In the Garden of Iden (16 page)

But even now I grit my teeth. He leaned back on his elbow to look at me, gingerly touching his cheek where I’d hit him. I had to turn away and cry.

“Thou art of two minds, it seems,” he remarked, in such outrageous understatement that I nearly had hysterics then and there. He put his arms around me (brave man) and tucked me up into his shoulder.

“Hush, then, thou. Is this all? Why, love, it is no shame to be afeared so early in the dance. We’ll have no leaping yet, shall we, no bouncing galliards? No. No. A slow pavane is more to the taste of a lady, I think. An easy dance, that may be learned by any little maid. We’ll not spoil with haste.”

“My body is frightened,” I tried to explain. “Not me.”

Patiently Nicholas held me until my sobs had gone quiet. Then he leaned up to look me in the eye and said:

“Now, why didst thou play the wanton with me? I would not have hurt thee for the world, Rose.”

“I came to you because I love you,” I said, as a defense; but I realized, with a certain gleeful horror, that it was true. “I have never loved anyone before in all my life, and I am so frightened.”

“Flesh is a comfort to flesh,” he said. “Though not, I think, the remedy for thy fear.”

“My fear is not of you,” I protested.

“What then?” he said. I took too long to come up with an answer, because thoughts began to turn behind his eyes and they grew small and suspicious.

“Did thy father bid thee come here?” That was so close to the mark that I had to catch my breath, which he interpreted correctly. His scowl deepened. I knew I must make the best of it, so I said:

“He hath counseled me to make much of you, señor, I will admit.”

“What manner of man sends his virgin child—” Nicholas began in thunder.

I rushed on: “But in an honorable manner, señor, as any maid might do. He wisheth me to be married well and, having some care to my happiness, bade me look to wed with an Englishman.”

“For safety,” Nicholas muttered.

“It may be so.”

“What storm is it he runs before? He hath some black business, thy father, hath he not? And this it is that maketh thee pale and sick.”

I clung to him. Let him think what he wanted, I was in over my head. “It’s true,” I whispered in his ear. “I want no part of his life. Let me stay here with thee. Keep me, love.”

He gave a long sigh, a brooding angry sound, but his hands began to move again on my skin. “Tell me the truth, Rose,” he said. “What dost thou fear?”

“So many things, I have forgot them all,” I said wearily. “But I struck you because I thought you would tear me and make me to bleed.”

He gave a rueful laugh. “I hope I may couch a lance with more skill than that. Will you prove me, love?” I kissed him where I had hit him. With great care and gentleness he began the game again.

“Some order ought to be taken for the better education of virgins, that they read no old romances,” he grumbled pleasantly. “For there they will read of this maiden come near to dying when her lover beds her first, or that maiden staining seventeen ells of linen by her defloration, swooning for love, and I assure you it is not so. Look you, Friar John shall preach you a sermon on it.” He began to speak in a little squeaky voice for his penis:

“
Now you must know, child, that what passeth between a man and a maid is no ordeal but a delightful measure, as many happy country girls witnesseth, who are never the worse for making familiar with a plain and well-intentioned prick. Nay, further, our Lord that loveth us surpassing well hath ordained this matter to be pleasing to the partakers thereof, as we may read in Holy Scripture, where it saith: O that thy mouth would give us a kiss, for thy breasts are more pleasant than wine, and
—”

So as I rocked in his arms, helpless with laughter, he pressed his advantage; with such courtesy that my castle, as they say, fell without further defense.

And as the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so was my beloved among the sons. Et cetera. What would I give, to have that night back, out of all my nights? No treasure fleet could hold it, what I’d give; no caravan of mules could carry it away.

I
N THE BLACK
morning he guided me down the stairs, though on the bottom step we clenched and melted, and had to run right back up to bed again.

When I finally crept back into my room, the eastern sky was starting to get light. Our windows faced east, so everything stood in black outline against them: very distinct, the posts and the drapes of the bed, and Nef’s Egyptian profile where she sat upright watching the dawn. She turned to look at me.

