Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V by Orson Scott Card

her. Not young, really; sagging just a bit; but not too bad, considering. Honoré would probably approve. If he decided to tell him.
    Oh, he would tell him. Without doubt, for Honoré would love the story of it, would love hearing how much Calvin had learned from his constant dalliances.
    “Where is my sister-in-law?” Calvin asked matter-of-factly.
    “Don’t go,” said Lady Ashworth.
    “It wouldn’t do for me to stay,” said Calvin. “The gossipy ladies of Camelot would never understand the perfect beauty of this hour.”
    “But you’ll come back.”
    “As often as prudence allows,” he said. “For I will not permit my visits here to do you any harm.”
    “What have I done,” she murmured. “I am not a woman who commits adultery.”
    On the contrary, Calvin thought. You’re just a woman who was never tempted until now. That’s all that virtue amounts to, isn’t it? Virtue is what you treasure until you feel desire, and then it becomes an intolerable burdento be cast away, and only to be picked up again when the desire fades.
    “You are a woman who married before she met the love of her life,” said Calvin. “You serve your husband well. He has no reason to complain of you. But he will never love you as I love you.”
    A tear slipped out of her eye and ran across her temple onto her hair-strewn pillow. “He rides me impatiently, like a carriage, getting out almost before he reaches his destination.”
    “Then he has his use of you, and you of him,” said Calvin. “The contract of marriage is well-fulfilled.”
    “But what about God?”
    “God is infinitely compassionate,” said Calvin. “He understands us more perfectly than humans ever can. And he forgives.”
    He bent over her and kissed her one more time. She told him where Peggy was staying. He left the house whistling. What fun! No wonder Honoré spent so much time in pursuit of women.

5

Purity
     
    Purity did her best to live up to her name. She had been a good little girl, and only got better through her teens, for she believed what the ministers taught and besides, wickedness never had much attraction for her.
    But living up to her name had come to mean more to her than mere obedience to the word of God in the Bible. For she realized that her name was her only link back to her true identity—to the parents who had died when she was only a baby, and whose only contribution to her upbringing was the name they gave her.
    The name contained clues. Here in Massachusetts, the people mostly hailed from the East Anglian and Essex Puritan traditions, which did not name children for virtues. That was a custom more common in Sussex, which suggested that Purity’s family had lived in Netticut, not in Massachusetts.
    And as Purity grew older in the orphan house in Cambridge, Reverend Hezekiah Study, now well into his seventies,took notice of her bright mind and insisted, against tradition, that she be given a full education of the type given to boys. Of course it was out of the question for her to enroll at Harvard College, for that school was devoted to training ministers. But she was allowed to sit on a stool in the corridor outside any classroom she wanted, and overhear whatever portion of the lesson was given loudly enough. And they let her have access to the library.
    She soon learned that the library was the better teacher, for the authors of the books were helpless to shut her out because of her sex. Having put their best knowledge into print, they had to endure the ignominy of having a woman read it and understand it. The living professors, on the contrary, took notice of when Purity was listening, and most of them used that occasion to speak very quietly, to close the door, or to speak in Latin or Greek, which the students presumably spoke and Purity was presumed not to understand at all. On the contrary, she read Latin and Greek with great fluency and pronounced it better than all but a few of the male students—how else would she have