by Kage Baker
So the English refused, at first, though of course they surrendered in the end. In one village a man realized that he could settle an old score with a neighbor by reporting him to the bishops’ men for heretical opinions. Somewhere else, a man terrified of being betrayed sought to save himself by confessing, and in doing so implicated most of his family and friends.
The old story, at least to a Spaniard. All the same, it took the English a little longer than most to light their fires.
It was decided that the household would be kept together for some months, while all the legal details of the transaction were arranged. During that time everyone was to go to Mass on Sundays, on pain of being discharged immediately.
Nicholas flatly refused. There was a terrible scene in Sir Walter’s private chamber, and I don’t know what they said, because I turned up the volume on the radio to drown them out; but they emerged with the agreement that Nicholas would remain at Iden Hall for as long as it took to prepare the inventory and financial records for the sale.
“I am not to speak with more folk than is needful, nor am I to arrange anymore with the butcher or greengrocer. Master Ffrawney shall see to that. Neither shall I conduct the penny-paying guests on the Walks Historical, Botanical, or Zoological.” Nicholas paused and squinted at the sky. “Not that I expect any penny-paying guests for months, if this weather hold.”
We were walking in the garden. It was raw and ugly as only January in England can be; but it smelled better outdoors than in the house.
He had changed, my Nicholas; he had grown pale. The early-morning bloodlessness was with him all the time now.
“What shall we do?” I sighed.
“Why, what you shall do I know not. Truth to tell, I know not mine own course neither.” He wrapped his hands in his frayed sleeves for warmth. “I must trust in God.”
“You could do that in Frankfurt,” I suggested. He fixed me with a cold look, askance down his high cheekbones, that made my heart beat fast. For days I had been trying to talk him into fleeing to safety.
“Setting aside the risk I should run of arrest,” he said, “there remains the question of expense.”
“That could be arranged,” I hinted. His look of scorn deepened.
This is the time to rehearse the wise and careful speeches about parting, those slick ways to begin the end. This is when you need to tell yourself, and then tell him, how natural it is to grow in different directions, and that it doesn’t mean failure, it doesn’t mean love is any less. All that beautifully phrased bullshit, over nerves screaming for release. But God help you if no such speech comes into your head, and you cling to the sullen rock of his shoulder in the night ocean.
“Your father must be dismayed by the sale of the house.” Nicholas looked away again.
“He is.” I did not take my eyes from his face. “And the new laws make him afeared. We shall not stay in this place much longer.”
“Shall you not? Where shall you go?”
“If we went to Frankfurt, would you come?”
“Your father has no need of a secretary, I think.”
We walked on in that winter pattern of hedges and lanes without another word.
And now the news. And it’s grim, we regret to say: today England’s first official victim of the Counter-Reformation was burnt at Smithfield. John Rogers, Canon of Saint Paul’s, long-time Reformation agitator and translator of the Matthew Bible, died in the presence of his wife and children in a ceremony lasting twenty-five minutes. Your news team had an operative on the scene and, Diotima, can you tell us about it?
Well, Reg, you know I’ve been in the field a long time, and I’ve been there for most of the big events of the Tudor regime, but let me say right now this hits a new low. This is on a par with the day the old Countess of Salisbury was executed—
You were there that day, weren’t you?
Yes, Reg, and frankly I thought that was pretty bad, I mean, the old woman was running around on the scaffold trying to escape and they had to physically drag her to the block—
And it’s, uh, interesting that the countess was Cardinal Pole’s mother. Wouldn’t you say that incident is the motivation for many of his policies now? Could you say he’s settling scores with the Reformation in a deeply personal way?
Undoubtedly, Reg. Anyway, I was there today, and let me tell you operatives listening in: these people are animals. There is not a doubt in my mind. Sick animals.
