The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley

by The Serpent Garden (epub)

  Then all at once the headache faded, as if someone had touched my forehead. The edges of the parchment circle regained their sharpness. A curious heat flooded through me, and I began to sweat. Oh, I thought, I must spare the parchment, so I wiped the fast-flowing drops off my forehead with my sleeve. I was soaking now, and even the silk smock was damp through. My fingers seemed to loosen and felt clever and deft.

  With the boldness of a swimmer who dives into an unknown river, I took a deep breath and mixed the first color for the line drawing, carnation with a little thin lake, and laid down the forehead stroke. There it lay, neat and correct. Inwardly, I exulted. As I felt my hands and mind connect in the old way, inwardly, I seemed to hear an odd sound, like the approving rustle of a voice coming from somewhere nearby. All around it, I could hear the faint echo of children’s laughter, like a dream or an imagining. The ugly thing, and the smell and evil rustling, had vanished as if the laughter had chased it away.

  Lightly I sketched in the features with the pale, rusty color; the proportion pleased me, and I moved on to sketch in the slashed sleeves and jeweled ornaments of the costume. These always give me special joy because I do love good jewelry, and nobody has better jewelry than princesses. “Well done, Susanna,” I seemed to hear in my ear. “Go on.”

  The picture drew me on as I saw it emerge from the parchment. In the shells, I mixed the body colors with water and gum arabic, then laid them on the tiny mother-of-pearl palette with growing sureness. Next came the shading colors, laid on in lines of a single hair’s breadth, so minute and close that they appeared solid to the inexpert eye. That is one of the secrets of a perfect miniature, as my father always used to say. Painters in large try to lay on the color in blobs as they would in a big portrait, and so lose the fineness of control that is necessary for a true likeness. They try to turn the form as they would in a large painting, with dark colors, violets, greens, and even black in the receding shadow, and so produce a sinister, dark muddle in place of luminous color. Father’s shading tones, which he learned from the illuminators, are rich and bright, only giving the illusion of shadow when seen next to the body color. All these are secrets the English painters have not yet discovered, which is why this work goes to foreigners. Foreigners and Rowland Dallet.

  So absorbed was I in the painting that time seemed to vanish. A wide and luminous space opened out around me, where common sounds became muffled. A still chiming, more beautiful than music, filled the edgeless space. Occasional comments of Nan, who would come in to say, “Why, that is very like!” and other words of praise, faded to the meaningless whispering of leaves far away in another world. A perfect pleasure in color occupied my physical being, more pure and perfect than any other kind of pleasure I could imagine. With a curious exactness, my tiny brushes found the precise shade and light to throw the figure from flat into round. At last I was done: in the fading luminosity, I ground the burned ivory for the black of the eye, which is almost a speck, fresh before mixing and applying it, so that it would shine from the picture with a true glance. A background of blue bice, richer than the sky in summer, set off the red hair and fresh, pale face. There were flashes of light caught in every jewel, and the rich gown shone like silk. I looked around, as if I had awakened from a dream. The afternoon was nearly gone. The sensation of watchers in the room seemed to fade. The workroom was again somber, dark, and empty of all presences, either good or evil.

  “What is that racket downstairs?” I asked Nan.

  “It’s that widow quarreling with some customers, no doubt. Don’t let it disturb you. The French gentlemen could be back at any moment.”

  “It’s done, Nan, and I like it better than anything Master Dallet ever painted. Listen at the door while I put the portrait in its case; you know I love gossip.” There were several plain, round, polished wood cases on hand. For a princess, there should be jewels, I sighed to myself. Well, never mind, if they want jewels, they can have a goldsmith make another case. But suppose they don’t come? Then God just hasn’t willed it, I thought. I’ll keep the picture as a sample of my work. “I’ll have to hide it,” I said to myself distractedly. After all, Rowland Dallet had sold my Salvator Mundi as a work by a long-dead Burgundian master.

  The shouting had grown louder. Then there was a clattering of clogs on the stair, followed by a positively rude banging on the door. Nan flung it open to confront the widow’s daughter.

  “Mother says she won’t have it laid out there. The lease give her right of use, and she just won’t have it cluttering up the shop. You have to take it up into your rooms.”

