ARMAND JEAN du Plessis de Richelieu, cardinal of the Church, first minister to His Most Christian Majesty Louis XIII, who had created him duke, gave his visitor a long regard. The man was altogether out of place in this chamber of blue-and-gilt elegance. Though decently clad for a commoner, he seemed unmistakably the seafarer he proclaimed himself. Of medium height, he had the suppleness of youth, and the dark hawk face was unlined; but something about him—perhaps the alert steadiness of the look he gave back—bespoke a knowledge of the world such as it takes many years in many comers to gain.
Windows stood open to summer fragrances blowing from the fields and woodlands of Poitou. The river Mable clucked past an ancestral castle lately rebuilt as a modern palace. Sunlight, reflected off the water, danced in shards among the cherubs and ancient heroes that adorned the ceiling. At a little distance from the cardinal’s thronelike chair, a kitten played with its shadow across the parquetry.
Richelieu’s thin fingers stroked the parchment on his lap. Its age-spotted dun made his robe appear blood-bright. For this meeting he had put on full canonicals, as though to shield against demons. But when he spoke, his voice held its wonted wintry calm.
“If this be not falsified, today shall perhaps see the strangest audience I have ever granted.”
Jacques Lacy bowed with more grace than would have been awaited. “I thank your eminence for it, and assure him all is true.” His speech was not quite of the region nor of any in France. Did it still bear a lilt of Ireland, or of some land farther yet? Certainly it showed that, if not formally educated, he had read many books. Where did a skipper plying between the Old World and the New find time?
“You may thank the bishop who prevailed upon me,” said Richelieu dryly.
“After the priest of St. Felix had prevailed upon another, Your Eminence.”
“You are a bold one indeed, Captain Lacy. Have a care. This matter is dangerous enough already.”
“I humbly beg Your Eminence’s pardon.” The tone was by no means insolent, but neither was it contrite.
“Well, let us get on with your business.” Even away from Paris, hours were precious; and the future might not hold a large store of them. Nevertheless Richelieu considered for a minute, stroking the beard that brought the gauntness of his features to a point, before ordering: “Describe exactly what you said to the priest and caused him to do.”
Surprise slightly shook Lacy’s self-command. “Your Eminence knows.”
“I will compare the accounts.” Richelieu sighed. “And you may spare the honorifics hereafter. We are alone.”
“I thank Your— Well.” The mariner, drew breath. “I sought him out at his church in St. Nazaire after I heard that ... monsieur would grace these parts, no enormous distance to travel from there, with his presence for a while. I told him of the casket. Rather, I reminded him, for he knew about it in a half-forgotten way. Naturally, that caught his attention, for nobody else remembered. It had simply gathered dust in the crypt these past four hundred years.”
The kitten pounced at Lacy’s foot. A smile in its direction flickered across the cardinal’s lips. His eyes, huge and feverishly luminous, turned back to the man. “Did you relate how it came to be there?” he pursued.
“Certainly, monsieur. That was evidence for my good faith, since the story had not become part of folklore.”
“Do so again.”
“Ah ... in those days a Breton trader named Pier, of Ploumanac’h, settled in St. Nazaire. It was hardly more than a village—not that it’s major these days, as monsieur doubtless knows—but on that account a house cost little, and the location was handy for the small coastwise vessel he acquired. Men could more easily change their homes and trades then than now. Pier prospered modestly, married, raised children. At last, widowed, he declared he’d enlist in the crusade—the final one, as it turned out—that King Louis the Saint was launching. By that time he was old, but remarkably well-preserved. Many people said he still looked downright youthful. He was never seen afterward, and folk supposed he had died.
“Before he left, he made a substantial donation to the parish church. That was common when someone was about to go on a long journey, let alone off to war. However, to this gift he attached a condition. The church was to keep a box for him. He showed the priest that it contained nothing more than a rolled-up parchment, a document of some importance and confidentiality; whereupon he sealed it. One day he or an heir would return to claim it, and the parchment itself would validate that claim. Well, a request of this kind was not unheard of, and the priest duly entered it in the annals. Lifetimes went by. When I appeared, I expected I’d have to find the record for today’s priest; but he’s an antiquarian and had browsed through the books.”
Richelieu lifted the parchment and read it for perhaps the seventh time, repeatedly glancing at Lacy. “Yes,” he murmured, “this declares that the rightful heir will look just like Pier de Ploumanac’h, whatever name he bears, and describes him in full. Excellently crafted, that description.” The cardinal fancied himself a man of letters, and had written and produced several dramas. “Furthermore, there is this verse in supposed nonsense syllables that the claimant will be able to recite without looking at the text.”
“Shall I do so for monsieur?”
“No need—thus far. You did for the priest, and later for his bishop. The proof was sufficient that he in turn wrote to the bishop of this diocese, persuading him to persuade me to see you. For the document concludes by declaring that the ... heir ... will carry tidings of the utmost importance. Now why did you refuse any hint of their nature to either prelate?”
“They are only for the greatest man hi the land.”
“That is His Majesty.”
The visitor shrugged. “What chance would I have of admission to the king? Rather, I’d be arrested on suspicion of—almost anything, and my knowledge tortured out of me. Your eminence is known to be more, m-m, flexible. Of an inquiring mind. You patronize learned and literary men, you’ve founded a national academy, you’ve rebuilt and generously endowed the Sorbonne, and as for political achievements—“ His words trailed off while he waved his hands. Clearly he thought of the Huguenots curbed, yet kept conciliated; of the powers of the nobles patiently chipped down, until now their feudal castles were for the most part demolished; of the cardinal’s rivals at court outwitted, defeated, some exiled or executed; of the long war against the Imperialists, in which France—with Protestant Sweden, the ally that Richelieu obtained—was finally getting the upper hand. Who really ruled this country?
Richelieu raised his brows. “You are very well informed for a humble sea captain.”
“I have had to be, monsieur,” replied Lacy quietly.
Richelieu nodded. “You may be seated.”
Lacy bowed once more and fetched a lesser chair, which he placed before the large one at a respectful distance, and lowered himself. He sat back, seemingly at ease, but a discerning eye recognized readiness to explode into instant action. Not that there was any danger. Guards stood just outside the door.
“What is this news you bear?” Richelieu asked.
Lacy frowned. “I do not expect Your Eminence to believe upon first hearing it. I gamble my life on the supposition that you will bear with me, and will dispatch trusty men to bring you the further evidence I can provide.”
The kitten frolicked about his ankles. “Chariot likes you,” the cardinal remarked, a tinge of warmth in his voice.
Lacy smiled. “They say monsieur is fond of cats.”
“While they are young. Go on. Let me see what you know about them. It will tell me something about you.”
Lacy leaned forward and tickled the kitten around the ears. It extended tiny claws and swarmed up his stockings. He helped it to his lap, chucked it under the chin and stroked the soft fur. “I’ve had cats myself,” he said. “Afloat and ashore. They were sacred to the ancient Egyptians; They drew the chariot of the Norse goddess of love. They’re often called familiars of witches, but that’s nonsense. Cats are what they are, and never try like dogs to be anything else. I suppose that’s why we humans find them mysterious, and some of us fear or hate them.”
“While some others like them better than their fellow men, God forgive.” The cardinal crossed himself in perfunctory fashion. “You are a remarkable man, Captain Lacy.”
“In my way, monsieur, which is quite different from yours.”
Richelieu’s gaze intensified. “I obtained a report on you, of course, when I heard of your wish,” he said slowly. “But tell me about your past life in your own words.”
“That you may judge them—and me, monsieur?” The mariner’s look went afar, while his right hand continued as the kitten’s playmate. “Well, then, I’ll tell it in a curious way. You’ll soon understand the reason for that, which is that I do not want to lie to you.
“Seumas Lacy hails from northern Ireland. He can’t readily say when he was born, for the baptismal record is back there if it’s not been destroyed; but on the face of it, he must be around fifty years old. In the year 1611 the English king cleared the Irish from the best parts of Ulster and settled it with Scottish Protestants. Lacy was among those who left the country. He took a bit of money along, for he came of a mildly well-to-do seafaring family. In Nantes he found refuge with old-established Irish trading folk, who helped him regularize his status. He took the French form of his Christian name, became a French subject, and married a French woman. Being a sailor, he made long voyages, as far as Africa, the West Indies, and New France. Eventually he rose to shipmaster. He has four children alive, their ages from thirteen to five, but his wife died two years ago and he has not remarried.”
“And when he heard that I would be in Poitou for several weeks, he went downstream to St. Nazaire and opened the casket that his ... ancestor had left in the church,” Richelieu said low.
Lacy looked straight at him. “Thus it is, Your Eminence.”’
“Presumably you always knew about it.”
“Obviously I did.”
“Although you are Irish? And no member of your family claimed the thing for four centuries. You yourself lived almost thirty years in nearby Nantes before you did. Why?”
“I had to be sure of the situation. At that, the decision was hard.”
“The report states that you have an associate, a redheaded man with a missing hand who goes by the name of MacMahon. Lately he has disappeared. Why?”
“No disrespect intended, Your Eminence, but I sent him off because I couldn’t foresee what would come of this, and it was wrong to risk his life also.” Lacy smiled. The kitten tumbled about his wrist. “Besides, he’s an uncouth sort. What if he gave offense?” He paused. “I took care not to know just where he’s gone. He’ll find out whether I’ve returned safely home.”
“You show a distrustfulness that is ... scarcely friendly.”
“On the contrary, monsieur, I’m putting a faith in you that I’ve put in none but my comrade for a very long time. I stake everything on the belief that you will not immediately assume I’m a madman, an enemy agent, or a sorcerer.”
Richelieu gripped the arms of his chair. Despite the robe, it could be seen how his wasted frame tautened. His eyes never wavered. “What, then, are you?” he asked tonelessly.
“I am Jacques Lacy from Ireland, your eminence,” the visitor replied with the same levelness. “The only real falsehood about that is that I was born there, for I was not. I did spend more than a centftry in it. Outside the English-held parts people have a large enough measure of freedom that it’s rather easy to change lives. But I fear they are all doomed to conquest, and the plantation of Ulster gave me an unquestionable reason for departing.
“I came back to where I had once been Pier de Ploumanac’h—who was not a Breton born. Before and after him I’ve used other names, lived in other places, pursued other trades. It’s been my way of surviving through the millennia.”
Breath hissed between teeth. “This is not a total surprise to me. Since I first heard from the bishop, I have been thinking... Are you the Wandering Jew?”
The head shook; the kitten sensed tension and crouched. “I know about rascals who’ve pretended they were him. No, monsieur, I was alive when Our Lord was on earth, but never saw him, nor knew about him till much later. Once in a while I have passed myself off as a Jew, because that was safest or simplest, but it was pretense, same as when I’ve been a Mussulman.” The mouth formed a grim grin. “For those roles, I had to get circumcised. The skin slowly grew back. On my kind, unless a wound is as great as the loss of a hand, it heals without scars.”
