In the Garden of Iden (Company)

by Kage Baker

  “This was a man? So these are not the locks caressed by Arthur? Well, farewell Sir Walter’s two pound tenpence. He ought to have known it were no true queen’s head at that price. Though mind you”—he put it back and moved down another shelf—“there was a time when queens’ heads went for less in this land.

  “Now, Rose, make a new heading of Popish Impostures—” He halted. “Nay, I see I am too slow. Someone hath been and changed the sign in this case. Rather write, Holy Relics Miraculously Preserved from the Late Heretics. Item, fifteen pieces of the true Cross. Item, six crystal vials of the blood of Christ, with lead stoppers. Item, seven glass vials of the same. Item, a finger of Saint Winifred. Item, a finger of Saint Ethelbert. Item, a toe of Saint Cuthbert, with an otter’s tooth affixed therein. Item, a tooth of Saint Ascanius.”

  He climbed down and came to sit beside me, shaking from an urge to laugh or cry. “A trove the Pope himself must envy. Yet I tell you, Sir Walter bought them cheaply when the monasteries were broken up. For a long while there was a card whereon was writ large how these were counterfeits made by greedy monks to rob honest Englishmen.”

  “One of those fingers is a chicken bone.” I put my arm around him. A couple of the little bones actually did show a faint spectrum of Crome’s radiation, though, so maybe they were the true toes of saints after all.

  But there were footsteps. A door opened, and people came into the great hall. Sir Walter, Joseph, and Master Darrell. Joseph was saying:

  “Now, having compounded this, you must rub it well into your scalp—” They noticed us sitting there. Joseph gave me a tiny apologetic shrug, and Master Darrell doffed his hat to me, courteous fellow. But Sir Walter strode forward and said:

  “How now, Nicholas, not finished yet? I would have this abstract done afore next Christmas, boy.”

  He had been such a charming little old man. What a bastard he was, young.

  “You bid me be exact, sir, and there is much to account for.” Nicholas bowed slightly.

  “Well, thou must be precise. Look you, Master Darrell, here are wonders indeed. Where is the sword of Charlemagne, Nicholas?”

  “Sword of Charlemagne?” Nicholas frowned.

  “What, art turned parrot? Tell me where it is, boy. Ha! I see it there. Look up, Master Darrell, it is the French Caesar’s very blade.” He pointed to a sword mounted on the wall high above the case. Nicholas consulted his list. Sir Walter went on: “This same blade, sir, was presented to our late King Henry Fifth, when he did conquer France. It came into this country, I am told, when—”

  “That’s the sword of Roland, sir.” Nicholas looked up.

  “When—what?”

  “It is Roland’s sword. Not Charlemagne’s.”

  Sir Walter’s eyes quite popped with annoyance. “I think I know mine own goods, boy. That is the sword of Charlemagne. Roland had a horn, Charlemagne had a sword.”

  “With respect, sir, the horn of Roland is in the second cabinet in the east gallery, and this is Roland’s sword. You bought them both from a peddler in Wapping. Charlemagne’s—”

  “God’s blood, must I prove it to thee? I see I must.” With a great show of impatience, Sir Walter seized the stepladder and bounded up to the top. The sword was still well out of his reach, though, so he got up on top of the cabinet and stood cautiously.

  “Sweet Jesu, sir, have a care!” cried Master Darrell.

  “Aye, aye.” Sir Walter turned unsteadily and looked out at us all: couldn’t resist the urge to see what the view was like from up there, I guess. I wondered briefly if he could see into the minstrels’ gallery.

  He remembered why he was there and grabbed for the sword. “Here! Now thou shalt see—” But it was only hanging between two sixpenny nails and came loose sooner than he expected and plummeted downward. He jumped back, nearly fell, as with a hiss the sword dropped behind the cabinet and thunked into the baseboard. Nicholas looked disdainful. I had to hide my face in my hands to keep from snickering, and it was well I did, for little Sir Walter grew as furious as a cat up there on his hands and knees.

  “Why was that not hung more securer?” he cried. “I might have been killed, thou fool! And now we must move the cabinet to have the sword back again!”

  “Peace, sir, another time,” soothed Master Darrell. “I am certain it was Charlemagne’s sword, none other.”

