The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley

by The Serpent Garden (epub)

  “The king had the jewelers from ‘the Row’ waiting to set a price on them as soon as the coffers were taken from the chamber. But even he was astonished by this big one, here, the ‘Mirror of Naples.’ The jeweled diamond is as large as a man’s finger, and the pearl beneath it the size of a pigeon’s egg.”

  “Clearly, Master Tuke, the King of France knows how to astonish. And Marigny’s mission?”

  “He is sent to attend the princess and instruct her in the etiquette of the French court.”

  “And how did you find him?”

  “He is a great lord, of impeccable politeness, but he looks about him with a glance like an eagle.”

  “Or a duenna. Old men, old men, Tuke. There’s no one more jealous. Pass me that barley water there, Tuke, I am so dry, and feel a weakness passing through me.” Brian Tuke felt genuinely alarmed, for Wolsey’s complexion had turned suddenly ashy. From the great silver pitcher at the bedside table he poured out the barley water.

  “Your Grace, the physician…”

  “Spare me that man yet a moment, Master Tuke. I swear he does nothing that does not aggravate my condition. See there? The small bottle? Put it closer so I can reach it when I need it.” Tuke’s whole career passed before his eyes in a spasm of fear; suppose, after all his efforts, Wolsey were to die here, at this moment, his bowels bleeding away his life? Ah, God, how unfair, how cruel! But if he recovered, for this service, what advancement…His eyes full of concern, he arranged the pillows behind Wolsey’s head, then held the cup while his master sipped it, eyes closed.

  “Ah, God, I thank you, Master Tuke.” Wolsey opened his eyes to spy his servant’s distressed face. With a sly smile, he whispered, “So, Tuke, I believe you consider I merit a more discreet illness. What say you to a thorn in the side?” Amused, he watched the warring emotions in Tuke’s face: shock at the heretical comparison to the apostle, desire to flatter by agreeing, and puzzlement as to whether it was all a joke or not.

  “Your Grace…” began the shocked privy secretary, but then he heard Wolsey’s snort of laughter. To be agreeable, he laughed, too, though nervously.

  “So, Master Tuke, through all your report, I have sensed a certain irritation. What else happened to you this day? Was de Marigny offensive?”

  “De Marigny? Oh, no, Your Grace, he is the soul of courtesy. A true gentleman, though French. It is that—that ghastly, that, that…Master Perréal he brought with him. After the reception I was entrapped, entrapped, I tell you!”

  “Perréal, the King of France’s painter?”

  “That very Perréal. De Marigny brought him. A small, wiry, dark fellow with the most offensive little smile. He pretends he cannot understand French that is not spoken with a Parisian accent. ‘Oh?’ he says, cupping his hand behind his ear, when the pronunciation of some word offends him. And then he smiles that little smile as the person who has spoken tries again and again to mend the flaw. I tell you, I wanted to strangle him….”

  “I take it, Master Tuke, it was your French he found objectionable.”

  “Mine, and others’, Your Grace. He is to design the princess’s wardrobe and paint a wedding portrait of her to match the great ugly one of the King of France that he brought to us. Knowing that I would report to you, His Majesty sent me, as well as one of his gentlemen of the chamber, to take him to meet with the princess’s ladies of honor to inspect her dresses. The entire afternoon, hearing that horrible man comment on the cut of her undersleeves and the placement of the points for her trains. ‘Oh, how old-fashioned. A queen of France cannot be seen in a bodice of such a provincial cut. What is this décolletage? How unbearable, it is cut in the Flemish style.’ As far as I know, he knows all too much about ladies’ clothing. It’s not decent, I tell you. And then there was the gallery….”

  “Ah, you had to show him the gallery as well?”

  “He wanted to see the king’s paintings. The man was insupportable. ‘How charming, in an old-fashioned way. So northern, so provincial. This nativity, it’s fading already? Ah, yes, I see, the glazes are poor. Who did you say painted this? Hethe? He does not understand the art of stained canvas. What a pity you English do not have a truly great city of art such as Tours. The Italians do wonderful things these days. Haven’t you anything by Leonardo?’ I thought there’d never be an end to it.”

