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Authors: Kage Baker

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BOOK: The Life of the World to Come

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We must go on with our work, because no one else will do it The tide of death has to be held back. Nothing matters except our work.

Nothing matters.

Except our work.

CHAPTER 2

My name, my age, the village of my birth, I can’t tell you with any certainty. I do know it was somewhere near the great city of Santiago de Compostela, where the Holy Apostle’s body was supposed to have been found. During the Middle Ages pilgrims flocked there to see the holy relics (if they didn’t get wrecked first off Cape Finisterre) and returned with cockle shells pinned to their hats (if they didn’t get wrecked going back). There, in that city, the Holy Inquisition set up one of its offices.

Also there, in the enormous cathedral, the Infanta Katherine, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, is supposed to have stopped to hear Mass on her way to marry the Prince of England. Now, in this cathedral was a silver censer, big as a cauldron, that swung in stately arcs at the end of a chain; and during the Infanta’s Mass the chain broke and this censer hustled out of the church through a window and exploded like a bomb on the paving stones outside. Some people would have taken this as an omen, but not the Infanta. She went resolutely on to England and wound up marrying King Henry the Eighth. This shows that one ought to pay attention to omens.

Anyway, we lived near there. My parents were thin and desperately poor, but racially pure, as they constantly assured us; and that is about all I remember of them. Racially pure meant a lot in Spain in those days, you see. Presumably to extend
the line of Old White Christians, my parents had half a dozen little children, which they soon regretted because our house only had one room.

This is where the story begins.

One day in 1541 (all dates approximate) my mother was sitting by the door, gloomily watching her little White Christians as they rolled in a screaming knot in the dust of the yard. Along the road came some people on horseback. They were very well dressed and looked as white as we did, nothing like Jews or Moriscas, though of course you could never tell nowadays. They reined in beside the gate and sat watching us for a moment.

“Good morning, gentle sirs and ladies,” said my mother.

“Good morning, goodwife,” said a tall lady with red hair. “What pretty children you have.”

“Thank you, gentle lady,” said my mother.

“And so many of them,” said the lady.

“Yes, gentle lady,” said my mother ruefully. (At least, they said something like this, but in sixteenth-century Galician Spanish, all right?)

We children had meanwhile stopped fighting and were staring at the people openmouthed. They really did look wealthy. I recall the women had those things on their heads like the queens on playing cards wear. You know.

“Perhaps,” said the fine lady, “you have more little ones here than you can provide for? You would perhaps entertain the idea of, say, hiring one out?”

Now my mother’s eyes went narrow with suspicion. She didn’t I know who these people were. They could be Jews, and everybody knew that Jews bought and ate Christian children. Or they could be agents of the Church, sent to see if they could confiscate her property because she was the kind of woman who sold her children to Jews. They could be anybody.

“Gentle lady, please,” she said. “Have consideration for a mother’s feelings. How should I sell my own flesh and blood, which is very old Christian blood, you should know.”

“That is very obvious,” said the lady soothingly.

“In fact, we are descended from the Guths,” added my mother.

“Of course,” said the lady. “Actually, this was an entirely
honorable proposition I had in mind. You see, my husband, Don Miguel de Mendes y Mendoza, was wrecked on the rocks at La Coruña, and I am traveling around the country until I have performed one hundred acts of charity for the repose of his soul. I thought I’d take one of your children into my house as a servant. The child would have food and clothing, a virtuous Catholic upbringing, and a suitable marriage portion arranged when she comes of age. What do you think of this idea?”

Boy, my mamacita was in a quandary. Just what every Poor but Honest Mother prayed would happen! One less mouth to feed without the expense of a funeral! Still … I can just see her racing mentally down the list of
One Hundred Ways to Recognize a Secret Jew
, posted by the Holy Inquisition in every village square.

“I would have to have some kind of surety,” she said slowly.

Beaming, the lady held out a purse, heavy and all clinquant, as the man says, with gold.

My mother swallowed hard and said: “Please excuse me, gentle lady, but you will surely understand my hesitation.” She wasn’t going to come right out and say. Would you care to stay for dinner, we’re having pork?

The lady understood perfectly. Spaniards were as famed for paranoia as for courtesy in those days. She pulled out a little silver case that hung about her neck on a chain.

