“Defending, eh?” asked Armor. “You a lawyer as defends people, is that it?”
“That’s what I’m best known for, in my home in Carthage City.”
Armor nodded again. He might live in Carthage City now, but his accent said New England. And he might try some folksy talk, but it was a lawyer’s version of it, to put folks off guard. This man could talk like the Bible if he wanted to. He could talk like Milton. But Armor didn’t let on that he didn’t trust the man. Not yet. “So when folks here tell you how they slaughtered Reds what never done nobody no harm, you can hear that without batting an eye, is that it?”
“I can’t guarantee I won’t do any eye-batting, Mr. Weaver. But I’ll listen, and when it’s done, I’ll get on with the business that brought me here.”
Now it’s time. “And what business is that?” asked Armor.
The man blinked. Already batting an eye, thought Armor. That was right quick.
“I told you, Mr. Weaver. Getting affidavits about Alvin the miller’s son.”
“In order to tell people in Hatrack River about his true character, I remember. The thing is, out of the last eight years, Alvin spent seven in Hatrack, and only one here in Vigor Church. We knowed him as a child, you bet, but lately I’d say it’s the people of Hatrack River as knows him best. So the way I see it, you’re here to get a picture of Alvin that folks in Hatrack don’t know. And the only reason for that is because you need to change their point of view about the boy. And since I know for a fact that Alvin is respected in Hatrack, you can only be here to try to dig up some dirt on the boy in order to do him harm. Have I just about got it? Friend?”
The lawyer’s sudden lack of a cheerful smile was all the confirmation Armor needed. “Dirt is the farthest thing from my mind, Mr. Weaver. I come here with an open mind.”
“An open mind, and free talk about how you defend people and all so as to make folks think you’re on Alvin’s side, instead of being hired to do your best to destroy folks’ good opinion of him. So I reckon the fact that you’re here means that Alvin’s friends better get somebody else to go around collecting affidavits in his favor, since you won’t be satisfied until you dig up some lies.”
The man stiffened and stepped back. “I see that you’re rather a partisan about the matter. I hope you can tell me what I said to give offense.”
“Why, the only offense you gave was thinking that because I’m not a lawyer I must be dumb as a dog’s butt.”
“Well, no matter what conclusion you have reached, I assure you that as an officer of the court I seek nothing more than the simple truth.”
“Officer of the court, is it? Well, I happen to know that all lawyers is called officers of the court. Even when they’re hired by a private party to do mischief, because you sure as God lives wasn’t hired by the county attorney down in Hatrack, because he would’ve give you a letter of introduction and you wouldn’t have tried none of these pussyfooting prevaricating misrepresenting shenanigans.”
The stranger put his hat back on his head and pushed it down right firm. Armor suppressed the impulse to reach out and push it down still firmer. As the stranger reached the door, Armor called out one last question. “Do you have a name, so we can inquire with the state bar association about any outstanding actions against you?”
The lawyer turned and smiled, even broader than when he was trying to fool Armor. “My name is Daniel Webster, Mr. Weaver, and my client is truth and justice.”
“Truth and justice must pay a damn sight better in New England than it does out here,” said Armor. “You are from New England, aren’t you?”
“I was born there, and raised there, but saw no future for myself in that benighted backward place. So I came to the United States, where the laws are founded on the rights of man instead of the dynastic claims of monarchs or the worn-out theology of Puritans.”
“Ah. So nobody’s paying you?”
“I didn’t say that, Mr. Weaver.”
“Who’s paying you, then? Ain’t the county, and it ain’t the state. And it sure can’t be Makepeace Smith, since he’s got him hardly four bits to rub together.”
“I’m representing a consortium of concerned citizens of Carthage City, who are determined to see that justice prevails even in the benighted backwaters of the state of Hio.”
“A consortium. That anything like a public house? Or a brothel?”
“How amusing.”
“Name me a name, Mr. Webster. I happen to be mayor of this town, such as it is, and you’re here practicing law, after a fashion, and I think I have a right to know who’s sending lawyers up here to collect lies about our respected citizens.”
