Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV (13 page)

It didn’t take Calvin too long to figure out that it was going to take a powerful long time to earn enough money to buy passage to Europe as a gentleman. A long time and a lot of work. Neither idea sounded attractive.

He couldn’t turn iron into gold, but there was plenty of things he
could
do, and he thought about them long and hard. He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t reckon them banks could keep him out of their vaults for long if he got to working on what all was holding them together. Still, there was a chance of being caught, and that would be the ruination of all his dreams. He thought of putting out his shingle as a Maker, but that would bring a kind of fame and attention that wouldn’t stand in his favor later, not to mention all the accusations of charlatanry that would be bound to come. He was already hearing rumors of Alvin—or rather, of some prentice smith out west who turned an iron plow into gold. Half those who told the tale did it with rolled eyes, as if to say, I’m sure some western farmboy has a Maker’s knack, that’s likely, yes!

Sometimes Calvin wished it was a different knack he had. For instance, he could do with a torch’s knack about now. Seeing the future—why, he could see which property to buy, or which ship to invest in! But even then he’d have to have a partner to put up the money, since he had nothing now. And hanging around New Amsterdam getting rich wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to learn Makering, or whatever it was that Napoleon could teach him. Having set his sights so high, the petty businessmen of Manhattan were hardly the partners he wanted.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying went. If he couldn’t easily get the money for his first-class voyage, why not go direct to the source of all voyages? So it was that he found himself walking the wharfs of Manhattan, along the Hudson and the East River. It was entertaining in its own right, the long, sleek sailing ships, the clunky, smoky steamers, the stevedores shouting and grunting and sweating, the cranes swinging, the ropes and pulleys and nets, the stink of fish and the bawling of the gulls. Who would have guessed, when he was a boy rowdying in a millhouse in Vigor Church, that one day he would be here on the edge of the land, drinking in the liquorous scents and sounds and sights of the life of the sea.

Calvin wasn’t one to get lost in reverie and contemplation, though. He had his eye out for the right ship, and from time to time stopped to ask a stevedore of a loading ship what the destination might be. Those as were bound for Africa or Haiti or the Orient were no use to him, but them with European destinations got a thorough looking-over. Until at last he found the right one, a bright and tall-masted English ship with a captain of some breeding who didn’t seem to raise his voice at all, though all the men did his will, working hard and working smart under his eye. Everything was clean, and the cargo included trunks and parcels carefully loaded up the ramp instead of being tossed around carelesslike.

Naturally, the captain wouldn’t think of talking to a boy
Calvin’s age, wearing Calvin’s clothes. But it wasn’t hard for Calvin to think of a plan to get the captain’s attention.

He walked up to one of the stevedores and said, “Scuse me, sir, but there’s a shaip leak a-going near the back of the boat, on the further side.”

The stevedore looked at him oddly. “I’m not a sailor.”

“Neither am I, but I think the captain’ll thank them as warns him of the problem.”

“How can you see it, if it’s under the water?”

“Got a knack for leaks,” said Calvin. “I’d hurry and tell him, if I were you.”

Saying it was a knack was enough for the stevedore, him being an American, even if he
was
a Dutchman by his accent. The captain, of course, wouldn’t care diddly about knacks, being an Englishman, which under the Protectorate had a law against knacks. Not against having them, just against believing they existed or attempting to use them. But the captain was no fool, and he’d send somebody to check, knack or no knack.

Which is how it happened. The stevedore talking to his foreman; the foreman to some ship’s officer; each time there was a lot of pointing at Calvin and staring at him as he nonchalantly whistled and looked down at the waterline of the ship. To Calvin’s disappointment, the officer didn’t go to the captain, but instead sent a sailor downstairs into the dark cellar of the ship. Calvin had to provide something for him to see, so now he sent out his doodlebug and got into the wood, right where he’d said the leak was. It was a simple thing to let the planks get just a little loose and out of position under the waterline, which sent a goodly stream of water spurting into the cellar of the ship. Just for the fun of it, when he figured the sailor must be down there looking at it, Calvin opened and closed the gap, so the leak was sometimes a fine spray, sometimes a gush of water, and sometimes just a trickle. Like blood seeping from a wound with an intermittent tourniquet. Bet he never saw no leak like that before, thought Calvin.

Sure enough, in a few minutes the sailor was back, acting
all agitated, and now the officer barked orders to several seamen, then went straight to the captain. This time, though, there wasn’t no finger-pointing. The officer wasn’t going to give Calvin none of the credit for finding the leak. That really got Calvin’s goat, and for a minute he thought of sinking the boat then and there. But that wouldn’t do him no good. Time enough to put that greedy ambitious officer in his place.

When the captain went below, Calvin put on a fine show for him. Instead of causing one leak to spurt and pulse, Calvin shifted the leak from one place to another—a gush here, a gush there. By now it had to be obvious that there wasn’t nothing natural about that leak. There was a good deal of stirring on the deck, and a lot of sailors started rushing below. Then, to Calvin’s delight, a fair number started rushing back onto the deck and onto the gangplank, heading for dry land where there wasn’t no strange powers causing leaks in the boat.

Finally the captain came on deck, and this time the officer wasn’t taking all the credit for himself. He pointed to the foreman, who pointed to the stevedore, and pretty soon they were all pointing at Calvin.

Now, of course, Calvin could stop fiddling with the leak. He stopped it cold. But he wasn’t done. As the captain headed for the gangplank, Calvin sent his bug to seek out all the nearby rats that he could sense lurking under the wharf and among the crates and barrels and on the other ships. By the time the captain got halfway down the gangplank, a couple of dozen rats were racing up the very same bridge, heading for the ship. The captain tried in vain to shoo them back, but Calvin had filled them with courage and grim determination to reach the deck—food, food, Calvin was promising them—and they merely dodged and went on. Dozens more were streaming across the planking of the pier, and the captain was fairly dancing to avoid tripping on rats and falling on his face. On deck, sailors with mops and bowling pins were striking at the rats, trying to knock or sweep them off into the sea.

Then, as suddenly as he had launched the rats, Calvin sent
them a new message: Get off this ship. Fire, fire. Leaks. Drowning. Fear.

Squealing and scurrying, all the rats that he had sent aboard came rushing back down the gangplank and all the lines and cables connecting the ship to the shore. And all the rats that had already been aboard, lurking in the cargo hold and in the dark wet cellar and in the hidden caves in the joints and beams of the ship, they also gushed up out of the hatches and portholes like water bubbling out of a new spring. The captain stopped cold to watch them leave. Finally, when all the rat traffic had disappeared into their hiding places on the wharf and the other ships, the captain turned toward Calvin and strode to him. Through it all the man had never lost his dignity—even while dancing to avoid the rats. My kind of man, thought Calvin. I must watch him to learn how gentlemen behave.

“How did you know there was a leak on my ship?” asked the captain.

“You’re an Englishman,” said Calvin. “You don’t believe in what I can see and do.”

“Nevertheless, I believe in what
I
can see, and there was nothing natural about that leak.”

“I’d say them rats might have been doing it. Good thing for you they all left your ship.”

“Rats and leaks,” said the captain. “What do you want, boy?”

“I want to be called a man, sir,” said Calvin. “Not a boy.”

“Why do you wish harm to me and my ship? Has someone of my crew done you an offense?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Calvin. “I reckon you’re not such a fool as to blame the one as told you you had a leak.”

“I’m also not such a fool as to think you knew of anything you didn’t have the power to cause or cure at will. Were the rats your doing as well?”

“I was as surprised as you were by their behavior,” said Calvin. “Didn’t seem natural, all them rats rushing
onto
a sinking ship. But then they seemed to come to their senses and
leave again. Every single rat, I daresay. Now, that would be an interesting voyage, wouldn’t it—to cross the ocean without any loss of your food supply to the nibbling of rats.”

“What do you want from me?” asked the captain.

