all the time? Did they make you sit outside the courtroom to plead your case?”

  “All these sacrifices,” said Cooper, “you’d make them gladly, if you believed in the cause.”

  “Are you accusing me of being an unbeliever?”

  “Yes,” said Cooper.

  “I’m a Christian!” she said. “You’re the heretics! You’re the witches!”

  “Keep your voice down,” said Fink menacingly.

  “I’m not a witch!” said Audubon fervently.

  “You see?” said Cooper. “Now you are accusing us.”

  “I’m not!” she said. “There’s no one here but you.”

  “You’re a woman whose world has just turned upside down. You’re the daughter of witches. You’re angry that they were killed. You’re angry at yourself for being alive, for being part of the very society that killed them. And you’re angry at that society for not being worthy of the sacrifice.”

  “I’m not judging others,” she said.

  “They were supposed to build Zion here,” said Cooper. “The city of God. The place where Christ at his coming could find the righteous gathered together, waiting for him.”

  “Yes,” whispered Purity.

  “They even named you Purity. And yet you see that nothing is pure. The people are trying to be good, but it isn’t good enough. When Christ comes, all he’ll find here is a group of people who have done no more than to find another way to be stubble that he will have to burn.”

  “No, the virtue is real, the people are good,” said Purity. “Reverend Study—”

  “Virtue is real outside New England, too,” said Verily Cooper.

  “Is it?” she asked. “Most people here live the commandments. Adultery is as rare as fish with feet. Murder never happens. Drunkenness can never be seen anywhere except at the docks, where sailors from other lands are permitted—and why should I defend New England to you?”

  “You don’t have to,” said Cooper. “I grew up with the dream of New England all around me. In every pulpit, in every home. When someone behaved badly, when someone in authority made a mistake, we’d say, ‘What do you expect? This isn’t New England.’ When somebody was exceptionally kind or self-sacrificing, or humble and sweet, we’d say, ‘He belongs in New England,’ or ‘He’s already got his passage to Boston.’”

  Purity looked at him in surprise. “Well, we’re not that good here.”

  “I know,” said Cooper. “For one thing, you still hang witches and put their babies in orphanages.”

  “I’m not going to cry again, if that’s what you’re hoping for,” said Purity.

  “I’m hoping for something else,” said Cooper. “Come with us.” />
  “Verily!” said Smith. “For pete’s sake, if we wanted a woman with us we’d be traveling with Margaret! You think this girl’s ready to sleep rough?”

  “Ain’t decent anyway,” said Mike Fink. “She’s a lady.”

  “You needn’t worry about my going with you,” said Purity. “What kind of madman are you? Perhaps I am angry and disillusioned about the dream of purity here in New England. Why would I be any happier with you, who aren’t even as pure as we are here?”

  “Because we have the one thing you’re hungry for.”

  “And what is that?”

  “A reason to live.”

  She laughed in his face. “The five of you! And all the rest of the world lacks it? Why don’t they all just give up and die?”

  “Few give up living,” said Cooper. “Most give up looking for a reason. But some have to keep searching. They can’t bear to live without a purpose. Something larger than themselves, something so good that just being a part of it makes everything worthwhile. You’re a seeker, Miss Purity.”

  “How do you know all these things about me?”

  “Because I’m a seeker, too. Do you think I don’t know my own kind?”

  She looked around at the others. “If I were this thing, a seeker, why would I want to be with other seekers? If you’re still seeking, it means you haven’t found anything, either.”

  “But we have,” said Cooper.

  Smith rolled his eyes. “Verily Cooper, you know I still don’t have a clue what we’re even looking for.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” said Cooper. “You’re not a seeker, Alvin. You already have your life handed to you, whether you want it or not. And Arthur here, he’s not a seeker, either. He’s already found what he wants.”

  Arthur hung his head, embarrassed. “Don’t you go saying!”

  “Just like Mike Fink. They’ve found you, Al. They’re going to follow you till they die.”

  “Or till I do,” said Smith.

  “Ain’t going to happen,” said Fink. “I’ll have to be dead first.”

  “You see?” said Cooper. “And Jean-Jacques here, he’s no seeker. He knows the purpose of his life as well.”