The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley (22 page)

“And I suppose you enjoy it all too well. Why did I never guess? Why did he do this to me? To rub my nose in the dirt? Did he see what I felt? Did it double his pleasure, to use me as his pander? And you, it is the morning of your triumph. No wonder you have risen in favor. You have perfected the ability to seem what you are not. Your husband vanishes conveniently when you know his secrets. Then with your pictures, you worm your way into great men’s houses. How clean, how hypocritical! And when you have pandered to their filthy lusts, they can pretend the payment is for a painting or two. All on the account books, as openly as the cost of a chapel singer or a side of beef. I could never have believed it if I had not seen with my own eyes. You make me sick.” He had come into the room now and stood directly in front of me. His shirt was undone at the neck and I could see a bit of his collarbone, and the place where the tendons of the neck join. Adam betrayed, after the apple. Blaming the snake, blaming the apple, blaming Eve, but never blaming himself. An interesting new composition, very realistic. But monks wouldn’t buy it. Definitely not the sort of thing a man would want to own. Nan looked alarmed.

“I hope you are not saying what I think you are.”

“I am saying that and more. Do you think I don’t know with whom you were closeted yesterday? For an hour and a half? The man who takes anything he wants. How perfectly matched with the woman who will stop at nothing.”

“What were you doing? Snooping outside the door? Then you will know that Nan was with me, and you should be ashamed for thinking to blacken a widow’s reputation.” Nan nodded vigorously in agreement with me.

“Don’t worry about your reputation,” he said, his voice bitter. “You stand too well with my master now for me to dare breathe a word. But I know this, too. He made your serving woman wait outside.”

“And left the door to the inner chamber open.”

“Open by six inches only. What a virtuous six inches! How much can be done in a chamber behind six hypocritical inches!”

“And what was your interest in these six inches? That they were too small for your prying nose? Or was Master Tuke lurking behind you to keep you from daring to spy?”

At the mention of the slippery and politic Tuke, he turned so crimson I thought he might explode. I’ve hit it square on at the first try, I thought. Master Tuke has been taken into confidence, and he has not. And Wolsey is rubbing it in by asking him to see me home.

“What bad sprite has made you so surly and suspicious? You go beyond yourself, Master Ashton. If you were more humble and took more care to please, you would advance more in favor, as Master Tuke does,” I said, just to annoy him further. I was rewarded by seeing him wince.

“Jezebel,” he hissed, as he followed us from the room. Silently, he followed us through the muddy streets. When we reached the Sign of the Standing Cat, he turned and left without a word. Nan and I stood and watched him go, his hose wrinkled, his hat askew, and his walk angry. Gone. Too bad. He really would have made a good-looking Adam.

“What ever possessed a great man like the archbishop to have such an obnoxious person about him?” asked Nan.

“They say he does well on foreign assignments,” I answered. Suddenly, my heart froze with horror. His crazy suspicions were one thing, but what if he went around talking about them? He could spread rumors and ruin my custom along with my reputation. Everything I’d done, all my work, my hard-earned living, could be spoiled in a moment with a few ugly, careless words. That’s what he’d do. He’d ruin me.

“As a diplomat?” snorted Nan. “Clearly foreigners are less demanding about manners than we English.”

The Sixth Portrait

Jean Clouet. ca. 1520?
Marguerite of Navarre.
4½ × 3½ cm. Gouache on vellum. Gold frame, encircled with diamonds. Obverse: arms of d’Alençon. Louvre.

This early portrait of the future Queen of Navarre and celebrated authoress of the
Heptameron
and
Miroir de l’âme pécheresse
depicts her sometime in her early twenties, during her first marriage to the Duc d’Alençon. The exquisite workmanship and characteristic use of the sky blue background are derived from the French school of manuscript illumination, which, developed in the masterful hands of Clouet, influenced the works of Holbein, predating the so-called “English school” of miniature painting by at least two decades.

