In the Garden of Iden (Company)

by Kage Baker

  The master of the consort, who had been watching for a cue all this while, stopped the music abruptly. Nicholas stood aghast as all eyes turned to him. I took his hand. “Come, love.”

  The music began again, and I drew him into the dance. In those days dancers saluted each other first, as fencers do, very stately. A little stylized kissing of hands, the fellow bowing and the lady making a curtsey, then into the patterned intricate steps.

  It was slow for a morisque, which was good because Nicholas hadn’t danced in—how long? But the music caught us up, and the grace of his body came back to him. What bliss.

  It disturbs me to remember how happy I was, how my blood moved in that hour. Music at that time was still brazen with colors picked up in the East during the Crusades, harsh with rhythms in a way it would not be again until the classical rock of the twentieth century. Dancing was erotic, formal, and feverish together. Nothing much more than hands touched, but what tension can crackle in fingertips. I forgot all about the terrible Christmas and the stinking food: there was only the music and my lover, who might as well have been naked there beside me, so fine he looked. Other couples had moved out beside us and were following in the steps. The music shook the very house; the bass rackett vibrated in the walls. Unreal at the corners, all kinds of little dramas were being acted out. Over there by the window at primero, Nef was beating the trunk hose off Sir Walter. Her face perfectly impassive, she accepted a card from him.

  Over there by the carved panels, Joseph was surrounded by four or five anxious old males who had got enough of a look at Sir Walter to know that whatever physick he had, they had to have it too. Joseph’s face was bland and slightly apologetic. I heard cracked elderly voices offering him many things, strange things, some of them.

  And over there by the fire, nasty Tom was talking to someone, grinning and pointing at Nicholas. A bad man. Dangerous. His face went pale suddenly, and he clutched at his throat, and the concerned friend had to thump him on the back. We kept on dancing.

  A basse-dance, a tourdion, a saltarello; bransles in sets of threes, and allemandes. Night fell early and black beyond the windows. Cressets were brought in, to flare and smoke. They made the dance more sensual, with complications of moving lights and shadow.

  Pavanes we danced. A pavane is an ideal dance for lovers, because it’s so slow, you can flirt or talk without losing your step. My very favorite pavane was “Belle Qui Tient Ma Vie” (the one from The Private Life of Henry VIII, Romeo and Juliet, the Leslie Howard version, and Orlando, both the 1993 version with Tilda Swinton and the 2150 remake with Zoë Barrymore), and it had just begun when Nicholas said: “Thy father will not give consent for me to wed thee.”

  “I know.” What on earth did it matter? I took his hand, turned, swayed. He shifted the conversation into Greek.

  “What do you think,” he turned and bowed, “of an elopement?”

  I stared but did not miss a step. Yes, a good dance for this kind of talk.

  “Run away?” I said at last. “But where would we run, love?”

  He took my hand and we turned. “To a safe place.”

  “Do you know of any?”

  He was silent down the whole passage of the room, but when we turned again, he said:

  “Some place where we are not known. Neither you nor I. We would have to leave Kent.”

  He had to switch into Latin for that, calling it the Place of the Cantii. It sounded very strange. I had a momentary vision of him blue and howling in a chariot, making life miserable for Flavius. “But how would we live?” I began a slow curtsey.

  “I could teach boys. I could keep another man’s accounts.” He looked a little desperate. “There must be some way for a husband to feed his wife. And children.” He glanced at me to see how I reacted to that.

  “If God grants that I have children,” I said primly, avoiding his gaze. “It is not the fate of all women.” Certainly it was not my fate, since the installation of my contraceptive symbiote. Up until this time I’d been saying I took one of Doctor Ruy’s secret potions to prevent a baby, but if we got married, Nicholas would see no reason …

  If we got married …

  Threading through the dance, I thought about it seriously. It wasn’t unheard of. Joseph had admitted that. What if we really did run off together, elope, and wed?

  I would have years and years, happy years with Nicholas. Someday he’d die, and my heart would break; but later was better than soon, and the good times would come first.

