Alvin chuckled. “No shooting savages, either, if you don't mind.”

Audubon looked at him, furious and embarrassed. «Parlez-vous fran‡ais?»

«Je ne parle pas fran‡ais,» said Alvin, remembering a phrase from the few halting French lessons Margaret tried before she finally gave up on getting Alvin to speak any language other than English. Latin and Greek had already been abandoned by then. But he did understand the word sauvage, having heard it so often in the French fort of Detroit when he went there as a boy with Ta-Kumsaw.

“C'est vrai,” muttered Audubon. Then, louder: “I make the promise you say. Bring me a goose that stand in one place for my painting.”

“You going to answer my questions?” asked Arthur Stuart.

“Yes of course,” said Audubon.

“A real answer, and not just some stupid nothing like adults usually say to children?”

“Hey,” said Alvin.

“Not you,” said Arthur Stuart quickly. But Alvin retained his suspicions.

“Yes,” said Audubon in a world-weary voice. “I tell you all the secret of the universe!”

Arthur Stuart nodded, and walked to the point where the bank was highest. But before calling the geese, he turned to face Audubon one last time. “Where do you want the bird to stand?”

Audubon laughed. “You are the very strange boy! This is what you Americans call 'the brag'?”

“He ain't bragging,” said Alvin. “He really has to know where you want the goose to stand.”

Audubon shook his head, then looked around, checked the angle of the sun, and where there was a shady spot where he could sit while painting. Only then could he point to where the bird would have to pose.

“All right,” said Arthur Stuart. He faced the river and babbled again, loudly, the sound carrying across the water. The geese rose from the surface and flew rapidly to shore, landing in the water or on the meadow. The lead goose, however, landed near Arthur Stuart, who led it toward the spot Audubon had picked.

Arthur looked at the Frenchman impatiently. He was just standing there, mouth agape, watching the goose come into position and then stop there, standing still as a statue. “You gonna draw in the mud with a stick?” asked Arthur.

Only then did Audubon realize that his paper and colors were still in his sack. He jogged briskly to the bag, stopping now and then to look back over his shoulder and make sure the goose was still there. While he was out of earshot, Alvin asked Arthur, “You forget we were leaving Philadelphia this morning?”

Arthur looked at him with the expression of withering scorn that only the face of an adolescent can produce. “You can go anytime you like.”

At first Alvin thought he was telling him to go on and leave Arthur behind. But then he realized that Arthur was merely stating the truth: Alvin could leave Philadelphia whenever he wanted, so it didn't matter if it was this morning or later. “Verily and Mike are going to get worried if we don't get back soon.”

“I don't want no birds to die,” said Arthur.

“It's God's job to see every sparrow fall,” said Alvin. “I didn't hear about him advertising that the position was open.”

Arthur just clammed up and said no more. Soon Audubon was back, sitting in the grass under the tree, mixing his colors to match the exact color of the goosefeathers.

“I want to watch you paint,” said Arthur.

“I don't like having people look over my shoulder.”

Arthur murmured something and the goose started to wander away.

“All right!” said Audubon frantically. “Watch me paint, watch the bird, watch the sun in the sky until you will be blind, whatever you want!”

At once Arthur Stuart muttered to the goose, and it waddled back into place.

Alvin shook his head. Naked extortion. How could this be the sweettempered child Alvin had known for so long?

Chapter 2 – A Lady of the Court

Peggy spent the morning trying not to dread her meeting with Lady Guinevere Ashworth. As one of the senior ladies-in-waiting to Queen Mary she had some influence in her own right; more importantly, she was married to the Lord Chancellor, William Ashworth, who might have been born the third son of a schoolteacher, but by wit, dazzle, and enormous energy had clawed his way to a fine education, a good marriage, and a high office. Lord William had no illusions about his own parentage: He took his wife's family's name upon marrying her.

A woman is a woman, regardless of her parents' rank or her husband's office, Peggy reminded herself. When Lady Ashworth's bladder was full, angels didn't miraculously turn it into wine and bottle it, though from the way her name was spoken throughout Camelot, one might have thought so. It was a level of society Peggy had never aspired to or even been interested in. She hardly knew the proper manner of address to a daughter of a marquis– and whenever Peggy thought that she ought to make inquiries, she forced herself to remember that as a good Republican, she should get it wrong, and ostentatiously so. After all, both Jefferson and Franklin invariably referred to the King as “Mr. Stuart,” and even addressed him as such on official correspondence between heads of state– though the story was that clerks in the ministry of state “translated” all such letters so that proper forms of address appeared on them, thus avoiding an international incident.

And if there was any hope of averting the war that loomed among the American nations, it might well rest on her interview with Lady Ashworth. For along with her lofty social position– some said the Queen herself consulted Lady Ashworth for advice on how to dress– Lady Ashworth was also leader of the most prominent anti-slavery organization in the Crown Colonies: Ladies Against Property Rights in Persons. (According to the fashion in the Crown Colonies, the organization was commonly called Lap-Rip, from the initials of its name– a most unfortunate acronym, Peggy thought, especially for a ladies' club.)

So much might be riding on this morning's meeting. Everything else had been a dead end. After all her months in Appalachee, Peggy had finally realized that all the pressure for maintaining slavery in the New Counties was coming from the Crown Colonies. The King's government was rattling sabers, both figuratively and literally, to make sure the Appalachian Congress understood exactly what abolition of slavery would cost them in blood. In the meantime, union between Appalachee and the United States of America was impossible as long as slavery was legal anywhere within Appalachee. And the simplest compromise, to allow the pro-slavery New Counties of Tennizy, Cherriky, and Kenituck to secede from Appalachee, was politically impossible in Appalachee itself.

The outcome Peggy most feared was that the United States would give in and admit the New Counties as slaveholding States. Such a pollution of American freedom would destroy the United States, Peggy was sure of it. And secession of the New Counties was only slightly more acceptable to her, since it would leave most of the Blacks of Appalachee under the overseer's lash. No, the only way to avoid war while retaining a spark of decency among the American people was to persuade the Crown Colonies to allow the whole of Appalachee, New 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.