The valet shrugged. “Be maybe you best ask around.”
“Ask what? ‘There’s a woman with a sick brother-inlaw named Calvin and she living in a boardinghouse somewhere.’ That get me a lot of results.”
The valet looked at him like he was crazy. “I don’t think you get much that way. I bet you do better, you tell them her name.”
“I don’t know her name.”
“Why not? I do.”
Denmark closed his eyes. “That’s good. How about you tell me that name?”
“Margaret.”
“She got her a last name? White folks has a last name every time.”
“Smith,” said the valet. “But she don’t look big enough for smith work.”
“You’ve seen her?” asked Denmark.
“Lots of times.”
“When would you see her?”
“I run messages to her and back a couple of times.”
Denmark sighed, keeping anger out of his voice. “Well now, my friend, don’t that mean you know where she lives?”
“I do,” said the valet.
“Why couldn’t you just tell me that?”
“You didn’t be asking where she live, you ask for the address. I don’t know no number or letter.”
“Could you lead me there?”
The valet rolled his eyes. “Sixpence to the White boss and he let me take you.”
Denmark looked at him suspiciously. “You sure it ain’t tuppence to the White boss and the rest to you?”
The valet looked aggrieved. “I be a Christian.”
“So be all the White folks,” said Denmark.
The valet, all anger having been stripped from him long ago, had no chance of understanding pointed irony. “Of course they be Christian. How else I learn about Jesus ’cept from them?”
Denmark dug a sixpence out of his pocket and gave it to the valet. In moments he was back, grinning. “I gots ten minutes.”
“That time enough?”
“Two blocks over, one block down.”
When they got to the door of Margaret Smith’s boardinghouse, the valet just stood there.
“Step aside so I can knock,” said Denmark.
“I can if you want,” said the valet. “But I don’t see why.”
“Well if I don’t knock, how’m I going to find out if she be in?”
“She ain’t in,” said the valet.
“How you know that?”
“Cause she over there, looking at you.”
Denmark turned around casually. A White woman, a White man, and a Black servant girl were across the street, walking away.
“Who’s looking at me?”
“They was looking,” said the valet. “And I know she can tell you about that Calvin man.”
“How do you know that?”
“That be him.”
Denmark looked again. The White man was shuffling along like an old man. Empty.
Denmark grinned and gave another tuppence to the valet. “Good job, when you finally got around to telling me.
The valet took the tuppence, looked at it, and offered it back. “No, it be sixpence the White boss want.”
“I already paid the sixpence,” said Denmark.
The valet looked at him like he had lost his mind. “If you done that, why you be giving me more? This tuppence not enough anyway.” Huffily, he handed the coin back. “You crazy.” Then he was gone.
Denmark sauntered along, keeping them in sight. A couple of times the slave girl looked back and gazed at him. But he wasn’t worried. She’d know who he was, and there was no chance of a Black girl telling this White lady anything about the taker of names.
“That him,” said Fishy. “He take the names.”
Margaret saw at once in Denmark’s mind that he could not be trusted for a moment. She had been looking for him, and he had been looking for her. But he had a knife and meant to use it. That was hardly the way to restore Calvin’s heartfire.
“Let’s go down to the battery. There are always plenty of people there. He won’t dare harm a White man in such a crowd. He doesn’t want to die.”
“He won’t talk to you, neither,” said Fishy. “He just watch.”
“He’ll talk to me,” said Margaret. “Because you’ll go ask him to.”
“He scare me, ma’am.”
“Me too,” said Margaret. “But I can promise you, he won’t harm you. The only one he wants to hurt is Calvin here.”
Fishy looked at Calvin again. “Look like somebody done hurt him most all he can be hurt till he be dead.” Then she realized what she had said. “Oh.”
“This name-taker, Denmark Vesey, is quite an interesting fellow. You know that he isn’t a slave?”
“He free? Ain’t no free Blacks in Camelot.”
“Oh, that’s the official story, but it isn’t so. I’ve already met another. A woman named Doe. She was given her freedom when she became too old to work.”
“They turn her out then?” demanded Fishy, outraged.
“Careful,” said Margaret. “We’re not alone here.”
Fishy at once changed her demeanor and looked down at the street again. “I seen too many damn cobblestones in my life.”
“They didn’t turn her out,” said Margaret. “Though I have no doubt there are masters cruel enough to do so. No, she has a little room of her own and she eats with the others. And they pay her a small wage for very light work.”
“They think that make up for taking her whole life away from her?”
“Yes, they think it does. And Doe thinks so, too. She has her name back, and I suppose she has reason enough to be angry, but she’s happy enough.”
“Then she a fool.”
“No, she’s just old. And tired. For her, freedom means she doesn’t have to work anymore, except to make her own bed.”
“That won’t be enough for me, Miz Margaret.”
“No, Fishy, I’m quite sure it won’t. It shouldn’t be enough for anyone. But don’t begrudge Doe her contentment. She’s earned it.”
Fishy looked back and became agitated. “He coming closer, ma’am.”
