Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV (18 page)

By the time he was ten, Verily no longer went openly into his father’s shop, and it seemed that his father didn’t mind having him stay away. Yet still it galled him to see the work that the shop turned out without his help, for Verily could sense the roughness, the looseness of the fit between the staves of the kegs and the barrels and the butts. It grated on him. It made him tingle between the shoulder blades just to think of it, until he could hardly stand it. He took to rising in the middle of the night and going into the shop and rebuilding the worst of the barrels. No one guessed what he had done, for he left no scraps
behind. All he did was unhoop the barrel, refit the staves, and draw the hoops back on, more tightly than before.

The result was, first, that Arise Cooper got a name for making the best barrels in the midlands; second, that Verily was often sleepy and lazy-seeming during the day, which led to more beatings, though nothing like as severe as the ones he got when he really concentrated on making things fit together; and third, that Verily learned to live with constant deception, hiding what he was and what he saw and what he felt and what he did from everyone around him. It was only natural that he should be drawn to the study of law.

Lazy as Verily sometimes seemed, he had a sharp mind with his studies—Arise and Wept both saw it, and instead of contenting themselves with the local taxpaid teacher, they sent him to an academy that was normally only for the sons of squires and rich men. The taunting and mockery that Verily endured from the other boys because of his rough accent and homely clothing was hardly noticeable to Very—such poundings as the boys inflicted on him were nothing compared to the beatings he was inured to, and any abuse that didn’t cause physical pain didn’t even enter Very’s consciousness. All he cared about was that at school he didn’t have to live in fear all the time, and the teachers loved it when he studied carefully and saw how ideas fit together. What he could only do in secret with his hands, he could do openly with his mind.

And it wasn’t just ideas. He began to learn that if he concentrated on the boys around him, really listening to them, watching how they acted, he could see them as clearly as he saw bits of wood, seeing exactly where and how each boy might fit well with each other boy. Just a word here and there, just an idea tossed into the right mind at the right time, and he made the boys of his dormitory into a cohesive band of loving friends. As much as they were willing, that is. Some were filled with deep rage that made it so that the better they fit, the more surly and suspicious they became. Verily couldn’t help that. He couldn’t change a boy’s heart—he could only help him
find where his natural inclinations would make him fit most comfortably with the others.

No one saw it, though—no one saw that it was Verily who made these boys into the tightest group of friends that had ever passed through this school. The masters saw that they were friends, but they also saw that Verily was the one misfit who never quite belonged. They could not have imagined that he was the cause of the others’ extraordinary closeness. And that was fine with Very. He suspected that if they knew what he was doing, it would be like being home with Father again, only now it wouldn’t be birch rods.

For in his studies, particularly in religion class, Verily finally came to understand what the beatings were all about. Witchery. Verily Cooper had been born a witch. No wonder his father looked haunted all the time. Arise Cooper had suffered a witch to live, and those canings, far from being an act of rage or hatred, were really designed to help Verily learn to disguise the evil born in him so that no one would ever know that Arise and Wept Cooper had concealed a witchchild in their own home.

But I’m not a witch, Verily finally told himself. Satan never came to me. And what I do causes no harm. How can it be against God to make barrels tight, or help boys find the best chance of friendship between them? How have I ever used my powers except to help others? Was that not what Christ taught? To be the servant of all?

By the time Verily was sixteen, a sturdy and rather good-looking young man of some education and impeccable manners, he had become a thoroughgoing skeptic. If the dogmas about witchery could be so hopelessly wrong, how could any of the teachings of the ministers be relied upon? It left Verily Cooper at loose ends, intellectually speaking, for all his teachers spoke as if religion were the cornerstone of all other learning, and yet all of Very’s actual studies led him to the conclusion that sciences founded upon religion were uncertain at best, utterly bogus at worst.

Yet he breathed no word of these conclusions. You could be burned as an atheist just as fast as you could be burned as a witch. And besides, he wasn’t sure he didn’t believe in
anything.
He just didn’t believe in what the ministers said.

