In the Garden of Iden (Company)

by Kage Baker

  I couldn’t get warm. Nothing would warm the bed. I couldn’t figure out what to do with my arms and legs while I slept, either.

  “Hi there,” said Joseph pleasantly, backing into the room. His arms were full of cut green twigs. “Beat it, goat.” The unicorn skittered away from him and then came bleating back, looking for a handout.

  “Whew. Now that the weather’s warming up, maybe we can persuade Nef to keep Fluffy here outside.” He dropped the twigs on my credenza. “So. You’re probably wondering what I’m doing with all this shrubby stuff. Well, I knew you weren’t feeling like doing any work or anything, but the garden’s just greening away and I thought: Say, I’ll bet I could take some of those specimens myself. All it involves is cutting off leaves and branches, right? Something like that. And what a good idea to speed things up when it’s getting more dangerous to stay in this country every day. Not that I want to put any pressure on Mendoza, I told myself. So I just found a pair of clippers and hacked off a bunch of stuff I thought looked interesting.”

  I looked at what he had brought. Hacked was too mild a word. I shuddered to think what the plant must look like now.

  “Yeah, I grabbed up a little of everything. Of course, I’m not a botanist, so I can’t really tell what’s important and what isn’t, but I figured if I just kept slashing away, I’d get something we need. Now, let’s see. How do you turn this thing on?”

  He twisted a few knobs, and the console lit up with a warning beep.

  “Gee, this must not be right. It’s asking me if I want to override. Well, let’s let it warm up a few minutes. I can just take the time to look through what I bagged and see if I got anything useful. Here’s some of that ilex stuff, for instance.”

  What a ruin he’d made of the stem. Had he used his teeth, for God’s sake?

  “Yes, sir, this is pretty interesting. Really funky leaves and, uh, I guess this is a flower or something—”

  “Let me see that.” I put out my hand. He brought the twig. Florets like pale green wax, arranged alternately at the bases of the leaves. “Were they all like this?” I demanded.

  “Could have been. I didn’t notice; I’m not a botanist, you know that.”

  I swore softly.

  “Is it important? Is it, like, the final all-important step in the growth cycle you’ve been holding us up here so you could get? Boy, wouldn’t that be swell? But don’t worry. Don’t bother to get up. I’ll process it for you, if I can get the credenza working.”

  I got out of bed.

  The official word to the residents of Iden Hall was that I was doing penance for my wicked behavior. I must travel all through the garden on my kneels, saying rosaries every hour on the hour, with my grim-visaged duenna by my side. The weather was not sufficiently damp and cold to satisfy those who felt I should be flayed alive, but they had to live with their disappointment.

  As for me, I was out in the garden before it was light, working until my breath smoked in the evening gloom. Nef, who would much rather have been in her warm room listening to the radio, was grim-visaged indeed. She had to play her part, though, as I had to play mine.

  Work shut my heart in another room and locked the door, so I was free of the wailing thing all day. Only at night was it able to get at me. Nights were hell.

  I cleaned out Joseph’s entire stash of Theobromos. He sighed and endured, because I was doing a month’s work in a matter of days. Ilex tormentosum was caught in its full cycle, absolutely optimum for the Company banks, forever and forever a benefit to humankind. Little herbs of the field, sweet grasses fell to my knife to rise eternal in electronic alchemy. Some nights, the best nights, I never went to bed at all; the blue light of the ultravey kept me safely out of that horrible terrain while Nef lay grumbling, holding up a pillow to block the light.

  I had always thought we were made perfect: but if they could make us sleepless, and heartless, what a lot of good work we could get done.

  Bright weather and steadily warmer. The smell of the land changed: that dead black coldness was blowing away. The north wind blows, and you look upward, at chimney pots and leafless branches, but the south wind blows, and you look down, where all wakeful things stretch green in the light of the young sun.

  I was doing the very last work on the roses. They weren’t as important as the ilex; Rosa pellucida would produce no miracle cures, but in a hundred years its distinctive flowers would open in no mortal garden. It would be rediscovered in the twenty-first century, in the abandoned garden of an old house in Oregon. What long chain of engineered circumstance would stretch back to me, here in the sunlight of a spring day in 1555?