  “Ah, Master Tuke, I see you are ripe for revenge.” Tuke bit his lip and bowed his head. “I think we will show this portrait painter our private collection. Tell the truth, Tuke. Who is the most irritating man you know?”

  “Him, Your Grace. He raises irritation to new heights.”

  “But before that—be truthful, now.” Brian Tuke was silent. “Come, come now. Wouldn’t you have answered, ‘Ashton,’ if this French fellow had not carried off the palm?” Tuke’s lizardy eyelids blinked with alarm. “I see I am right,” observed Wolsey.

  “He follows me, he thinks of a thousand little things to prove himself superior to me that he thinks I do not notice. Your Grace, I would rather spend time in a barrelful of fleas than in his company.” Wolsey chuckled. Even in his illness, the daily drama of their rivalry did not fail to amuse; it was the true flattery, since it centered on who would bask first in his greatness. It kept them both in line and assured that he would always hear of the doings of one from the lips of the other. It was one of the many little tricks of power that Wolsey had mastered in this rapid rise. Men, they were easy. It was women he did not understand. But it is our good fortune that God had ordained that women must do as they are told, Wolsey thought as he pondered the issue briefly.

  “I’m thinking the Frenchman could use a bath of fleas, and the bath of fleas might benefit from a Frenchman.” Tuke glanced quickly at the archbishop’s face, uncertain how to respond. “What say you, Master Tuke, to having Ashton conduct Perréal through my collection?”

  “An excellent idea, Your Grace,” said the privy secretary, with a bland smile. Wolsey looked at his face and burst out laughing.

  “Ah, I see. This ‘York House’ is undergoing redecoration. His Grace, the mighty Bishop Wolsey should have a single man of taste overseeing the renovation. The Italian style—that is the style to be most admired. This rather primitive arras here, I take it, is to be replaced.”

  “The hangings in this room are entirely new,” said Ashton, suppressing a powerful impulse to shake Maître Perréal until his teeth rattled.

  “Yes, the northern style. So angular, so dated. Here, you see, the cornices lack fluidity of line. That charming grace of the Italian—a cornucopia, or perhaps a cherub, would look well over that window. Ah, but it must be the austere taste of a man of the church—still, in Rome…”

  “Rome should no more be in London than London in Rome,” growled Ashton. His accent had a Norman twang. Perréal listened politely but every so often allowed his nostrils to twitch as Ashton spoke, as if there were the smell of something slightly putrid in the room.

  “Profound,” replied Perréal. “Simple, yet profound. It might be engraved over the lintel here.” He waved a hand at a doorway that lacked cherubs. Ashton caught something in the word. A trick of the rs. He smelled revenge.

  “Master Perréal,” he said, in a voice of feigned admiration, “you are so very knowledgeable about the new styles. Tell me, when did you study in Italy?”

  “Italy? Why, the Italian style is known everywhere…”

  Ashton sighed heavily, with false regret. “Except here, where we are so far, so very far. How fortunate you are to have studied in Tours. I imagine Italian artists find it so much easier to travel there. How unfortunate we lack such a great center of refinement….” Ashton watched Perréal’s face stiffen. It was his rs that still retained a bit of the Tourangeau. “The bishop’s collection is through this doorway,” added Ashton, unctuously. “You’ll find the paneling in the cabinet a charming example of the northern style. Very simple, with that austere angularity so suited to a prince of the Church. Did you know that Lord Wolsey wears a hair shirt
?” Perréal cast a look of pure hatred at his guide.

  Above the shoulder-high wainscoting, the walls of the cabinet had been richly gilded and painted with a religious scene: the presentation of the infant Jesus at the temple. The figures were angular, the brightly painted and decorated draperies symmetrical, in the old style. The background, a temple not unlike the Tower with a gilded dome set upon it in place of a crenellated battlement, was depicted in a stylized fashion, entirely without perspective. Ashton watched Perréal’s face. It was a study in concealed disdain. Good, thought Ashton, my strategy is working.

  “And what master painted this?” asked the French artist.

  “Master Brown, of the Painter-Stainers’ Guild.”

