In the Garden of Iden (15 page)

“He’s interested in me,” I guessed. “Sympathetic.”

“Bingo. Vulnerability can be very appealing. So, what do we do about Master Harpole, Mendoza? I’ve been saying all along, in my jolly avuncular way with just a hint of the pander, that you two would make the cutest couple.”

“You have got to be crazy! I just embarrassed myself to death in front of that man.”

“Oh. I see. All right. Forget I ever mentioned it. Say, I’ve always meant to ask you: Did you ever remember what your mortal name was?”

“What?” I started.

“Your name, when you were a mortal. At Santiago? We couldn’t figure out if you were so little you didn’t really know, or if you knew your name but were afraid to tell us.”

“I really didn’t know.” Sweat broke out on my forehead.

Joseph sipped his wine.

“Remembering something?” he inquired.

“No!”

“Well. I guess we needn’t worry too much about Master Harpole. Now that I know I’m supposed to be a Rosicrucian alchemist-kabbalist, I’ll drop a few corroborating remarks here and there. Doubtless that will satisfy his curiosity. Okay? And I’m sure things will work themselves out.”

I stayed in my room the next four days all the same. It rained steadily, so I had an excuse, but meals were awkward. Nefer brought me bread and cheese a couple of times; I could hear her downstairs, graciously informing them that Doña Rosa was indisposed, with that monolithic dignity she could summon at will. She had a good grasp of cover identity. Joseph was right: I had to work at my character more.

But I sat on my bed and watched the rain falling forever, and I entered requisition codes at my credenza, and I ignored Joan when she came in to clean, and I listened to the radio. There was steady music all day, some of it live. There was an evening news broadcast, and a great talk show in the afternoon: one of the station staff had a mortal cover identity as a lawyer, and he’d invite his clients to talk about their lives and problems in a room rigged with microphones. Occasionally the results were hilarious. Sometimes, lying awake at night, I heard strange little electronic noises coming from Sir Walter’s room—Joseph in there with his pocketful of cryptotools, performing some secret rearrangement of Sir Walter’s insides.

I listened for Nicholas, too. His long stride came sometimes down the hall and paused outside our door before moving slowly on. He sat up each evening late, before his bed creaked with the weight of his length settling on it. He read a lot. I wondered what he was reading now.

The fifth morning dawned bright and clear. No help for it: this would be a great day for collecting rare specimens of variegated shepherd’s purse or green fumitory. I crept down the stairs behind Nefer, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, and so naturally everyone was assembled in the great hall and all heads turned to stare at me as I entered.

“Why, well met, Lady Rose!” Sir Walter rose and bowed. “Are you with us again? I trust our English air hath not given you the tisick?”

“No, I thank you, sir. I am recovered now,” I murmured.

“Excellent well! You shall dine on oranges in the Spanish fashion.”

Oh, God, there was a bowl of ten oranges set at my place at table. I smiled feebly.

“Master Harpole himself hath brought them in this morning. I thought we should never get more than three together ripe at one time, but it seems the weather likes them well,” Sir Walter babbled on. I glanced up at Nicholas. I glanced away.

Hey
, Nefer transmitted sternly.
These people are trying to be kind to you. Behave yourself
.

Taking your role as duenna a little seriously
,
aren’t you?
I shot back. But she was right. “Truly I am unworthy of such care from so gracious a host, Sir Walter, but I pray you accept my wholly inadequate thanks for this abundance of orangery.” I curtseyed.

So with my bodice dagger I peeled one and set to, and as the others sat there with eggs and oatmeal, I ate oranges until the corners of my mouth stung. Nicholas kept looking at me, but I avoided his gaze.

Just as the meal was concluding, Master Ffrawney hurried into the room.

“Sir Walter, there is a great party come on horseback, express to see the garden. John hath collected their pence, and they wait but for a guide—
thy
duty, man,” he nodded peremptorily at Nicholas, who stood up and glowered at him. “And they have been at Penshurst Place and seem to be persons of gentle birth and consequence, and—
wilt
thou not go, Nicholas?—and one gentleman, being a Master Darrell of Colehill, particularly wisheth to speak to you, sir, wherefore I judged it best to advise you directly.”

“Thou didst well.” Sir Walter rose in excitement, his mustache points quivering. He practically ran for the door, then halted, conscious of the fact that he had Spaniards sitting in his dining room. “Er, Doctor Ruy, for appearances’ sake—”

“Say not a word, my dearest friend.” Joseph rose majestically. “You shall see that Spanish discretion is as great as Spanish love of fruit. Doña Marguerita? Daughter? Let us retire. I feel an urgent need to pray.”

