In the Garden of Iden

by Kage Baker

  This truly hurts. But I need to record that green filtered sunlight streaming in through the great hall, where we made eye contact over breakfast. His foot sought mine under the table. He peeled oranges for me in long curls of gold. I ate them for him in suggestive ways, eloquent with lips and tongue. God knows what the servants thought.

  So you may laugh at my heart's nakedness, but I'll tell you this much: all my nasty expectations fell away like stone birds that summer. With each sexual act and variation, layers of fear came away to reveal a commonplace, comfortable pastime.

  It wasn't that the obsession died—Christ, we couldn't keep our hands off each other. What clutchings in the maze, what passionate and explicit notes in Greek we left for each other! But it became innocent. Maybe wholesome is a better word. Pleasant and unremarkable as eating. No sense of sin. What a revelation for me, eh?

  We played mental games with each other, too, he still asking oblique questions about alchemists and I poking with casual remarks about weird Anabaptist sects. Stimulating discourses, as it were, to counterpoint our play.

  Enough of the idyllic sex scenes. What we did, we did, and now you know.

  Nef was very accommodating about it, because now she had the bed to herself and could play the radio as late as she wanted. Mind you, all there was usually to hear was a weather broadcast and a nightly program of madrigals by a popular group of castrati; but those things would comfort you too if you were trapped in a back country manor house and the only other woman around was younger than you and having a torrid love affair besides. Joseph made a few cheerful remarks about how great one's first little mortal fling was. Beyond that he didn't comment much, being very busy himself at that time.

  In August, Mary the Queen and Philip her consort went on up to London, where it promptly rained buckets on all the Londoners who nonetheless staged elaborate pageants for His Gloomy Grace. I remember where I was when I heard the broadcast floating out of Nef's open window: in the center of a privet hedge with Nicholas. We were having a fierce postcoital discussion about Savonarola. Nicholas defended, I attacked.

  In September there were news reports every day on how badly our quondam countrymen were getting on in England. Somewhere there was a plaintive hidalgo with gonorrhea who wondered what had become of the private physician whose passage he had paid for. Joseph could disappear in transit like a check, if he found it convenient.

  There were rumors of revolts, of barricades and imperial treachery, but nothing came of them, and the sun kept shining down. No, it was in our own bright garden that the trouble began.

  People noticed when the color began to come back into Sir Walter's hair and beard, but even the servants assumed it was only a dye job, if a subtle one. When Sir Walter got to handling and pinching the kitchen girls, his household chalked it up to male menopause. Dotage, they used to call it. But the day he fell down at the breakfast table in a fit, no one knew quite what to say.

  I, Nicholas, and Master Ffrawney, Nef, Joseph, the steward, and two scullery boys all looked down at him in horror. He kicked. He foamed. He grunted. Oops, transmitted Joseph. Out loud, he said:

  "Why, he hath the falling sickness. How unusual that he never told me of it."

  What do you mean, oops? I questioned, and Nef echoed me. Joseph ignored us as he and Nicholas hastened down to their knees beside Sir Walter. With some struggle they edged him away from the table so he wouldn't brain himself, and did all the helpful things one is supposed to do for an epileptic. While Nicholas was busy unhooking fastenings, Joseph discreetly broke a little capsule over the throbbing vein in Sir Walter's temple.

  "He hath never been so taken," gasped Nicholas, dodging a flailing shoe.

  "Well, perhaps he had a surfeit of something that drew the sanguine humors up into the brain." Joseph pretended to take his pulse. "Eels, or oysters, or venison pie, perchance. Hmm?" But he struck a false note then, because his tone was too light and careless. I guess he was badly rattled, or he wouldn't have slipped up like that. And he only slipped a little; but Nicholas caught it, though the rest of the company were oblivious. He threw Joseph a quick, wondering look.

  Watch out, I transmitted.

  Slight miscalculation of dosage, Joseph returned. The little guy must have been at the beefsteak again. I warned him about that. Sir Walter gave a final thrash and went limp, apparently unconscious. Joseph called for a cushion and placed it under his head with great solicitude. "There is no cause to be alarmed, good people," he said loudly. "Doubtless this unfortunate incident was only the result of intemperate diet."

