by Kage Baker
“Oh, sweet Christ!” Nicholas halted. He turned back and took the tray. “I’ll bear him this.”
“As thou wilt.” Master Ffrawney shrugged and turned to descend. “I’ll go and see what manner of fare we have remaining.”
This was grim. With an apologetic look Nicholas left me. I picked my way through the bodies to Nef’s door and slipped inside.
They were sitting there listening to the radio, Joseph, Nef, and the unicorn.
…the consequences of the Act of Supremacy were tremendous, and its proposed repeal is viewed as a token measure only by the Council. Of course, they have no idea yet of the extent to which Pole will implement the repeal. Roderick, can you give us the story from Court?
Well, Decius, the cardinal appears to be having a temporary eclipse of his power over the Queen right now, because of course with the Christmas festivities the Queen and the Prince Consort are publicly together quite a bit, so the growing rift between them isn’t as apparent as it was. The cardinal’s doing most of his damage in the Parliament, though, and a few of the Council members are beginning to get an inkling of just how far to the religious right things are going to swing. Sir William Cecil, in fact…
“Smart man. Cake?” Joseph held out a small plate. I inspected it gingerly and took a slice.
“None of those awful people went home!” I announced. “Couldn’t you have done something? They’re going to eat us out of house and headquarters!”
“What will be, will be. The little guy was in what you’d call an expansive mood last night. I guess he’ll just have to send out for a few more sides of beef.”
“I won thirty-seven pounds last night,” remarked Nef.
“So, what did you think of my diversion?” Joseph leaned back and sipped wine. “What about those pyrotechnics, huh? What about that sleight of hand?”
“Not bad. The piñata I liked particularly. Nicholas was a surprise too.”
“He’s tall and real loud. Perfect for the part,” said Joseph. I bristled, but Nef said thoughtfully:
“Sir Walter will need more entertainment if all these people stay until Twelfth Night. I’ll bet I could make a fortune at cards.”
How could millennia-old superbeings be so boring? I wandered over to the window and watched the snow fall. Spreading my fingertips against the glass, I tuned in and scanned.
Many voices, inquiring about breakfast and sanitary arrangements. Dark voices belowstairs, complaining of the extra work. Master Ffrawney saying something high-pitched about the snow. And there, there it was, Nicholas’s voice in earnest entreaty.
“Sir, I tell you plainly that you waste your substance. What will you do? Where will you get more money?”
“Why, with any luck I shall better my fortune.” There was a faint defiance in Sir Walter’s voice.
“In God’s name, sir, how?”
“I have my plans.” Now there was desperation. “I am revolving in my mind some several stratagems, any of which may bring me fortune enough.”
Nicholas radiated bewilderment.
“By feeding peacocks to the Syssings and the Preeves the whole Christmastide?”
“Um, no. But, Nicholas, I must think of myself! Gold I have had for many years, and the good name of my fathers; but mine own name is unknown, Nicholas. Thirty years have I spent in careful restoration of Sir Alexander’s glory, ensuring that his name be not forgot. Were it not well now to add mine own glories to the name of Iden?”
There was a long pause.
“If I take your meaning aright,” said Nicholas carefully, “you seek a life in the world again. Why, this is well; commerce suited you. I shall, if you wish, make inquiries as to companies seeking capital and mercantile argosies. You may buy and trade and so increase your revenues until within them you shall live as liberally as you please. Shall I ride forth, when the roads are clear?”
“Yea. Nay. I would, and yet…” Sir Walter’s voice grew small.
“Sir, this is excellent good sense.”
“But it fretted my soul to be a merchant,” Sir Walter complained. “It is no fit work for a gentleman. Sir Alexander won his glory with a sword, in the service of his king.”
“So he did, sir, but men live otherwise now. Any knave with a pistol may drop a knight-at-arms, and the tourneys are all for show. Take heart! Lords win honors by their wits these days, and doubt not that you shall do the same. Be thrifty! Send your neighbors home now, and you shall feast them in greater splendor on another day.”
