by Kage Baker
I wasn't even a human being. And this warm mortal man, with his broken nose and unshaven chin, speaking so confidently of such crazy ideas, seemed to stand in a lamplit room. I stood without in freezing darkness, by a sealed window. But I touched his hand and he took mine without even noticing. He folded it between his hands and kept on talking.
"The end of sin, therefore, is the end of death."
"Is there no way out of all this sin?" I cried in agony. Must I be trapped in this conversation my whole life?
"None for me. I have sinned, and I will surely die; but I have been closer to the true faith than my father was, and the child born tomorrow shall come closer yet than I. So long as each generation works tirelessly for the perfection of the soul, His Kingdom cannot fail to come on Earth."
Shut up, shut up, I thought. It was my own creed he was outlining, and it terrified me. There was no hope for him, he would surely die, but he didn't matter beside the greater good. I didn't want to think of my eternal labor through generations of men yet unborn, when Nicholas would be so much forgotten dust. I wanted to breathe in the scent of his mortal body and listen to the rhythms of his voice, without understanding.
"What madness this is, this idea," I said. "Living forever on Earth. Where will we all go, tell me, if no one ever dies? Next you'll be telling me that men will travel to the moon and stars." If he started to prophesy about space travel, I really was going to scream. But he only shrugged and smiled.
"As easily as traveling to the Isle of Avalon," he said. "For men must be without sin before they can do either."
Well, he was wrong about that, at least. "Enough of this talk of sin, in God's name," I begged him. "We are here, now, in this beautiful place. Isn't this enough? This garden, and the sun, and you and I here, and the poor little unicorn?"
"But the sun will set tonight, Rosa," he said. "And our lives will be over in a moment. And we know the truth, you and I, about that unicorn. What will sustain us but working for the eternal realm?"
Eternal work. My God, couldn't the man talk about anything else? What business did he have being so holy, with that big body of his so well made? With a sob of exasperation I caught hold of him, rock-steady as he was, and kissed him to make him quiet.
His first reaction was to kiss back. He did it very well, he took the initiative at once, and his hands set to work busily doing all the right things. He kissed like an angel of God. It figured.
He lifted his mouth, though, before even one lace had come unfastened, and set me at arm's length. "We must not," he said.
I looked at him, speechless. He could not snatch it away, whatever this was. I had stopped shaking and begun to grow warm inside, warm right through, even to that secret cupboard full of shattered glass and broken dishes. Yet it wouldn't do, would it, for Master Ffrawney or poor Sir Walter or even unexpected penny-paying tourists to come upon us sprawling in the long grass? Nicholas must have learned to dread scandal, if what was said of him was true. I looked down sullenly and said, "So love is a sin too."
"No!" He caught up my hand. "Before God, I tell you, flesh is innocent enough. But you are yet young and I…" I looked longingly at his big fine hands. He drew them back. "Would to God I had never sinned," he said.
We went on through the garden then, as we were supposed to do, and through all that long day I filled my basket with rarities, each priceless sacrifice saving its kind from extinction. The finest work in the world, as per my contract.
He didn't look happy either.
I bade Nicholas adieu at the top of the stairs that evening, and went into my room and worked at my credenza, like the good little operative I was supposed to be. I worked until late hours without a break, though Nefer brought me a plate of some kind of supper. I made immortal seven different varieties of cinquefoil, root, leaf, and blossom, for the benefit of the unborn generations who would thank me someday.
Wouldn't they? Wouldn't they appreciate the miraculous survival of seven rare subspecies of a common wildflower? Surely in the glorious future we were all headed for, such things would matter to everyone.
I was only a little distracted by Nefer pacing the floor, though I thought it very unusual for her to be disturbed about anything. Joseph came in to retire, cheery and relaxed, chuckling at some private joke. It must be nice, to find life so funny.
At eleven o'clock Nef came and tapped me on the shoulder.
"Lights out," she said flatly. I shut off the ultravey, and we were left in the wobbling candlelight to undo each other's back lacing.
