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It's 1825, in a version of America's past that doesn't look like the history
books. The folk magic of the American people really works, though whites,
blacks, and reds go about their acts of power in different ways.
The land we call America isn't just one nation. New England is still a colony
of an England ruled over by the Lord Protector. The slave states of the south
are the Crown Colonies, ruled over by the King in exile. In the middle is the
United States, struggling to exist half slave and half free. This story,
however, takes place in Nueva Barcelona -- once called New Orleans, when the
French founded it.
To this city comes Alvin Smith, the seventh son of a seventh son, who makes
his living as a journeyman blacksmith; and beside him is Arthur Stuart, a free
young man, half white and half black, pretending to be Alvin's servant while
they're in slave country. They're on a mission here, and they're determined to
accomplish it ... if they can figure out what it is.
"Walking on Water" is the first third of The Crystal City, the
penultimate novel in the Tales of Alvin Maker. It will be serialized on the
Hatrack River site in 14 parts, a new one appearing every five days or so. (The
first two parts of this serialization appeared previously in The Rhinoceros
Times.)
The rumor mill went on. The yellow fever only added to it -- who's sick,
who's dead, who fled the city to live on some friend's plantation until the
plague passed.
The most important story, though, was no rumor. The army that the King had
been assembling was suddenly ordered back home. Apparently the King's generals
feared the yellow fever more than they feared the military might of Spain.
Which might have been a mistake. The moment the threat of invasion
disappeared, the Spanish authorities in Nueva Barcelona began arresting Cavalier
agents. Apparently the Spanish had been aware of the plots all along -- they
heard the same rumors as everyone else -- and had only been biding their time
before striking.
So it wasn't just the yellow fever that was decimating the English-speaking
population of Nueva Barcelona. Plenty of Americans and Yankees and Englishmen
were taking ship out of the city -- Americans in steamboats up the river,
Yankees and Englishmen in clippers and coastal traders heading out to sea, bound
for New England or Jamaica or some other British destination.
Cavaliers weren't finding it any easier than the French. The Pontchartrain
ferry and all the other passages out of the city were being watched, and those
who carried royal passports from the Crown Colonies were forbidden to leave.
Since the Cavaliers were the largest single English-speaking group, this left a
lot of frightened people trapped in Nueva Barcelona as the yellow fever made its
insidious way through the population.
Wealthy Spanish citizens headed for Florida. As for the French, they had
nowhere to go. The borders had been closed to them from the time Napoleon first
invaded Spain.
The result was a city full of fear and anger.
Alvin was shopping in the city, which was getting harder these days, with the
fever making farmers more reluctant to bring in their produce. He was looking
through as ratty-looking a bunch of melons as he'd ever seen when he became
aware of a familiar heartfire making toward him in the crowd. He spoke before
turning around. "Jim Bowie," he said.
Bowie smiled at him -- a big, warm smile, which made Alvin check to see if
the man's hand was on his knife. Nowhere near, but that didn't mean much, as
Alvin well knew, having seen the man in action.
"Still here in Barcy," said Bowie.
"I thought you and your expedition would be long gone."
"We almost made it before they closed the ports," said Bowie. "Cuss the King
for making such a mess of things."
Cuss the King? As if Bowie weren't part of an expedition committed to
spreading the power of the King into Mexican lands.
"Well, the fever will pass," said Alvin. "Always does."
"We don't have to wait for that," said Bowie. "Word's just come down from the
Governor-General of Nueva Barcelona. Steve Austin's expedition can go ahead. Any
Cavaliers who are with us can get passage out on a ship bound for the Mexican
coast."
"I reckon that gave recruitment a big boost."
"You bet," said Bowie. "The Spanish hate the Mexica worse than they hate
Cavaliers. I reckon it has something to do with the fact that King Arthur never
tore the beating hearts out of ten thousand Spanish citizens to offer as a
sacrifice to some heathen god."
"Well, good luck to you."
"Seeing you in the market here, I got to say, I'd feel a lot better about
this expedition iffen you were along."
So you can find a chance to stab me in the back and get even for my
humiliating you? "I'm no soldier," said Alvin.
"I been thinking about you," said Bowie.
Oh, I'm sure of that.
"I think an army as had you on their side would have victory in the bag."
"There's an awful lot of bloodthirsty Mexica, and only one of me. And keep in
mind I'm not much of a shot."
