Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V Read Online Free PDF

goose-feathers.
    “I want to watch you paint,” said Arthur.
    “I don’t like having people look over my shoulder.”
    Arthur murmured something and the goose started to wander away.
    “All right!” said Audubon frantically. “Watch me paint, watch the bird, watch the sun in the sky until you will be blind, whatever you want!”
    At once Arthur Stuart muttered to the goose, and it waddled back into place.
    Alvin shook his head. Naked extortion. How could this be the sweet-tempered child Alvin had known for so long?

2

A Lady of the Court
     
    Peggy spent the morning trying not to dread her meeting with Lady Guinevere Ashworth. As one of the senior ladies-in-waiting to Queen Mary she had some influence in her own right; more importantly, she was married to the Lord Chancellor, William Ashworth, who might have been born the third son of a schoolteacher, but by wit, dazzle, and enormous energy had clawed his way to a fine education, a good marriage, and a high office. Lord William had no illusions about his own parentage: He took his wife’s family’s name upon marrying her.
    A woman is a woman, regardless of her parents’ rank or her husband’s office, Peggy reminded herself. When Lady Ashworth’s bladder was full, angels didn’t miraculously turn it into wine and bottle it, though from the way her name was spoken throughout Camelot, one might have thought so. It was a level of society Peggy had never aspired to or even been interested in. She hardly knew the proper manner of address to a daughterof a marquis—and whenever Peggy thought that she ought to make inquiries, she forced herself to remember that as a good Republican, she
should
get it wrong, and ostentatiously so. After all, both Jefferson and Franklin invariably referred to the King as “Mr. Stuart,” and even addressed him as such on official correspondence between heads of state—though the story was that clerks in the ministry of state “translated” all such letters so that proper forms of address appeared on them, thus avoiding an international incident.
    And if there was any hope of averting the war that loomed among the American nations, it might well rest on her interview with Lady Ashworth. For along with her lofty social position—some said the Queen herself consulted Lady Ashworth for advice on how to dress—Lady Ashworth was also leader of the most prominent anti-slavery organization in the Crown Colonies: Ladies Against Property Rights in Persons. (According to the fashion in the Crown Colonies, the organization was commonly called Lap-Rip, from the initials of its name—a most unfortunate acronym, Peggy thought, especially for a ladies’ club.)
    So much might be riding on this morning’s meeting. Everything else had been a dead end. After all her months in Appalachee, Peggy had finally realized that all the pressure for maintaining slavery in the New Counties was coming from the Crown Colonies. The King’s government was rattling sabers, both figuratively and literally, to make sure the Appalachian Congress understood exactly what abolition of slavery would cost them in blood. In the meantime, union between Appalachee and the United States of America was impossible as long as slavery was legal anywhere within Appalachee. And the simplest compromise, to allow the proslavery New Counties of Tennizy, Cherriky, and Kenituck to secede from Appalachee, was politically impossible in Appalachee itself.
    The outcome Peggy most feared was that the UnitedStates would give in and admit the New Counties as slaveholding States. Such a pollution of American freedom would destroy the United States, Peggy was sure of it. And secession of the New Counties was only slightly more acceptable to her, since it would leave most of the Blacks of Appalachee under the overseer’s lash. No, the only way to avoid war while retaining a spark of decency among the American people was to persuade the Crown Colonies to allow the whole of Appalachee, New