The laughing stopped. Harsh hands seized his arms and lifted him out of his chair. All four gendarmes were around him now, not laughing at all. They bound his wrists together and hobbled his legs. Then they half-dragged him from the cafe.
It was astonishing. It was impossible. This had to be a response to the report of the secret policeman. But why would they arrest him? What law had he broken? Was it simply that he spoke English? Surely they understood the difference between an Englishman and an American. The English were still at war with France, or something like war, anyway, but the Americans were neutral, more or less. How dare they?
For a moment, painfully hobbling along with the gendarmes at the too-brisk pace they set for him, Calvin toyed with the idea of using his Makering power to loose the bonds and stand free of them. But they were all armed, and Calvin had no desire to tempt them to use their weapons against an escaping prisoner.
Nor did he waste effort, after the first few minutes, trying to persuade them that some terrible mistake was underway. What was the point? They knew who he was; someone had told them to arrest him; what did they care whether it was a mistake or not? It wasn't their mistake.
Half an hour later, he found himself stripped and thrown into a miserable stinking cell in the Bastille.
“Welcome to the Land of the Guillotine!” croaked someone farther up the corridor. “Welcome, 0 pilgrim, to the Shrine of the Holy Blade!”
“Shut up!” cried another man.
“They sliced through another man's neck today, the one who was in the cell you're in now, new boy! That's what happens to Englishmen here in Paris, once somebody decides that you're a spy.”
“But I'm not English!” Calvin cried out.
This was greeted with gales of laughter.
Peggy set down her pen in weariness, closed her eyes in disgust. Wasn't there some kind of plan here? The One who sent Alvin into the world, who protected him and prepared him for the great work of building the Crystal City, didn't that One have some kind of plan? Or was there no plan? No, there had to be some meaning in the fact that this very day, in Paris, Calvin was locked up in prison, just as Alvin was in prison in Hatrack River. The Bastille, of course, was a far cry from a second-story room in the back of the courthouse, but jail was jail– they were both locked in, for no good reason, and with no idea of how it would all come out.
But Peggy knew. She saw all the paths. And, finally, she closed up her pen, put away the papers she had been writing on, And got up to tell her hosts that she would have to leave earlier than she expected. “I'm needed elsewhere, I think.”
Bonaparte's nephew was a weasel who thought he was an ermine. Well, let him have his delusion. If men didn't have delusions, Bonaparte wouldn't be Emperor of Europe and Lawgiver of Mankind. Their delusions were his truth; their hungers were his heart's desire. Whatever they wanted to believe about themselves, Bonaparte helped them believe it, in exchange for control over their lives.
Little Napoleon, the lad called himself. Half of Bonaparte's nephews had been named Napoleon, in an effort to curry favor, but only this one had the effrontery to use the name in court. Bonaparte wasn't quite sure if this meant that Little Napoleon was bolder than the others, or simply too stupid to realize how dangerous it was to dare to use the Emperor's own name, as if to assert one's claim to succeed him. Seeing him now, marching in here like a mechanical soldier– as if he had some secret military accomplishment that no one knew about but which entitled him to strut about playing the general– Bonaparte wanted to laugh in his face and expose in front of all the world Little Napoleon's dreams of sitting on the throne, ruling the world, surpassing his uncle's accomplishments. Bonaparte wanted to look him in the eye and say, “You couldn't even fill my pisspot, you vainglorious mountebank.”
Instead he said, “What good wind blows you here, my little Napoleon?”
“Your gout,” said the lad.
Oh, no. Another cure. Cures found by fools usually did more harm than good. But the gout was a curse, and… let's see what he has.
“An Englishman,” said Little Napoleon. “Or, to speak more accurately, an American. My spies have watched him–”
“Your spies? These are different spies from the spies I pay?”
“The spies you assigned to me for supervision, Uncle.”
“Ah, those spies. They do still remember they work for me, don't they?”
“Remember it so well that instead of simply following orders and watching for enemies, they have also watched for someone who might help you.”
“Englishmen in Europe are all spies. Someday after some notable achievement when I'm very very popular I will round them all up and guillotine them. Monsieur Guillotin– now that was a useful fellow. Has he invented anything else lately?”
“He's working on a steam-powered wagon, Uncle.”
“They already exist. We vall them locomotives, and we're laying track all over Europe.”
“Ah, but he is working on one that doesn't have to run on rails.”
“Why not a steam-powered balloon? I can't understand why that has never worked. The engine would propel the craft, and the steam, instead of being wastefully discharged into the atmosphere, would fill the balloon and keep the craft aloft.”
“I believe the problem, Uncle, is that if you carry enough fuel to travel more than twenty or thirty feet, the whole thing weighs too much to get off the ground.”
~That's why inventors exist, isn't it? To solve problems like that. Any fool could come up with the basic idea– I came up with it, didn't I? And when it comes to such matters I'm plainly a fool, as most men are." Bonaparte had long since learned that such modest remarks always got repeated by onlookers in the court and did much to endear him to the people. "It's Monsieur Guillotin's job to… well, never mind, the machine that bears his name is enough of a contribution to mankind. Swift, sure, and painless executions– a boon to the unworthiest of humans. A very Christian invention, showing kindness to the least of Jesus' brethren." The priests would repeat that one, and from the pulpit, too.
“About this Calvin Miller,” said Little Napoleon.
“And my gout.”
“I've seen him drain a swollen limb just by standing on the street staring at a beggar's pussing wound.”
“A pussing wound isn't the gout.”
“The beggar had his trousers ripped open to show the wound, and this American stood there looking for all the world as if he were dozing off, and then suddenly the skin erupted with pus and all of it drained out, and then the wound closed without a single stitch. Neither he nor any man touched the leg. It was quite a demonstration of remarkable healing powers.”
“You saw this yourself?”
“With my own eyes. But only the once. I can hardly go about secretly, Uncle. I look too much like your esteemed self.”
No doubt Little Napoleon imagined that this was flattery. Instead it sent a faint wave of nausea through Bonaparte. But he let nothing show in his face.
“You now have this healer under arrest?”
“Of course; waiting for your pleasure.”
“Let him sweat.”
Little Napoleon cocked his head a moment, studying Bonaparte, probably trying to figure out what plan his uncle had for the healer, and why he didn't want to see him right away. The one thing he would never think of, Bonaparte was quite sure, was the truth: that Bonaparte hadn't the faintest idea what to do about a healer who actually had power. It made him uneasy thinking about it. And he remembered the young white boy who had come with the Red general, Ta-Kumsaw, to visit him in Fort Detroit. Could this American be the same one?
Why should he even make such a connection? And why would that boy in Detroit matter, after all these years? Bonaparte was uncertain about what it all mean, but it felt to him as if forces were at work, as if this American in the Bastille were someone of great importance to him. Or perhaps not to him. To someone, anyway.