“I’m afraid you give me too much credit.”

  “I don’t publish such things, Alvin. They exist only in my memory. But you see how it works, não é? Vines of every kind, twining around steel machinery as the machine is plopping out candies. ‘All vines, smith, maker.’”

  “That’s clever. And I’ll never get that image out of my mind, so I can see that it works. I just wonder if I’m seeing the same kind of candy you’re seeing.”

  Lukasz laughed. “Does it matter?”

  “I first thought of horehound candies, cause that’s all we could get in the first few years of my life,” said Alvin. “I learned soon enough that horehound makes you need to piss, and as a child, when I overindulged in horehound I’d pee so much I got so thirsty that I drank all the water I could get and then I needed to piss even more. Taught me that I should suck on one horehound candy all day, and not take another till the next day.”

  Lukasz laughed again. “Sometimes you have dignity, and sometimes you talk about things that would get you thrown out of any drawing room in England.”

  “Good thing I’m not in any drawing rooms.”

  “The candy I think of is nougat, soft yet firm, formed into tubes. It’s laid down on the tray, the candymaker slides the tray along, as the machine pours out warm chocolate onto the nougat to enrobe it. You must enrobe it three times before it has the right balance with the nougat.”

  “Wish I knew what nougat is,” said Alvin. “I never heard of it.”

  “You will. At least if you ever get to the continent. The Swiss and the Dutch have different processes, but I imagine you’ll understand the recipe at once and never forget it.”

  “If that’s true,” said Alvin, “why does Peggy always throw me out of the kitchen when she’s working?”

  “I believe that’s frontier humor. She never does any such thing, does she?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Alvin. “We’re never in the same house more than a few weeks at a time.”

  “I don’t know much about marriage,” said Lukasz, “but when people spend too much time apart, friends or spouses, their affection cools, or turns toward others.”

  “What good is a promise if you don’t stick to it even when you don’t feel like it?” asked Alvin.

  “I wish more people understood that,” said Lukasz. “So many promises barely outlast the desire.”

  “There must be a thousand adults in our little community, Father Inquisitor. You have objects standing for all of them in your memory palace?”

  “And many more besides,” said Lukasz. “The exact number of convicted witches in our seaside encampment is eight hundred and forty-five.”

  “Only that many?”

  “The confessed witches awaiting trial are another hundred, and friends and relatives who are just glad to be in a place where there’s food, they bring the total over a thousand. Your estimate was solid enough.”

  What Alvin hadn’t yet brought up with Lukasz was the issue of money. Lukasz did disappear from time to time—long enough to take the train to Dublin, meet with somebody, and come back. When Alvin or one of the other Americans found a boat or talked about materials needed for the voyage or food that was needed, the money Lukasz handed over was always in florins or doubloons.

  “Lots of horehound grows around where I grew up and pretty much everywhere. When folks came over from Europe and Britain, a lot of them brought horehound with them as a medicine. Trouble with horehound is, it’s a kind of mint, so once you plant it, there’ll be new plants springing up all around till the Second Coming.”

  “Wouldn’t it be good if potatoes grew the same way,” said Lukasz.

  “It would,” said Alvin, “but better if you know how to cultivate them. To get any use out of potatoes, though, you got to dig them up. But if you leave them alone, they spread all right, though not as fast as horehound. Problem isn’t that potatoes don’t grow all right. Problem is there’s a blight grows faster.”

  “I wish there was something you could do about the blight,” said Lukasz.

  “I remember what I saw when I looked deep into it, and I’m still trying to think of a way to get at it. I don’t usually look for ways to kill something, because the blight is as alive as I am, and it’s only filling the measure of its creation. I just want to persuade it to stop eating potatoes.”

  “Unless that is the ‘measure of its creation,’” said Lukasz.

  “How did things go with the Bishop of Dublin?” asked Alvin.

  Lukasz smiled. “I haven’t met with him, probably never will. He can’t officially know that I exist, though stories about our Inquisition are spreading.”

  “So who do you meet with?”

  “Other missionaries,” said Lukasz. “Hermits and flagellants. And now and then a priest of the Church of Ireland who hates what folks keep doing to so-called witches. They talk up their moral qualms with other priests. The idea is to make it so, if the English Church were to stop the persecution of our people, and admit there’s no such thing as a witch, all the rank-and-file priests would sigh with relief and say, Thank God that wretched business is over.”

  “You want the members of the church to lead their pastors.”

  “Pastors can’t lead the sheep to a place they don’t want to go.”

  Alvin didn’t tell him that he shouldn’t use sheep as examples, because it was obvious Lukasz had never worked as a shepherd. Of course, Jesus told stories using sheep all the time, and the Bible didn’t say he was ever a shepherd. Sure, lambs were gentle, but grownup sheep were not. Especially not rams. Couldn’t get a flock to do anything, if the ram doesn’t agree with you, plus the ram will knock you over like a ninepin. Which was Lukasz’s point, after all, wasn’t it? Yes, flocks with rams in them weren’t so easy to lead.

  Yet I need them to be a flock with a lot of rams—so that every ship and boat and barrel that would be used for crossing the Atlantic could have a leader, someone whose knack allowed them to keep the passengers in their craft safe until they got across.

