In the Garden of Iden (29 page)

“I am,” I said, without much hope.

“It may be so,” he admitted. “But what thou art I cannot guess.” There was another long silence. “Where is thine argument?” he said at last. “Where is thy subtle persuasion? Wilt thou not beg me to lie, and recant, and get mercy from the bishop?”

“Thou wilt not,” I said. I was so tired. “They will kill thee, and I have no power to help—” My voice broke. By reflex he got up and came to me with a gesture of comfort, then froze.

“Ah,” he said. “This is temptation too.”

I let my head fall backward, for exasperation and weariness. He sat down again. After a moment he ventured:

“Wert thou mortal once?”

I nodded.

“And art thou damned eternally?”

“No.” I laughed. “Yes! Oh, I must be.”

He frowned. “What wert thou, being mortal?”

“I told thee what I was.” I looked down at him. “A child of Spain. And by chance, and by lies, I came into the dungeons of the Inquisition there.” He looked uncomfortable then. “Oh, yes, señor. Didst thou think I was only a mask of Satan, with no real heart to be broken? What thou lovedst was real enough. Suffering and all. Muddy feet and all.”

He jumped up and went to the window, and stood there staring out.

“Hast thou never heard,” I tried to put it a way he might understand, “of spirits who partake neither of Heaven nor of Hell?”

“The heathen and the dead children,” he whispered, “who are neither damned nor saved.”

“Just so.”

He turned around and looked at me with such dread in his eyes, I grew angry. Was he superstitious? This man? I clenched my fists. “Now hearing you’d been arrested for yelling in the street, I came weeping all the way here and never slept, and was followed by a murderer, and had neither rest nor food, and God knows why I troubled myself, for I knew you’d only say I was Satan come to tempt you. I wanted to save your life! But I’m too late! You have your martyr’s crown, your horrible death! Oh, I could have gone away with you—I would have run away from my duty and lived with you in any street in Europe, I’d have read your awful Scripture and listened to your awful sermons and worshiped your awful God—”

“Stop!” He seized me by the shoulders. “Stop! Stop!”

“Don’t you tell me to stop!” I screamed at him. “
You
talked and talked—”

“But if I could have
saved
thee—”

The door flew open. We both turned, expecting the guard. It wasn’t the guard, though. It was Joseph.

“Excuse me.” He marched right up to us, looking determined, and threw a punch at Nicholas. He had to jump a little to connect with Nicholas’s jaw, but he connected, and Nicholas crashed backward into the wall.

“Mendoza, out. Now.” Joseph turned to me.

This was too much. This was grossly unfair. I collapsed sobbing on the bed. Joseph exhaled angrily and went to the door, where the Lord Mayor was peering in with a rather frightened face.

“I must have some private speech with my child, it seems. Pray pardon me.” And he swung the door shut, bang. Turning back, he said:

“Okay, Mendoza, get up. I’ve just ridden thirty miles on an extremely unpleasant horse and I don’t feel like having an argument. You are in a lot of trouble.”

“No!” I cried. “You can’t make me leave now!”

“Now? Not leave now? What do you want to do, stay here until they torch the guy?”

Nicholas was struggling to his feet, staring from one to the other of us in bewilderment. Cinema Standard was enough like Tudor English for him to be able to understand about one word in three of what we were saying.

“I don’t know! God, God, help me, I can’t save him!”

“What language are you speaking?” inquired Nicholas in Latin.

“Shut up, creep. Oh, and by the way,” Joseph continued in Latin, turning to him, “would you tell me why you were trying to get into my room with a sword? It takes something more to kill me, as you no doubt have guessed.”

“I never went to your room to kill you,” said Nicholas. “I was trying to get out of the house without being killed. I went to your room only for medicine, to calm your daughter. You know what I saw when I opened your door.”

“I know. You ought to have knocked. But do you understand you are a dead man?”

“Truly I know it,” said Nicholas, with a little of his former sneer. “But I die in a just cause. And I will testify to the truth until I have no voice.”

“You mean to denounce us to the world, then?” Soberly, Joseph put his hand on his pouch, where he kept his little glass vials. I opened my mouth, but no scream came out.

“By no means. Who would believe me? The ranting of a madman is not regarded. I mean to put my last breath to better use.”

“Very wise of you, I’m sure.” But Joseph’s fingers were still working at the fastening. Nicholas saw the fear in my eyes.

