So Queen Marie was very happy to put down the cope and look at Madame Claude’s angels, and Madame Claude wept and said it looked so very like her dear dead mother, and wasn’t the portrait of the king so very like, dear Stepmother? Queen Marie looked very pouty faced, but she agreed, yes, the likeness was just miraculous and changed the subject by asking if I was English. And then I explained that I had come over with her but she had probably been too busy to notice, and she said, “Oh, yes, that’s right, Archbishop Wolsey said something.” Then I explained that I was to make commemorative miniature portraits of her and the king which Wolsey wanted to have set in gold and diamonds and present to King Henry, her brother, and she cheered up considerably.
“Oh, then you are the person who paints the clever tiny portraits. Did you—ah, I have heard that you once painted the Duke of Suffolk.” Then I knew that he must have had that portrait painted to give to her, which sounded pretty suspicious. Besides, her face lit up when she spoke his name.
“Yes, Your Majesty, I painted him fresh from the tilt yard. He said to paint his gaze fiery.”
“That sounds very like him. But…have I not heard of you before? I heard that…let me see…Longueville told the story…about a ghost and a picture. Do you remember it?” I could feel my face getting all hot when luckily Duchess Claude broke in, and said,
“Oh, yes, my, I heard that story. It was so very touching. About devotion beyond the grave. Do you believe that the ghosts of the blessed can return? I believe that my mother still comes to her bedchamber. I felt a presence, and a cold wind.”
Queen Marie looked cross at anyone who could take a draft for a ghost, and the other ladies all chimed in with ghost stories and they all forgot about me, which was very fortunate. I would have left then, but I was waiting to hear about my payment. It was at that time that Duke Francis was announced, and he came in with Bonnivet and Fleurange and his other friends. He stalked in looking like a thundercloud, and bowed over his wife’s hand and wished her farewell because they were going to Blois for some errand or other. When he saw the queen, he gave such a look to her, as if she were some scheming betrayer, that she was shocked, and then he bade his “mother” (that is, the queen) farewell so very coldly that I was shocked, considering how much he had been hanging about her lately. But Claude never noticed anything and was very touched by his courteous farewell to her and talked about it for long after he had left.
“Oh, you are still here,” she said after a while, noticing me waiting. “I have no money here, but I’ll have the steward of my household make your payment. I like your work even better than the prayer book I had completed in Paris last spring, so I will pay you the same.” She called one of her waiting footmen and while I inwardly rejoiced, he took me off to get my money, which was most sorely needed. Her steward, who was a knight, never did business but had a clerk who had set up near the kitchens with others of her household officers who traveled with them. There was a lot of clattering and the smell of things roasting and cooks shouting coming from inside the kitchens, and every so often somebody rushed in or out as if on an important errand. But while I was sitting on a bench waiting outside the steward’s clerk’s little door, I could hear them talking about how mad Duke Francis was.
“I tell you, he was in a fury.”
“I’m not surprised. I heard even the queen’s good French gentleman of the chamber, who could not be more loyal to us, said things must be taken in hand. He told Madame Louise yesterday that Monsieur d’Angoulême was likely to sire the heir who would displace him, if he kept up his mooning about that ambitious Englishwoman. There was no holding him, the great fool. What man wants a woman so much he would displace his own inheritance? But his mother, ah, she’s the only one who can make him see sense.”
“Thank God for Madame Louise, or that scheming English hussy would make herself queen regent.”
“Yes indeed. Thank God for her. There is a woman who thinks like a man and lays plans like a general. When would I ever have dreamed a woman’s conspiracy would save France? But that is how things stand at this moment. The monarchy hangs by a thread, and everything is in her hands.”
“Softer. There’s another English outside.”
“The ‘widow’? I hear she was Archbishop Wolsey’s mistress, and he discarded her by sending her here.”
I was very annoyed. I made some loud clattering sounds outside just to remind them I was there, and they called me in as if they hadn’t said anything at all.
“You have kept back a livre from my fee,” I said, emptying out the purse and counting it right in front of them.
“Oh, ah, it’s customary. For goodwill. It is a fee you owe to the steward’s office.”
“Well, I’m afraid it’s customary to pay that livre to foreign painters. It’s for silence. It’s an old English custom.” They looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.
“I think not,” said the steward.
“Oh, I think so. Poor Duchess Claude. She is so honorable, she would hate to know her very own steward is a rogue. How many other illuminators and tapestry makers and merchants do you think might speak for me if there were an inquiry?”
“Pay the foreign shrew,” said the footman.
“Damned English. The sooner they leave, the better,” I heard the steward say as I left to find Nan so I could go home.
“Nan,” I said to her as we trudged through the slush on our way to the Pont au Change, “that Les Tournelles is just a hotbed of enemies of the queen. They’d do anything to disgrace her and prove all their dirty gossip is right.”
“It’s none of your business, Mistress Susanna. Great people must look after themselves, and small people must get out of their way. You keep yourself to yourself, and don’t go listening around corners anymore. But I’m glad you made that nasty fellow cough up your fee.”