  In the end, I could return contrite to Dr. Zeus. I was sure I knew enough about Company methods to avoid being caught until then. I’d accept the disciplinary actions there’d undoubtedly be, but it would have been worthwhile. Then I’d go on with my life. I could do that, couldn’t I? I mean, if you’re an immortal, they have to let you get away with peccadilloes like that, because what are they going to do? Kill you?

  Instantly I had a plan. “I know what we can do,” I told him. “We can get away to the Continent. England is not safe anymore. Europe, love, that’s the place to go! We could go to Geneva! Many English are living there in exile now, and you’d find work easily. Translating. Teaching. Something!”

  But he had been thinking about it too, as he measured his steps to mine. When I mentioned Geneva, something went dark in his face. “Running,” he said. “Hiding. Just like your father, living by his wits. We would be paupers, and year by year your eyes would grow more frightened. No, sweetheart, it would not be a good life. I must think of something better.”

  Slowly we turned. He bowed. I bent to him. Mendoza, said an urgent voice. Don’t do it. Don’t even think about it.

  I looked around, startled, to meet Joseph’s dark gaze. How dare you listen in on my signal? I raged at him.

  What signal? he retorted. You’re talking as loud as the music.

  I turned my back on him, but lowered my voice as I said:

  “Nicholas, we’d be safe in Switzerland.” Which was true; Dr. Zeus practically ran the place. Well, perhaps we wouldn’t be so safe there. “Or Italy. Or France. Nicholas, a black storm is breaking over England. Any dumb animal knows enough to get in out of the rain. We must go to Europe, love.”

  “Your metaphor is badly chosen.” He rose to his full height. “It is no storm that comes, but a war. No man seeks shelter in a war. He fights.” He looked over at Tom in contempt. “Or he surrenders.”

  “If we were safe in Geneva,” I ventured to Nicholas, “among so many righteous people, surely I might learn to trust your God.”

  He looked at me bleakly. “Or you might learn to hate me for a coward. I must save your soul and mine own too, and flight is not the way. Give me time, love, to think what we can do.”

  “All my time I give you,” I promised. And the dance came to an end, in slow final steps. Now I can never listen to that music without feeling sad, though it was my very favorite pavane. I have never danced to it since.

  I realize now that I must have talked him out of elopement, without meaning to. His idea must not have seemed stupid until he heard someone else agree with it.

  It wouldn’t have worked, of course.

  After so many dances, people began to flag, and by this time the tables had been spread with clean cloths; so everyone trooped back in and found places for round two. The mortal guests were stupefied with all the eating and dancing, too sleepy to be quarrelsome. The musicians were tired too: they were doing mostly lute pieces now, very quiet, very soothing.

  Only Joseph and Sir Walter were agitated. I looked over at them curiously. They were whispering together just as if they really were old friends. Nicholas got up and went over to them and leaned down. Sir Walter spoke rapidly in his ear. Nicholas listened, his face impassive; he nodded once, and then rose to exit the room. I leaned, trying to catch his eye; he gave me a peculiar smile and disappeared into the servants’ hall.

  How disappointing. I was hoping we might dance again, if the musicians woke up a little. I rested my chin on my palm and
watched the mortals gossip, or doze, or stuff themselves.

  Then they began to go out, the mortals. Not to leave the room, you understand, but to go out—like lamps. They were flickering out all around me and becoming transparent; one and then another vanished into the silence of the torchlight. Pop, here went a little lady in a great starched ruff, in the very act of talking behind her hand to her neighbor. Pop, there went a rakish fellow with mustaches, even as he poured wine in a long red stream from a high-held pitcher into his cup. Pop, there went both Master and Mistress Preeves, between one snore and the next. Before long there were no people at all, only tables, and then they too were gone. The fire burned down dim and cold, and the room itself changed, grew small and dark, the timbers blackening and warping. All the gilding and bright decoration went away.

  Whoosh, the fire went out. I was alone in a cold blue light that streamed in through the windows. I looked at the windows, and they were distorted, for the leading had sagged and thrown the bright diamond panes out of true. But they faded and were gone, lingering for a moment as thin gray lines crossing the face of the moon. I looked back into the room, but it had gone too; I was alone in an expanse of snow mounded over ruins, and there was no house, no garden, only moonlight and dark trees in the distance …

  I jerked upright in the midst of chattering mortal folk having their Christmas. I grabbed for a cup of wine. My teeth chattered against the rim. Sir Walter was standing, raising his hands for silence; he beamed around at all the guests.