“A thousand thanks,” breathed Sir Walter, and hastened away with Nicholas stalking after him. As they departed, something strange drew my eye.

Sir Walter was taller.

High heels on his shoes? No. No, he actually was taller, coming farther up to Nicholas’s shoulder than he had, and his movements were nimbler. I watched their retreating backs with some wonder. Joseph’s clandestine retooling was beginning to show. How about that?

“Yes, a day of retreat and meditation will serve me well.” Joseph selected an orange from the few still in the bowl. “Master Ffrawney.” He inclined in his direction and swept from the room. Nefer rose and hurried ahead of him, doubtless hoping to catch the morning news program. I got up to follow them, but Master Ffrawney stepped before me hesitantly and bowed low.

“Good Lady Rose,” he said. “A word in your ear, with my most profound apologies for taking such familiarity, but I must speak.”

I felt the bridge of my nose arch just a little higher. “What meanest thou, good man?” I said with condescending grace.

“By your leave, Lady, it is Sir Walter’s man Nicholas. In him Sir Walter is much abused, I tell you, Lady, though he harbors him out of kindness. The knave is a pernicious heretic and an obdurate Gospel reader.”

“Something of this I had heard before,” I informed him solemnly, “and I pray hourly for his poor soul. But thou needst not concern thyself, señor. We are well aware that many in England are subject to such vice.”

“Yea, but it is no common viciousness that is in this man, Lady.” Master Ffrawney looked over his shoulder uneasily. I stepped closer to him, suddenly interested in his story. Having satisfied himself that Nicholas was not lurking nearby, Master Ffrawney stuck out his neck and spoke just above a whisper.

“You must know, Lady, that of late there hath been much apostasy and such like wickedness practiced here in Kent. Not only the new heresies of the German distemperature, but certain ancient ones too.” He dropped his voice still lower. “More I may not tell a virtuous maid, but there was a community of such lewd persons in these parts, young persons given to idleness and heresy, and such a one, Lady,” he looked around again, “was
Nicholas Harpole!
”

Wow! “I am shocked and horrified,” I said.

“Yea, Lady, you shall find it is so, and though he came near to being hanged for his brawling and lasciviousness, he had friends at the University who excused and huddled it up, and set him here like a viper to be nourished at Sir Walter’s bosom.” He leaned back with pursed lips, nodding.

I was ready to die with laughter there on the spot, but I clutched my rosary and said, in most grave tones: “Now by Saint Mary and Saint James, can this be true? Was he verily given to the lusts of the flesh? Thou must understand that I am only an innocent and hath been among the blessed sisters all my days, and know nothing of the twisted sexual practices of Anabaptists.”

Master Ffrawney drew back at the very word, and we both made the sign of the Cross.

“The more reason, gentle Lady, that I must warn you, for you go into the garden alone with this man and there is rumor (saving your grace) you were seen abovestairs with him, though no honest man believes it. But pray, beware this Harpole!”

How very, very amusing. “Fear not, good man, I will heed thy timely warning. Who would have thought he was one of those vile freewillers?”

“Aye, forsooth! I could tell you such things; but you see the sort of creature this Harpole is, do you not? You will not be deceived by his smooth speech or his politic looks. He is a very Satan in persuasion, I say.”

“I go forth fortified by thy counsel,” I promised him. “And now, I join my dear father in prayer. Buenos días, señor.”

I skipped up the stairs and fell through our doorway giggling. Nef was sitting hunched up on our bed with a strained expression. The radio was on, as usual.

“You will never, never guess what I just found out!” I whooped.

“Mendoza, this is an interview with a mortal who raises Red Alderney cows, and if you talk through it, I’ll make your life miserable for weeks.”

“Well, pardon me.” I started to flounce out of the room, but paused. Somehow I didn’t feel like telling Joseph. I wandered over to the window instead and looked out at the bright day.

All in the garden green, there were the mortals moving. The top of Nicholas’s biretta appeared above a hedge and traveled slowly along it until he emerged, so tall in his black robe that the visitors scurrying after him looked like dolls. Two little ladies in claret-colored velvet, four little gentlemen in their flat caps with swirling feathers. One of the little gentlemen was in heated conversation with Sir Walter. Nicholas pointed at a particularly fine old elm tree and said something about it, and everyone stared at it intently, except Sir Walter and the fourth little gentleman. I looked down on them like a goddess leaning out from Olympus.

