In the Garden of Iden (Company)

by Kage Baker

  “Would to God we were,” he said. “And yet that’s blasphemy, to rail at love. No more of this talk.”

  We had our little supper, crowded together at the table, while the draft ruffled the candle. We could hear the wild air prowling round and round outside, buffeting for a way in through the window. We didn’t talk much. I watched him eat. Half dressed and unshaven as he was, he looked dissolute. Hard. I wondered what he’d have been like that way. There are plenty of gentlemen adventurers around, bastards by birth and inclination both. I’d have loved him anyway: better for him to have been a rogue like Tom than a righteous martyr. At least we wouldn’t be sitting in this chilly room now, amid the ghosts of his books, in a fearful country.

  Well, who knew? Maybe in a month’s time we’d be in some other drafty little garret somewhere, sharing our bread by some other candle or by no candle at all. But we’d be free. Running together.

  To the end of his tether.

  That popped into my head so sudden and discordant, I scanned for Joseph, but he wasn’t there. What a nasty thought. I’d have to learn to keep all such nasty thoughts well to the back of my mind in the future. We’d have forty years at least, and everything would be wonderful, wonderful. Love on the run through Renaissance Europe. Grand romance, as in the films. High adventure, and it was only just beginning.

  At last Nicholas leaned back from the table and sat with his arms crossed, looking at me.

  “Thy father,” he said. “How long shall he lie abed until he heal?”

  “Why, some days, surely,” I said uncomfortably. Why did he want to talk about Joseph, now of all times? “He is hurt sore.”

  “Yet he would have no surgeon to tend him, but only thee,” Nicholas mused. I knit my brows.

  “Doctors have but poor opinion of each other. He trusts no physick but his own.”

  “But must he have thee by him the whole time he mends?”

  Aha. “Nay, love, or I should have been by his side this whole while.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Couldst thou leave him?”

  My soul leapt right up like the candle flame. I looked him straight in the eyes without smiling and said, “Aye.”

  We were going to elope after all. And what an opportunity: Joseph disabled and Nef absorbed in her radio and magazines. When might such a chance come again? Though I hadn’t finished my work …

  Nicholas got up and went to the window to peer out. The wind was higher; black branches whipped against the stars. “Well,” he said, “it is no night for faring abroad. It is bitter cold, and all the lanes will be foul with mud.”

  “I fear no cold,” I said at once. He looked over at me and smiled wryly.

  “Nor I,” he said. “But we should leave tracks in mud, and be followed.”

  Oh, right. Of course.

  “Too wet to fare abroad.” He came and leaned forward, taking both my hands. “But if this wind continues, it will dry out the roads soon. In some two days or three, one horse might bear two riders to the sea, leaving no mark of their passing.”

  Yes, a horse. How foolish I’d been to think of running out now just as we were. How clever he was at planning. Clearly this was going to work out well.

  “Art thou fearful?” He leaned closer.

  “I? Nay!” Was my face doing something I wasn’t aware of? His eyes were a little sad.

  “My Rose is scarlet sometimes, and other times white pale. Come to bed, sweetheart. Thou to rest, and I to think. It is a long way yet until morning.”

  A long way until morning.

  I must finish this. I began it as a kind of therapy, and, like pulling one’s own tooth, it becomes unbearable as the inevitable conclusion nears. But I find myself back in that room again, seeing that sad candle, that girl expecting a miracle. So let’s finish it.

  Joseph lay awake in pain, in darkness. The amontillado had long since been metabolized down to sugar and water, leaving him mercilessly sober. The capon broth was busy providing him with protein and hydrating vital tissues; but even its most enthusiastic proponents cannot claim that chicken soup is a narcotic.

  “Screw this,” he told himself at last. Groping one-handed, he pushed back the sheet and crawled out of bed. From beneath the bed he drew a slim wooden box, awkwardly thumbed the combination, and removed a small leather case. This he unrolled, and spread its contents out upon the counterpane.