“You all right?” she inquired.

I just smiled, the way you do when you’re newly nineteen on a summer morning in England and you’ve just discovered Paradise on Earth. Were there stars in my eyes? I suppose there were. I came and settled gingerly on the foot of the bed.

“You know something?” I said. “All my life I’ve been fed this line of utter garbage about mortals. They’re just the same as we are, and some of them”—meaningful pause here—“are
better
.”

The pity in her face was a thousand years old. I didn’t understand it, so I ignored it.

“I just spent the night with a mortal man who’s got God’s own intellect,” I swept on. “And the body to match. He’s enlightened, he’s fearless, he’s fearless, he’s seven hundred years ahead of his time. The only thing that makes him different from me or you is the hardware.”

She just nodded and said, “Well…”

“The thing is, I’ve been operating all this time with an incredible sense of superiority over this race that produced Caligula and Hitler and the other monsters, and all the while ignoring the fact that this same race is capable of turning out Da Vincis and Shake-speares. How can we all be so arrogant?”

She shrugged a little and said, “Sometimes …”

“I mean, there’s a whole world here I’ve never even thought about. There must be millions of these sane, intelligent individuals whose lives are every bit as meaningful as our own, and if it weren’t for a few aberrant types screwing it up for everyone else, they’d probably be well on the way to the perfect civilization. This is tragic. We have to help these people. I mean, they made us, didn’t they? We came from them. In a sense, we
are
them. Aren’t we?”

How infinitely wry was Nef’s smile, on that two millionth morning of her life.

“Yes and no,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I bounced impatiently on the bed.

“You’ll find out.”

“Oh, baloney.” I jumped up and crawled in on my side of the bed. “Don’t go all metaphysical on me. And anyway—anyway! Why didn’t anyone ever tell me what happens when you—you know—for the first time? I went into automatic defense mode and nearly hurt him!”

At least she winced. “Sorry about that,” she said. “I thought you knew.”

“Well, I didn’t, and it nearly ruined everything,” I said crossly, yanking most of the blankets over on my side.

“The man has to be careful, and you have to relax a lot,” she explained.

“Thank you, we figured that out.” I burrowed down into the pillows. “And now I’m going to sleep for hours and hours. I won’t be down for breakfast. You can tell them whatever you want.” To her everlasting credit, Nef did not pick up the candlestick and club me over the head. She only sighed and climbed out of bed to begin her two millionth day.

When I woke, I was as happy as if it were my birthday, and someone had crept into my room and left a rose by my pillow.

Well, who cared about work after that? Not I, and not Nicholas Harpole, except that it gave us an excuse to get out alone together in the garden. His God even favored us with a miracle, for it stopped raining; and this is always a marvel in that damned green land, but more so in that particular summer when the Cloud Prince was in residence.

Now that I come to write of what we did together, I have a peculiar reluctance to put pen to paper. Yes, this is definitely pain I feel. There is a locked door, you see, hinges red as blood with rust: it screams upon being opened and tries to close again, but through its narrow space I see the color green.

Long grass where we lay, in the heart of the maze, and the little white flowers of the hedge had a sweet smell, like semen. I had filled my overskirt with damson plums, and we took turns eating them and reading to one another from
De Immensa Misericordia Dei
. I can still see the explosion of green at his window, the summer leaves crowding thick as though they would burst in on us where we sat naked on his bed. We had a dish of strawberries and a flagon of Rhenish wine, and he cradled a mandolin on his lap, for decency’s sake, he said; his big hands closed on the frets and plucked the strings. Sweat formed on his fair skin. He taught me songs.

This truly hurts. But I need to record that green filtered sunlight streaming in through the great hall, where we made eye contact over breakfast. His foot sought mine under the table. He peeled oranges for me in long curls of gold. I ate them for him in suggestive ways, eloquent with lips and tongue. God knows what the servants thought.

So you may laugh at my heart’s nakedness, but I’ll tell you this much: all my nasty expectations fell away like stone birds that summer. With each sexual act and variation, layers of fear came away to reveal a commonplace, comfortable pastime.