What a snotty child she was, the little botanist Mendoza. Also gleeful, gratified, newly self-confident, and intrigued. She’d known there was more to Nicholas than met the eye. A wimpy Bible apologist is one thing, but a dark secret anarchist with a tortured soul, participating in religious orgies—well!

As I observed the mortals with a cool and distant smile, Nicholas suddenly lifted his head and stared straight at me. I caught my breath and backed away from the window, into the middle of the room.

Nay
,
good sir
,
they’s good milkers
,
my cows be. My Silver
,
now she do give place to none in filling of the can. Why
,
I could tell
—The transmission dissolved in a burst of static as my hardware disturbed the frequency. Nefer jumped like she’d been shot and glared at me.

“Sit down, dammit!”

Meekly I sat at the credenza and took out my sample analysis reports to work on. At least
they
did not give me unaccountable sensations in the pelvic region.

I
T WAS THE
middle of August and the first warm day since we arrived. Little rare plants were consenting to bloom, which meant I had much to do.

So I found myself in the garden again, threading my way through the green maze with Master Harpole and wondering what to say besides: “Pray, where do the best specimens of
Cochlearia officinalis
grow?”

I think he must have felt a certain shyness also, for he finally ventured to remark:

“The season grows hot at last, methinks.”

It must have been all of twenty-one degrees Celsius outside.

“I think you have but one season in your England,” I said. “Nothing but rainy spring all year round. Your King Arthur poet saith of the Isle of Avalon that it is a summer country, but I find it not so.”

Nicholas smiled absently. “You misunderstand, Lady. This same Isle of Avalon is not England but some country to the west, beyond the sea.”

“Ireland?”

“Not so, neither; for I understand the wild men there themselves believe in a western island where the flowers never fade.”

“Think you they mean the New World?”

He shook his head. “Ships have been to the New World,” he said in Latin. “That is an earthly place too, like Ireland, except that it is bigger and its savages wear feathers, not wool.” Latin had become our favored language for straightforward conversation, because one didn’t have to keep coming up with flowers of speech.

“What a disappointment. Surely, this Blessed Isle, it must be somewhere,” I maintained. “Perhaps it lies to the west of the New World?”

Nicholas looked at me sideways. “It’s a poetic device,” he informed me. “A fantasy, a metaphor for the heart’s desire that can never be found here on Earth.”

“You think there is no place on Earth where flowers always bloom and it is always warm?” I found a nice little example of rupturewort and bent to examine it.

“Certainly you may find such a place, if you go to the Equator. The Blessed Isle of the poet is a land without human grief or sin.”

“Ah, well, that is a fantasy, certainly.” I took a quick holo shot.

“Let us hope not.” His voice was quiet.

I snipped a few sprigs and put them away in my basket. “But I remember now. You believe men will defeat human nature and become perfect here on Earth. Tell me, how do you hope to accomplish that? What will you do about old age? Or death?”

I was smug, because I thought I had the answers myself. But he sat down on the grass beside me, put his fingertips together, and said, quite seriously:

“It’s obvious. If men no longer sin, there will be no old age or death.”

“What?” I stared, laying down my trowel.

“Have you read a book by Miles Coverdale on the old faith? Just a moment.” He fished a dog-eared quarto from an inner pocket and thumbed through it. “He says—this is in reference to the Fall of Adam and Eve—he says, to paraphrase the English, that the Lord God made man with both an immortal soul
and
an immortal body, and that when Adam sinned, his flesh became mortal and only his soul remained everlasting. Here, he says it. Now, since we know that enough sin can kill even the everlasting soul, would it not therefore follow that
freedom
from sin might preserve even the earthly body so it endures forever? Read this page, here.”

But I stared unseeing at the black-letter text. He had it right again! Men could defeat death, just as he believed, though technology, not grace, would be the weapon.

Though, come to think of it, we had done away with sin too, hadn’t we? And not only by abandoning the concept: we eternal ones worked tirelessly for the good of man. His hideous wars, his politics, his greed and ignorance and wastefulness were abhorrent to us. We were perfect. Well, no, not
perfect
, exactly, but … Then again, define perfect.

“Nor is this idea without precedence in Scripture.” Nicholas tucked the book away. “For example, the prophet Elijah was taken into Heaven in his mortal flesh, alive.”

