The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley

by The Serpent Garden (epub)

  “Close the shutters; someone is shooting!” he cried. Perversely, at his cry, all the rest of the shutters on the street opened, and filled with nightcapped faces. All in an instant, I thought I saw, from where I lay in the street, still staring groggily upward, a movement among the bells in the tower over the cistern.

  At that very moment the loosened saddle rolled beneath the horse’s belly, pulling the whole harness with it, and I heard Ashton fall to the ground with a crash. There was a scuffle, the clatter of horseshoes on stone, and the rattle and jingle of loose tack, and I saw that one foot was still entangled in the stirrup. Steel-clad hooves danced perilously close to his head as he struggled to pull his foot loose. Cursing, he lost his grip and was thrown back flat into the road, still held by his foot. The horse, eyes rolling, bucked once and began to head away in big strides, Ashton still struggling and entangled. If the roan took it into its head to run, Ashton would be dragged to death over the stones. I could see him trying to protect his head with his arms. There were shouts of alarm from the windows. I pulled myself up and ran, limping, for the horse’s head, but as it saw me run, it tossed its head away and moved faster. Its evil yellow eye glared at me, and it showed me the big, ugly green-flecked teeth in its foaming, open mouth.

  By this time, Ashton’s man had turned back and dismounted, leaving Nan holding the pack mule, but he was not close enough to reach us in time. I snatched at a dangling rein, and pulled hard. The horse whirled about, dragging Ashton’s struggling body in an arc across the stones and through the muck in the gutter at the center of the street. His entrapped foot was near my hand. Dropping the rein, I heaved at the stirrup with both hands, forcing his foot loose. The horse, half bucking and half running, the saddle dragging and rattling beneath its belly, ran off down the street, accompanied by a chorus of guffaws out of the open windows. Ashton lay in the street, not moving, blood running down his dirt-stained face. His eyes were open.

  “Headed straight for the stable,” he whispered. “I’ll never live this down.”

  “Is anything broken?” I asked.

  “My reputation. My best coat. My pride. Maybe my head. I swear Tuke bribed someone to set me up with that old screw. He can’t ride a baby’s pet donkey, and now I can’t show my face at the stable. Jesus…my back…” He winced as he tried to move his legs. “It’s just as well I’m headed for France, if I can ever get up. I can hide my shame there until this is forgotten. If ever.”

  “Look there, I can see a bolt in the timber. Someone was trying to kill you. If you hadn’t bent over at that very moment, it would have been in you, I swear.”

  “They’ll think I just produced the bold to strengthen my story. It’s impossible to worm out of being the butt of a practical joke. Especially one of Tuke’s, that smooth, smiling son of a bitch.”

  “I can tell them it wasn’t made up. Nan and your man can, too.”

  “They are servants. And as for you, they’ll say you’re just amorous. Ashton…goes courting. A joke…for every stable boy and page in London…” He groaned and tried to sit up. “God, my head,” he said.

  “You see how easy it is to break a reputation,” I said, but he was too busy thinking about himself and sitting there and checking his bruises to listen.

  “Master, are you hurt? Take the other horse.” His man’s grizzled face was full of concern as he knelt down close to help him.

  “No, Will, I’ll walk. I wish to wallow in my degradation. Go ahead of us and get the surgeon. My head’s cracked.” Still lying there, he wiped the blood from his eyes with the back of his hand, then inspected it. “And I’m cut,” he said, as if taking inventory. Slowly, painfully, he got up out of the gutter. He was standing now, wiping off his clothes and looking glumly up at the faces that lined the open windows. There was the sound of laughter as he bent down to pick up his hat from the street.

  “There’s an elegant cavalier,” said a voice.

  “A fine way to impress a lady,” added another.

  “What did he say they were doing? Shooting? A likely story.” Silently, Robert Ashton plucked the bolt from the timber above his head and stuck it in his belt.

  “But, Master Ashton, the man who shot?”

  “I’m sure he’s long gone. There’re too many witnesses now. The people here would set up the hue and cry, and he’d be caught.”

  “I’ll walk with you,” I said. “It’s not so far, and it will work the bruises out.” He didn’t say a thing. His pores oozed humiliation.

