Quintessence Sky (26 page)

The sixth must have been cleverer than the
rest. He was the smallest, carried a short sword, and probably
survived by his wits on the battlefield more than brute strength.
As Ramos delivered a final blow on the fifth attacker, the sixth
darted forward and grasped the pouch at Ramos's neck. With a mighty
yank, he snapped the leather cord and threw the pouch far away.

Ramos knew he was done for. He tried to run,
but he tripped over one of the prone bodies and sprawled to the
ground. His attacker was there in an instant, fury twisting his
face. He stepped hard on Ramos's wrist, and lifted his sword high
to strike off his arm. Terrified, Ramos tried to roll away, but he
was held fast.

It was the king who saved him. One moment,
the brute's sword was swinging down toward him; the next a jeweled
and shining blade was buried in his neck. The soldier toppled and
fell in a gurgling rush of blood, revealing Philip standing behind
him.

"I can't have my brightest inventor losing an
arm," he said. He held out a bloody hand to Ramos. Ramos clasped
it, and Philip hauled him to his feet. "Besides, I have no desire
to waste ten gold sovereigns."

The watching generals applauded. A page
retrieved Ramos's pouch and returned it to him, and Ramos
demonstrated once again how his body could be completely
insubstantial while appearing just as solid as ever. Even Carillo
approached and slapped him on the back, and exclaimed as his hand
passed through Ramos's shoulder. After that, they all had to reach
a hand through him, staring in wonder as they felt no resistance.
Some were disturbed by the experience, crossing themselves and
murmuring wards against witchcraft, but no one dared denounce it in
light of the king's clear approval.

Afterwards, the king dismissed his advisors,
all except Barrosa, and made Ramos explain how it worked.

"I figured it out from the bird, Majesty,"
Ramos said, bowing low.

"That invisible one that makes such a
racket?"

"Yes, Your Grace. We can't see it or touch
it, but somehow it's there. We might think it a spirit, and yet it
eats the seeds we give it. I wondered where the seeds went when the
bird ate them."

King Philip laughed. "The room is probably
littered with bird droppings that we can't see or touch."

"Just so. And I found them."

"How?" Barrosa said.

"I embedded tiny iron filings in the seeds
that I fed to the bird. Then, after a time, I searched for them
with a lodestone."

"If you could neither see nor feel them, how
did you know you had found them?" the king said.

"The lodestone weighed more."

The king's eyebrows shot up. "The filings are
no longer material . . . and yet they weigh more? It makes no
sense."

"They are still a part of the material
world—the bird can eat and digest the seeds, after all. It's just
that something has been done to them. Two things, in fact. They
have been changed so that light will pass through them unhindered,
and they have been changed so that other matter will pass through
them unhindered."

The king nodded. "And today, you duplicated
the second feat. Can you also duplicate the first?"

"Alas, no. Not yet, Your Majesty."

"But how did you do it?" Barrosa
demanded.

"I obtained a quantity of the bird's saliva,"
Ramos answered, enjoying the consternation on the faces of both
king and friend. "Yes, I know the objections. How did I extract
saliva from an invisible bird? How could I possibly get enough to
cover my body with it? It was the obvious step, though, you see.
Something in the seeds' passage through the bird caused the change.
Since we did not see the seeds, after they were eaten, sliding in
mid-air down the bird's throat, I concluded that it must be its
saliva."

King Philip grinned and squeezed Ramos's
shoulder. "It's enough for me. You are a genius, and you will be
rewarded."

Barrosa's face showed clearly that the
explanation was not enough for him, but he could hardly say so
until the king had left.

"It still requires a shekinah," Ramos said,
shrugging. "So it is only of limited use."

"That may soon change," the king said.
"Continue this great work. You are the sword of God, bringing light
to the world."

Barrosa was beside himself with impatience
while the king and his retinue prepared to leave. When they were
finally gone, he rounded on Ramos, who couldn't contain a smirk.
"Tell me the rest!" Barrosa said. "My curiosity is not so easily
satisfied."

"You mean the part where I got the bird to
kiss me?" Ramos said, grinning.

Barrosa punched him on the arm, but of
course, his fist passed right through. He grunted in frustration.
"Come now, it's amazing. How did you do it?"

"It's like a conjuror's trick. If I tell you,
you'll realize how simple it is, and you'll lose all your wonder
for the trick itself."

"Just tell me!"

"Collecting the saliva required no miracle. I
floated the seeds in a measure of water. The bird plucked them up,
naturally leaving a tiny amount of saliva behind in the water."

"And you isolated it?"

"No. The water itself took on the quality of
the saliva. When I dipped a rod into it, the rod became
insubstantial. It can, apparently, be greatly diluted and still
have the same effect. Only a tiny amount is sufficient."

"But then, why didn't you turn
invisible?"

"I don't know. Maybe that's accomplished
through a different means. Maybe the saliva needs to be less dilute
to achieve invisibility."

"Can you change back? Now that the saliva is
on you, can you become substantial again?"

Ramos laughed. "It would be a big problem for
me if I couldn't. No, I tested that on the rod before using it on
myself. It takes a lot of scrubbing, but it can be taken off.
Besides, it wears off by itself in a few hours. Evaporates, or just
loses its potency."

Barrosa gripped his head and shook it as if
trying to dislodge something inside. "But it doesn't make any
sense. If only your skin has touched the saliva, why didn't one of
those swords pass through your skin only to pierce your heart?"

Ramos lifted his hands and shrugged. "Perhaps
it's not allowing things to pass through my skin, exactly. Perhaps
it simply deflects the sword into another space when it touches one
side of my skin, and then back into our space on the other
side."