“I must think anew.” Richelieu closed his eyes. Presently his lips moved. They shaped the Paternoster and the Ave, while his fingers drew the Cross, over and over.
Yet when he was done and looked back upon the world, down at the parchment, he spoke almost matter-of-factly. “I saw at once that the verse here is not actually nonsense. It bears a certain resemblance to Hebraic, transcribed in Roman letters, but it is different. What?”
“Ancient Phoenician, Your Eminence. I was bora in Tyre when Hiram was its king. I’m not sure whether David or Solomon was reigning in Jerusalem just then.”
Again Richelieu closed his eyes. “Two and a half millennia ago,” he whispered. He opened them wide. “Recite the verse. I want to hear that language.”
Lacy obeyed. The rapid, guttural words rang through sounds of wind and water, through the silence that filled the chamber. The kitten sprang off his lap and pattered to a corner.
Stillness prevailed for half a minute before Richelieu asked, “What does it mean?”
“A fragment of a song, the sort men sang in taverns or when camped ashore during a voyage. ‘Black as the sky of night is my woman’s hair, bright as the stars are her eyes, round and white as the moon her breasts, and she moves like Ashtoreth’s sea. Would that my sight and my hands and myself lay upon all!’ I’m sorry it’s so profane, monsieur. It was what I could remember, and at that, I had to reconstruct it.”
Richelieu quirked a smile. “Yes, I daresay one forgets much in thousands of years. And in ... Pier’s day, clerics, too, were less refined than they are now.” Shrewdly: “Though did you expect that something like this would go a little way toward authenticating you, since it is the kind of thing that would stick in a man’s mind?”
“I am not lying to Your Eminence. In no particular.”
“In that case, you have been a liar throughout the ages.”
Lacy spread his palms. “What would monsieur have had me do? Imagine, if you please, even in this most enlightened of eras and countries, imagine I proclaimed myself openly. At best I’d be taken for a mountebank, and be lucky to escape with a scourging. I could easily go to the galleys, or hang. At worst I’d be condemned as a sorcerer, in league with Satan, and burned. Evil would befall me without my saying a word if I just stayed in one place, living on and on while they buried my sons and grandsons and I never showed signs of age. Oh, I’ve met folk—many live at this moment in the New World—for whom I could be a holy man or a god; but they’ve been savages, and I prefer civilization. Besides, civilization sooner or later overruns the savages. No, best I arrive at a new home as a plausible outsider, settle down a few decades, and at last move onward in such wise that people take for granted I’ve died.”
“What brought this fate upon you?” Richelieu signed himself anew.
“God alone knows, Your Eminence. I’m no saint, but I don’t believe I was ever an especially terrible sinner. And, yes, I am baptized.”
“When was that?”
“About twelve hundred years ago.”
“Who converted you?”
“I’d been a Christian catechumen a long time, but customs changed and— May I ask leave to defer telling how it happened?”
“Why?” demanded Richelieu.
“Because I must convince Your Eminence that I’m telling the truth, and in this case the truth looks too much like invention—“ Before those eyes, Lacy broke off, threw up his hands, laughed, and said, “Very well, if you insist. It was in Britain after the Romans were gone, at the court of a warlord. They called him Riot ham us, their High King, but mainly he had some cataphracts. With them he staved off the English invaders. His name was Artorius.”
Richelieu sat motionless.
“Oh, I was no knight of his, merely a trader who came by on my rounds,” Lacy stated. “Nor did I meet any Lancelot or Gawain or Galahad, nor see any glittering Camelot. Little of Rome lingered there. In fact, it’s only my guess that this was the seed corn of the Arthur legend. But monsieur will understand why I was reluctant to mention it at all, I was tempted to concoct a prosaic falsehood.”
Richefieu nodded. “I do understand. If you continue a liar, you are as skillful a one as I have found in a wide experience.” He forbore to inquire whether the Phoenician had embraced Christ out of expediency, the same as when he did homage to numerous other gods.
Lacy’s tone became wry. “I shan’t insult you by denying that I’ve given a great deal of beforehand thought to this interview.”
Richelieu plucked the parchment from his lap and cast it to the floor. It struck with a small rattling noise that drew the notice of the kitten. So much of a bodily gesture did the cardinal permit himself. He leaned forward, fingertips pressed together. Sunlight glistened off a great ring of gold and emerald. “What do you want from me?” he snapped.
“Your protection, monsieur,” Lacy replied, “for myself and any like me.” Color came and went in his lean cheeks, above the closely trimmed beard which had not a single silver hair.
“Who are they?”
“MacMahon is one, as your eminence must have guessed,” Lacy told him. “We met in France when it was still Gaul. I’ve encountered or heard of three more whom I wondered about, but death by mischance took them before I could be certain. And another I did feel sure of, but that person—disappeared. Our kind must be very rare, and shy of revealing themselves.”
“Vanishingty rare, as the learned doctor Descartes might put it,” said Richelieu with a flash of bleak humor.
“Some, over the centuries, may have tried to do what I am trying this day, and come to grief. No record of them would likely remain, if any was ever made.”
The kitten advanced cautiously toward the parchment. Richelieu sat back. Lacy had stayed well-nigh immobile, hands folded on the sober-hued knee breeches. “What more evidence have you to offer?” the cardinal asked.
Lacy gazed away at nothing visible. “I thought about this for lifetimes before I took the first measures.” His voice was methodical. “One gets into the habit of taking forethought and biding one’s time. Perhaps too much so. Perhaps opportunities slip by and it’s again too late. But one has learned, sometimes at a high price, monsieur, one has learned that this world is dangerous and nothing in it abides. Kings and nations, popes and gods—no irreverence meant—all go down in the dust or up in the flames, all too soon. I have my provisions, piecemeal made over the centuries, hoards buried here and there, tricks for changing identities, a tool chest of assorted skills, and ... my reliquaries. They are not all in churches, nor are they ail of them caskets containing parchments. But throughout Europe, northern Africa, hither Asia lie the tokens I planted whenever I could. My idea was that if and when a hope came along, I’d go to the nearest of those caches and retrieve what it held. That should give me my opening wedge.
“Now, if Your Eminence likes, I can describe quite a few that will be accessible to his agents. I can say exactly what the nature of each is, and where it reposes. In several cases, at least, it will definitely have been there for a long while. In every case, they can verify that Captain Jacques Lacy could not possibly have made the arrangements at any time in the half century that men have known him.”
Richelieu stroked his beard. “And meanwhile you expect to wait in custody, hostage to this material,” he murmured. “Yes. I have little doubt that if exists, for you show no signs of madness. Therefore you cannot be an impostor either, of any sort known to criminal justice. Unless, indeed, you really are a sorcerer, or an actual demon.”
A film of sweat shone on Lacy’s brow, though he responded steadily: “Holy water or exorcism won’t hurt me. You could have me put to the question. You’d find me healing quite fast from anything that didn’t kill or totally mutilate. I came here because everything I could find out made me think you are too wise—I do not say ‘merciful,’ monsieur, I say ‘wise, enlightened, intelligent’—to resort to that.”
“Others will urge me to do so.”
“Your Eminence has the power to refuse them. That’s another reason why I sought you. I’ve waited centuries for such a man at such a crux in history.”
The kitten arrived at the parchment, reached out, patted it. Curled back into a loose roll, it rustled and moved. Delighted, the kitten bounced to and fro.
Richelieu’s look smoldered. “Have you never before had a protector?”
Lacy sighed. “Once, monsieur. About three hundred years after my birth, in Egypt.”
“Tell me.”
“Like a number of Phoenicians—I’d resumed that na-_ tionality—I sailed in the service of Pharaoh Psammetk. You may have read of him under the name Psammetichus. He chanced to be strong and wise, like you, a man who saved his country from disaster and made it once more secure. Oh, I’d planned nothing, except to depart in my usual way when the tune came. But it also chanced this king lived long, reigning for more than fifty years. And I—well, it was a good service I was in; and when my first Egyptian wife died I married another and we were ... uncommonly happy. So I lingered, till the king saw past the mannerisms by which I feigned encroaching age. He persuaded me to confide in him, and took me under his wing. To him I was sacred, chosen by the gods for some purpose unknown but surely high. He set inquiries afoot throughout his realm and as far abroad as possible. Nothing came of them. As I said, my kind must be very rare.”
“What finally happened?”
“Psammetk died. His son Necho succeeded him, and had no love for me. Nor hatred, I suppose; but most of the priests and courtiers did, seeing me as a threat to their positions. It grew plain that I wouldn’t last in the royal compound. If nothing else, an assassin would get me. But the new king denied me leave to go. I think he feared what I might be able to do.
“Well, talk rose about dispatching a Phoenician crew to try sailing around Africa. I used what little influence was left me to help make that come about, and be named to it. An immortal man might prove valuable in unknown countries.” Lacy shrugged. “At the first opportunity, I jumped ship and made my way to Europe. I never found out whether the expedition succeeded. Herodotus said it did, but he was often careless about his information.”
“And I assume any record of you in Egypt has decayed, if your enemies didn’t expunge it,” Richelieu said. “Not that we can read those glyphs.”
“Please understand, monsieur,” Lacy urged, “I’ve seldom been in the presence of greatness. Psammetk, Artorius, two or three others, but usually insignificantly; and now Your Eminence. I’ve glimpsed more, but only when I was in a crowd. It’s almost always been wisest to stay obscure. Besides, I’m just an old sailor, with nothing special to offer.” Eagerly: “Except my memories. Think what I can mean to scholars. And if, under your protection, I draw other immortals to us think, my lord, what that will mean to ... France.”
Silence fell again, except for the wind, the river, a ticking dock, and the kitten that made a toy of the parchment. Richelieu brooded. Lacy waited.
At last the cardinal said: “What do you truly want of me?”
“I told you, monsieur! Your protection. A place in your service. The proclamation of what I am, and the promise that anyone like me can come to the same safe harbor.”
“Every rogue in Europe will swarm here.”
“I’ll know what questions to ask, if your learned men don’t.”
“M-m, yes, I daresay you will.”
“After you’ve made a few examples, that nuisance should end.” Lacy hesitated. “Not that I can foretell what the immortals will each prove to be like. I’ve admitted, my Mac-Mahon is a crude sort. The other whom I was sure of is, or has been, a prostitute, if she still lives. One survives as best one can.”
“But some may well be decent, or repent. Some may in truth be holy—hermits, perhaps?” Richelieu’s momentarily dreamy tone sharpened. “You have not sought for any new patron after that Egyptian king, more than two thousand years ago?”
“I told Your Eminence, one grows wary.”
“Why have you now at last let down your guard?”
“In part because of you,” Lacy answered at once. “Your Eminence hears much flattery. I needn’t go into detail about what’s the plain truth. I’ve already spoken it.
“But you by yourself wouldn’t have been enough. It’s also that I dare hope the times are right.”
