Left in the Wind by Ed Gray

Author:Ed Gray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books

twenty-six

I spent the rest of the evening in conversation with Manteo and Benginoor. Both wanted to try to understand why the English reacted with such outrage at the pictures made by John. It was not easy to explain. Benginoor kept trying to understand what “innocent” meant. I tried to explain it in terms of good and evil, but Benginoor kept shaking her head the way one does when there are too many flies buzzing near one’s ears.

“What garden?” she abruptly asked.

“What garden?” I answered.

“You fren say ‘not since garden,’ when say Manteo wrong.”

“Oh, yes. The Garden of Eden. It is where the first two people lived. Adam and Eve. They were naked there. That’s what Audry meant.”

Benginoor listened as Manteo translated.

“No robe in Garden is innocent?” she asked me. “But no robe here is not?”

“Yes. Adam and Eve did not know good and evil. They were innocent. But then they sinned. After that they were no longer innocent, so God cast them out of the Garden. Since then, no one has been innocent. We are all sinners.”

“Explain ‘sinner.’”

I paused for thought. “Sin is when a person does a thing forbidden by God.”

Benginoor and Manteo both nodded.

“Understand,” Benginoor said. “We believe that, too.” Then she squinted. “No robe forbidden by your God?”

I took a breath. Audry was a tutor. She could have handled questions like these, not me.

“Not directly,” I answered. “But no robe is immodest. Immodesty is a sin.”

She nodded. “Not to us. But to you?”

I nodded. “That is the problem with the pictures. My people say they show me being immodest. They say they show me committing a sin.”

After Manteo translated, we were quiet. Valentyne fussed and I picked him up.

“Where is Garden?” Benginoor asked me. “In England?”

I laughed. “England is far from the Garden of Eden. No one knows where it is. God took it away when Adam and Eve sinned.”

“Maybe here.” She smiled. “We still no robe. We still innocent.”

“Yes.” I smiled back. “Maybe here. Why not here?”

“Not here,” said Manteo abruptly. We both looked at him. Apart from translating for his mother and me as we spoke, he had said little. Now he spoke directly to us both, first to his mother in their language and then to me in English, alternating as he did.

“Not here because we are not innocent. We do sin. We fight and kill each other, just as in England. Not here because we punish people for doing things we do not understand, just as in England. Here is no Garden of Eden, just as England is not.”

There was little to say after that. Together we sat in silence until full darkness fell, after which we retired to our mats for the night. I curled up on mine with Valentyne held close to keep him warm. For a long time I lay that way, listening to the soft sounds he made in his sleep and trying to imagine the babe’s new world, the one he would find when he, too, grew old enough to see it for what it was.

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