The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley (40 page)

“Where on earth did you find him, my dear Bourbon?” said the Duc d’Alençon to a tall, dark, rather sour-faced young man, his padded doublet sweat stained from his jousting armor.

“I got him through a contact with the emperor,” said the Duc de Bourbon, “and had him invited as an ambassador of goodwill.”

“Goodwill, indeed,” said d’Alençon with a laugh.

“Take a message to my dear friend, the Duke of Suffolk,” Francis was saying. “The finger I hurt in the last encounter has not yet recovered. I am most grateful that he has agreed to stand in my place to accept the mystery challenger.” There was a flurry, and a page in velvet livery hurried away to deliver the word to the duke. The French knights roared with laughter, and the immense champion chuckled deep in his vast chest.

“And now, we must have a French surcoat for you, my dear chevalier,” said Francis. “And we have here a French helm, so that your German one will not give you away.” As the squires armed the huge German, the French knights commented as if he were not even there.

“My God, he’s a monster.”

“It’s fair. The English are too large. That is how they cheat. It gives an unfair advantage.”

“He’s twice the size of that ox, Suffolk. He’s sure to bring us the victory.”

“A German mystery challenger for France; there’s a joke.”

“Chevalier, you must know Suffolk’s tricks. Remember the sword stroke from below—like this—that was how he tricked me.”

“Are you sure you have it?” The French knights crowded around to coach their ringer.

“I have practiced the defense against this stroke only yesterday. Remember, I have been the emperor’s champion,” replied the immense knight. “The Englishman will surely fall.”

In the corner, the little angel twittered with indignation. It seemed hardly fair, when he couldn’t cheat himself, that the French were cheating so outrageously. With an annoyed sniff, he rose through the ceiling of the pavilion and fluttered off to the English pavilions. Here was the same jumble of horses, squires, armorers, and spectators all picking their way through the muddy grounds beyond the lists. The French messenger picked his way through the crowd past two women, one carrying a drawing board followed by another with a wooden case. Behind the two trailed an ancient lackey in the livery of the Duchesse d’Alençon, carrying a stool.
Aha
, thought the little creature flying above, that will be Mistress Susanna, the one who paints funny pictures.

“Mistress Susanna, Mistress Susanna, look ahead of you and go back the other way.” Susanna looked up into the air and saw nothing. She rubbed her ear, wondering where the clear little child’s voice had come from. Then she looked ahead of her and saw two men facing away from her, riding on immense black horses in the direction of the lists. The sight of one of them, a tall, broad, white-haired man in a green velvet gown, made her blood run cold. He was looking away from them. But to Susanna, even his back looked sinister.

“We need to leave,” she said to the older woman carrying the case.

“At last you’ve seen sense,” the older woman replied. The lackey, not understanding English, said nothing.

“No, I’ve seen something worse. Septimus Crouch. The murderer. He’s here.”

“Here? What on earth for? He must be following you.”

“He must be,” whispered Susanna, her face shocked. Panicked, she turned and began to run, and tripped on a tent peg, pitching into the mud. An armorer’s assistant came to help her up, and at the sound of a woman speaking English in this foreign place, several other curious people offered their help, pulling at her elbows and rescuing her drawing board from the mud. Curious, the little dark-eyed creature fluttering above turned back to listen in on the commotion.

“Oh, a picture,” the armorer’s assistant said. “It’s a sketch of our duke, triumphing over those French dandies. See here, you’ve done the engrailing on the tasses wrong. Come in and see the duke’s own armor if you like, then you’ll get it right.” Susanna looked about her, confused, while Nan tried to wipe the mud off her skirts.

“Mistress Dallet, Mistress Dallet!” a boy’s voice called. Susanna looked up at the sound of her name. The voice, cracking between high and low, sounded familiar.

“Do you know her?” someone asked.

“Why, it’s Mistress Dallett. She is the most wonderful paintrix in the whole world,” said the familiar voice. Susanna looked up amazed.

“Tom! Oh, Tom, you’re not a ghost, are you? I dreamed of you drowned so many nights.”

“I’m not a ghost; just ask anyone here. I—I meant to come looking for you, but they’ve kept me so busy.”

“Tom, they told me you were lost with the
Lübeck
and Master Ashton.” Susanna flung her arms around the angular, freckled boy, who blushed horribly.