The parchment jammed against a leg of the chair of state and resisted further attempts. The kitten mewed. Richelieu looked down and half reached. “Does my lord wish—?”
Lacy sprang to pick up the animal and proffer it. Richelieu took the small fuzzy form in both hands and placed it on his lap where the parchment had rested. Lacy bowed and resumed his seat.
“Continue,” the cardinal said while he caressed his pet.
“I have watched the course of things as well as a man can who’s in the middle of them,” Lacy said. “I’ve read books and listened to philosophers, and to common folk with native wit. I’ve thought. Immortality is lonely, monsieur. One has much time for thinking.
“It seems to me that in the past two or three centuries, a change has been coming upon the world. Not just the rise or fall of another empire; a change as great as the change from boy to man, or even worm to butterfly. Mortals feel it too. They speak of a Renaissance that began perhaps fourteen hundred years after Our Lord. But I see it more clearly. Pharaoh Psammetk—how far could his couriers go? How many could they find who’d understand my question that they bore, and not cower from it, ignorant and frightened? And he was as powerful a king as any in his age. The Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Persians, all the rest, they were little better as regards either knowledge or range. Nor did I ever again have access to a ruler I trusted; nor had I then thought to prepare myself for such a meeting. That came later.
“Today men have sailed around the globe; and they know it is a globe. The discoveries of such as Copernicus and Galileo—“ He saw the slight frown. “Well, be that as it may, men learn marvelous things. Europe goes forth into a whole new hemisphere. At home, for the first time since Rome fell, we begin to have good roads; one can travel swiftly, for the most part safely, over hundreds of leagues— thousands, once this war is over. Above all, maybe, we have the printing press, and more people every year who can read, who can be reached. At last we can bring the immortals together!”
Richelieu’s fingers amused the kitten, which was becoming drowsy, while his brows again drew downward. “That will take a considerable time,” he said.
“Oh, yes, as mortals reckon— Forgive me, Your Eminence.”
“No matter.” Richelieu coughed. “With none but Chariot to hear, we can speak plainly. Do you indeed believe mankind—here in France, let us say—has attained the security that you found to be such a delusion through all prior history?”
Taken aback, Lacy stammered, “N-no, monsieur, except that—I think France will be strong and stable for generations to come. Thanks largely to Your Eminence.”
Richelieu coughed afresh, his left hand to his mouth, his right reassuring the kitten. “I am not a well man, Captain,” he said, hoarsened. “I never have been. God may call me at any moment.”
Lacy’s visage took on a somehow remote gentleness. “I know that,” he said softly. “May He keep you with us for many years yet. But—”
“Nor is the king in good health,” Richelieu interrupted. “Finally, finally he and the queen are blessed with a child, a son; but the prince is not quite two years old. About when he was born, I lost Father Joseph, my closest councillor and ablest helper.”
“I know that also. But you have this Italian-born Mazarin, who’s much like you.”
“And whom I am preparing to be my successor.” Richelieu’s smile writhed. “Yes, you have studied us carefully.”
“I must. I’ve learned how, during my span on earth. And I, you too think far ahead.” Lacy’s words quickened. “I beg you, think. You’ll need a while to take this in, as well as to verify my story. I’m amazed how calmly you’ve heard me out. But—an immortal, in due course a gathering of immortals, at the service of the king—today’s king, and afterward .., his son, who should reign long and vigorously. Can you imagine what that will mean to his glory, and so to the glory ,. and power of France?”
“No, I cannot,” Richelieu snapped. “Nor can you. And I have likewise learned wariness.”
“But I tell you, Your Eminence, I can give you evidence—”
“Silence,” Richelieu commanded.
He rested left elbow on chair arm, chin on that fist, and I stared into space, as if beyond the walls, the province, the kingdom. His right hand gently stroked the kitten. It fell asleep, and he took his fingers away. The wind and the river rustled.
At last—the clock, on which Phaeton careered desperately in Apollo’s runaway sun chariot, had snipped off almost a quarter of an hour—he stirred and looked back at the other man. Lacy had gone Orientally impassive. Now his countenance came alive. The breath shivered in and out of him.
“I need not trouble myself with your tokens,” Richelieu said heavily. “I assume you are what you assert. It makes no difference.”
“I beg Your Eminence’s pardon?” Lacy whispered.
“Tell me,” Richelieu went on, and he came to sound nearly amiable, “do you, in the teeth of what you have seen and suffered, do you really believe we have won to a state of things that will endure?”
“N-no,” Lacy admitted. “No, I think instead everything is changing, everything, and this will go on and on, and nobody can guess what the end will be. But—because of it— we and the generations to come, our lives will be unlike any that ever were lived before. The old bets are off.” He paused. “I’ve grown weary of being homeless. You cannot dream of how weary. I’ll snatch at any chance of escape.”
Richelieu ignored the informal language. Perhaps he did not notice it. He nodded, and said as he might have crooned to one of his pets, “Poor soul. How brave you are, to have ventured this. Or else, as you say, how weary. But you have just your single life to lose. I have millions.”
Lacy’s head lifted stiffly. “My lord?”
“I am responsible for this realm,” Richelieu said. “The Holy Father is old and troubled and never had any gift of statecraft. Thus I am also responsible to a certain extent for the Catholic faith, which is to say Christendom. A good many people think I’ve given myself over to the Devil, and I confess to scorning most scruples. But in the end, I am responsible.
“You see this as an age of upheaval, but also of hope. You may be right, perhaps, but if so, you look on it with an immortal eye. I can only, I may only, see the upheaval. War devastating the German lands. The Empire—our enemy, yes, nevertheless the Holy Roman Empire that Charlemagne founded—bleeding to death. Protestant sect after sect springing up, each with its own doctrine, its own fanaticism. The English growing back to power, the Dutch growing newly to it, voracious and ruthless. Stirrings in Russia, India, China. God knows what in the Americas. Cannon and muskets bringing down the ancient strongholds, the ancient strengths—but what will replace them? To you, the discoveries of the natural philosophers, the books and pamphlets that pour from the printing presses, those are wonders that will bring a new era. I agree; but I, in my position, must ask myself what that era will be like. I must try to cope with it, keep it under control, knowing the entire while that I shall die unsuccessful and those who come after me will fail.”
His question lashed: “How then dare you suppose I would ever allow, yes, encourage and trumpet the knowledge that persons exist whom old age passes by? Should I— the doctor Descartes might say—throw yet another, wholly unknown and unmanageable factor into an equation already insoluble? ‘Unmanageable.’ Indeed that is the right word. The sole certainty I have is that this spark would ignite a thousand new religious lunacies and make peace in Europe impossible for another generation or worse.
“No, Captain Whatever-you-are,” he ended, glacial again in the way the world had come to fear, “I want no part of you or your immortals. France does not.”
Lacy sat equally quiet. He had had his reverses often before. “May I try to persuade Your Eminence otherwise, over the next few days or years?” he asked.
“You may not. I have too much else to occupy my mind, and too damnably little time left for it.”
Richelieu’s manner mildened. “Be at ease,” he said with half a smile. “You shall depart freely. Caution enjoins me to have you arrested and garroted within this hour. Either you are a charlatan and deserve it or a mortal danger and require it. However, I deem you a sensible man who will withdraw to his obscurity. And I am grateful to you for a fascinating glimpse of—what is best left alone. Could I have my wish, you would stay a while and we would talk at length. But that would be risky to me and unkind to you. So let us store this afternoon, not among our memories, but among our fantasies.”
Lacy sat silent for a bit, until he drew breath and answered, “Your Eminence is generous. How can you tell I won’t betray your trust and seek elsewhere?”
Richelieu chuckled. “Where else? You have called me unique. The queen of Sweden has a penchant for curious characters, true. She is still a minor, though, and when she does take power, well, everything I know about her makes me warn you most sincerely to stay away. You are already aware of the hazards in any other country that matters.”
He bridged his fingers. “In all events,” he continued, didactic, “your scheme was poor from the beginning, and my advice is that you abandon it forever. You have seen much history; but how much of it have you beenl I suspect that I, in my brief decades, have learned lessons in which your nose was never nibbed.
“Go home. Then, I strongly suggest, make provision for your children and disappear with your friend. Take up a new life, perhaps in the New World. Remove yourself, and me, from temptation, remembering what my temptation is. For you dream a fool’s dream.”
“Why?” Lacy croaked.
“Have you not guessed? Really, I am disappointed in you. Hope has triumphed over experience. Hark back. Remember how kings have kept wild animals in cages—and freaks at court. Oh, if I accepted you I might be honest in my intentions, and Mazarin might be after me; but what of young Louis XIV when he comes to his majority? What of any king, any government? The exceptions are few and fleeting. Even if you immortals were a race of philosophers who also understood how to rule me—do you suppose those who do rule would or could share power with you? And you have admitted you are only extraordinary in your lifespans. What can you become but animals in the royal menagerie, endlessly watched by the secret police and disposed of if ever you become inconveniently articulate? No, keep your freedom, whatever it costs you.
“You begged me to think about your proposal. I tell you to go and think about my counsel.”
The clock ticked, the wind blew, the river flowed.
From down in his throat, Lacy asked, “Is this Your Eminence’s last word?”
“It is,” Richelieu told him.
Lacy rose. “Best I leave.”
Richelieu’s lips contorted. “I do wish I had more time to give you,” he said, “and myself.”
Lacy approached. Richelieu extended his right hand. Lacy bowed and kissed it. Straightening, he said, “Your Eminence is as great a man as I have ever met.”
“Then God have mercy on humankind,” Richelieu replied.
“I shall never forget you.”
“I will bear that in mind for as long as is granted me. Farewell, wanderer.”
Lacy went to the door and knocked. A guard opened it. Richelieu signalled him to let the man by and close it again. Thereupon he sat with his thoughts. The sunlight lengthened. The kitten woke, scrambled down his robe, and frisked off in its own life.
OVER THE plain from the north the young men came a-gal-lop. The haste and rhythm of it were like the ripples that went through the grass beneath the wind. Sunflowers here and there swayed the same, lofty, petals as hot yellow as the light pouring across the world. Land and sky reached both unbounded, green seemed to meet blue but that was only at the edge of sight, distance went on and on farther than dreams could fly, A hawk rode the airflows, dipping and soaring, his wings twin flames. A flight of marshfowl lifted, so many that they darkened their quarter of heaven.
Children set to keep crows out of the fields were first to see the young men. The oldest boy among them ran back to the village, filled with importance; for Deathless had ordered that he be told of the return. Yet when the boy had passed inside the stockade and was among the houses, his courage faltered. Who was he to speak to the mightiest of all shamans? Dared he risk interrupting a spell or a vision? Women at their work saw him stand forlorn. One hailed him, “Oh6, Little Hare, what is in your heart?” But they were only women, the old men he glimpsed were only old men, and surely this was a thing of terrible power if Deathless cared so much about it.