“Only because he’s afraid of losing track of us in the crowd.” Margaret steered Calvin toward the seawall. Out in the water they could see the fortresses: Lancelot and Galahad. Such fanciful names. King Arthur indeed. “Denmark Vesey is free and he earns his living by keeping the account books of several small businesses and professional offices.”
“A Black man know his numbers?”
“And his letters. Of course he pretends that he works for a White man who really does the work, but I doubt any of his clients are fooled. They maintain the legal fiction so that nobody has to send anyone to jail. They pay half what they would for a White man, and he gets paid far more than he needs to live in Blacktown. Clever.”
“And he take the names.”
“No, actually, he collects them, but he takes them somewhere and gives them to someone else.”
“Who?”
Margaret sighed. “Whoever it is, he knows how to shut me out of just that part of Denmark’s memory. That’s never happened to me before. Or perhaps I simply didn’t notice it. I must have skimmed past this man’s heartfire before, searching for the taker of names, but because only part of his memory was hidden, I would never have noticed.” Then she thought a little more. “No, I daresay I never looked in his heartfire, because he has his name, and so his heartfire burns brightly enough that I would have assumed he was a White man and not looked at all. He was hidden right out in the open.”
“You a witchy woman, ain’t you, ma’am?”
“Not in the sense that White folks use the word,” said Margaret. “I don’t do any cursing, and what hexes I have to protect me, those were made by my husband, I do no such work. What I am is a torch. I see into people’s heartfire. I find the paths of their future.”
“What you see in my future?”
“No, Fishy,” said Margaret. “You have so many paths ope
n before you. I can’t tell you which one you’ll take, because it’s up to you.”
“But that man, he don’t kill me, right?”
Margaret shook her head. “I don’t see any paths right now where that happens. But I don’t tell futures, Fishy, People live and die by their own choices.”
“Not even your own future? Your husband?”
Margaret grimaced. “I did try to get my husband to change his life. You see, on every path where he doesn’t get killed sooner, he ends up dying because of the betrayal of his own brother.”
Fishy took only a moment to realize the connection. “Be maybe you don’t mean this brother?”
“No, I do mean this brother.”
“Then why you not let that name-taker man cut his throat?”
“Because my husband loves him.”
“But he going a-kill him!”
Margaret smiled wanly. “Isn’t that the strangest thing?” she said. “Knowing the future doesn’t change a man like my husband. He does what’s right no matter where the road leads.”
“He always do what’s right?”
“As much as he understands it. Most of the time he tries to do as little as possible. He tries to learn, and then teach. Not like Denmark Vesey. He’s a man who acts.” Margaret shuddered. “But not wisely. Cleverly, yes, but not wisely, and not kindly, either.”
“He squatting under that tree yonder.”
“Now is the time, Fishy. Go to him, tell him I want to talk to him.”
“Oh, Miz Margaret, you sure he don’t hurt me?”
“He’ll think you’re pretty.” Margaret touched her arm. “He’ll think you’re the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.”
“You joking now.”
“Not at all. You see, you’re the first free Black woman he’s known.”
“I not free.”
“He bought a slave once. Hoping to make her his wife. But she was so ashamed of being owned by a Black man that she threatened to expose his ability to read and write and tell the authorities that he’s a free Black in Camelot.”
“What he do?”
“What do you think?”
“He kill her.”
“He tried. At the last moment he changed his mind. She’s still his slave, but she’s crippled. Mind and body.”
“You didn’t have to tell me that story,” said Fishy. “I wasn’t going to let him talk love to me. He scare me too bad.”
“I just thought you should know.”
“Well, you know what? It take away some of my scared, knowing that about him.”
It stabbed Margaret to the heart, watching the smiling girl change before she turned around and walked among the Whites promenading on the battery. The smile fled; her eyelids half closed; she bent her shoulders and looked down as she made her way, not directly toward Denmark, but off at an angle. After a short time she doubled back and came to him from another way. Very good, thought Margaret. I didn’t think to tell her to do that, but it keeps it from being obvious to onlookers that I sent her to fetch Denmark.
Fishy handled it deftly. My mistress want a-talk to you. What about? My mistress want a-talk to you. No matter what he said, she answered like a parrot. Maybe he knew she was pretending or maybe he thought she was stupid and stubborn, but either way, it got him up and walking, following Fishy’s roundabout course as she walked two paces ahead of him. They couldn’t walk side by side, or it would seem to White folks that they were promenading, and it would be taken as outrageous mockery. Instead it was obvious she was leading him, which meant they were on an errand for their master, and all was well with the world.
“What you want to talk about?” Denmark asked her, keeping his head downcast. But in the tone of his voice she could hear his hostility toward her.
“You’re looking for me,” she said.
“Am not,” he said.
“Oh, that’s right. It’s Calvin you’re looking for.”
“That his name?”
“His name won’t give you any power over him greater than what you already have.”
“I got no power over nobody.”
Margaret sighed. “Then why do you have a knife in your pocket? That’s against the law, Denmark Vesey. You have other hidden powers. You’re a free Black in Camelot, doing account books for—let’s see, Dunn and Brown, Longer and Ford, Taggart’s grocery—”
“I should have knowed you been spying on me.” There was fear in his voice, despite his best effort to sound unconcerned. “White ladies got nothing better to do.”