“I stopped to do you a favor, with no thought of benefit to my own self,” said Calvin, trying to sound like an educated Englishman and knowing from the expression on the captain’s face that he was failing pathetically. “But it happens that I am in need of first-class passage to Europe.”

The captain smiled thinly. “Why in the world would you want to book passage on a leaking ship?”

“But sir,” said Calvin, “I’ve got a sort of knack for spotting leaks. And I can promise you that if I were aboard your ship, during the whole voyage there’d be not a single leak, even in the stoutest storm.” Calvin had no idea whether he could keep a ship tight during all the stresses of a storm at sea, but odds were that he’d never have to find out, either.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” said the captain, “but am I to guess that if I take you on my ship, first class, without your paying a farthing, I’ll find no problem with leaks and not a rat on my ship? While if I refuse, I’ll find my ship at the bottom of the harbor?”

“That would be a rare disaster,” said Calvin. “How could such a well-made ship possibly sink faster than your boys could pump?”

“I saw how the leak moved from place to place. I saw how strangely the rats behaved. I may not believe in your American knacks, but I know when I’m in the presence of unaccountable power.”

Calvin felt pride flush through his body like ale.

Suddenly he felt the barrel of a pistol just under his breastbone. He looked down to see that the captain had somehow come up with a weapon.

“What’s to stop me from blowing a hole in your belly?” asked the captain.

“The likelihood of your dancing on the end of an American
rope,” said Calvin. “There ain’t no law against knacks here, sir, and saying that somebody was doing witchery ain’t cause enough to kill him the way it is in England.”

“But it’s to England you’re going,” said the captain. “What’s to stop me from taking you on my ship, then having you arrested the moment you step ashore?”

“Nothing,” said Calvin. “You could do that. You could even kill me in my sleep during the voyage and cast my body overboard into the sea, telling all the others that you had to dispose of the body of a plague victim as quickly as possible. You think I’m a fool, not to think of that stuff?”

“So go away and leave me and my ship alone.”

“If you killed me, what would keep the planks from pulling free of the beams of your boat? What would stop your boat from turning into scraps of lumber bobbing on the water?”

The captain eyed him curiously.

“First-class passage is ludicrous for you. The other first-class passengers would snub you at once, and no doubt they’d assume I’d brought you aboard as my catamite. It would ruin my career anyway, to permit an uncouth, unlettered ruffian like you to sail among my gentle passengers. To put it plainly, young master, you may have power over rats and planks, but you have none over rich men and women.”

“Teach me,” said Calvin.

“There aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the week.”

“Teach me,” said Calvin again.

“You come here threatening me with destruction of my ship by the evil powers of Satan, and then dare to ask me to teach you to be a gentleman?”

“If you believed my powers were from the devil,” said Calvin, “then why didn’t you once say a prayer to ward me off?”

The captain glared at him for a moment, then smiled, grimly but not without genuine mirth. “Touché,” he said.

“Whatever the devil
that
means,” said Calvin.

“It’s a fencing term,” said the captain.

“I must’ve put up ten miles of fences in my life,” said Calvin.
“Post and rail, stone, wire, and picket, every kind, and I never heard of no tooshay.”

The captain’s smile broadened. “There is something attractive in your challenge. You may have some interesting . . . what do you call them . . . knacks? But you’re still a poor boy from the farm. I’ve taken many a peasant lad and turned him into a first-rate seaman. But I’ve never taken a boy who wasn’t a gentleman born and turned him into something that could pass for civilized.”

“Consider me the challenge of your life.”

“Oh, believe me, I already do. I haven’t altogether decided not to kill you, of course. But it seems to me that since you mean to cause me trouble anyway, why not accept the challenge and see if I can work a miracle just as inexplicable and impossible as any of the nasty pranks you’ve played on me this morning?”

“First class, not steerage,” Calvin insisted.

The captain shook his head. “Neither one. You’ll travel as my cabin boy. Or rather, my cabin boy’s boy. Rafe is a good three years younger than you, I imagine, but he knows from birth all that you are so desperate to learn. With you to help him, perhaps he’ll have enough free time to teach you. And I’ll oversee you both. On several conditions, though.”