"Another space? What are you talking
about?"

"A space behind the material world. The void
behind the atoms."

Barrosa grew quiet. "That's atomism," he
said. "It's not orthodox church doctrine."

Ramos brushed the idea aside with an awkward
motion. "Just an example," he said. "There are many explanations.
Which one is the right one, well . . ."

"Next thing you know, you'll be reading
Copernicus," Barrosa said.

There was a tense silence, then Barrosa
laughed and Ramos joined in with him. "I can't believe you put on
this show," Barrosa said. "If you had missed a spot with that
stuff, you could be bleeding out on the grass."

Ramos relaxed. "Something else interesting I
found with the rods. If you dip two of them in the saliva water,
then strike them together . . ."

"They touch each other," Barrosa guessed.

"They do."

"Even though either one of them would pass
through any other material thing."

Ramos nodded. "As if both were material after
all."

"Or . . ." Barrosa couldn't finish the
thought.

Ramos did it for him. "Or as if both,
encountering the saliva on the other rod, were deflected into a
space outside the elements of the material world around them, and
there struck each other, just as materially as ever."

They looked at each other. The Church had
opposed ideas like this for centuries. Atomism was at its root an
atheistic philosophy. It suggested that the world was a machine, a
mere byproduct of atoms crashing together in random ways, and that
everything that we called a tree, a chair, a star, or a man, was
bound by the same rules and governed by the same random
interactions. If the universe was nothing more than a machine, then
what room did that leave for God?

It was a chilling, dizzying thought, and
Ramos felt his heart racing. If heretical musings like this were
heard by the wrong people, he could go up against the Inquisition.
Much worse, however, was the question of what he, Ramos, believed
in his heart. Did he really think the world worked in such
haphazard fashion? Didn't that go against the whole idea that God
had made the Creation exactly as it should be, with all the
mountains and oceans and stars perfectly in place? But then, he had
already seen the stars change. Perhaps the mountains and oceans
could change, too, given enough time.

Ramos pondered these things, disturbed, as
they made their way back to Whitehall. No sooner had he returned,
than a liveried runner found him to say that the king wanted to see
him, alone, in his privy chambers.

KING PHILIP was never alone. He had
menservants to dress and shave and coif him, cupbearers and waiters
to bring him food and drink, a chief groom of the toilet to see to
his necessaries; he had bodyguards and door sentries, scribes and
translators and harbingers, a chief historian to record his life
story (which twice already he had burned in pique), and jugglers
and minstrels and clowns. His most favored friends and advisors
rarely left his side. Today, however, he was in his most privy
chambers, alone, without even the most lowly servant to attend
him.

Ramos trembled with anticipation. Such an
honor was unheard of, and would be buzzed about the court for days,
since all those who had been sent out of the room would be jealous
to know what had transpired, and fearful for what it might mean for
them. If he were an ambitious man, he could easily turn such a
meeting to his political advantage, by hinting this, suggesting
that, or intimating that favors done for him might mean a favorable
word in the king's ear. Ramos had no such intentions, but he still
quaked to think of what difficult or dangerous task the king might
ask of him.

The king sat in a straight-backed chair. To
his left, on a small service stool, sat a porcelain dish and a tiny
pair of silver scissors. Ramos understood that he was meant to
assume a duty generally performed by the groom of the king's
toilet, that of clipping the king's fingernails. For any other man,
this would be a lowly task, but for the King of Spain, Portugal,
and England, it was an honor, a private intimacy that involved
touching the king's own person. It was a mark of the king's favor
and trust.

Ramos knelt by the tool and took up the
silver scissors, terrified that he might mangle the job or cut the
king's hand by mistake.

"You have shown your faithfulness and
devotion," the king said.

"Thank you, Your Grace." Ramos took the
king's fifth finger in his own trembling hand and delicately
snipped off the edge of the nail. Better to leave too much, he
thought, than to cut too short.

"I have another service to ask of you," the
king said.

"Only speak it, and I will fulfill it to the
best of my humble abilities."

"Have you ever met the Princess
Elizabeth?"

"Never. I only saw her once, on el Domingo de
Ramos."

"Ah yes. Her secret arrival in the city." The
edges of Philip's mouth turned up slightly. "To which everyone in
the kingdom turned out."

"Just so, Your Grace."

"Elizabeth is a conundrum. She appears
innocent and guileless to the people, yet she is shrewd as a snake.
She knows more than she should, and she manipulates those around
her—even her jailors—like a master puppeteer. If there is anyone in
this kingdom who threatens our sovereignty, it is she, and yet I
cannot kill her, lest the people revolt. The best would be to marry
her off to a Spanish nobleman, thus nullifying her claim to the
throne, and yet this, too, would strain our command of the English
people, who hate foreign rule. She is a spark from which the fires
of rebellion can spring, and yet I cannot be rid of her."

Ramos finished trimming the nails on one
hand, but the king did not offer his other. Ramos noticed a file
partly obscured by the bowl, and picked it up, tentatively running
it along the nails to smooth out the rough edges. "What would you
have me do, Your Grace?" Ramos said.

The king frowned down at him. "Put some
strength in it, man."

"What? Oh. Yes, Your Grace," Ramos said and
applied the nail file more vigorously.

"I want you to hear the Lady Elizabeth's
confession," the king said.

Ramos waited to hear more, but the king was
silent. "She is a Protestant," Ramos said. "Will she not refuse to
confess?"

"Your task will be to convince her."