“A crystal vision led you to the riverside and a canoe offered to carry you west,” said Suckling. “I was weaving when all that happened. I told Wieza and she said, ‘Probly not till tomorrow.’”

  “But this is still the very day I crossed the river,” said Alvin.

  “True enough, Wieza guessed wrong. But remember she said probly.”

  Alvin heard the sound of dishes being stacked or unstacked upstairs. “I didn’t mean to come around suppertime, this is just when we finished at Cahokia Mound.”

  “We eat when we eat,” said Suckling. “We carry food down to the Weaver, if they’re hungry, but mostly when we’re weaving, we don’t think of food.”

  “I could never do that job,” said Alvin. “I think of food a lot.”

  Suckling shrugged. “Wieza’s ready for you now.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “There was a change in the rhythm of the Loom,” he said. Then he ushered Alvin through a door and there was the Loom.

  It was twice as big as the one he had seen in Becca’s house over in the East. And the threads were different colors, not as vibrant, more subdued, but the cloth emerging from the Loom was intricately woven with beautiful fine lines and also wide lines of many threads together for a longish time.

  “Not the same Loom,” said Alvin.

  “No two Looms are alike, except for being looms,” said Suckling. “The power isn’t in the machine.”

  “It’s in the threads?” asked Alvin.

  “It’s the threads and the fingers of the Weaver,” said Suckling. “Took me ages to learn how to let my fingers find the way, and me not trying to control them.”

  “Hardest thing to learn,” said Alvin, “how not to try to control what you’re doing.”

  “What is it you have to not control?”

  “Crystal City,” said Alvin. “The scrying blocks and the people. The blocks will tell you what you demand that they show, but the more you push, the falser they get, until you ruin the block and it has to be replaced. People struggle with that one all the time.”

  “Reckon so,” said Suckling.

  “The people are the same. You can push and push them into doing something they don’t want to do, but turn your back and they spring right back to their old ways.”

  Through all this, Wieza kept weaving, her eyes closed, her face serene.

  “Howdy, Wieza,” said Alvin.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t bring Arthur Stuart with you, Maker,” she said softly.

  “I didn’t see him in the canoe with me, when I looked into the block.”

  “You didn’t bring him because you didn’t see him,” she said, “but you didn’t see him because you didn’t bring him.”

  “Now I wish I’d’ve thought of it,” said Alvin.

  “If the crystal didn’t guide you, I reckon it wasn’t all that important,” said Wieza. “You can go now.”

  Alvin was startled, but Suckling put a hand on his shoulder. “She’s talking to me,” he said. “She wouldn’t just give a command like that to you.”

  “Wasn’t a command,” said Wieza. “It was permission.”

  “And with that permission, I excuse myself. Should I tell them you’re eating with us?”

  “I don’t want to steal from your pot, Suckling,” said Alvin.

  “It’s not about the quantity of food,” said Suckling. “It’s about the number of plates and bowls and mugs on the table.”

  “Set a place for him,” said Wieza, “and toss a few more carrots into the pot. Or those new batata roots, but chop them up fine enough to cook quickly.”

  Suckling smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t ma’am me, you catfish tickling scrub of a man.”

  “That’s Wieza’s term of endearment for me,” said Suckling. “She pretends to find me annoying.”

  Wieza gave a little sniff, which sounded like a complete refutation of his word “pretends.”

  Suckling left the room with a smile, but through the outside door, so he’d trudge up the hill rather than climb the stairs.

  “Cantankerous boy,” said Wieza. “Thinks he knows everything, most especially me.”

  “Annoying, isn’t it?” said Alvin.

  “I took you for a know-everything kind of man,” said Wieza.

  “No, ma’am. Miss.”

  “Wieza,” she said, “or Mana, or Mana-Tawa, or Tawa, but no honorifics, please.”

  “Got it,” said Alvin. “I’m a wants-to-know-everything man.”

  “You’re never taken anyone on as a teacher.”

  “Tenskwa-Tawa,” said Alvin. “My father. Miss Margaret Larner, who is also now my wife, and she’s still teaching me. I learn from—”

  “Nobody taught you making,” said Wieza.

  “Nobody knows how better than me,” said Alvin. “But I still learned some things. ‘The Maker is the one who is part of what he makes.’”

  “A good maxim,” said Wieza. “That helped you?”

  “It helped me find my way to making gold out of iron,” said Alvin.

  “Where is that plow these days?” asked Wieza.

  “Wrapped in burlap among a lot of other things wrapped in burlap.”

  “Think you’ll ever need it again?” asked Wieza.

  “Unless you tell me otherwise, no. Not after I used it to help lay out and break ground for Crystal City.”

  “Good plan,” said Wieza. “You save yourself a lot of bother and heartache by not showing the thing to anybody, for any reason.”

  “I don’t hide it from Margaret or Measure or Verily or—well, I wouldn’t hide it from Tenskwa-Tawa or Ta-Kumsaw, iffen they ever come around.”

  “Listen to you. ‘Iffen,’ plus bad grammar. Don’t you remember anything Little Peggy taught you?”

  “She knows how I talk when I’m away from home,” said Alvin.

  “She doesn’t like it, though, does she?”

  “Says it reflects badly on her as a teacher.”

  “Why do you still do it, then?”

  “Because it’s a lot more fun than talking proper.”

  “Talking properly enhances communication and doesn’t put up class barriers.”

  “I’ll try to remember that, at least until I can figure out what the hell it means.”

  “Alvin Maker,” said Wieza, “why have you come to me?”

  “I don’t know,” said Alvin. “All I know is I saw myself crossing the Mizzippy in a canoe. Tenskwa-Tawa suggested I should come here.”

  “For what purpose?” asked Wieza.

  “For me to ask you why I came here? It wasn’t my idea. I didn’t think it was possible for a White to cross the Mizzippi.”

  “Many things that are thought to be impossible turn out to be essential, whether they’re possible or not.”

  “That’s it, I came here for the gnomic aphorisms.”

  “Do you want to know how your life ends?”

  “Not how, not when, not where,” said Alvin.

  “Sooner than I want,” said Wieza. “But not right at the doorstep.”

  “Do the threads tell you anything I ought to know?”

  Wieza thought, her eyes closed. Only after she had opened them again did she say, “Is it only in America that Puritans are persecuting people with knacks?”

  “In England, under the Lord Protector, there’s plenty of mercy-killing of witches, for only thuswise can they become purified and live harmlessly among their fellow men.” Alvin sighed. “I think of them in England, waiting for deliverance that only I can bring, but I need to be here in America.”

  “Better to be needed in two places rather than not being needed in any.”

  “What, are you becoming an oracle?”

  “Think of me as the natural successor to Poor Richard,” said Wieza.

  “Poor Wieza,” said Alvin, “are those dangers coming up primarily in just one area?”

  “It has been a nightmare in England for many decades, but all those who needed to leave because of their extraordinary abilities are gone,” said Wieza. “So there are a few hundred left, and they’ve learned to keep their mouths shut and their knacks unused.”

  “That’s just wrong.”

  “They’re alive. So it is working for them. The real problem comes in another place, within the English Empire. A place where the people are caught between hating their English overlords, but loving the land and the people. A place where the people’s religion tolerates knacks, but the religion of their overlords condemns knacks and seeks to use the death penalty to purify their church.”

  “It sounds to me that you’re angry,” said Alvin, “but you’re reluctant to tell me who these oppressed people are.”

  “Because I know you’ll immediately want to go there and help them develop their knacks and bring as many as you can to Crystal City, to be free.”

  “That sounds like me,” said Alvin. “I want to do exactly that.”

  “And we want you to be in favor of living in North America,” said Wieza. “Which requires that you avoid death and always return to your Crystal City.”

  “You’re saying I shouldn’t go to Ireland.”