  “It must be got out!”

  “We shall have some of the household move the cabinet later, my friend.” Joseph came and steadied the ladder. “But descend now, I pray you, lest you fall.”

  “We shall have it moved now, and I shall prove to thee …” Reckless in his anger, Sir Walter scrambled to his feet again. Bad move. He overbalanced and tottered. To avoid falling, he threw himself backward against the wall. His feet pushed at the top of the cabinet, and it toppled slowly outward. I screamed, and the men shouted, for Joseph was standing underneath.

  Now, a scene in slow motion:

  Joseph’s eyes met mine. It wasn’t that he couldn’t get out of the way in time: we had both been alerted when the center of gravity began to shift. He could have been safe on the stair beside me in that first fraction of a second after the cabinet started falling. But there were two mortals staring fixedly at him, who would have seen him blink out.

  My God, what are you going to do?

  Make it look good. Cross your fingers.

  As artifacts and pieces of saints began to rain down on him, Joseph found the exact place of least momentum, lightest impact; positioned himself there, threw up his arms, and waited. Crraassh, it came. A mortal man would have been broken like a matchstick. Joseph, though, took the weight and folded with it, telescoped and bent like a spring but did not crush. Nothing can shatter our cyborg skulls. BOOM. Dust settling.

  Normal time again. Sir Walter sprawled amid cobwebs, fractured in a few places, but nobody was paying him any heed because I was screeching fit to wake the dead, frantically clawing at the cabinet. Nicholas and Master Darrell were beside me at once, and some of the servants ran in, and by combined effort we hoisted the cabinet up about two feet. I let go at once and flung myself underneath, ruining my hoops.

  “Rose!”

  Joseph looked like a cubist painting. He unfolded as I slithered to him.

  Damage?

  Pull me out.

  I got him by the shoulders and pulled, and he swore, but I backed out rapidly with him. When we emerged, he feigned unconsciousness. Kneeling beside him, I wrung my hands and lamented in Spanish, while the following subvocal conversation was going on:

  Damage?

  Soft tissue injuries, multiple, minor. Right ankle sprained. Right wrist sprained. Left shoulder sprained, separated, massive hematoma—

  Here comes Nef.

  Have you got—

  Yes. What dosage?

  Six point three.

  Beside me Nef joined in the hysterics, seizing Joseph’s face in her hands and neatly pressing the drug patch into place behind his ear.

  Better. Thanks.

  “Oh, Jesu, is he slain?” Sir Walter staggered up, looking ghastly pale. I could hear Nicholas shouting for someone to fetch a surgeon. Joseph turned his head and moaned feebly. Nef shrieked her joy that he was alive and began to pray. I cried out that it was a miracle, blessed be the Holy Virgin and Saint James, et cetera. Nicholas crouched down beside me.

  “Sir, can you hear me? We have sent for a surgeon. All will be well.”

  “A surgeon?” Joseph’s eyes flew open.

  “He speaks!” Master Darrell bent close. “Master Doctor, it is God’s mercy you yet live. We thought you smashed like an apple.”

  “No, God be thanked,” Joseph murmured. “But let me have no surgeons—I pray you!”

  “But sir, your hurts must be seen to,” protested Nicholas.

  “My daughter shall tend to me. Have I not taught her physick?” Joseph tried to sit up and gave a cry of real pain.

  “Peace, Father, all shall be as you wish,” I reassured h
im. Nicholas stared at me, and I gave him my most beseeching look. So he helped make a litter out of a tapestry and a pair of boar spears and carried Joseph up to our rooms. Once Joseph was set down, Nef chased everyone else out of the room so we could get most of his clothes off him.

  What a mess. He looked like a peach that hadn’t been packed in excelsior before it was shipped, and was subsequently dropped and stepped on. Pulpy devastation. A veritable field of blossoming purple. Even as we watched, though, he was healing. Bruises roiled beneath his skin, spread, changed color, faded like clouds across the sky at sunset.

  “Kind of pretty, isn’t it?” Nef surveyed him.

  “Shut up,” he groaned.

  “Oh, you’re doing fine. The sprains are binding back up, aren’t they? I think the swelling’s even going down. That shoulder’s going to give you trouble, though. I had one once like that and it took most of a week to heal.”