  “My favorite broadcast is on in six minutes,” Nef informed me in a martyred tone. I looked up, startled.

  “Oh?”

  “It’s on Red Shropshires,” she explained. God only knew what Red Shropshires were, but I decided to be accommodating.

  “Nobody’s likely to bother me here. I’ve got my rosary handy. Why don’t you go tune in?”

  “Thanks.” She was away like a shot. For such a big woman, she could move pretty quickly when she needed to. But, then, we all could, couldn’t we? I went on clipping and scanning, because I had work to do.

  I sensed a mortal coming into the garden. Who?… Straining, I perceived Master Ffrawney. In a panic I pulled out my rosary.

  There I knelt, the image of pious repentance, but he came nowhere near me. I tracked his approach to a spot about three meters away, blocked from me by a dense hedge. There he stopped and settled, and I heard him sigh. What on earth was he doing? But perhaps even crawling sycophants liked to take in a little sunshine now and then. I tucked my rosary away.

  No sooner had I resumed work than another of the little monsters arrived. This time I scanned to follow his or her progress. His, definitely. Male, about thirty-five, five feet six inches tall, weight one-forty, chemical profile … Master Darrell.

  He was advancing steadily along the main avenue to the house, and would miss me completely. I relaxed. As he approached the intersection of his path and the one Master Ffrawney was seated in, I heard Master Ffrawney rise.

  “Good day to you, Master Darrell.”

  “Ah.” The other altered his course and proceeded at right angles. “Good day to you, sir. Most rare weather for March, is it not?”

  “Even as the true faith bloometh, so doth England,” responded Master Ffrawney. “Er … have you come a-purpose to see Sir Walter?”

  “Aye, forsooth.”

  “Alack, sir, he is indisposed.” A wave of embarrassment from Master Ffrawney, and some covert sexual excitement too. Sir Walter must be with the laundress again.

  “Oh.” A creak as Master Darrell sat down. “Well, well … perhaps you would know. I have been studying the household account books and would have some speech thereupon with some responsible person. Having heard of Master Harpole’s disgrace—and I trust no evil came to Sir Walter thereby?—I say, having heard of it, I wondered who hath been appointed to keep accounts now?”

  “I have that task, sir, until a new secretary be found. And may I say, sir, that Sir Walter haply had resolved to rid himself of that vile heretic already—”

  “Good. Good. So you keep accounts now? Tell me, have you been long in this household?”

  “Twelve years, sir.”

  “And you know well, then, how much money hath been spent to maintain the garden?”

  “Why … yea, yea, I do. Better, I may say, than that foul heretic who, when he was not lusting after wenches, was polluting his heart with Lutheran books.”

  “Aye, forsooth, but let him alone for now. You shall remain in the household, shall you, when it is given over?”

  “No, sir, I am Sir Walter’s man.” Pride swelled in him like a pimple. “He desires me to go to Court with him. You see I wear new livery, special for the purpose.”

  “A great honor.” Masked annoyance in Master Darrell’s congratulation. “Yet I could wish—I will be frank with you, Master Ffraw
ney, and do you the office of a friend. I could wish you less honored and more fortunate.”

  “I do not understand your meaning, sir.”

  “Master Ffrawney, I am often in London. Sir Walter hath not been there this many a year. He doth not know how the ground lies outside of Kent. It is not so easy to make one’s fortune at Court as at a wool mercer’s. I have seen many a noble knight unable to pay his tailor. Need I say that where the master goes hungry, his man starveth? You face no safe or comfortable prospect, Master Ffrawney.”

  “Oh, sir.” Master Ffrawney sounded thoroughly alarmed. “Surely Sir Walter is so liberal and excellent in his person, and so faithful a son of the Church, that he must win wealthy friends in London. Yet an he doth not, what remedy for me?”

  “Fear not, Master Ffrawney, for here I stand like a loving cousin to counsel you. Whatever wage Sir Walter promised you, I’ll double it. You shall be my secretary here, supplying the place of that Harpole who is gone, and shall remain safe in this noble hall. And (to tell you in your ear) you shall fare better thereby than Sir Walter, ere long.”

  It was at that precise moment that Master Ffrawney switched allegiances, if the chemical composition of his sweat was any indication. He wanted to be wooed, all the same.

