“Yes I would,” I grumbled. “I love beautiful things. I don’t need to see ugly ones just to like the nice ones better.”
“You are entirely too interested in what shows on the surface for your own good,” muttered Nan, who had earned the right of criticism not only by long service but by great forbearance on that little matter of wages.
“Master Dallet says that the appearance of things is very important, and that is why he has to take such great care with his clothes. Besides, I should not be seen to burden him when he must give seemly attendance on princes and patrons.” My head and shoulders still damp, I wiped off my face on my sleeve and sat down on the bench by the fire. Mending was looking up at me from the basket by my ankles. I gave it an evil stare back.
“I suppose he considers that sufficient reason to spend your dowry at the tailor’s and pawn your mother’s wedding ring.”
“That is the sacrifice that a woman must make to ensure her husband’s great success and fortune. A virtuous woman will be repaid with honor a hundredfold for her uncomplaining patience, says my book. And when he brings home a purse of gold and buys me a silk dress, you’ll be sorry you ever let a word of complaint pass your lips.” I stuck my feet, clad in heavy stockings and homely old clogs, straight out in front of me, not touching the ground, the better to see my homespun skirt, dyed black in mourning and spotted with the gesso that would escape my apron, and imagined it transformed into sapphire blue silk, bravely spotted with embroidery. I was certain back then that all this was sure to happen someday, when he attained success because of my labors. And I did labor, more than any other woman, for another woman would not have known his art. I boiled glue for him and I gessoed his tables and made his brushes and ground his paints just as I had learned to do in my father’s house. But I never painted anything of my own anymore because it was not proper for a married lady who must live only for her husband’s good and not her own selfish pleasures.
“Ah, God, that I should have ever lived to see this day,” said Nan, looking down at her knitting and making the needles go faster and faster, clickety click. “Three days already at that godless Mistress Pickering’s, heaven give me strength!” Nan always said things like that, especially calling on heaven, because she was always full of worries—most of them imagined. But I would have been very sorry if she quit worrying about death and the devil and doomsday, because that would have meant she was getting sick, and with Mother and Father dead I did not want to lose Nan, because then I would just have had Master Dallet and he didn’t talk much.
“Oh, Nan, always so suspicious! He told me himself he is finishing an important portrait of Captain Pickering’s old mother, which Mistress Pickering is planning to hang in a place of honor to surprise him when he gets home. I think that’s lovely. That is exactly like the part where it says that a woman should always plan elegant and thoughtful surprises to bring pleasure to her husband.” I threaded my needle as I spoke and took the darning egg from on top of the mending in the basket.
“And I suppose he told you himself that Mistress Pickering was ugly, too.”
“Oh, no, he would never say anything to unflattering about a patroness, but he says she has a great deal of trouble getting around on her club foot, and that she must come very close to the portrait to see through her spectacles, and I said I hoped he was gracious to her and he said he would take care to follow my advice. So you see I know she is very plain, although Master Dallet always tries to be tactful about people with money.”
Nan sighed as if she were the greatest martyr on earth, which was one of her favorite things to do. It clears the lungs and lightens the digestion, said Goody Forster, who is a very clever midwife and also sells a powder that will make you rich if you burn it at midnight when there is a full moon. I had got some from her, but it hadn’t worked yet. And I did need something to pay Nan so she could send money to her brother who was in prison most unjustly and also for the baby, who was very badly in need of a cradle and swaddling bands.
I became very upset thinking about money and jabbed my thumb with the darning needle, leaving a big drop of blood on Master Dallet’s brown stocking. But just as I was rubbing it in so it wouldn’t show, there was a heavy sound of boots downstairs, which was very surprising, because men in boots did not come to the Sign of the Standing Cat very often. Ordinarily there were just women there, upstairs and down. That is because when Master Dallet got the lease of the house, it was on the condition that Mistress Hull, who is a widow of the Painter-Stainer’s Guild, could live in the downstairs room for her lifetime. The lease said we had the use of the kitchen once a week for laundry, and the right to come through the shop on the ground floor and up the stairs at the back of it to our own rooms, which were only two: one for Master Dallet’s studio, and one for a bedroom, parlor, dining hall, and everything else all squashed together.
