"Card, Orson Scott - The Tales of Alvin Maker 01 - Seventh Son" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

"She cuts off the fat," said Armor, "and throws in some chicken."

"Now you mention it," said Thrower, "I can taste it in the broth."

"And the deer fat goes into the soap," said Armor. "We never throw anything away, if we can think of any use for it."

"Just as the Lord intended," said Thrower. Then he fell to eating. He was well into his second bowl of stew and his third slice of bread when he made a comment that he thought was a jesting compliment. "Mrs. Weaver, your cooking is so good that it almost makes me believe in sorcery."

Thrower was expecting a chuckle, at the most. Instead, Eleanor looked down at the table just as ashamed as if he had accused her of adultery. And Armor-of-God sat up stiff and straight. "I'll thank you not to mention that subject in this house," he said.

Reverend Thrower tried to apologize. "I wasn't serious about it," he said. "Among rational Christians that sort of thing is a joke, isn't it? A lot of superstition, and I--"

Eleanor got up from the table and left the room.

"What did I say?" Thrower asked.

Armor sighed. "Oh, there's no way you could know," he said. "It's a quarrel that goes back to before we were married, when I first come out to this land. I met her when she came with her brothers to help build my first cabin-- the soapmaking shed, now. She started to scatter spearmint on my floor and say some kind of rhyme, and I shouted for her to stop it and get out of my house. I quoted the Bible, where it says, You shall not suffer a witch to live. It made for a right testy half hour, you may be sure."

"You called her a witch, and she married you?"

"We had a few conversations in between."

"She doesn't believe in that sort of thing anymore, does she?"

Armor knitted his brows. "It ain't a matter of believing, it's a matter of doing, Reverend. She doesn't do it anymore. Not here, not anywhere. And when you-- sort of halfway accused her of it, well, it made her upset. Because it's a promise to me, you see."

"But when I apologized, why did she--"

"Well, there you are. You have your way of thinking, but you can't tell her that come-hithers and herbs and incantations got no power, because she's seen some things herself that you can't just explain away."

"Surely a man like you, well read in the scripture and acquainted with the world, surely you can convince your wife to give up the superstitions of her childhood."

Armor gently laid his hand on Reverend Thrower's wrist. "Reverend, I got to tell you something that I didn't think I'd ever have to tell a grown man. A good Christian refuses to allow that stuff in his life because the only proper way to bring the hidden powers into your life is through prayer and the grace of the Lord Jesus. It ain't because it doesn't work."

"But it doesn't," said Thrower. "The powers of heaven are real, and the visions and visitations of angels, and all the miracles attested in the scripture. But the powers of heaven have nothing at all to do with young couples falling in love, or curing the croup, or getting chickens to lay, or all the other silly little things that the ignorant common people do with their so-called hidden wisdom. There's not a thing that's done by doodlebugging or hexing or whatever that can't be explained by simple scientific investigation."

Armor didn't answer for the longest while. The silence made Thrower quite uncomfortable, but he had no idea what more he could say. It hadn't occurred to him before that Armor could possibly believe in such things. It was a startling perspective. It was one thing to abstain from witchery because it was nonsense, and quite another to believe in it and abstain because it was unrighteous. It occurred to Thrower that this latter view was actually more ennobling: for Thrower to disdain witching was a matter of mere common sense, while for Armor and Eleanor it was quite a sacrifice.

Before he could find a way to express this thought, however, Armor leaned back on his chair and changed the subject entirely.

"Reckon your church is just about done."

With relief, Reverend Thrower followed Armor onto safer ground. "The roof was finished yesterday, and today they were able to clap all the boards on the walls. It'll be watertight tomorrow, with shutters on the windows, and when we get them glazed and the doors hung it'll be tight as a drum."

"I've got the glass coming by boat," said Armor. Then he winked. "I solved the problem of shipping on Lake Erie."

"How did you manage that? The French are sinking every third boat, even from Irrakwa."

"Simple. I ordered the glass from Montreal."