by Kage Baker
"I must have some private speech with my child, it seems. Pray pardon me." And he swung the door shut, bang. Turning back, he said:
"Okay, Mendoza, get up. I've just ridden thirty miles on an extremely unpleasant horse and I don't feel like having an argument. You are in a lot of trouble."
"No!" I cried. "You can't make me leave now!"
"Now? Not leave now? What do you want to do, stay here until they torch the guy?"
Nicholas was struggling to his feet, staring from one to the other of us in bewilderment. Cinema Standard was enough like Tudor English for him to be able to understand about one word in three of what we were saying.
"I don't know! God, God, help me, I can't save him!"
"What language are you speaking?" inquired Nicholas in Latin.
"Shut up, creep. Oh, and by the way," Joseph continued in Latin, turning to him, "would you tell me why you were trying to get into my room with a sword? It takes something more to kill me, as you no doubt have guessed."
"I never went to your room to kill you," said Nicholas. "I was trying to get out of the house without being killed. I went to your room only for medicine, to calm your daughter. You know what I saw when I opened your door."
"I know. You ought to have knocked. But do you understand you are a dead man?"
"Truly I know it," said Nicholas, with a little of his former sneer. "But I die in a just cause. And I will testify to the truth until I have no voice."
"You mean to denounce us to the world, then?" Soberly, Joseph put his hand on his pouch, where he kept his little glass vials. I opened my mouth, but no scream came out.
"By no means. Who would believe me? The ranting of a madman is not regarded. I mean to put my last breath to better use."
"Very wise of you, I'm sure." But Joseph's fingers were still working at the fastening. Nicholas saw the fear in my eyes.
"Thou art not her father!" he blurted out in English. "Though I'll lay odds thou art the same demon who stole the child and made her what she is."
Dead silence. Joseph surveyed him.
"Boy, you're good at figuring things out. Isn't he? Except that if anybody's the devil in this room it's you, buster." An extraordinary bitterness came into his face. "I've seen you before. I know you, all right, preacher man. Age after age, you come back. You always lead the crusades. You're so damned golden-tongued, other people just flock to die for your causes. You die with them, it's true, because you're stupid enough to believe your own great lies; but you always come back again somehow. Oh, I know you."
No hair-tearing, no jumping up and down. Only his voice dropping to an unexpected bass with Nicholas staring at him, unable to comprehend.
"You think I'm not her father?" Joseph thundered. "I took her out of the grave and gave her eternal life, which is more than your lousy God would have done! You're the one who seduced her into believing that your miserable little cult matters a damn, when she knows nothing matters less. You're the one who's made her hate what she is. How's she supposed to live, now, after what you've done to her heart?"
Not understanding him, Nicholas had stopped listening and was watching me where I cowered on the bed.
"So thou canst disobey him," he said softly. "So thou hast a free will and may choose."
"Mendoza, get up. I'm taking you out of here."
Nicholas held my gaze, and I could not look away. "Stay with me until I have suffered tomorrow. Be with me at the end. I cannot rest otherwise, nor wilt thou rest. This thou knowest, love."
Joseph seized me and pulled me to my feet. "Mendoza, we're getting on two fine horses I paid ready cash for and we're riding south. We are not going to watch an auto-da-fé. Come on."
My heart felt like a balloon.
"You can't make me leave if I don't want to. Can you?" I said to Joseph. "I'm already in trouble. I'm staying until it's over tomorrow. When it's over, I'll go back with you, and the Company can do whatever it wants to."
Joseph let go of me. "It might teach you a lesson, at that," he said. "All right." He looked at Nicholas. "Young man. Do you know how many burnings at the stake I've had to sit through? Seven hundred and nine. Yours may be the first one I've ever enjoyed. In anticipation of that, I thank you."
He swung the door open and pulled me out with him.
I went obediently enough. I let Joseph lead me back to the Lord Mayor's house with the Lord Mayor practically bowing and scraping beside us the whole way and telling us about his cousin who had married one of Katherine of Aragon's grooms. Apparently he offered to put us up for the night, too, but I missed what he and Joseph said to each other in that regard, because I was in a fog.
