by Kage Baker
But he moved away from me and took hold of the bed rail with both hands.
“Mendoza,” he said, “you can sleep in the saddle. We’ll go slow. I’ll lead your horse. Just come away with me right now, and I swear I’ll fix everything with the Company about your going AWOL. Maybe I can even get you out to the New World. There are people who owe me favors out there. Please, Mendoza. For your old pal who got you out of Santiago? Don’t stay here.”
“Didn’t you hear a word I just said?” I demanded. His shoulders sagged.
“You’d better get some sleep,” he said.
It was still dark when I opened my eyes, but I was wide awake at once. Joseph sat motionless in a chair by the window.
Rochester. Today. Nicholas.
“It’s April first,” I said. “Fool’s Day.” Joseph nodded.
“Five A.M., as a matter of fact. Want to go back to sleep for a few hours?”
“Don’t be stupid. I have to see him.” I jumped out of bed and got dressed. I felt very light, very unreal, and my heart was pounding.
I had thought we could just leave the house quietly, but when we went downstairs, the Lord Mayor’s household was awake and bustling. So we were offered breakfast (I was too nervous to eat) and given cushions by the fire while the Lord Mayor got into his mayoral robes, because of course he had to attend the public event, and we, being his guests, had to wait for him. It took him forever to get dressed. His wife fussed around him and adjusted his chain of office and his big flat cap with its curling plume. The plume was an ostrich feather. It must have come from Africa by way of Spain. Wasn’t the world a small place nowadays?
It was gray when we left the house. A light wind had risen in the night and blown away the fog. The Medway sparkled dully, waiting for the sunlight. The stars were going to bed, faint in a sky pale as blue chalk. Everything green was turned to the east, where it was bright and growing brighter.
The people, though, were drawn to the precinct of the cathedral. There, right by the bishop’s palace, they had set up the stake. I saw it from a distance before I knew what it was. What drew my attention to it was the stream of mortals: from every door and lane they emerged to hurry toward it, like rats after the Pied Piper. Some mortals only glanced at us as they came out. Some bowed and slowed, and made to trail behind us as though they were members of our party. Some mortals spat at us and ran. They all looked alike, though.
But the stake. How could anyone pay attention to anything else? It was black with pitch and stood straight up out of a platform of logs. There were tidy bundles of brushwood stacked close by and a perimeter of bleachers, yes, actual spectator seating. Why, they’d thought of everything. We might have been in Spain.
Joseph had taken my hand in his and was squeezing tight. Was he worried? We were shown to seats. Seats of honor in the front row, no less, though some people in the crowd muttered against us. Then came out the bishop and the other ranking clergymen of the area, in solemn procession. Everybody stood. Respectfully, after the religious had been seated, the rest of us sat down again. Just like at Mass.
We waited. The sky grew lighter. What a sweet wind had sprung up, all fresh the way it is in the early morning.
In the midst of a prayer led by the bishop, they brought out Nicholas. You could see him from a long way off too, like the stake. He towered above his guards.
Oh. He was stripped to his shirt and hose. Indecent, somehow. Didn’t they give the condemned in this country sanbenitos to wear? Wondering that was a mistake, because it called to my mind a long-buried memory of shuffling figures all chained together, the tall points of their hats bobbing like antennae. I had screamed when I saw them. Where had I seen them? When? Was I sweating cold then, as I was now?
Then as now, people stooped to pick up stones and flung them.
Like men braving heavy rain, Nicholas and his guards put their heads down and slogged on. Stones clattered on the metal pot hats of the guards. They swore at the crowd and swung their pikes before them. Nicholas could have run away then, but he didn’t. He didn’t even look up until a flint struck and gashed his scalp. Blood ran down the side of his face. As he stood staring, his eyes met mine. The guards grabbed him, and he walked on. He came to the stake.
Suddenly he moved, he struck into the crowd and caught me up close to him. Only for a second, a split second, and then his guards were pulling him back and he was shouting hoarsely:
“Ego te baptismo! In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti! Amen!”