“I swear by the finger of Holy Saint Catherine of Alexandria that I am neither Judaizer nor Morisco,” she declared. She leaned over and put the purse into my mother’s hands, and my mother opened it and looked inside. Then my mother looked at all of us, with our gaping little mouths, and she sighed and shrugged.

“Honest employment is a good thing for a child,” she said. “So. Which one would you like to hire?”

The lady looked us over carefully, like a litter of small cats, and said: “What about the one with the red hair?”

That was me. That was the first moment I can remember being aware of being
me
, myself alone. My mother came and got me and led me to the gate. The lady smiled down at me form the height of her house.

“What about it, little girl?” she said. “Would you like to come live in a fine house, and have fine clothes to wear and plenty of food to eat?”

“Yes,” I said like a shot. “And my own bed to sleep in, too?”

Whereupon my mother slapped me, but all the fine folks laughed. “Yes,” said the lady, “I’ll take that one.” So was taken indoors to have my face washed while the strangers waited, and my mother stripped off my filthy shift and pulled a clean one on over my head. Then she leaned closer to give me her last piece of advice before sending me out into the world.

“If those people turn out to have been lying, hija, you go straight to the Holy Inquisition and inform on them.”

“Yes, Mama,” I said.

Then we went out and I was lifted up in front of one of the men; he smelled of leather and musk perfume. We waved goodbye and rode slowly away into the golden morning. Goodbye Mama, Papa, Babies, Little Stone House?

I didn’t cry. I was only four or five, but I knew I was going off on a splendid adventure. Food and clothing and my very own bed! Though before we had ridden many miles, the lady carefully explained to me that what she had told my mother wasn’t exactly true; I was not to be a servant.

“In fact, little girl, we are going to do you a very great honor,” she said. “We are going to betroth you to be married to a mighty lord. This will be much to your advantage, for then you will no longer be a little pauper. You will be a noblewoman.”

It sounded fine to me, except: “I’m only a little girl. Big girls get married, not little ones,” I observed.

“Oh, gentlefolk marry off their little children all the time,” said the lady serenely. “Little princes, little princesses, two and three years old they hitch them up. So you see there’s no problem.”

We rode along for a while, past castles and crags, while I mulled this over.

“But I’m not a princess,” I said at last.

“You will be,” I was assured by the man who held me. He wore riding gauntlets with the cuffs embroidered in gold
wire. I can see the pattern to this day. “As soon as he marries you, you see.”

“Oh,” I said, seeing nothing at all. But they all smiled at one another. What a slender, elegant lot they were, with their smiles and secrets. I considered my cotton shift and my grubby sandals, and felt as strange as red wheat in a vase of lilies.

“Why is this lord going to marry me?” I wanted to know.

“I told you, I’m arranging it as an act of charity,” said the lady.

“But—”

“He loves little girls,” laughed one of them, a very young man, his face still downy over the lip. The others all glared at him, and the lady rode between us and said:

“He too is a very charitable man. And life will be splendid for you from now on! You’ll wear gowns of fine velvet and shoes lined with lamb’s fleece. You’ll have a bed all to yourself with sheets of the whitest lawn, the counterpane embroidered with ruby pomegranates and golden lilies. You’ll have a servant to lift you into it each night. The pillow will be filled with whitest down from the wild geese that fly to England in the spring.”

I stared at her. “What land is he lord of, this lord?” I asked finally.

“The summer land,” said the lady. “Beyond Zaragoza.” I didn’t know where that was. “Shall I tell you about the palace where you’ll live? The most beautiful palace of Argentoro, which is not least among the palaces of the world, being made of blocks of pure white marble veined with gold. The park around it is seven by seventy leagues to a side and filled with pleasant streams and walks; There are orange groves and pools where swim gold and silver fish. There are Indians and monkeys from the New World; there are rose gardens. Everything a little girl could want.”

“Oh,” I said again.

And again they all smiled at one another over my head.

Well, that had me floating on air. Except, in all the stories I’d ever heard, little princesses had big troubles. It was true that handsome princes usually came and rescued them, but the troubles came first and sometimes they lasted a hundred years.

Notes

Forthcoming

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME

A portion of this novel originally appeared as the story “Smart Alec” in the September 1999 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction.

Edited by David G. Hartwell

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^®is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

eISBN 9781429910446

First eBook Edition : March 2011

First edition: December 2004
First mass market edition: November 2005