Something had happened in that cell that made it all right between us again. My own Nicholas had been looking at me at the last, and not that cold godly stranger.
At the Lord Mayor's house we were shown to an upstairs room, quite nicely furnished. Food and hot wine were brought for us; soap and water in a basin for me. I watched as Joseph talked to people. He explained, he apologized, he made arrangements, and at last he closed the door on the last mayoral wish for our pleasant stay in Rochester.
Turning around, he leaned against the door and stared at me.
"You shouldn't have said all those awful things about Nicholas," I said thickly. "Not true at all. Petty of you. Coming back age after age?"
He put his palms to his temples and pressed, as though he were trying to keep his brains from exploding.
"I mean, what, you believe in reincarnation or something?" I went on.
"You're how old now, Mendoza?" he inquired, with tremendous self-control.
"Nineteen. Maybe."
"Nineteen, huh?" He took his hands down and began to pace. "Jesus. This must be what it's like to have a real daughter. What are they teaching you kids back there? As for reincarnation, it's realer than you think, smart-ass. There are only so many personality types among mortals. They just use the same ones over and over. Zealots like your Nicholas keep turning up, and every time they do, they make trouble for everybody. He's screwed you up, the son of a bitch. When this guy burns tomorrow—"
"Oh, he won't burn," I said dreamily. "He's going to recant. That's why he wants me to be there. He'll save himself, and then what will you do? He knows all about us. And he understands—isn't that incredible? A mortal capable of understanding the truth about us? See, you won't have any choice. You'll have to recruit him for us now. Give him tribrantine. And you know he'll be the best mortal worker we've ever had, once we explain the whole truth to him. Imagine all that intellect and all that zeal working for us!"
But he moved away from me and took hold of the bed rail with both hands.
"Mendoza," he said, "you can sleep in the saddle. We'll go slow. I'll lead your horse. Just come away with me right now, and I swear I'll fix everything with the Company about your going AWOL. Maybe I can even get you out to the New World. There are people who owe me favors out there. Please, Mendoza. For your old pal who got you out of Santiago? Don't stay here."
"Didn't you hear a word I just said?" I demanded. His shoulders sagged.
"You'd better get some sleep," he said.
It was still dark when I opened my eyes, but I was wide awake at once. Joseph sat motionless in a chair by the window.
Rochester. Today. Nicholas.
"It's April first," I said. "Fool's Day." Joseph nodded.
"Five A.M., as a matter of fact. Want to go back to sleep for a few hours?"
"Don't be stupid. I have to see him." I jumped out of bed and got dressed. I felt very light, very unreal, and my heart was pounding.
I had thought we could just leave the house quietly, but when we went downstairs, the Lord Mayor's household was awake and bustling. So we were offered breakfast (I was too nervous to eat) and given cushions by the fire while the Lord Mayor got into his mayoral robes, because of course he had to attend the public event, and we, being his guests, had to wait for him. It took him forever to get dressed. His wife fussed around him
and adjusted his chain of office and his big flat cap with its curling plume. The plume was an ostrich feather. It must have come from Africa by way of Spain. Wasn't the world a small place nowadays?
It was gray when we left the house. A light wind had risen in the night and blown away the fog. The Medway sparkled dully, waiting for the sunlight. The stars were going to bed, faint in a sky pale as blue chalk. Everything green was turned to the east, where it was bright and growing brighter.
The people, though, were drawn to the precinct of the cathedral. There, right by the bishop's palace, they had set up the stake. I saw it from a distance before I knew what it was. What drew my attention to it was the stream of mortals: from every door and lane they emerged to hurry toward it, like rats after the Pied Piper. Some mortals only glanced at us as they came out. Some bowed and slowed, and made to trail behind us as though they were members of our party. Some mortals spat at us and ran. They all looked alike, though.
