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

Counties and all, to form a union with the United States of America—with slavery illegal throughout the nation that would result.
    Her abolitionist friends laughed when Peggy broached this possibility. Even her husband, Alvin, sounded doubtful in his letters, though of course he encouraged her to do as she thought right. After hundreds of interviews with men and women throughout Appalachee and for the last few weeks in Camelot, Peggy had plenty of doubts of her own. And yet as long as there was a thread of hope, she would try to tat it into some sort of bearable future. For the future she saw in the heartfires of the people around her could not be borne, unless she knew she had done her utmost to prevent the war that threatened to soak the soil of America in blood, and whose outcome was by no means certain.
    So, dread it as she might, Peggy had no choice but to visit with Lady Ashworth. For even if she could not enlist Lady Ashworth and her Lap-Rip club in the cause of emancipation, she might at least win an introduction to the King, so she could plead her cause with the monarch directly.
    The idea of meeting with the King frightened her less than the prospect of meeting Lady Ashworth. To an educated man Peggy could speak directly, in the language they understood. But Southern ladies, Peggy already knew, were much more complicated. Everything you said meant something else to them, and everything they said meant anything but the plain meaning of the words.It was a good thing they didn’t let Southern ladies go to college. They were far too busy learning arcane languages much more subtle and difficult to master than mere Greek and Latin.
    Peggy slept little the night before, ate little that morning, and kept down even less. The most acute nausea from her pregnancy had passed, but when she was nervous, as she was this morning, it returned with a vengeance. The spark of life in the baby in her womb was just beginning to be visible to her. Soon she would be able to see something of the baby’s future. Mere glimpses, for a baby’s heartfire was chaotic and confusing, but it would become real to her then, a life. Let it be born into a better world than this one. Let my labors change the futures of all the babies.
    Her fingers were weak and trembly as she tried to fasten her buttons; she was forced to ask the help of the slavegirl who was assigned to her floor in the boarding-house. Like all slaves in the Crown Colonies, the girl would not meet Peggy’s gaze or even face her directly, and while she answered softly but clearly every question Peggy asked, what passed between them could hardly be called a conversation. “I’m sorry to trouble you, but will you help me fasten my buttons?”
    “Yes ma’am.”
    “My name is Peggy. What’s yours?”
    “I’s Fishy, ma’am.”
    “Please call me Peggy.”
    “Yes ma’am.”
    Don’t belabor the point. “Fishy? Really? Or is that a nickname?”
    “Yes ma’am.”
    “Which?”
    “Fishy, ma’am.”
    She must be refusing to understand; let it go. “Why would your mother give you such a name?”
    “I don’t know, ma’am.”
    “Or was it your mother who named you?”
    “I don’t know, ma’am.”
    “If I give you a tip for your service, do you get to keep it?”
    “No tips please, ma’am.”
    “But if you were to find a penny in the street, would you be permitted to keep it as your own?”
    “Never found no penny, ma’am. All done now, ma’am.” And Fishy was out the door in a heartbeat, pausing in the doorway only long enough to say, “Anything else, ma’am?”
    Peggy knew the answers to her questions, of course, for she saw into the woman’s heartfire. Saw how Fishy’s mother had shunted her off on other slavewomen, because she could hardly attract the master’s lust with a baby clinging to her thighs. And when the woman grew too slack-bellied from her repeated pregnancies, how the master began to share her with his White visitors, and finally with the