  I can’t send them separately. There are no knacks except mine and Measure’s that I can count on to keep people safe. Jedediah might be able to whip up a wind on demand, but what if he couldn’t control the direction of the wind? Westerlies prevailed in these latitudes, he’d been told, so if you let a ship in these waters have its head, the wind and currents would carry it right back to Ireland. Had to go west, relentlessly west. Do that long enough, and even though you might end up in some godforsaken corner of Canada, you’d reach land, North American land.

  “You’re thinking worrisome thoughts,” said Father Lukasz.

  “I am indeed.” And then an unexpected thought. “You don’t happen to have a knack for—”

  Luke waved off the question. “I cannot read minds, Alvin. I read faces, I read posture and gestures, I read actions and choices. That usually tells me what I need to know.”

  “My Margaret can see into people’s heartfires. She doesn’t read their minds, not like letters on a page. Most people think that they do all their thinking in words, but that just isn’t so. Margaret says—and I’ve done enough with heartfires to know she’s right—she says that the important thoughts don’t have words at all. After all, babies know how to think before they’re even born. They know what they want, they don’t know how to say it, so they cry till some adult gives it to them or does it for them. And they know when they got it, and they lie there practicing the use of their limbs until they can balance sitting up, and then they practice grasping and also cooing and making other noises, and the adults say, ‘Oh how cute, did he just say—’ and the baby knows that whatever sound he made pleased the adult. And they learn language.”

  “And immediately begin using it to deceive,” said Father Luke.

  “Of course,” said Alvin. “Manipulation of other people is what language is for. Little children have no idea what truth is—you mean I’m only allowed to say words that correspond with what actually happened? No! Says the baby, I need to say whatever it takes to get you to do what I need you, what I want you to do.”

  “So lying comes first.”

  “Trying to control what happens to you and around you, that’s why learning language is worth the effort.”

  “And from what philologist did you learn this?” asked Luke.

  “I don’t know a philologist from a frying pan,” said Alvin.

  “I don’t want to be around you when you’re cooking!”

  “You’re a philologist?”

  “You know my trade,” said Luke.

  “Smuggler.”

  Luke hesitated, then smiled. “Bringing in illegal stock to supply a desperate need. I accept that title.”

  “At the prices you charge, you’ll never break even.”

  “My account book is kept in heaven, and enumerates a different coin. ‘Even as ye have done it unto the least of…’”

  Alvin almost finished the quotation himself, but instead asked, “Why have you stopped?”

  “I find myself quoting the Protestant translation.”

  “I imagine it’s safer for you to quote from the King James Version. If you quote from the Catholic Bible, it might be a hint that you have actually read the Catholic Bible, which is a serious crime in England and, therefore, in Ireland.”

  “Yes,” said Luke. “It’s hard to not use what you know.”

  “I do that all the time—not using what I know. And when you add in all the things I don’t know that I should know, I’m surprised I can chew my own food without help.”

  “I like you, American Wizard.”

  “Just a man with a knack.”

  “American Maker. I like you. You are able to jest about your own vast abilities—”

  “Which you know about only by rumor,” said Alvin.

  “I know people who have seen what you can do, and I can’t doubt their solemn testimony.”

  “Have you been gathering testimony about me?” asked Alvin. “You’re not going to Inquisit me, are you?”

  “You are a heretic, aren’t you?”

  “Because I got me some knacks?”

  “Because you’re not a good Catholic.”

  “I’m not a bad Catholic, either.”

  Luke laughed. “I believe, Alvin Maker, that you will find a way to get your ragtag fleet and these Children of Ireland across the wide Atlantic and safely to America.”

  “I hope that’s a prayer you say often, because I don’t see an open road to that result.”

  “I believe you’re doing God’s work, Alvin,” said Luke. “So the way will be opened to you.”

  14

  CALVIN TRIED NOT to make a count of how many spectators had joined him and Goody Lamb and her husband at the shore of the Mizzippy. Naturally, the fogs of the river obscured everything to the west of them, but here at the shore, Calvin was fulfilling a promise.

  “What will we see in the crystal?” asked Goody Lamb.

  “I don’t know,” said Calvin. “I have nothing to do with what you see or don’t see. All I can do is help you make a crystal that truly belongs to you.”

  Her husband, Plato Lamb, thrust his hands into his pockets. “If this can be done, why hasn’t Alvin been doing it?”

  “Alvin doesn’t report to me, just as I don’t report to him. He makes crystals that can be looked into by anyone. He doesn’t think it matters to make crystal blocks for individuals, to see what they need.”

  “But you can’t say if we’ll see anything,” said Goody Lamb.

  “Indeed I cannot,” said Calvin. “All I can do is make the crystal using a few drops of your blood and water from the river. What it does or does not show you is dependent on the blood you contribute and what you look for when you gaze into the crystal.”

  “Sounds like hokum-pocus to me,” said Plato Lamb.

  “Sounds the same to me, too,” said Calvin. “Except I’m not going to say any magic words cause there’s nothing magic about it. Doesn’t Alvin say that all the time? No such thing as magic. Everything has a natural explanation. We just don’t know all the explanations yet.”

