The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley (33 page)

Claude of France, heiress of Brittany, eldest daughter of Anne of Brittany and the King of France, and Duchess of Angoulême, was in her dressing chamber, attended by several of her favorite ladies, a half dozen spotted, hairy lap dogs, the Duchess of Alençon, her sister-in-law, and Gaillarde the Fool, a fierce, dark-browed, sharp-tongued little woman no taller than a dwarf. Claude herself overshadowed the little woman by only an inch or two, limped badly, and was, in addition, immensely fat, her face puffy with some strange disorder, her eyelids swollen and her eyes squinting. An unfortunate luck of the blood, everyone knew. She resembled her mother, but some unhappy trick of breeding had pushed the French princess from the merely ugly to the abnormal. Sweet tempered and simpleminded, she was still far from her twentieth year. As if to compensate for the cruelty of nature, humanity had made accommodation. Alone in the court, she had no enemies. Her mind was incapable of perceiving that she was being used. To her, everyone was handsome, everyone was clever, everyone was virtuous. And because the courtiers enjoyed seeing themselves reflected so admirably in the mirror of her simplicity, they never disabused her of her notions.

“Oh,” she said, looking down disconsolately at the embroidered crimson velvet gown she was wearing, “this gown sorrows me. Mother not dead a year, and the king has ordered that I put off mourning in honor of my stepmother. Even for my own wedding to my lord the duke, I wore black. How could he forget Mother so soon?”

“When a man catches sight of a redheaded woman, everything else flies out of his mind,” said Gaillarde in her funny bass voice, and with a mincing walk, and head held high, she mimicked the new queen in that droll way she had. Marguerite, the Duchess of Alençon, burst out laughing. “He has told the court that three times last night he crossed the river, and could have done more if he wanted. An astonishment of nature! Blame the red hair.” Gaillarde patted her own dark head in an imitation of primping. Now even Claude laughed. Then a puzzled look came over her face.

“Three times?” she said slowly. “But even my lord, who is so much younger…” She shook her head as if thinking deeply. “It must be because he is a king,” she announced, as if she had solved a very complex puzzle.

“That’s it!” announced Gaillarde, and Marguerite snorted. Her own mother, Louise of Savoy, had stayed away from the festivities in pure rage, pleading illness and the state of the roads. But Marguerite’s husband had featured prominently in the ceremonies, and so she had smiled and smoldered while the old king celebrated his wedding to the woman who would displace her brother from the throne. How sure that foreign woman seemed of her beauty, how cold, how arrogant! And how the old king seemed to simper over her. Disgusting! And what a great train of followers she had brought with her, all clattering away in their alien tongue, rude, boastful, and ill-mannered!

“Things will be different now,” said Marguerite, thinking to enroll Claude in her cause. “The English swarm everywhere. They will all want favors and influence. To think that only yesterday they were attacking our cities.”

“Yesterday? I thought yesterday was the wedding…yes, certainly it was yesterday. The foreigner brought a large suite so she could hear her own language. Mother did that, you know. She could not be happy without hearing Breton about her. Of course, English is different. Breton sounds comfortable, but that English! What an ugly-sounding language! I’m sure they must be embarrassed to have such a language. Doubtless they will try to learn French.”

“Ha! They think they are speaking French!” announced Gaillarde. “Hey, mounseer, move-o zzee cheval, je swee gentilhomme, goddam, goddam!” She imitated the rolling, graceless, swaggering gait of an English lord. The ladies all giggled. Gaillarde, encouraged, added a leer to her performance, then pushed an imaginary hat over one eye and gave a tug to the waist of an imaginary doublet as she pretended to be seeking out a likely lady. Claude looked puzzled, then, when she saw the others laughing, she pretended to laugh herself, so as not to be left out.

“Oh, Madame, that’s them exactly. They have no manners!” exclaimed one of her ladies.

“But some of the new queen’s ladies have lovely manners,” said Claude. “That one that played so sweetly, Mademoiselle de Boline, for example. She has been raised at the Regent’s court and speaks almost like one of us. And, oh! Madame d’Alençon, I must show you something—” Claude went to a large chest and rummaged among the gloves and stockings she kept there. Then, triumphantly, she held a sheet of paper aloft. “You see?” she said, “I can so find things after I have put them away. Look at this.” She brought the paper and spread it out on her dressing table for Marguerite and her ladies to see. “This one, here, beneath the angels, will be the queen my mother, and the one on the other side will be the king in full armor, kneeling. And there, in the center, at the hem of the Virgin, see that sweet little winged baby? That is my brother, the Dauphin. Just so he looked before he died. She will paint them all just this size, and put little joints between the frames to form a triptych that folds in on itself. See this? It will all be no bigger than my hand.” With a pleased look on her face, she set her fat little palm beside the tallest drawing, a Virgin on a cloud, with a winged angel peeping from a corner and a little cherub entangled in the hem of her flowing robe. “I can take it with me everywhere, and always think on the goodness of the Virgin, and the blessing of heaven.”

“She?” said Marguerite. “Who is doing this for you?”

“Oh, the holy father, the English Archbishop Wulsei, has sent the cleverest, most pious widow to us, who paints these lovely tiny pictures to bring us closer to heaven. So you see? Not all English are bad. After all, we are all Christians.”

“That we are,” agreed Marguerite. “Pious, you say?”