But the stake. How could anyone pay attention to anything else? It was black with pitch and stood straight up out of a platform of logs. There were tidy bundles of brushwood stacked close by and a perimeter of bleachers, yes, actual spectator seating. Why, they'd thought of everything. We might have been in Spain.
Joseph had taken my hand in his and was squeezing tight. Was he worried? We were shown to seats. Seats of honor in the front row, no less, though some people in the crowd muttered against us. Then came out the bishop and the other ranking clergymen of the area, in solemn procession. Everybody stood. Respectfully, after the religious had been seated, the rest of us sat down again. Just like at Mass.
We waited. The sky grew lighter. What a sweet wind had sprung up, all fresh the way it is in the early morning.
In the midst of a prayer led by the bishop, they brought out Nicholas. You could see him from a long way off too, like the stake. He towered above his guards.
Oh. He was stripped to his shirt and hose. Indecent, somehow. Didn't they give the condemned in this country sanbenitos to wear? Wondering that was a mistake, because it called to my mind a long-buried memory of shuffling figures all chained together, the tall points of their hats bobbing like antennae. I had screamed when I saw them. Where had I seen them? When? Was I sweating cold then, as I was now?
Then as now, people stooped to pick up stones and flung them.
Like men braving heavy rain, Nicholas and his guards put their heads down and slogged on. Stones clattered on the metal pot hats of the guards. They swore at the crowd and swung their pikes before them. Nicholas could have run away then, but he didn't. He didn't even look up until a flint struck and gashed his scalp. Blood ran down the side of his face. As he stood staring, his eyes met mine. The guards grabbed him, and he walked on. He came to the stake.
Suddenly he moved, he struck into the crowd and caught me up close to him. Only for a second, a split second, and then his guards were pulling him back and he was shouting hoarsely:
"Ego te baptismo! In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti! Amen!"
I was shocked numb. I put up my hand to my face. His blood was smeared on my face, in my hair. He had a look of desperate triumph in his eyes, though the guards were beating him with their pike staves. Stumbling, he let them back him in among the logs. He fell against the stake.
What was happening?
He let them clamber up beside him and chain him there. A big loop around his chest, another about his legs. Three little kegs of gunpowder were brought and fastened up with him. Then the guards jumped down and began to lift the brushwood bundles into place with their pikes.
Weren't they going to give him a chance to recant?
The bishop stood up and began solemnly to tell him off, but Nicholas didn't listen; his gaze was fixed on me with a kind of black delight, and I felt so stupid, sitting there, because I was only just beginning to understand.
"… to the everlasting shame of them that bore thee, and clothed thee, and taught thee, and sheltered thee! Wilt thou not so far amend thy life, man, as to renounce thine error? Speak, for thine hour is at hand," commanded the bishop.
It was what Nicholas had been waiting for. He swung his head from side to side, taking in his audience. "Yea, the hour is at hand!" he shouted. "Not mine hour alone but all England's hour, when it shall be tried in the sight of God! Gentlemen, my sin was very great. Ye know it well, all of ye, for it is your sin too and its name is Silence! O England, we knew the truth! We had the stone wherewith to build the New Jerusalem! And we neither spoke that truth nor built that city, being prudent, fearful men, and see what woe hath overtaken us now! The Lord hath sent a plague of Romish cardinals to drink our blood—"
"Fie! Wilt thou slander, thou?" cried the bishop.
"Do I slander? I humbly cry you mercy. I do but confess my sin. We have all sinned, we righteous men who kept silent when you crept back into England. Now you have returned in your power to forbid us the very Word of God! And who shall we blame but ourselves, who have let you return? O England, men will wear no chains but what they bind on with their own hands!"
His voice was beautiful. God, how beautiful. People were listening with their mouths open and greedy satisfaction in their eyes. Even the bishop, though his face was growing steadily more purple; he didn't want to miss a word, not a single damning word.
"Well, I will wear no more chains, gentlemen! I never will be silent again! Yea, you smile and say I am chained now, and soon will be silent enough. Yet I wear no such coils as all of ye. How will it go with ye when ye stand in shame before Almighty God, wearing such a weight of silence? England, is your flesh so dear to you as that? Is the flame so terrible?"