  Steel rods, the size of pencils. They had peculiar grips and buttons and tiny winking lights. He studied them for a long moment and hummed a little song to himself. It was a very old song. He had learned it as a child, and it evidently held some soothing association with a pleasant memory, for he had found that humming it helped him self-induce a light trance state.

  After about five minutes of contemplation he got up and wandered around the room, slightly glassy-eyed. His little song was doing its trick. He found five wax tapers in a drawer and carried them to the hearth, where he crouched down and held the tips into the coals until they ignited. Light bloomed. He stood up and arranged the surface of his writing desk, sticking the tapers upright in a tankard, fanning them out. He found a mirror in his travel bag and propped it up in the candlelight. When he was satisfied with the arrangement, he took off his sling.

  The humming had become a chanting now. With his good hand he collected the instruments and moved forward to regard himself in the mirror.

  Pulse, slow. Heartbeat, slow. Respiration, very slow and deep. His right arm was warm and had good color, but the rest of his skin now was pale, especially over the left side of his chest. He depressed a button on an instrument, and there was a hiss, followed by a strong smell of cloves. He put down the instrument, took up another, and applied it to his shoulder. No blade was visible, but his skin parted in a long red line. He extended the line down in a semicircle, back and forth. His skin peeled back in a sheet, gradually exposing the musculature underneath.

  There was no bleeding. As he worked, there were pinpoint flashes of green light. The chanting resolved into words, in a language long forgotten, about some boys with new spears who go down by the river to hunt bison but catch ducks instead, and take them back to their girlfriends who live under the cliffs, who are not impressed and won’t dig garlic for them anymore …

  It was dark where I was, except for the hole the fire shone through and the red red coals, and they gleamed in the priest’s eyes but not in Joseph’s where he watched in a corner. My eyes hurt. And I couldn’t breathe. I tried to get out of the chair, but my hands were pinned straight through by the spines of holly leaves. Merry Christmas. Jesus Christ, said Joseph, they’ll bury you alive.

  “Rose!” The terrifying darkness faded into Nicholas’s staring face. He had me by the wrists. “Rose, in God’s name!” Only his room. Only England outside, with her buffeting wind and her stars wheeling late through the night. Only the candle, burned low through the hours so its big flame staggered like a drunkard.

  “Los Inquisidores,” I stated. I lay back down, and it began again at once, the fire, the darkness, the suffocation, and with a scream (silent, I had no breath) I fought my way back upright. Without another word Nicholas swung me out of bed and stood me on the cold floor.

  “Walk with me.” Three times around the room, and I was wide awake, shivering in my shift. It was clammy with sweat.

  “I couldn’t wake up,” I explained. He helped me back to bed and sat beside me. My heart was hammering still, so loud he must have been able to hear it. Carefully he arranged the blanket and smoothed my hair back. He was shaking too, his face twisted by pity and revulsion.

  “Thou hast dreamt of Spain.”

  “I did. I was there again. I was where they—they—”

  He was not looking at me but at the shadows on the wall. “They killed thy mother.”

  “She wasn’t!” I cried in panic.

  “Ssh! ’Tis well, ’tis well. See, love, that was long ago. Thou art safe—” and he halted, because he couldn’t really tell me that truly, could he? Not in
this England. He got up to put on his breeches and shoes. I only watched him, too exhausted and confused to move. He went to the door, and I protested and stretched out a hand.

  “Wait, love. I will fetch thee a posset,” he promised.

  Joseph, deep in his trance, became aware that someone was outside his door. His exterior consciousness began to return. Circled by the blaze of light from five waxen tapers, he turned around as the door opened.

  I sat bolt upright. I hadn’t screamed, I wasn’t having a nightmare. But somebody was.

  There was a horrendous crashing. The door flew open, and a figure hurled itself at me. That was too much for my nerves. I winked out.

  I was across the room watching Nicholas fall on the bed. He got up slowly, staring at me, shocked forever. There was no color in his face at all. His eyes were like glass. He came at me. Again, I winked out.

  I was on the other side of the room. He spun around and caught at me again.

  I was standing on the bed. He came after me.

  I was perched on the windowsill. He leaped.