The boy gulped and made for a certain house. Its dun sod loomed over him. When he came around its length to the front, the doorway gaped on a nightful cave where a single banked fire glimmered red. The families that shared it were elsewhere, doing their tasks or, if they had none, taking their ease down by the river. One did remain, the person for whom Little Hare had hoped, a man dressed in woman’s clothes, grinding corn. He looked up and asked in his mild way, “What do you wish, lad?”
Little Hare gulped. “The hunters come back,” he said. “Will you go tell the shaman, Three Geese?”
The noise of stone against stone ceased. The berdache rose. “I will,” he replied. Such as he had some power against the unseen, perhaps because the spirits made up to them for their lack of manliness. Besides, he was a son of Deathless. He dusted meal off his buckskin, uncoiled his braids, and departed at a dignified pace. Little Hare gusted relief before he started back to his duty. Eagerness tingled in him. What a brave sight the riders would be when they went by!
The shaman’s house stood next to the medicine lodge at the middle of the village. It was smaller than the rest because it was only for him and his family. He was there just then with his wives. Copperbright, mother of Three Geese, sat on the ground outside, watching over the two small daughters of Quail Wing while they played in the sun. Bent, half-blind, she was glad she could still help this much at her great age. In the doorway, Rain At Evening, who had been born the same winter as the berdache, helped a daughter of her own, Dawn Mist, ornament a dress with dyed quills for the maiden’s forthcoming marriage. She greeted the newcomer and, at his word, went inside to call her husband. Deathless came forth after a short while, still fastening his breechclout. Young Quail Wing peeped out from within, looking rumpled and happy.
“Ohe, father,” said Three Geese with due respect but not the awe that was in the likes of Little Hare. After all, this man had dandled him when he was a baby, taught him to know the stars and how to set snares and everything else needful or delightful—and, when it grew clear that the youth was not going to become fully a man, never lessened his love but accepted the fact with the calm of one who had watched hundreds of lives blow past on the wind. “They have seen Running Wolf’s party on the way back to us.”
Deathless stood quiet for a bit. When he frowned, a single wrinkle spread on his face. Sweat made his skin gleam over the springy muscles tike dew upon rock; his hair was like the rock itself, polished obsidian. “Are they sure that is who it is?” he asked.
“Why, who else?” replied Three Geese, astonished.
“Enemies—”
“Raiders would not come so openly, in broad daylight. Father, you have heard about the Pariki and their ways.”
“Oh, true, I have,” the shaman muttered, as if he had forgotten and needed reminding. “Well, I must make haste now, for I want to speak to the hunters alone.”
He went back into his house. Berdache and women exchanged looks where foreboding stirred. Deathless had spoken against the buffalo hunt, but Running Wolf had gotten his band together and left too swiftly for any real talk about it. Since then Deathless had brooded, and sometimes taken elders aside, who afterward kept silence themselves. What did they fear?
Soon Deathless reappeared. He had donned a shirt with strong signs burnt into the leather. White swirls of paint marked his countenance; a cap made from the pelt of a white mink encircled his brows. In his left hand he bore a gourd rattle, in his right a wand topped with a raven’s skull. The rest stood aside, even the children gone silent. This was no longer the kindly, rather quiet husband and father they knew; this was he in whom a spirit dwelt, he who never grew old, he who during the ages had guided his folk and made them unlike any other.
The hush followed him as he walked among the dwellings. Not every eye watched with the ancient reverence. Especially hi the heads of boys, several smoldered.
Through the open gate of the stockade he passed, and through the patches of corn, beans, and squash outside. The village stood on a bluff overlooking a broad, shallow river and the cotton woods along the banks. Northward the ground sloped into gently rolling hugeness. Hereabouts short-grass prairie gave way to tall-grass plain. Shadows went mysterious over green waves. The hunters were now quite near. Earth drummed to hoofbeats.
When he recognized the man afoot, Running Wolf signalled halt and reined in. His mustang whinnied and curvetted before standing quiet. Leggings held close against ribs, the rider sat the beast as if he had grown from it or it from him. His dozen followers were nearly as skillful. Under the sun, men and horses alike blazed with hie. In some hands were lances, on some shoulders hung bows and quivers. A knife of the finest flint rested at each waist. Headbands bore patterns of lightning bolt, thunderbird, hornet. From Running Wolf’s, feathers of eagle and jay thrust upward—did he think someday he would fly?
“Oh£, great one,” he said reluctantly. “You honor us.”
“How went the chase?” asked Deathless. , Running Wolf gestured backward at the pack animals. They bore hides, heads, haunches, humps, entrails, umbles, lavishness that strained against rawhide lashings. Already, as they rested, the grease and clotted blood were drawing flies. Exultance surged in his voice: “Never was such sport, never such slaughter! We left more than this behind for the coyotes. Today the people feast, no, they gorge.”
“The spirits will punish wastefulness,” Deathless warned.
Running Wolf squinted at him while retorting, “What, is Coyote not pleased that we feed his kind so well too? And the buffalo are as many as the blades of grass.”
“A fire can blacken the land—”
“And with the first ram it springs green anew.”
Breath hissed between teeth when the leader thus dared interrupt the shaman; but none of the band were really shocked. Two grinned.
Deathless ignored the breach, save that his tone grew harder still: “When the buffalo come by, our men go forth to take of them. First they offer the proper dances and sacrifices. Afterward I explain our need to the ghosts of the quarry, that they be appeased. So it has always been, and we have prospered in peace. Ill must come from leaving the ancient, proven path. I win tell you what atonement you can make, and lead you in it.”
“And shall we then return to waiting until a herd drifts within a day’s walk of here? Shall we try to cut a few out and kill them without any man getting gored or trampled? Or if we are lucky, may we stampede the whole herd over a drop, and see most meat rot before we can eat it? If our fathers brought home little, it was because they could do no more, nor could the dogs draw much on their wretched tra-vois.” Running Wolf’s words came in spate, never hesitating. Clearly he had awaited this encounter sometime upon his return, and planned what he would say.
“And if the new ways are unlucky,” exclaimed Red Hawk, “why do the tribes that follow them flourish so mightily? Shall they take everything, and we pick the carrion bones?”
Running Wolf frowned at his follower and beckoned for silence. Deathless sighed. His response was almost gentle: “I foreknew you would speak like this. Therefore I sought you out where nobody else can hear. It is hard for a man to admit he has been wrong. Together we shall find how you can set things right and still keep your pride. Come with me to the medicine lodge, and we will seek a vision.”
Running Wolf straightened, sheer against the sky. “Vision?” he cried. “I have had mine, old man, under the high stars after a day when we raced with the wind. I saw riches overflowing, deeds men will remember longer than you yourself have lived and will live, glory, wonder. New gods are in the land, fiery from the hands of the Creator, and— they ride on horses whose hoofs drum thunder and strike forth lightning. It is for you to make peace with them!”
Deathless lifted his wand and shook his rattle. Unease crossed faces. The mounts felt it and snorted, shied, stamped.
“I meant no offense, great one,” Running Wolf said quickly. “You wish us to talk free of fear and boasting alike, no? Well, if I got too loud, I’m sorry,” He tossed his head. “Nevertheless, the dream did come to me. I have told my comrades, and they believe.”
The magical things sank earthward in the shaman’s grasp. He stood for a little while unmoving, dark amidst the sunlight and grass, before he said low, “We must talk further and try to learn the meaning of what has happened.”
“Indeed we must.” Relief made Running Wolf’s tone kindly. “Tomorrow. Come, great one, let me lend you this, my prize stallion, and I will walk while you ride into the village, and you will bless us there as you have always blessed the returning hunters.”
“No.” Deathless went from them.
They sat mute, troubled, until Running Wolf laughed. He sounded like his namesake in wooded eastern country. “The joy among our people will be blessing enough,” he said. “And ah, for us the women, hotter than their fires!”
Most of them had to force an echo of his mirth. However, the act heartened them. He at the forefront, they struck heels to flanks and pounded whooping ahead. When they passed the shaman, they never glanced his way.
Upon his own entry, he found tumult. Folk seethed about the party, shouted, capered, exulted. Dogs clamored. The abundance was more than meat. It was fat, bone, horn, gut, sinew, all they needed to make nearly all they wanted. And this was the barest beginning. The hides would become coverings for tipis—those that were not traded eastward for poles—and then whole families could range as fax and as long as they wished, hunt, butcher, tan, preserve on the spot, before going on to the next kill and the next...
“Not overnight,” Running Wolf cautioned. Though he spoke weightily, his voice carried through the racket. “We have few horses yet. And first we must care for these that have served us.” Victory rang: “But we shall soon have more. Every man of us shall have his herd.”
Somebody howled, somebody else did likewise, and then the tribe was howling—his sign, his name, his leadership to be.
Deathless went around them. Few noticed him. Those looked away, abashed, before throwing themselves the more wildly back into jubilance.
The wives and youngest children of Deathless stood fast outside his house. There they could not see the crowd, but the cheers broke across them. Quail Wing’s gaze kept drifting yonder, wistfully. She was hardly more than a girl. He halted, confronted them. Lips parted but nobody had words.
“You were good to wait here,” he said at length. “Now you may as well go join the rest, help cook the food, share in the feast.”
“And you?” asked Rain At Evening low.
“I have not forbidden it,” he said bitterly. “How could I?”
“You counselled against the horses, you counselled against the hunt,” quavered Copperbright. “What madness is in them, that they no longer heed you?”
“They will learn better,” Rain At Evening avowed.
“I am thankful I shall soon be snug hi death.” Copperbright reached a gnarled hand toward Deathless. “But you, poor darling, you must live through that lesson.”
Quail Wing regarded her children and shuddered a little.
“Go,” said the man. “Have pleasure. Also, it will be wise. We must not let the folk feel divided. That could well destroy them. I always strove to keep my people together.”
Rain At Evening considered him. “However, you will stay away?” she asked.
“I will try to think what can be done,” he answered, and went into the medicine lodge. They lingered a bit, troubled, before leaving. His unsureness, the defiance of him, struck at the heart of everything by which they had lived.
With its entrance toward sunrise, the lodge had at this time of day gone gloomy. Light from doorway and smoke-hole lost itself in shadows brimming the circle of floor and walls. Things magical were blurs, gleams, hunched lumps. Deathless laid buffalo chips in the firepit at the center. He worked with drill and tinder until flames licked small. After he had banked the fire, he put tobacco that traders bore from afar into his calumet, kindled it, breathed deep, let the sacred dizziness whirl him off toward meditation.
Insight escaped him. He was wanly glad when a form darkened the doorway. By then the sun was on the horizon he could not see. Light tinged with yellow the smoke that drifted thick and savory off cookfires. The din of celebration was at once loud and remote, only half real.
“Father?” came a shy whisper.
“Enter,” said Deathless. “Be welcome.”