  Paintings hung on the paneling, each protected from the dust by a damask curtain. Religious scenes for contemplation, portraits of long-dead churchmen and patrons, the usual furnishings of an archbishop’s cabinet. Many were obviously the product of some long-gone studio, the faces flat and ill fitted to the ready-painted bodies, costume detail and elaborate gilding used to mask the defects of composition.

  “Lord Wolsey, I take it, is not a connoisseur.”

  “Oh, these he inherited from his predecessor. They have mostly historical importance.” Ashton was nonchalant.

  “This one in the corner. Why do you neglect it?” Perréal lifted the curtain. Ashton smiled to himself as he heard the Frenchman suck in his breath. The Temptation of Eve, with rich layers of color shining through semitransparent glazes, so fresh and prettily modeled that you thought it would be possible to reach right into the depths of it. In the foreground, a vast, pink Eve, surrounded by a flowery Eden; in the background, a familiar-looking mountain, being struck by the lightning of God’s wrath. Ashton, his hands behind his back, inspected both the Frenchman and the painting at the same time. Suddenly, something struck him. Eve’s hands. Short fingered and plump, oddly familiar. Had she used her own as a model? The face, of course, was not hers. But had she used the rest of herself, too? The bosom for example, and what about that dimple at the knee? The blood began to prickle in his veins. Susanna, that shameless wretch…

  “Fascinating,” said the French painter, and then, with a malicious smirk, he could not help adding: “But of course I have recently, in this very city, been shown one almost exactly like this, painted with dark varnish and blackened with candle smoke, being passed off as a work by our great Fouquet.” Smiling, he watched the muscles of his guide’s jaw clench. “It seems to me that this false Fouquet must have returned from the grave to paint the scene anew. Hmm. The use of glazes is excellent. The depiction of form—precise, but more literal than graceful. There is no true art here. I would say this man is Flemish. Flemish with an Italian master. I hope your archbishop did not pay too much for the work.”

  “It was given to him,” snapped Ashton, turning to a great locked chest that stood upon heavy, carved legs. “The archbishop’s collection is here. He has several rare coins he would like you to identify and value. He also has a collection of portraits in miniature in the new style.”

  Ashton watched while Perréal made oddly birdlike humming sounds, turning various medallions and coins over and over in his hands. “This one,” he said, “is the profile of the emperor Nero. The inscription is worn off yours, but we have several like it at Les Tournelles. These—Aha! They are Merovingian. The time of King Dagobert. Where were they found? Here? How very curious.” So busy was he inspecting the Frenchman that he never looked up when a familiar figure spoke in English from the open doorway.

  “Why, Ashton, how good to run into you here. How goes it with the frog painter?” Brian Tuke, unable to resist, had come to spy out Ashton’s discomfiture. Ashton glared his beaming, slippery rival. “Ah, look,” Tuke observed, “he’s opened the first of the Dallets.” Together, they watched the supercilious Frenchman’s eyebrows rise in amazement. Differences temporarily put aside in the interests of national rivalry, the two Englishmen looked at each other and grinned.

  “Who did this?” demanded the French artist.

  “Just a simple provincial style,” said Tuke.

  “Yes, the English style,” added Ashton. “Admit it is naively amusing.” Caught up in his baiting of the irritating Frenchman, he had forgotten how infuriated he was at this new evidence of Susanna’s trickery. A smoked-up antique, indeed. How much had she managed to trick Perréal out of? Was she incapable of shame? All over town, she must have left deceptions like this just waiting to be unveiled. Still, there was a certain appropriateness in setting the sly little paintrix on the French, just as you’d set a ferret on a weasel. The French deserved her.

  “This style was developed in France. Our Fouquet…”

  “The French style is confined to manuscript illustration,” observed Ashton. “I say, have you ever noticed, Master Tuke, how all those French manuscript portraits look alike?”

  “Odd, I have remarked on it, Master Ashton. They all look like fishes,” answered Tuke.

  “It is hardly original to separate the portrait from the manuscript page,” spluttered the Frenchman.