  Sir Walter shot out his arms and legs and crowed like a rooster.

  "Jesu bless us!" shrieked Master Ffrawney. "He hath a devil in him!" He and the scullery boys all made the sign of the Cross. So did Nefer and I, belatedly. Joseph was too busy trying to catch Sir Walter's flapping arms.

  "I have it now!" he shouted. "It is, uh, an effusion of melancholic bile in the liver. The Count of Alcobiella was afflicted with the very same. Please, my young friend, let us get your master to his bed." Between them, he and Nicholas hoisted Sir Walter, who was grinning idiotically, and struggled with him up the stairs. Near the top, the old man began to howl:

  "Dookies! Dookies! Dookies!"

  I was too frightened to laugh. Nefer looked around at our terrified faces and pulled out her rosary. "Let us pray," she said firmly. "Entreat the Blessed Virgin in our efforts on Don Walter's behalf. Ave Maria, Gratia plena …"

  We mumbled with her, occasionally glancing up as thumps and crashes came from the room above. At last there was silence. Three quarters of the way around the rosary, Nicholas came slowly down the stairs. His face was set and closed. I ran to him. "How does the good man?" I cried. He turned to stare at me; then he looked at the others and said:

  "By the grace of God, Sir Walter is sleeping now and his fit hath passed. The doctor says he will be well." And as Nef and the others resumed prayer, he took me by the arm and led me outside.

  "What is it, in God's name?" I said, peering up at him. He led me a little way from the house and looked at me.

  "I have just seen a thing I cannot understand," he said.

  "Before God, I don't doubt it!"

  He glanced around before he replied in Greek. "I mean, above the extraordinary sight of a gentleman of reverend years crying cuckoo before his whole house. Men have lost their wits before. No, my love, when we carried my master up to his room, we stripped away his doublet and shirt so that your father could bleed him.

  "Now, when Sir Walter was a young man, he saw some service with our late king in France, and took a wound from it. (Or it may be that as he sat in a tavern one night, he was set upon by thieves; I've heard him tell both stories.) However he came by it, he certainly had a great scar across his ribs."

  "Had," I said uneasily.

  "Yes. Past tense. Now he has but a little red line there, like a track of scarlet ink. How should this be, Rose?"

  I took a deep breath. "Well, did you think it was sorcery? It's the physick, no question. Every hedgerow charlatan has a potion to take away wrinkles and scars. My father's remedy works, that's all."

  Nicholas relaxed a little. "Certainly it's a great remover of scars. So long as it doesn't take Sir Walter's life away with the scar, all may be well. Pray that your father knows what he's doing, Rose, or people will swear there's been murder done. And witchcraft, very likely, or whatever else comes into their heads."

  Mendoza!

  I'm busy! I transmitted.

  So am I, and I need somebody to hand me things. Now. On the double!

  "Your advice is well taken." I squeezed Nicholas's arm. "I will go warn my father at once." He stared after me as I hitched up my skirts and ran back into the house.

  Up the stairs and up the stairs and up the damned stairs, clattering, past staring servants. All right, where are you?

  In here. I heard a bolt slide back at a near door, and the door opened just wide enough to admit me. It was a narrow room, like a
cell. Once inside, I gasped and fell back at what I saw in it, as though physically pushed against the wall.

  Sir Walter was laid out on a baize-covered table, smiling and stone dead. Had to be dead: his skin was gray, his stare was glassy as a doll's, and his chest had been opened out and folded back to expose its contents. Joseph was leaning down into the bloody cavity, working frantically with little tools. Organs were draped everywhere.

  "Oh, my God, you've killed him," I said.

  "Shut up and hand me that box," Joseph hissed. Too stunned to argue, I handed it to him: a red Bakelite component about the size of a matchbox, with a couple of tiny wires trailing from it. He snatched it from me, and it disappeared into the mortal mess.

  "Pliers," he demanded. "Goddamn faulty regulator!"

  "You really think you can revive him?" I edged closer to peer into the gaping hole as Joseph rummaged around in it frantically. Oh, gross.

  "Yes. Grab that hemostim and stick it up his nose!"

