The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley

by The Serpent Garden (epub)

  “Imagine the nobleman’s distress when I—uh, he, found that the jewel could not possibly have been completed. Still, when he entered the artist’s studio, the lord found there a masterwork, more perfect than earthly hand could create.” The company drew in its breath as one. “‘From whence did this perfect jewel come?’ the lord asked. And the artist’s young wife, still uninformed of her great loss, said that her husband had appeared silently that morning and worked all day without meat or drink, vanishing silently when the work was complete. Little did the wife suspect what the lord knew instantly: that it was the spirit of her dead husband, devoted beyond the grave, that had returned to complete the commission and so provide for her and the infant.”

  “Astonishing!” cried another gentleman.

  “So touching. Oh, in spite of the wickedness of the world, there is still true married love.” Mother Guildford wiped away several large tears.

  “In the City itself, you say?”

  “I wonder who it could have been. Did you say you knew this fellow?”

  “I have sworn secrecy for the sake of a lady’s honor,” said de Longueville, content with the sensation he had made.

  “Tell me,” teased Jane Popincourt, “the great lord was you, wasn’t it?” De Longueville, sated, stretched his naked body back on the pillows of the great bed. Even though the heavy velvet curtains were pulled shut around them, Mistress Jane had discreetly pulled the linen sheet over her in place of a shift. De Longueville smiled impishly and pulled at the sheet.

  “Show it to me again,” he said.

  “Oh, not until you tell,” she cried with mock modesty.

  “Why, then, I’ll tell: it was me,” said de Longueville, twitching at the sheet.

  “But what woman was it?” asked Mistress Jane, suddenly alarmed and clutching at the sheet with both hands. “Oh, you ingrate! You have another lady!”

  “In addition to you, who are everything?” he teased. “Never think it, my sweet little Jeanne.” Then, spying the look on her face, he went on more seriously. “It was a commission for another—person—which I carried out. The woman is a great lady, and you will forgive me if I am sworn to protect her reputation.” Suddenly, Mistress Jane did not trust his sensual smile, his insinuating voice. Did those dark eyes light up for her alone? She scrutinized his face, trying to read some secret meaning there. She had risked everything, seeing him like this. She had risked her reputation, and her place with the princess, if the word got out. But if he abandoned her, he might well gossip about her. Men, oh, who can trust them? she thought. When can a man ever resist boasting about a conquest? Look at him there, betraying someone else’s secret to make a sensation at a dinner party. No, if she didn’t want him talking, she would do best to keep him entangled, she thought. She smiled and pulled aside the sheet.

  “Beautiful,” he said. “You are more lovely than Venus herself.” As he rolled on top of her for a second passage at love, she resolved to question his footman, find the widow, and discover whose picture had been painted by the ghost. Distracted by her worry, she found him decidedly less satisfactory than before. But de Longueville, who liked to see his mistresses insecure, rejoiced in her edginess and let passion take his mind from the web of secrets he had so artfully concealed from her. The very least of them was that he was dispatching a portrait in miniature of the king’s sister, Mary Tudor, to Louise of Savoy, mother of the heir to the throne of France, at the request of that most formidable and ambitious lady.

  Thomas Wolsey, the King’s Almoner, member of the King’s Council, Bishop of Lincoln and master of military logistics for the recent war in France, was seated in his cabinet at Bridewell when Robert Ashton, one of the secretaries of his privy chamber, along with the priest who was the confessor of Jane Popincourt, were announced. Wolsey was then in the act of conferring with the master cook of his privy kitchen, a personage held in high esteem in a household where food was of the first importance. The master cook was no small person: he was clad in damask satin, with a gold chain about his neck, and he carried himself with the confidence of one who commands two master cooks of the hall kitchen, two clerks of the kitchen, four kitchen grooms, two yeomen of the pantry, a yeoman of the scullery, and a yeoman of the silver scullery, to say nothing of an army of lesser laborers of the kitchen, men, women, and children.