  I was on the ceiling, wedged into the angle of the beam where no human woman could ever have held on.

  The chase ended there. He regarded me, panting. I regarded him, neither breathing nor moving. He took a step backward and collapsed. “Nicholas,” I said in a tiny voice.

  He sat up at once, fixing his gaze on me. Dragging himself backward until he reached the chest at the foot of his bed, he threw it open and fumbled inside. He pulled out a sword. So his books hadn’t been his only possessions.

  Gasping, he set his back against the wall and took the sword out of its sheath. He held it in both hands, the pommel resting on his drawn-up knees, the point directed at me. Neither of us moved for some few minutes, while the sound of his breathing grew quieter. How the wind roared and threatened to get into the room with us.

  “What art thou?” he said at last.

  To answer such a question, in such a position.

  “Come, tell me, for I must know.” His voice grew stronger.

  I drew a deep breath. “I am not mortal.”

  “So much I’d guessed.” He actually laughed, a low cold laugh. While I was fleeing him, his face had been like an animal’s, almost unrecognizable. I thought he had gone mad. But he hadn’t: his eyes were clear now and very, very hard. I moved an arm, and the sword point jerked up at me. “Nay, do not come down,” he said sternly.

  “Whilst thou art up there, I cannot be persuaded this is a dream. Nor would I kill thee. Can I kill thee?”

  “No,” I informed him.

  “No, not with a sword, if thou art a spirit.” Looking at me steadily, he reversed the sword so that the cross-shaped hilt was toward me. When I did not flinch, he spun it back. “Ha! That’s a fable. Thou hast worn crucifixes and read Scripture with me. So much for the devil in the old play. But I charge thee, Spirit, to tell what thou art.”

  “A spirit whose heart breaks,” I said faintly. “A spirit who can bleed.”

  He glanced at the door, nervous. “True enough. Thy flesh is palpable, I know that well. Oh, God help me, that I suspected what thou wert and still loved thee. Thou wouldst scarce eat of our mortal bread. Thou hadst never seen snow nor frost. A hundred things betrayed what thou wert, and still I loved thee.”

  “I am still what I was,” I pleaded.

  “But the world has changed. What I have learned in this one hour—” His eyes widened. “To think I sought to save thy soul! And thou wert ever seeking after mine. Lord God, why hast thou shown me this fearful thing?”

  “Nicholas, let me come down.”

  But he did not answer me, staring slack-jawed as revelation came to him. “Once,” he said, “I betrayed the faith for the sake of my sinful flesh. The way to atonement has lain before me all this while, but I did not take it, for love of thee. I would have run away with thee and saved myself again. My flesh hath ever been mine enemy. And how sweet, how reasonable were thine arguments that led me to damnation! Nor could I have ever seen the trap, unless God made it plain. Which He hath done!”

  He struggled to his feet, looking up at me. His face was shining, shining with fire.

  “My love—for truly I may call thee so, since thy failure hath been my salvation—my love, thou hast lost. Return whence thou earnest, and tempt me no more.”

  I think he expected me to vanish then, but I was in danger of falling on him, so racked with gripping were my arms and legs. “I can’t go like that,” I wept. “I have to climb down.”

  “Then I shall leave thee.” He backed toward the door. “If I can. If I can get out of this house alive, I shall. And then the way lies clear and straight. Farewell, Spirit!”

  He turned and bolted. I heard him thundering down the stairs, and then the screaming began: deep, full-throated screams of alarm in purest Castilian Spanish. I fell at last and scrambled to the doorway.

  There was Nef down on the landing, immovable as rock in front of Joseph’s door. She was in her shift, and her hair was down around her shoulders. She brandished a lighted candelabra at Nicholas, who was edging warily past her, holding out his sword.

  “Murderer!” she howled. “Seducer! Lucifer incarnate!”

  And I realized that doors were opening and people were running from all parts of the house to stare. Nicholas realized it too. He made a break and got past her, and, running to the edge of the great staircase, vaulted into space from the top step. Like a star he dropped out of the light, and I was sure the fall would kill him.