"What's wrong with you?" I inquired.
"I'm doing nothing here," she sighed.
"Oh. Yes, I'd noticed that." I pulled her lacing free at the bottom, handed it to her, and turned my own back. Her fingers dug at the knots she'd tied that morning.
"It's not fair. There's so much work I could be doing. I hate these dead shifts, where you get stationed in the middle of nowhere for six months at a time with no assignment. At least in Spain there were cattle. I haven't seen anything but two oxen and three horses since I got here. Just wait, they'll pull this on you sometime."
"I don't see how. Domestic animals may be scarce in some places, but plants grow everywhere," I pointed out.
"Ha!" She jerked out a lace. "Ever been in the Sahara? Ever seen pictures of New York Terminus 2100? Or Luna? Not even a cactus. Wait'll you do a ten-month layover in metropolitan Bikkung."
Nonsense. She was exaggerating, surely. Though I recalled holos of urban canyons of the time to come, monoliths of millions of tiny windows, and now that I thought about it, I couldn't recall seeing a blade of grass anywhere there. But if that's what the future held—
"Nef," I said, "did you ever have second thoughts?"
"About what?" She stepped out of her skirts, and her hoops fell to the floor with a gentle whoosh. The candle flame danced.
"Just… everything."
"You mean Doctor Zeus?" She stared at me as if I were crazy.
"Well, no," I lied.
"I mean, yes, I'm fed up at the moment, and some of my assignments have been in some awful places, but the job is, well, the job, isn't it? How could anybody have second thoughts? I mean, who'd rather be dead?"
"Yeah, right," I said.
The candle was out, and the house was quiet. And all the talk, all the hours of good work were done. I was alone in the dark, sweating sick with the terror of eternal years.
Nicholas Harpole was sitting in his room, reading. He shone like his own candle through the walls. I could hear his breathing. He was aroused. That was what it was, the change in his scent. He closed the book. Snap. He put out his candle. Ssst. He rustled out of his clothes and into his creaking bed.
As he was poking his feet down into the bed to get them warm, my feet were touching the icy floor. No one made a move to stop me. I drifted from the room and up the long dark corridor, up through the house, with shades pressing close around me on all sides. I didn't run. I found my way to the top of the house, and I opened up the door of that high narrow room where he lay.
He sat up in his shirt, staring at me. I stood there in my nightgown. Oh, the floor was cold. What could I possibly say to him?
"I'm lost," I said. Ha ha; but it was true.
"Think, Lady," Nicholas whispered. "Consider your honor. Consider what you do." But he was already moving over and making room for me beside him, folding back the sheet with those superb hands.
"It is very frightening, being lost." I came closer. "Also I am cold, señor."
"You would be warm in bed," he conceded.
"Can you remedy my being lost, too?" I sat down on the edge. He put out his arm in the darkness and folded me to him.
"Why, Lady, I have found you. How then are you lost?"
He swept me in close, jumping a little at the touch of my icy toes on his shins, and leaned down for a kiss. Oh God he was warm, and his mouth tasted good, and his bed smelled of books and maleness and late nights. He was bare under his shirt, as I was bare un
der my shift.
"Well met!" He came up from the kiss laughing. "Hadst thou not come here, I swear I'd have lived thy constant friend in chastity, but my poor Friar John would scarce have left me alone."
"Friar John?" I was incredulous.
"Why, to be sure. The upright monk with his hood, who ever entreats me to seek out holy places." We were both giggling now. "Who would ever live in contemplation in some close dark cell, who, um, weeps great tears of remorse at my sins… Who… who… oh, the devil with the metaphor." We kissed greedily; but my fear had not gone yet.
"Everything I was ever told was a lie." I clung to him. "And I have gone too far on a road with no turning, but there must be a way back. There must. I can't take that road, though it lead to Paradise." Not many men would have taken thought for my spiritual state just then, but Nicholas lifted his head and said seriously:
"Sweet love, we shall go to Paradise. Here, now, in this idle pleasant way with our flesh; but also through grace. I will make you love God again."