  “And just what is it you’re talking about?” Nan asked her.

  “You’ll see,” she answered, her eyes narrow and her smile malicious. Perhaps a gift, I thought, pushing ahead of Nan down the narrow, spiral stair. Downstairs, two sailors stood beside a long, dark-stained, canvas-wrapped bundle they had laid on the ancient rushes covering the floor. They looked embarrassed as I stooped to uncover the bundle. For a moment my breath stopped. Then I could feel a kind of curious coldness all through my body before I could hear the oddest scream that seemed to come out of me but also from far away. The skin was a bluish gray, and the clotted, open wounds, a deep murrey unlike any I could ever have imagined…. The bundle was the corpse of Master Dallet, as dead as a herring.

  The taller of the sailors, the one with the black hair and the earring, looked suddenly embarrassed as he stared at my swollen middle, and the wedding ring on my finger.

  “Um, an accident in the alley behind Captain Pickering’s house,” he said.

  “Footpads,” added the shorter one, with the rusty beard.

  “The captain came home from sea unexpectedly,” broke in the widow’s daughter, with a meaningful look.

  “—and found the accident,” interjected the shorter sailor. I scarcely heard them, my heart was pounding so. It was all clear to me. This was the terrible punishment for my forwardness and wickedness in daring to paint when I should have been serving my husband better. Now he was dead and we were ruined, all because of me and my selfishness. Who would look after us? Who would help the baby? He might have loved me, if the baby were a son. Now there was nothing. No hope. Tremors went up and down my body, and I felt faint.

  “Now look what you’ve done, and her expecting!” I could hear Nan accusing the sailors. “You’ve killed her with shock!” The first convulsion threw me at the feet of the corpse, and set the women in the room wailing. I felt heavy hands holding me down, and heard the widow giving orders, “Not there, here—do you want to kill the child as well?” As the seizure passed, the widow, who was kneeling by my side, rolled her eyes heavenward and proclaimed, “Oh, the sorrow! Only a widow can understand another widow’s grief!” Groggy as I was, I knew perfectly well that she was savoring the moment with that special pleasure that elderly people get from disasters. “What can a man know of women’s suffering!” she announced triumphantly. I could hear embarrassed mumbling from the sailors, who backed toward the door, only to find it had been barred by Nan.

  “Just see what your captain has done!” she said. “Do you know what great patrons Master Dallet has? He has painted our old King Harry the Seventh himself, and the new King Harry that is, when he was prince, and many other gentlepersons. Your master will never outlive the scandal of delivering his poor murdered corpse to his pregnant wife and killing her.”

  “He had a right—” grumbled the short sailor.

  “Nan—Nan,” I whispered, “I felt something. I think the baby’s coming.” Nan didn’t hear me, but the widow, who could hear a secret through three walls, did.

  “Murdering a poor, innocent widow and her orphan child—” the widow added, “a scandal to the heavens. All of London will hear. Your master will never escape the justice of God and man,” she announced righteously, pointing her finger melodramatically to the heavens. The sailors’ eyes darted from side to side. There was no escape through the barricade of women.

  “You tell him to
come and take care of the orphan he’s made, or the world will know,” said Nan, still hard against the door.

  “Blasted magpies—now look what he’s done. I told him to get rid of it. Now he has to shut them up,” muttered the tall one with the earring.

  “A man who does his Christian duty by widows earns only praise,” said Nan, firmly righteous.

  “Yes, and silent prayer—silent—be sure to tell him that,” added the widow, as Nan let them escape through the front door at last. Then she turned to me where I still lay on the floor. “We’ll see his burial paid for at least, and perhaps a tidy little purse for us—have you had another pain yet, my poor little dove?”

  “I’m sure I felt one—”

  “Oh, my, then, it’s coming,” said the widow, “and much too soon by my count.” Oh, that nosy widow. Of course she’d been counting. Old ladies always do, after a wedding date. As she and Nan helped me get up, she announced, “The problem with men, as I see it, is that they never tidy up after themselves. It’s the job of women to make sure that they do.”

  “True enough,” agreed Nan, “but we need to help my mistress upstairs to bed before she has another pain.”