This arrangement made Master Dallet malcontent because he wanted all the space for himself to have a large studio with several apprentices someday, and also because the widow and her gossipy grown-up daughter had the shop filled with very ugly paintings left by the late Master Hull which my husband feared might be taken for his and spoil his custom. Besides that, they had spread out many strange objects they had made to sell, such as knitted women’s sleeves and lumpy mittens, which Master Dallet said lowered the tone of the whole establishment.
But the oddest thing about what went on downstairs was that besides women coming to buy pins, mostly it was a lot of monks and other gentlemen of religion who came to the shop. When I asked Mistress Hull why monks wanted pins, she said they came for the devotional paintings left by the late Master Hull. Now that was the greatest mystery of all, I thought, because those paintings never changed. The Christ in Chains was in the same place every day, and that poor, ugly Madonna was dustier all the time, and the Sebastian that had his eyes painted on different levels just squinted away in the corner no matter how many religious gentlemen came and went.
So you see my ears just pricked up when I heard boots clumping instead of slippy-sloppy sandals. That could only mean one thing, and that was the bailiff had come at last to collect our furniture for my husband’s debt, and I knew Nan thought so too. Her head popped up and her nose quivered like an old hound that smells danger. Now we could hear the sound of men’s voices below, and the voice of the widow’s daughter spitefully directing the strangers upward to our rooms. We couldn’t hear what they said because that dreadful rain was rattling on the closed shutters. The fire was low and cast little light, leaving the room all dim and gloomy.
“Oh, Nan, I’ll hide in back and you just tell them Master Dallet’s not home—he left very suddenly for the Continent. A big commission—he’ll be able to pay everything he owes.”
“Which they’ll believe about as much as I do,” grumbled Nan. “No, I have every intention of telling them exactly where to find Master Dallet this time.” Nan sounded just as spiteful as the widow’s daughter, though I wasn’t sure why.
But the strangers that Nan showed up the stairs and into the bedroom did not appear to be bill collectors. They paused to peer into the open door to the studio. I watched them look with puzzled eyes at the plaster models of hands and arms, the finely made drawings, and the bright colors on the half-finished portraits of fashionable persons, so handsome and neatly painted compared to the dusty old saints downstairs. They eyed the cupboards and shelves with the boxes and distended bladders containing colors and medium, as if they would be able to judge the quality of work that might come from them.
The floor of the studio was without rushes, scrubbed down to the boards with lye and water weekly by Nan and me, the walls fresh washed with turpentine and chalk, and the whole room spotless. You see, this is how a house must be kept if anyone is going to be making miniatures and illumination, for in fine work the greatest danger is of dust, the second greatest danger being of dampness in the breath, to say nothing of gross coughing and blowing. And Master Dallet was more than just an
easel painter who could turn out a neat portrait in stained canvas or a wood tablet. At the tall worktable by the window, he prepared portraits in miniature, an art that my father had made fashionable in England when he first came from Flanders to paint for the king. Master Dallet learned all his cunning in miniatures from Father, when he studied with him at our house.
“This is the house of Maître Roland Dolet, the painter?” the taller one asked. The glistening silk and rich velvet of their clothes made a bright splash of color in the somber room. The taller one had on a blue velvet long-sleeved doublet slashed to reveal a flame-colored silk lining, and a linen shirt embroidered in gold thread beneath his heavy, rain-damp cloak, while the shorter, broader one was in green, his long sleeves lined in yellow satin, and his gown edged with marten. Each wore several costly, jeweled rings. Their spurred boots told me that they had not walked. Each had both sword and dagger at his girdle. Foreigners, I thought, from a land of sunny colors, trapped in the gray northern spring. French, by the bold cut of their clothes, and the way they spoke my husband’s name, which is really French, though his family made it English long ago. They looked me up and down with arrogant, calculating eyes, and I could feel my face turning hot.