  “Is that all.” Joseph writhed.

  “We’ll put a fake splint on the arm.” Nef turned to me. “He can wear a sling to immobilize that side. If we were at HQ, they could go in and staple him up right now, but out here—gee. These things can be awfully tedious when they happen in the field.” Her unicorn wandered in and tried to jump up on the bed.

  “Keep that thing out of here!” railed Joseph. “And that goes double for their damned surgeon. Leeches biting me, that’s all I need.”

  “Fuss, fuss, fuss.”

  “I’m in pain, dammit!”

  “Not like you’d be if you were a mortal,” Nef pointed out.

  “If I were a mortal, I wouldn’t be feeling anything because I’d be dead now,” Joseph snapped.

  “There art thou happy,” Nef told him cheerily.

  By the time we got the splint on him, the bruises had all but disappeared. I left him in bed watching a holo and went out to see if I could help clean up the wreckage downstairs. I found Nicholas waiting just outside the door.

  “Shall he live?”

  “Aye, Saint James be praised for a miracle.”

  He came close to me. “Yet thou hast no belief in Saint James, nor in miracles neither. If there had been no miracle and thy father had been killed, what then? Hast thou any family but him? Any friends?”

  “None,” I replied. “If my father were slain, I should be alone in this foreign land. I have no husband, nor am I like to.”

  He leaned down and kissed me. What a long, lovely, lose-your-balance kiss. We hadn’t kissed like that in weeks.

  Say you’ll come away with me! But though he held tighter, he didn’t say it.

  “What of the case of relics?” I gasped, when we came up for breath. “There was fearful disarray there. Ought we not to sweep it up?”

  “Let Sir Walter go picking in the dust for his trash,” he growled. “I have done with him.”

  I threw my arms around his neck and hugged tight. He made a harsh sound and we fled away, up to his room.

  I was certain I’d won. People who struggle with their consciences and triumph over them get a certain look on their faces, disappointment mingled with relief. They don’t say much. I thought Nicholas’s silence was a sure sign that he’d decided to do something wrong by his standards.

  But he never did say he’d come away with me.

  We spent the rest of the day in his room, being what used to be called wanton. I was thrilled, I was intoxicated. Everything would be all right. If only he would say something, though …

  The rain stopped some time before twilight. A north wind came up, sharp and cold as crystal, and shredded away the clouds. It drove their rags far out to sea, so that a red sunset flared in through the windows, and later piercingly bright stars.

  “Sweetheart, we should rise,” I whispered at last. “’Tis past the hour of six, surely. Folk will wonder where we are.”

  “We may burn in Hell for all they care,” he said out loud. I jumped a little, it had been so quiet in that room.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I must see how my father fares.”

  He nodded at that but made no move to get up with me as I rose and dressed. I left him there in drafty starlight and went down into the depths of the house.

  Smoky and too warm: they had built up the fires. Supper cooking. I was so ravenous, I could have eaten the Christmas pie. There might well have been some left, bubbling away and evolving into a strange life-form on a forgotten shelf in the pantry.

  It was quiet outside Nef’s room: no radio on. I looked in on Joseph and found him wide awake in darkness. “Where’s Nef?” I lit a candle.

  “Down having supper,” he replied. “Say, you wouldn’t mind pouring me some sherry, would you? About three bottles?”

  I looked around for a decanter and filled a glass. He took it in his good hand and tossed the drink back in one gulp.

  “Are you still hurting that bad?” I looked at the empty glass in awe. He held it out for a refill, and I obliged.

  “Wait’ll you do this to yourself some day, little cyborg. Healing hurts. Pain and I are becoming old friends. It invites me over to watch football matches in holo, and we’ve loaned each other money. Old friends. Heck, yes, I sure do hurt.” He chugged his drink again.

  “Should you drink so much with the patch on?”

  “Won’t affect it. It’s the shoulder that’s giving me hell. Everything else healed right up. But the Pectoralises Major and Minor and a host of their neighbors have parted company with Mr. Clavicle. They need a mediator in a big way.”

  “I’m really sorry.” I poked up the fire. “Can I get you anything?”