“Say, mistress, I was almost drowned on the
Lübeck
, too,” said a wag.

“And me!” cried another.

“How did you get here, Tom?”

“Master Ashton lashed me to a spar with his own belt. He saved me, Mistress Susanna.”

“Then he died a hero, as they said.”

“He didn’t die, Mistress Susanna. He’s getting well in Calais, with the others. The water was too cold and gave most of them that were pulled out the lung fever. He got me a place here with the horses. He’s too sick to come now, and he says he’s waiting for a letter from the archbishop.” Susanna turned pale and put her hand to her heart. Her eyes were huge.

“Alive,” she whispered. “He’s alive.”

“He says he keeps turning up, like the bad penny, much to everyone’s annoyance.”

“Then he’s the same as ever….” Tom looked at her face and was suddenly angry and envious, all at once, even though he felt guilty for it, and for not being grateful enough. But in that moment he realized that Susanna’s face had never looked like that for
him
and never would. Jealousy pricked him. He stuck his thumbs in his belt and cocked his head to one side.

“No, not the same. He’s all thin and wore-out-looking. Limps, too.” And not handsome anymore, even if I
am
plain, he thought with satisfaction, thinking of Ashton’s sunken, dark-rimmed eyes and skeletal, gray face. “He got very sick with coughing and talked nonsense a lot. A lot. He’s full of suspicions, you know. You wouldn’t like what he said. He’s not a true friend to you, for what he believed, even for all you’ve done for him. It’s me who’s been faithful to you, Mistress Susanna. It’s me.”

“Will he come, Tom? Do you think he’ll come?”

“Hey, Tom, you rogue! You’re needed to assist in compounding a poultice. The duke’s best horse has gone lame, and he is beside himself.” A tall stranger with a bridle thrown over one shoulder came to pull Tom away.

“I suppose,” said Tom grudgingly, as he turned away from Susanna to follow the stranger. Above them, the little angel who had been hovering close to listen in was transfixed with a sudden look of joy, then sped away with a flash of iridescent wings.

Susanna watched Tom go with a pang of guilt. She had been cruel, without meaning to. She wanted to run after him and say she was sorry, but she knew that would make it worse. She couldn’t hide from Tom what she felt, and it was not for him. Robert Ashton. He was alive. I’m bound to see him again, she said to herself. He’ll come. It was all meant to be, after all. But then she thought: What if I was wrong? What if I felt nothing in him, and what I thought I felt in him was only in me? What if he steals kisses like that from all sorts of ladies and counts them all the same? What if I really don’t like him when I see him again? What if he never comes? Her heart in a turmoil, she turned to trudge back through the mud to Les Tournelles, where she and Nan could wash out her dress. Suddenly, the tourney had lost all its charm for her.

“Nan, do you think we could go to Calais?”

“Nonsense, Susanna. You get giddier every day. Stick to your work, and what will happen, will happen.”

The cherub spotted the French page at the entrance of the grandest of the pavilions and followed him in.

“What’s this?” said the duke. “Duke Francis asks me to stand for him? Bigod, the man’s a weakling. That finger is something only a lady would cry over.” The knights around him laughed. But then Suffolk’s face grew serious. His best horse had gone lame, and the one he had counted on as a spare seemed to have become ill from eating French grain. He needed a fresh horse, a good one. He was about to ask Dorset, when a child’s voice, as clear as clear, seemed to speak from a point just above his ear:

“Look outside, my lord, and take your purse with you.” He felt something like a fly somewhere near his shoulder and tried to swat it off, but there was nothing there.

“Come outside a moment, my lord of Dorset; I have had an idea,” said the Duke of Suffolk. Striding out of his pavilion, surrounded by his followers, he spied a pair of preposterous horsemen, so overmounted as to appear ridiculous. One of them was white haired, a man more suited to a sweet-going gennet than a warhorse. The other sat all crouched up, his stirrups too short, his reins dangling as if he had never ridden anything before. Yet his mount, a great, shining black stallion so spirited that he seemed to breathe fire, was as docile as a lamb. Perfect horses, shining blue-black, the biggest he had ever seen. Horses to take a real warrior to victory. Quickly, the duke said to one of his knights, “See there? Go and ask those knights if they will come here. I would buy one or both of those horses.”