"You're after my soul," I murmured, looking up at him. This was more wickedly exciting even than our nakedness. I could tell it was working that way with him, too: his nostrils flared, and he lowered himself to kiss me, but slow this time, and we settled down for serious work. I wonder if the careful reader has figured out what was bound to happen next. If you have, are you laughing? Are you really?
Our bodies are designed as indestructible sanctuaries. We are trained to flee every assault on their integrity; and if we cannot flee, then to fight. It's hardwired, we can't help it.
But even now I grit my teeth. He leaned back on his elbow to look at me, gingerly touching his cheek where I'd hit him. I had to turn away and cry.
"Thou art of two minds, it seems," he remarked, in such outrageous understatement that I nearly had hysterics then and there. He put his arms around me (brave man) and tucked me up into his shoulder.
"Hush, then, thou. Is this all? Why, love, it is no shame to be afeared so early in the dance. We'll have no leaping yet, shall we, no bouncing galliards? No. No. A slow pavane is more to the taste of a lady, I think. An easy dance, that may be learned by any little maid. We'll not spoil with haste."
"My body is frightened," I tried to explain. "Not me."
Patiently Nicholas held me until my sobs had gone quiet. Then he leaned up to look me in the eye and said:
"Now, why didst thou play the wanton with me? I would not have hurt thee for the world, Rose."
"I came to you because I love you," I said, as a defense; but I realized, with a certain gleeful horror, that it was true. "I have never loved anyone before in all my life, and I am so frightened."
"Flesh is a comfort to flesh," he said. "Though not, I think, the remedy for thy fear."
"My fear is not of you," I protested.
"What then?" he said. I took too long to come up with an answer, because thoughts began to turn behind his eyes and they grew small and suspicious.
"Did thy father bid thee come here?" That was so close to the mark that I had to catch my breath, which he interpreted correctly. His scowl deepened. I knew I must make the best of it, so I said:
"He hath counseled me to make much of you, señor, I will admit."
"What manner of man sends his virgin child—" Nicholas began in thunder.
I rushed on: "But in an honorable manner, señor, as any maid might do. He wisheth me to be married well and, having some care to my happiness, bade me look to wed with an Englishman."
"For safety," Nicholas muttered.
"It may be so."
"What storm is it he runs before? He hath some black business, thy father, hath he not? And this it is that maketh thee pale and sick."
I clung to him. Let him think what he wanted, I was in over my head. "It's true," I whispered in his ear. "I want no part of his life. Let me stay here with thee. Keep me, love."
He gave a long sigh, a brooding angry sound, but his hands began to move again on my skin. "Tell me the truth, Rose," he said. "What dost thou fear?"
"So many things, I have forgot them all," I said wearily. "But I struck you because I thought you would tear me and make me to bleed."
He gave a rueful laugh. "I hope I may couch a lance with more skill than that. Will you prove me, love?" I kissed him where I had hit him. With great care and gentleness he began the game again.
"Some order ought to be taken for the better education of virgins, that they read no old romances," he grumbled pleasantly. "For there they will read of this maiden come near to dying when her lover beds her first, or that maiden staining seventeen ells of linen by her defloration, swooning for love, and I assure you it is not so. Look you, Friar John shall preach you a sermon on it." He began to speak in a little squeaky voice for his penis:
"Now you must know, child, that what passeth between a man and a maid is no ordeal but a delightful measure, as many happy country girls witnesseth, who are never the worse for making familiar with a plain and well-intentioned prick. Nay, further, our Lord that loveth us surpassing well hath ordained this matter to be pleasing to the partakers thereof, as we may read in Holy Scripture, where it saith: O that thy mouth would give us a kiss, for thy breasts are more pleasant than wine, and—"
So as I rocked in his arms, helpless with laughter, he pressed his advantage; with such courtesy that my castle, as they say, fell without further defense.
