The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley

by The Serpent Garden (epub)

  “So, you see, Nan, it was really a terrible scandal. And I think that the duke did it just to see if he could catch a glimpse of her undressed.” I was huddled up in bed at last, wrapped up against the cold, and coughing as loudly as the last trump. Everyone was off at the banquet, and since it was in the annex of the king’s hôtel, we could hear the shouting and music from the hall and the scurrying of cooks and lackeys just by opening the shutters on our little attic window.

  “Oh, if you’d heard what I heard from the boy who turns the spit—see what I’ve brought? They hardly even missed it, they had so much. Besides, they never even noticed me in the bustle. Everything’s going on out there. They’ve even lighted some big bonfire on the other side of town. Everyone’s celebrating.” She took a napkin off the dish and revealed several slices of ham, all spicy and hot, to go with the loaf of bread and flask of French wine she’d gotten.

  “Oh, you are clever, Nan. How would I manage without you? That looks very good. I think I’ll live.”

  “I think you will, too, God be thanked, but not the way you’ve been rushing about. You don’t want that cough to settle in your chest. I’ll make a poultice tonight. Now, about that boy, let me tell you. He says he got it from the cook, who speaks French even better than you do, who got it from a liveryman in the duke’s household. That man has a terrible appetite, just terrible. When he’s in Paris, he never attends to business, just roisters at houses of ill fame with his friends—that Bonnivet, and Fleurange, and all of those that he grew up with, all of them old hands at troublemaking. They ride through the streets looking for likely women, then follow them home and demand them from their husbands or fathers—or deceive them, or bribe them, or take them by force. They just don’t hear the word no. And women of the court—oh! You can’t even count his conquests, and him only twenty. His sister and his mother, they just look the other way. And his sister, that Duchess of Alençon. She gathers men and women together to debate things no proper person discusses. And do you know what’s worse? They say she’s writing a book.”

  “A book? And her not a nun? Why, that’s a scandal, Nan.”

  “The scandal’s worse than that. They say it will be a dirty book, Mistress Susanna, a book of racy stories that she’s been collecting about love affairs at court.”

  “Oh, my. Cut me another piece of that ham. Then I do believe that what I thought is right. That man wants an affair with our princess. After she’s married, she’d better keep her door locked.”

  “He won’t get past Mother Guildford, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t care if he were the king himself, he’d get nowhere with me, and he’ll get nowhere with her. He doesn’t understand Englishwomen. When we are looking after our own, we are made of iron.”

  “I’m afraid I’m feeling made of slime just now, Nan. Pass me that cup. Even wine tastes odd with this horrible cold.”

  “Well, you’re to be pardoned this time,” said Nan, and her face softened with the sad memory. “It’s hard here, and I loved that boy, too.”

  “It’s not just him, you know that, Nan.” Nan stiffened with indignation.

  “The man defamed you, Susanna. Stealing a kiss doesn’t make it right again. He never apologized, never at all. And after all you did for him! If I could wish a man back from the dead, I would wish it for him, though as far as I’m concerned I’m much happier never seeing him again. But he should come back to make good to you, so you can see him plain, and not keep mooning over him as if he were some martyr and dead saint. That’s what I would wish! For him to stand here, as rude as ever, so you could be rid of him for once and for all!”

  “I’ve tried to put away my thoughts on him, Nan. I can’t help it, I keep thinking on him. I want to tell him he was wrong. I wasn’t making my way in the world like these bad French ladies. I do honest work. Well, sort of honest,” I added as an afterthought, thinking about all those Adam and Eves. Well, whatever it looked like, it wasn’t as bad as telling everyone’s secrets in a book of racy stories. But maybe I was wicked, for thinking over and over again about that kiss, instead of offering prayers and pious meditations to God about sin. Why had I suddenly begun to yearn for sin so much and me not even married, when being wedded to Master Dallet had made me yearn only for virtue? Ah, God, Robert Ashton was dead and rotten at the bottom of the ocean. Was it a judgment on me for my wickedness? My thoughts had strayed so far from those recommended for the virtuous widow in Chapter the Ninth of The Good Wyfe’s Booke of Manners, that I had grown ashamed to open it up. And my heart kept hurting, or maybe it was my chest, from coughing.