  “Stupid. Stupid. I should have checked sooner. But no. I had to be off. Taking you. Stupid. Women.” He shook his head.

  “Women? Why do you say women? Are we at fault somehow? Men are crazy, I say. How can you be more upset about your horse returning with a loose saddle than about a man shooting a crossbow out of a tower at you?”

  “Not a crossbow. The bastard must have had two. How else could he have reloaded so quickly? No. He wasn’t shooting to hit me.” Suddenly I had a horrible thought.

  “Suppose he was shooting to hit me?” I asked.

  “You? Whatever for? No, if he wanted to hit anyone, it was me. If I wanted to conjure up a conspiracy, I’d say it was someone who knew of my business abroad. But no, I swear it was some fellow Tuke hired, to give me a scare, and maybe make the horse shy in the hopes I’d not checked the girth, which I hadn’t. No, he knew me, how it’s been for me…. Whoever did this knew me too well to be anyone but Tuke…. He figured I’d be rattled this morning, I might not check. Who else but Tuke?” He was limping along, his head straight ahead, not even looking at me as he spoke. Sometimes he shook it as if an invisible argument was going on in his mind. He seemed almost as if he were talking to himself.

  “Rattled? By what? Why that?”

  “Why do you think?” he said, avoiding my eyes, then hunching his shoulders and setting his head down. We had come to the gate of the stable yard now. It was lined with ragamuffins, all laughing and pointing. He glanced up at the crowd ahead of him with damaged eyes but set his head back down again, as if facing a high wind, and walked straight forward, looking at no one. Knights and priests, already mounted for the journey, tipped back their heads and guffawed at the sight of Robert Ashton, once arrogant and officious in the wearing of his master’s rank, now filthy and bedraggled, trailing a spoiled, runaway horse home on foot. Even better, he was escorting the stuck-up freak, the lady paintrix, equally bedraggled and brought low. My good dress, I thought, brushing off a bit of dirt I’d missed on one elbow. I limped as I followed behind him. I ached everywhere. It wouldn’t make the trip to Dover any better. A fine joke. It was a joke.

  Nan had gotten there first and brought us wet towels, and the bishop’s barber-surgeon put a bandage on Master Ashton’s head, right there in the stable yard. Then there was a sudden, pregnant, silence, as a stable boy with a sarcastic smile led the very same horse, resaddled, up to the mounting block. Ashton heaved a sigh, lifted up the stirrup and felt the girth. It was tight. The big, bony roan had made himself as round as a barrel. Under the eyes of the whole party, Ashton led the horse a few steps. The horse heaved a sigh, too, an even heavier one than Ashton’s, as it deflated its puffed-up belly. With a wickedly fast movement, before the horse could change its mind, Ashton tightened the girth. There was a titter from an elderly chaplain, then a suppressed snort from a clerk who stood under the stable arch, his arms folded. Then it broke loose. Gentlemen and priests, scribes and stable-boys, they all laughed. The ruder ones even slapped their legs. Ashton stared straight at the ground under the horse’s belly. The back of his neck was crimson. He didn’t say a word for miles.

  Our little party of the bishop’s servants, at every turning of the way, was joined by other parties as streams join a great river. Every lord of the realm, it seemed, had demanded the honor of escorting the princess and her suite to the ships, so in order to displease none, all were going, each with a more magnificent train than the next. As we crossed London Bridge into Southwark, among the bustl
e of mounted knights, liveried servants, pages with banners, and ornamented litters, I saw a familiar little figure dodge behind an abbot on a silver-harnessed mule. Tom was following us.

  The weather was blustery, and the sky slate gray and threatening rain as we rode on toward Dover. The road was thick with riders in glittering armor, pennants flying, with servants, with clerks and attendants, lords on fine gennets and ladies on palfreys and in litters, that stretched in a train so long I could hardly see the beginning of it winding away in the distance ahead of us. At the head of the procession were royal guards and the king and princess riding together, the pregnant queen beside them in her litter. This I know because I heard it, but not because I saw it. Everyone of importance was there: the greatest lords of the realm dressed in gold chains and rich gowns especially made for the occasion. Four hundred knights and barons, two hundred gentlemen and esquires, and a thousand palfreys clattered through the fall mud beneath the leaden sky. Over a hundred wagons filled with great ladies moved ponderously along the road.