  “Sir, shall I desert him I have served so faithfully and so long? I’ll tell you plain, he payeth me handsomely indeed.” This outright lie was a mistake, for Master Darrell had been reading the household accounts, after all.

  “Handsomely, say you?” smirked Master Darrell. “If you think you are well paid now, you shall think me as liberal as Croesus. I mark how Sir Walter hath paid out divers sums this long while for certain curiosities, the verity of which I do doubt. Sure I have seen his unicorn: if the man had no better judgment than to buy a plain goat for twenty pounds eightpence, it is a miracle he hath kept himself out of debt as long as he hath. Thrift shall be the new order of the day, I tell you, and there shall be no more cockatrices nor sea dragons bought from peddlers. And why should not some of these grounds be planted out in bright stuff, less rare but easier to maintain, that maketh a better show? And why should folk pay but a penny at the gate, when they might just as well pay twopence?”

  I nodded. As I’d thought: the end of the garden as I’d known it.

  “This is excellent sense, sir,” Master Ffrawney agreed. “I oft did think, in days past, that Sir Walter spent his substance unwisely. But in this he was much misled by his man Nicholas, you must know. Well, of him we shall speak no more. He shall be brought to justice some day, and God will deal with him then.”

  A wave of puzzlement from Master Darrell. “Shall be? But he hath been.”

  Now wonder and excitement from Master Ffrawney. “Hath he been taken? I thought all had been kept quiet, lest shame come to the Spanish doctor. And is he hanged indeed?”

  “Hanged!” Master Darrell was frowning. “Nay, he is condemned to burn.”

  My heart wasn’t beating. I couldn’t hear it beat.

  “Burn? Go to!”

  “Aye, in Rochester. Jesu, what hath happened here? Didst thou not hear how he was taken preaching in the marketplace at Sevenoaks? They say he ranted heresies like a bedlam man, and not in the way of a plain Lutheran neither, but the old heresies—thou knowest whereof I speak. Hath he done some offense here too?”

  Master Ffrawney’s joy was incandescent. It fairly shone through the hedge. I could almost see the little green leaves shrivel and curl with its intensity. He proceeded to tell the whole juicy story, but I didn’t stay to listen. I had been carefully packing up my tools. I set them in my basket, got to my feet, and walked away.

  I walked right out of that garden. Out through the fantastical gate with its gilded whirligigs and pennants, out into the lane beyond, where long meadows sloped down to a river and pollarded willows grew. No, that was south. I mustn’t go that way. Rochester was due north. I had to find a road that would take me north.

  I kept walking.

  When I had gone some eight kilometers, it occurred to me that they might be burning him even now. Sobbing, I began to run.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  IT WAS A long way, fifty kilometers or more. I had to wade rivers. I saw the osiers and weirs and other uniquely English features of the landscape. I walked through orchards just leafing out in green mist, no blossoms yet. I crossed chalky downs, with stands of beech trees. Sometimes I ran, and sometimes I walked. Sometimes I followed a road, and sometimes I cut across broad expanses where sheep grazed. I saw examples of Dianthus carolphyllus albans and Cerastium holosteoides and Polygala caeruleis.

  I saw thieves, possibly murderers. Near dark I passed through the outskirts of a little town and saw some men standing around a well. I remember their hard stares in their bearded faces. Probably they didn’t often see a young lady in Spanish dress out alone at sunset. Not in Cosenton, or wherever it was.

  One of them followed me. About a mile onward, I picked up his signal, coming swiftly after: his pulse was racing, he was excited. Rape, probably, or robbery. I tucked my crucifix inside my bodice and looked around for a place to hide. There were trees nearby, very dense and dark, darker now with night falling. I left the road and went in among them. Nothing there but birds, settling in for the night. I climbed into a good old oak, tearing my dress but who cared now, and sat primly on a branch with my hands folded, waiting.