  The next morning, preparations began at dawn for the wedding, and I managed to get a perch in a crowded window with a view of the garden to see the procession. There was a light wind, and it brought cinders onto the sill, where one of them caught the back of my hand. It was a tiny, blackened fragment of floating paper, with a letter, in even deeper black, still visible on it.

  “What’s this?” I sniffled. “They’re burning books?” I felt all feverish, and the garden seemed to sway in the gray, early-morning light. A potboy squashed in beside me answered.

  “Oh, it must be from the great fire last night. Half the town, they say, burned on the other side of the river. I heard the Italian ambassador complaining he was nearly killed.” Oh, I thought, now I’m going deaf, too.

  “I didn’t know. I had a fever last night. I guess I didn’t hear the fire bell.”

  “They didn’t ring it. It would have spoiled the ball last night. They say they might have stopped it sooner if they’d had more men to pull down the walls.” First the storm, then the fire, I thought. I’ve never heard of so many bad omens before a wedding. How can it turn out well?

  “See there, the English knights. How many? One…two…I count twenty-six. Not bad. Ah, the queen looks much better dressed in the French fashion.” The Frenchwoman on the other side of me was making her own personal assessment of English glory. Behind the heralds and macers followed the musicians with all their different instruments and the singing priests. Now the princess had stepped from the wide stone doorway, accompanied by two great lords, Norfolk and Dorset, who stood on either side of her. She paused a moment. Laden with jewels, almost dwarfed by her huge dress of cloth of gold and ermine, she looked small and lost. The cold wind ruffled her gown and set the embroidered silk banners in the procession flying. The gray light shone dully on the golden gown and glanced feebly from the heavy burden of jewels, making them look almost black. Music, praises, and the shouts of admirers filled the garden. Then the heavy, bearded old lords in their ponderous, jewel-encrusted gowns assisted her down the steps. Behind her followed thirteen of her favorite ladies, and each of them was escorted by two gentlemen, as well. Behind them, the procession seemed to go on endlessly. The brown, autumnal garden, passageway to the great hall in the Hôtel de la Gruthuse, was all blooming with moving color. I stayed in the window until the last page had vanished into the wedding hall. I suppose somehow I thought it was my duty to try to impress the scene, the costumes, on my mind for some unknown future purpose, but I found them blurring strangely. All the singing, and praises, and glitter, seemed oddly darkened, as if some evil shadow had floated over them. Maybe it’s just the fever, I thought, as I made my way back to bed. The rain, which had broken briefly, began to pour down in sheets. In the distance, far beyond the gray towers of the Hôtel de la Gruthuse, I could hear the roll of thunder.

  Claude of France, heiress of Brittany, eldest daughter of Anne of Brittany and the King of France, and Duchess of Angoulême, was in her dressing chamber, attended by several of her favorite ladies, a half dozen spotted, hairy lap dogs, the Duchess of Alençon, her sister-in-law, and Gaillarde the Fool, a fierce, dark-browed, sharp-tongued little woman no taller than a dwarf. Claude herself overshadowed the little woman by only an inch or two, limped badly, and was, in addition, immensely fat, her face puffy with some strange disorder, her eyelids swollen and her eyes squinting. An unfortunate luck of the blood, everyon
e knew. She resembled her mother, but some unhappy trick of breeding had pushed the French princess from the merely ugly to the abnormal. Sweet tempered and simpleminded, she was still far from her twentieth year. As if to compensate for the cruelty of nature, humanity had made accommodation. Alone in the court, she had no enemies. Her mind was incapable of perceiving that she was being used. To her, everyone was handsome, everyone was clever, everyone was virtuous. And because the courtiers enjoyed seeing themselves reflected so admirably in the mirror of her simplicity, they never disabused her of her notions.

  “Oh,” she said, looking down disconsolately at the embroidered crimson velvet gown she was wearing, “this gown sorrows me. Mother not dead a year, and the king has ordered that I put off mourning in honor of my stepmother. Even for my own wedding to my lord the duke, I wore black. How could he forget Mother so soon?”