  “I’m saying nothing of the kind. I’m not even saying that the threads show you do go to Ireland.”

  “Not saying it, but saying it anyway,” said Alvin.

  “I don’t know what’s best for you or for your people or, for that matter, for my people. I merely urge you to be careful not to die.”

  “You know I don’t have any money for a voyage like that.”

  “We don’t have any money at all,” said Wieza. “So I don’t think we can help.”

  “I wasn’t asking for money. I was asking how this would be possible.”

  “Your people aren’t rich, but they’re prosperous and many of them have full enough pockets to help you on your way.”

  “Why would they help me to leave them?” asked Alvin.

  “Because your purpose is to rescue persecuted people. People like them. Of course they want you to go—and then to come back. This much I’ll tell you: Only raise enough money to pay your passage there, not back again, and live from the generosity of strangers once you’re there.”

  “The Irish are poor,” said Alvin. “How would they have anything to share with me?”

  “Come now, Maker,” said Wieza. “You know that the poor always have more to share with beggars than the rich.”

  “True enough,” said Alvin. “I can see that I have to go to Ireland, booking passage only to get there, and bring people with knacks back to the Crystal City.”

  “That might be your best course, though as far as I know, it might be a terrible set of choices.”

  “Ambiguous answers,” said Alvin, “like every wise oracle.”

  “I don’t want to promise you certainties when I’m uncertain.”

  “I’m going, if we can raise the money.”

  “They speak English there, mostly, so you won’t have to learn Irish, though I imagine they’ll be gratified if you try.”

  “Arthur Stuart has the knack for languages, not me.”

  “And I say, all you need to do is learn a few words, including the words, ‘I’m so sorry, I don’t speak Irish.’”

  “I bet I’ll have to say that all the time.”

  “Practice is good.”

  “There’s one barrier that you haven’t mentioned. My wife, Margaret Larner, has suggested often that I should be done with traveling to bring people to the Crystal City.”

  “Whether she likes it or not, the threads don’t say. But if you go, she’ll remain close to you, and faithful, and when you come home, you’ll still belong to her and she to you.”

  “That’s quite a promise right there, with no weaseling.”

  “I don’t weasel,” said Wieza. “I don’t say things because you want to hear them.”

  “I know,” said Alvin. “I was being … I was jesting.”

  “You meant every word, and I understand why, because the threads are so nonspecific. I do know that very shortly this continent will be the host to hundreds of thousands of Irish people.”

  “Hundreds of thousands? With knacks?” asked Alvin.

  “I don’t know about knacks. I know the immigration will begin with your people, but why so many thousands more will follow I can’t guess. Your charms are not infinite.”

  “That’s the kindest way anyone has ever found to tell me that.”

  “Alvin, you have all the skills you need to do this work, and in my opinion it needs doing. But if you don’t go, maybe they’ll find their own way to Crystal City. I don’t know.”

  “But what you see is that I go,” said Alvin

  Wieza looked down at her weaving once again. “I only have another hour of light, even now with longer days. And I can hear that supper is ready upstairs.”

  “You’re sending me away.”

  “I’ve told you all that I can about what I have learned from your threads.”

  Alvin heard her words and parsed them carefully. She has told me all she can, but she has not told me all she knows.

  He bowed to her, and thanked her, and went up the stairs, closing the door behind him. She would not starve, and he needed to eat. Her people would bring food to her, or save food for her. Whatever was needful.

  To Alvin’s surprise, Tenskwa-Tawa was seated at the table. He looked up at Alvin and said, “The little girl invited me.”

  Alvin saw that a child of about five was beaming with pride. She had asked the Prophet to dinner when none of the big people had dared. And the Prophet had come and would eat at their table, along with the Maker. It was a delicious stew, with peppers from the south to make it tingle in Alvin’s mouth. I must bring some of those peppers home so we can liven up the fare at our own table.