  Wolsey’s shape illustrated his passion for cuisine, but beneath the effulgent flesh and appearance of health lay a weakness of digestion that must be catered to absolutely. It was the master cook of the privy kitchen’s job to keep the internal workings of his master as finely tuned as a well-oiled clock, for as the Wolsey-clock functioned, so prospered the realm. Wolsey had been the secret power that planned England’s future since the death of the shrewd, stingy old king who had fathered Henry the Eighth. Under Wolsey’s capable management had come all the business neglected by an amusement-loving young king. Whenever there were statutes to consider, treaties to ponder, papers to be inspected before signing, in short, whenever dull work enclosed in a cabinet threatened, the king was only too happy to have Wolsey stand beside his stirrup and say, “Don’t let this matter spoil your day’s hunting, Your Majesty. Take your princely pleasure where you will, while I, your humble servant, shoulder the dull duties of the council and dispatch your business entirely according to your will.”

  So well had Wolsey done that prince’s will in the dull matters of business that dull money, dull manors, and dull bishoprics had fallen like ripe fruit into the King’s Almoner’s busy, if plump, hands. At this time two great projects occupied entire compartments in his multicompartmented and ever-calculating mind, beyond the project of tomorrow’s dinner, which occupied a section that might be called “miscellaneous, recurring.” The first project was the search for a manor located near the capital city, but free from its pestilential airs. Wolsey feared illness as only a man with complex and far-reaching plans can. And so he employed tasters, hired physicians, and procured water from faraway sources. The thought that so humble a thing as poisoned air might lay low his grandest schemes offended him; he preferred enemies of rank. He had secured the lease of a place on the river called Hampton Court where his physicians had assured him the air was salubrious; now a part of him was given over to planning a residence worthy of his splendor.

  The second project, rather less personal but no less dear to him, involved the complete realignment of the powers of Europe, in England’s favor, of course. The centerpiece to this plan was the engineering of an alliance with England’s greatest enemy, France, which would offset the power of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor. But the key to the plan was a woman, or, rather, a flirtatious, lighthearted, spoiled girl of seventeen, Mary Tudor, the king’s younger sister. Just as Wolsey had been worrying about how to approach his project, and almost as if God had willed it, the King of France’s wife had died. Through secret negotiations (how convenient de Longueville had been!) Wolsey had offered the King of France Henry’s newly widowed sister, Margaret, the Queen of Scotland. But the old king had rejected her. The Queen of Scotland, the king had heard, was old and stout, having already reached her twenty-fifth birthday.

  Wolsey, like a cat watching a mouse hole, waited while the old king inspected other brides and found them wanting. Quietly, he took the old man’s measure; a man trying to recapture his lost youth, speculated the shrewd cleric. He wants beauty, he wants frivolity, he deludes himself into thinking he acts only for an heir. With an almost satiric craft, the King’s Almoner had dangled the prize bait in front of him: he had offered to seal an alliance between France and England with the most beautiful and frivolous princess in Europe.

  The French king hesitated; Wolsey dispatched by secret courier a life-size portrait of her head in three-quarters view, her lips parted, her eyes shining invitingly beneath long lashes (it had not hurt that the master painter was quite handsome and had a most flattering tongue). It was a picture calculated to set an old man’s blood boiling. Wolsey smiled at the remembrance of it.
Even his French agent who had received the portrait had expressed his admiration. The most delicate operation, accomplished brilliantly. In what great secrecy he had had to work, to prevent a counter-scheme from being hatched against him by the English king’s father-in-law, the King of Spain, whose spies were everywhere!

  Now, dinner having been planned and all his mind-compartments humming, Wolsey sent off the Master Cook. The King’s Almoner was expecting de Longueville shortly, with news from France, he hoped. Instead it was Master Ashton, the newest of his privy secretaries, and a priest whose name he ought to have remembered, but which seemed to escape him at the moment. As his servant and the strange priest were shown in, Wolsey made a point of looking up from some papers with which he appeared to be busy as if to say, Well, be quick about it.