  “When a man catches sight of a redheaded woman, everything else flies out of his mind,” said Gaillarde in her funny bass voice, and with a mincing walk, and head held high, she mimicked the new queen in that droll way she had. Marguerite, the Duchess of Alençon, burst out laughing. “He has told the court that three times last night he crossed the river, and could have done more if he wanted. An astonishment of nature! Blame the red hair.” Gaillarde patted her own dark head in an imitation of primping. Now even Claude laughed. Then a puzzled look came over her face.

  “Three times?” she said slowly. “But even my lord, who is so much younger…” She shook her head as if thinking deeply. “It must be because he is a king,” she announced, as if she had solved a very complex puzzle.

  “That’s it!” announced Gaillarde, and Marguerite snorted. Her own mother, Louise of Savoy, had stayed away from the festivities in pure rage, pleading illness and the state of the roads. But Marguerite’s husband had featured prominently in the ceremonies, and so she had smiled and smoldered while the old king celebrated his wedding to the woman who would displace her brother from the throne. How sure that foreign woman seemed of her beauty, how cold, how arrogant! And how the old king seemed to simper over her. Disgusting! And what a great train of followers she had brought with her, all clattering away in their alien tongue, rude, boastful, and ill-mannered!

  “Things will be different now,” said Marguerite, thinking to enroll Claude in her cause. “The English swarm everywhere. They will all want favors and influence. To think that only yesterday they were attacking our cities.”

  “Yesterday? I thought yesterday was the wedding…yes, certainly it was yesterday. The foreigner brought a large suite so she could hear her own language. Mother did that, you know. She could not be happy without hearing Breton about her. Of course, English is different. Breton sounds comfortable, but that English! What an ugly-sounding language! I’m sure they must be embarrassed to have such a language. Doubtless they will try to learn French.”

  “Ha! They think they are speaking French!” announced Gaillarde. “Hey, mounseer, move-o zzee cheval, je swee gentilhomme, goddam, goddam!” She imitated the rolling, graceless, swaggering gait of an English lord. The ladies all giggled. Gaillarde, encouraged, added a leer to her performance, then pushed an imaginary hat over one eye and gave a tug to the waist of an imaginary doublet as she pretended to be seeking out a likely lady. Claude looked puzzled, then, when she saw the others laughing, she pretended to laugh herself, so as not to be left out.

  “Oh, Madame, that’s them exactly. They have no manners!” exclaimed one of her ladies.

  “But some of the new queen’s ladies have lovely manners,” said Claude. “That one that played so sweetly, Mademoiselle de Boline, for example. She has been raised at the Regent’s court and speaks almost like one of us. And, oh! Madame d’Alençon, I must show you something—” Claude went to a large chest and rummaged among the gloves and stockings she kept there. Then, triumphantly, she held a sheet of paper aloft. “You see?” she said, “I can so find things after I have put them away. Look at this.” She brought the paper and spread it out on her dressing table for Marguerite and her ladies to see. “This one, here, beneath the angels, will be the queen my mother, and the one on the other side will be the king in full armor, kneeling. And there, in the center, at the hem of the Virgin, see that sweet little winged baby? That is my brother, the Dauphin. Just so he looked before he died. She will paint them all just this size, and put little joints between the frames to form a triptych that folds in on itself. See this? It will all be no bigger than my hand.” With a pleased look on her face, she set her fat little palm beside the tallest drawing, a Virgin on a cloud, with a winged angel peeping from a corner and a little cherub entangled in the hem of her flowing robe. “I can take it with me everywhere, and always think on the goodness of the Virgin, and the blessing of heaven.”

  “She?” said Marguerite. “Who is doing this for you?”

  “Oh, the holy father, the English Archbishop Wulsei, has sent the cleverest, most pious widow to us, who paints these lovely tiny pictures to bring us closer to heaven. So you see? Not all English are bad. After all, we are all Christians.”

  “That we are,” agreed Marguerite. “Pious, you say?”

  “Oh, very pious. At first, I thought perhaps I might not wish her services. It is not respectable for a woman to go wherever she wishes, to travel without a husband. I had Mademoiselle de Boline question her in her own tongue, and she said she was a widow, whose husband left her nothing because he was murdered, poor thing, so she must make her own way. So then I thought, it will do no harm just to see what she can do. And she is so very respectable. She is never seen without a very fierce, dour old Englishwoman who protects her honor better than a mother. So I called her back, and had Mademoiselle de Boline question her again. And I found her conversation most edifying, for a person of low degree. She reads holy books every day and seems to know so very much about the life of the Holy Virgin….”