  They offered Alvin a place to sleep, and he would have taken it, but he felt a sudden urgency to get home to Margaret and let her know what the Weaver had said and what he had decided to do. So when supper was over, he went outside with Tenskwa-Tawa, bade him farewell as one of the great friends of Alvin’s life, and then took off running for the shore of the Mizzippy. He got there just as the Pawnees were returning with their canoes from taking the gun smugglers across to White America.

  “The canoe will go eastward with little trouble,” a Pawnee said to him. “And then you can put the paddle aboard and walk away. It knows how to get back home.”

  As do I, thought Alvin. I always know the way home, because that’s where Margaret is.

  8

  Lisbon

  FRA ANGELICO NEVER made demands. Never asked favors, never begged for alms. He was a mendicant, and a mendicant who never begged was something of an anomaly. He was supposed to go about the world providing opportunities for people of plenty to share their wealth like good Christians. Instead he simply showed up at Father Lukasz’s modest home overlooking the sea just northwest of Lisbon and, without announcing himself, sat on a bench in the garden, looking, not at the beautiful view, but at the blossoms and bees.

  Eventually, the housekeeper came into Father Lukasz’s office and, on the pretext of picking up empty plates and glasses and cups for washing, said, “By the way, Father, he’s back again.”

  No need to explain who “he” was. “Bench in the garden?” asked Lukasz.

  “A different one this time, Father. Straight out of the conservatory door.”

  “A sunny spot, this time of day,” said Lukasz.

  “On a cool day, perhaps the best seat in the garden,” said the housekeeper. “You might try it sometime, if you should ever choose to give yourself a moment’s relaxation.”

  “I’ll rest on that bench next to Fra Angelico.”

  “Is he?” asked the housekeeper. “Angelic? Truly?”

  “Not for me to judge,” said Father Lukasz. “Only for me to be his friend when he happens to come by.”

  A few minutes later, his papers turned over, his books closed, Father Lukasz made his way out into the garden and sat down beside Fra Angelico. They sat there in silence for a long time, or it felt like a long time to Lukasz, anyway. They didn’t so much as glance at each other.

  “Portuguese is nothing like Polish,” said Fra Angelico, “and yet they say you speak it like a native.”

  “Portuguese is very much like Latin spoken through the nose,” said Lukasz, “and no Luso has ever mistaken me for a native.”

  Fra Angelico gave a tiny hoot of laughter.

  “I’ve never heard,” said Lukasz. “What’s your native language? Is ‘Angelico’ Spanish? Italian?”

  “Angelico was the name I chose when I set aside worldly concerns and entered into a life of poverty.”

  “Then where were you born? What is your native tongue?”

  “I was born a Muslim named Ali Jafar, in Lebanon, where I was converted with the help of Christian neighbors. I wasn’t baptized until I made my way to Greece, and then I went to Rome—”

  “Always a test of a convert’s faith,” said Lukasz.

  “I left the Church twice during my years in Rome, but I always came back to the fold, more determined than ever to prove my worthiness to Christ and to myself. I was not going to be a corrupt priest, you see. If I had wanted to be rich, I could have stayed in Beirut, where my family still owns several ships—”

  “Pirates, I assume,” said Lukasz.

  “Pirates are in Tripoli. We’re the civilized part of the Levant.”

  “Is any of what you’re telling me true?”

  “I was born,” said Fra Angelico. “After that I just followed the story wherever it wanted to go.”

  “The story I want to hear is about your most recent visit to the Holy See, and what you might have overheard from the Holy Father.”

  “I try not to eavesdrop, but he will speak quite loudly, because half the cardinals are deaf.”

  “Anything I should take particular interest in?”

  “The Holy Father is concerned about Ireland,” said Fra Angelico. “It seems the land is a hideous pit of witchcraft and conspiracy.”

  “Or so the English are fond of saying,” said Lukasz.

  “Miserable heretics, those English,” said Fra Angelico. “A thorn in the side of every good Catholic.”

  Lukasz said, “You know that here in Portugal, I have spent many years ministering among those whom the false English church accuses of witchcraft and expels from their island.”