And as the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so was my beloved among the sons. Et cetera. What would I give, to have that night back, out of all my nights? No treasure fleet could hold it, what I'd give; no caravan of mules could carry it away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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In the black morning he guided me down the stairs, though on the bottom step we clenched and melted, and had to run right back up to bed again.
When I finally crept back into my room, the eastern sky was starting to get light. Our windows faced east, so everything stood in black outline against them: very distinct, the posts and the drapes of the bed, and Nef's Egyptian profile where she sat upright watching the dawn. She turned to look at me.
"You all right?" she inquired.
I just smiled, the way you do when you're newly nineteen on a summer morning in England and you've just discovered Paradise on Earth. Were there stars in my eyes? I suppose there were. I came and settled gingerly on the foot of the bed.
"You know something?" I said. "All my life I've been fed this line of utter garbage about mortals. They're just the same as we are, and some of them"—meaningful pause here—"are better."
The pity in her face was a thousand years old. I didn't understand it, so I ignored it.
"I just spent the night with a mortal man who's got God's own intellect," I swept on. "And the body to match. He's enlightened, he's fearless, he's seven hundred years ahead of his time. The only thing that makes him different from me or you is the hardware."
She just nodded and said, "Well…"
"The thing is, I've been operating all this time with an incredible sense of superiority over this race that produced Caligula and Hitler and the other monsters, and all the while ignoring the fact that this same race is capable of turning out Da Vincis and Shakespeares. How can we all be so arrogant?"
She shrugged a little and said, "Sometimes…"
"I mean, there's a whole world here I've never even thought about. There must be millions of these sane, intelligent individuals whose lives are every bit as meaningful as our own, and if it weren't for a few aberrant types screwing it up for everyone else, they'd probably be well on the way to the perfect civilization. This is tragic. We have to help these people. I mean, they made us, didn't they? We came from them. In a sense, we are them. Aren't we?"
How infinitely wry was Nef's smile, on that two millionth morning of her life.
"Yes and no," she said.
"What do you mean?" I bounced impatiently on the bed.
"You'll find out."
"Oh, baloney." I jumped
up and crawled in on my side of the bed. "Don't go all metaphysical on me. And anyway—anyway! Why didn't anyone ever tell me what happens when you—you know—for the first time? I went into automatic defense mode and nearly hurt him!"
At least she winced. "Sorry about that," she said. "I thought you knew."
"Well, I didn't, and it nearly ruined everything," I said crossly, yanking most of the blankets over on my side.
"The man has to be careful, and you have to relax a lot," she explained.
"Thank you, we figured that out." I burrowed down into the pillows. "And now I'm going to sleep for hours and hours. I won't be down for breakfast. You can tell them whatever you want." To her everlasting credit, Nef did not pick up the candlestick and club me over the head. She only sighed and climbed out of bed to begin her two millionth day.
When I woke, I was as happy as if it were my birthday, and someone had crept into my room and left a rose by my pillow.
Well, who cared about work after that? Not I, and not Nicholas Harpole, except that it gave us an excuse to get out alone together in the garden. His God even favored us with a miracle, for it stopped raining; and this is always a marvel in that damned green land, but more so in that particular summer when the Cloud Prince was in residence.
Now that I come to write of what we did together, I have a peculiar reluctance to put pen to paper. Yes, this is definitely pain I feel. There is a locked door, you see, hinges red as blood with rust: it screams upon being opened and tries to close again, but through its narrow space I see the color green.
Long grass where we lay, in the heart of the maze, and the little white flowers of the hedge had a sweet smell, like semen. I had filled my overskirt with damson plums, and we took turns eating them and reading to one another from De Immensa Misericordia Dei. I can still see the explosion of green at his window, the summer leaves crowding thick as though they would burst in on us where we sat naked on his bed. We had a dish of strawberries and a flagon of Rhenish wine, and he cradled a mandolin on his lap, for decency's sake, he said; his big hands closed on the frets and plucked the strings. Sweat formed on his fair skin. He taught me songs.