  I began to giggle in spite of my horror. Somehow I found the slender pointed tool and inserted it just above Sir Walter's mustache. Joseph growled, "Farther!"

  Suddenly festoons of tiny colored lights were blinking inside Sir Walter, all over his lungs and heart and liver, as though his organs were throwing a block party. It was pretty, in a ghastly sort of way. One of Sir Walter's thumbs began to waggle back and forth.

  "Good. Great." Joseph twisted the pliers and leaned with all his strength. Something gave a little click, and the blinking stopped, the lights shone with a steady soft glow. "Now take the hemostim out of his nose."

  I obeyed gingerly and dropped the tool into a sterilizing pail. The lights continued to shine. Joseph exhaled loudly and began to close up Sir Walter.

  "If you don't need me for anything more…" I moved toward the door.

  "No, stick around. Your boyfriend noticed some stuff he couldn't account for, didn't he?"

  "You mean, like scars vanishing? He's not an idiot. Don't worry, though, I explained it all away." I leaned against the wall and folded my arms, grinning. "I did my job. Your little mistake won't leave any lasting suspicions in his mind."

  "It wasn't my little mistake after all, wiseass. See this?" Joseph slam-dunked something into the sterilizer. I peered at it. A little Bakelite box, twin to the first but obscured by a film of blood and tissue. "Defective. If I ever get my hands on Flavius again—"

  "Wow. What was it supposed to do?"

  "Regulate the release of pineal tribrantine 3, not dump a week's worth into his system." Joseph reached for the skin plasterer.

  "No!" I whooped with laughter. "No wonder he went tilt! You're lucky you didn't have to get him down out of a tree!" Joseph just glared at me and troweled new flesh into Sir Walter's wounds while my snickering subsided. After a moment a thought sobered me.

  "How come you're giving him tribrantine anyway? I thought only we got that."

  "Special case." Joseph put away the plasterer and grabbed up the retoucher. "It can be given to mortals, and it'll do for them what it does for us; it's just that their systems can't learn to produce it like ours can. Costs a fortune to keep pumping it into 'em, too."

  "But it wouldn't make them immortal, would it?"

  "Nah. But they'd be good-looking corpses when they finally died, believe me." Joseph looked up at me. "Thinking of the boyfriend, huh?"

  Sir Walter twitched and groaned. His eyes had closed. I stared at him, watching the color return to his face. "No, actually," I lied.

  Joseph appeared at supper grave and solemn as a church elder, close at Sir Walter's elbow. "Nay, I thank ye, I am very well now." Sir Walter waved easily at everyone. "It was but the falling sickness, brought on by immoderate diet. Doctor Ruy hath explained it all."

  There were some dark looks in Joseph's direction from the household staff, but the truth was that Sir Walter did look perky as a cricket again. He reached out now and dragged a bowl of watercress across the table to his place.

  "What's this? Cresses? You, Dick, this wants oil and salt! Alexander the Great was much given to the falling sickness, did you know that, madam?" He turned to Nef abruptly.

  She blinked. He had scarcely ever spoken to her before. "Why—no, señor, I knew it not."

  "Verily, Lady. Julius Caesar, too. And Pompey, so I believe." He stroked his beard complacently as one of the scullions fussed with the salad. "The ancients, being deluded heathen, held it to be a sign that Jupiter, who as you know was their principal idol, had marked a man for greatness. God's marrow bones, fool, I said salt!" he shouted, glaring at the boy. It was a loud and deep shout, a resonant sound, very striking on the ear, as it came from old, dry lungs. The boy cowered. Everyone at table stared.

  "Perhaps it would be wise to take but little salt," reminded Joseph.

  "Well, well." Sir Walter dredged up some cress between his thumb and forefinger and stuffed it in his mouth. He wiped his hand on a piece of bread and turned back to Nef, chewing busily. "Where was I? Aye, aye, that great ones were ofttimes marked. Or so the Romans held. I myself was born with a mark like a cobbler's awl upon mine elbow."

  "Doubtless a prophecy of your piercing wit." Joseph smiled.

  "Ha, ha, ha! Though I may tell you, Doctor Ruy, that I have made good fellows to laugh in my day, forsooth! I was once sought after for my good conversation." He coughed modestly.