“Thou art not her father!” he blurted out in English. “Though I’ll lay odds thou art the same demon who stole the child and made her what she is.”

Dead silence. Joseph surveyed him.

“Boy, you’re good at figuring things out. Isn’t he? Except that if anybody’s the devil in this room it’s
you
, buster.” An extraordinary bitterness came into his face. “I’ve seen you before. I know you, all right, preacher man. Age after age, you come back. You always lead the crusades. You’re so damned golden-tongued, other people just flock to die for your causes. You die with them, it’s true, because you’re stupid enough to believe your own great lies; but you always come back again somehow. Oh, I know
you
.”

No hair-tearing, no jumping up and down. Only his voice dropping to an unexpected bass with Nicholas staring at him, unable to comprehend.

“You think I’m not her father?” Joseph thundered. “I took her out of the grave and gave her eternal life, which is more than your lousy God would have done! You’re the one who seduced her into believing that your miserable little cult matters a damn, when she knows nothing matters less. You’re the one who’s made her hate what she is. How’s she supposed to live, now, after what you’ve done to her heart?”

Not understanding him, Nicholas had stopped listening and was watching me where I cowered on the bed.

“So thou canst disobey him,” he said softly. “So thou hast a free will and may choose.”

“Mendoza, get up. I’m taking you out of here.”

Nicholas held my gaze, and I could not look away. “Stay with me until I have suffered tomorrow. Be with me at the end. I cannot rest otherwise, nor wilt thou rest. This thou knowest, love.”

Joseph seized me and pulled me to my feet. “Mendoza, we’re getting on two fine horses I paid ready cash for and we’re riding south. We are not going to watch an auto-da-fé. Come on.”

My heart felt like a balloon.

“You can’t make me leave if I don’t want to. Can you?” I said to Joseph. “I’m already in trouble. I’m staying until it’s over tomorrow. When it’s over, I’ll go back with you, and the Company can do whatever it wants to.”

Joseph let go of me. “It might teach you a lesson, at that,” he said. “All right.” He looked at Nicholas. “Young man. Do you know how many burnings at the stake I’ve had to sit through? Seven hundred and nine. Yours may be the first one I’ve ever enjoyed. In anticipation of that, I thank you.”

He swung the door open and pulled me out with him.

I went obediently enough. I let Joseph lead me back to the Lord Mayor’s house with the Lord Mayor practically bowing and scraping beside us the whole way and telling us about his cousin who had married one of Katherine of Aragon’s grooms. Apparently he offered to put us up for the night, too, but I missed what he and Joseph said to each other in that regard, because I was in a fog.

Something had happened in that cell that made it all right between us again. My own Nicholas had been looking at me at the last, and not that cold godly stranger.

At the Lord Mayor’s house we were shown to an upstairs room, quite nicely furnished. Food and hot wine were brought for us; soap and water in a basin for me. I watched as Joseph talked to people. He explained, he apologized, he made arrangements, and at last he closed the door on the last mayoral wish for our pleasant stay in Rochester.

Turning around, he leaned against the door and stared at me.

“You shouldn’t have said all those awful things about Nicholas,” I said thickly. “Not true at all. Petty of you. Coming back age after age?”

He put his palms to his temples and pressed, as though he were trying to keep his brains from exploding.

“I mean, what, you believe in reincarnation or something?” I went on.

“You’re how old now, Mendoza?” he inquired, with tremendous self-control.

“Nineteen. Maybe.”

“Nineteen, huh?” He took his hands down and began to pace. “Jesus. This must be what it’s like to have a real daughter. What are they teaching you kids back there? As for reincarnation, it’s realer than you think, smart-ass. There are only so many personality types among mortals. They just use the same ones over and over. Zealots like your Nicholas keep turning up, and every time they do, they make trouble for everybody. He’s screwed
you
up, the son of a bitch. When this guy burns tomorrow—”

“Oh, he won’t burn,” I said dreamily. “He’s going to recant. That’s why he wants me to be there. He’ll save himself, and then what will you do? He knows all about us. And he understands—isn’t that incredible? A mortal capable of understanding the truth about us? See, you won’t have any choice. You’ll have to recruit him for us now. Give him tribrantine. And you know he’ll be the best mortal worker we’ve ever had, once we explain the whole truth to him. Imagine all that intellect and all that zeal working for us!”

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: