Knacks. Alvin Smith could shed iron like melting butter. What is my knack? Do I have one? Perhaps my knack is just to hold on my course whether it seems to be taking me anywhere or not. Stubbornness. That could be a gift of God, couldn’t it? If so, I daresay I’ve been blessed with far more than my share. And when God judges me someday, he’ll have to admit I didn’t bury my talent. I shared it with everyone around me, much to their consternation.

John Adams had a good laugh about that, all by himself.

14

Revolt

No sooner was Alvin out of the courtroom than he began to run, long loping strides that would carry him to the river. No greensong helped him at first, for the town was too built up. Yet he was scarcely wearied when he reached the place where Arthur, Mike, and Jean-Jacques were just awakening from their late-afternoon naps. For a moment they wanted to show him what Jean-Jacques had painted, but Alvin had no time for that.

“I was in court and I couldn’t pay attention to half that folderol, and my mind wandered to Margaret and there she was, her heart beating so fast, I knew something was wrong. She was spelling big letters in midair. Help. And I looked around her and there was Calvin lying on the floor of an attic in Camelot, and he’s in a bad way.”

Jean-Jacques was all sympathy. “You must feel so helpless, to be so far away.”

Mike Fink hooted with laughter. “Alvin ain’t all that helpless wherever he is.”

“It means we’re going to part company with you, Jean-Jacques,” Alvin said. “Or rather, some of us are. Arthur, you’re coming with me.”

Arthur, who had been on tenterhooks waiting to hear the plan, now grinned and relaxed.

“Mike, I’d appreciate it if you’d go on into town and meet Very. He’ll have that Purity girl with him, I reckon, or I’ll be surprised if he don’t. So if you’d tell him that he and you and her and Jean-Jacques here, you should all head for the border of New Amsterdam. I figure we can join up in Philadelphia when I’m done with whatever it is Margaret wants me to do.”

“Where?” asked Mike. “Philadelphia’s a big place.”

“Mistress Louder’s rooming house, of course.”

“What if she don’t got room?”

“Then leave word with her where you’ll be. But she’ll have room.” Alvin turned again to Jean-Jacques. “It’s been a pleasure, and I’m proud to know a man with such a knack for painting, but I’m taking Arthur and we got nobody to hold the birds still for you now.”

“So what I do now?” said Jean-Jacques. “I make you angry when I kill the bird and stuff it. My career is over if I do not kill the bird.”

Alvin looked at Arthur Stuart. “I got to tell you, Arthur, I got no problem with him killing a bird now and then for the sake of folks studying his paintings.”