If the preachers had no idea of what was good or evil, where could he turn to learn about right and wrong? He tried reading philosophy at Manchester, but found that except for Newton, the best the philosophers had to offer was a vast sea of opinion with a few blocks of truth floating here and there like wreckage from a sunken ship. And Newton and the scientists who followed him had no soul. By deciding that they would study only that which could be verified under controlled conditions, they had merely limited their field of endeavor. Most truth lay outside the neat confines of science; and even within those boundaries, Verily Cooper, with his keen eye for things which did not fit, soon found that while the pretense of impartiality was universal, the fact of it was very rare. Most scientists, like most philosophers and most theologians, were captives of received opinion. To swim against the tide was beyond their powers, and so truth remained scattered, unassembled, waterlogged.

At least lawyers knew they were dealing with tradition, not truth; with consensus, not objective reality. And a man who understood how things fit together might make a real contribution. Might save a few people from injustice. Might even, in some far distant year, strike a blow or two against the witchery laws and spare those few dozen souls a year so incautious as to be caught manipulating reality in unapproved ways.

As for Arise and Wept, they were deeply gratified when their son Verily left home expressing no interest in the family business. Their oldest child, Mocky (full name: He Will Not Be Mocked Cooper) was a skilled barrelmaker and popular both inside and outside the family. He would inherit everything. Verily would go to London and Arise and Wept would no longer be responsible for him. Verily even gave them a quit-claim against the family estate, though they hadn’t asked for it. When Arise accepted the document, twenty-one-year-old Verily took
the birch rod from where it hung on the wall, broke it over his knee, and fed it into the kitchen fire. There was no further discussion of the matter. All understood: What Verily chose to do with his powers was his own business now.

Verity’s talents were immediately noticed. He was invited to join several law firms, and finally chose the one that gave him the greatest independence to choose his own clients. His reputation soared as he won case after case; but what impressed the lawyers who truly understood these things was not the number of victories, but rather the even larger number of cases that were settled—justly—without even going to trial. By the time Verily turned twenty-five, it was becoming a custom several times a month for both parties in hotly contested lawsuits to come to Verily and beg him to be their arbiter, completely sidestepping the courts: such was his reputation as a wise and just man. Some whispered that in due course he would become a great force in politics. Some dared to wish that such a man might someday be Lord Protector, if that office were only filled by election, like the presidency of the United States.

The United States of America—that motley, multilingual, mongrel, mossbacked republic that had somehow, kingless and causeless, arisen by accident between the Crown Lands and New England. America, where men wearing buckskin were said to walk the halls of Congress along with Reds, Dutchmen, Swedes, and other semi-civilized specimens who would have been ejected from Parliament before they could speak a word aloud. More and more Verily Cooper turned his eyes to that country; more and more he yearned to live in a place where his gift for making things fit together could be used to the fullest. Where he could join things together with his hands, not just with his mind and with his words. Where, in short, he could live without deception.

Maybe in such a land, where men did not have to lie about who they were in order to be granted the right to live, maybe in such a land he could find his way to some kind of truth,
some kind of understanding about what the universe was for. And, failing that, at least Verily could be free there.

The trouble was, it was English law that Verily had studied, and it was English clients who were on the way to making him a rich man. What if he married? What if he had children? What kind of life would he make for them in America, amid the forest primeval? How could he ask a wife to leave civilization and go to Philadelphia?

And he wanted a wife. He wanted to raise children. He wanted to prove that goodness wasn’t beaten into children, that fear was not the fount from which virtue flowed. He wanted to be able to gather his family in his arms and know that not one of them dreaded the sight of him, or felt the need to lie to him in order to have his love.