I was shocked numb. I put up my hand to my face. His blood was smeared on my face, in my hair. He had a look of desperate triumph in his eyes, though the guards were beating him with their pike staves. Stumbling, he let them back him in among the logs. He fell against the stake.
What was happening?
He let them clamber up beside him and chain him there. A big loop around his chest, another about his legs. Three little kegs of gunpowder were brought and fastened up with him. Then the guards jumped down and began to lift the brushwood bundles into place with their pikes.
Weren’t they going to give him a chance to recant?
The bishop stood up and began solemnly to tell him off, but Nicholas didn’t listen; his gaze was fixed on me with a kind of black delight, and I felt so stupid, sitting there, because I was only just beginning to understand.
“… to the everlasting shame of them that bore thee, and clothed thee, and taught thee, and sheltered thee! Wilt thou not so far amend thy life, man, as to renounce thine error? Speak, for thine hour is at hand,” commanded the bishop.
It was what Nicholas had been waiting for. He swung his head from side to side, taking in his audience. “Yea, the hour is at hand!” he shouted. “Not mine hour alone but all England’s hour, when it shall be tried in the sight of God! Gentlemen, my sin was very great. Ye know it well, all of ye, for it is your sin too and its name is Silence! O England, we knew the truth! We had the stone wherewith to build the New Jerusalem! And we neither spoke that truth nor built that city, being prudent, fearful men, and see what woe hath overtaken us now! The Lord hath sent a plague of Romish cardinals to drink our blood—”
“Fie! Wilt thou slander, thou?” cried the bishop.
“Do I slander? I humbly cry you mercy. I do but confess my sin. We have all sinned, we righteous men who kept silent when you crept back into England. Now you have returned in your power to forbid us the very Word of God! And who shall we blame but ourselves, who have let you return? O England, men will wear no chains but what they bind on with their own hands!”
His voice was beautiful. God, how beautiful. People were listening with their mouths open and greedy satisfaction in their eyes. Even the bishop, though his face was growing steadily more purple; he didn’t want to miss a word, not a single damning word.
“Well, I will wear no more chains, gentlemen! I never will be silent again! Yea, you smile and say I am chained now, and soon will be silent enough. Yet I wear no such coils as all of ye. How will it go with ye when ye stand in shame before Almighty God, wearing such a weight of silence? England, is your flesh so dear to you as that? Is the flame so terrible?”
“Thou shalt know!” the bishop told him and, turning, gave the order. A soldier brought a torch and thrust it in among the piled brushwood. I lunged forward, and yet I could not leave the spot where I stood: there was an audible crack as muscle strove against bone. Joseph muttered an exclamation beside me and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Go, set the fire to blaze, for I will not peril my soul to keep out of it any longer!” Nicholas’s voice came back like a great bell, drawing the crowd’s attention from the first little curls of smoke. “I will escape the prison of earthly flesh that confineth ye all!”
And he turned and found me with his eyes, and his look went through me like a sword.
“I call on thee to break down the prison wall! What, wilt thou live on for endless years in this dark place and never come to Paradise? Thou art a spirit, and wilt t
hou not come back to the love of God? Thou mayest choose! Look, I stand in this door of flame and I tell thee it is but a little way through. Wilt thou not rise and walk with me?”
And he held out his hand, through the fire. But he was wrong: I couldn’t choose. I was rooted where I stood. I could no more have walked into those flames than lifted that stone cathedral on my back. I had no free will.
Fire shot up and danced through his outstretched fingers, caught at his wide sleeve. He closed his eyes for a moment in pain. The contact was broken, and I looked away wildly. I was closed in by a circle of eager faces, rapt faces, Catholic and Protestant alike. He could be a heretic or a holy martyr to them, so long as they got to watch him die. This quaint people, pink-faced lord mayors and goodwives and honest tradesmen, were leaning close to see the intellect of an angel reduced to so much greasy ash. This people, whose wicker holocausts had shocked even the Romans; they had become Christians, but they hadn’t changed. I met Joseph’s sad black stare.
