Heartfire

Plot summary

Alvin and Peggy marry, and Peggy becomes pregnant with a daughter who has not yet been born when the book ends. Alvin travels with Verily Cooper, Arthur Stuart, and Mike Fink, and they are joined by John James Audubon, a French-speaking painter of birds. The group heads to a Puritan-dominated area near Boston, where they confront the local witch laws. Meanwhile, Peggy journeys to the Crown Colonies, slave states ruled by the exiled Stuart dynasty, hoping to free the enslaved people.

There, a Puritan girl named Purity enters the story; her parents were hanged for having knacks, which the Puritans consider witchcraft. Purity meets Alvin’s band, and Arthur Stuart tells her the full account of their travels. Convinced they are witches, Purity reports them to a local witcher named Quill, a malicious man who twists her words against her and the group. Quill plans to hang both Purity and the others.

Alvin uses the greensong to whisk Arthur Stuart, Mike Fink, and Audubon away, allowing them to run hundreds of miles without tiring, but he turns back alone. He then surrenders to the men sent to capture the witches, while Verily hides. Quill forces Purity and Alvin to run in tight circles until they are exhausted, a semi-legal torture meant to extract confessions of witchcraft. Verily appears and loudly condemns Quill’s actions as inhumane in front of the crowd.

At the trial, Verily argues against the witch laws, pointing out that in every previous witch trial, the witcher introduced the connection to Satan, while the defendant was too broken to defend themselves. The judge, John Adams, is sympathetic but fears that overturning long-standing laws too quickly would cause social unrest. Instead, he suspends the licenses of all witchers in New England for alleged misconduct. To reinstate a license, a witcher would need to prove their claims in a regular court, which is impossible, so this effectively ends witch trials while keeping the laws on the books.

Separately, Calvin returns to America from France with Honoré de Balzac, a young French writer. They meet up with Peggy, and Calvin lands himself in serious trouble.