But I too had been taken to Heaven in a chariot of fire. What a depressing thought, somehow. Nothing to do with a soul or a spirit: a mechanical conjuring trick, a deus ex machina. And so what was I? The machine’s child?

It’s frightening, that moment when the ground first washes out from under your feet.

I wasn’t even a human being
. And this warm mortal man, with his broken nose and unshaven chin, speaking so confidently of such crazy ideas, seemed to stand in a lamplit room. I stood without in freezing darkness, by a sealed window. But I touched his hand and he took mine without even noticing. He folded it between his hands and kept on talking.

“The end of sin, therefore, is the end of death.”

“Is there no way out of all this sin?” I cried in agony. Must I be trapped in this conversation my whole life?

“None for me. I have sinned, and I will surely die; but I have been closer to the true faith than my father was, and the child born tomorrow shall come closer yet than I. So long as each generation works tirelessly for the perfection of the soul, His Kingdom cannot fail to come on Earth.”

Shut up, shut up, I thought. It was my own creed he was outlining, and it terrified me. There
was
no hope for him, he
would
surely die, but he didn’t matter beside the greater good. I didn’t want to think of my eternal labor through generations of men yet unborn, when Nicholas would be so much forgotten dust. I wanted to breathe in the scent of his mortal body and listen to the rhythms of his voice, without understanding.

“What madness this is, this idea,” I said. “Living forever on Earth. Where will we all go, tell me, if no one ever dies? Next you’ll be telling me that men will travel to the moon and stars.” If he started to prophesy about space travel, I really was going to scream. But he only shrugged and smiled.

“As easily as traveling to the Isle of Avalon,” he said. “For men must be without sin before they can do either.”

Well, he was wrong about
that
, at least. “Enough of this talk of sin, in God’s name,” I begged him. “We are here, now, in this beautiful place. Isn’t this enough? This garden, and the sun, and you and I here, and the poor little unicorn?”

“But the sun will set tonight, Rosa,” he said. “And our lives will be over in a moment. And we know the truth, you and I, about that unicorn. What will sustain us but working for the eternal realm?”

Eternal work. My God, couldn’t the man talk about anything else? What business did he have being so holy, with that big body of his so well made? With a sob of exasperation I caught hold of him, rock-steady as he was, and kissed him to make him quiet.

His first reaction was to kiss back. He did it very well, he took the initiative at once, and his hands set to work busily doing all the right things. He kissed like an angel of God. It figured.

He lifted his mouth, though, before even one lace had come unfastened, and set me at arm’s length. “We must not,” he said.

I looked at him, speechless. He could not snatch it away, whatever this was. I had stopped shaking and begun to grow warm inside, warm right through, even to that secret cupboard full of shattered glass and broken dishes. Yet it wouldn’t do, would it, for Master Ffrawney or poor Sir Walter or even unexpected penny-paying tourists to come upon us sprawling in the long grass? Nicholas must have learned to dread scandal, if what was said of him was true. I looked down sullenly and said, “So love is a sin too.”

“No!” He caught up my hand. “Before God, I tell you, flesh is innocent enough. But you are yet young and I…” I looked longingly at his big fine hands. He drew them back. “Would to God I had never sinned,” he said.

We went on through the garden then, as we were supposed to do, and through all that long day I filled my basket with rarities, each priceless sacrifice saving its kind from extinction. The finest work in the world, as per my contract.

He didn’t look happy either.

I bade Nicholas adieu at the top of the stairs that evening, and went into my room and worked at my credenza, like the good little operative I was supposed to be. I worked until late hours without a break, though Nefer brought me a plate of some kind of supper. I made immortal seven different varieties of cinquefoil, root, leaf, and blossom, for the benefit of the unborn generations who would thank me someday.

Wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t they appreciate the miraculous survival of seven rare subspecies of a common wildflower? Surely in the glorious future we were all headed for, such things would matter to everyone.

I was only a little distracted by Nefer pacing the floor, though I thought it very unusual for her to be disturbed about anything. Joseph came in to retire, cheery and relaxed, chuckling at some private joke. It must be nice, to find life so funny.

At eleven o’clock Nef came and tapped me on the shoulder.

“Lights out,” she said flatly. I shut off the ultravey, and we were left in the wobbling candlelight to undo each other’s back lacing.

“What’s wrong with you?” I inquired.

“I’m doing nothing here,” she sighed.