  “But, Mother,” I could hear the widow’s daughter wailing behind me, “what about that, uh—Master Dallet?”

  “We’ll lay him out downstairs. What else? Would you have a corpse in the same room as a woman in labor?”

  As I lay down in the bed, Mistress Hull took advantage of the opportunity to peer into every corner of our rooms, which I am sure she had been perishing to do for a long time. “Goodness,” she said, “your featherbed is very thin—oh, what’s this in the cupboard, only wooden dishes, no pewter?” She took her long, prying nose out of the cupboard and turned to the fireplace, where she lifted the lid on our kettle to spy the quality of the soup inside. Old ladies like that never like to miss anything. “This cooking pot looks old—”

  “I had it from my mother.”

  “I’d have thought he’d have bought you a better one.” I could see her skinny old body practically disappearing into my parents’ big old armoire. Her voice came out all muffled from among Master Dallet’s best suits. “And these clothes—they’re all his? Didn’t he even buy you a ribbon or two? And here I thought he was a wealthy man, just waiting to take away my poor little rooms….” I pulled the bed quilt over my face, because it was a trial to have to watch all her nosiness and quite bad enough just to hear her rustle, rustle, rustle among all my things. I could hear Nan answering her back, old lady to old lady.

  “You’ve never met a stingier man than Master Dallet. Every penny went for show and nothing for my mistress, that I’ve looked after ever since she was a little slip of a girl. You have no idea of the wickedness of that man!” Her voice lowered. “Pray for me, Mistress Hull. I—I did a terrible thing. And now I’ve brought all this misfortune on us, and I daren’t tell her.” I could barely hear her whisper. “He set her so crazy, with his philandering, and her an innocent that didn’t even understand what was happening, that I begged the devil to fly away with him. And now it’s happened, and he goes to his grave unshriven, and it’s all my fault….”

  Suddenly I began to feel better. Maybe it wasn’t all the fault of my lies and painting after all. I poked just my eyes out above the bed quilt. The pains seemed to have gone away.

  “God forgive me my wicked wish, now we are left in debt and want.” Nan’s voice was sorrowful as she followed the widow as she went into the studio. “Want? I’m an expert on that,” answered Widow Hull, prying into a packet of pounded serpentine. “Oof, painters! Not much worthwhile here. You’ll have to find another painter to buy this, and even so, half of it’s junk. Perhaps the guild can arrange to aid you—hasn’t he left anything you could sell? Religious paintings? My husband left twelve Christs, but I haven’t been able to sell any. God is forgotten in these wicked times. It’s Master Hull’s Adam and Eves that I sell. And do you know why? It’s because they haven’t any clothes! Eve in the Garden, Eve tempted by the serpent. Eve braiding her hair, with serpent. Eve being spied on by Adam, with serpent. My husband couldn’t deliver enough of them, I tell you. Half the monks in Christendom must own one. Luckily, he left me a good two dozen of them, though not all were finished. Ah, me, when those are gone, I don’t know what I’ll do for a bit of sausage in my soup.”

  “Naked pictures? But I’ve never seen any in the shop.” Nan seemed puzzled. I put my head entirely out from under the covers so that I could hear better.

  “I keep them behind the Christs, they’re that filthy. But people who want them know where to come.” I could see Nan trying to distract her and lead her out of the studio, but she kept nosing about, turning over panels, inspecting shelves. Suddenly I heard her cry out, “Oh! What’s this I see here on the worktable? You can’t fool me, I’ve been a painter’s wife too long. Just look at the size of it, and the colors! The features are perfect; she looks as lively as if she could step from the case. And I can see her character from the eyes. That’s the test of a true portrait, you know. What a jewel! An emperor would buy that.” She stood back from the worktable and put her hands on her hips, inspecting the miniature with her head tilted to one side. “Now that I see his skill, I begin to regret this arrogant Master Dallet,” she observed.

  “My mistress did that.”

  “Your mistress? That’s a joke. Only a man could paint this well.”

  “My mistress is the only daughter of the great master Cornelius Maartens.”

  “Martin? Well perhaps I heard my husband speak of him, and perhaps I didn’t. He doesn’t sound like a liveryman. I hope he wasn’t a foreigner, come to steal good English livings. I tell you, if the guild didn’t burn their work, we’d all be living in the gutter.”

