Orson Card - Heartfire

"Never mind," she said. "I can go another way."

But at the moment she took her first step to return along the riverbank, a coarse-looking man with heavy muscles and a menacing cast to his face stepped in front of her. She couldn't help gasping and stepping back--

Only to find that she was stepping on a man's boot.

"Ouch," he said mildly.

She whirled around. There were two men, actually, one of them a dapper but smallish man who looked at her with a candor that she found disturbing. But the man she had stepped on was a tall, dignified-looking man who dressed like a professional man. Not in the jet-black costume of a minister, but not in the earthy "sad" colors of the common folk of New England. No, he dressed like nothing so much as...

"An Englishman," she said. "A barrister."

"I confess it, but marvel that you guessed it."

"English visitors come to Cambridge often, sir," she said. "Some are barristers. They seem to have a way of dressing to show that their clothing cost considerable money without ever quite violating the sumptuary laws." She turned around to face the menacing man, unsure whether this Englishman was a match for him.

But then she realized that she had been momentarily deceived by appearances. There was no menace in the rough fellow, no more than in the Englishman. And the other one, the dapper little fellow who was still inspecting her with his eyes, posed no danger, either. It was as if he knew only one way to think of women, and therefore shelved his attitude toward Purity under the heading "objects of lust," but it was a volume that would gather dust before he cared enough to take it down and try to read it.

"We must have frightened you," said the Englishman. "Our friends were determined to bathe, and we were determined to lie on the riverbank and nap, and so you didn't see any of us until you were right among us, and I apologize that you saw two of our company in such a state of deshabille."

"And what, pray, is a state of Jezebel?"

The dapper little fellow laughed aloud, then stopped abruptly and turned away. Why? He was afraid. Of what?

"Pardon my French," said the Englishman. "In London we are not so pure as the gentlefolk of New England. When Napoleon took over France and proceeded to annex the bulk of Europe, there were few places for the displaced aristocracy and royalty to go. London is crawling with French visitors, and suddenly French words are chic. Oops, there I go again."

"You still have not told me what the French word meant. 'Cheek,' however, I understand-- it is a characteristic that your whole company here seems to have."

The barrister chuckled. "I would say that it's yourself that takes a cheeky tone with strangers, if it were not such an improper thing to say to a young lady to whom I have not been introduced. I pray you, tell me the name of your father and where he lives so I can inquire after your health."

"My father is dead," she said, and then added, despite her own sense of panic as she did so, "He was hanged as a witch in Netticut."

They fell silent, all of them, and it made her uneasy, for they had nothing like the reaction she expected. Not revulsion at her confession of such indecent family connections; rather they all simply closed off and looked another way.

"Well, I'm sorry to remind you of such a tragic event," said the Englishman.

"Please don't be. I never knew him. I only just realized what his fate must have been. You don't imagine that anyone at the orphanage would tell me such a thing outright!"

"But you are a lady, aren't you?" asked the Englishman. "There's nothing of the schoolgirl about you."

"Being an orphan does not stop when you come of age," said Purity. "But I will serve myself as father and mother, and give you my consent to introduce yourself to me."

The Englishman bowed deeply. "My name is Verily Cooper," he said. "And my company at the moment consists of Mike Fink, who has been in the waterborne transportation business but is on a leave of absence, and my dear friend John-James Audubon, who is mute."

"No he's not," said Purity. For she saw in both Cooper and Audubon himself that the statement was a lie. "You really mustn't lie to strangers. It starts things off in such an unfortunate way."

"I assure you, madam," said Cooper, "that in New England, he is and shall remain completely mute."

And with that slight change, she could see in both of them that the statement was now true. "So you choose to be mute here in New England. Let me puzzle this out. You dare not open your mouth; therefore your very speech must put you in a bad light. No, in outright danger, for I think none of you cares much about public opinion. And what could endanger a man, just by speaking? The accent of a forbidden nation. A papist nation, I daresay. And the name being Audubon, and your manners toward a woman being tinged with unspeakable presumptions, I would guess that you are French."

Audubon turned red under his suntan and faced away from her. "I do not know how you know this, but you also must be seeing that I did not act improper to you."

"What she's telling us," said Verily Cooper, "is that she's got her a knack."

"Please keep such crudity for times when you are alone with the ill-mannered," said Purity. "I observe people keenly, that is all. And from his accent I am confident that my reasoning was correct."

The rough fellow, Mike Fink, spoke up. "When you hear a bunch of squealing and snorting, you can bet you're somewhere near a pig."

Purity turned toward him. "I have no idea what you meant by that."

"I'm just saying a knack's a knack."

"Enough," said Cooper. "Less than a week in New England and we've already forgotten all caution? Knacks are illegal here. Therefore decent people don't have them."

"Oh yeah," said Mike Fink. "Except she does."

"But then, perhaps she is not decent," said Audubon.

It was Purity's turn to blush. "You forget yourself, sir," she said.

"Never mind him," said Cooper. "He's just miffed because you made that remark about unspeakable presumptions."

"You're travelers," she said.

"John-James paints North American birds with an eye toward publishing a book of his pictures for the use of scientists in Europe."

"And for this he needs a troop along? What do you do, hold his brushes?"

"We're not all on the same errand," said Cooper.

At that moment the two she had seen in the river came out of the bushes, still damp-haired but fully clothed.

"Ma'am, I'm so sorry you had to see so much horseflesh without no horses," said the White one.

The Black one said not a thing, but never took his eyes from her.

"This is Alvin Smith," said Cooper. "He's a man of inestimable abilities, but only because nobody has cared enough to estimate them. The short one is Arthur Stuart, no kin to the King, who travels with Alvin as his adopted nephew-in-law, or some such relationship."

"And you," said Purity, "have been long enough out of England to pick up some American brag."

"But surrounded by Americans as I am," said Cooper, "my brag is like a farthing in a sack of guineas."

She couldn't help but laugh at the way he spoke. "So you travel in New England with a Frenchman, who is only able to avoid being expelled or, worse, arrested as a spy, by pretending to be a mute. You are a barrister, this fellow is a boatman, as I assume, and the two bathers are..." Her voice trailed off.

"Are what?" asked Alvin Smith.

"Clean," she said. Then she smiled.

"What were you going to say?" asked Smith.

"Don't press her," said Cooper. "If someone decides to leave something unsaid, my experience is that everyone is happier if they don't insist on his saying it."

"That's OK," said Arthur Stuart. "I don't think she knows herself what was on her lips to say."