The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley (25 page)

“Your stars are false. I burned the hair last night, and that’s a sure sign.”

“You burned
my
hair last night? When did I say you could?” Now I was irritated, too. Nan has no right to go fortune-telling with my hair without asking first. Everyone knows if a lock of your hair doesn’t flare up when you put it on the fire, you’re doomed to death by drowning.

“It didn’t blaze up?” asked Mistress Hull, looking worried.

“It didn’t flare up much,” announced Nan, gloomily triumphant. Mistress Hull nodded knowingly.

“Not
much
,” she repeated. “Ha!”

“I plan to be shriven before we sail,” said Nan, in a tone full of doom.

“If you cared about your friends, you’d make a vow to Saint Christopher’s relics and come home safe. That’s what I’d say.” Mistress Hull nodded righteously.

“Care about your friends!” Nan stood up in such a rage she nearly overturned the bench beside the table. “Well, I like
that
! We’re doomed to die a watery death, and our
friend
isn’t even sorry!” Now I popped my feet out of bed, because they weren’t noticing me anymore.

“Watery death, indeed! You just want it because you’d rather see us weeping than prosperous! Selfish, I call it! See if
I
pay for any funeral mass for
you
!” Mistress Hull grabbed up her pot and flounced out the door, giving it a hard slam.

“That dreadful old witch! Get dressed at once, Susanna. We’re going to Saint Sepulchre’s. Stars, she says! I’ll show her! Is that silver shilling of mine still hidden in the sewing box? I’ll put the biggest candle of all in front of that relic! And it won’t do a speckle of good! I’ll show
her
who knows more about doom!” It was late afternoon by the time we left the house, and as we set off up Fleet Lane, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that eyes were watching us.

Saint Sepulchre’s is not far and very fair and large, being rebuilt by a rich man in my father’s time. It has a tower with a great bell that rings the night before executions and sits right next to the Saracen’s Head. Of course I had my usual problem, and by the time we were near the inn, dogs were following, ugly spotted ones and a poor yellow hound with only one ear. Nan stopped to shoo them, and I was admiring a woman with a dashing green velvet hat being helped from her horse in the courtyard, when there was the sound of a shutter opening above us. Then I looked up and it slammed all of a sudden. The dogs wouldn’t go away at all but sat all around my feet with their tongues hanging out, and then clustered up so close around me as I walked that I very nearly tripped over them. But we shut them out of the church, which was very dim and cool and dusty, and I was glad to be rid of them.

Nan reconsidered buying a candle, and I could tell she thought they were too high; so we decided we would just pray at the relics in the north chapel, and promise a candle if the saint got us back safely. The afternoon light was all yellowy and dim in patches between the columns in the nave, and the altar was lost in shadow. Racks of candles flickered and smoked before painted wooden saints in their niches. Here and there were chantry priests going about their business, businessmen from the parish, bent on asking favors from heaven, as well as a lady all in silk with her maid come to visit a tomb. The chapel seemed deserted except for the dark, musty carvings, and the most dismal triptych at the altar. There was a Descent from the Cross, with Christ dripping in blood to hide the fact the man had painted Him with bony legs like a grasshopper and facial bones all wrong. Also you couldn’t tell the men from the women except that some were wearing turbans to show that it was far away in the Holy Land, and the Roman soldiers were wearing French armor, which I suppose the painter thought was exotic. I found it hard to have religious thoughts in front of that painting. But I also did not feel so bad about all those vines I’d painted on Adam when I saw that trick with the blood.

There was just a bit of dim, colored glow about the window, so you couldn’t really see the thigh bone and the piece of hair shirt in the saint’s reliquary at all, even though it had a little crystal panel to let people peek in. Besides, it was set too far up for me to see properly, in a niche high on the wall with a lot of dusty woodwork carved with ugly faces and plantlike things under it. Over it was the saint, carved in wood and painted very gaily, with his gown all tucked up for wading, and with Baby Jesus on his shoulder. There was a bank of candles lit in front of the statue that gave off the rich, heavy odor of melting beeswax. Above them, twinkling in the reflected light of the candles, little ships and hearts in silver were hanging up around the reliquary as thank offerings. I was just feeling embarrassed that Nan was being so stingy with the saint when I thought I saw a shape in darker black standing quietly in the black shadows behind the screen that stood on the far side of the chapel altar.