  “Nicholas!” I ran shrieking.

  He hit the floor below with a crash that shook the house. I sped after him, but Nef reached out and took my wrist in a grip of iron.

  “Stop,” she said quietly. And even as I sagged to the floor crying, I heard him get to his feet and run on, and there was a boom as the doors of the great hall were flung open. The wind was let into the house at last. Rejoicing, it swept up through that dusty place, bringing in the smell of a cold spring morning.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  THE STORY TOLD itself. Everyone had seen it happen. The duenna, steadfast and formidable; the wretched daughter in tears; the father pale as his sheet, a terrible wound in his shoulder, begging—for the honor of his family name—that no more should be said about this lamentable occurrence.

  Several of the household offered to ride out and find Nicholas, that he might be hanged; though there were others who shrugged and spat, and whispered to one another that something terrible had been bound to happen sooner or later, with Spaniards in the house. Sir Walter told me I was an evil daughter and ought to be beaten soundly. He would gladly beat me himself if Doctor Ruy so wished. Doctor Ruy thanked him graciously but declined.

  My own plan was to lie in the corridor where I had fallen and cry until the world ended. I was prevented from doing this by Nef, who dragged me into her room and shut the door after us. She then directed a shrill volley of Castilian abuse at me, which greatly edified the listeners outside. Joseph explained, and explained, and ex-began to grow light outside, everyone gave it up o bed.

  “It was just the worst luck in the world,” Nef told me. “And I’ve seen some bad luck in my day. But, honey, the relationship couldn’t have gone on anyway. We were leaving soon. He was about to be fired. This way there was a hell of a scandal, but at least our cover wasn’t blown.”

  I listened without comment. Failing my plan to lie on the floor, I was perfectly content to lie in bed and cry until the world ended.

  “Now, I know nothing I say helps,” Nef went on. “You may not believe this now, but you’re not the only person this has ever happened to, you know.”

  Great.

  “And it could have been worse. What if I hadn’t come out? What if he’d gone back in there and attacked Joseph? We’d have had to kill him then, and what a mess that would have been to cover up. Even if he talks about what he saw, wherever he is now, who’s going to believe him? Half the servants are convinced they saw the whole thing ju
st the way Joseph says it happened. So we’re safe. Your reputation’s a little soiled, but what the heck. You’ll be out of here in another month.”

  I couldn’t live that long.

  “Hey, baby, what can I say?” Joseph shrugged, not easy with his arm in a sling. “I should have locked the door. My one mistake. Well, okay, I shouldn’t have been doing self-repair in the field. But have you ever had a shoulder separation? You try living with a thing like that for a whole week. Really painful. Nothing like the pain I’d feel if I ever, ever thought you had some crazy idea about ditching the Company and running off with a mortal. Not that you could, of course; they built all sorts of subprograms into you to make you betray yourself if you ever tried dereliction of duty after all the money they spent on you. But you’re a good little operative, I know you’d never do a thing like that. Say, did the guy happen to mention why he felt it was necessary to run back down with his sword to try and kill me?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “I guess he thought I was kind of, like, the Devil or something, huh?”

  I closed my eyes.

  Joan entered the room as silently as a mortal can, and I lay with closed eyes pretending to be asleep. Do Not Disturb. But I didn’t hear her pulling out dirty linen or pouring wash water, so after a moment I squinted through my lashes to see what she was doing.

  She had an amulet of some kind and was waving it over our things: the baggage, the credenza, even the dirty linen. Her lips were moving in some kind of chant. She turned to look at me, and I saw her extend her hand in the old, old sign against evil, fingers pointed like a devil’s horns. Then she crept out.

  Well, I knew now conclusively: I could never have walked away and left Nicholas anywhere. It would have killed me. It was killing me now.

  I slept and dreamed he had come back. It had all been a misunderstanding: everything was all right now. Somehow he had accepted the truth about me and didn’t mind. We kept packing our belongings to go to Europe, but when I’d get to the door, he wouldn’t be with me, and I’d have to go back and look for him.