And now we had to go to Mass again, after happy months of neglect. Once again miserable journeys through Sunday rain, to file into a dear quaint village church of local stone and arctic atmosphere. Lots of bare whitewashed walls, and a priest very nervous and imperfect in his Latin. Nonetheless, it was standing room only, and the wretched faithful, packed in like sardines, were only too glad to be seen there. On prominent display by the pulpit was a great big book, and you can bet it had nothing to do with Common Prayer. Nearby sat an alert gentleman in nondescript clothes, who conferred often with the priest. After these conferences, the priest mixed up his tenses and endings even more, and the gentleman made many notes in a smaller book he kept in his doublet.
For once, I was not bored at Mass. The mortal population for miles around was crammed into that quaint little church, and you could have floated an armada on the high waves of emotion there. Our arrival occasioned a particularly heady gust, of course, as the Evil Spaniards, particularly when Sir Walter accompanied us with every single member of his household but one.
“Why, Sir Walter, you are well met,” said one of our Christmas visitors as we sidled in.
“Aye, forsooth, friends, I hope I am as pious and conformable a man as any in England,” answered Sir Walter, loud and firm.
“I do not see your tall fellow,” remarked someone else.
“No, alack.” Sir Walter looked straight ahead and made a passable sign of the Cross. “The poor man is grievous sick.”
“Alack, indeed. And is he expected to live?”
“Sir, I scarcely know.”
Everyone turned and looked knowingly at everyone else; then everyone turned cold gazes back to the Spanish visitors, as though it were our fault.
The unfortunate Canon Rogers was followed to the stake by Bishop John Hooper. There was a live broadcast from Gloucester, and I had to run out of the room before it was over. His executioners botched the job: they used wet wood, and green wood, and at the last the poor old bastard left off his prayers and screamed for more fire, because only his legs were burning.
As the days went by, a butcher was burned alive, then a barber, then a weaver, and more common folk followed them to the fire. The prisons began to fill with the condemned from all ranks, all classes. It was true that some died political deaths, old scores from the previous reign settled at last. But most people were dying for things like being seen reading their Bibles, or even for only listening to the Bible being read.
The Spanish were bewildered. In Spain the Holy Inquisition was a gloomy duty, propelled along by the riches it brought the Holy Office from the confiscated property of the condemned. That was easy to understand: who wasn’t motivated by profit? But how to explain the brutal zest with which these country constables dragged penniless apprentices to martyrdom? What to make of reverend old bishops fighting like Punch and Judy, squalling curses at each other from their respective sides of the flames? It was all so personal.
Even our prince decided that he’d had enough of this crazy country, and gave the order that all his remaining countrymen were to get themselves home to Spain.
No escape for us synthetic Spaniards, though. Too much to do. There was another thaw and more rain; all manner of splash and trickle ran everywhere, and blind green shoots found their way up to the sun. My work began again. I was mostly alone in the garden now, Nicholas being kept indoors. Sometimes the old gardener appeared, tramping about with sacking and a shovel, but he would neither speak nor look at me. That suited me fine. My loathing for mortals was growing like the garden.
I took blossom and cutting of an apple men would not taste again for centuries, until it was—will be—rediscovered in Humboldt Province. I took wildflowers, tiny ephemera of the hedgerows: soon men would know them only through images in tapestries, their names would be forgotten, and there would come a day when even hedgerows themselves would be plowed under by an England that no longer remembered what it was. But when the industries have come and gone, the little flowers will seed and bloom again. Men will not even notice they’ve returned; but the land will know. This is the purpose of my life.
Men burned; flowers were rescued.
It was all drawing to a close. Nicholas spent his days with the documents for the sale, long hours drawing up inventories of goods. All the furnishings were to be sold; all the plate was to be sold. The cabinets of curiosities and the tapestries were to be sold. All the careful gathering of a lifetime was to go for ready cash. If Sir Walter had been dead, it would have been very sad, but since he was selling his own dreams, nobody felt anything. Nicholas woke me muttering in his sleep: “Item, one salver of Italian plate. Item, one pair of bronze candlesticks, representing satyrs …”
One day, when he was at work, someone went into his room and took all his books away. I saw white smoke billowing from the kitchen chimney, smelled burning paper, never guessing that his translations of Saint Paul were cooking dinner. He never guessed either, until we opened his door that evening.