  Well, he was boring enough now. Not my Nicholas, though. I gave him a sultry smile, but he was watching Sir Walter, frowning a little. A moment later he noticed and smiled at me, and gave me a compensatory nudge under the table. Then his gaze wandered away again.

  "Lewd fellows, those Romans," Sir Walter went on, digging out another handful of cress and wolfing it down. "They cut an image of Hercules in one of our chalk hills and—well—hum." He glanced over at me and then back at Nef. "I shall tell you of it another time, Lady. Take some of the cress, I pray you, it is very good. Now, Master Ffrawney, did I not call for a capon to table?" Hurriedly the serving boy presented a whole roast chicken from the sideboard. "Aah," cried Sir Walter; and as he leaned forward to pull off a drumstick, we all heard a distinct tearing sound. He froze.

  "Your doublet is broke open behind, sir," observed Nicholas.

  "Is it so?" Sir Walter scrabbled at the front buttons with greasy fingers. "Well, out upon it, it was an old thing and shabby besides. I shall have a new one! Nicholas, bid Master Fish the tailor to call upon me. I must have six doublets cut in the new fashion. See that it is done."

  He got his six new doublets, and new shirts and hose as well; and the tailor went away shaking his head, because everything had to be made bigger in the neck and the shoulders. There was talk in the servants' hall, let me tell you.

  There was more talk when Sir Walter began to sleep with the laundress. She was a well-mannered person remarkable chiefly for her cleanness—she must have taken her line of work seriously—and for her breasts, which were like river rocks. Pretty soon she was making regular calls at Sir Walter's creaking ancestral bed with the Iden arms on its hangings. I think the servants felt an obscure pride that somebody their master's age should have a backstairs squeeze at all. But they really did not approve of his flirting with Nef too.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  « ^ »

  One fair bright morning, I was running along an aisle of the privet maze, ever so picturesque: my hair down, cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling, et cetera. Just like the beginning of a historical romance. Never mind what I'd been doing. I found a green alleyway and ducked inside. My breathless giggling and the whining of the gnats sounded loud in my ears. There was a rustling from the hedge, and I poised to shriek: but it was Nef's long profile that came around the corner.

  Pop went the ambiance. "What the hell are you doing here?" I snarled.

  "Hiding," she said gloomily.

  "Well, go hide somewhere else!"

  "Ssh." She put out her hand. We listened for a few seconds but heard nothing.

  "Who are you hiding from, anyway?"
I resumed in a stage whisper.

  "Sir Walter."

  "You're kidding!" I began to giggle again. She favored me with a look that would have frozen anybody older and less stupid.

  "He keeps trying to get me to ride down to Dorset with him to look at this Hercules thing. From the way he leers, I get the impression it's something improper."

  "It sure is! It's a Neolithic nude with a twelve-foot penis."

  She rolled her eyes. "Why me?"

  "Because he figures you're a gentlewoman, what do you want to bet? And with all the improvements Joseph's making, the old man's fancy must be heavily turning to thoughts of love. I bet he feels like a million bucks. I bet he's beginning to regret that he never married and furthered the heroic Iden line. And you're the only available female of his social status, right? Quod erat demonstrandum!"

  She took a swing at me with her rosary, which was solid silver and would have done me injury had it connected, though of course it only whirred harmlessly through the space where I'd been a nanosecond earlier. "Mendoza, you're a rotten kid."

  "Don't you feel honored? How many years do you think it's been since the old boy thought of anything but his garden?"

  She slumped down to a sitting position on the grass. "This is too embarrassing."

  "Seriously, though, would you mind being embarrassed somewhere else? Nicholas and I were—"

  That was when the unicorn appeared. Tiny and demure, he came around the corner nibbling daisies from the grass. He halted when he saw us. Nef sat bolt upright, staring.

  "What—" she said, and I started to explain; but she put out her hand, and the little creature ran to her at once. It nuzzled her, and she swept it up into her arms. "Little baby, what's the matter?" Her hands found the twisted stumpy horn, and she gave a cry.

  "It's the unicorn," I said uncomfortably. "The one I keep telling you about. Sir Walter's pride and joy. You know."