So he dreamed of America but stayed in London, searching in high society to find the right woman to make a family with. By now his homely manners had been replaced by university fashion and finally with courtliness that made him welcome in the finest houses. His wit, never biting, always deep, made him a popular guest in the great salons of London, and if he was never invited to the same dinners or parties as the leading theologians of the day, it was not because he was thought to be an atheist, but rather because there were no theologians regarded as his equal in conversation. One had to place Verily Cooper with at least one who could hold his own with him—everyone knew that Very was far too kindhearted to destroy fools for public entertainment. He simply fell silent when surrounded by those of dimmer wit; it was a shameful thing for a host when word spread that Verily Cooper had been silent all night long.

Verily Cooper was twenty-six years old when he found himself at a party with a remarkable young American named Calvin Miller.

Verily noticed him at once, because he didn’t fit, but it wasn’t because of his Americanness. In fact, Verily could see at once that Calvin had done a good job of acquiring a veneer of
manners that kept him from the most egregious faux pas that bedevilled most Americans who attempted to make their way in London. The boy was going on about his effort to learn French, joking about how abominably untalented he was at languages; but Verily saw (as did many others) that this was all pretense. When Calvin spoke French each phrase came out with splendid accents, and if his vocabulary was lacking, his grammar was not.

A lady near Verily murmured to him, “If he’s bad at languages, I shudder to imagine what he’s
good
at.”

Lying, that’s what he’s good at, thought Verily. But he kept his mouth shut, because how could he possibly know that Calvin’s every word was false, except because he knew that nothing fit when Calvin was speaking? The boy was fascinating if only because he seemed to lie when there was no possible benefit from lying; he lied for the sheer joy of it.

Was this what America produced? The land that in Verily’s fantasies was a place of truth, and this was what was spawned there? Maybe the ministers were not wholly wrong about those with hidden powers—or “knacks,” as the Americans quaintly called them.

“Mr. Miller,” said Verily. “I wonder, since you’re an American, if you have any personal knowledge of knacks.”

The room fell silent. To speak of such things—it was only slightly less crude than to speak of personal hygiene. And when it was rising young barrister Verily Cooper doing the asking . . .

“I beg your pardon?” asked Calvin.

“Knacks,” said Verily. “Hidden powers. I know that they’re legal in America, and yet Americans profess to be Christian. Therefore I’m curious about how such things are rationalized, when here they are considered to be proof of one’s enslavement to Satan and worthy of a sentence of death.”

“I’m no philosopher, sir,” said Calvin.

Verily knew better. He could tell that Calvin was suddenly more guarded than ever. Verily’s guess had been right. This
Calvin Miller was lying because he had much to hide. “All the better,” said Verily. “Then there’s a chance that your answer will make sense to a man as ignorant of such matters as I am.”

“I wish you’d let me speak of other things,” said Calvin. “I think we might offend this company.”

“Surely you don’t imagine you were invited here for any reason other than your Americanness,” said Verily. “So why do you resist talking about the most obvious oddity of the American people?”

There was a buzz of comment. Who had ever seen Verily be openly rude like this?

Verily knew what he was doing, however. He hadn’t interviewed a thousand witnesses without learning how to elicit truth even from the most flagrant habitual liar. Calvin Miller was a man who felt shame sharply. That was why he lied—to hide himself from anything that would shame him. If provoked, however, he would respond with heat, and the lies and calculation would give way to bits of honesty now and then. In short, Calvin Miller had a dander, and it was up.

“Oddity?” asked Calvin. “Perhaps the odd thing is not having knacks, but rather denying that they exist or blaming them on Satan.”

Now the buzz was louder. Calvin, by speaking honestly, had shocked and offended his pious listeners more than Verily’s rudeness had. Yet this
was
a cosmopolitan crowd, and there
were
no ministers present. No one left the room; all watched, all listened with fascination.

“Take that as your premise, then,” said Verily. “Explain to me and this company how these occult knacks came into the world, if not caused by the influence of the Devil. Surely you won’t have us believe that we Englishmen burn people to death for having powers given to them by God?”