What a surprise. What petty devastation: flakes of wax, chips and flattened beads of candle wax, scattered all over the bare table. Moth wings. Great square vacancies in the dust of the tabletop, and a broken candle lying on the floor, wrenched from its drippy socket between two volumes. But no volumes. All that crazy-tumbled pyramid of thought and argument was gone.
We just stood and stared by the light of the new candle we had brought. When it sank in that practically everything he owned was so much ruffled ash in the kitchen grate, I was the one who broke down and cried, and wanted to go accuse somebody. Nicholas was too stunned to hear my tempest. He wandered over to the table and stood looking down at the place where his books had been. There was a long stream of wax lying there, a solid river broken off at its source. He picked it up and turned it in the light, examining it intently.
Finally he said, “Wherefore art thou angered?”
I stared through my tears. “Thy books are burnt!” Get red in the face, Nicholas, please, storm downstairs and grab Master Ffrawney by the throat.
He shook his head.
“It is a sign. One more test. The Word of God is not so much paper and calfskin. These gross forms have been destroyed. Perhaps this is to signify that I loved them too much. Perhaps I sinned in pride, having so many books.”
This kind of talk terrified me. I went across the room to him, to physically close the gulf I could feel opening between us. There was something glinting on the bit of wax he held; I looked at it closely and saw it was a moth. Its charred body was trapped in the frozen flow of tallow, legs clumped all askew, and the powdery wings that stuck out were shredded and broken.
How cold that room was.
You must understand that I would not sit there and watch. Mortals can make a poetry of death; they have to. What is too horrible to look in the face must have a mask. Still, mortals have the urge to pull away that mask, as the stupid girl does in the film, and the angry specter jumps out roaring.
We are not like that. No romantic Death for us. Like cockroaches or mold, he must be driven out: spray for him, scour him away, put him out in the sunlight. Unclean.
I made a plan.
“Joseph.” I opened his door. He looked up at me unfocused: he had a ring holo made like a pair of spectacles on his nose and was relaxing with a film. “We have to talk.”
“We do, huh?” He sighed and switched off the holo. Folding it up, he put it in his doublet and pulled out a stick of Theobromos. “Mood elevant?” He offered it to me.
“No, thanks.”
He shrugged and commenced peeling the silver paper off one end.
“How soon before we leave here, Joseph?”
“That’s up to you, isn’t it? Sit down. How long before you’ve taken as much as is worth taking out of the garden?”
“Only a few weeks. I’ll have a complete growing cycle on the ilex by then, and enough samples on everything else for full in-lab reconstruction.”
“Say a month, then.” He leaned back and put the end of the stick in his mouth. “Sooner, if you can manage it, because in case you haven’t been listening to the news, the rest of the Spaniards are ditching the joint. It would be nice if you and I could do likewise. Save us the cost of paying off Master Darrell, too.”
“What about Nef?”
“She’s going to HQ, and they’re finally sending her north with a new cover.”
“Oh.” I got up and paced. “Well, look; I need you to do something for me.”
“Oh really?” He raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“Save Nicholas.”
“He’ll die, Mendoza,” Joseph said. “Eventually. They all do. You know that.”
“But he doesn’t have to die now. Not while he’s a young man. He has no idea how dangerous it is here now, he won’t listen to reason, and I’ve talked to him until I’m going crazy trying to get him to flee to Zurich or somewhere safe. He won’t listen to me. This is why you have to help me.”
“I have persuasive charms, baby, but I’m not that good.”
“Like hell you’re not. I know what you are. You can sell anything.”