  “My neighbors all! Ye have supped this night on many a rare dish, and sported even as folk do at Court. Yea, I am assured that they keep Christmas no better even at the Emperor’s very Court—” The door at the far side of the hall slammed open, and one of the serving boys ran in.

  “My master!” he shouted. “Such portents, such signs and wonders! A great stag has been sighted, afar off, and he hath fire all along his horns!”

  There was startled silence. Then the buzz of comments started up, and Sir Walter cried above it:

  “Now what could this mean?”

  We heard pounding footsteps, and another servant burst into the hall. “Oh, sir!” he cried. “Such strange things are abroad this night! There has been a great cloud hanging over the wood, and it shouted with the voice of a man!”

  Before anyone could react to this, a third servant appeared. “Now Christ save us all! I have just seen, with mine own eyes, a tree that burned and yet was green! Surely this prefigures some fearful thing!”

  It did, too, because there came a tremendous crash, and both the great hall doors flew open. At the same time the blazing fire dimmed and went out, just as in my vision, and though I had seen Joseph throw something into it, I still scanned nervously, involuntarily. Something was approaching, each step a thunder that shook the house. There was a flare of light from somewhere beyond; it threw a vast shadow that rippled across the wall, moved closer with each heartbeat.

  Then it was in the doorway, silhouetted against the spectral glow: the figure of a knight, immensely tall, bearing in his hands a great double-headed ax. Several people screamed. Another flare of light, from a ball of green fire that hissed upon the floor. By its flickering light we could see the knight as he moved stiffly into the room.

  His armor was wound about with ivy and stuck with holly branches here and there. His helmet was monstrously high, higher for the branching antlers at the crest; the visor was down, and no face could be seen. More green lights popped and rolled before him as he proceeded down the length of the hall. The faces of the guests shone out like masks as the light passed them: frozen in astonishment, terror, or laughter. He came to a stop just before Sir Walter’s place at table. The candles burned high there, outlining Sir Walter in a golden halo.

  “WHO IS LORD IN THIS PLACE?” cried a great hollow voice from within the helmet.

  “I am he,” said Sir Walter, trying to sound dignified but coming across smug. “What art thou, apparition, that troubles our festivities? Whither hast thou come, and wherefore?”

  “I AM A SPIRIT THAT DOES NOT REST,” boomed the voice. “AGE AFTER AGE I COME AGAIN, TO TEST MEN’S HEARTS: FROM OUT OF THE DEEP HILL I COME, UNDER THE STARING MOON.”

  “Come, spirit, tell us thy purpose!” demanded Sir Walter. The knight took a step backward and swung his ax up high. The lights came up slightly; the blade winked as it rose.

  “I CRY A CHALLENGE TO THIS MORTAL COMPANY! WHO SHALL TRY ODDS WITH ME? WHO HATH A FEARLESS HEART?”

  Sir Walter slapped his hand on his sword hilt. “Why, who shall match thee but this hall’s very master? I take thy challenge, phantom!”

  “NAY, LORD, THIS CANNOT BE,” replied the knight. “BY LAW MORE ANCIENT THAN THE STANDING OAKS, I AM BID CHOOSE MINE OWN CHAMPION FROM YOUR GUESTS. WHO IN THIS PLACE SHALL STAND A CAST WITH ME?”

  He began to stalk along the tables, turning his helmet this way and that.

  “WHO HATH A VALIANT HEART?” he called. “WHO DURST HAZARD A CHANCE?” Nobody spoke up, though somebody was crying hysterically. Goodness, hadn’t these people read their own literature?

  Finally he stopped and again lifted the ax high. Slowly he brought it down, down, down, and pointed at a very small boy, who sat wedged between his parents. Relieved laughter from all the adults as the tension broke.

  “THIS SHALL BE MINE OPPONENT,” declared the knight. The little boy shrank back, his eyes huge in his white face.

  “Why, Edward, it seems thou must play the hero now,” his father joked.

  Edward shook his head mutely and made himself even smaller; but rowdy grown-ups all over the room were shouting for him now.