Three Geese stooped, passed through, settled on the opposite side of the pit. His face was barely visible, webbed and gullied with encroaching age, full of the concern that a berdache need not be ashamed to show. “I hoped you would give me refuge here, father,” he said.
“From what?” asked Deathless. “Has anyone abused you?”
“No, no. Everybody is gleeful.” Three Geese winced. “That is what hurts. Even the old men seem to have cast their doubts from them.”
“Save for you.”
“And perhaps a few others. How should I know? More of the women are with us in their hearts, but the men sweep them along. And it is a mighty gain that Running Wolf and his followers have made.”
“He promises unboundedly much in the future.”
Three Geese grunted an affirmative.
“Why do you not share these hopes?” Deathless asked.
“You are my father, who was always kind to me,” said the berdache. “I fear there will be scant kindness in the morrow that Running Wolf brings.”
“From what we know about the tribes who have gone the way of the horse, that is so.”
“I have heard men say—when I happened to be in earshot of man-talk—that some are forced to it.”
“True. They are thrust from their ancient homes, the eastern woodlands, out onto the prairie, by invaders from farther east. They say those invaders bear horrible weapons that shoot lightning. They get them from pale-skinned foreigners such as we hear rumors of. But others, like the Par-iki, have freely taken to the horse, and spill out of the west, out of the mountains yonder.
“They did not have to. We do not have to. I have spoken with travelers, traders, whoever bears news from outside. North of us the Ankara, Hidatsa, and Mandan still live in olden wise. They remain strong, well-off, content. I would have us do the same.”
“I have talked with two or three of those young men who brought horses despite your counsel, father,” said Three Geese. “One of them went forth with Running Wolf, first to practice, later on this buffalo hunt. They say—he says— they intend no disrespect, no overthrow of anything. They only want for us whatever is good in the new ways.”
“I know. I also know you cannot pick and choose. Change is a medicine bundle. You must refuse it altogether, or take the whole thing.”
Sorrow thinned the voice of Three Geese: “Father, I do not question your wisdom, but I have heard some who do. They wonder if you can understand change, you who live outside of time.”
Deathless smiled sadly through the dusk. “Strange, my son, strange that only now, when you near the end of your days, do we truly confide in each other.” He drew breath. “Well, I seldom speak of my youth. It was so long ago that it seems a half-forgotten dream. But as a boy I listened to my grandfather tell about the drought of many years that at last made our people trek eastward from the uplands, to find a better home here. We were still learning how to be plainsfolk when I became a man. I had no idea then of what I was. No, I expected to grow old and lie down to rest in the earth like everyone else. When, slowly, we came to see that this was not happening—what more soulshaking change than that can you imagine? Since it was clear the gods had singled me out, I must seek the shaman, have him teach me, change from man to disciple, finally from housefather to shaman myself. And the years flew by faster and faster. I saw girls born whom I wed when they were grown and buried when they had died, along with the children, the children. I saw more tribes pour onto the plains, and war begin among them. Do you know it was only hi your mother’s girlhood that we decided we must build a stockade? True, a certain awe of me has helped keep enemies off, but—Running Wolf has had a vision of new gods.”
He laughed wearily. “Yes, my son, I have known change. I have felt time rush by tike a river hi flood, bearing the wreckage of hopes downstream out of sight. Now do you understand why I have tried to bulwark my people against it?”
“They must heed you,” Three Geese groaned. “Make a medicine that will open their eyes and unstop their ears.”
“Who can make a medicine against time?”
“If anyone can, father, that one is you.” The berdache hugged himself and shivered, though the air was still mild. “This is a good life we have, a gentle life. Save it for us!”
“I will try,” said Deathless. “Leave me alone with the spirits.” He held out his arms. “But first come and let me embrace you, my son,”
The old cold body trembled against the firm warm flesh, then Three Geese said farewell and departed.
Deathless sat unmoving as embers faded and night welled up out of the earth. Noise continued, drum-throb, chants, feet stamping around an extravagant fire. It grew louder when the doorway brightened again. A full moon had risen. That gray went black as the moon climbed higher, though the ground outside remained hoar. At last the merrymaking dwindled until silence laid its robe over the whole village.
No vision had come. Perhaps a dream would. He had heard that men of nomad tribes often tortured themselves in hope that that would call the spirits to them. He would abide with the ancient unforced harmonies. On a few heaped skins, one atop him, he slept.
Stars fared across heaven. Dew glittered in deepening chill. The very coyotes had quieted. Only the river murmured, along the banks, under the cottonwoods, around the sandbars, on and on in retreat from the sinking moon.
Slowly, eastern stars dimmed as their part of the sky turned pale.
The hoofs that ueared scarcely broke the stillness. Riders dismounted, left their animals in care of chosen companions, approached on foot.
They meant to steal the horses hobbled outside the stockade. A boy’on watch saw them and sped for the gate. He screamed his warning till a warrior overtook him, A lancethrust cast him to hands and knees. Little Hare gobbled around the blood that welled into his mouth. He threshed about till he fell in a heap that looked very small. War cries ripped the dawn.
“Out!” roared Running Wolf before his house. “It’s an attack! Save the horses!”
He was the first to dash forth into the open, but men swarmed after him, mostly naked, clutching whatever weapons they had snatched. The strangers sprang at them. Alien words yowled. Arrows whirred. Men screamed when struck, less in pain than in fury. Running Wolf bore a tomahawk. He sought the thick of the foe and hewed, snarled, a tornado.
Bewildered, the villagers nevertheless outnumbered the raiders. The Pariki leader yelled commands. His men rallied to him, where he shook his lance on high. In a body, they beat the defenders aside and poured through the opened gate.
Dawnlight strengthened. Like prairie dogs, women, children, old folk fled back into houses. The Pariki laughed and pursued them.
Running Wolf lost time getting his dismayed fighters together. Meanwhile the Pariki made their quick captures—a woman or child seized, hauled outside, or fine pelts grabbed, a buffalo robe, a shirt with colorful quillwork— and regathered in the lane that went straight to the gateway.
One warrior found a beautiful young woman with an aging one and a crone in the smallest of the houses, next to a round lodge. She wailed and clawed at his eyes. He pinned her wrists at her back and forced her along, regardless of struggles or of the others who sought to hinder him. A man bounded from the lodge. He was unarmed apart from a wand and a rattle. When he shook them, the warrior hooted and swung tomahawk at him. The man must dodge back. The raider and his prey joined the rest of the war band.
Running Wolf’s men milled in the entrance. At their backs, those Pariki who had kept the horses arrived at a gallop, with the free beasts on strings. The villagers scattered. The forayers seized manes, got on with a single leap, dragged booty or captives up after them. The men who had already been riding helped injured comrades mount and collected three or four dead.
Running Wolf bayed, egged his people on. Their arrows were spent, but enough of them finally came at his heels that the foe made no further try for their herd. Instead the Pariki rode west, .bearing their prizes. Dazed with horror, the villagers did not give chase.
The sun rose. Blood glowed brilliant.
Deathless sought the battle place. Folk were getting busy there. Some mutilated two corpses the enemy had not recovered, so that the ghosts must forever drift in the dark; these persons wished aloud for live prisoners to torture to death. Others tended their own slain. Three Geese was among those who worked on the wounded. His hands eased anguish; his low voice helped men bite back any cries. Deathless joined him. The healing arts were part of a shaman’s lore.
“Father,” said the berdache, “I think we need you more to make medicine against fresh misfortune.”
“I know not if any power to do that is left in me,” Deathless replied.
Three Geese pushed a shaft deeper into a shoulder, until the barbed head came out the rear and he could pull the entire thing free. Blood welled, flies buzzed. He packed the hole with grass. “I am ashamed that I was not in the fight,” he mumbled.
“You are long past your youth, and fighting was never for you,” Deathless said. “Buf I— Well, this took me by surprise; and I have forgotten whatever I once knew about combat.”
Running Wolf stalked around, tallying the harm that had been done. He overheard. “None of us knew anything,” he snapped. “We shall do better next time.”
Three Geese bit his lip. Deathless went impassive.
Afterward he did undertake his duties as the shaman. With his disciple, who yesterday had never come near him, he led rites for the lost, cast spells for the clean mending of wounds, made offerings to the spirits. An elder mustered courage to ask why he did not seek omens. “The future has become too strange,” he answered, and left the man standing appalled. By eventide he could take a short span to console Quail Wing’s children for the taking of their mother, before he again went alone into the medicine lodge.
Next morning the people buried the dead. Later they would dance in their honor. First, though, the hale men gathered at a place which had known happier meetings. Running Wolf had demanded it—no council of elders calmly finding their way toward agreement, but every man who could walk—and none cared to gainsay him.
They assembled before a knoll near the bluff edge. Standing on it, a man could look south to the broad brown river and its trees, the only trees anywhere in sight; east to the stockade, the fields clustered about it, gravemounds both raw and time-worn; elsewhere across grass that billowed and shimmered, green and white, under a shrill wind. Clouds flew past, trailing shadows through a sunlight gone harsh. Thunderheads loomed blue-black in the west. From here the works of man seemed no more than anthills, devoid of life. Nothing but the horses moved yonder. They chafed at their hobbles, eager to be off and away.
Running Wolf mounted the knoll and raised an arm. “Hear me, my brothers,” he called. Wrapped in a buffalo robe, he seemed even taller than he was. He had gashed his cheeks for mourning and painted black bars across his face for vengefulness. The wind fluttered the plumes in his headband.
“We know what we have suffered,” he told the eyes and the souls that sought him. “Now we must think why it happened and how we shall keep it from ever happening again.
“I say to you, the answers are simple. We have few horses. We have hardly any men who are good hunters upon them, and we have no skilled warriors at all. We are poor and alone, huddled within our miserable walls, living off our meager crops. Meanwhile other tribes ride forth to garner the wealth of the plains. Meat-fed, they grow strong. They can feed many mouths, therefore they breed many sons, who in turn become horseman hunters. They have the time and the mettle to learn war. Their tribes may be strewn widely, but proud brotherhoods and sisterhoods, oath-societies, bind them together. Is it then any wonder that they make booty of us?”
His glance fell hard on Deathless, who stood in the front row under the hillock. The shaman’s gaze responded, unwavering but blank. “For years they stayed their hand,” Running Wolf said. “They knew we had one among us who was full of spirit power. Nonetheless, at last a band of young men resolved to make a raid. I think some among them had had visions. Visions come readily to him who rides day after day across empty space and camps night after night beneath star-crowded skies. They may have urged each other on. I daresay they simply wanted our horses. The fight became as bloody as it did because we ourselves had no idea of how to wage it. This too we must learn.
“But what the Pariki have found, and soon every plains ranger will know, is that we have lost whatever defense was ours. What new medicine have we?”
He folded his amis. “I ask you, Deathless, great one, what new medicine you can make,” he said. Slowly, he stepped aside.