Septimus Crouch was gratified by the attention paid to him. Once dismounted, with the plentiful aid of several of the duke’s retainers, he practically simpered.

“My lord, I cannot sell these horses, even for the honor of England. They do not belong to me, but to my companion, the most noble foreign prince Belfagor-o.” Crouch had been quick to realize that a fellow like Suffolk would recognize any name claimed to be of a great English or French house. And he was desperately angling for the coveted invitations to the festivities that he had promised Belphagor he could easily obtain.

“Belfagor-o? What kind of name is that?” asked the man who had helped him from his horse.

“Oh—ah, Italian. Belfagoro is a mighty prince in his own state.” Belphagor bowed his head slightly. The duke bowed his head equally slightly.

“What state is that?” asked Suffolk, who was very rigid about precedence.

“Oh, why, um, Tartarus. Yes, Tartarus. He is an archduke.”

“Tartarus? I’ve never heard of the place.”

“Oh, one of the smallest Italian states. In the…ah, mountains, very isolated. The archduke is unvanquished in war, but he…hum, concentrates his efforts these days on horse breeding.” Belphagor was enjoying himself. There was a time when he would have sprouted up fifty feet high, spouting fire, just to terrify the man, but now that he was learning civilization, he delighted in the game of jockeying for precedence. What fun, for a being who must usually sift through walls, invisible, to be instead invited in by his victims, in full infernal form! Belphagor felt intoxicated with the new game.

In the meantime, the duke’s master of the horse was inspecting the two mounts, who were being held by one of the duke’s pages. Amazing creatures. Their hooves seemed made of solid steel, rather than horn, and there was no soft spot in the middle. A soft, hot, orangeish glow seemed to come from their nostrils, as if they were stoked by some internal furnace.

“Why should I help the English in the victory when I favor no side?” Belphagor asked the knight who had made the duke’s offer.

“Because, Most Noble Lord Belfagoro, our lord the duke is undefeated in the lists. Now the French have used his own chivalry to betray him, they know his horses are done, and they expect the victory. So if you sell us these horses, you can place bets at very favorable odds in the French camp and then trick the trickers, collecting a large sum in addition.” The imps grumbled to each other in their own language, and the boy holding them felt the hair going up on the back of his neck.

“Ah, I see. A double betrayal and wealth in the bargain. Agreed,” said Belphagor, nodding agreeably. “But the horses can’t be sold. They belong to themselves. However, I can rent you out their services for the length of the engagement. I would, however, expect handsome payment.”

“A hundred pounds.”

“Not good enough.”

“And two seats in the stands.”

“Where in the stands?”

“In the middle, with the ladies.”

“No good,” said Belphagor. “I’m not a lady.”

“In front then, next to the princes of the blood.”

“I suggest, Most Noble Lord Belfagoro, that you accept this offer, since you may enhance your esteem in the eyes of others by sitting next to the princes of the blood.” Crouch, smooth and politic, stood by Belphagor’s elbow.

Belphagor nodded affably at Crouch, whose face was a study in disdain. How curious, thought some of the onlookers. We have never seen an uglier lord. His trunk hose, what a huge cut, and his shoes, as big as boats. And what curious eyes, all sunken and red beneath beetling brows of never-before-seen hairiness! White powder like a clown and—is it possible? No neck at all. Still, a man who could own horses like that must be respected, no matter what his appearance, even if it is rather dim in places.

“Will you require an indemnity, if the horses are killed?”

“The horses will not be killed,” said Belphagor, and the master of the horse silently nodded his head. Not those two hellhounds, he thought.

“Let me try them first,” said the duke.

“Of course, Illustrious Duke,” agreed Belphagor, and then he spoke softly to the two imps in their own language. “Go with this fellow. Don’t give him any trouble. Give him the victory. I, Belphagor the Great, require it of you.” The imps grumbled, but the nearest one allowed himself to be mounted by the silly mortal with almost no fuss at all. Then the duke put the horse through his paces: tight turns and figures, cantering on both leads, a stop from a full gallop. Pleased, he tried the more complex maneuvers that require the most perfect training; the piaffe, the levade, and the other movements used in parade and war.

“Perfect,” he breathed. The immense black thing beneath him was not even damp with the exertion.