The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley

by The Serpent Garden (epub)

  “What is it he said?” buzzed the crowd of courtiers waiting outside the death chamber as the queen was escorted out, white faced.

  “He said, ‘I give you the best present yet, my death,’” said someone.

  “Imagine!”

  “At last we’ll be rid of that filthy Englishwoman.”

  “Not if she’s pregnant.”

  “Do you think she is pregnant?”

  “The Dauphin’s wife is with child, they say.”

  “The queen is pregnant, have you heard?”

  “Oh, here comes the Dauphin.”

  “Look how solemn he is.”

  “What will the king say?”

  “Suppose the king gets well, then what?”

  Inside the chamber, the king, gray faced and feeble, scarcely moved on his great bed. A violent fit of vomiting had overtaken him, bringing him so low that all hope of recovery had been given up. The priests had administered the last rites, but still the physicians labored. Now the physicians parted, allowing Francis to the dying man’s bedside. Tall and robust, the long-nosed prince knelt to hear the dying man’s words. The king struggled to get up; two of his gentlemen in waiting lifted him up, and the king embraced Francis. “I am dying,” whispered the king. “I leave behind me two young daughters, a wife; I confide them to your affection.”

  “Your Majesty, there is hope yet. Your physicians assure me that recovery is near.”

  “Nonsense, nonsense. I know that I am dying.” The king’s breath was slow, his voice weak. Francis, still embracing him, laid him back gently on his pillows. “We commend our subjects to your care,” whispered Louis the Twelfth. Francis could feel the fever eating up the old man’s bones. Relief and ambition mingled with shock at the speed with which the hour had come at last, with a certain horror at the ugliness with which death came even to kings. For long hours, Francis sat at the head of the king’s bed, listening to the death rattle, his mind torn with new thoughts. Before it had seemed easy, the idea of being king. Now, suddenly, he found himself wondering how he could be as competent, as beloved by the people, as the old man who lay dying beside him. Time passed slowly as he sat, as the attendants lit the candles, as the candles burned down. By eleven o’clock at night, the king, his head cradled in Francis’s arms, breathed his last.

  “Fleurange, it is over,” said Francis, stiff and exhausted, as he left the death chamber after midnight. “Send for my mother and sister.” That morning, even as the king’s body was being disemboweled, embalmed, and laid out in robes of state, a messenger left Paris at full speed for Romorantin. By the time the king’s body was in its coffin, being carried in procession through black-draped streets to the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame, Louise of Savoy and her daughter were on the road.

  “Now, you see how easy it is? The molds came off perfectly. That’s how your hands look in reverse. Then we just use the molds to cast your hands in plaster.” Just to look overlong at Master Ashton’s handsome, wide-boned hands sent my mind off down the path of evil thoughts. Like a drunken person, I wanted more, more, and there was no satisfaction. Secretly, thinking of the hands, I wished I had a mold of his whole body, lying like a glorious plaster god, in the corner of my studio. Everything all there, for me to touch and feel and lust after when he was gone…. All my feeding had filled him back out, and he was perfect. The way the wide, heavy bones of his chest melted into the muscles at the flank, the hint of bone at the pelvis and the heavy roll of muscle across the hip above the joint, which flowed to the lower belly, and then…well, you can see my mind was full of the most lascivious wickedness day and night, and I just couldn’t hate it the way I ought to. Of course, I kept it all inside so no one would know, but I think Nan knew, even though I had been ever so careful. She was pretending to be busy knitting and looking at my birds, which were thriving very excellently.

  When Robert Ashton had come this day to get his hands cast, I saw he had washed his face all shiny and combed his hair almost flat with water and goose grease, which was a miracle although one I did not care for, because I liked him better plain and curly headed, and not in the fashion. It was flattering, though, to see that he still wanted me to think well of him, and went to all that trouble to dress up, even after he had obtained what all men want. And he had brought me a sack of millet for a present and looked at my birds a proper long while. The truly interested look on his face as he watched them hop made me think the right things might well be inside of him, unlike my fearful suspicions that he might only be good on the outside and full of deception on the inside, like that whited sepulchre you hear about in church that looks nice but is really just full of ugly dead things. Besides, Master Dallet would never have brought millet for my birds.

  “They look very odd to me, these molds. But real, too. Can you paint the cast, or must it always be white?”