The king’s physicians were arguing at his bedside in Latin, holding a glass retort filled with the royal urine to the light from the window as they debated. On either side of the bed, his gentleman attendants stood in clusters in front of the arras, trying to follow those fragments of the language that they could comprehend.
“They’ve said another dose of purgatives; I’m sure that’s what it was.”
“It’s the urine. I think they said he’d passed a stone.”
“The stone. A man recovers from the stone.”
“I thought they said bleeding.”
“They’ve tried bleeding.”
The long-robed physicians nodded at each other learnedly and spoke of the overbalancing of humors and the value of a compound of mercury often used in such cases.
The king, the center of all this interest, lay in the ending throes of a gout attack. The covers over his feet and legs had been put on a frame to keep them from contacting his twisted lower limbs, but all night long he had writhed and tossed, shaking with chills and fever. The physicians had tried applications of heat, then applications of cold. At last repeated bleedings, the applications of certain holy medals, and doses of opium seem to have brought the attack under control.
“Tell me, Duprat, has my wife inquired of my health?”
“Only the orders of the physicians barred her from your room, Your Majesty.”
“My affairs…I am better now. Bring me my foreign correspondence.”
“Your Majesty,” said the shocked voice of the chief physician, “you must have absolute bed rest to recover. Do you hear? Absolute. Only the lightest food. And then, when you are up, regular hours, rest, no feasting. It is the great effort, the late hours of these last months, the travel…”
The king struggled to sit up. Immediately, two of his gentlemen assisted him, propping up his head with additional pillows. There seemed to be an evil smell about the bed. Sulfur, perhaps, or a bit of brimstone, but the gentlemen took it for the smell of illness, or perhaps medicine.
Sitting on the head of the king’s bed, Belphagor, his old smoky self, too transparent now to be seen at all, leaned
his head attentively toward the king, taking in the whole scene.
“Rest, Your Majesty. You must rest to get well,” said the first physician.
“Get away from the foulness and the smokiness of the city air. You must travel to Saint-Germain and rest,” said his assistant.
“Ask about the queen,” whispered Belphagor.
“My wife, how did she spend the night?”
“In prayer, Your Majesty. She worked on Queen Anne’s cope all the afternoon with your daughter, Claude, and in the evening went to the chapel to offer prayers for your recovery.”
“They lie,” whispered Belphagor. “She tapped her foot impatiently and yearned for dancing and music. Do you remember how bored she acted the last time you gave her one of the crown jewels? That kiss was hardly a peck. She has eyes only for jousting champions. You must show yourself young or she will take a lover.” Belphagor’s voice was cynical and insinuating. The king started.
“Never!” he said, into the air.
“What was that, Your Majesty?” asked Duprat, but behind him the physicians began to mumble in Latin again about dementia. The last sign.
“Duprat, I wish to plan a grand feast, to thank the burgesses of Paris. And after that…”
“Your Majesty! Your health!” said the physician.
“Nonsense. Who is the best judge of my health but me? I’ll have entertainment. I am still young. A day or two in bed is all I need. Send for the queen.”
“Never let them see you are weak,” came Belphagor’s sly whisper. “They will try to steal the throne. Feasts, parties, dancing. Live like a king! Confound your enemies! Captivate the queen anew!”
“Why should I live, if I cannot live like a king?” said Louis the Twelfth. “I want feasts, parties, dancing! In the spring, I shall go to Blois, and hunt again. I am renewed!”
Belphagor, finer than a vapor, passed through the tiny circles of frosty glass in the window, well pleased at the damage he had wrought. The plan for the regency was afoot.
Originally, Belphagor had thought to flit right home to the house in the Ile de la Cité that Crouch had rented for him, but he was simply too tempted on the way by the excellent possibilities he saw. He sent a runaway horse through a group of bundled-up children who had been playing ball in the street, then he dazzled the eyes of an elderly merchant with the reflection off a gilded saint’s statue in a niche, so that he did not notice the cutpurse who relieved him of his money with a single stroke of a sharp knife. Then he tripped an old lady carrying a basket of clean laundry and floated like a cloud of malice into a bakery, where he caused all the bread to fail to rise. By now he had quite forgotten to go home, but the bells of a church tower recalled the hour to him, and he whisked to his own house, where his new servant, a very promising young student of theology from the Sorbonne, awaited him. It was such a tempting little soul, all fresh and unused, and full of holy aspirations, that he simply couldn’t resist. Slowly, slowly, that’s how to do it, he had told himself, and so he’d begun by buying the starving fellow a dinner. Then he’d offered him a job—just a few harmless tasks. Reading aloud, running errands. The gratitude in the hollow, hungry eyes pleased Belphagor. If I get this tasty little priestling trained right, he thought, I can finally get rid of that Crouch. Between this little bookworm and those sly fellows in the cellar over there across the river, I can get anything I need to know. Besides, I know enough about being a gentleman already.
At the door, he was met by his imps, who were now in human form, dressed in the handsome Moorish regalia he had acquired for them. The house, an old, turreted place on a corner, had a cozy, homey smell to it: sulfurous. It looks quite elegant with those imps at the door, thought Belphagor. I think I should always maintain a town residence from now on.