“But I promised them supper, Nicholas,” said Sir Walter miserably.
A long, long exhaled breath from Nicholas.
“Sir, what shall they eat? There is no more beef slaughtered and dressed. Who hath fowls to sell us, even should we buy? The snows have filled the ways to your farms.”
Another long pause, and then a snuffling sound. Sir Walter was crying.
Creak creak creak. Nicholas pacing furiously.
“We shall make broth,” he said, “out of the leavings. And put in some unlikely herb, or some color to make it strange. And you shall tell them it is a dish from the Court of the Emperor, that it is the Spanish fashion to sup but lightly after a feast day. Doctor Ruy will not naysay you.”
“I could do that, couldn’t I?” said Sir Walter through his tears.
“Aye, and—and—offer that they may, nay, ought to be purged and bled by the doctor, which (you shall say) is also the fashion of the Court after a great feast. I warrant they’ll get them home in haste then.”
“Thou hast brains, boy, thou hast.” A honk, as Sir Walter blew his nose on the sheet.
“And you shall make them promise of great cheer in some time to come.”
“Oh, good.”
“And so honor is served, with no ruin to your purse thereby.”
“Nicholas, thou hast ever done me good service. ’Tis only a pity—”
Pause. “Sir?”
“A pity thou art so inclined to Gospelling. It suits not with the time, I fear.”
Dead silence. Then:
“I may cut my coat to follow fashion, sir, but not my conscience.” Nicholas’s voice was rigid.
“Well, but thou dost neither. I shall have new livery made for thee, what say you? Not so much black. It puts folk in mind of Lutherans.”
“When you can afford new livery, sir, you may do what you list.”
“I shall, then. Go thou now, and send Jack that I might dress me.”
“Sir.” Nicholas was withdrawing, coming down the hall in a glow of anger. I left the window.
“Sir Walter can’t send out for more beef,” I told Joseph abruptly. “He doesn’t have enough money. He and Nicholas were just fighting about it. Can’t you do something to help? Prescribe fasting for health reasons, maybe?”
Joseph sighed. “I can try. He needs to be fine-tuned after all that whoopee last night anyway. All right, I’ll pay him a visit.”
“Great!” I ran from the room so I could catch Nicholas halfway down the hall.
“My love! My father fears that immoderate merriment may do Sir Walter harm, and hinder careful physick. He will counsel him to send his neighbors home.”
“My master is already so persuaded, but if thy father’s word will strengthen the argument, be it so.” Nicholas leaned against the wall and folded his arms. “I never heard that wits came with wrinkles, but as he loses the one, it seems he loses the other too.”
“Oh, love.” I put my arms around him, so sorry to see him unhappy, and moodily he held me. As we stood there, a smell came floating up the stairs, a greasy rank smell.
“What reeks so?” I said in distaste.
“Suet pudding from last night. They fry it for breakfast,” he replied. “We must get these folk out of the house ere we have nothing to feed them.”
“You could make a mess of thin pottage,” I said mischievously. “Color it with saffron and tell folk it is a rare dish out of Spain.”
It was a stupid slip. No older, experienced operativ
e would have made it. Nicholas glanced down at me with suspicion in his eyes. Only for a moment, but the suspicion was there.
“Why, so I had resolved to do,” he said. “Dost thou listen at doors, Rose?”
“Nay, love, I have been with my father!” I buried my face against him to conceal my dismay. “Sweetheart, have courage! All will be well.”
All was well, too, thanks to Joseph. When Sir Walter’s guests heard that forthcoming meals were going to consist of leftovers and purges, they found courteous excuses to brave hip-deep snow back to their own homes. Only a few folk lingered, minor gentry so impoverished that even a purge sounded like fun to them so long as it was free. They made a less unreasonable demand on the larder while still allowing Sir Walter to play the host, so everyone was happy. Besides, the more inedible portions of the festal food could be recycled endlessly, if the cook kept grating cinnamon on it to disguise the smell.
