Many of the spectators nodded. They knew something of this matter, of wanting to do something with their hands, without the use of the extraordinary knacks that were so common in this town these days.
“And when it was done, what did you have?”
“A plow,” said Alvin. “Pure iron, well shaped and well tempered. A good journeyman piece.”
“Whose property was that plow?” asked Verily. “I ask you not as an expert on law, but rather as the apprentice you were at the time you finished it. Was it your plow?”
“It was mine because I made it, and his because it was his iron. It’s custom to let the journeyman keep his piece, but I knew it was Makepeace’s right to keep it if he wanted.”
“And then you apparently decided to change the iron.”
Alvin nodded.
“Can you explain to the court your reasoning on the matter?”
“I don’t know that it could be called reasoning, rightly. It wasn’t rational, as Miss Lamer would have defined it. I just knew what I wanted it to be, really. This had nothing to do with going from prentice to journeyman smith. More like going from prentice to journeyman Maker, and I had no master to judge my work, or if I do, he’s not yet made hisself known to me.”
“So you determined to turn the plow into gold.”
Alvin waved off the idea with one hand. “Oh, now, that wouldn’t be hard. I’ve known how to change one metal to another for a long time—it’s easier with metals, the way the bits line up and all. Hard to change air, but easy to change metal.”
“You’re saying you could have turned iron to gold at any time?” asked Verily. “Why didn’t you?”
“I reckon there’s about the right amount of gold in the world, and the right amount of iron. A man doesn’t need to make hammers and saws, axes and plowshares out of gold—he needs iron for that. Gold is for things that need a soft metal.”
“But gold would have made you rich,” said Verily.
Alvin shook his head. “Gold would have made me famous. Gold would have surrounded me with thieves. And it wouldn’t have got me one step closer to learning how to be a proper Maker.”
“You expect us to believe that you have no interest in gold?”
“No sir. I need money as much as the next fellow. At that time I was hoping to get married, and I hardly had a penny to my name, which isn’t much in the way of prospects. But for most folks gold stands for their hard labor, and I don’t see how I should have gold that didn’t come from my hard labor, too. It wouldn’t be fair, and if it’s out of balance like that, then it ain’t good Making, if you see my point.”
“And yet you did transform the plow into gold, didn’t you?”
“Only as a step along the way,” said Alvin.
“Along the way to what?”
“Well, you know. To what the witnesses all said they seen. This plow ain’t common gold. It moves. It acts. It’s alive.”
“And that’s what you intended?”
“The fire of life. Not just the fire of the forge.”
“How did you do it?”
“It’s hard to explain to them as don’t have the sight of a doodlebug to get inside things. I didn’t create life inside it—that was already there. The bits of gold wanted to hold the shape I’d given them, that plow shape, so they fought against the melting of the fire, but they didn’t have the strength. They didn’t know their own strength. And I couldn’t teach them, either. And then all of a sudden I thought to put my own hands into the fire and show the gold how to be alive, the way I was alive.”
“Put your hands into the fire?” asked Verily.
Alvin nodded. “It hurt something fierce, I’ll tell you—”
“But you’re unscarred,” said Verily.
“It was hot, but don’t you see, it was a Maker’s fire, and finally I understood what I must have known all along, that a Maker is part of what he Makes. I had to be in the fire along with the gold, to show it how to live, to help it find its own heartfire. If I knew exactly how it works I could do a better job of teaching folks. Heaven knows I’ve tried but ain’t nobody learned it aright yet, though a couple or so is getting there, step by step. Anyway, the plow came to life in the fire.”
“So now the plow was as we have seen it—or rather, as we have heard it described here.”
“Yes,” said Alvin. “Living gold.”
“And in your opinion, whom does that gold belong to?”
Alvin looked around at Makepeace, then at Marty Laws, then at the judge. “It belongs to itself. It ain’t no slave.”
