The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley

by The Serpent Garden (epub)

  The clerk, a young priest who was an expert at decoding intercepted correspondence, pried loose the seals intact with a practiced hand and delicately cut the threads that held the oiled silk tightly around the box. Inside was a letter folded tight, in cipher, and a plain round case, about two inches in diameter.

  “The cipher is a simple one, de Longueville’s usual, Your Grace,” said the clerk, who had brought his decoding paraphernalia with him. He lit a candle from the fire and delicately applied heat to the letter to bring out any hidden writing, then set to work. In the quiet of the room, the only sound was that of his pen scratching, as Wolsey opened the portrait box with the practiced care of a great connoisseur. But even he was taken aback by the glittering little image that lay inside the turned wood box.

  “The Princess Mary, as I surmised,” he said. “Louise of Savoy must wish to know the face of her enemy.” He turned the box sideways to catch the light at a different angle. Wolsey considered himself an exceptional judge of all that was most exquisite in art and music, as befits a churchman of rank. “This is a copy of the Dallet portrait. But it surpasses the original, a thing most surprising in a copy.” He held the picture closer to his good left eye. “And, I judge, it is not by Dallet’s hand.” He gestured to his code clerk, who understood instantly what he wanted, and handed the bishop his magnifying glass. “See here,” said Wolsey, peering through the glass, “the work is finer. See the hatchwork under the jaw? It is almost invisible, the strokes are so finely wrought. This work is not done in England. Or rather, it was not until now. Yes, I imagine we shall find that Dallet had a foreign apprentice—one who surpassed him, and whose name he concealed out of jealousy.”

  “It is indeed most finely made,” said the code clerk, who had finished copying the brief, ciphered letter into plain English and had taken a moment to peer at the miniature painting in his master’s hand.

  “Master Dallet would not long have retained his crown had he let this apprentice be known. The boy could have set up as his rival even without a mastership,” observed Ashton, his intelligent face intently peering over the code clerk’s shoulder as he, too, inspected the painting. Secretly, he gloried in the moment of shared connoisseurship. Ha, take that, Tuke. The great man confers with me on matters that require a real mind.

  Wolsey set down the painting and took up the transcribed letter. “Pleasantries,” he said, “and not much more. ‘The image which accompanies this letter is that which you requested of Princess Mary Tudor, younger sister to the King of England. I can vouch personally for the fact that it is a true portrait in the liveliest detail of her character as well as her features—’ Longueville must be in regular correspondence with this woman. The wretch! Now, how can we turn this to our account?” Wolsey tapped an impatient finger on the arm of his great cushioned chair as he thought.

  “De Longueville is right about her character. This artist seems to portray the very thoughts of the subject through the features. It is really most extraordinary,” said Ashton. He was a good judge of painting, and genuinely impressed and puzzled at such a display of talent from one unknown. Wolsey turned suddenly to him and said,

  “And what thoughts do they seem to be? How will that Frenchwoman read this picture? Answer honestly, now.” Ashton answered suddenly, with the vigor and bitterness of a passionate soul who has just been jilted and still has the event fresh in his mind.

  “She will see a light-headed girl whose thoughts turn on love, jewels, and clothes—a hot-tempered girl without the bitter steadfastness necessary to carry out far-reaching, ambitious plans. In short, a person easily manipulated—”

  “—and no match for herself,” finished Wolsey. “It is, perhaps, better to let her know this, so she will not try to maneuver against the marriage. We will send it to her by slow courier when the arrangements are nearly complete. Then we will offer prayers that the old king can still get an heir on his new bride—an English heir for the throne of France.”

  “But if the king dies while the infant is a minor—”

  “We must begin laying plans to assure that the English queen is made regent, otherwise—”

  “—otherwise Francis of Angoulême becomes regent, and Louise of Savoy the regent’s mother. A mother ambitious above all that her son Francis have the throne.”

