Three
IT was gray dusk. Inside the Green Gate Tavern, they were lighting the rushlights, and the last passers-by could hear drunken singing coming through closed shutters. A man with a gray hood pulled closely around his face hurried past the tavern and on up Lime Street through the melting heaps of dirty snow. Reaching the edge of the city, he stopped before a tall, narrow house crowded in among the crumbling tenements that stood beneath the walls. He looked at the door. Yes, there was a niche above it with an imp carved in stone. It must be the place. But suddenly he could go no farther, his way barred by a beggar who stood barefoot in the slushy mud on the doorstep. The man took in at a glance the beggar’s long, patched homespun cloak and pallid face. Behind the intruder, the monkey’s-face door knocker gleamed invitingly on the front door of Sebastian Crouch’s house.
“Out of my way, fellow. You hinder me,” said the man.
“Stay a minute, Master Goldsmith,” said the beggar. “Give me a coin and ask for God’s blessing.” Brazenly, he barred Master Jonas’s way.
“Who are you to delay me? I say, make way,” said Master Jonas, the goldsmith.
“Go home and finish the bishop’s casting,” said the beggar. His face was hidden in the shadow of the house’s overhanging upper story.
“What business is it of yours? I am meeting someone here. Again, I say, get out of my way.” The goldsmith’s mind was full of riches and impatient with desire.
“If you go inside, I will abandon you,” said the beggar. He was slender and pale. The goldsmith looked down at the strong, white bare feet in the freezing mud.
“Abandon me? Go right ahead, you sturdy, worthless fellow. You should be working for a living, not threatening decent folk in the street.”
“Working? Do you think the cunning of your hand comes from you alone? Haven’t you seen me standing by your furnace? Haven’t you felt my hand guide yours as you poured the metal into the mold? Are you so thankless that still you want to pass through this door?”
“I do indeed, sirrah. I have business with an important man. Get out of my way.”
“Very well,” said the beggar as he stood away from the door. “I will go from you. There are others who need me more.” Relieved, Jonas the Goldsmith pushed his way past the beggar and rapped three times with the monkey’s-head door knocker. An elderly servant appeared and ushered the goldsmith into the paneled, oak-beamed hall. Outside, the beggar gazed at the locked door for a moment, then threw off the old cloak and followed them, pushing through the half-timbered wall beside the door as if it were no more solid than smoke. An old woman closing her shutters across the street saw the hem of a rich gown and the tips of a pair of tall, iridescent wings pass into the solid wall and thought she had gone mad.
Several men, Crouch’s business partners in this newest venture, were already seated by the fire. Crouch himself presided over all from a cushioned, barrel-backed chair, his feet propped up on a little stool carved like a lying dog, his arms waving confidently as he explained some point of the project at hand.
“Ah, and here is Master Jonas at last. Our company is complete,” he announced, as the goldsmith took a seat on the bench by the fire and stripped off his mittens to warm his hands. The fire irons, he noticed, were very curious in form, cast in the shape of two immense, black salamanders, their eyes formed by holes that let the orange flames wink and spark through them. It could only be that their owner was a powerful occultist. “You have seen the drawing, Master Jonas. How soon might it be cast?”
“The question is not how soon, but how much. It will take nearly a pound of gold to make it; a fortune, not even counting the silver and other precious metals.”
Crouch turned to address a man in the heavy, Italian gown of a Lombard banker. “You can provide that much?” The man, dark bearded and somber, nodded gravely, yes.
“The thing, what is it? Not a goblet, surely, the upper bowl is too flat. And as for the burnishing, it will cast a strange reflection at the face of the drinker.”