"You know what I'm talking about. What if all the Mexica weapons went soft or
flat-out disappeared, as once happened with my lucky knife?"
"I'd say that was a miracle, caused by an evil god who wanted to see slavery
expanded into Mexican lands."
Bowie stood there blankly for a moment, "So that's how it is. You're an
abolitionist."
"You knew that."
"Well, there's folks who are just agin slavery and then there's
abolitionists. Sometimes you can offer a man a good bit of gold and he don't
mind so much how many slaves another fellow owns."
"That would be someone else," said Alvin. "I don't have much use for gold. Or
expeditions against the Mexica."
"They're a terrible people," said Bowie. "Bloody-handed and murderous."
"And that's supposed to make me want to go fight them?"
"A man don't shrink from a fight."
"This man does," said Alvin. "And you would too, if you had a brain."
"The Mexica won't stand up to men as knows how to shoot. On top of that,
we're bound to have thousands of Reds from other tribes join with us to
overthrow the Mexica. They're tired of having their men sacrificed."
"But you'd restore slavery. They didn't like that either."
"No, we wouldn't enslave the reds."
"There's lots of black former slaves in Mexico."
"But they're slaves by nature."
Alvin turned away and picked a half-dozen melons to put in his poke.
Bowie poked him hard in the arm. "Don't you turn your back on me."
Alvin said nothing, just offered a couple of dimes to the melon seller, who
shook his head.
"Come on now, this is for kids in an orphanage," said Alvin.
"I know who it's for," said the farmer, "and the price of melons today is ten
cents each."
"What, it took so much more work to raise these? They plated with gold
inside?"
"Take it or leave it."
Alvin pulled some more money from his pocket. "I hope you're proud of
profiting from the neediness of helpless children."
"Nobody helpless in that
house," murmured the farmer.
Alvin turned away to find Bowie standing in his way.
"I said don't turn your back on me," Bowie murmured.
"I'm facing you now," said Alvin. "And if you don't take your hand off your
knife, you'll lose something dear to you -- and it ain't made of steel, no
matter how you brag to the ladies."
"You don't want me as your enemy," said Bowie.
"That's true," said Alvin. "I want you as a complete stranger."
"Too late for that," said Bowie. "It's friend or foe."
Alvin walked away with his poke full of melons, but as he went, he hotted up
the man's knife blade. Also the buttons on the front of his pants. In a few
moments, the threads around the buttons burned away and Bowie's pants came open.
And when he reached for his knife, the sheath burst into flame. Behind him Alvin
could hear the other shoppers laughing and hooting.
That was probably a mistake, he thought. But then, it was a mistake for Bowie
to show his face near Alvin again. Why did men like that refuse to accept defeat
and keep challenging someone they knew had the better of them?
Arthur Stuart woke up in the middle of the night with his bowels in a state.
It was sloshy in there, and so it wasn't something that could be relieved by the
soundless passing of gas and then pretending to be asleep if Alvin noticed. So,
resigned to his fate, he got up and carried his boots downstairs and put them on
by the back door and then slogged on out into the sultry night to the privy.
It was about a miserable half-hour in there, but each time he thought he was
done, he'd start to get up and his bowels would slosh again and he'd be back
down on the seat, groaning his way through another session. Each time of course,
thinking he was through, he'd wipe himself, so by the end he felt like his
backside was as raw as pounded flank steak. At least the cows are lucky enough
to be dead before they get turned into raw meat, he thought.
Finally he was able to get up without hearing more sloshing or feeling more
pressure, though that was no guarantee he wouldn't reach the top of the three
flights of stairs and have to go clomping back down. He worried, of course, that
maybe this had something to do with yellow fever, that Alvin might not have made
him healthy enough, that it was coming back.
Though when he thought about it, he reckoned it probably had more to do with
the street vendor who sold him a rolled pie this afternoon that might not have
been cooked as much as it ought.
He flung open the privy door and stepped outside.
Someone tugged at his nightshirt. He yelped and jumped away.
"Don't be afraid!" said Dead Mary. "I'm not a ghost! I know Africans are
afraid of ghosts."
"I'm afraid of people grabbing at my nightshirt when I come out of the privy
in the middle of the night," said Arthur Stuart. "What are you doing here?"
"You're sick," she said.
"No joke," he agreed.
"But you will not die this time," she said.
"And just when I was beginning to wish I could."
"So many people are going to die. And so many of them blame me."
"I know," said Arthur Stuart. "I went out to warn you, but you and your ma
were gone."