Indrawn breath whispered among the men, beneath the damp chill that streaked from the stonnclouds. They stared at the shaman. He stood still an instant. Thereafter he climbed the knoll and confronted Running Wolf. He had not adorned himself in any way, merely donned buckskins. Against the other man, he seemed drab, the life in him faded.
Yet he spoke steadily: “Let me ask you first, you who take leadership from your elders, let me ask you and let you tell us what you would have the people do.”
“I did tell you!” Running Wolf declared. “We must get more horses. We can breed them, boy them, catch them wild, and, yes, steal them ourselves. We must go win our share of the riches on the plains. We must become skilled in the arts of war. We must find allies, enroll in societies, take our rightful place among folk who speak Lakotan tongues. And all this we must begin upon at once, else it will be too late.”
“Thus is your beginning,” said Deathless quietly. “The end is that you will forsake your home and the graves of your ancestors. You will have no dwellings save your tipis, but be wanderers upon the earth, like the buffalo, the coyote, and the wind.”
“That may be,” replied Running Wolf with the same lev-elness. “What is bad about it?”
A gasp went from most listeners; but several young men nodded, like horses tossing their heads.
“Show respect,” quavered an aged grandson of the shaman. “He is still the Deathless one.”
“He is that,” acknowledged Running Wolf. “I have spoken what was in my heart. If it be mistaken, tell us. Then tell us what we should do, what we should become, instead.”
He alone heard the answer. The rest divined it, and some wrestled with terror while others grew thoughtful and yet others shivered as if in sight of prey.
“I cannot.”
Deathless turned from Running Wolf, toward the gathering. His voice loudened, though each word fell stone-heavy. “I have no further business here. I have no more medicine. Before any of you were born, rumors came to. me of these new creatures, horses, and of strange men who had crossed great waters with lightnings at their command. In time the horses reached our country, and that which I feared began to happen. Today it is done. What will come of it, nobody can foretell. All that I knew has crumbled between my fingers.
“Whether you must change or not—and it may well be that you must, for you lack the numbers to keep a settlement defended—you will change, my people. You want it, enough of you to draw the rest along. I no longer can. Time has overtaken me.”
He raised his hand. “Therefore, with my blessing, let me go.”
It was Running Wolf who cried, “Go? Surely not! You have always been ours.”
Deathless smiled the least bit. “If I have learned anything in my lifetimes of years,” he said, “it is that there is no ‘always.’“
“But where would you go? How?”
“My disciple can carry out what is needful, until he wins stronger medicine from warrior tribes. My grown sons will see to the welfare of my two old wives and my small children. As for myself—I think I will fare alone in search of renewal, or else of death and an end of striving.”
Into their silence, he finished: “I served you as well as I was able. Now let me depart.”
He walked down the knoll and away from them. Never did he look back.
A THUNDERSTORM flamed and boomed during the night. By morning the sky was clear, everything asparkle, but the fields were too wet for work. That didn’t matter. Crops were coming along fine, alfalfa so deep a green you could nearly hear the color and corn sure to be knee-high by the Fourth of July. Matthew Edmonds decided that after chores and breakfast he’d fix up his plow. The colter needed sharpening and there was a crack in the whippletree. If he reinforced it, he could get yet another season’s use out of it before prudence called for replacement. Then Jane had a long list of tinkerings around the house for him.
When he closed the kitchen door, he stopped and drew a breath on the top step. The air was cool and damp, rich with smells of soil, animals, growth. On his right the sun had just cleared the woods behind the bam; the rooster weathervane there threw the light back aloft into a blue that had no end. The yard was muddy, but puddles shone like mirrors. He let his eyes run left, across silo, pigsty, chickenhouse, over his acres that rolled away beyond them bearing the earth’s abundance. Could he, could any man ever make any real return for the blessings of the Lord? . Something flickered at the edge of sight. He turned his head fully left. You could see the county road from here, about a hundred yards off along the west edge of the property. On the other side lay Jesse Lyndon’s land, but his bouse was to the north, hidden from this by its own patch of woods. The Edmonds’ drive was also screened from sight, :lined with apple trees whose fruit was starting to swell among pale-bright leaves. Out from between them ran a woman.
Chief, the half-collie, was helping ten-year-old Jacob take the cows to pasture. That was just as well. The woman acted scared when Frankie bounded forth barking at her, and he was only a fox terrier. At least, she shied from him and made fending motions. She kept on running, though. No, she staggered, worn out, close to dropping. All she had on was a thin dress that had once been yellow, halfway down her shins. A shift, would the ladies call it? Ragged, filthy, and drenched, it clung to a skin from under which the flesh had melted away. That skin was the shade of weak coffee.
Edmonds sprang down the steps and broke into a run himself. “You, Frankie, quiet!” he hollered. “Shut up!” The little dog skipped aside, wagged his tail, and lolled his tongue.
Man and woman met near the corncrib, stopped, stared at each other. She looked young, maybe twenty, in spite of what hardship had done to her. Feed her up and she’d be slender and tall instead of skinny. Her face was different from the usual, narrow, nose curved and not very wide, lips hardly fuller than on some whites, big eyes with beautiful long lashes. Hair, cut short, wasn’t really kinky; it would bush out if ever she let it grow. Edmonds thought with a pang how a slaveowner must have forced her mother or her grandmother.
The wind went raw in her throat. She tried to straighten, but a shiver took hold of her. “Peace,” Edmonds said. “Thee is with friends.”
She stared. He was a big sandy man, wearing clothes darker than most and a hat that was flat of crown, broad of brim. After a moment she gasped, “Yo’ Massa Edmonds?”
He nodded. “Yes.” His voice stayed easy. “And thee, I think, is a fugitive.”
She half lifted her hands. “Please, sub, please, dey’s aftuh me, right behin’ me!”
“Then come.” He took her arm and led her across the yard to the kitchen door.
The room beyond was large and sunny, clean-scrubbed but still full of sweet odors. Jane Edmonds was spooning oatmeal into Nellie, not quite one, while four-year-old William stood on a stool and manfully pumped water into a kettle fresh off the stove. Its earlier load steamed in a dishpan. Everybody stopped when Father and the Negress appeared.
“This girl needs shelter, and quickly,” Edmonds told his wife.
Herself fine-boned, hair peeping red from beneath a scarf, she dropped the spoon and clutched fist between fingers. “Oh, dear, we haven’t any real hiding place ready.” Decision: “Well, the attic must serve. Nothing in the basement to hide behind. Maybe the old trunk, if they search our house—”
The Negress leaned against the counter. She didn’t pant or shake now, but wildness still dwelt in her eyes. “Go with Jane,” Edmonds told her. “Do what she says. We’ll take care of thee.”
A brown hand snaked out. The big butcher knife almost flew from the rack into its grasp. “Dey ain’ gon’ take me live!” she yelled.
“Put that down,” Jane said, shocked.
“Child, child, thee must not be violent,” Edmonds added. “Trust in the Lord.”
The girl crouched back, blade bright in front of her. “Ah don’ wanna hurt nobody,” she answered, raspy-voiced, “but dey fin’ me, Ah kill manse’f ‘fo’ dey take me back, an’ fust Ah kill one o’ dem if’m de Lawd he’p me.”
Tears stood forth in Jane’s eyes. “What have they done, to drive thee to this?”
Edmonds cocked his head. “Frankie’s barking again. Don’t wait, let her keep the knife, just get her out of sight. I’ll go talk to them.”
Since his boots were muddy, he went straight out and around the corner of the house to the front porch on the west side. The drive branched off where the apple trees ended, an arm leading south. Edmonds hushed the dog and placed himself on the step before the screen door, arms folded. When the two men saw him, they cantered that way and drew rein.
Their horses were splashed but fairly fresh. At each saddle was sheathed a shotgun, at each belt hung a revolver. One rider was burly and blond, one gaunt and dark. “Good day, friends,” Edmonds greeted them. “What can I do for ye?”
“We’re after a runaway nigger woman,” said the blond man, “You seen her?”
“How does thee suppose I should know?” Edmonds replied. “Ohio is a free state. Any person of color passing by should be as free as thee or me.”
Hie dark man spat. “How many like that you got around here? They’re all runaways, and you damn well know it, Quaker.”
“I do not, friend,” said Edmonds with a smile. “Why, I could name thee George at the feed store, Caesar in the blacksmith shop, Mandy who keeps house for the Abshires—”
“Stop stallin’ us,” snapped the blond man. “Listen, this mornin’ early we seen her ourselves, way off. She ducked into some woods and shook us, but this here’s jest about the only way she could come, and we’ve found barefoot tracks in the road.”
“And up your drive!” crowed his companion,
Edmonds shrugged. “It’s getting to be summer. Children leave off their shoes whenever we let them.”
The blond man narrowed his eyes. “All right, sub,” he murmured. “If you’re so innocent, you won’t mind us lookin’ through your place, will you?”
“She could’a snuck in without you knowin’,” suggested the other. He forced a smile. “You wouldn’t like that, you with a wife and kids, I’ll bet. We’ll jest make sure for you.”
“Yen, you wouldn’t break the law,” said the first. “You’ll co-op-erate, sure. C’mon, Alien.”
He moved to dismount. Edmonds raised a thick, hard hand. “Wait, friend,” he called softly. “I am sorry, but I cannot invite either of ye in.”
“Huh?” grunted the blond man.
Alien snickered. “He’s skeered o’ what his wife’ll do if we track up her floor, Gabe. Don’t you worry, sun, we’ll wipe our feet real good.”
Edmonds shook his head. “It grieves me, friends, but neither of ye is welcome. Please go.”
“Then you are harborin’ the nigger!” Gabe exploded.
“I did not say that, friend. I simply do not wish to talk further with ye. Please get off my land.” ,
“Listen, you. Helpin’ a runaway, that’s a federal crime. Could cost you a thousand dollars or six months in jail. Law says you got to help us.”
“An iniquitous ordinance, as wrong as President Pierce’s designs on Cuba, plain contrary to God’s commandments.”
Alien drew his pistol. “I’ll give you a commandment,” he snarled. “Stand aside.”
Edmonds didn’t stir. “The Constitution grants my family and me the right to be secure in our home,” he told them with the same calm.
“By God—“ The weapon lifted. “You wanna get shot?”
“That would be a pity. Thee would hang, thee knows.”
Gabe gestured. “Put that away, Alien.” He straightened in the saddle. “Aw right, Mr. Niggerlover. Tam’t far to town. I’m goin’ right in there and git me a warrant and a deppity sheriff. Alien, you watch and see nobody sneaks out o’ here while I’m gone.” He squinted back at Edmonds. “Or you wanna be reasonable? Your last chance, boy.”
“Unless the Lord show me otherwise,” Edmonds said, “I believe I am the reasonable man here and ye, friends, are terribly mistaken.”
“Aw right! About time we started makin’ some examples. Watch close, Alien.” Gabe wheeled his horse and struck spurs to flanks. In a shower of mud, he galloped away. Frankie’s barking sounded thia against the hoofbeats.