“Ah, Master Jonas, not the drinker, the seer. You are now one of our company, and worthy of our confidence. What you will cast is not a mere goblet, but the fabled Mirror of Diocletian, by which this mighty emperor was able to see revealed in its surface all plots and cabals against him, even though they be planned in the depths of the earth or the farthest reaches of the sea. The formula, until now, has been lost to the ages: gold and silver, mingled in exact proportion with certain parts of a black goat and the blood of a virgin.” Crouch’s eyes lit up, and he rolled these last words on his tongue. “It must be cast with certain—ah—enchantments. Happily, through my knowledge of antiquities, I have discovered the formula anew, concealed in a box of secrets and prophecies guarded by the most puissant demon Belphagor, whose guardian power I overcame with the most terrible commandments of the mighty Honorius. Now I have gathered these gentlemen into my enterprise; this is but the first of the wonders we shall create. We shall command the wealth of princes. We shall see across the world at a glance. We shall fly like eagles. Do you begin to comprehend now the meaning of our oath?”
The somber men about the fire nodded, and Jonas was suddenly seized with terror. What was he, a tradesman, doing in the company of such great gentlemen? If he did this work, he would know too much. What would happen to him? Ah, God, even the beggar at the door knew he should not have entered. But then he thought of the fortune that might await him, his debts, and how with cleverness, he might extricate himself to his advantage….
Invisible on the smoke-blackened rafters above the conspiratorial company, three figures, two barefoot infants with shining eyes and the pale, tousle-headed beggar in the luminous gown, were sitting and listening. Their iridescent wings were neatly folded, and they dangled their toes almost directly over Crouch’s head, peering down at the company the way boys who are fishing peer into a shadowy pool to see where the biggest fish is hiding.
“Well, well. So Belphagor’s out at last,” said the beggar.
“Aren’t you going to tell on him?” asked one of the children.
“Who’s Belphagor? Pooh! A second-rate demon at best. I haven’t time to think about him just now. I’m planning to do that ungrateful goldsmith one last favor.”
“What’s that?” cried the little creatures, their wings vibrating with excitement.
“I’m going to put my finger on his balance when he weighs out the ingredients; then the mirror won’t work properly, and they’ll all blame one another, instead of killing him to preserve the secret, which he now understands is exactly their intention.”
“Oh, clever, clever! What will the mirror show?”
“Why, their own thoughts right back at themselves. Everything they already think, they’ll see and take it for a prophecy. Conceited braggarts. It will do them good,” pronounced the beggar with a sniff.
“Then will you tell about Belphagor?”
“We-ell, when I’m done. I think I’ll follow the old demon and see what he’s up to, first. I need to pay him back for a little trick he played on me back before the Templars stuffed him in that box, and I don’t want my fun spoiled. There’s time enough to go reporting things to the archangels later.” With that, all three of them rose through the ceiling. The men at the fire thought the gusts of air from their beating wings had come down through the chimney.
“By God, Bridget, you grow more beautiful daily!” exclaimed Rowland Dallet, leaning back in his chair and setting his wine cup back among the laden dishes. Mistress Pickering had ordered a nice little supper of chicken cooked with saffron and opened a bottle of Spanish wine for the painter’s pleasure. She ordered little Master Pickering, whose round, dark head and large brown eyes had more than a passing resemblance to the painter’s, carried off to bed by the nursemaid. Master Dallet had amused the baby and his mother both with his rapid drawings of the bearbaiting he had attended with several gentlemen the previous week. Then she had played the virginals and he had sung in a mellow baritone about the
faithlessness of women. Now he returned his attention wholly to the mother of the recently removed infant and to the food on the little candlelit table by the bed. The amplitude of Master Dallet’s stomach was already beginning to bear witness to his passion for the table. In time this passion might undermine his dark good looks, and thus his pursuit of other passions, but for now all his passions, as it were, carried equal weight.
“You have no idea what I go through. No man can abide a clinging woman. Whereas you are far too lovely to ever cling,” he opined, setting down a gnawed leg bone and delicately wiping his fingers. Mistress Pickering loosed her long, black hair, smooth as silk, shaking her head to spread it over her half-bare shoulders like a dark cloak. She half smiled in answer. “Glorious,” enthused the painter, admiring the shining blue lights in the flowing dark mass. “You are perfection. Your hair. Your lovely little waist. I want to paint every inch of that delicious skin of yours. Would you prefer to be Venus, rising from the sea foam, or perhaps Delilah the temptress, reclining on a lion?” He held up his hands together, the thumb and fingers forming a hollow square, like a picture frame, to surround the imaginary scene.