—R. Dupré.
H
ISTOIRE DE LA PEINTURE FRANÇAISE

T
he
D
UCHESS
M
ARGUERITE HAD A VERY LONG NOSE, ALTHOUGH HER BROTHER’S WAS LONGER.
But I think she was the cleverer of the two, and it is too bad she was not born the boy, given that she had more sense. Their mother, Louise of Savoy, only had an ordinary nose, so I think the noses as well as the brains must have come from their father, who was long dead so I couldn’t see whether my idea was true. But they say he not only collected books but had his own illuminator, which is what made Marguerite such a good judge of painting and so quick to like my works in small. I painted her in three-quarters view in the new style, and I think I got the eyes just right though I must admit to shortening the nose just the tiniest bit because it was too long for the fashion.

But my greatest problem with the painting was that it was nearly stolen by that arrogant bully, Duke Francis’s friend Bonnivet, who thinks he is such a great lover and handsome stallion, which irritates me terribly because even if he is a lord, he is not what I count handsome. He came into my studio while I was working, pretending to be “just visiting” with that big show-off Fleurange and maybe thinking about having his portrait done, and then he “accidentally” picked up the duchess’s portrait to look at. It was about to disappear when I just as accidentally snatched it back, which is a big offense to a lord, and said, “Thank you for praising my work so when it is only half done, but I am sure Duchess Marguerite will let me make a copy for you.” He looked totally shocked, and Fleurange put back his head and roared with laughter, which meant I was safe. But it also meant Bonnivet had wicked desires for the duchess, so I was not at all surprised when I heard a very long time later that he hid in her bedroom and tried to force her and she took several bruises fighting him off before her servants could come. Even so, he was too important for anyone to do anything, and besides, it was all considered just good sport. I’m sure his friends just cuffed him on the arm and made fun of him for not being able to finish the job. That is how it is with those lords, and you have to know it if you want to get on at court.

Fourteen

A
light rain had fallen the previous night, and the damp had brought the cranes to the rolling meadows beyond the Loire to feed in the hours after dawn. The old King of France, unable to resist the auspicious signs, had ordered out his falconers, huntsmen, and harriers while the light was still rosy. The hunting of four-footed beasts, with noisy horns, baying hounds, and feats of strength, bored him. But falconry was a science; it required a perfect knowledge of beasts, of birds, and of men. Silence and strategy were more important than boastful prowess. Too frail to sit a horse, he was borne, gaunt and gray faced, in a litter carried by two quiet bay jennets to the damp, green meadows beyond the Château de Blois. On his wrist was his favorite gerfalcon, and riding beside his litter were his old councilors, dressed in the dark, earth-toned hunting clothes that kept the birds they stalked from startling and taking flight. A dozen falconers rode at a distance, and the masters of the harriers walked beyond, their shaggy gray hounds quiet beside them. Yet another party of mounted falconers circled beyond the feeding cranes. The crane, sharp beaked, much larger than the falcon, was the noblest prey. The most difficult art was to hunt them with a cast, that is, several trained birds attacking the crane at the same time in the air.

An old crane ruffled its feathers and took flight. At a signal from the king, two falcons were loosed, to which he added his own. With shrill cries, they flew at their prey. Perfect, thought the king, it will be perfect. The crane slashed at the first falcon with its sharp beak; the second, and then the third joined in the attack. But behind him, the king heard the clatter of hooves and the whinny of a badly trained horse. Loud voices drifted to him in the wind, and laughter. The young lords of the court, careless, unconscientious. The noise had startled the feeding cranes. Their great wings flapped and they rose into the air to join their battling comrade. With high, keening cries they flew at the falcons, bombarding them, battering them. The king’s mouth closed in a tight line of rage, and his complexion grew grayer at the sight. How dare those careless oafs destroy the cast! It was rare that cranes could be alarmed like this. It was the rattle of harness and voices that had aroused the birds to their danger and spoiled the kill. Already, sensible of what they had done, the younger men had brought their horses to a walk. The king did not even need to look to see who it was. Their voices had told him. François of Angoulême and his friends Bonnivet and Fleurange. Noisy, troublesome, brash.

But like a general on the field, the king must look to the battle at hand. “The hounds,” he said, and as the struggling crane fell to earth, still slashing, with two falcons perched on top of it, the harriers, freed at his orders, seized it by the feet. But his own falcon had fallen, wounded. His best, his dearest. The king’s chief falconer rode to it at a gallop. Could she live? The king’s face, usually so somber, was frozen with a rage that he allowed to show itself only in his eyes. The escaping cranes were already blobs of white against the pale blue morning sky.