Marty Laws rose to his feet. “Surely the witness isn’t asserting the equal citizenship of golden plows.”
“No sir,” said Alvin. “I am not. It has its own purpose in being, but I don’t think jury duty or voting for president has much to do with it.”
“But you’re saying it doesn’t belong to Makepeace Smith and it doesn’t belong to you either,” said Verily.
“Neither one of us.”
“Then why are you so reluctant to yield possession of it to your former master?” asked Verily.
“Because he means to melt it down. He said as much that very next morning. Of course, when I told him he couldn’t do that, he called me thief and insisted that the plow belonged to him. He said a journeyman piece belongs to the master unless he gives it to the journeyman and, I think he said, ‘I sure as hell don’t!’ Then he called me thief.”
“And wasn’t he right? Weren’t you a thief?”
“No sir,” said Alvin. “I admit that the iron he gave me was gone, and I’d be glad to give that iron back to him, fivefold or tenfold, if that’s what the law requires of me. Not that I stole it from him, mind you, but because it no longer existed. At the time, of course, I was angry at him because I was ready to be a journeyman years before, but he held me to all the years of the contract anyway, pretending all the time that he didn’t know I was already the better smith—”
Among the spectators, Makepeace leapt to his feet and shouted, “A contract is a contract!”
The judge banged the gavel.
“I kept the contract, too,” said Alvin. “I worked the full term, even though I was kept as a servant, there wasn’t a thing he could teach me after the first year or so. So I figured at the time that I had more than earned the price of the iron that was lost. Now, though, I reckon that was just an angry boy talking. I can see that Makepeace was within his rights, and I’ll be glad to give him the price of the iron, or even make him another iron plow in place of the one that’s gone.”
“But you won’t give him the actual plow you made.”
“If he gave me gold to make a plow, I’d give him back as much gold as he gave me. But he gave me iron. And even if he had a right to that amount of gold, he doesn’t have the right to this gold, because if it fell into his hands, he’d destroy it, and such a thing as this shouldn’t be destroyed, specially not by them as has no power to make it again. Besides, all his talk of thief was before he saw the plow move.”
“He saw it move?” asked Verily.
“Yes sir. And then he said to me, ‘Get on out of here. Take that thing and go away. I never want to see your face around here again.’ As near as I can recall them, those were his exact words, and if he says otherwise then God will witness against him at the last day, and he knows it.”
Verily nodded. “So we have your view on it,” he said. “Now, as to Hank Dowser, what about the matter of digging somewhere other than the place he said?”
“I knew it wasn’t a good place,” said Alvin. “But I dug where he said, right down till I reached solid stone.”
“Without hitting water?” asked Verily.
“That’s right. So then I went to where I knew I should have dug in the first place, and I put the well there, and it’s drawing pure water even today, I hear tell.”
“So Mr. Dowser was simply wrong.”
“He wasn’t wrong that there was water there,” said Alvin. “He just didn’
t know that there was a shelf of rock and the water flowed under it. Bone dry above. That’s why it was a natural meadow—no trees grew there, then or now, except some scrubby ones with shallow roots.”
“Thank you very much,” said Verily. Then, to Marty Laws: “Your witness.”
Marty Laws leaned forward on his table and rested his chin on his hands. “Well, I can’t say as how I have much to ask. We’ve got Makepeace’s version of things, and we’ve got your version. I might as well ask you, is there any chance that you didn’t actually turn iron into gold? Any chance that you found the gold in that first hole you dug, and then shaped it into a plow?”
“No chance of that, sir,” said Alvin.
“So you didn’t hide that old iron plow away in order to enhance your reputation as a Maker?”
“I never looked for no reputation as a Maker, sir,” said Alvin. “And as for the iron, it ain’t iron anymore.”
Makepeace nodded. “That’s all the questions I’ve got.”
The judge looked back at Verily. “Anything more from you?”