  “Precisely. Accidents occur to young children, Ashton. An open window, a sick wet-nurse. Louise will stop at nothing to see her son Francis of Angoulême as king. No, we must always be three steps ahead of her.” We. The word sounded splendid to Ashton. We. His intelligent eyes watched Wolsey as England’s most brilliant strategist reworked the plans in several of his mind-compartments. Already, the King’s Almoner calculated, he had obtained the princess’s trust. He had no doubt that she would be guided by him. But at such a distance! Wolsey shook his head, regretting that she was so young, so incapable of understanding the forces arrayed against her. If only it had been Margaret! Regretfully, Wolsey closed the portrait case. “I hate to give this up,” he said, “but I am consoled for its loss by the thought that I will soon have the unknown master painter in my household service.”

  The code clerk was already reaffixing the seals on the letter with a careful hand. Wolsey sighed as he saw the oiled silk restitched about the box, exactly as if it had never been intercepted, and the outer seals reattached. “Master Ashton, go find me this painter and bring him to me here at Brideswell,” he said. “I can make good use of a man who can depict the soul with a brush.” Dismissing his code clerk, he turned his mind to the method by which he would confront de Longueville with his treachery and bring him even deeper into his power.

  On the rue de la Harpe, on the left bank of the river that divides the city of Paris and not far from the Hôtel de Cluny, there stands a pleasant old stone house with slate-roofed turrets and tall, narrow windows with blue shutters. Behind its kitchen, with its huge fireplaces and stone ovens, there is an overgrown, walled garden, where herbs grow wild. Its owner, one Maître Bellier, is a doctor of theology who travels extensively on business. But even though he is not currently at home, the neighbors observe that he has been receiving guests this afternoon. The last of them, masked, tall, and imperious, is late. He strides through the hall as if he owns it, descends a narrow stair, and taps a signal on a closed door to the cellars. A man with a candle opens, and then bars the door after them. Behind wine casks, the entrance to a tunnel is concealed, whose dark slippery walls give off the smell of old and fetid water. They plunge unerringly into the dark, descending rapidly along a corridor of smoke-blackened brick until they enter a vaulted underground chamber lit by torches. The floor is slick marble, and at the center of the room, a square pool of black water shines with the orange, reflected glow of the smoking torches. At one end of the pool, a company is seated around a heavy oak table. The thronelike chair at the head of it is empty. This dank and buried ruin is the meeting place of an ancient secret society, the Priory of Sion, mother organization of the Knights Templar, and dedicated, for reasons known only to itself, to the overthrow of the Valois, the ruling house of France.

  “Brethren, the Helmsman,” announces the man with the candle, and the grave men in black all stand. The tall man throws back his mask, revealing a pair of smoldering, dark eyes set in a narrow, overbred face, tight and bitter with some old resentment. The light picks up the shine of gold embroidery where his black cloak parts. Evidently, in the outer world, he is a man of rank and power. At a sign, the knights of the Priory of Sion sit.

  “Brethren,” announces the Helmsman, “two grave matters are before us. The first is that the King of France has selected a bride. The prophecy slips from us.” A babble of voices responds.

  “But is it not the hour? The stars have foretold it.”

  “Louis the Twelfth hopes to renew the Valois line. As it stands now, he has no direct heir. Only Francis of Angoulême remains between us and the Great Task.”

  “The restoration of the True Blood to the throne.”


  “The bride is young, the king is old. Should she bear sons, she will become Queen Regent of France, and her children will push the throne even farther from our grasp.”

  “We must set her against Francis, and that harpy, his mother, Louise of Savoy. The two camps will destroy each other.”

  “Carefully, carefully, brethren. We must lay plans. They say the bride is young and foolish. She is the pawn of the churchman who controls the English throne, the bishop Wolsey. He craves an English heir for the throne of France as mightily as we crave no heir at all from the House of Valois. But he will have problems acting at a distance. There is a weakness….”

  “We could assassinate Wolsey…”

  “No easy task. He is guarded and has a man taste every dish from which he eats.”