“Mendoza, people have to want to be saved. Did you want to die in Santiago? No. Did Sir Walter want to get old and sick? No. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you? What can I offer this guy? Big healthy buck in the prime of life like him. He doesn’t like me, he doesn’t trust me, and if a nubile little thing like you can’t make him catch a fast boat to the Continent for his own good, I’ve got a feeling that I too shall argue in vain.”
“I’m not asking you to argue with him. Look, I have it all worked out. Give me a drug that will make him look dead.”
“You mean like in Romeo and Juliet?” Joseph was incredulous.
“Just like that. Slip him the drug just before we’re ready to leave, do the coffin trick, and smuggle him out with us when we go. Keep him on life support until we get to Europe, leave him in an inn in Zurich, where he can wake up with a headache and no memory of how he got there. But he’ll have a purse of Swiss gold. And I’ll never see him again, Joseph, I promise.”
“Mendoza, did you ever see the movie? The poison bit didn’t work out so well. All kinds of stuff could go wrong with your plan. I might miscalculate the dosage.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“This is a plan dreamed up by a desperate person.”
“Is there any reason it positively wouldn’t work? Huh?”
“Where do you think I’m going to get a drug like that? I don’t exactly keep a box of them under my bed. Oh, a Juliet special? Yes, I just whipped up a batch.”
“You can make a batch. You must know a formula. Give me a list of what you need, and I’ll get everything.”
“Mendoza … I’ll try. Okay? I can’t guarantee anything, and I wish you wouldn’t get your hopes up about this—”
“You can do it.” I thumped him on the shoulder. His stick of Theobromos broke, and he looked at me reproachfully, but I was already exiting on a wave of confidence.
So that was my plan.
Actually, that was only one of my plans, but they all began: As soon as I get Nicholas out of here …
Chapter Twenty-one
THE DAYS WENT by as I clipped and dug and collected. Sir Walter proposed to Nef and was refused with a great deal of tact and charm. She told him she was too old for him (certainly true), too poor, and anyway had been betrothed since childhood to an hidalgo of Castile who had sailed away to the New World. Though the hidalgo had never returned, doubtless slain by savages somewhere, honor compel
led her to wait for him. This news was received with great dismay by Sir Walter, but his tears were in vain. He became resigned; he let her keep the unicorn as a symbol of their lost love. It was pretty obviously a goat now anyway, both little horns poking out bravely; and thus Sir Walter could be gallant and rid himself of an embarrassment at the same time. Within a day he had convinced himself that there were plenty of wealthy noble-women in England who’d fall for him.
One day it rained. And the next day it rained, and the next. Then it rained again. Venturing into the garden meant sinking ankle-deep in wet leaf mold (a substance found only in the British Isles, thank God), so I opted to stay indoors and watch Nicholas take inventory.
Rain pattered down, and light came gray and watery through the windows of the great hall. I sat on the staircase hoping to avoid the drafts, my skirts all tucked up around my ankles, and helped Nicholas with the inventory list. Chin on fist, I watched as he crawled up and down the stepladder before an enormous curio case. How bleak and unforgiving the light, picking out every threadbare place in his black robe. No new livery for him now: Sir Walter wasn’t going to waste the money.
“Item, one head of a Scots king,” he announced.
“Thou liest!” I lowered my quill to stare.
“There.” He pointed to the topmost shelf, and I looked up to meet the blind stare of very former majesty. The man had died young: had very good teeth and a lot of red hair and beard, still bushy.
“What is he doing here?” I looked away and jotted the entry.
“Little enough nowadays, I warrant you. Item, one head of a queen.” He reached to the back of the shelf and pulled it out for me to see. “Supposed to be Queen Guenevere.”
“Who supposes so?” I jeered. “That’s a man’s skull with a yellow wig glued on’t!” A Roman man, to be exact, about fifty years of age and dead of—plumbism? No. I scanned deeper and found the flint projectile point. Poor old centurion. I hoped my tour of duty in Britain turned out better than his had.