  “The technique is new, too. Would you like to have a glass to inspect the shading? The strokes are quite invisible to the unaided eye.” Ashton beamed maliciously at the little Frenchman as Tuke produced a magnifying glass for him. What a pity I can’t introduce him to Mistress Dallet, Ashton thought. She’d make short work of him. Briefly, he imagined her attending Perréal’s funeral, all in black, dabbing at her eyes, having artfully arranged his death. So charming, so deadly. And yet his heart pounded when he thought of her. She’s trapped me, he thought. How did she trap me? Sir Septimus says she is like Messalina. Did Messalina paint portraits of her unclad body to entangle a man’s mind into thinking of nothing else? Her gestures, her comings and goings, her wily schemes had become engraved on his mind. Even away from her, he found himself imagining, What would she say about this? What would she do if this or that happened? And now these Eves. They were all over the City. Would he hunt them out, comparing each with the next, to see if his sudden suspicion was correct? Was it some kind of curse or enchantment that she had had cast that drew him, despite all that he knew of her depravity, to want only to be closer to her? He found himself mulling over random things he overheard her say. He craved to know the secret details of her life, even as he told himself thousands of times he wanted nothing to do with her. Women. Crouch was right. Remember the danger.

  “The background,” added Tuke helpfully, noting the Frenchman’s rising emotions. “The blue is quite original. It is a secret process. Don’t you find it sets off the skin tones well?”

  But what had upset the Frenchman was not the idea of the paintings, or even their technique, dazzling as it was. The secret of the serene sky blue he intended to discover at home in his alchemical laboratory. No, what had upset him most was the depiction of the faces. There was a trick to the lift of a brow, to the light in the pupil of the eye, that proclaimed the unknown master of The Temptation of Eve to be also the author of the exquisite little portraits he had just lifted from the drawer.

  Perréal, artist, sculptor, and alchemist, was more than a mere designer of royal weddings and funerals. He was also a member of the Priory of Sion, that international web of alchemists, artists, builders, mystics, cavaliers, and romantics that had existed since the time of the Crusades: the Priory of Sion, severed from the Knights Templar at the Splitting of the Oak. The Templars had been destroyed, but the Priory remained, brooding over its great Secret and leaving conspiratorial messages in code across the face of Europe: stones like grave markers covered with secret carvings, secret signs and code words depicted in acrostics, poems, paintings, maps, and cryptic prophetic verse.

  Now, as he stared at the picture, Perréal shuddered at the coded secrets revealed as clearly as if they had been printed in prose. He saw the sacred mountain, the home of the Secret, before the Redemption. He saw a mound, like a tomb, he saw patterns in the greenery, patterns he might have
missed had he not recognized the mountain itself, bathed in unearthly light. It was all true. Maître Bellier was right. There was an outsider who had discovered what had been concealed for so long by the ancient secret society. And Wolsey knew him. Why had Wolsey asked his servant to lead him to this particular picture? Was it a secret sign? Did Wolsey wish to threaten, or was it a sign he wished to negotiate? This prince of the Church had obtained the Secret. Was he keeping it for his own power, or was the Priory betrayed? He must find out more, the Helmsman must be informed, and Wolsey and his agents must be dealt with.

  “Does the man who painted these live in London?”

  “No man painted them,” said Tuke, grinning at Ashton as they saw the Frenchman turn pale.

  “The Devil…” whispered the artist. “What powers…?”

  “He said,” announced Ashton, “that a man didn’t do them.” The Frenchman looked up, puzzled, at their cheerful faces.

  “No man? If it was no man, then…”

  “…it was a woman.” The Englishmen burst out laughing at the Frenchman’s confusion. Furious, the artist pulled himself up to his full height.

  “You brought me here only to mock my art,” he said.

  “Us? Oh, never,” said Ashton.

  “How could you ever think us so ungracious?” said Tuke. “You? The greatest master in France? Our master is full of gratitude that you could identify his ancient treasures. See here, he has sent this purse to show his appreciation.”

  “Purse? Is my honor to be purchased with money?”

  “Oh, such a thing could not be imagined,” said Ashford. “Our master wanted you to see his collection so that you could offer advice on what he should do to make it more complete.”

  “Yes, it requires the most subtle artistic judgment.”

  “We wouldn’t want to think it might overburden you.” Bit by bit, they mollified the furious Frenchman with flattery. His raging subsided into spluttering, and eventually the spluttering gave way to rational speech.