  “But it is the second business that is the greater risk,” the Helmsman’s voice breaks in. “Maître Bellier has written us from London. An agent of this Wolsey has recently purchased several antique coins for the bishop’s collection of ancient coins and medallions. These are Merovingian coins, coins of King Dagobert….”

  “The True Blood!”

  “The London Hoard…”

  “Exactly. Someone has found it. And if Wolsey’s agent, in pursuit of more antiquities, recovers the manuscript that is concealed with it, then our Secret will fall into the hands of the Church—and the Valois.” The faces of the men at the table are stiff with horror.

  “It must be recovered.”

  “Exactly. I have sent instructions to our brother Bellier. The manuscript must be recovered, at any cost.”

  “Louise of Savoy?” spluttered de Longueville. “But of course I maintain correspondence with many of the great families of the kingdom—why should I not correspond with my friends?”

  “In the heart of the most delicate and secret of negotiations? Milord de Longueville, your future as well as mine is tied to this great affair.”

  “Then I beg to remind you, Your Grace, that Louise of Savoy and her son, the Duc d’Angoulême, must be kept as friendly as possible in this matter. The marriage risks snatching a throne from their grasp. The princess will have powerful enemies at court, and it is better that you maintain a connection with them.”

  “Nonsense. Louis the Twelfth appears old at fifty-two, but he is still sound. And if he dies when I surmise, his new queen will be Queen Mother, and most amenable to our interests.”

  “I tell you, I have heard that he is ill with grief since his old queen died. He wept on her tomb and swore that he would follow her within the year.”

  “Pure melodrama. A younger woman will restore him.”

  “Or kill him, my lord, in which case you will need other friends at the French court.”

  “Milord of Longueville, you argue for your own convenience.” Wolsey feigned an explosion of wrath, then paused, appearing to check himself, shaking his head as if his Christian conscience were battling his lower instincts. Then, brushing a hand across his forehead, he spoke as if weakened by the internal struggle. “But still, I am a forgiving man, and much beholden to you for your private service in this matter. You will be richly rewarded should this marriage be accomplished. But secrecy is essential—the agents of the Holy Roman Empire abound like fleas in this great city. So be careful to spread no news, even inadvertently.” It was a magnificent performance, designed at once to terrify the younger man and to give him a sense that he somehow was in control of the older man, that he could understand him. But it was all illusion. The hidden depths remained unfathomable. The sinister, drooping eyelid twitched. The creased mouth was an emotionless plane.

  “But my expenses now—” burst out the young man.

  “Ah yes, costumes, masques, worldly pleasures. I hear you were magnificent at the ball at Richmond. And then,” Wolsey added slyly, “there is the matter of three pounds for a portrait in miniature. Quite a princely sum. Surely you could have had it for less?” De Longueville looked taken aback. “My dear young man, never assume I don’t know everything,” Wolsey added cozily. “Tell me, they say it was painted by a ghost. Does that account for the extraordinary fee?” De Longueville, happy to change the subject, began the narration of the ghost story that had made him so popular at dinner parties for the last week. And Wolsey, feigning amazement, marveled inwardly at the gullibility of the otherwise hardheaded Frenchman.

  Seven

  THERE was something very discouraging about staring at an old lady with a dragon’s eye and trying to think about how to make her more beautiful without making it a lie altogether, but only something of a fib, and how she imagines herself anyway. The studio looked ever so naked, and so did our rooms which were fair pitiful. But still it was better than being on the street or in some charitable institution scrubbing floors or worse for sour-tempered holy people. Now I always secretly had it more in mind to be painting inspirational things like Christ and the Holy Virgin in order to display my virtue. But the dragon lady was the mayor’s wife and had money, and we needed another bed to make up for the one that had been taken away. Now here was where imagination came in, and it was just as well as I had such a powerful one because it took a lot to imagine that lady young, but I did it.