“The temptress,” answered Bridget Pickering, looking up at him through her long, dark lashes with adoring eyes. It was a bit tricky for her to accomplish this, her most effective little gesture, since she was three inches taller than the painter. But height in a lover was never her first concern. In those proportions that mattered most to her, she had found the painter a perfect specimen. And when you added to this a flattering tongue, a pleasant and frequent offering of gifts, and a random schedule of work that allowed for convenient trysting, it was small wonder that Rowland Dallet was her favorite, if not exclusive, way to beguile the time while her husband was away at sea. She thought, for a brief moment, that she had lost him when he married, but soon enough the Magdalen had left port and the painter had arrived once more at her door, not the least chagrined.
“Naughty man,” she had said, “what makes you think I will have you back?”
“My damned fine equipment, madame, and your randy eye. Surely you didn’t think you could be outmatched by a shaggy little Flemish cow, did you?” And since he had brought her a perfectly stunning bracelet, she’d taken him back in a flash.
“Tell me, how’s that virtuous little wife?” she asked, glancing slyly at him as she unpinned her sleeves.
“Fatter than ever. Her face puffs like a bladder. She bleats after me like a sheep. ‘When will you be back? Can’t you fetch me some oranges? I’m wanting some so.’ She irritates me. She positively drives me off. She should study your ways if she wants to be attractive.” Mistress Pickering smiled a little, as if she thought any imitation of her to be impossible. Rowland Dallet shrugged a little as if to say, Well, I suppose you’re right, and then went on. “Ever since her parents died she’s been more of a useless lump than ever.” Dallet was seated on the bed now, undoing the points that kept his codpiece and hose snugly fastened together.
“Mmmm,” responded Mistress Pickering, “did they leave you anything?”
“Twenty pounds and some ugly foreign furniture, plus a cross-tempered old servant-woman who came with the lot. Oh yes, some cooking pots and a Turkish carpet they brought over the water with them. I suppose I could sell the wretched stuff.”
“I’ve always wanted a Turkish carpet. Is it big?”
“Little. They put it on the table. So now I have a fat Flemish wife, fat Flemish furniture, and a carpet on my table. And all for success in my trade. A devil’s bargain. The world in return for marriage to a dowdy woman. Pity me, O goddess.”
She sat down beside him on the bed, reached behind her, and unlaced her bodice. As he saw it loosen, he plunged his hand down it, while with the other he pressed her backward. As she felt his weight on her, her mind soared. It was a special kind of triumph, to lead a newly wedded man by the nose like a prize bull. And married to a younger woman than herself. What a fool that woman was to think that a worldly man like Rowland Dallet would be interested in her for any other reason than advancing his trade. She enjoyed imagining the look on the silly sheep’s face if she could somehow magically see him there, and see her victorious.
Once, just after the wedding, she’d seen the girl leaving Saint Paul’s, on Rowland Dallet’s arm. Now Bridget Pickering was envisioning in her mind the plump, almost childish little figure she had seen. What a fool: pink cheeked, round faced, with simple blue eyes, a spattering of ridiculous freckles across a tip-tilted nose, and gingery, unruly hair that crept from beneath her matron’s headdress. I’ve won, she said to the image. The girl’s freckled face vanished, and he was in her. The sweet sensation flowed through them both. The warm sweat mingled on their bodies, and his breath was coming in fast, broken gasps when there was the fierce crash of the bedroom door flung back suddenly. There was the heavy sound of men’s boots and the howling of women in an outer corridor.
“There she is, the harlot! The whoreson’s letter was no lie.” Captain Pickering’s voice drowned out the frantic cries of her maid. “Damn you! Damn you both to hell!” he shouted. Fear and shock froze her to the bed in the very act. The painter shrieked as he was pulled off her by several sets of work-roughened hands. Before she could struggle away, the captain had grabbed her by the hair and pulled her face to within inches of his. Her eyes widened with horror at the sight of her husband’s weather-beaten, hard-boned face and ferocious blue eyes. “Liar, cheat! You’ve deceived me for the last time!” he cried. She could hear the thrashing and screaming of her lover as he fought to free himself from her husband’s sailors.