“Oh. Yes, I’d noticed that.” I pulled her lacing free at the bottom, handed it to her, and turned my own back. Her fingers dug at the knots she’d tied that morning.

“It’s not fair. There’s so much work I could be doing. I hate these dead shifts, where you get stationed in the middle of nowhere for six months at a time with no assignment. At least in Spain there were cattle. I haven’t seen anything but two oxen and three horses since I got here. Just wait, they’ll pull this on you sometime.”

“I don’t see how. Domestic animals may be scarce in some places, but plants grow everywhere,” I pointed out.

“Ha!” She jerked out a lace. “Ever been in the Sahara? Ever seen pictures of New York Terminus 2100? Or Luna? Not even a cactus. Wait’ll you do a ten-month layover in metropolitan Bikkung.”

Nonsense. She was exaggerating, surely. Though I recalled holos of urban canyons of the time to come, monoliths of millions of tiny windows, and now that I thought about it, I couldn’t recall seeing a blade of grass anywhere there. But if that’s what the future held—

“Nef,” I said, “did you ever have second thoughts?”

“About what?” She stepped out of her skirts, and her hoops fell to the floor with a gentle whoosh. The candle flame danced.

“Just … everything.”

“You mean Doctor Zeus?” She stared at me as if I were crazy.

“Well, no,” I lied.

“I mean, yes, I’m fed up at the moment, and some of my assignments have been in some awful places, but the job is, well, the job, isn’t it? How could anybody have second thoughts? I mean, who’d rather be
dead
?”

“Yeah, right,” I said.

The candle was out, and the house was quiet. And all the talk, all the hours of good work were done. I was alone in the dark, sweating sick with the terror of eternal years.

Nicholas Harpole was sitting in his room, reading. He shone like his own candle through the walls. I could hear his breathing. He was aroused. That was what it was, the change in his scent. He closed the book.
Snap
. He put out his candle.
Ssst
. He rustled out of his clothes and into his creaking bed.

As he was poking his feet down into the bed to get them warm, my feet were touching the icy floor. No one made a move to stop me. I drifted from the room and up the long dark corridor, up through the house, with shades pressing close around me on all sides. I didn’t run. I found my way to the top of the house, and I opened up the door of that high narrow room where he lay.

He sat up in his shirt, staring at me. I stood there in my nightgown. Oh, the floor was cold. What could I possibly say to him?

“I’m lost,” I said. Ha ha; but it was true.

“Think, Lady,” Nicholas whispered. “Consider your honor. Consider what you do.” But he was already moving over and making room for me beside him, folding back the sheet with those superb hands.

“It is very frightening, being lost.” I came closer. “Also I am cold, señor.”

“You would be warm in bed,” he conceded.

“Can you remedy my being lost, too?” I sat down on the edge. He put out his arm in the darkness and folded me to him.

“Why, Lady, I have found you. How then are you lost?”

He swept me in close, jumping a little at the touch of my icy toes on his shins, and leaned down for a kiss. Oh God he was warm, and his mouth tasted good, and his bed smelled of books and maleness and late nights. He was bare under his shirt, as I was bare under my shift.

“Well met!” He came up from the kiss laughing. “Hadst thou not come here, I swear I’d have lived thy constant friend in chastity, but my poor Friar John would scarce have left me alone.”

“Friar John?” I was incredulous.

“Why, to be sure. The upright monk with his hood, who ever entreats me to seek out holy places.” We were both giggling now. “Who would ever live in contemplation in some close dark cell, who, um, weeps great tears of remorse at my sins … Who … who … oh, the devil with the metaphor.” We kissed greedily; but my fear had not gone yet.

“Everything I was ever told was a lie.” I clung to him. “And I have gone too far on a road with no turning, but there must be a way back. There must. I can’t take that road, though it lead to Paradise.” Not many men would have taken thought for my spiritual state just then, but Nicholas lifted his head and said seriously:

“Sweet love, we shall go to Paradise. Here, now, in this idle pleasant way with our flesh; but also through grace. I will make you love God again.”

“You’re after my
soul
,” I murmured, looking up at him. This was more wickedly exciting even than our nakedness. I could tell it was working that way with him, too: his nostrils flared, and he lowered himself to kiss me, but slow this time, and we settled down for serious work. I wonder if the careful reader has figured out what was bound to happen next. If you have, are you laughing? Are you really?

Our bodies are designed as indestructible sanctuaries. We are trained to flee every assault on their integrity; and if we cannot flee, then to fight. It’s hardwired, we can’t help it.