  “Your Grace, you have asked me to report any news that pertains to Longueville’s activities. I have come to you because I have reason to believe that he is carrying on a separate correspondence with France.” Ashton’s face was calm as he delivered this news, but in an unconscious gesture, he unrolled the tightened fingers of his left hand with his right. Wolsey noticed it. Ashton might as well have written his nervousness on a sign and hung it about his neck.

  Ashton had good reason to be nervous; he was knowingly interrupting the great man at his labors. Being cast into outer darkness was the very least of the penalties that Wolsey imposed on those who annoyed him. And Ashton, in the course of his duties as a confidential agent, errand boy, and letter writer in four languages, had already become well acquainted with the utter ruthlessness that lay beneath the silky surface of Wolsey’s ambition. But Ashton, just twenty-five, was new to the bishop’s service and had no important family connections. He needed to take risks to rise. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, said Ashton to himself. I can’t let Brian Tuke spend all his time wallowing in the bishop’s favor. It’s Ashton’s turn for praise.

  What Ashton would have been humiliated to realize was that he had been retained for the sake of an unfortunate gift that endeared him to Wolsey: to anyone with a mind to see, Ashton’s honest eyes signaled every thought that went through his head as clearly as if it were written on his forehead. It amused Wolsey to read the continual display of thoughts that passed through Ashton’s hazel eyes, and occasionally to give Ashton a prod, or even several, just to watch his face change. The fact that Ashton was intelligent made it even better. Reading Ashton made Wolsey feel older and cleverer, and was always a pleasant thing to do on a rainy afternoon, when reading documents cloyed. For this reason, he tolerated Ashton’s youthful brashness, his tendency to be too hasty and too passionate in matters he considered moral, his fits and moods, and the irritating little habits that signaled he had not been trained at court. Besides, the man was useful; he was courageous, he was nosy, he was persistent, and he was eager to rise.

  Wolsey cast a long, purposefully shrewd stare at Ashton, taking in at a glance the strapping form, the mobile, intelligent face, the livery dusty with travel and hastily, hopefully, brushed. He measured with a glance Ashton’s overeager eyes, in which trepidation and calculation warred with triumphant delight at his own cleverness. Aha, thought Wolsey, whatever he has here, he’s planned a counterblow against Master Tuke. It is bound to be interesting. Brian Tuke pleased Wolsey for exactly the qualities Ashton had no hope of possessing: he was smooth, deferential, flattering, and pliant to his master’s least wish. Unoriginal and politic, his rise within Wolsey’s household was unhindered by the kind of embarrassing incident that Ashton was likely to entangle himself in. He had served longer than Ashton; he did better than Ashton. Ashton resented it, and strove mightily to overtake him. Wolsey enjoyed the rivalry immensely, and every so often did something to overbalance it, first one way, and then another, just to watch the two of them circle each other like fighting dogs in the pit. Another amusement for those dull moments between plans.

  The priest, who had let Master Ashton’s silver tongue, golden coin, and mention of the mighty bishop’s favor worm the secret from him, seemed suddenly to shrivel under Wolsey’s cold gaze.

  “Surely, de Longueville is too cautious to bring any deep scheme to the confessional. Are you sure it is not some frivolous social correspondence?” Wolsey made his voice icy and was rewarded by the sudden fading of the expression of cocky cleverness in Ashton’s eyes.

  “It was not he who confessed, but Mistress Popincourt, who was wild with jealousy that he had secretly procured the portrait of another woman,” Ashton broke in. Wolsey made his face darkly dubious. Ashton’s eyes were filled with a sudden, deeply gratifying, anxiety. “This priest here will bear me out,” said Ashton. The priest nodded in affirmation of Ashton’s words.

  “Another woman? What other woman?” Wolsey’s curiosity was piqued, and he let it show. Good, thought Ashton, I’ve aroused his interest. Now we are safe. The image of Master Tuke’s snobbish, irritated glare danced delightfully in Ashton’s mind. Next time, Tuke, it will be Ashton who walks behind the bishop, carrying the dispatch case and record books to the council meeting, not Tuke. Wolsey noted the return of the rivalrous glitter to Ashton’s eyes, and was silent.