“Do you own a gun of any kind, Mr. Weaver?”
“I do, friend.”
“Then why should I reveal the names of my clients to an armed and angry man of a town that is so proud of being a nest of murderers that they brag out the whole story to any unfortunate visitor who happens by? Also, mayors have no right to inquire about anything from an attorney about his relations with his clients. Good day, Mr. Weaver.”
Armor watched the Webster fellow out the door, then put on his hat, called out to his oldest boy to leave off soapmaking and watch the store, and took off at a jog up and over the hill to his in-laws’ house. His wife would be there, since she was the best of the women at doing Alvin’s Makery stuff and so was in much demand as a teacher and a fashioner of—much as Armor hated it—hexes. The family needed to know what was going on, that Alvin had enemies from the capital who were spending money on a lawyer to come dig up dirt about the boy. There was no way around it now—they had to get them a lawyer for Alvin, somehow. And not no country cousin, either. It had to be a city lawyer who knew all the same tricks as this Webster fellow. Armor vaguely remembered having heard of this man somewhere. He was spoke of with awe in some circles, and having talked to him and heard his golden voice and his quick answers and the way he made a lie sound like the natural truth even to someone who knew it was deception—well, Armor knew it would take some finding to get them a lawyer who could best him. And finding was going to be complicated by another problem—paying.
Calvin had no idea what he was supposed to do upon meeting the Emperor. The man’s title was a throwback to ancient Rome, to Persia, to Babylon. But there he sat in a straight-back chair instead of a throne, his leg up on a cushioned bench; and instead of courtiers there were only secretaries, each scribbling away on a writing desk until an order or letter or edict was finished, then leaping to his feet and rushing from the room as the next secretary began to scribble furiously as Bonaparte dictated in a continuous stream of biting, lilting, almost Italian-sounding French.
As the dictation proceeded, Calvin, with guards on either side of him (as if that could stop him from making the floor collapse under the Emperor if he felt like it), watched silently. Of course they did not invite him to sit down; even Little Napoleon, the Emperor’s nephew, remained standing. Only the secretaries could sit, it seemed, for it was hard to imagine how they could write without a lap.
At first Calvin simply took in the surroundings; then he studied the face of the Emperor, as if that slightly pained expression contained some secret which, if only examined long enough, would yield the secrets of the sphinx. But soon Calvin’s attention drifted to the leg. It was the gout that he had to cure, if he was to make any headway. And Calvin had no idea what caused the gout or even how to figure it out. That was Alvin’s province.
For a moment it occurred to Calvin that maybe he ought to beg permission to write to his brother so he could get Alvin over here to cure the Emperor and win Calvin’s freedom. But he immediately despised himself for the cowardly thought. Am I a Maker or not? And if a Maker, then Alvin’s equal. And if Alvin’s equal, why should I summon him to bail me out of a situation which, for all I know right now, might need no bailing?
He sent his doodling bug into Napoleon’s leg.
It wasn’t the sort of swelling that Calvin was used to
in the festering sores of beggars. He didn’t understand what the fluids were—not pus, that was certain—and he dared not simply make them flow back into the blood, for fear that they might be poisons that would kill the very man he came to learn from.
Besides, was it really in Calvin’s best interests to cure this man? Not that he knew how to do it—but he wasn’t sure he really ought to try. What he needed was not the momentary gratitude of a cured man, but the continuing dependence of a sufferer who needed Calvin’s ministration for relief. Temporary relief.
And this was something Calvin did understand, to a point. He had learned long ago how to find the nerves in a dog or squirrel and give them a sort of tweak, an invisible pinch. Sometimes it set the animal to squealing and screeching till Calvin almost died from laughing. Other times the creature didn’t show pain, but limped along as if that pinched limb didn’t even exist. One time a perfectly healthy dog dragged around its hindquarters till its belly and legs were rubbed raw in the dirt and Father was all set to shoot the poor thing to put it out of its misery. Calvin took mercy on the beast then and unpinched the nerve so it could walk again, but after that it never did walk right, it sort of sidled, though whether that was from the pinch Calvin gave it or from the damaged caused by dragging its butt through the dirt for most of a week Calvin had no way to guess.