"I saw you go there and I thought, this boy is coming to give warning. So
tonight I think, maybe you're the one who can give us some food. We're very
hungry."
"Sure, come on in the house," said Arthur Stuart.
"No no," she said. "It's a strange house. Very dangerous."
Arthur Stuart made a disgusted face at her. "Yeah, so the stories they tell
about you are lies, but the
stories they tell about this house are all true, is that it?"
"The stories they tell about me are half true," said Dead Mary. "And if
the stories about this house are half true, I won't go in, no."
"This house has no danger for you, at least not from the folks that live
there," said Arthur Stuart. "And now I've been standing outside the privy this
long, I'm beginning to notice how bad it stinks here. So get your ma and come on
inside where the air is breathable. And make it quick or I'll be out here in the
privy again and then who's going to feed you?"
Dead Mary considered for a moment, then picked up her skirts and scampered
off into the wooded darkness near the back of the property. Arthur Stuart took
the opportunity to move farther away from the privy and closer to the kitchen.
A few minutes later, he had a candle lighted and Dead Mary and her mother
were gobbling slightly stale bread and bland cheese and washing it down with
tepid water. Didn't matter how it tasted, though. They were swallowing it down
so fast they probably couldn't tell bread from cheese.
"How long has it been since you last ate?" said Arthur Stuart.
"Since we hid," said Dead Mary. "Didn't have no food in the house though, or
we would have took it."
"All the time flies bite me," said her mother. "I got no blood now."
She did have a few welts from skeeter bites, now that Arthur Stuart looked at
her. "How you feeling?" he asked her.
"Very hungry," she said. "But not sick, me. That all done. Your
master, he make me well."
"He's not my master, he's my brother-in-law."
Dead Mary looked at him sideways. "So Alvin married an Africaine? Or you have
married his sister?"
"I'm adopted," said Arthur Stuart.
"So you're free?"
"I'm no man's slave," said Arthur Stuart. "But it's not exactly the same as
being free, not when everybody says, You're too young to do this and you're too
young to do that and you're too black to go here and you're too inexperienced to
go there."
"I'm not black," said Dead Mary, "but I rather be a slave than what I am."
"Being French ain't so bad," said Arthur Stuart.
"I mean one who sees who is sick."
"I know," said Arthur Stuart. "I was joking. Course, like Alvin says, if you
have to tell folks you was joking, it wasn't much of a joke, was it?"
"This Alvin," said Dead Mary. "What is he?"
"My brother-in-law," said Arthur Stuart.
"Non, non," said the mother. "How he make me so better?"
Suddenly Arthur was suspicious. They come in the middle of the night and ask
questions about Alvin. Perfectly good explanations for all of it -- why not be curious about Alvin! -- but it
could also be somebody had set out to trap Arthur Stuart into telling more than
he should.
"I expect you can ask him yourself in the morning."
"Got to be gone by morning," said Dead Mary. "Before light. People watch this
house. They see us, they follow us, they kill us. Burn us for witches, like in
New England."
"They haven't done that in New England in years," said Arthur Stuart.
"Your Alvin," said the mother. "Did he touch this bread?"
Alvin had, in fact, bought the baguettes. So Arthur hesitated a moment before
saying, "How should I know?" He knew that the hesitation was more of an answer
than his words. And without knowing why, he wanted to snatch the bread back and
send them on their way.
As if she had read his desire, or perhaps because she thought her mother had
been too obvious, Dead Mary said, "We go now."
"Inmediatement," echoed her mother.
"Thank you for the food," said Dead Mary.
Even as she was thanking him, her mother was putting a couple more baguettes
into her apron. Arthur would have stopped her -- that was supposed to be part of
breakfast in the morning -- but he thought of them out in the swamps for days
with nothing to eat and little to drink and he held his tongue. He'd go fetch
more baguettes in the morning.
He followed them out the door.
"Non," said the mother.
"You shouldn't go with us," said Dead Mary.
"I'm not," said Arthur Stuart. "I got to go sit in the privy again. So you
best move fast, cause I don't want the ensuing odor to offend your delicate
sensibilities."
"What?" said Dead Mary.
"I'm gonna let fly in the privy right quick, ma'am, so hightail it if you
value your nose."
They hightailed it, and Arthur Stuart went back to groaning over the privy
pot.
"Walking on Water" is Copyright © 2003 by Orson Scott Card. All rights
reserved.