  “Master Maartens was Flemish.”

  “Oh—well—not that I haven’t seen some foreign work that wasn’t shoddy. Still, they can’t paint a proper coat of arms. It’s their strange ways….”

  “My mistress was raised a painter from childhood. He taught her all his secrets before he died.”

  “Now there is a strange custom, teaching a daughter to do man’s work.” The widow seemed disbelieving. She came closer to inspect the painting again. “Just imagine! It would turn her head from duty. How could she ever be a proper wife if she knew a man’s trade? No, girls should be raised girls, I say, or soon enough they’d all be wearing trunk hose and short swords, and then where would we be?” She picked up the miniature from the worktable, and her brain was thinking so hard I could almost hear it from the bed in the other room. “Still…if she paints like this…it’s a crime to waste…the damage is already done, so why not profit?”

  Suddenly I remembered something. I sat up with a start.

  “The miniature! Nan, those Frenchmen are coming any time now! We have to hide the body!”

  “What Frenchmen?” asked the widow, sensing good gossip.

  “The Frenchmen who commissioned that miniature from my husband,” I said, sitting up in bed, newly frantic. “If they know he’s dead, they won’t take it. Nan, we need that money.”

  “You mean,” said the widow, “you’re palming off your own work as Master Dallet’s?”

  “What else?” I answered. “Someone has to find money for this household, and it certainly isn’t going to be Master Dallet anymore—not that it ever was.”

  “My dear,” said the widow, with a smile of discovery on her face. “I will help you hide the body on one condition—”

  “We can’t afford to share the Frenchmen’s money,” said Nan. “We have to bury him, you know.”

  “No, I wouldn’t think of depriving the poor man of his shroud. What I propose is that your mistress there renew my supply of Adam and Eves—we’ll go halves.”

  A great cloud of worry lifted from me, and I felt suddenly that from now on, fate would look after my every need. “An excellent idea,” I said. “Halves it is.”

  “Ah, blessed be God, who answers prayer
s in such strange ways,” said the widow, as she rolled her eyes heavenward. “Now, dear Mistress Dallet, rest yourself and repair your health, while we go hide that thing downstairs. Praise the Lord it’s cold; he won’t stink, and we can have him out by tomorrow.”

  The Second Portrait

  Lucas Hornebolt. ca. 1514. Princess Mary Tudor. 1½-inch diameter. Gouache on vellum. Cherrywood case. Huntington Gallery.

  Attributed to Lucas Hornebolt, this excellent early specimen of the English miniaturist’s art portrays Princess Mary Tudor of England (1495?–1533), third daughter of King Henry VII of England and younger sister of Henry VIII. Princess Mary should not be confused with Queen Mary I (Mary Tudor, 1516–1558, “Bloody Mary”), the eldest daughter of Henry VIII and half sister of Queen Elizabeth I. The Tudor strain is clearly visible in the reddish hair and stubborn lower lip of the portrait. This miniature, most likely a copy of a larger portrait, was painted as an engagement gift to King Louis XII of France, dating it sometime in the year 1514. In clarity of jewel-like color and depiction of character in a small space, no school of painting surpasses that of the English miniaturists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

  —THE ENGLISH MINIATURE. Exhibition catalog, October 1985

  I have ALREADY TOLD YOU HOW I CAME TO PAINT THIS PICTURE, WHICH IS REALLY ONLY A COPY AND NOT FROM LIFE, BUT IT BROUGHT ME THE FIRST MONEY I EVER EARNED WITH MY BRUSH. Faces are my strongest skill, because my father was a taskmaster who never let anything get by, and he made me copy an ugly old skull he had over and over again from all angles until I cried, because he said you can’t understand the flesh unless you understand the bone underneath. And my mother shook her head and said girls shouldn’t be drawing ugly bones and he was a madman, but here I am so perhaps he wasn’t so mad after all. I see a lot in faces. I can see thoughts and hurts and dreamings and sometimes very great evil well concealed. It is a special art to catch these things in the droop of an eyelid, or the way light shines on a cheekbone, and that is what I work at most of all, because I want to get better and better at it.