It wasn’t that the obsession died—Christ, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. What clutchings in the maze, what passionate and explicit notes in Greek we left for each other! But it became
innocent
. Maybe wholesome is a better word. Pleasant and unremarkable as eating. No sense of sin. What a revelation for me, eh?

We played mental games with each other, too, he still asking oblique questions about alchemists and I poking with casual remarks about weird Anabaptist sects. Stimulating discourses, as it were, to counterpoint our play.

Enough of the idyllic sex scenes. What we did, we did, and now you know.

Nef was very accommodating about it, because now she had the bed to herself and could play the radio as late as she wanted. Mind you, all there was usually to hear was a weather broadcast and a nightly program of madrigals by a popular group of castrati; but those things would comfort you too if you were trapped in a back country manor house and the only other woman around was younger than you and having a torrid love affair besides. Joseph made a few cheerful remarks about how great one’s first little mortal fling was. Beyond that he didn’t comment much, being very busy himself at that time.

In August, Mary the Queen and Philip her consort went on up to London, where it promptly rained buckets on all the Londoners who nonetheless staged elaborate pageants for His Gloomy Grace. I remember where I was when I heard the broadcast floating out of Nef’s open window: in the center of a privet hedge with Nicholas. We were having a fierce postcoital discussion about Savonarola. Nicholas defended, I attacked.

In September there were news reports every day on how badly our quondam countrymen were getting on in England. Somewhere there was a plaintive hidalgo with gonorrhea who wondered what had become of the private physician whose passage he had paid for. Joseph could disappear in transit like a check, if he found it convenient.

There were rumors of revolts, of barricades and imperial treachery, but nothing came of them, and the sun kept shining down. No, it was in our own bright garden that the trouble began.

People noticed when the color began to come back into Sir Walter’s hair and beard, but even the servants assumed it was only a dye job, if a subtle one. When Sir Walter got to handling and pinching the kitchen girls, his household chalked it up to male menopause. Dotage, they used to call it. But the day he fell down at the breakfast table in a fit, no one knew quite what to say.

I, Nicholas, and Master Ffrawney, Nef, Joseph, the steward, and two scullery boys all looked down at him in horror. He kicked. He foamed. He grunted.
Oops
, transmitted Joseph. Out loud, he said:

“Why, he hath the falling sickness. How unusual that he never told me of it.”

What do you mean, oops?
I questioned, and Nef echoed me. Joseph ignored us as he and Nicholas hastened down to their knees beside Sir Walter. With some struggle they edged him away from the table so he wouldn’t brain himself, and did all the helpful things one is supposed to do for an epileptic. While Nicholas was busy unhooking fastenings, Joseph discreetly broke a little capsule over the throbbing vein in Sir Walter’s temple.

“He hath never been so taken,” gasped Nicholas, dodging a flailing shoe.

“Well, perhaps he had a surfeit of something that drew the sanguine humors up into the brain.” Joseph pretended to take his pulse. “Eels, or oysters, or venison pie, perchance. Hmm?” But he struck a false note then, because his tone was too light and careless. I guess he was badly rattled, or he wouldn’t have slipped up like that. And he only slipped a little; but Nicholas caught it, though the rest of the company were oblivious. He threw Joseph a quick, wondering look.

Watch out
, I transmitted.

Slight miscalculation of dosage
, Joseph returned.
The little guy must have been at the beefsteak again. I warned him about that
. Sir Walter gave a final thrash and went limp, apparently unconscious. Joseph called for a cushion and placed it under his head with great solicitude. “There is no cause to be alarmed, good people,” he said loudly. “Doubtless this unfortunate incident was only the result of intemperate diet.”

Sir Walter shot out his arms and legs and crowed like a rooster.

“Jesu bless us!” shrieked Master Ffrawney. “He hath a devil in him!” He and the scullery boys all made the sign of the Cross. So did Nefer and I, belatedly. Joseph was too busy trying to catch Sir Walter’s flapping arms.