Nicholas made an agonized sound, and I looked back at him. The flames were high now. “Spirit, I charge thee, follow me into Paradise!” he choked, and then his voice rose clearer and louder than before. “I am thine only husband and thou art my bride! I am the same that waked thee among the apple trees where thy mother bore thee, where thy mother brought thee into the world! Come, and I will stay for thee! Oh, Jesu have mercy—oh—OH, JESU HAVE MERCY—”
Never say God doesn’t answer prayers. The powder blew then and killed him. He became a column of fire and light as the sun rose over England.
While the crowd made appreciative noises, Joseph was finally able to pull me away from there; and we left that place.
Chapter Twenty-Four
T SOME LATER point, not connected by memory to anything preceding or following it, I was riding along a lane with Joseph. All the trees were in bloom: white blossoms and sweet scent everywhere. Apple trees. Every kind of flowering tree.
Joseph was talking to me as we rode along.
“You aren’t feeling anything much right now,” he was saying, “because you’re in shock. It’s a protective reflex. It’ll last for a while. Eventually you’ll feel again, and when you do, you’ll be hurting pretty badly. But your work will help, Mendoza. Only your work will take the pain away. You’ll need it like food and water and air.
“I’ll see to it they don’t take your work away. This wasn’t your fault, this was a hell of a thing to happen to you your first time out in the field.”
He was correct, it was. I looked at all the details of his clothing as we rode, fascinated by the patterns in the cloth. He watched the road for a while, and then he said:
“Yes, I can cover everything up, I know what I can do. Don’t worry. And think of the relief, Mendoza, this whole nasty business is over. It ended badly, but it’s over. Nothing to be afraid of now, nothing to break your heart hoping for. The mission was a success, too, and we’re out of here. New location, nothing to remind you of unhappiness.”
Oh, yes, I had to get out of England. He peered at me.
“Maybe I can get you posted to the New World. Hey, there’s a great base where you could do research work, lots of peace and quiet there, maybe I can fix it so you won’t get another assignment right away. What do you say, Mendoza?”
Yes, that sounded like what I needed.
He leaned toward me from his horse. “Okay, Mendoza?”
I blinked in surprise. Wasn’t I agreeing with him? He took the reins from my hand and shook his head.
We got back to Iden Hall, I remember that very clearly. I thought it would hurt, but it didn’t hurt, because it wasn’t the same place. Nothing at all looked familiar.
Only my work area met me like an old friend. I went straight to it and got busy wrapping up my projects for travel. I worked steadily there until we left, however many days that may have been. One day, when I was in the middle of an entry, Joseph and Nef told me that I had to dismantle the unit for packing. So I logged out, and they told me to pack my other things too.
Joan came in while we were closing up our trunks, no doubt to discreetly inventory the linen to be sure we didn’t make off with anything at check-out time. Nef attempted to press a shilling on her by way of tip, but Joan drew her hand back as from a snake.
“Thank you, mistress, but I will none,” she snapped.
“How now?” Nef stared at her. “Wherefore art thou displeased with us? Have we not ever treated thee well?”
“Ay, mistress, it seems; but God knows this is not the house it was when ye came into it, and a many strangenesses have happened, and whose doing were they?” She turned a killing look on me. “And there was a holy martyr lately burned for his faith at Rochester, they say, but I say he had been living still, had not some here meddled with him.”
Nef stepped swiftly to my side and put an arm around me, but I had taken the blow without blinking. Why blanch at the truth?
“We need no reproaches from the likes of thee.” Nef glared at her. “Leave us!”
“With a right good will,” retorted Joan, and flounced out of the room.
When the servant came to help us carry our bags down, it wasn’t a servant I knew. I saw no one as we descended the staircase for the last time, went through the great hall for the last time, went out and climbed into our saddles and rode out through the garden the way we’d come. Not a sign of Sir Walter or Francis Ffrawney. Had they gone away to London? But that had been a lifetime ago. I didn’t look back as we rode, knowing that the house had already faded to transparency and would vanish altogether if I turned.