“Just one question,” said Verily. “Alvin, you heard the things Amy Sump said about you and her and the baby she’s carrying. Any truth to that?”
Alvin shook his head. “I never left the jail cell. It’s true that I left Vigor Church at least partly because of the stories she was putting out about me. They were false stories, but I needed to leave anyway, and I hoped that with me gone, she’d forget about dreaming me into her life and fall in love with some fellow her own age. I never laid a hand on her. I’m under oath and I swear it before God. I’m sorry she’s having trouble, and I hope the baby she’s carrying turns out fine and strong and makes a good son for her.”
“It’s a boy?” asked Verily.
“Oh yes,” said Alvin. “A boy. But not my son.”
“Now we’re finished,” said Verily.
It was time for final statements, but the judge didn’t give the word to begin. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a long moment. “Folks, this has been a strange trial, and it’s taken some sorry turns along the way. But right now there’s only a few points at issue. If Makepeace Smith and Hank Dowser are right, and the gold was found not made, then I think it’s fair to say the plow is flat out Makepeace’s property.”
“Damn straight!” cried Makepeace.
“Bailiff, take Makepeace Smith into custody please,” said the judge. “He’s spending the night in jail for contempt of court, and before he can say another word I’ll inform him that every word he says will add another night to his sentence.”
Makepeace nearly burst, but he didn’t say another word as the bailiff led him from the courtroom.
“The other possibility is that Alvin made the gold out of iron, as he says, and that the gold is something called ‘living gold,’ and therefore the plow belongs to itself. Well, I can’t say the law allows any room for farm implements to be self-owning entities, but I will say that since Makepeace gave Alvin a certain weight of iron, then if Alvin made that iron disappear, he owes Makepeace the same weight of iron back again, or the monetary equivalent in legal tender. This is how it seems to me at this moment, though I know the jury may see other possibilities that escape me. The trouble is that right now I don’t know how the jury can possibly make a fair decision. How can they forget all the business about Alvin maybe or maybe not having scandalous liaisons? A part of me says I ought to declare a mistrial, but then another part of me says, that wouldn’t be right, to make this town go through yet another round of this trial. So here’s what I propose to do. There’s one fact in all of this that we can actually test. We can go out to the smithy and have Hank Dowser show us the spot where he called for the well to be dug. Then we can dig down and see if we find either the remnants of some treasure chest—and water—or a shelf of stone, the way Alvin said, and not a drop of water. It seems to me then we’ll at least know something, whereas at the present moment we don’t know much at all, except that Vilate Franker, God bless her, has false teeth.”
Neither the defense nor the prosecution had any objections.
“Then let’s convene this court at Makepeace’s smithy at ten in the morning. No, not tomorrow—that’s Friday, election day.
I see no way around it, we’ll have to do it Monday morning. Another weekend in jail, I’m afraid, Alvin.”
“Your Honor,” said Verily Cooper. “There’s only the one jail in this town, and with Makepeace Smith forced to share a cell in the same room with my client—”
“All right,” said the judge. “Sheriff, you can release Makepeace when you get Alvin back over there.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” said Verily.
“We’re adjourned till ten on Monday.” The gavel struck and the spectacle ended for the day.
17
Decisions
Because Calvin used to keep to himself so much in Vigor Church, he always thought of himself as a solitary sort of fellow. Everybody in Vigor who wasn’t besotted with Alvin turned out to be pretty much of an idiot, when it came down to it. What did Calvin want with pranks like luring skunks under porches or pushing over outhouses? Alvin had him cut out of anything that mattered, and any other friends he might have had didn’t amount to much.
In New Amsterdam and London, Calvin was even more alone, being concentrated as he was on the single-minded goal of getting to Napoleon. It was the same on the streets of Paris, when he was going around trying to get a reputation as a healer. And once he got the Emperor’s attention, it was all study and work.