So the days of Christmas rolled on cheerily enough. There was no work to do in the garden; there were no guests to shepherd about and explain things to; there were no more frenzied party preparations. Most hours Nicholas and I spent in his little bare room at the top of the house, where the relative chill refreshed us after the stuffiness downstairs.
My love, my love. At night we cuddled together under the blanket and read by the light of his single candle, or talked far into the dark hours. He would never give over his attempts to persuade me that I needed his Christ; and I could not resist the temptation to argue the need to save men’s lives rather than their souls. Yet he had some remarkably advanced ideas for a man of his time, he really had.
Mine only love. The household slept below in silence; our little room seemed cut adrift, the cabin of a ship sailing through the vaster silence of the winter stars. How could anyone think that my lover was a paltry mortal thing? He was an immortal creature like me, and we dwelt in perfect harmony in a tiny world of bare boards and dust, leather and vellum.
You can love like that but once.
I was vaguely aware that terrible and portentous things were happening in the world outside. I heard fragments of news broadcasts coming up from Nef’s room, and warning messages were surfacing out of my chronomemory program. It seemed sensible to ignore them, since there was nothing at all I could do about them. One should always avoid unnecessary unhappiness. Especially if one is an immortal. They taught us that in school.
Chapter Nineteen
ON THE ELEVENTH day of Christmas, January 5,1555, there was a thaw. There was pouring rain, rushing in gutters, and then it froze again; but the snow had been so reduced that the lanes were open and people could visit one another for Twelfth Night.
Our Christmas parasites used the opportunity to go home at last. Without them the house seemed luxuriously empty, and Nicholas and I got the chance to explore the minstrels’ gallery.
It was entered from a third-floor passageway, through a tiny dark door that looked like a cupboard. Nicholas had to bend nearly double to squeeze through, and my hoops gave me no end of trouble, but once we were up there, it was neat. We stood and surveyed the view of the great hall, and Nicholas drew my attention to the fine carved roundels that were practically invisible from down on the dance floor.
“Red roses,” I observed. “Red roses were the badge of your Lancasters, in your Roses wars, were they not? I did not know the house was so old.”
“It isn’t.” Nicholas grinned. “But Sir Alexander was a Lancastrian partisan, and so we have roses encarnadined in his honor. Not that any Christian soul hath noticed them these thirty years. I must write them in mine abstract of Worthy Sights to Be Pointed Out to Paying Guests.”
I peered over the rail.
“So far up and such a little space. I wonder they got all those hautboys and base viols up here. They must have been sitting in one another’s laps, trying to play.”
We looked at each other. I sidled over to him.
“I recall,” I remarked, “that when we looked up at the musicians, we could see but their heads and the topmost parts of their instruments.”
Nicholas leaned his elbows on the rail and gave me a sidelong gaze.
“What better place than this,” I decided, “for a lesson on the recorder?”
“Madam, what can you mean?” inquired Nicholas in his suavest voice. I pounced, and we tussled out of sight, up there on the tiny platform.
A door opened below us, and two sets of footsteps sounded in the great hall. We froze, except for Friar John, who fainted dead away. I sat up in a panic, and Nicholas grabbed me and pulled me down. Our hearts thundered, surely louder than those footsteps over hollow cellars.
“I had come sooner, but the snow did not permit,” said a voice. Familiar, somehow. “And, to tell the plain truth, there have been fearful things that captured my thoughts. I have ridden from Rochester, you may know.”
“Aye. Well, the time spent has been favorable to thy case. I too have had much to consider.” That was Sir Walter. “I’ll tell thee, Master Darrell, I have looked at thine offer with new eyes.”
Master Darrell? Offer?
“Have you so?” the other voice sharpened. “And what say you to it now?”
“It likes me well,” said Sir Walter. “I were a liar if I said otherwise.”
“This is a change, certes.”
“Well, well; the case is altered.”
“Ah.”
Creak as they sat down together.
“Shall I—? I shall call for sack,” said Sir Walter, and he did, and they sat there saying nothing while a servant brought sack, and they said nothing while he left, and only after the door shut behind him did they speak.