  “I can’t, Dad,” he said in a tiny voice.

  “What, sirrah, wilt thou not?” His mother reached down and pinched him, hard, which brought him yelping to his feet; and his father hauled him up onto the table, telling him:

  “If thou’rt a coward, thou’rt no boy of mine!”

  I am always so sorry for mortal children.

  Well, the knight put down his ax and lifted Edward to the floor, where he stood shaking in his little holiday clothes.

  “NOW, EDWARD,” admonished the knight. “THOU SHALT TAKE MINE AX”—he lifted the weapon and put it in the child’s hands—“AND I SHALL BEND MY NECK TO THE BLOW. THOU SHALT PLAY THE HEADSMAN, AND TRY WHETHER MY HEAD COME OFF OR NO.”

  “I dursn’t!” gasped Edward, and there were jeers and catcalls from all around the room.

  “NAY, EDWARD, TAKE THOU HEART.” The knight turned to sweep the room with his gaze. “WHAT THOU MUST DO, ALL THESE FEAR TO DO THEMSELVES.” The noise subsided a little. The knight turned back.

  “STRIKE ONLY ONCE,” he said. “CLEANLY, AND QUICK.” Then, ever so slowly, he bent down, and the broad antlers raked the air in their descent. Edward made a little terrified sound; but he dragged the great ax aloft, tottering with effort, and let it come crashing down.

  A crack, a smash, and a shower of sparks. All the lights burned high at once, and the knight’s head came off and shattered on the floor, spilling out sweets and trinkets and little sugared cakes. Nicholas rose up smiling and tousled.

  “A Merry Christmas, neighbors, to you all!” he shouted.

  I laughed so hard, there were tears in my eyes. All around me mortals whooped and applauded. Joseph closed his eyes in relief that all his special effects had worked. Little Edward blinked at Nicholas. After a careful survey of the grown folk, none of whom were watching him, he knelt and began methodically scooping loot into his doublet.

  Now I remember the detail of the boy, but then I saw only Nicholas in his pasteboard armor. Nicholas looked charming and silly and very sexy too, in a kinky sort of way. Somehow it all recedes from me as I write it down, like a fade-out in an old film. I remember that Nicholas came clumping back to his place at table, and that amid all the clamor we slipped off upstairs. There I played the squire, or maybe page is the better word, and helped my knight get naked in the darkness. Jolly Christmas pastimes then, I
can assure you, as peach wool and green carapace scattered together on the floor.

  Yet the first memory that comes when I think of that night is the wary face of the child. I wonder who he was, and what became of him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE BIG SURPRISE the next morning was that most of the guests were still there.

  Waking slowly in Nicholas’s arms, my first drowsy scan of the house told me it was pullulating like a beehive. When we crept down cautiously in the first winter light, we saw rows of makeshift beds all along the gallery, most of which were still occupied by sleeping mortals.

  “What are they doing here?” I whispered. Nicholas shook his head in amazement. As we came to the stair landing, we met Master Ffrawney coming up with a tray, followed by Joan, whose expression was even more martyred than usual. Ffrawney smiled at us maliciously. Nicholas ignored his ill will and pointed in the direction of the gallery.

  “What means this?” he said. “Have these folk no homes?”

  “Oh, to be sure they do.” Master Ffrawney leaned the tray on a corner post. “But snow is deep and bitter cold, or so Sir Walter wisely said last night, when he was far gone in wine. Further, he assured his many friends that the hour was late, and all those present solemnly agreed with him. Lastly, he said he was not such a starveling beggar as to bid his guests depart when his splendid house could accommodate them all. Whereupon beds were made, and those folk who could still walk went off to sleep in them. I am bound for His Grace’s chamber now, to tell him that the folk who remained at table clamor for breakfast.”

  “Doth he think this is Whitehall Palace?” Nicholas was aghast. “His revenues will not feed all these folk the whole Christmastide, he cannot afford it.”

  “Well, no doubt thou hadst told him so, hadst thou been there. But thou wast abed early, if I recall me.” And he gave me an arch glance.

  “I must speak with him privily.” Nicholas started back up the stairs.

  “Then thou must ask the youngest Ashford girl to get out of his bed.”