What mattered was that pinching of the nerve, to remove all feeling—Bonaparte might limp, but it would take away the pain. Relief, not a cure.
Which nerve? It wasn’t like Calvin had them all charted out. That sort of methodical thinking was Alvin’s game. In England, Calvin had realized that this was one of the crucial differences between him and his brother. There was a new word a fellow just coined at Cambridge for people who were ploddingly methodical like Alvin: scientist. While Calvin, with dash and flair and verve and, above all, the spirit of improvisation, he was an artist. Trouble was, when it came to getting at the nerves in Bonaparte’s leg, Calvin couldn’t very well experiment. He didn’t think a strong friendship would develop between the Emperor and him if it began with the Emperor squealing and screeching like a tortured squirrel.
He pondered that for a while until, watching a secretary rise up and rush from the room, it occurred to him that Bonaparte’s weren’t the only legs around. Now that it mattered that Calvin find out exactly which nerve did what, and that his pinch deadened pain instead of provoking it, he had to play the scientist and test many legs until he got it right.
He started with the secretary who was next in line, a shortish fellow (smaller even than the Emperor, who was a man of scant stature) who fidgeted a little in his chair. Uncomfortable? Calvin asked him silently. Then let’s see if we can find you some relief. He sent his bug into the man’s right leg, found the most obvious nerve, and pinched.
Not a wince, not a grimace. Calvin was annoyed. He pinched harder. Nothing.
Then the current secretary jumped to his feet and rushed from the room. It was now the turn of the short fellow Calvin had pinched. The man tried to shift his body in his chair, to adjust the position of the lapdesk, but to Calvin’s delight a look of astonishment came over the man’s face, followed by a blush as he had to reach down and move his right leg with his hands. So. That large nerve—or was it a bundle of very fine nerves?—had nothing to do with feeling. Instead they seemed to control movement. Interesting.
The fellow wrote in silence, but Calvin knew that all he was really thinking about was what would happen when he had to jump up and run from the room. Sure enough, when the edict ended—it was about the granting of a special tax exemption to certain vintners in southern France because of a bad harvest—the man leapt up, spun around, and sprawled on the floor, his right leg tangled with his left like the fishing lines of children.
Every eye turned to the poor fellow, but not a word was spoken. Calvin watched with amusement as he got up on his hands and his left knee, while the right leg hung useless. The knee bent well enough, of course, and the man got it under his body so it looked like it might work, but twice he tried to put weight on it and twice he fell again.
Bonaparte, looking annoyed, finally spoke to him. “Are you a secretary, sir, or a clown?”
“My leg, sir,” said the miserable clerk. “My right leg seems not to work just now.”
Bonaparte turned sharply to the guards detaining Calvin. “Help him out of here. And fetch someone to clean up the spilled ink.”
The guards hauled the man to his feet and started to move him toward the door. Now it was time for Little Napoleon to assert himself. “Take his desk, fools,” said the Emperor’s nephew. “And the inkwell, and the quill, and the edict, if it isn’t spoiled.”
“And how will they do all that?” asked Bonaparte testily. “Seeing they have to hold up this one-legged beggar?” Then he looked expectantly at Little Napoleon’s face.
It took a moment for Little Napoleon to realize what the Emperor wanted of him, and an even longer moment for him to swallow his pride enough to do it. “Why, of course, Uncle,” he said, with careful mildness. “I shall gladly pick it up myself, sir.”
Calvin suppressed a smile as the proud man who had arrested him now knelt down and gathered up papers, lapdesk, quill, and inkwell, carefully avoiding getting a single drop of ink on himself. By now the secretary Calvin had pinched was out of the room. He thought of sending out his bug to find the man and unpinch the nerve, but he wasn’t sure where he had gone and anyway, what did it matter? It was just a secretary.