  “Reads books, you say?”

  “Oh, very virtuous books. She told me of one, by a very devout man, that gives instructions to wives and widows. I think it should be made into French, to aid and comfort widows in their sorrow.”

  “English virtues into French, hmm,” said Marguerite, and the oddest little smile turned one corner of her mouth up. “I think I would like to see this prodigy. Send her to me when next she comes to you.” It must be this one, she thought, looking again at the sketch. This is the one who painted the portrait de Longueville sent. Virtuous, indeed. I’ll have the real story, so I can tease de Longueville with it. I like the idea of the little devotional triptych. Perhaps I’ll have one myself. Claude is too much of a simpleton to appreciate this work. A drawing of a monkey that was supposed to be her mother would please her.

  A door opened far down a corridor, and she could hear scurrying footsteps traversing the long, tapestry-hung chambers into Claude’s quarters. A maid of honor, young, out of breath, her headdress askew, was running toward her.

  “Madame! Madame! There is news! Oh, what a scandal! The English queen is weeping in her chambers, and all her ladies are weeping, too!”

  “What is this?” asked Marguerite, as Claude and her ladies turned toward the newcomer expectantly.

  “Oh, Madame, the king has dismissed the English queen’s entire suite. He says he will have only Frenchmen and women serve her.”

  “Do you know more? What has brought this about?”

  “Oh, he is mightily incensed against that Madame Gil’for’ who came with the queen. She puts on airs, and says who may see the queen and who may not. And she is always there, even when he would be merry with his queen, and he cannot be merry with her when someone he dislikes so much is always there. Oh, he says no man ever loved his wife so much, but he would rather be without her than have such a one as that Madame Gil’for’ serving her. So now she is weeping, and he is lying down again, scarcely able to move with the gout.”

  Claude and her ladies had clustered around Marguerite and the attendant, all eager to hear the news. “Ah yes, the Eng
lish, there were too many,” said one.

  “It was their airs. I myself have disliked that Mère Gil’for’, she is a foul-tempered dragon.”

  “It is good they will be gone. They could help her carry on intrigues, and the king is too old to catch them.”

  “It is the honor of France….”

  “Oh dear, oh dear!” cried Claude. “If they go away too soon, I shall not have my picture finished. I must go to my lord and beg that he intercede with the king. He must not send away the paintrix with the others. Or that charming little Nan de Boline. And Mademoiselle Bourchier, why, she is almost French. Surely, they are not displeasing to him like that haughty Madame Gil’for’.”

  But as usual, it was Gaillarde who had the last word. With the liberty allowed jesters, she plumped herself in the duchess’s own chair, tipping her nose up arrogantly and assuming a broadly comic English accent. “I am sorry,” she sniffed, “the queen is not receiving today. Who are you? The Pope? Oh, too bad, you’ll just have to wait in the antechamber with the others. After all, I am Madame Gil’for’, and a woman of great importance in Reechmon’. Oh? You have not heard of Reechmon’? Then that proves you are unworthy to know me.” The ladies dissolved in laughter at this portrait of provincial snobbery, and Gaillarde clapped her stubby-fingered hands together, the bells on her red velvet dress quivering as she applauded herself.

  The Ninth Portrait

  Anon. Early sixteenth century. Lady at the Virginals. 8 × 9”. Silverpoint on prepared paper. J. Paul Getty Museum.

  Falsely identified in the upper-left-hand corner as a portrait of the young Anne Boleyn, this delightful drawing illustrates a typical evening in an upper-class household of the early Renaissance. Two good-looking couples in Italian dress are seated at a table, part-singing from a sheet of “table music,” printed on all four sides for ease in sight reading. An older woman sits dozing over her embroidery, while two little dogs fight over a scrap beneath the table. Behind the virginals, a young man with foxy eyes and a long nose leans perilously close to the lady’s bosom as he helps to turn the pages of music that sit before her on the instrument. The domestic charm and sly humor of this drawing, as well as the precise and slightly stiff draftsmanship, have led to its identification with the Flemish school.