“For God’s sake, no!” she heard herself shouting as the captain pushed her aside and drew his short sword. Mindlessly, she wept and clawed at his coat, crying over and over again, “No, no!”
Captain Pickering, shaking with rage, plunged his short sword through the painter’s naked belly. The painter’s face distended in an unearthly cry. Two sailors held down the bleeding body while the captain pulled his sword free and, with a curiously cold precision, cut Rowland Dallet’s throat from ear to ear. Blood splattered everywhere. There were pools of it, rivers, oceans. It flowed between the floorboards and spotted the bed curtains. The blood seemed to enrage the furious husband even more. “Whore, whore!” cried the captain, as he battered at her with his bloody fists, then flung her like a bundle of old rags into the slippery puddle at the foot of the bed. But before she lost consciousness, to the very end of her days, Bridget Pickering would swear that she saw a hideous, naked, dark shape leaning over Rowland Dallet’s corpse, smiling and picking through it for something with long, scaly fingers, the way a greedy child might pick the silver coin out of a Christmas pudding.
I woke up craving oranges, oranges from Spain. In all my life I’ve had but one. I’ll have oranges, too, I thought, as I popped my feet out of the bed. The rain had washed away the clouds, and new dawn shone pink and inviting through the studio window. Barefoot and in my shift, oblivious to the cold, I used a weasel’s tooth to finish burnishing the little circle of parchment which, the previous night, I had glued tight to a base cut from an old playing card and then left to dry. I took out my husband’s drawing of the princess. An easy job, I thought, looking at the smooth, pretty face with just a hint of a spoiled pout in the expression.
I set out a row of clean mussel shells to mix the colors in and took six of the best pencils, the narrow little squirrel’s-hair brushes I had made for Master Dallet. I ground and mixed the carnation fresh, to get the light, pretty skin tone just right, then coated the parchment and left it to dry. It was all easy; I’d done it a hundred times for him, now the hundred and first was for me. By now I was frozen through, and glad Nan had made up the fire.
Over my clothes, I put on the silk smock my husband used for miniature painting, to protect the tiny image from hairs or lint that might come from clothing, and then I sat at the worktable. I had a fierce headache; the parchment circle on the drawing board seemed to move an
d double itself in front of my eyes. My fingers could hardly bend for the swelling. All at once, I felt empty and cold. It had been more than a year since I’d put a line of my own onto paper. What if my skill had gone? What would I tell those rich Frenchmen? My God, if Master Dallet found out, he might break my bones; he might kill me.
Now I was very frightened; I could feel some shapeless, wicked thing hiding in the corner, making darkness even in the daytime. I could hear a rustling in the chimney and smell something ugly, like old, rotting wood. My skin started to crawl. “You’ve lost the art,” the thing whispered. “Better to kill yourself now, before your husband does it.” My chest was all heavy, and I couldn’t breathe. It was something, something terrible like an evil presence that was taking away my painting just when I needed it most.
Then I tried to take away my fear with the thought of all that money, and the good things I could do with it which would be entirely for others and so entirely virtuous. I’ll just start, and my old skill will come back, I thought. But the dark thing crowded more into the room, and I started weeping even though I was so stubborn as to keep hunting out my drawing things.
But as I laid the big drawing out on the table for copying, I felt the oddest pressure in the air behind me, as if someone curious were watching what I was doing. “Of course you can, Susanna,” I heard in my ear. I turned my head suddenly, and caught a flash in the corner of my eye, something that shone, all translucent, and which I can only describe as, well, oddly feathery. The light seemed bright and rich in the room, and my heart lost its heaviness. I could feel a calm sort of joy beating through my veins, where sad, heavy blood should have been. Well, I thought, now I’m seeing things as well as having a dreadful headache. Maybe Nan was right and it was all from putting my head out in the rain when she told me not to.
The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley Page 3