“Has Crouch come back yet?” he addressed the first Moor in impish language, and the creature responded in the squealing, grumbling sounds with which it customarily spoke:
“No, he’s been off at the public baths all afternoon, being stroked by female humans and eating pies.”
“Wastrel. Is Nicholas here yet?”
“He’s been waiting this half hour in your study, Lord Belphagor. He’s been eating pies, too.”
“Has it done him any good yet?”
“No, he’s as thin as ever. Humans are ridiculous; no matter how they try, they are stuck with whatever shape they come in.”
But Lord Belphagor, dressed in a heavy, fur-lined, brocade gown in the French style, a handsome silk shirt and velvet trunk hose, his splendid flat-brimmed velvet hat trimmed with a diamond and an egret feather, had passed through his great hall, where an array of meat pies and cheeses and a large decanter of wine had been laid out on the table. Belphagor inspected them. Wine half gone. Good. Inside his study, Nicholas, his skinny cheeks distended and still munching, was sitting in Belphagor’s big barrel-backed chair and toasting himself by the fire while reading.
“Oh, Lord Belfagoro!” he said, jumping up so suddenly that the crumbs fell from his lap in a shower. “I was just reading ahead. This is a very interesting manuscript.”
“Don’t bother, my boy. Just give me back my chair. Mighty interesting, isn’t it? In my opinion, the man’s a genius. Took no end of trouble to get hold of this manuscript copy from one of his friends. They said it would be the book to change the world. Pity I can’t read. But you—ah, yes, you’ve opened the world of learning to me, a poor old gentleman. How grateful I am!” Nicholas’s eyes slid sideways, but Belphagor didn’t notice, he was so pleased with his new gifts of devious speech. “Now, let’s just start where we had left off, dear boy….”
“Here we are: ‘The Way to Govern Cities or Dominions That, Previous to Being Occupied, Lived under Their Own Laws.’”
“Yes, that’s it. Read on. I am learning all the time.” Nicholas read on in a clear, slow, voice:
“‘And whoever becomes the ruler of a free city and does not destroy it, can expect to be destroyed by it, for it can always find motive for rebellion in the name of liberty and of its ancient usages, which are forgotten neither by lapse of time nor by benefits received….”
“Ah, clever. Yes, clever. One must know when to destroy and when to keep, and what benefits may be expected by each course. That Machiavelli fellow is brilliant. How much I am learning from him! Yes, yes. ‘The unarmed prophet fails.’ What do you think of that, Nicholas?”
“Our Lord Jesus Christ was unarmed,” said the theology student. A puff of steam came out of Belphagor’s ears, but he maintained his calm facade.
“And he came to a bad end,” said the demon. “Painful. Sad. No grandchildren to charm in his old age. It’s nothing a man would seek out. Now, wealth…”
“All over the earth his church converts the heathen, so the unarmed prophet…”
“That was then, and this is now,” said Belphagor hastily, for argument wearied him.
“But if something is truth, shouldn’t it be so for all times, not just one?”
“You’re tiring my mind, young man. Read on.”
But scarcely had Nicholas gotten to the chapter on controlling new dominions acquired by the power of others or by fortune, than one of the imps knocked on the study door.
“Lord Belphagor, it is the Duc de Bourbon who wishes to have an audience with you,” said the Moor in impish language. But Belphagor’s brain was still operating in French.
“Ah, the Helmsman! Show him in, show him in! That’s enough for today, Nicholas. My servant will give you your payment for the week. He speaks no French, but just show him your open palm, and he’ll understand.”
The Due de Bourbon gave the scrawny young man in the student’s gown an arrogant stare as he strode into Belphagor’s study, and Nicholas felt as if he were slinking out like some stray cat. But outside, he paused. The table was still full, and the wine only half drunk. The two Moors were chatting to each other in the oddest, grumbling tones, as if they hadn’t noticed him. Nicholas paused, reversed his hood like a huge satch
el, and began to tuck away the extra pies into it. Then he paused. Voices were coming from the study, and Nicholas, who was very curious about Belphagor, who wasn’t like any Italian he had ever known, paused. Belphagor, who never noticed whether doors were open or closed because he was accustomed to passing through them, had left the study door open.
“The plot progresses, my lord of Bourbon. I visited Les Tournelles today, and I assure you, after what I have done, the king will die shortly. How goes the plan for the substitution?” Nicholas’s blood ran cold. A regicidal plot. Oh, Lord, he had already heard too much. He was frozen to the spot. Suddenly, the cheeses didn’t look as tasty anymore.
“It goes well. The society has undertaken to bribe one of the stewards, who will purchase an infant from the orphanage. Even if all are arrested, my role will never be discovered.”
“Well then, the fall of the Valois is assured.”
“It is that I wish to speak to you about. That is why I meet you here, without them, and not in the hidden chambers. The Priory wishes to return the True Blood to the throne. The closest descendants of the Merovingians are the Houses of Lorraine and Guise.”
The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley Page 41