  “Hokum-pocus,” murmured Plato.

  “Then let’s not do it,” said Calvin. He stood up from his place at the water’s edge.

  The onlookers murmured and sighed.

  “Please,” said Goody Lamb.

  “I can’t predict what you’ll see or promise anything at all. That’s not how it works. You know how it is, inside the Crystal City. You look at the crystal blocks, you see what you see. Someone right beside you won’t see the same thing at all. Who controls that? Not me. Not Alvin. Not you. Images simply appear. Scenes like in a play.”

  “With singing and dancing?” asked Plato wryly.

  “I didn’t say it was a musical revue,” said Calvin.

  “So there’s nothing to see or do in Crystal City except go looking into blood-crystal blocks and try to make sense out of the random things they show.”

  * * *

  Calvin chuckled. “Brother Plato,” he said.

  “Not your kin,” murmured Plato.

  “Brother Plato, because that’s what folks call each other here, where knacks abound. Brother Plato, are you already bored with the fact that when you look into those crystals, you actually see things? Real-looking things?”

  “They don’t all look real,” said Plato.

  “My dear,” said Goody Lamb.

  “They don’t,” he said to her. “And I don’t know if anybody in Crystal City is one lick smarter or wiser or better-informed because of anything they saw in the Crystal.”

  “They’re free to stop looking,” said Calvin, “just as they’re free to keep looking, if that’s what suits them.”

  “You’re as vague as your brother,” said Plato.

  “I’m as clear as my brother,” said Calvin. “He won’t, and I won’t, ever promise anything we don’t know we can deliver. For all I know, when your wife puts her blood into the water, we’ll end up with a solid crystal block that shows nothing but the fog on the river. If that’s too vague for you, don’t look in the crystal.”

  “I don’t want my wife shedding blood into this filthy muddy river hoping to get a clear crystal out of it.”

  Calvin sighed. “Don’t you think you should have settled that between the two of you before you asked me to come out and make you a crystal from your own blood?”

  “I want you to do it, and if Plato Lamb makes a fuss about it that is between him and me, and won’t reflect bad on you at all.” She turned to her husband. “I wouldn’t give a fieldmouse’s fart over whether you want me to drip some blood in the river. It’s my blood, not yours, and my body and soul are not your property.”

  “I think we made some vows that kind of say—”

  “If they only ‘kind of’ say something, then they aren’t vows, are they? Our vows did not make me your property. I’m not a slave, am I? In the Crystal City, am I not a citizen with a vote, just like any man? May I not own property that does not belong to my husband?”

  “I can see the two of you should be talking to a lawyer,” said Calvin. “Settle this matter of who gets the say about Goody Lamb’s blood.”

  In reply, she pulled a long pin out of her hat. Immediately the hat blew away, even though there wasn’t much of a wind. Calvin raised his eyebrows, making sure he looked as surprised as anyone, even though he made the hat fly away.

  Everybody was watching the hat, except Calvin, who watched Goody Lamb jab herself in the wrist so hard he was sure it had gone all the way through.

  She turned her hand over, and indeed, the sharp end of the pin was sticking out of her wrist a good two inches. Goody Lamb made no sound of pain. Calvin looked at her in admiration.

  But he had a job to do. Her blood was dripping into the murky water and Calvin had to hurry to gather it into one place with his hands and his doodlebug, and then swirl it like a tornado in the water.

  The water clarified until it looked like pristine spring water, or the melt from winter icicles. Goody Lamb looked at it, breathing more heavily. Like a woman in the midst of lovemaking, thought Calvin. It was his favorite way to hear a woman breathe.

  Plato began humming—nervously, some kind of childish song with words Calvin couldn’t even make out. Plato was clearly disturbed—by his wife’s self-savagery? Or by the way the river water clarified?

  It took about ten minutes before the clear water with threads of blood in it began to solidify, and as it did, the blood attenuated and disappeared.

  “My blood is gone!” said Goody Lamb in dismay.

  “It is not gone,” said Calvin. “It’s doing its work in the water. It made the water crystal clear. Now it’s making the crystal solid.”

  Plato wasn’t saying anything about hokum-pocus, maybe because he could see it all happen with his own eyes.

  And very soon after, the block was a perfect cube of crystal. “Me oh my,” said Calvin. “I’ve never had one form up in a perfect cube before.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Goody Lamb eagerly.

  “Like I said, Goody Lamb, I’ve never seen one come out as a perfect cube before, so how am I supposed to know what it means?”

  “Don’t be short with my wife, sir,” said Plato Lamb. “She only wants to know what it means.”

  “And I want to tell her, but I can’t tell her what I don’t know. Should I make up some lies—of the sort sometimes referred to as hokum-pocus—so I can satisfy her curiosity for a moment, only to have her be sad because whatever I said didn’t come exactly true?”

  “No lying,” said Plato.

  “You can see by this crystal in my hands that I haven’t lied to you at all, not at all, so stop fretting about whether I’m lying or not.”

  “You’re the one who talked about things you said not coming true.”