  Behind this grandeur trudged servants, musicians, secretaries, and footmen. Mounted stablemen led heavy horses, gift palfreys, and amblers. Guards surrounded carts loaded with pavilions, with the gowns and jewels of the trousseau, with the dowry plate. In the midst of his lesser rabble, Nan and I made our way on horseback, mounted behind Ashton and his servant; our packhorse trailing behind.

  Fearful of falling, sore and bruised and still washed out from the fever, I clung to his waist, feeling how he moved with the shifting motion behind us. What an irony, I thought. If I didn’t know him, this would be exciting, sitting behind a strange man like this. But with all that’s gone on, it’s only an agony I wish were over. His back was still bad, I could tell. Or maybe his ribs. When I held too tightly, I could hear his breath come hard, but he wouldn’t make a sound. As the hours passed, my head dropped until it was resting on his shoulder blades. He still smelled of dust, and of the gutter, and of something else, strong scented, a man-smell that I had never smelled on Rowland Dallet, who favored perfume, like a dandy. Mile after mile, I could feel the misery rolling off him in silent waves.

  “Master Ashton, how much longer?” We could hear the cries and whips of the drovers. Around us were a ragtag bunch of servants, some on horseback, some on foot. We didn’t ride near the others, because the roan had a nasty habit of trying to bite strange horses. It had a big, rough gait like a cart horse, which ate up the miles and left every joint aching. I suppose that’s why it hadn’t been sold. It did travel. When I die and go to purgatory, it will be on that horse. I hated its big yellow teeth and malignant little eyes, and stiff, ugly mane like a row of bristly hairbrushes. Its coat stank, and its sweat stained my skirts. Master Ashton rode it with an extra-heavy bit and a riding crop that could slice a mail coat.

  No answer.

  “Master Ashton, can’t we rest?”

  No answer. The flat, gray September sky stretched overhead, endless and heavy. Beside us, behind us, and ahead of us, the wedding escort crept on through the mud. We could hear the screech of seagulls in the distance.

  “We can’t stop. We must keep up.”

  “What are you thinking? Speak to me. You don’t speak even when we dismount. Will speaks to Nan. See over there? He tells a joke, and they both laugh. I still think about that fall. I could have been killed. You could have been killed. Say something and stop my mind from turning.”

  “I’m not your jester, even if the archbishop’s entire household now sees me as one.”

  “Someone tried to kill you, and failed, and that’s all you think of?”

  “Someone tried to humiliate me, and succeeded. That’s what I think of.” Now we could smell the ocean—a rich, salty smell like a barrelful of mussels.

  “Where is the ocean? I can’t see it.”

  “We’re nowhere near yet. You’re not supposed to see it. The wind just brings the smell of it.” From pure fatigue and soreness and irritation as well as the last of the fever, I could feel tears coming up, though I didn’t make a sound.

  “What are you doing?” he said. “You’re soaking down the back of my neck.”

  “I’m tired, I hurt, and I fell off a horse, and I wish I were home in bed,” I answered. There was a long pause.

  “I suppose I should have thanked you,” he said.

  “I didn’t want you dragged,” I said.

  “There’s more dignity in being carried home on a litter than limping home covered with horse dung,” he said.

  “You wouldn’t know unless you tried it the other way,” I answered.

  “I have,” he said. “That time the bolt hit home.” And then he was quiet again for a long time. The ocean smell was stronger now, blown on a stiff wind, and seagulls circled overhead beneath the low, gray sky. On the hills ahead of us was the great castle that guards the cliffs above the docks. Nearly there. But then the first heavy drops fell on my face.

  “Damn, rain,” he growled. Ahead of us, horsemen began to hurry, urging their mounts to a stiff trot. “We are so far behind that every corner of the castle and every great house nearby as well will be stuffed full. I swear, even lords’ servants will go bedless tonight.”