  Presently he came along, and I could see him by infrared, his blood glaring out hot through his clothes. He slunk at a quick trot, as a dog on bad business does, with his excitement hanging around him like a bad smell. I sent a blast of loathing at him. He must have been a psychic dog: he faltered and turned about in the road and actually came a few paces near my tree. I sent images into his mind of violent assault, murder, bloodshed. It must have excited him, because he nosed even closer. In desperation I conjured up the supernatural: white clammy specters coming at him out of the trees, arms wide to embrace him. That did the trick. He took to his heels and ran back the way he’d come. I sat trembling in the oak branches for a while, hating the mortal race.

  Except Nicholas, of course.

  There was a waxing moon for a few hours, and by its light I found my way on through cold England, across green hills. Somewhere off north was the sea, and away to my left was a river that snaked down to it, growing wider with each curve. The Medway, it must have been. Yes, Rochester was on the Medway. The smell of the river and the turning stars guided me after the moon went down.

  Sometimes, a long way off, I could see candlelit windows. There were mortals in the warmth behind those windows, up late: sitting up with sick ones or reading solitary or having late-night suppers of toast and mulled wine. I would have liked some toast and mulled wine. Any other time, I would have thought sentimentally about the people in the candlelit rooms, living out all the poignant details of their little mortal lives. Not tonight. I passed on through the dark with the knowledge that if I knocked on one of those doors, was welcomed into one of those warm bright rooms, they would be bright for only a moment: then, as at Christmas, all the lights would go out, and I would be alone in the dark with time and its dead. Better to walk the night.

  Morning took a long time coming. The first thing I noticed by its gray light was that I had wrecked my clothes: there were rips and trails of lace everywhere, and mud, and wet dead leaves. Too bad. The second thing I noticed was a castle sticking up on a mound by a big gray curve of river. There were pointy parts of building below it—a cathedral.

  I accessed all my store of maps and literature. Yes, that must be Rochester. Smoke curled upward from it. Oh, let it be chimney smoke, harmless chimney smoke. Or a hundred men with pipes? No, not pipes. A few years yet before tobacco became a habit among civilized men. What would it be like to live, as some future generations would, in perpetual clouds of herbal smoke? It must be a sweet kind of smell. Perhaps it would be like incense. A shame about the carcinogens, of course, but with all the medical advances of that era, the mortality rate
would probably balance out even with now.

  So I babbled to myself, on the road to the city, and the sun climbed higher in the sky. It did not dry me out much. I was encountering mortals on the road now. They did stare at me as we passed each other. Either my clothes were in a worse state than I thought, or they didn’t often see señoritas here.

  An old woman was puffing along slowly toward me with a basket under her arm. She was as much a wreck as sixty mortal years could make her, but my goodness what pink skin she had. That’s the English for you.

  “Good morrow, good mother.”

  “Eh?” She looked up (she was only about four feet tall) and noticed me for the first time. Her blue eyes widened in a stare.

  “Art thou come from yonder town, good mother?”

  “Eh? Aye.” She couldn’t make up her mind to curtsey to me, not being entirely sure what I was, so she wobbled a bit and flapped her apron to be on the safe side. I reached up to smooth my hair and found a long oak twig sticking straight up like an antenna. Wonderful.

  “Thou wilt pardon me for my wild appearance, good woman, as I was set upon by thieves.”

  “Truly?” Instant rush of interest, and not sympathy, exactly, but a certain enthusiasm. She came closer.

  “I must know, goodwife, whether there hath lately been a man burned at Rochester?” I held my breath and waited.

  “Nay, lady, but there is to be.”

  Whoosh. “I pray you, tell me when?”

  “Why, on the morrow, lady.” Her eyes assessed me. “Spanish, are you?”

  Must be the cut of my gown. “Why, so I am,” I answered cautiously.

  “Then you’ve lost none of your sport. The man burneth tomorrow betimes.” She shrugged her basket closer to her and walked on. I walked on my way too, light-headed as all hell. Nearly a whole day before? Surely I could come up with some kind of plan.

  Rochester was a very old place. It smelled old. Moldy, too. The air of decay probably came from the ruin that about a third of the town was fast becoming. It had been a monastic town, so the Reformation had smashed it pretty well. There seemed to be one main street that dove straight through without taking the traveler anywhere much. To either side of it the town was self-enclosed and secretive, blind as a maze. Only, looming over all, was this big cathedral that looked like it might fall on you at any time. I didn’t like the cathedral. But I wasn’t there to like it, was I?