  “Just another shot of amontillado. Listen, this is kind of going to put a crimp in my abilities to, uh, make secret knockout potions and so on …”

  I grinned, pouring out his refill. “Don’t worry about that. It may not be necessary. I think that issue’s going to resolve itself real soon.”

  “No kidding?” He looked at me searchingly. “Somebody’s listening to reason? Well, glad to hear it. Just the same, with my arm like this, I wouldn’t want us to have to pack our bags and run for anywhere for at least a week. Keep that in mind, won’t you? In case any of your plans involve dramatic departures.”

  “Hey, baby, trust me.” I smiled and exited on that line.

  Down the dark staircase into firelight. It occurred to me that in a month’s time I might be in a different city, away from the rain and smoke and dark corridors of England. This cheered my heart so much, I danced a saltarello all the way to the bottom of the stairs and ran breathless into the great hall.

  Same old tableau there, a few people more or less. Francis Ffrawney standing all self-important in new livery. Being a groveling toady had paid off in a big way. Sir Walter looking very stiff and uncomfortable and somehow suddenly older; nevertheless his beard wagged on implacably about something to Nef, who was nodding in boredom as she poked her spoon around in a dish of baked beans. She was a great listener, that woman.

  As I came skipping in, they all turned to stare at me with varying degrees of the same expression of disapproval.

  “God give you good evening, gentles.” I curtseyed. “I am come lately from my father, who hath slept and waked with a rare appetite. Which portends (as Avicenna saith) a speedy recovery, God be thanked. Wherefore I would take him some new loaves of bread, some hot broth, perhaps a joint of beef or a chicken, and some strong ale …?” Nef raised eyebrows at me, but Sir Walter waved his hand at Master Ffrawney.

  “See to it, Francis. How now, Lady Rose, doth thy father so well? I am glad. I would not for the world have him miscarry in my house.”

  I felt a storm of giggling coming on. “Trust me, sir, his miraculous preservation was due to none other thing but the great abundance of holy relics of the saints that fell in profusion about him. Yea, surely, the very finger of Saint Ethelbert stood upright to ward off the terrible blow.”

  Mendoza, you brat, watch your mouth.

  “Say you so? It may be.” Sir Walter nodded solemnly. “I myself was sh
rewdly bruised, I fear, and want your father’s physick much. But sit, child, and thou shalt hear how I have won a sharp bargain with Master Darrell …”

  Yawn yawn yawn. The little weasel had got a clause put in the sale contract for a room to be set aside for his use, if he should ever come back to visit Iden Hall: the idea being that as a kind of celebrity exhibit himself, he deserved free bed and board. I could see how he had cleaned up in the wool trade all those years ago. He seemed ready to go on about the clause for hours, so when Master Ffrawney returned with a huge tray, I jumped up and took it from him.

  “Señor, you are too kind. I shall away to my poor, dear father with this bounty at once. Yet though it be excellent wholesome, I believe it shall do him less good than your prayers.”

  “Why, so we shall pray for him,” Sir Walter called after me as I sped off. I paused long enough to curtsey again, didn’t spill a drop of ale, and hurried on. I took the stairs two at a time. Fresh-baked bread, oh boy. Capon broth and a roasted capon too. Joseph blinked at me foggily as I set the can of broth beside him.

  “Have some chicken soup,” I said, snatching up his candle. “Trade you.”

  “Room service?” he called, but I was already gone.

  So at last back to Nicholas, who had put on his shirt and breeches and was sitting on the bed looking out at the little square of night sky. I set down the tray on the table where his books used to be; the candle danced and flared in the draft.

  “Supper,” I announced. He turned in the candlelight, and my heart lurched painfully. It was very strange, because this surge of love swept away all my merriment and left me feeling the need to hold him and cry. I rushed to him, blinking back tears.

  “What, Rose, is thy father worse?” He put his arms around me.

  “No.” I hid my face against him. “But I am sick with love.”

  He was silent a moment at that, stroking my hair.

  “So am I,” he said at last. “Who shall heal us?”

  “We haven’t got the fever by the book.” I wiped at my eyes. “All this heat, all this sorrow should have come at the beginning. By now we should have been cool to each other and free of pain.”