“
Pssst
, Nan, do you see somebody there?” I whispered, pulling on her sleeve.

“Why of course she does,” said a man’s voice. The shadow moved and became visible. I could see a stray bit of light catch pale green eyes that seemed to glow in the dark. Above them, two coils of white rose from his forehead like ram’s horns. There was the sound of a boot on the hard tile floor and the soft whisper of his velvet robe as he stepped toward us out of the shadows. “I, ah, discerned you might pay a visit to the saint on the eve of your journey. And I craved, for the sake of your husband, whom I loved like a son, to give you some assistance to help you meet the demands of foreign travel. And, too, I can offer you a letter of introduction….”

“Bishop Wolsey has arranged everything for my convenience,” I answered, my mouth almost too dry to speak.

“Ah, Bishop Wolsey. Tell me, has he given you a letter to deliver?”

“I don’t need letters of introduction. I’ll be serving the princess.”

“No message? How strange. Not even a painting delivered by your hand?”

“Why would he entrust me, a woman, with letters? I go to paint two wedding miniatures. I am sorry, I must be going.” I dodged away from him, but he was too fast. In a few long strides, he had caught up to me. He grabbed me by the shoulder and whirled me around, pressing me back into the screen. The agreeable mask dropped and I could see lunacy glittering in the eyes.

“Don’t lie to me. I have means to see secret truths. The mirror showed you plotting; I saw you in your chamber making secret conversation with a man in a dark cloak. Ha! You’re surprised? Never underestimate my powers. And now I tell you, the secrets your husband stole from me—you traded them to Wolsey and carry them now to France. Who would ever suspect a woman? But ever since you gave the bishop your favors, he…”

“I did
not
,” I said, trying to push his hand away.

“How
dare
you!” said Nan, who is ordinarily very quiet around gentlefolk.

“Ashton has betrayed you,” said Crouch. “Don’t you understand? Ashton is mine.” He leaned closer. I couldn’t move. I turned my face away from Crouch’s to keep his foul breath from me. My bones felt liquid with revulsion.

“Sieur Crouch, how well met, and how unexpected. Surely I do not interrupt some important business?” A foreign voice, even and polite, spoke from beside the columns just outside the chapel entrance. A strange man, with a narrow, intelligent face, was standing there in the nave behind Sir Septimus just like a guardian angel. Crouch took his hand off me and turned to meet him.

“Bellier,” I heard him say.

“I have long yearned to meet the famous paintrix, Sieur Crouch, and when I saw her pass beneath the window of my little lodging, I hurried forth, only to find that you seem to have taken up collecting miniatures ahead of me. Perhaps you could introduce us?” Crouch stood there, too furious to speak. “No? Please accept my apologies for being so abrupt, Madame Dolet, but I am Maître Bellier, theologian, traveler, and collector of rare works, at your service. I have in my possession an exquisite allegory of yours,
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
, which I would love to discuss with you sometime at your leisure.” He bowed grandly, which seemed to enrage Crouch even further.

“So it’s you who have it, Bellier. That explains your gloating image. I saw your evil eye glinting in the gold. Is it you who has the dark cloak? By coming here you have revealed your secret. How dare you think you can come so as to gloat at me? Do you know my powers?” At the word
powers
Bellier sniffed and smiled condescendingly. Though Crouch was taller and wider and more threatening than the strange man, it warmed my heart to see how this Master Bellier seemed to stop him dead with his piercing glance and cynical, knowing smile. There was a weakness in Crouch; he was vulnerable to someone. The sudden paralysis of will that Crouch had caused in me began to fade. “But you do not yet have all of it, remember that,” Crouch said to the foreigner. I would have been pleased to see him so angry and so rattled, except that his anger also contained something very frighteningly insane, which made my hair want to stand on end. And what was this “it” that he didn’t have all of? What was stirring his mind to ever-greater madness? While the two of them faced each other, I began to slither sideways as silently as possible. Nan saw what I was doing, and tiptoed to the chapel entrance. Crouch put a hand on his dagger, but Bellier just tipped back his head and smiled, and I could see the hilt of a short sword protruding from an opening in his foreign robe. I took another few steps.