“I have it now!” he shouted. “It is, uh, an effusion of melancholic bile in the liver. The Count of Alcobiella was afflicted with the very same. Please, my young friend, let us get your master to his bed.” Between them, he and Nicholas hoisted Sir Walter, who was grinning idiotically, and struggled with him up the stairs. Near the top, the old man began to howl:

“Dookies! Dookies! Dookies!”

I was too frightened to laugh. Nefer looked around at our terrified faces and pulled out her rosary. “Let us pray,” she said firmly. “Entreat the Blessed Virgin in our efforts on Don Walter’s behalf.
Ave Maria, Gratia plena
…”

We mumbled with her, occasionally glancing up as thumps and crashes came from the room above. At last there was silence. Three quarters of the way around the rosary, Nicholas came slowly down the stairs. His face was set and closed. I ran to him. “How does the good man?” I cried. He turned to stare at me; then he looked at the others and said:

“By the grace of God, Sir Walter is sleeping now and his fit hath passed. The doctor says he will be well.” And as Nef and the others resumed prayer, he took me by the arm and led me outside.

“What is it, in God’s name?” I said, peering up at him. He led me a little way from the house and looked at me.

“I have just seen a thing I cannot understand,” he said.

“Before God, I don’t doubt it!”

He glanced around before he replied in Greek. “I mean, above the extraordinary sight of a gentleman of reverend years crying cuckoo before his whole house. Men have lost their wits before. No, my love, when we carried my master up to his room, we stripped away his doublet and shirt so that your father could bleed him.

“Now, when Sir Walter was a young man, he saw some service with our late king in France, and took a wound from it. (Or it may be that as he sat in a tavern one night, he was set upon by thieves; I’ve heard him tell both stories.) However he came by it, he certainly had a great scar across his ribs.”

“Had,” I said uneasily.

“Yes. Past tense. Now he has but a little red line there, like a track of scarlet ink. How should this be, Rose?”

I took a deep breath. “Well, did you think it was sorcery? It’s the physick, no question. Every hedgerow charlatan has a potion to take away wrinkles and scars. My father’s remedy works, that’s all.”

Nicholas relaxed a little. “Certainly it’s a great remover of scars. So long as it doesn’t take Sir Walter’s life away with the scar, all may be well. Pray that your father knows what he’s doing, Rose, or people will swear there’s been murder done. And witchcraft, very likely, or whatever else comes into their heads.”

Mendoza!

I’m busy!
I transmitted.

So am I, and I need somebody to hand me things. Now. On the double!

“Your advice is well taken.” I squeezed Nicholas’s arm. “I will go warn my father at once.” He stared after me as I hitched up my skirts and ran back into the house.

Up the stairs and up the stairs and
up
the damned stairs, clattering, past staring servants.
All right, where are you?

In here
. I heard a bolt slide back at a near door, and the door opened just wide enough to admit me. It was a narrow room, like a cell. Once inside, I gasped and fell back at what I saw in it, as though physically pushed against the wall.

Sir Walter was laid out on a baize-covered table, smiling and stone dead. Had to be dead: his skin was gray, his stare was glassy as a doll’s and his chest had been opened out and folded back to expose its contents. Joseph was leaning down into the bloody cavity, working frantically with little tools. Organs were draped everywhere.

“Oh, my God, you’ve killed him,” I said.

“Shut up and hand me that box,” Joseph hissed. Too stunned to argue, I handed it to him: a red Bakelite component about the size of a matchbox, with a couple of tiny wires trailing from it. He snatched it from me, and it disappeared into the mortal mess.

“Pliers,” he demanded. “Goddamn faulty regulator!”

“You really think you can revive him?” I edged closer to peer into the gaping hole as Joseph rummaged around in it frantically. Oh, gross.

“Yes. Grab that hemostim and stick it up his nose!”

I began to giggle in spite of my horror. Somehow I found the slender pointed tool and inserted it just above Sir Walter’s mustache. Joseph growled, “Farther!”