“Now, friend, kindly remove thyself,” Edmonds said to Alien.
The slavecatcher grinned. “Oh, I think I’ll jest ride around, this fine mornin’. Won’t hurt nothin’, won’t poke in nowheres.”
“Thee will nevertheless be trespassing.”
“I don’t think the jedge’ll call it that, you a lawbreaker and all.”
“Friend, we in this family have always done our humble best to observe the law.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Alien unlimbered his shotgun and laid it across his saddlebow. He clucked to the horse and jogged off, around the yard, on patrol.
Edmonds went back inside. Jane was on hands and knees, cleaning tracks off her floors. She rose and stood quietly “while her husband told her what had happened. “What shall we do?” she asked.
“I must think,” he answered. “Surely the Lord will provide.” His gaze sought William. “My son, thee is happy, because thee is too young to know about evil. However, thee can help us. Pray keep silent, unless thee needs something for thyself, and then speak only to thy mother. Say no word to anybody else till I tell thee. Can thee do that?”
“Yes, father,” piped the boy, delighted by the responsibility.
Edmonds chuckled. “At thy age, it won’t be so easy. Later I’ll tell thee a story about another boy named William. He became famous for keeping still. To this day they call him William the Silent. But thee’d better hold thyself aside. Thee may go play with thy toys.”
The lad pattered off. Jane wrung her hands. “Matthew, must we endanger the children?”
Edmonds took both her hands in his. “A deal more dangerous it’d be to let wickedness go unresisted... Well, thee see to Nellie. I’d better catch Jacob on his way back. And we all have our work to do.”
His older-son, tanned and towheaded, came into sight from behind the barn as the man stepped out again. Edmonds walked unhurriedly to meet him. Alien saw from a distance and rode toward them. The big dog, Chief, sensed trouble and growled.
Edmonds quieted him. “Jacob,” he said, “go clean up.”
“Of course, father,” replied the boy, surprised.
“But don’t head for school. Wait in the house. I think I’ll have an errand for thee.”
The blue eyes widened, went to the approaching stranger, back to the parent, kindled with understanding. “Yes, sir!” Jacob scampered from them.
Alien halted. “What you been talkin1 about?” he demanded.
“Can’t a man speak to his son any more in these United States?” The smallest bit of harshness touched Edmonds’ tone. “I almost wish my religion would let me kick thee off my grounds. Meanwhile, at least leave us alone in our business. // doesn’t hurt, anybody.”
In spite of his weapons, Alien looked uneasy. Edmonds stood bear-powerful. “I got my livin’ to make, same as you,” the slavecatcher mumbled.
“Plenty of honest jobs around. Where is thee from?”
“Kentucky. Where else? Gabe Yancy and me, we been trackin’ that coon for days.”
“Then the poor creature must be half dead from hunger and weariness. The Ohio’s a wide river. Thee does not think she could swim across, does thee?”
“I dunno how, but them niggers got their ways. Some-body’d seen her yestiddy on t’ other bank, like she meant to cross. So we ferried over this mornin’, and sure ‘nough, found somebody else who’d sported what had to be her. And then we seen her ourselves, till she went into the woods. If only we’d’a had a dawg or two—”
“Brave men, chasing unarmed women like animals.”
The rider leaned forward. “Listen,” he said, “she ain’t jest any old runaway off a plantation. They’s somethin’ queer about her, somethin’ real wrong. That’s how come Mr. Montgomery was fixin’ to sell her south. He wants her back for more’n the money she’s worth.” He wet his lips. “And don’t you forget, if she gits away, you got a thousand dollars owin’ to him, ‘sides the fine and jail.”
“That’s if they can prove I had anything to do with her escape.”
Anger flashed: “You won’t lie your way out o’ this.”
“Lying is against the principles of the Society of Friends. Now kindly let me get on with my work.”
“So you don’t lie to nobody, huh? You ready to swear you ain’t hidin’ any nigger?”
“Swearing is against our religion too. We don’t lie, that’s all. It doesn’t mean we have to make conversation.” Edmonds turned his back and walked off. Alien didn’t pursue him, but after a minute took up his rounds again.
In the dimness of the wagon shed, Edmonds began to repair his plow. His mind wasn’t really on it. At last he nodded to “himself and returned to the house. Alien’s look followed his every step.
Inside, he asked Jane, “How’s our guest?”
“I took some food up to her,” she said. “Starved, she is. This is the first station she’s found.”
“She struck off entirely on her own?”
“Well, naturally she’d heard about the Underground Railroad, but only that it exists. She lived on roots, grubs, a few times a meal in a slave cabin. Swam the river last night during the storm, with a piece of driftwood to keep her afloat.”
“If ever anybody earned freedom, she has. How did she find us?”
“Came on a Negro man and asked. From what she told me, I think it must have been Tommy Bradford.”
Edmonds frowned. “I’d better speak to Tommy. He’s a steady fellow, but we’ll have to be more careful in future... Well, we’re pretty new in this traffic. Our first passenger.”
“Too soon,” she said fearfully. “We should have waited till thee had the hidey-hole dug and furnished.”
“This duty can’t wait, dear.”
“No, but— What shall we do? Those dreadful anti-Abolitionists in the neighborhood—they would be glad to see us ruined—”
“Speak no evil of people. Jesse Lyndon is misguided, but he’s not a bad man at heart. He’ll come to the light eventually. Meanwhile, I have a notion.” Edmonds raised his voice. “Jacob!”
The boy entered the plainly, comfortably furnished parlor. “Yes, father?” Excitement danced in his tone, his whole being.
Looming over him, Edmonds laid a hand on his shoulder. “Listen carefully, son. I have an errand for thee. We have a guest today. For reasons that thee doesn’t need to know, she’s staying in the attic. Her dress isn’t fit to be seen in. It was ail she had, but we will provide her decent clothes. I want thee to take the foul old garment elsewhere and get rid of it. Can thee do that?”
“Uh, y-yes, sure, but—”
“I told thee to listen close. Thee may go barefoot, which I know thee enjoys, and carry a basket. Pick up some dead-wood for kindling on thy way home, eh? Keep the dress down in the basket. We don’t want anybody offended. There is no hurry. Go across the road to the Lyndons’ woods. Do not gather sticks there, of course; that would be stealing. Saunter about, take pleasure in God’s beautiful creation. When thee is by thyself, put on a black kerchief thy mother will give thee to cover thy hair from the sun. It’s pretty muddy. Thee would do well to roll up thy sleeves and trousers, and pull the dress over’them. A smock to keep thine own clothes clean, understand? Just the same, I suppose thee’ll get thy head and arms and legs mired up.
Downright black, even. Well, I remember how I liked that when I was a kid.” Edmonds laughed. “Till I came back and my mother saw me! But this is a holiday for thee, so that such carelessness will be allowable.” He paused. “If perchance thee pass near the Lyndon house, so they spy thee, don’t linger. Don’t give them a good look, but run past quickly. They’d be scandalized to know young Jacob Edmonds was dressed and mucked like that. Dash back into the woods and bury the dress somewhere. Then circle back to our land and collect that kindling. Thee may take several hours all told.” He squeezed the shoulder and smiled. “How’s that sound, hm?”
His son had strained breathless at his words. Eagerness blazed: “Yes, sir! Wonderful! I can do it!”
Jane touched her man’s arm. “Matthew, dear, he’s only a child,” she protested.
Jacob reddened. Edmonds raised a palm. “There should be no danger to him if he’s as smart as I think he is. And thee,” he said sternly to the face below his, “remember Jesus doesn’t like bragging. Tomorrow I’ll give thee a note to the schoolmaster, that I needed thy help here today. That’s all that either of us has to tell anybody, ever. Got me?”
Jacob stood very straight. “Yes, sir, I do.”
“Good. I’d better get back to work. Have fun.” Edmonds stroked his wife’s cheek, softly and briefly, before he went out.
As he crossed the yard, Alien rode over and exclaimed, “What you been doin’?”
“Minding my own business,” Edmonds said. “We have a farm to run, if thee has not heard.” He went on into the shed and took up his task again.
It was near midday and he was growing hungry—Jacob doubtless wolfing the sandwiches Jane would have made— when the dogs barked and Alien whooped. Edmonds strolled into the warm sunlight. Alongside Gabe rode a man with curly brown hair and troubled youthful face. The three of them brought their horses to meet the farmer.
“Good day, friend Peter,” said Edmonds cheerily.
“Hi.” Deputy Sheriff Frayne bit the greeting off. He struggled a few seconds before he could go on. “Matt, I’m sorry, but this man’s gone to Judge Abshire and got a search warrant for your place.”
“That was not very neighborly of the judge, I must say.”
“He’s got to uphold the law, Matt. I do too.”
Edmonds nodded. “Everybody should, when it is at all possible.”
“Well, uh, they claim you’re hiding a fugitive slave. That’s a federal offense, Matt. I don’t like it, but it’s the law of the land.”
“There is another Law, Peter. Jesus Christ spoke it hi Nazareth. ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath set me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.”“
“No more of your preachin’, Quaker!” Gabe shouted. He was tired, sweaty, on edge after so much faring to and fro. “Deppity, do your duty.”
“Search as thee will, thee will never find a slave on this land,” Edmonds declared.
Frayne stared. “You swear to that?”
“Thee knows I can’t give an oath, Peter.” Edmonds stood silent for a spell. Then, in a rush: “But it’d bother my wife and frighten our little ones, having ye ransack the house. So I’ll confess. I did see a Negro woman today.”
“You <ftJ?”-Alleri yelled. “And didn’t tell us right off? Why, you son of a bitch—”
“That’ll do, fellow!” Frayne rapped. “Any more and I’ll run you in for abuse, threat, and menace.” He turned to Edmonds. “Can you describe what you saw?”
“She was wearing a ragged yellow dress, badly stained, and it was clear she was traveling north. Before ye spend valuable time here, why not ask the people in that direction?”
Frayne scowled. “Um, yeah,” he said reluctantly, “the Lyndons are about a mile off, and they ... don’t like Abolitionists.”
“They ,might have1 seen something too,” Edmonds reminded him. “They wouldn’t keep it from thee.”
“The tracks we followed—“ Alien began.
Edmonds chopped air with his hand. “Bah! Barefoot tracks are everywhere. Look, if ye find nothing, hear nothing, yonder, ye can come back and search us. But I warn ye, it’ll take hours, as many possible hiding places as a big farm has got, and meanwhile a fugitive who was not here would get clean away.”
Frayne stared hard at him. Gabe opened his mouth. “He’s right,” the deputy said. “Let’s go.”
“I dunno—“ Gabe muttered.
“You want my help or not? I been hauled from my business hi town for this. I’m not about to lose another half a day watching you bumble around if it’s needless.”
“You go ask,” Gabe told Alien. “My turn to guard this place.”
“I’ll come along,” Frayne said, and rode off with the warrant in his pocket.
Jane appeared on the kitchen steps. “Dinner!” she hailed.
