“We’ve already learned something, just by having Miss Purity with us.”

“What did you learn?” demanded Arthur Stuart.

“That maybe the Crystal City has another name,” said Smith.

“Crystal City?” asked Miss Purity.

Cooper looked at Smith for permission. Alvin glanced at each of them in turn, until at last his gaze lingered on Purity herself. “If you think she’s all right,” said Alvin.

“I know she is,” said Cooper.

“Got a couple of minutes?” Alvin asked Purity.

“More like a couple of hours,” said Mike Fink.

“Maybe while you talk and talk I bath in the river,” said Audubon.

“I’ll keep watch,” said Fink. “I fell in enough rivers in my time without getting nekkid to do it on purpose.”

Soon Purity, Smith, Cooper, and Arthur Stuart were sitting in the tall soft grass on the riverbank. “I got a story to tell you,” said Alvin. “About who we are and what we’re doing here. And then you can decide what you want to do about it.”

“Let me tell it,” demanded Arthur Stuart.

“You?” asked Alvin.

“You always mix it up and tell it back end to.”

“What do you mean, ‘always’? I hardly tell this story to anybody.”

“You ain’t no Taleswapper, Alvin,” said Arthur Stuart.

“And you are?”

“At least I can tell it front to back instead of always adding in stuff I forgot to tell in the proper place.”

Alvin laughed. “All right, Arthur Stuart, you tell the story of my life, since you know it better than I do.”

“It ain’t the story of your life anyway,” said Arthur Stuart. “Cause it starts with Little Peggy.”

“‘Little’ Peggy?” asked Alvin.

“That’s what her name was then,” said Arthur.

“Go ahead,” said Alvin.

Arthur Stuart looked to the others. Cooper and Purity both nodded. At once Arthur Stuart bounded to his feet and walked a couple of paces away. Then he came back and stood before them, his back to the water, and with boats sailing along behind him, and the summer sun beating down on him while his listeners sat in the shade, he put his hands behind his back and closed his eyes and began to talk.

6

Names

Margaret did not waste time worrying about when—or if—her promised audience with the Queen might happen. Many of the futures she found in other people’s heartfires led to such a meeting, and many more did not, and in neither case did she see such an audience leading to the prevention of the bloody war she dreaded.

In the meantime, there were plenty of other activities to fill her time. For she was finding that Camelot was a much more complicated place than she had expected.

During her childhood in the North she had learned to think of slavery as an all-or-nothing proposition, and in most ways it was. There was no way to half-permit it or half-practice it. Either you could be bought and sold by another human being or you couldn’t. Either you could be compelled to labor for another man’s profit under threat of death or injury, or you couldn’t.