For a while. Because after a few weeks it became pretty clear that Napoleon was going to stretch out his teaching as long and slow as possible. Why should he do otherwise? As soon as Calvin was satisfied that he had learned enough, he’d leave and then Napoleon would be the victim of gout. Calvin toyed with the idea of putting on some pressure by increasing Napoleon’s pain, and with that in mind he went and found the place in the Emperor’s brain where pain was registered. He had some idea of using his doodling bug to poke directly into that place of pure agony, and then see if Napoleon didn’t suddenly remember to teach Calvin a few things that he’d overlooked till now.
That was fine for daydreaming, but Calvin wasn’t no fool. He could do that agony trick once, and get one day’s worth of teaching, but then before he next fell asleep, he’d better be long gone from Paris, from France, and from anywhere on God’s green Earth where Napoleon’s agents might find him. No, he couldn’t force Napoleon. He had to stay and put up with the excruciatingly slow pace of the lessons, the sheer repetitiveness. In the meantime, he observed carefully, trying to see what it was Napoleon was doing that Calvin didn’t understand. He never saw a thing that made sense.
What was left for him, then, but to try out the things Napoleon had taught him about manipulating other people, and see if he could figure out more by pure experimentation? That was what finally brought him into contact with other people—the desire to learn how to control them.
Trouble was, the only people around were the staff, and they were all busy. What’s worse, they were also under Napoleon’s direct control, and it wouldn’t do to let the Emperor see that somebody else was trying to win control of his toadies. He might get the wrong idea. He might think Calvin was trying to undermine his power, which wasn’t true—Calvin didn’t care a hoot about taking Napoleon’s place. What was a mere Emperor when there was a Maker in the world?
Two Makers, that is. Two.
Who could Calvin try out his new-learned powers on? After a little wandering around the palace and the government buildings, he began to realize that there was another class of person altogether. Idle and frustrated, they were Calvin’s natural subjects: the sons of Napoleon’s clerks and courtiers.
They all had roughly the same biography: As their fathers rose to positions of influence, they got sent away to steadily better boarding schools, then emerged at sixteen or seventeen with education, ambition, and no social prestige whatsoever, whic
h meant that most doors were closed to them except to follow in their fathers’ footsteps and become completely dependent upon the Emperor. For some of them, this was perfectly all right; Calvin left those hardworking, contented souls alone.
The ones he found interesting were the desultory law students, the enthusiastically untalented poets and dramatists, the gossiping seducers looking around for women rich enough to be desirable and stupid enough to be taken in by such pretenders. Calvin’s French improved greatly the more he conversed with them, and even as he followed Napoleon’s lessons and learned to find what vices drove these young men, so he could flatter and exploit and control them, he also discovered that he enjoyed their company. Even the fools among them were entertaining, with their lassitude and cynicism, and now and then he found some truly clever and fascinating companions.
Those were the most difficult to win control of, and Calvin told himself that it was the challenge rather than the pleasure of their company that kept him coming back to them again and again. One of them most of all: Honoré. A skinny, short man with prematurely rotten teeth, he was a year older than Calvin’s brother Alvin. Honoré was without manners; Calvin soon learned that it wasn’t because he didn’t know how to behave, but rather because he wished to shock people, to show his contempt for their stale forms, and most of all because he wished to command their attention, and being faintly repulsive all the time had the desired effect. He might start with their contempt or disgust, but within fifteen minutes he always had them laughing at his wit, nodding at his insights, their eyes shining with the dazzlement of his conversation.
Calvin even allowed himself to think that Honoré had some of the same gift Napoleon had been born with, that by studying him Calvin might learn a few of the secrets the Emperor still withheld.
At first Honoré ignored Calvin, not in particular but in the general way that he ignored everyone who had nothing to offer him. Then he must have heard from someone that Calvin saw the Emperor every day, that in fact the Emperor used him as his personal healer. At once Calvin became acceptable, so much so that Honoré began inviting him along on his nighttime jaunts.
Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV Page 35