“I regret we cannot invite thee to share our table,” Edmonds said to Gabe. “A matter of principle. However, we’ll send food out.”
The slavecatcher shook his head, furiously, and swatted at a fly. “To hell with you,” he grated, and trotted to a vantage point.
Edmonds took his time washing up. He had barely finished saying grace when the dpgs barked once more. Glancing out a window, he and Jane saw the deputy ride back into the yard and over to Gabe. After they had talked a minute, Gabe spurred his horse and disappeared between the apple trees. Soon he came back to sight on the road, northbound in a hurry.
Edmonds went onto the steps. “Will thee come eat with us, friend Peter?” he called.
The deputy rode to him. “Thanks, but, uh, I’d better get on back,” he replied. “Another time, or you folks come in to Molly and me, hey? Maybe next week?”
“I thank thee. We’ll be in touch. Did the Lyndons have news?”
“Yeah, Jesse told as how he glimpsed what’s got to be her. We’ve seen the last of those two boys for a while, I guess.” Frayne hesitated. “I never thought you’d give out information like that.”
“I really didn’t want my house invaded.”
“N-no, but still—“ Frayne rubbed his chin. “You said no-body’d ever find a slave on your land.”
“I did.”
“Then I s’pose you haven’t joined the Railroad after all. There was some rumors.”
“It’s better not to listen to gossip.”
“Yeah. And better not wonder too much.” Frayne laughed. “I’m off. Give your missus my best.” He turned serious. “If you did ever tell a lie—if you ever do—I’m sure it’s in a rightful cause, Matt. I’m sure God will forgive you.”
“Thee is kind, but thus far falsehoods haven’t been necessary. Not but what I don’t have plenty of other sins to answer for. Good day, friend, and give thy Molly our love.”
The deputy tipped his hat and departed. When he was out of earshot, Edmonds stated, “There are no slaves. It’s against Christ’s teaching that human beings should be property.”
He went back in. Jane and William cast him expectant looks. Nellie gurgled. He smiled as widely as a mouth could stretch. “They are gone,” he said. “They took the bait. Let us give thanks to the Lord.”
“Mr. Frayne?” asked his wife.
“He’s gone home.”
“Good. I mean, he’d be welcome, but now we can bring Flora down to eat with us.”
“Oh, is that her name? Well, certainly. I should have thought of that myself.”
Jane left the kitchen, set the ladder against a wall, climbed it, opened the trapdoor, murmured. In a short while she returned with Flora at her heels. The colored girl walked warily, eyes darting to and fro. A gown of the wife’s rustled about her ankles. The knife quivered in her hand.
“Thee can surely put that from thee now,” Edmonds told her. “We’re safe.”
“We really is?” Her gaze searched his. She laid the knife on the counter.
“Thee should never have taken it up, thee knows,” Edmonds said.
A measure of strength had risen in the worn body. Pride rang: “Ah wasn’ goin’ back there nohow. Ah’d die fust. Hope Ah’d kill fust.”
“’Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath; for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’” Edmonds shook his head sadly. “I dread His punishment of this sinful land when it comes.” He stepped forward and took the swart hands in his. “But let’s not talk of such things. On second thought, we should eat right away and give thanks later, when we can feel properly joyful.”
“What then, massa?”
“Why, Jane and I will see to it thee get a hot bath. Later thee’d better sleep. We can’t risk keeping thee here. The hunters might be back tomorrow. As soon as it’s dark, tbee and I’ll be off to the next station. Have no fears, Flora. Thee ought to reach Canada in another month or less.”
“Yo’s mighty good, massa,” she breathed. Tears trembled on her lashes.
“We try our best here to do what the Lord wants, as well as we can understand it. And by the way, Fm nobody’s master. Now for pity’s sake, let’s eat before the food gets cold.”
Shyly, Flora took Jacob’s chair. “Ah don’ need much, thank yo’, ma—suh an’ ma’m. The lady done gimme some-thin’ awready.”
“Well, but we’ve a plenty of meat to get onto those bones of thine,” answered Jane, and heaped her plate for her— pork roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, squash, beans, pickles, cornbread, butter, jam, tumbler on the side full of milk that had sat in the cool of the spnnghouse.
Edmonds kept up a drumfire of talk. “Here’s somebody who hasn’t heard my jokes and stories a score of times,” he said, and finally coaxed a few slight laughs from his guest.
After pie and coffee the grownups left William in charge of Nellie and retired to the parlor. Edmonds opened the family Bible and read aloud while they stood: “—And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land and unto a good land and a forge, unto a land overflowing with milk and honey—”
Flora shivered. The tears ran free down her cheeks. “Let mail people go,” she whispered. Jane hugged her and cried too.
When they had prayed together, Edmonds regarded the girl a while. She met his look, flinching no longer. A sunbeam through a window turned her darkly aglow. For the first time today he felt unsure of himself. He cleared his throat. “Flora,” he said, “thee needs rest before nightfall, but maybe thee would sleep better for having told us something about thyself. Thee doesn’t have to. It’s just, well, here we are, if thee would like to talk to friends.”
“’Tain’t much to tell, suh, an’ some of it’s too awful.”
“Do sit,” Jane urged. “Never mind me. My father is a doctor and I’m a farm wife. I don’t flinch easy.”
They took chairs. “Did thee have far to go?” Edmonds asked.
Flora nodded. “’Deed Ah did, suh. Don’ know how many miles, but Ah counted de days an’ nights. Sebenteen o’ dem. Often thought Ah was gonna die. Didn’ min’ dat too much, long’s dey didn’ catch me. Dey was gonna sell me down de ribber.”
Jane laid a hand over hers. “They were? What on earth for? What were you doing there? I mean, your duties—”
“Housemaid, ma’m. Nuss to Massa Mon’gom’ry’s chillun, like Ah was to hisself when he little.”
“What? But—”
“’Twasn’ too bad. But dey sell me, Ah knowed Ah’d be a field nan’ ag’in, or wuss. B’sides, Ah’d been thinkin’ ‘bout freedom a long time. We heahs things an’ passes dem on to each othah, us black folks.”
“Wait a minute,” Edmonds broke in. “Did thee say thee was a—a mammy to thy master when he was a child? But thee can’t be that old.”
As Flora answered, he thought that already she bore herself like one free and, yes, proud. Maybe too proud. “Oh, Ah is, suh. Dat’s wny dey was fixin’ to sell me. Wasn’ no thin’ Ah did wrong. But yeah by yeah, Ah saw how Massa an’ Missus was watchin’ me mo’ an’ mo’ strange, same as ever’body else. Den when she died—well, Ah knowed he couldn’ stan’ habbin’ me dere no mo’. Could yo’ of?”
Both the Edmondses sat silent.
“Happened befo’,” Flora went on after a minute during which the grandfather clock had seemed to tick as loud as doom. “Dat’s how come Ah knows what it’s tike bein’ a field ban’. Not jes’ watchin’ an’ feelin’ sorry fo’ dem. No, Ah been dere. When dat ol’ Massa sol’ me to Massa Mon’gom’ry’s father, he didn’ say nothin’ ‘bout man age den. So Ah Jiggered dere was man chance.” She stopped, swallowed, looked at the carpet. “Better not tell yo’ how Ah got’m to notice me an’ git me trained fo’ de big house.”
Edmonds felt his cheeks go fiery. Jane patted the hand beneath hers and murmured, “Thee needn’t tell, dear. What choice has a slave ever had?”
“None, ma’m, an’ dat’s a fack. Ah was ‘bout fo’teen de fust time Ah was sol’, away from mah father an’ mother, an’ dat man an’ bofe his sons—“ Flora’s glance touched the Bible on its stand. “Well, we s’pose fo’gibe, ain’t we? Po’ young Marse Brett, he done get killed in de waw. Ah saw his pappy when de wuhd come, an’ would’a felt sorry fo’ him ‘cep’ Ah was too tired fum wuhk.”
A chill went along Edmonds’ backbone. “What war?”
“De Rebolution, it was. Yay, eben us slabes heard ‘bout dat.”
“But then thee— Flora, no, it can’t be! That would make thee ... about a hundred years old.”
Again she nodded. “Ah buried mah men, mah real men, an’ Ah buried chillun, when dey wasn’ sol’ off fum me, an’—“ Suddenly her firmness broke. She reached out toward him. “It’s been too long!”
“Were you born in Africa?” Jane asked low.
Flora fought for calmness. “No, ma’m, in a slabe cabin. But mah dad, he was stolen away fum dere. Used to tell us young’uns ‘bout it, de tribe, de foe-rest—said he was part Ay-rab, an’—“ She stiffened. “He daid. Dey all daid, and nebba free, nebba free. Ah swo’ to mahse’f Ah was gonna be, in deir names Ah was. So Ah followed de Drinkin’ Gourd an’—an’ heah Ah is.” She buried her face in her hands and wept.
“We must be patient,” Jane said across the bowed head. “She’s overwrought.”
“Yes, what she’s been through, I suppose that would drive anybody kind of crazy,” Edmonds agreed. “Take her away, dear. Give her that bath. Put her to bed. Sit with her till she sleeps.”
“Of course.” They went their separate ways.
Though Jacob came home jubilantly, supper was quiet. His parents had decided to leave Flora resting as long as possible. Jane would pack a basket of food for the next stage of the journey. Once she said, “Matthew, I wonder what she meant by following the Drinking Gourd. Does thee know?”
“Yes, I’ve heard,” he answered. “It’s the Big Dipper. The one constellation nobody can mistake. They have a song about it, the slaves, I believe.”
And he wondered what other songs went secretly through the land, and what songs might awaken in the future. Battle hymns? No, please, God, of Thy mercy, no. Withhold Thy wrath that we have so richly earned. Lead us to Thy light.
As dusk fell, he and Jacob rolled forth the buggy and harnessed Si to it. “Can I come along, father?” the boy asked.
“No,” Edmonds said. “I’ll be gone till nearly sunrise. Thee has school tomorrow after chores.” He rumpled the bright head. “Be patient. Man’s work will come on thee quite soon enough.” After a moment: “Thee made a fine start today. I can only hope the Lord won’t later want far more.”
Well, but Heaven waited, the reward that has no bounds. Poor half-mad Flora. What if somebody really did have to live on and on tike that, in bondage or hunted or—whatever menial thing she could become in Canada? Edmonds shuddered. God willing, as she met friendship along the Underground Railroad, she ought to recover her wits.
A lantern glowed. Jane brought the fugitive out and helped her into the buggy. Edmonds mounted to the driver’s seat. “Good night, my dear,” he said, and gently touched whip to horse. Wheels creaked down the drive and onto the road. The air was still fairly warm, though a touch of oncoming cold went through it. The sky ranged from purple in the west to velvety black in the east. Stars were blinking forth. The Big Dipper stood huge. Presently Edmonds made out the Little Dipper and Polaris in it, that guided north toward freedom.