  “Surely, the great Wolsey’s liverymen…”

  “Will be last in line. Have you seen the number of lords gathered here? We’ll have to fend for ourselves. If we cut away from the road now, we may yet get a place at an inn by the docks that I know. Hold on, we’ll have to make better speed.” Now was when I regretted my cozy rooms all the more; indeed, they seemed cozier and cozier to me as we left the parade of toiling servants and soldiers on the muddy road and trotted bumpety, bump across the open fields with the pack horse trailing behind on a lead rope, its head and neck stretched out as it pulled to try to slow us down. I should have stayed with the Adam and Eves, I thought. If only I hadn’t gone and put Rowland Dallet’s face on the serpent. Everything was all his fault. Rowland Dallet, Rowland Dallet, what else will you be doing to me? All because of him, I was bumping along in the rain with sore bones and wishing I’d offered up something much more impressive to Saint Christopher when I’d had the chance.

  But then the wind got stronger and the rain heavier and by the time we were in the city so was everyone else, and all looking for shelter, too, and the White Horse was all full, and so were the Castle and the Lion and we were soaked through and shivering. Finally Master Ashton found a low tavern at the Sign of the Mermaid, which was full of sailors lying drunk on benches shouting and singing before the fire and other persons who appeared to have no daily occupation.

  A one-eyed man in a dirty apron told him there was room for our horses in his stable but we would have to pay double for feed because of the princess and all, and feed was very dear these days. Then he winked the only eye he had and said he had a bed, too, the very last in town, and that would be double, as well. Master Ashton’s ears grew very red, and I could feel my face getting all hot, so I turned it away. Then he stamped on the floor and cracked that dangerous riding crop on his boot, and said if there was only one bed fit, then he would sleep on a bench before the fire like all those sailors. But then he changed his mind when he found out there were two beds in the room and the big one was already full of six gentlemen travelers. Also the one-eyed man said the second bed would really hold five and it would cost extra for him not to sell the last place in it, because he was only a poor man and had so many expenses. I might have laughed at Master Ashton once, the way his face twitched with disgust and his eyes rolled, but I didn’t have the heart for it just then.

  We ate supper in the tavern sitting on our boxes so they wouldn’t be stolen, but Nan seemed to do all the talking, and I could see Master Ashton’s eyes were sunken in; his face was turning grayish and blood had soaked through the bandage around his head. When we were finally dried out, Master Ashton’s man went to sleep with Bishop Wolsey’s horses so they would not vanish in the night or turn into different horses with lame feet, and we stumped upstairs
with a single rushlight that Master Ashton held up ahead of us. In the narrow, slant-roofed attic room with the beds, one of the gentleman travelers was already in bed asleep, fully clothed, with his boots on. Another was drunk and pissing in the fire, and his friends were commenting on how much wine he held. The room was smelly with mildew and stale beer and unwashed men, and I could feel things crawling on my ankles.

  “Oh, this nasty bed. I swear the linen’s never been washed. And what’s this? Ugh! It’s full of bedbugs!” Nan was very disgusted and began to shake out the linen and bedding in the largish bed we had rented. I could see the bedbugs all scuttle away into the cracks.

  “Hey, you woman, don’t shake those bedbugs out here!”

  “Yes, every man to his own bedbugs!”

  The rain was battering on the closed shutters harder than ever. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could sail for France in this awful weather.

  “There’s a lucky man. Two women for himself, and none for us. Share, you wretch.” Master Ashton put his hand on his knife, but he swayed slightly. They took it for drink. I was glad he was sturdy-looking.

  “You’ll answer to the King’s Almoner if these women do not depart safely for France in the morning.” His speech was harsh and unsteady.

  “Oho, Bishop Wolsey’s doxy, eh?” Now that made me just furious, because it is disgusting when a gentleman, even a drunken one of small family, cannot tell a respectable widow from a woman of ill fame. All that anger pushed away my fatigue and made my tongue sharp.

  “God will punish you for your wicked speech,” I said firmly. “I am paintrix to the bishop’s household, and I go to France to paint the queen and gentlefolk so that men here can know their faces. I come with my respectable woman, here, that my lord of York appointed especially to attend me, and if it were not so very crowded in this town we would be in a much more elegant establishment, and you would not be worthy even to see my work, which is not for vulgar people with no taste, but only for great gentlemen and princes.” Master Ashton’s eyes flicked sideways at me, and I could tell he was surprised that I could be so firm. But I know how to deal with drunken rogues because of living across from the Goat and Jug for so long.