  “Hear me out, and perhaps you will draw conclusions similar to mine.” Best not to let it out all at once, thought Ashton. Through hard experience abroad, much of it spent observing ruthless men of power, Ashton had become an expert at the timing of telling a good tale. In addition, he could, when sufficiently drunk, mimic the accents and affectations of others in a manner calculated to bring the company into fits of helpless laughter. These were skills of great value to a man who at sixteen had inherited ten pounds and a horse at his father’s death, almost as useful as his neat clerk’s handwriting, and the gift of languages he had discovered in his brief career as a mercenary abroad.

  Wolsey sunk his chin in his hand as he listened. His right eyelid drooped in a way that seemed most sinister to the confessor, who seemed to have lost the power of speech. Ashton paused, and continued. “At a supper at Greenwich, de Longueville was enticed by the guests into telling a ghost story. It seems a certain lord offered a commission to paint a miniature from a stained canvas portrait in large to a certain painter in the city—”

  “Yes, yes, go on.” Wolsey was impatient with long stories.

  “When he returned to collect the miniature, he met a priest outside the house of the artist who had come to inform the artist’s wife that her husband had been murdered across town the night before. But to the lord’s surprise, the portrait was complete anyway. The wife, unknowing, gave out that in ghostly fashion her husband had returned and finished the work.”

  “Ghostly fashion indeed,” snorted Wolsey. “The man had an apprentice who finished the job and the wife palmed off apprentice work for master’s wages.”

  “That was my thought, too, Your Grace. The French are so excitable, you know. The picture, of course, was reported to be a masterwork of the highest order.” Ashton pulled his face into a droll imitation of a French connoisseur of art. Try as he might to be serious, he could not disguise the fact that he loved a good practical joke. This was another quality that had caused Wolsey to retain him, despite his other defects. It made him the perfect agent. Many of Wolsey’s finest schemes had the quality of practical jokes on the universe, and it was the unconscious understanding of this that made Robert Ashton able to act at a distance exactly as Wolsey would have done if he were there in person. It was a talent that Wolsey at the same time both valued and despised, as one despises some less elegant part of oneself that should have been left behind when one rose in the world.

  “Of course,” Wolsey responded. “What else would give so excellent a finish to a story? But go on.” Wolsey had become interested in spite of himself. He shifted to a more comfortable position in his big chair. Good, he’s settling in, thought Ashton.

  “Mistress Popincourt divined through a slip of the tongue that de Longueville was the lord involved, and decided he had another mistress, one he favored more, for wh
en had he ever worn her portrait around his neck? She searched his things, subtly questioned his servants, and found he had indeed had the portrait painted, and paid three pounds for it, too, which made her even more furious. But he did not have the portrait in his possession. The servant would tell no more but only blessed himself to keep the ghost off. Being curious, I made inquiries and found that de Longueville had sent off a pouch containing a small box sewn into an oiled silk cloth to Dover—”

  “The portrait.”

  “Exactly. It was to be entrusted to a French captain who would see it delivered to Louise of Savoy, mother of the Dauphin.” The fatal shot. Ashton’s face was serene.

  “Louise of Savoy! That scheming woman! This French duke plays a double game with me!” Wolsey stood suddenly, furious. “Then the portrait must be—”

  “Your Grace, in a moment you will know for certain.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your Grace, knowing your mind in these matters, and being your faithful servant in all things, I sent a fast messenger by post and intercepted the ship. My servant bribed the captain’s servant and secured the package, on loan, as it were—”

  “Brilliant! I forsee a grand future for you, Ashton,” Wolsey interrupted. Ashton’s eyes lit up.

  “—which I have here,” Ashton finished. Triumphantly, he produced a leather pouch and placed it among the papers and dispatch cases on Wolsey’s immense oak desk. The victorious secretary saw Wolsey’s eye glow beneath the sinister, drooping lid; he noted with mixed delight and relief the imperceptible smile and the controlled calm in the bishop’s voice as he said:

  “My dear Master Ashton, will you be so kind as to show out this excellent priest and to call the clerk of my closet?”