“Yes it is, but my husband is not at home,” I answered, and still clutching my sore thumb, I showed them where they could dry their cloaks by the fire.
“Good,” said the shorter one in French, “perhaps we can deceive this woman into giving us what the master has refused.” Now I must say, that made me angry. It was not just that they were trying to trick me but that they thought me so common that I couldn’t understand them. Me, the daughter of Cornelius Maartens, painter of the greatest princes of Europe? Did they imagine I was some simpleminded, uneducated woman? In my father’s house, I learned French, Italian, music, and manners, as well as painting. I was silent with rage, and I could tell those Frenchmen took my stare for dumbness. That made me even angrier.
“Madame,” said the shorter of the two Frenchmen, “your husband last month had the honor of painting a most excellent portrait of the Princess Mary, sister to His Majesty.” Now here was something interesting. That was supposed to be a secret, but of course I had wormed it out of him when he was drunk.
“Yes, he did,” I said, “and he tells me it is her to the life.”
“We wish to purchase the master drawing,” said the first Frenchman.
“My husband never sells his drawings,” I said, firmly. A painter’s portrait drawings are his stock-in-trade. Suppose the sitter wants a copy for her aunt in Yorkshire? She certainly has no intention of sitting again and may well have shipped off the first portrait to some admirer. So to make the copy, the painter returns to the drawing he made at the sitting, where he has written in all the colors. My father said that in France, where all the gentle families like to have portrait books composed of faces they admire, other artists pay to copy the drawings, but it is just our bad luck that isn’t the fashion in England.
“We are prepared to pay handsomely. Surely a woman as young and charming as you would like to set herself off with a gold necklace, or some pearl eardrops.” His voice was warm and oozing, like syrup. Ha. Liar. Did he think he was seducing some housemaid? Did he think I was so silly I knew nothing of the value of the drawing? Now I was just boiling, and I could feel my face getting hot, which I could tell those Frenchmen took for modest blushing, because of their shameless leering.
“New jewelry is exactly what my husband would notice first. Do you want him to think I have a lover?” But when a Frenchman opens his mouth, the Devil listens. Who else could have put the idea in my mind that I had at that very moment? The thought of it just plain took my breath away. It was a large idea, a splendid idea, a lie of most grandly sinful proportions; I’d spare the drawing and take my payment in good English cash. Master Dallet would never know.
“My husband would never give up the drawing, but why not commission another painting?” I asked, just as calm as could be, as if the Devil weren’t prompting me.
“It would take too long,” answered the tall one, “and we must send it by—” The short one stopped him.
“A copy in miniature could be delivered by tomorrow evening,” I answered. “My husband’s fee is three pounds.” They looked at each other, shocked by the price. Really, I thought to myself, it would dishonor my husband, who only portrays persons of rank, to ask for less.
“Three pounds?” asked the tall Frenchman, rolling a sarcastic eye at me.
“My husband is a Master of the Guild of Painter-Stainers. No one excels him in fineness of work. If you doubt me, go elsewhere and seek another painter. When you see how poorly the work is done, then return here.” Nan sucked in her breath at my daring. But I could feel something inside me just like a wild beast stirring, and my boldness just grew and grew because when you let bad seeds that are wrong ideas in you they just grow like those weeds and tares you hear about in church and smother out all the good intentions. The Frenchman looked taken aback, and triumph thrilled through my veins.
“You are sure it could be done?”
“Absolutely,” I answered, avoiding Nan’s shocked stare.
“We will refuse the miniature if it is not an exact copy of her features,” said the shorter man.
“My husband’s work is the finest in England,” I answered, as they departed, grumbling.
“What on earth possessed you to make a promise like that?” Nan’s face was horrified. “You know the master won’t be home, and if he is, he’ll be in no condition to paint. And a miniature, you careless, thoughtless thing! His hands shake when he’s been drinking, and he’ll have a headache and a foul temper! He’ll be furious when he finds out what you’ve promised. You’ve ruined his reputation, all with your foolish tongue!”