When Little Napoleon was gone, Bonaparte resumed dictating, but now his delivery was not rapid and biting. Rather he halted, corrected himself now and then, and sometimes lapsed into silence for a time, as the secretary sat with pen poised. At such moments Calvin would cause the ink on the quill to flow to the tip and drop off suddenly onto the paper—ah, the flurry of blotting! And of course this only served to distract the Emperor all the more.
There remained, however, the matter of legs. Calvin explored each secretary in turn, finding other nerves to pinch, ever so slightly. He left the nerves of movement alone now; it was the nerves of pain that he was finding now, charting his progress by the widened eyes, flushed faces, and occasional gasps of the unfortunate secretaries. Bonaparte was not unaware of their discomfort—it distracted him all the more. Finally, when a man gasped at a particularly sharp pinch—Calvin’s touch was not always precise with such slender things as nerves—Bonaparte turned himself in his chair, wincing at the pain in his own leg, and said, as best Calvin could understand his French, “Do you mock me with these pains and moans? I sit here in agony, making no sound, while you, with no more pain than that of sitting too long to take letters, moan and gasp and wince and sigh until I can only imagine I am trapped with a choir of hyenas!”
At that moment Calvin finally got it right, giving just the right amount of pressure to a secretary’s pain nerve that all feeling vanished, and instead of the man wincing, his face relaxed in relief. That’s it, thought Calvin. That’s how it’s done.
He almost sent his bug right into Bonaparte’s leg to do that same little twist and make the Emperor’s pain go away. Fortunately he was distracted by the opening of the door. It was a scullery maid with a bucket and rags to clean up the ink from the marble floor. Bonaparte glared at her, and she almost dropped her things and fled, except that he at once softened his expression. “My rage is at my pain, girl,” he said to her. “Come in and do your work, no one minds.”
With that she gathered her courage, scurried to the drying ink, set down the bucket with a clank and a slosh, and set to work scrubbing.
By now Calvin had come to his senses. What good would it do to take away Bonaparte’s pain if the Emperor didn’t know that it was Calvin doing it? Instead he practiced the soothing twist of the nerves on all the secretaries, to their undoubted relief, and as he did he began to sense a sort of current, a humming, a vibration on the nerves that were actually carrying pain at the instant he twisted them, so that he could get even more p
recise, taking away not all the feeling in a leg, but just the pain itself. Finally he got to the scullery maid, to the pain she always felt in her knees as she knelt on hard cold floors to do her work. So sudden was the relief, and so sharp and constant had been the pain, that she cried aloud, and again Bonaparte glared at the interruption.
“Oh sir,” she said, “forgive me, but I suddenly felt no pain in my knees.”
“Lucky you,” said Bonaparte. “Along with this miracle, do you also find that you see no ink on the floor?”
She looked down. “Sir, with all my scrubbing, I can’t get up the whole stain. I’m afraid it’s gone down into the stone, sir.”
Calvin at once sent his doodling bug into the surface of the marble and discovered that the ink had, indeed, penetrated beyond the reach of her scrubbing. Now was the chance to have Bonaparte notice him, not as a prisoner—even his guards were gone—but as a man of power. “Perhaps I can help,” he said.
Bonaparte looked at him as if seeing him for the first time, though Calvin was quite aware that the Emperor had sized him up several times over the past half-hour. Bonaparte spoke to him in accented English. “Was it for scullery work you came to Paris, my dear American friend?”
“I came to serve you, sir,” said Calvin. “Whether with a stained floor or a pained leg, I care not.”
“Let’s see you with floors first,” said Bonaparte. “Give him the rags and bucket, girl.”
“I don’t need them,” said Calvin. “I’ve already done it. Have her scrub again, and this time the stain will come right up.”
Bonaparte glowered at the idea of serving as interpreter for an American prisoner and a scullery maid, but his curiosity got the better of his dignity and he gave the girl the order to scrub again. This time the ink came right up, and the stone was clean again. It had been child’s play for Calvin, but the awe in the girl’s face was the best possible advertisement for his wondrous power. “Sir,” she said, “I had only to pass the rag over the stain and it was gone!”
Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV Page 19