"Thou shalt know!" the bishop told him and, turning, gave the order. A soldier brought a torch and thrust it in among the piled brushwood. I lunged forward, and yet I could not leave the spot where I stood: there was an audible crack as muscle strove against bone. Joseph muttered an exclamation beside me and put his hand on my shoulder.
"Go, set the fire to blaze, for I will not peril my soul to keep out of it any longer!" Nicholas's voice came back like a great bell, drawing the crowd's attention from the first little curls of smoke. "I will escape the prison of earthly flesh that confineth ye all!"
And he turned and found me with his eyes, and his look went through me like a sword.
"I call on thee to break down the prison wall! What, wilt thou live on for endless years in this dark place and never come to Paradise? Thou art a spirit, and wilt thou not come back to the love of God? Thou mayest choose! Look, I stand in this door of flame and I tell thee it is but a little way through. Wilt thou not rise and walk with me?"
And he held out his hand, through the fire. But he was wrong: I couldn't choose. I was rooted where I stood. I could no more have walked into those flames than lifted that stone cathedral on my back. I had no free will.
Fire shot up and danced through his outstretched fingers, caught at his wide sleeve. He closed his eyes for a moment in pain. The contact was broken, and I looked away wildly. I was closed in by a circle of eager faces, rapt faces, Catholic and Protestant alike. He could be a heretic or a holy martyr to them, so long as they got to watch him die. This quaint people, pink-faced lord mayors and goodwives and honest tradesmen, were leaning close to see the intellect of an angel reduced to so much greasy ash. This people, whose wicker holocausts had shocked even the Romans; they had become Christians, but they hadn't changed. I met Joseph's sad black stare.
Nicholas made an agonized sound, and I looked back at him. The flames were high now. "Spirit, I charge thee, follow me into Paradise!" he choked, and then his voice rose clearer and louder than before. "I am thine only husband and thou art my bride! I am the same that waked thee among the apple trees where thy mother bore thee, where thy mother brought thee into the world! Come, and I will stay for thee! Oh, Jesu have mercy—oh—OH, JESU HAVE MERCY—"
Never say God doesn't answer prayers. The powder blew then and killed him. He became a column of fire and lig
ht as the sun rose over England.
While the crowd made appreciative noises, Joseph was finally able to pull me away from there; and we left that place.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
« ^
At some later point, not connected by memory to anything preceding or following it, I was riding along a lane with Joseph. All the trees were in bloom: white blossoms and sweet scent everywhere. Apple trees. Every kind of flowering tree.
Joseph was talking to me as we rode along.
"You aren't feeling anything much right now," he was saying, "because you're in shock. It's a protective reflex. It'll last for a while. Eventually you'll feel again, and when you do, you'll be hurting pretty badly. But your work will help, Mendoza. Only your work will take the pain away. You'll need it like food and water and air.
"I'll see to it they don't take your work away. This wasn't your fault, this was a hell of a thing to happen to you your first time out in the field. "
He was correct, it was. I looked at all the details of his clothing as we rode, fascinated by the patterns in the cloth. He watched the road for a while, and then he said:
"Yes, I can cover everything up, I know what I can do. Don't worry. And think of the relief, Mendoza, this whole nasty business is over. It ended badly, but it's over. Nothing to be afraid of now, nothing to break your heart hoping for. The mission was a success, too, and we're out of here. New location, nothing to remind you of unhappiness."
Oh, yes, I had to get out of England. He peered at me.
"Maybe I can get you posted to the New World. Hey, there's a great base where you could do research work, lots of peace and quiet there, maybe I can fix it so you won't get another assignment right away. What do you say, Mendoza?"
Yes, that sounded like what I needed.
He leaned toward me from his horse. "Okay, Mendoza?"
I blinked in surprise. Wasn't I agreeing with him? He took the reins from my hand and shook his head.