“I know how to put those three pounds to most virtuous use, Nan. Besides, I need to have that money. I have it all thought out. This way I save my husband from cares and worries exactly the way a thoughtful wife should always do and anticipate his needs and comforts. He won’t even be home until after it’s done, and we’ll have firewood and sausages and linen bands and a cradle for the baby without his ever having troubled the burdens of his mind.” Nan looked at me stupefied.
“What are you saying? Susanna, I see your brain turning like a windmill again. Oh, this is trouble. I should never have let you put your head out into the rain.”
“Have you forgotten that I am Cornelius Maarten’s daughter? Remember my Ascension? Remember my Salvator Mundi, that could be fit in the palm of a man’s hand? Even Father’s friends marveled. I have the same hands as when I was a maid. Look at them! Have they become stupid from scrubbing floors?” I held out my hands. My fingers were all swollen up with pregnancy, and the narrow wedding band cut deep. One palm was all stained with color, and there was blue dye beneath my short-cut fingernails.
Nan pushed a loose strand of gray hair up beneath her cap. All the wrinkles in her face twisted up with worry.
“Wouldn’t you like to help your brother?” I said slyly, with the Devil prompting me. “You know Master Dallet said he would help your brother if he could. It would be just as if he did it.”
“But suppose he discovers—?”
“It’s really not a bit deceptive, you see. After all, for a whole year now I’ve burnished his parchments, ground his colors, and even painted in draperies and the embroidery on sleeves. Why, that’s practically a whole painting in itself, except for the faces which are what makes it a painting by the famous Rowland Dallet and worth so much. The only difference is that this time, we’ll have the money direct in our hands to use the way Master Dallet would have wanted if he’d thought of it. These foreigners will just take it away with them and no one will be the wiser, even him.”
“But I promised your parents—”
“Oh, that promise! You’re always throwing it up to me! Didn’t Master Dallet promise to keep me when my parents arranged my marriage? I’m beginning to come to the conclu
sion that he deceived them, Nan.”
“Oh!” she said, shocked, and crossed herself. “You must never speak ill of the dead. Your mother was a saint. Your father was a man of perfect judgment, perfect! But when a Master of the Guild so condescended to study with him, a foreigner, what could he think but that it was all for love of you? Ah, lord, he was so certain it meant a golden future for you that he couldn’t see anything but good in the man.”
But painting was in my bones, in my hands, in my eyes. My brain was humming with the plan of the picture, the way I’d lay out the palette. I wanted it again in my hands, the mother of pearl shining beneath my colors, all arranged just so. I wanted the tiny neat brushes, which we limners call pencils, arrayed on the worktable, I wanted to see the shine of color as I first laid it across the tinted ground of the parchment. I looked at his mending, there in the basket by the fire. Suddenly, without knowing why, I hated it. I hated the wrinkles his living had made in it, I hated the smell of his body on it. I grabbed the basket from the bench and upended it into the fire, ugly brown stocking and all, and then stormed into his studio. The gray light of early spring was already failing, but I spread my arms wide, as if I could catch all the light in the world in them. “I’ll have this,” I said, “and may the Devil fly away with you, Master Rowland Dallet.” Behind me I could hear Nan scrabbling to rescue that ugly stocking from the fire. My ears were deaf to her agonized wail:
“But I promised your mother to keep you out of trouble!”
As I mixed the glue and cut the parchment to prepare the base for the next morning’s work, I hummed to myself, “Three pounds, three pounds and we shall be rich. The froggies will take it away and no one will be the wiser.” Like that man in the Bible who is so busy counting his granaries or whatever it was that he forgets to repent of his sin and so comes to no good end by being forgetful, I never even stopped to ask myself what two mysterious French gentlemen, who didn’t even give their names, wanted with a miniature of the king’s sister.
The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley Page 2