“Your Majesty, a terrible pity…” said the Comte de Guise, leaning toward the infuriated king.

“That gross infant,” the king hissed between his teeth. “For the sake of France, there must be another heir.”

Once again they were together, brother and sister, almost like the old days before her marriage to the Duc d’Alençon had taken her away to isolation in Normandy. The family had gathered at Blois at the beginning of the summer to celebrate the long-awaited wedding of Francis to Claude of France, eldest daughter of the king and his second queen, Anne of Brittany. It was the penultimate step toward the supreme power, but one bitterly contested. Unlike the kingdom of France, the vast lands of Brittany could be inherited through the female line. The king had wed Anne, his brother’s widow, to maintain the territorial integrity of France. But the threat of the marriage of her daughters, the heiresses of Brittany, abroad led the Parlement to beg that Claude be betrothed to Francis, her cousin, the male heir to the throne. The old queen was furious. She knew that to place the fate of her frail, deformed daughter in the hands of this brilliant, careless, and ambitious family would doom her. She loathed the tenacious, scheming Louise of Savoy, and until death struck her down, she prevented the marriage. Now that she was in her grave, everything she had once feared had come about: her beloved child, deformed and sweet tempered, had fallen deeply in love with a husband who considered her only a convenience. Once again, Louise had triumphed. Her son was now Duke of Brittany. Quietly, Louise informed her son that if he ever allowed the younger daughter, Renée, to wed, he would lose half of Brittany to her future husband. Francis resolved that his infant sister-in-law, should he become king, would never be allowed to marry.

“I have taken your knight, my lord,” announced Marguerite, her eyes still fixed on the ebony-and-ivory chessboard. Her chestnut hair was nearly entirely hidden under her peaked matron’s headdress and black velvet hood. Two of her favorite little white lapdogs lay at her feet. Francis, at twenty still slender and clean shaven, looked up. Their faces were nearly indentical, with long noses, shrewd, intelligent eyes, and a glint of humor about their mobile, narrow mouths. Louise had spared nothing on their education, and their accomplishments, since childhood, had been near legendary. Already, Marguerite, accomplished with her pen and bored in exile from the court, was collecting stories for a book of naughty, humorous tales; her brother wrote poetry and pursued women in his leisure hours. Their fates had taken them on different paths, but they understood each other perfectly.

“Then my rook will avenge me,” answered Francis, making the move. He was clad in pale lavender satin, and on his head was a flat, brimmed hat of crimson velvet. Already it was twilight, and a servant came to light the candles in the long gallery. The great tapestries undulated with a stray summer breeze that came through the open windows, and the candles flickered and smoked in the newly raised chandeliers. At the end of the gallery, one of Claude’s ladies of honor was playing the virginals, while another sang. Claude’s needle passed up and down through an embroidery hoop that contained an altar cloth. At sixteen, she was swollen as if by a strange disorder, hugely fat, her face round and puffy. A rich gown in pale blue satin only emphasized her pallor and desperate plainness. Every so often, she raised her eyes from the cloth to cast adoring eyes at the marvelously handsome, dashing man to whom she had been wed. How far from her he sat, and how engrossed he was, talking with his tall, elegant sister. Francis was playing chess, a game that she could never hope to master. How clever he looked, sitting there, engrossed in things that were beyond her. If only he would turn and look her way!

“I knew you would do that. Check,” said Marguerite.

“Is this just? You won last time. I should win this time. After all, I am the dauphin.” Francis evaded Marguerite’s queen, but he knew the respite was only temporary.

“You know if I let you win every time, you would have no sport,” answered Marguerite. “Check and mate.”

“Bah, chess is boring tonight. Call your ladies to dance for me, and I will give a prize to the fairest, like Paris.”

“Paris caused a great deal more trouble than he thought with his prizes. And you, my lord, must be more circumspect. The king looks to replace you.”

“Ridiculous. An impossibility. He’s far too old.”

“What if his blood were stirred by the English princess?”

“She would have to be a miracle to raise life in that old hulk.”

