They all laughed at that, but in the end they knew it wasn't exactly funny.
“Anyhow, Eleanor says, Amy's best friend is that mouse of a girl Ramona and I'm going to get the truth out of her.”
Alvin turned to Verily. “Eleanor's our sister, Armor-of-God's wife.”
Another reminder, that he wasn't inside this circle. But also a reminder that Alvin thought of him and wanted to include him.
“So Eleanor gets Ramona and sets her down inside that hex you made for her in the shop, Alvin, the one that makes liars get so nervous, only I don't know as how it was really needed. Eleanor says to her, Who's the father of Amy's baby, and Ramona says, How should I know? only it's a plain lie, and finally when Eleanor won't let up, Ramona says, Last time I told the truth it only caused Alvin Maker to have to run away cause of Amy's lies, but she swore it was true, she swore it and so I believed her but now she's saying it was Alvin got her pregnant and I know that's not true cause she got into the freak show tent with–”
Alvin held up his hand. “Matt Thatcher?”
“Of course,” said Measure. “Why we didn't just castrate him along with the pigs I don't know.”
“She saw them or is it hearsay?” asked Verily.
“Saw them and stood guard where they went under the tent and heard Amy cry out once and heard Matt panting and then it was done and she asked Amy what it was like and Amy looked positively stricken and says to her, It's awful and it hurts. Ramona's got no doubt Amy was a virgin up till then, so all the other stories is lies.”
“She's not competent to testify about Amy's virginity,” said Verily, “but she'd still be a help. It would take care of the pregnancy and make it plain that Amy is something of a liar. Reasonable doubt. How long will it take to get her down here?”
“She's here,” said Peggy. “I got her to the roadhouse and Horace Guester's feeding her.”
“I want to talk to her tonight,” said Verily. “This is good. This is something. And until now, we had nothing.”
“They have nothing,” said Peggy. “And yet…”
“And yet they'd convict me if they voted right now, wouldn't they?” Alvin asked.
Peggy nodded. “I thought they knew you better.”
“This is all so extraneous to Makepeace's assertions,” said Verily. “None of this would have been permitted in an English court.”
“Next time somebody tries to get me arrested for larceny and a crazy girl claims to be pregnant by me, I'll arrange to have it tried in London,” said Alvin, grinning.
“Good idea,” said Verily. “Besides, we have a much higher grade of crazy girls in England.”
“I'm going to testify,” said Peggy.
“I don't think so,” said Alvin.
“You aren't a witness of anything,” said Verily.
“You saw how the rules go in this court,” said Peggy. “You can work me in.”
“It won't help,” said Verily. “They'll chalk it up to your being in love with Alvin.”
Alvin sighed and lay back on his cot.
“No they won't,” said Peggy. “They know me.”
“They know Alvin, too,” said Verily.
“Don't mean to contradict you, sir,” said Arthur Stuart, “but everybody knows Miss Larner here is a torch, and everybody knows that before she tells a lie, you can boil an egg in a pan of snow.”
“If I testify, he won't be convicted,” said Peggy.
“No,” said Alvin. “They'll drag you through the mud. Webster doesn't care about convicting me, you know that. He only wants to destroy me and everybody near me, because that's what the people who hired him want.”
“We don't even know who they are,” said Verily.
“I don't know their names, but I know who they are and what they want. To you it looks as though Amy's testimony is a sidetrack, but it's Amy's testimony they wanted. And if they could get testimony about me and Peggy in the smithy on the night the plow was made–”
“I'm not afraid of their calumnies,” said Peggy.
“It ain't calumnies I'm talking about, it's the plain truth,” said Alvin. “I was naked, we was alone in the smithy. Can't help what conclusions folks draw from that, and so I won't have you getting on the stand and all that story coming out in the papers in Carthage and Dekane and heaven knows where else. We'll do it another way.”
“Ramona will be a help,” said Verily.
“Not Ramona either,” said Alvin. “It does no good to have one friend betray another for my sake.”
The others were flabbergasted.
“You got to be joking!” cried Measure. “After I brought her all the way here? And she wants to testify.”
“I'm sure she does,” said Alvin. “But after the papers are through hacking at Amy, how will Ramona feel then? She'll always remember that she betrayed a friend: That's a hard one. It'll hurt her. Won't it, Peggy?”
“Oh, you actually want my advice about something?”
“I want the truth. Fve been telling the truth, and so have you, so just say it.”
“Yes,” said Peggy. “It would hurt Ramona greatly to testify against Amy.”
“So we won't do it,” said Alvin. “Nor do I want to see Vilate humiliated by having her hexes removed. She sets a store by being taken for beautiful.”
“Alvin,” said Verily, “I know you're a good man and wiser than me, but surely you can see that you can't let courtesy to a few individuals destroy all that you were put here on this earth to do!”
The others agreed.
Alvin looked as miserable as Verily had ever seen a man look, and Verily had seen men condemned to hang or burn. “Then you don't understand,” he said. “It's true that sometimes people have to suffer to make something good come to be. But when I have it in my power to save them from suffering it, and bear it myself, well then that's part of what I do. That's part of Making. If I have it in my power, then I bear it. Don't you see?”
“No,” said Peggy. “You don't have it in your power.”
“Is that the honest torch talking? Or my friend?”
She hesitated only a moment. “Your friend. This passage in your heartfire is dark to me.”
“I figured it was. And I think the reason is because I got to do some Making. I got to do something that's never been done before, to Make something new. If I do it, then I can go on. If I don't, then I go to jail and my path through life takes another course.”
“Would you go to jail?” asked Arthur Stuart. “Would you really stay in prison for years and years?”
Alvin shrugged. “There are hexes I can't undo. I think if I was convicted, they'd see to it that I was bound about like that. But even if I could get away, what would it matter? I couldn't do my work here in America. And I don't know that my work could be done anywhere else. If there's any reason to my life at all, then there's a reason I was born here and not in England or Russia or China or something. Here's where my work's to be done.”
“So you're saying that I can't use the two best witnesses to defend you?” asked Verily.
“My best witness is the truth. Somebody's going to speak it, that's for sure. But it won't be Miss Larner, and it won't be Ramona.”
Peggy leaned down and looked Alvin in the eye, their faces not six inches apart. “Alvin Smith, you wretched boy, I gave my childhood to you, to keep you safe from the Unmaker, and now you tell me I have to stand by and watch you throw all that sacrifice away?”
“I already asked you for the whole rest of your life,” said Alvin. “What do I want with your ruin? You lost your childhood for me. You lost your mother for me. Don't lose any more. I would have taken everything, yes, and given you everything too, but I won't take less because I can't give less. You'll take nothing from me, so I'll take nothing from you. If that don't make sense to you then you ain't as smart as you let on, Miss Larner.”