“Oh, very pious. At first, I thought perhaps I might not wish her services. It is not respectable for a woman to go wherever she wishes, to travel without a husband. I had Mademoiselle de Boline question her in her own tongue, and she said she was a widow, whose husband left her nothing because he was murdered, poor thing, so she must make her own way. So then I thought, it will do no harm just to see what she can do. And she is so very respectable. She is never seen without a very fierce, dour old Englishwoman who protects her honor better than a mother. So I called her back, and had Mademoiselle de Boline question her again. And I found her conversation most edifying, for a person of low degree. She reads holy books every day and seems to know so very much about the life of the Holy Virgin….”

“Reads books, you say?”

“Oh, very virtuous books. She told me of one, by a very devout man, that gives instructions to wives and widows. I think it should be made into French, to aid and comfort widows in their sorrow.”

“English virtues into French,
hmm
,” said Marguerite, and the oddest little smile turned one corner of her mouth up. “I think I would like to see this prodigy. Send her to me when next she comes to you.” It must be this one, she thought, looking again at the sketch. This is the one who painted the portrait de Longueville sent. Virtuous, indeed. I’ll have the real story, so I can tease de Longueville with it. I like the idea of the little devotional triptych. Perhaps I’ll have one myself. Claude is too much of a simpleton to appreciate this work. A drawing of a monkey that was supposed to be her mother would please her.

A door opened far down a corridor, and she could hear scurrying footsteps traversing the long, tapestry-hung chambers into Claude’s quarters. A maid of honor, young, out of breath, her headdress askew, was running toward her.

“Madame! Madame! There is news! Oh, what a scandal! The English queen is weeping in her chambers, and all her ladies are weeping, too!”

“What is this?” asked Marguerite, as Claude and her ladies turned toward the newcomer expectantly.

“Oh, Madame, the king has dismissed the English queen’s entire suite. He says he will have only Frenchmen and women serve her.”

“Do you know more? What has brought this about?”

“Oh, he is mightily incensed against that Madame Gil’for’ who came with the queen. She puts on airs, and says who may see the queen and who may not. And she is always there, even when he would be merry with his queen, and he cannot be merry with her when someone he dislikes so much is always there. Oh, he says no man ever loved his wife so much, but he would rather be without her than have such a one as that Madame Gil’for’ serving her. So now she is weeping, and he is lying down again, scarcely able to move with the gout.”

Claude and her ladies had clustered around Marguerite and the attendant, all eager to hear the news. “Ah yes, the English, there were too many,” said one.

“It was their airs. I myself have disliked that Mère Gil’for’, she is a foul-tempered dragon.”

“It is good they will be gone. They could help her carry on intrigues, and the king is too old to catch them.”

“It is the honor of France….”

“Oh dear, oh dear!” cried Claude. “If they go away too soon, I shall not have my picture finished. I must go to my lord and beg that he intercede with the king. He must not send away the paintrix with the others. Or that charming little Nan de Boline. And Mademoiselle Bourchier, why, she is almost French. Surely, they are not displeasing to him like that haughty Madame Gil’for’.”

But as usual, it was Gaillarde who had the last word. With the liberty allowed jesters, she plumped herself in the duchess’s own chair, tipping her nose up arrogantly and assuming a broadly comic English accent. “I am sorry,” she sniffed, “the queen is not receiving today. Who are you? The Pope? Oh, too bad, you’ll just have to wait in the antechamber with the others. After all, I am Madame Gil’for’, and a woman of great importance in Reechmon’. Oh? You have not heard of Reechmon’? Then that proves you are unworthy to know
me
.” The ladies dissolved in laughter at this portrait of provincial snobbery, and Gaillarde clapped her stubby-fingered hands together, the bells on her red velvet dress quivering as she applauded herself.

The Ninth Portrait

Anon. Early sixteenth century.
Lady at the Virginals.
8
×
9”. Silverpoint on prepared paper. J. Paul Getty Museum.

Falsely identified in the upper-left-hand corner as a portrait of the young Anne Boleyn, this delightful drawing illustrates a typical evening in an upper-class household of the early Renaissance. Two good-looking couples in Italian dress are seated at a table, part-singing from a sheet of “table music,” printed on all four sides for ease in sight reading. An older woman sits dozing over her embroidery, while two little dogs fight over a scrap beneath the table. Behind the virginals, a young man with foxy eyes and a long nose leans perilously close to the lady’s bosom as he helps to turn the pages of music that sit before her on the instrument. The domestic charm and sly humor of this drawing, as well as the precise and slightly stiff draftsmanship, have led to its identification with the Flemish school.

—R
ENAISSANCE
D
RAWINGS AT THE
G
ETTY.
Exhibition catalog

I
made
THIS PICTURE AT
M
ISTRESS
A
NNE’S REQUEST TO SEND TO HER FATHER, BUT THEN BECAUSE OF THINGS THAT HAPPENED IT DID NOT GET SENT AND SO
I
KEPT IT WITH MY OTHER DRAWINGS FOR A LONG TIME.
Mistress Anne was brown-haired and slender, and most clever and interesting in conversation, as well as skilled in several kinds of music. She also had a sixth finger on one hand, which she usually hid in a fold in her skirt except when she was playing, but I did not draw that, because it would have annoyed her. I would never have thought her destined to be a queen, but that is how it turned out, although it is not part of my story. I always thought she was more likely to wed some rich country gentleman and spend her time telling him how to get on at court, which she was very good at. Perhaps that would have been a better idea.