Margaret pressed on. “You found out where I lived because the valet at Calvin’s former boardinghouse led you. And you have a woman at home whose name you never utter. You nearly drowned her in a sack in the river. You’re a man with a conscience, and it causes you great pain.”
He almost staggered from the blow of knowing how much she knew about him. “They hang me, a Black man owning a slave.”
“You’ve made quite a life for yourself, being a free man in a city of slaves. It hasn’t been as good for your wife, though, has it?”
“What you want from me?”
“This isn’t extortion, except in the mildest sense. I’m telling you that I know what and who you are, so that you’ll understand that you’re dealing with powers that are far out of your reach.”
“Sneakiness ain’t power.”
“What about the power to tell you that you have it in you to be a great man? Or to be a great fool. If you make the correct choice.”
“What choice?”
“When the time comes, I’ll tell you what the choice is. Right now, you have no choice at all. You’re going to take me and Calvin and Fishy to the place where you keep the name-strings.”
Denmark smiled. “So they still some things you don’t know.”
“I didn’t say I knew everything. The power that hides the names also hides from me your knowledge of where they are.”
“That be the truth, more than you know,” said Denmark. “I don’t even know myself.”
Fishy scoffed aloud at that. “This ain’t no White fool you can play games with.”
“No, Fishy,” said Margaret, “he’s telling the truth. He really doesn’t know. So I wonder how you find your way back?”
“When it time for me to go there, I just wander around and pretty soon I be there. I walk in the door and then I remember everything.”
“Remember what?”
“How do I know? I ain’t through that door.”
“Powerful hexery,” said Margaret, “if hexery it be. Take me there.”
“I can’t do that,” said Denmark.
“How about if I cut off your balls?” asked Fishy cheerfully.
Denmark looked at Fishy in wonder. He’d never heard a Black woman talk like that, right out in public, in front of a White.
“Let’s hold off on the mutilation, Fishy,” said Margaret. “Again, I think Denmark Vesey may be telling me the truth. He really can’t find the place unless he goes there alone.”
Denmark nodded.
“Well, then. I think we have no further business together,” said Margaret. “You can go now.”
“I want that man,” said Denmark. He glanced at Calvin.
“You’ll never have him,” said Margaret. “He has more power than you can imagine.”
“Can’t be that much,” said Denmark. “Look at him, he’s empty.”
“Yes, he was taken by surprise,” said Margaret. “But you won’t hold him for long.”
“Long enough,” said Denmark. “His body starting to rot. He be dying.”
“You have till the count of three to walk away from me and keep on walking,” said Margaret.
“Or what?”
“One. Or I’ll call out for you to take your filthy paws off of my body.”
Denmark at once backed away. There could be no charge more sure of putting Denmark on the end of a rope without further discussion.
“Two,” said Margaret. And he was gone
.
“Now we lost him again,” said Fishy.
“No, my friend, we’ve got him. He’s going to lead us right where we want to go. He can’t hide from me.” Margaret made a slow turn, taking in the view. “Today, I think it’s worth it to splurge on a carriage ride.”
Margaret led Fishy and Calvin to the row of waiting carriages. It took Margaret lifting his foot and Fishy pulling him up to get Calvin’s uncaring body into the coach. The moment Calvin was settled in his seat, Fishy started to get down.
“Please, stay inside with me,” said Margaret.
“I can’t do that.”
As if he were part of their conversation, the White driver opened the sliding window between his seat and the interior of the carriage. “Ma’am,” he said, “you from the North, so you don’t know, but around here we don’t let no slaves ride in the carriage. She knows it, too—she’s got to step out and walk along behind.”
“She has told me of this law and I will gladly obey it. However, my brother-in-law here is prone to get rather ill during carriage rides, and I hope you understand that if he vomits, I am not prepared to hold a bag to catch it.”
The driver considered this for a moment. “You keep that curtain closed, then. I don’t want no trouble.”
Fishy looked at Margaret, incredulous. Then she leaned over and pulled the drapes closed on one side of the coach while Margaret closed them on the other. Once they were closed off from public view, Fishy sat on the padded bench beside Calvin and grinned like a three-year-old with a spoon full of molasses. She even bounced a little on the seat.
The window opened again. “Where to, ma’am?” asked the driver.
“I’ll know it when I see it,” Margaret said. “I’m quite sure it’s in Blacktown, however.”
“Oh, ma’am, you oughtn’t to go up there.”
“That’s why I have my brother-in-law with me.”
“Well, I’ll take you up there, but I don’t like it.”
“You’ll like it better when I pay you,” said Margaret.
“I’d like it better iffen you paid me in advance,” said the driver.
Margaret just laughed.
“I meant to say half in advance.”
“You’ll be paid upon arrival, and that, sir, is the law. Though if you’d like to throw me out of your carriage, you are free to summon a constable. You can ask him about having a slave seated in your carriage, too, while you’re at it.”
Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V Page 26