“She’s not bad, brother. And you must quit playing and lay plans. If she bears a child, you must be sure to be made regent. An English Queen Regent would destroy France. You need to go to court. Speak to the old ones, de Guise and La Tremoïlle and the others who bore you. Flatter them. Show yourself wise and mature.” Francis had paled. The throne, so close, could be snatched away. He, the lone male heir of the Valois, the only son, his mother’s adored Caesar. In his vast self-confidence, he had never thought it possible.

“Who has spoken of this? Has Mother concurred in this plan?”

“It was she who thought of it. But I warn you, you must go to her and act as if it had come over you as your own idea. She frets so, these days, that I am worried for her health. The king thwarts her at every turn. He rages at the orders she gives the cooks, the laundry maids. Only he shall command in his own house, he says. Have you not seen how bitter, how resentful he looks when he spies her among the ladies of the court, or even you, these days? Show Mother that you are changed, serious. It will relieve her. She loves you above all things and lives only for your happiness.”

“It won’t happen. It can’t,” said Francis, shaking his head.

“It could happen easily, and you must not let things go by until it is too late,” she said. “The negotiations are far advanced, and encouraged by his closest advisors. They, too, despise you. They have whetted his appetite and encouraged him in this fantasy.” Francis shook his head in disbelief.

“A child heir? France would be torn apart. Brittany would be separated from the crown. Unless—would they wed this infant heir to Renée? Shameless—divide my inheritance? Then Bourbon would be as great as I…. Yet, no, no—it makes sense. Until the infant’s majority, they would need a puppet regent. A foreign queen, a weakling who could be ruled. In a regency, those old men would prolong their power, cost France what it may.” Even Francis, whose young mind never lit on one subject for very long, began to see the path of destruction that hung on an old man’s whim.

“Just see this,” said his sister, “and you will understand all. Only don’t tell Mother I showed you.” From a reticule at her waist, she took out a tiny, round wooden box and laid it in the middle of the chessboard. Artfully, she blocked the view from the others in the gallery by her body. “There is the most curious story about this painting. De Longueville said it was painted in London by a ghost.” As his sister launched into the story, Francis undid the lid of the box and stared for a long time at the fresh, willful face. A great beauty, not a deformed, fat little woman such as he had been saddled with for the sake of having Brittany. Suddenly he was filled with anxiety. Anxiety for the boldfaced heirs this woman could put between him and the throne. And in the midst of anxiety, something else. Desire.

The Great Banquet Hall at Greenwich was hung with arras of gold, laced with an embroidered frieze emblazoning the royal arms of France and England. It was already mid-August, and the bright sun of midsummer glinted on gold and silk, steel and cloth of gold, as the gaudy assemblage of English lords, foreign dignitaries, and Papal envoys waited for the arrival of the bridal party. Wolsey was there, resplendent, beaming, along with Norfolk, Dorset, Buckingham, Suffolk, and the principal earls of the realm. A huge lace collar and a massive gold chain set off Suffolk’s broad bull neck. His complexion was reddish from the indoor heat. Sweat ran from beneath his rich, jeweled and plumed hat, gluing his dark hair to his temples. His gait, as he mingled with the crowd, was the rolling strut of a man who enjoys the highest favor. His face was a study in self-satisfaction. For his part in the wedding negotiations, the French king had awarded him a pension of 875
livres tournois
a year, an extraordinarily handsome sum for a man of “petite famille” who had risen on the King of England’s friendship alone.

Wolsey’s French pension was three times Suffolk’s, but for him it was only pocket change. Even at a celebration, he was full of business. With one of his mind-compartments, he was taking note of who talked to whom in the crowded hall. Aha, said this part of his brain, I know who is missing. The Spanish ambassador. He seethes with envy; a sign of our triumph. Simultaneously, with another mind-compartment, he was calculating how soon the backing of the Pope would get him his cardinalate. Very soon, very soon, it whispered. You have bribed everyone so handsomely. Go cautiously, go cleverly, Thomas Wolsey, and you will be the first English Pope. In one of the lesser mind-compartments, he was deciding whether he should spend King Louis’s money on redecorating Hampton Court or save it for York House. So much to do, so little time to do it in. Perhaps I need a larger staff, this brain-compartment was thinking.