“Ah, Sieur Crouch, I see Madame Dolet is anxious to return home before evening. I am afraid I must take leave of you to accompany her on her way. I wouldn’t want her to be struck by a
falling tile
.” I couldn’t understand a thing that he meant, but it seemed to strike Sir Septimus very hard and make his eyes blaze with rage. He didn’t take a step as Master Bellier took my arm as if I were some great lady and led me out into the nave, with Nan following behind.

The late-afternoon shadows were long as we stepped out of the great arched doorway of the church. The dogs had tired of waiting, I guess, and were gone. As we passed the open courtyard gateway of the Saracen’s Head, I could see that a merchant, his mules, and several drivers were crowded inside, and hear the cries and commotion of ostlers and stable boys running to their assistance.

“I am afraid, Madame Dolet, that the Sieur Crouch is quite evil,” said Master Bellier, in an agreeable voice as we passed the corner of Saint George’s Lane.

“I already know that,” I answered.

“You would. A painter of such mastery could not miss the signs in his face. The crosses on the line of Mars…and he has grown quite frantic of late…. Now, about that charming allegory of Eden that you created, tell me about the symbolism. We do not, for example, see Adam’s face, and he is entirely covered with vines….” I was silent with humiliation. That is how bad business and a sinful past come to trap a person just as she is on the eve of truly remarkable success and respectability. It was just like the moral tale in chapter the fourth of
The Good Wyfe’s Book of Manners
only worse because it was happening to me. If Crouch hadn’t been following me with evil designs in his heart I would have run away from that foreigner with his earnest, probing questions, but instead I just answered with only one word at a time, which wasn’t very polite.

“Why are you so quiet, Madame Dolet? Is there some secret you wish to impart. Your delightful art…Tell me, what significance has the mountain?” Gingerly, he led me around a pile of entrails and kitchen garbage in the street, keeping me under the overhang of the houses as we passed into Fleet Lane.

“I copied it,” I said.

“Copied it?”

“From another painter.” We were almost at my door.

“Ah,
another
painter, yes,” he said, in a strange voice. “One living here?” I couldn’t bear to tell him. Suppose my father who was already so mad at me up in heaven that he said I was worse than an Italian heard him?

“No,” I said.

“So charming, so modest,” said Maître Bellier. “Do you ever travel? I often do. I maintain my principal residence in Paris, though it has been ill kept since I became a widower.” Mistress Hull had the shop shutter down for air, and you could see right into where Saint Simon with the squinty eyes and misplaced navel reigned in glory over his corner of ghastly painted saints. Again, Maître Bellier smiled his amused, cynical smile, and I knew right away he was an excellent judge of art.

“The House of the Standing Cat. Your house, I believe? We shall have to speak again, Madame Dolet. I know it is fated.” He looked deep into my eyes. Now he was white haired and rather too old for me, but you know how foreigners are. And he really did have an interesting sort of face, with excellent, if somewhat narrow bones beneath the skin. “My admiration for you will lead our destinies to intertwine,” he said in a deep, meaningful way. But I was all stiff and pink with embarrassment, because I was sure it was my Adam and Eves that had stirred him up. I hoped he would go away quickly and not make a scene. Luckily he was a gentleman and went away after kissing my fingertips, which I wiped off.

“Well,
there
was a gentleman,” said Nan. “Here we’ve never seen him before, and he pops up and does you a service just when you needed it. I do believe he’s interested in you.”

“He just likes paintings, Nan. You shouldn’t mistake him.”

“No, I can tell. He’s interested in more than paintings. Otherwise he wouldn’t have mentioned that he’s a widower and doesn’t always live in an inn. I wonder what that house he mentioned is like? He seems well-off, too. Did you see his gold chain? And that ring with the curious design? The ruby was the largest I’ve ever seen. And here we are going to France. Think about it, Susanna. You might do well.”

“I thought we were doomed, Nan.”

“Oh, that was before we visited the saint. Now, you see, he’s listened, and this strange gentleman is a Sign.”

“Another Sign? Well, at least you think this one’s favorable. There’s only one thing I don’t understand.”