  First I painted out her chins in shadow with a nice gray violet and made a bit of a shine along a made-up jawline that I copied from the princess, who had a very nice one. Then I shifted the highlight on her nose, which made it much less horsey without actually shortening it—which she might have noticed. Then I put another glaze across the whole face to reduce the wrinkles. By this time I was having a good time because it was really a bit like making an entire new person, and I was losing my sense of shame. Then I decided to make her jewels larger and shinier and put more of a gloss on her silk dress because Dallet never did do jewels right, and his dresses always look as though they came from the same place, just different colors. It was strange; as I worked, I had the feeling of watchers looking over my shoulder, but it didn’t seem to bother me; instead, it spurred me on.

  By now I was having a very good time, with my sleeves rolled up like a housemaid’s and the paint spattered all about the hem of my old skirt, which was much happier not being my best anymore. My nose felt very itchy so I wiped the back of my hand across it so as not to paint it, too, and then I sat back to look at what I had done. It was very good. I’d left the eye, so she’d know herself, but that was about all. The light was almost gone, and I was stiff from sitting on that little stool, so I left the glaze to dry until tomorrow and got up and stretched and peeked out the window and felt good. As I turned back from the window, I heard a little scurrying sound and saw the oddest thing. A little baby’s bare pink foot seemed to be vanishing through the wall, but then, it could have been a trick of the failing light.

  Nan was down at Widow Hull’s talking which gave me time to think. Spring was outside, which includes flowers and birds but also ugly smells because the gutters get warm and stinky, which shows that there is a good and a bad side to everything. Twilight was just trying to push the last of the golden light from the sky. There was loud singing and the sound of some woman laughing coming from the brewhouse across the way, and three men trying to carry a drunk man home but since they were all drunk it wasn’t working out very well.

  “Hey, look at that woman in the window. She has a blue nose.”

  “Shut up, you idiot, you’re drunk. Now look, you’ve dropped him.”

  “’S blue, I tell you.”

  I pulled my face in and ran to look in the mirror. A big streak of blue, right across my nose. For a minute I was frightened. He’d see it. He’d tell me I was ugly. He’d hit me for using his things. Then I remembered. He can’t. I laughed. Maybe I won’t clean it off, I thought, just to prove I can even have a blue nose if I want. But then I put some turpentine on a rag and cleaned it off anyway because it might be harder to get off tomorrow, and suppose I needed to go to the market? So then I sat and thought as I scrubbed up about the good and the bad side, which is like balance and being f
air which are all part of the same thing. I mean, on the one side it is bad to be poor and have no furniture, but on the other side it is good to have friends and hope. And now that Master Dallet was not around to give mean looks to Mistress Hull and mock her husband’s paintings we could be friends.

  “Supper, supper!” Nan called from downstairs, because now we all ate in the kitchen and put together our grocery money to have better things.

  “Oh, you stink of turpentine. What’s that on your face?” Nan does carry on, but that is because she worries about everything.

  “I thought I’d got it all. What’s that, a chicken? We must be rich already.”

  “You need to keep up your strength. Master Hull always needed to keep up his strength when the creation was on him. And besides, you’re building back from all that’s happened.” Mistress Hull was always very considerate about just skipping over mentioning ugly things that could make a person unhappy and possibly mope and not paint. “How’s that old lady doing? Have you got her thinned out? I’ll show you the Adam and Eves after supper. Maybe there’s one you can use as a model.”

  A light rain had dampened the cobblestones in the courtyard of the Saracen’s Head, making them shine, treacherously slippery for the cloaked figure who picked his way gloomily across them to the door of the inn’s great public room. Brian Tuke’s mood matched the flat gray barely visible above the inn’s half-timbered third story. Head down, face sullen, he pushed his way into a corner and sat down, brooding at the disparity between the happy souls he saw drinking and eating before him and his own ever-deepening gloom. The ale was tasteless. It didn’t make him drunk fast enough. He had another, and another.

  “Hey, brother, why the long face? Has your sweetheart left you?” A garrulous old man sat down beside him.

  “Worse,” said Tuke, staring bitterly into the goblet. “What do you do when a man wants your place?”