So through the whirligig gate, Joseph, Nef, and I. Just beyond it a farmer was pulling up in his cart, and he gave us a bright expectant look as we came abreast of him.
“Be ye folk come from the great house yonder?”
“Aye, good man,” replied Joseph.
“Then I have a marvel for ye, gentles. Grant a look, sir, only a look—” And he jumped down and pulled a cover of sacking from the back of the cart. There, lying in the straw, was the complete skull of an ichthyosaur half embedded in a rock.
“Sir, you see? The very dragon’s head of the dragon Saint George slew. It came out of a rock nigh to my house. What say you, sir, is it not worth an angel at least?”
“Without doubt.” Joseph stroked his beard. “But I fear thou hast come a long way for naught, man. Iden Hall hath been sold. There is no market here anymore for such things as dragon’s heads.”
The man’s mouth fell open. He gave such a howl of dismay that the unicorn struggled and bleated in Nef’s arms. “Say not so! I have carried it clean from Lyme, sir!”
“Sad but sooth, my good man. Though I’ll tell thee, there’s an inn on the road to Southampton, the Jove-His-Levin-Bolt, where they might pay thee for a look at this skull,” Joseph offered.
“Nay, out upon Southampton! If I’ve come on a fool’s errand, I’ll no further with the damned thing!” the farmer yelled, and he hauled off and kicked the wheel of his cart. His horse reared, the traces flew up, and the cart dipped backward, tipping the skull out into the road. It rolled ponderously, wobbling end over end, to the edge where the embankment dropped away; poised there a thudding second, and then went over, picking up speed as it went, bumping away down the long sloping meadows of Kent. The last we saw, it struck a log and bounded into space, completely clearing a hedge and crashing out of sight below. For all I know it is rolling still.
“You’ll be sorry you did that, in the morning,” Joseph called to the farmer, who had gone storming off.
“When will they ever regret what they do?” Nef brooded.
“Oh, some morning or other,” said Joseph lightly. And we rode on.
Not that morning, though, nor for many others.
Poor Queen Mary never had her baby, because of course it was only a tumor. She went right on burning her subjects, though, in the hope that God would somehow produce a baby from somewhere if she did His will resolutely enough.
She never birthed her Counter-Reformation, either. In November 1558 she died, quietly in her pointless bed, and Elizabeth got the throne. That was it for the Catholic Church in England. The burnings stopped abruptly. The Protestants were reinstated. England did an about-face into a Golden Age.
But you missed it, Nicholas. You should have listened to me.
I missed it, too, because six months after leaving England I was stepping out of an air transport at New World One, and I was fine, just fine. I’d had therapy, I’d had drugs, I had lots of new clothes, and the AAE recommendation had mysteriously vanished from my personnel file. Happy me. Best of all, I was in New Spain.
I was discovering that a transport terminal was a pretty good indicator of the status of the outpost. New World One glittered: fabulous Mayan murals, gold leaf everywhere, inlaid floors. I wandered around the lounge, staring. A transport hostess with a spectacular feathered headdress. Jade cups in the coffee bar. Art objects, for God’s sake, mounted on brackets above the announcement speakers. A little cross-legged god vibrated slightly as I was asked to report to the arrivals office.
The arrivals office looked like a hothouse. Thick bluegreen glass, terra-cotta, flowers crowding the walls. A smiling woman in tropical whites came to the window. I had on tropical whites, too. With our hoop skirts we looked like a pair of wedding cakes.
Wedding cakes. Grooms and brides. A thought like a loose plank in a bridge, to be stepped around.
“Hi there.” A musical voice. “Botanist Mendoza? Did you have a good flight?”
“Reporting. Yes. Where do I sign in?”
She dimpled about something. “Well, your personnel coordinator is waiting right through those doors. You’ll want your arrival packet first, of course.” She drew out a handsomely embossed portfolio and pushed it across the desk to me. “You might want to remove the complimentary Theobromos right away. It melts out in the sun.”
“Hot here, huh?”