“Tell me, how much—” began Sir Walter, at the same moment that Master Darrell said, “I am prepared—” They both halted.
“Forgive me, sir,” said Master Darrell.
“Nay, a thousand pardons. Speak, friend.”
“What I offered, I offer still: half the sum in sealed bags now, and the rest when the cherries ripen and apricots go to market, God send us favorable sun and rain. Even failing that, I have wool in the north, and that’s sure. And you spake once of certain provisos …”
“In sooth. Thou must keep the name.”
“Oh, sir, the name is all. Therein is the value. Who would pay a farthing to see Darrell’s Garden?”
Nicholas turned his head, frowning.
“Well! I am satisfied,” said Sir Walter, and there was a silence as they both drank. Sir Walter set down his tankard and said:
“I am no man for this country life. Look at me, Master Darrell, am I old? Am I palsied? Do I falter?”
“Uh … nay.”
“Hadst thou met me but today, thou shouldst say I were no more than thirty. The Greek physick hath given me a new life! Shall I dream it away in this quiet place? Or shall I not rather set out anew?”
Bad feelings in the minstrels’ gallery.
“What is it you mean to do?”
“Meseems I have not known mine own heart … I thought this garden should be my fame, my child, my all. I see now it is not the end I desire. I, I meant to hold a Christmas revel that befitted mine ancient lineage. It was nothing so grand as I envisioned, for I saw that my neighbors are but lowborn country folk, and I find myself but a little country squire pinched shrewdly by his expenses. I was made for greater things, Master Darrell!”
“But what remedy, sir?”
“Thou shalt hear it. I’ll get me to London and try for a courtier. There is power, there are the New Men! Through sale of this estate I’ll have ready cash in hand, and haply a Spanish wife of noble birth, which cannot but stand me in good stead at Court.”
“You mean to marry, then?”
“If the lady grant my suit, aye. She hath looked well on me thus far, and I may hope, I tell thee. God knows she is not fair, but she’s young, and I doubt not of an heir once I bed her—”
He was talking about Nefer. My astonishment at this was such that I inadvertently broadcast it
, and a second later I felt both Joseph and Nef tuning in to the conversation.
“—and thereby my puling nephew shall have no claim.”
“This lady is one of your guests, then,” said Master Darrell.
“Yes. As to that—” Sir Walter sounded uneasy.
What’s going on? from Nef.
Shut up! from Joseph.
“There is a thing thou shouldst know,” said Sir Walter. “This Lady Margaret is a sort of nurse, after the Spanish fashion, of virtues sober, to that girl thou hast seen in my garden. The girl and her father, Doctor Ruy, are my guests here.”
“For that he is your ancient friend. Aye, I remember me.”
“Yea, even so, and yet thou shouldst know …”
Hold it hold it HOLD IT! Joseph was exploding out of a chair, and distantly I heard him pelting down a corridor.
“There is a certain arrangement that I have with Doctor Ruy. He must remain here, he and his daughter, as long as they will; and all that they want of the garden, they must have. Seeds or grafts or bushes entire, and thou must on no account hinder them. Nor mayest thou question them concerning anything thou seest, though never so strange.”
“I like this not so well,” ventured Master Darrell.
“I could say more, if I durst.” Sir Walter gulped his wine. “So thou meddle not in his affairs but let him do as he pleases, it will be well for thee. He hath powerful friends, hath Doctor Ruy—”
“What, is the man a Spanish spy?” blurted Master Darrell. “God’s death, sir, how could you?”
The shock in Nicholas’s face is something I wince at even now.
“No, his masters have—”
“God save you, Sir Walter. I have come of express purpose to seek you out. God save you also, sir.” Joseph appearing out of nowhere, not even out of breath.
A silence that sizzled like bacon.
“This is Master Darrell of Colehill,” said Sir Walter with a little cough.
“Ah. Sir, your servant. You are the gentleman who desires to purchase the garden, is it not so?”
A baffled silence. “I had not told anyone—” began Sir Walter.