He didn't hear them until they stepped onto the wooden floor. Then he looked up and saw, to his surprise, Mistress Faith carrying a lantern, followed by the eighteen-year-old twins, Wastenot and Wantnot. They were carrying a large wooden box between them. It took a moment before he realized that the box was meant to be an altar. That in fact it was a rather fine altar, the wood was tightly fitted as any master cabinetmaker could manage, beautifully stained. And burnt into the boards surrounding the top of the altar were two rows of crosses.
“Where do you want it?” asked Wastenot.
“Father said we had to bring it down tonight, now that the roof and walls were done.”
“Father?” asked Thrower.
“He made it for you special,” said Wastenot. “And little Al burnt in the crosses hisself, seeing how he wasn't allowed down here no more.”
By now Thrower was standing with them, and he could see that the altar had been lovingly built. It was the last thing he expected from Alvin Miller. And the perfectly even crosses hardly looked like the work of a six-year-old child.
“Here,” he said, leading them to the place where he had imagined his altar would stand. It was the only thing in the meetinghouse besides the walls and the floor, and being stained, it was darker than the new-wood floor and walls. It was perfect, and tears came to Thrower's eyes. “Tell them that it's beautiful.”
Faith and the boys smiled as broad as could be. “You see he ain't your enemy,” said Faith, and Thrower could only agree.
“I'm not his enemy, either,” he said. And he didn't say: I will win him over with love and patience, but I will win, and this altar is a sure sign that in his heart he secretly longs for me to set him free from the darkness of ignorance.
They didn't linger, but headed home briskly through the night. Thrower set his candlestick on the floor near the altar– never on it, since that would smack of Papistry– and knelt in a prayer of thanksgiving. The church mostly built, and a beautiful altar already inside it, built by the man he had most feared, the crosses burnt into it by the strange child who most symbolized the compelling superstitions of these ignorant people.
“You're so full of pride,” said a voice behind him.
He turned, already smiling, for he was always glad when the Visitor appeared.
But the Visitor was not smiling. “So full of pride.”
“Forgive me,” said Thrower. “I repent of it already. Still, can I help it if I rejoice in the great work that is begun here?”
The Visitor gently touched the altar, his fingers seeking out the crosses. “He made this, didn't he?”
“Alvin Miller.”
“And the boy?”
“The crosses. I was so afraid they were servants of the devil–”
The Visitor looked at him sharply. “And because they built an altar, you think that proves they're not?”
A thrill of dread ran through him, and Thrower whispered, “I didn't think the devil could use the sign of the cross–”
“You're as superstitious as any of the others,” said the Visitor coldly. “Papists cross themselves all the time. Do you think it's a hex against the devil?”
“How can I know anything, then?” asked Thrower. “If the devil can make an altar and draw a cross–”
“No, no. Thrower, my dear son, they aren't devils, either of them. You'll know the devil when you see him. Where other men have hair on their heads, the devil has the horns of a bull. Where other men have feet, the devil has the cloven hooves of a goat. Where other men have hands, the devil has the great paws of a bear. And be sure of this: he'll make no altars for you when he comes.” Then the Visitor laid both his hands on the altar. “This is my altar now,” he said. “No matter who made it, I can turn it to my purpose.”
Thrower wept in relief. “Consecrated now, you've made it holy.” And he reached out a hand to touch the altar.
“Stop!” whispered the Visitor. Even voiceless, though, his word had the power to set the walls a-trembling. “Hear me first,” he said.
“I always listen to you,” said Thrower. “Though I can't guess why you should have chosen such a lowly worm as me.”
“Even a worm can be made great by a touch from the finger of God,” said the Visitor. “No, don't misunderstand me– I am not the Lord of Hosts. Don't worship me.”
But Thrower could not help himself, and he wept in devotion, kneeling before this wise and powerful angel. Yes, angel, Thrower had no doubt of it, though the Visitor had no wings and wore a suit of clothes one might expect to see in Parliament.
“The man who built this is confused, but there is murder in his soul, and if he is provoked enough, it will come forth. And the child who made the crosses– he is as remarkable as you suppose. But he is not yet ordained to a life of good or evil. Both paths are set before him, and he is open to influence. Do you understand me?”
“Is this my work?” asked Thrower. “Should I forget all else, and devote myself to turning the child to righteousness?”
“If you seem too devoted, his parents will reject you. Rather you should conduct your ministry as you have planned. But in your heart, you'll bend everything toward this remarkable child, to win him to my cause. Because if he does not serve me by the time he's fourteen years of age, then I'll destroy him.”
The mere thought of Alvin Junior being hurt or killed was unbearable to Thrower. It filled him with such a sense of loss that he could not imagine a father or even a mother feeling more. “All that a weak man can do to save the child, I will do,” he cried, his voice wrung almost to a scream by his anguish.
The Visitor nodded, smiled his beautiful and loving smile, and reached out his hand to Thrower. “I trust you,” he said softly. His voice was like healing water on a burning wound. “I know you will do well. And as for the devil, you must feel no fear of him.”
Thrower reached for the proffered hand, to cover it with kisses; but when he should have touched flesh, there was nothing there, and in that moment the Visitor was gone.
Chapter Nine – Taleswapper
There was once a time, Taleswapper well remembered, when he could climb a tree in these parts and look out over a hundred square miles of undisturbed forest. A time when oaks lived a century or more, with ever-thickening trunks making mountains out of wood. A time when leaves were so thick overhead that there were places where the forest ground was bare from lack of light.
That world of eternal dusk was slipping away now. There still were reaches of primeval wood, where Red men wandered more quietly than deer and Taleswapper felt himself to be in the cathedral of the most well-worshipped God. But such places were so rare that in this last year of wandering, Taleswapper had not journeyed a single day in which he could climb a tree and see no interruption in the forest roof. All the country between the Hio and the Wobbish was being settled, sparsely but evenly, and even now, from his perch atop a willow at the crest of a rise, Taleswapper could see three dozen cookfires sending pillars of smoke straight up into the cold autumn air. And in every direction, great swatches of forest had been cleared, the land plowed, crops planted, tended, harvested, so that where once great trees had shielded the earth from the sky's eye, now the stubbled soil was naked, waiting for winter to cover its shame.
Taleswapper remembered his vision of drunken Noah. He had engraved it for an edition of Genesis for Scottish rite Sunday schools. Noah, nude, his mouth lolling open, a cup half-spilled still dangling from his curled fingers; Ham, not far off, laughing derisively; and Japheth and Shem, walking backward to draw a robe over their father, so they would not see what their father had exposed in his stupefaction. With an electric excitement, Taleswapper realized that this, now, is what that prophetic moment foreshadowed. That he, Taleswapper, perched atop a tree, was seeing the naked land in its stupor, awaiting the modest covering of winter. It was prophecy fulfilled, a thing which one hoped for but could not expect in one's own life.