  “Oh, it can be painted, but you have to seal it first, because the material is porous. That’s how cheap saints are made for churches. The most realistic casts are tinted wax, though. The transparency looks just like human flesh.”

  “I can’t imagine why anyone would want that.”

  “Oh, wax effigies for funerals, false relics, holy incorruptible corpses, that sort of thing.”

  “That’s done?” he asked, with the oddest smile.

  “Oh, a good artificer has to know how to make many things. The relic trade is a lucrative one—even better than making weeping statues.”

  “Susanna, you have some of the most profoundly sinful knowledge of any honest person I know. No wonder you are tempted into deception.” He poured some water into the basin to wash off his hands.

  “I suppose I can’t help it. When I was little, I once watched my father make several excellent Veronica’s handkerchiefs. A little red lead, tempered with a bit of umber, if I recall right. The color of old blood must be matched perfectly. The linen has to be aged, too.”

  “That’s dreadful.”

  “Master Ashton, have you ever counted how many Veronica’s handkerchiefs there are in the world? My father was not the only one. The only thing he wouldn’t do was shrouds. Too big, and no money in them. The full figure, you understand. The monks don’t pay proportionally.”

  “I made a pilgrimage to a holy shroud once. Now I am ashamed to think I wept.”

  “You shouldn’t be. It’s good to weep for the Passion of Our Lord. The shroud just helped you to do it, that’s all.”

  “Susanna, you never cease to surprise me.”

  “Admit you’re pleased I’m not boring. Do you like the soap? I made it myself from my Good Wyfe’s Book of Manners.”

  “Hmm. It is a bit, ah, strong, I think. But…effective. Very effective.”

  “You see? That is a wonderful book. It is not often one can have a book that touches on moral and useful questions all at one time.”

  “I wish I had a book that touched on one question.”

  “The Secret? Don’t tell me you are beginning to believe all that nonsense.”

  “It’s not that I believe it, but that others do. What secret would make them undertake such risks? I have taken to following that Crouch around town, and I am certain he’s up to something. For one thing, he’s searching for this place, I think. I’m always careful when I come here, and you should be, too. Take a different route each time.”

  “I do, Robert. And I look behind me, too.”

  “Then there’s something else that’s going on. Men come and meet at the house he shares with that Italian, they exchange code words to enter, and I have seen the servants of some of the greatest notables in the kingdom holding their horses in the courtyard.”

  “Does Crouch know you follow him?”

  “At first I thought not, but lately, he goes roundabout. I follow, he ducks into an alley. I stop. He hurries out by the same way he went in. He knows.”

  “Well, be careful you don’t get too close. He has a long, sharp knife.”

  “All this for a treaty. It seems a waste.”

&
nbsp; “Oh, I don’t think so. The archbishop is a shrewd man. I think he wants to know how strong the conspiracy is so he can judge which side to join.”

  “Susanna! That’s unspeakable! Abandon our obligations, our sacred pledges, our princess?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. It was just a thought. I meant nothing by it.”

  “That’s just as well. I fear that your natural bent for deception may overgrow itself. That way lies the fear of imaginary conspiracies, eccentricity, and the lunatic asylum. There are enough of that sort of people in the world already.”

  Twenty-four

  IT seems that once upon a time a Queen of France bore a son after the death of the king and therefore ever after the French have been afraid the same thing would happen. So immediately when the king died, they took the queen off to an old palace on the other side of the river called the Hôtel de Cluny, which has many narrow winding rooms and shut her up in the dark in bed just to make sure if there was or was not a baby coming, like that queen from long ago. I know because I got to see her there and she was very glad about it because they didn’t let her see any English, but instead that Louise of Savoy who runs everything had the Countess of Nevers who is very sharp-nosed and unpleasant watch the chamber day and night. The queen was required to wear white in mourning and so they called her the “White Queen” instead of her having a name like a Christian person. That is how the French are.

  The only person who was really sad about the king’s dying was poor Claude, who looked over and over again at the picture I had made of her father and mother and the Virgin and angels and cried and cried. And then she sent for me because she’d had another one of her ideas.

  “I have been selfish in my sorrow,” she said, “and now I know that it is only blessed to console others.” Now that she was to be queen, there were all sorts of petitioners and flatterers outside her door, and I practically had to step over them with the help of the lackey that she had sent to fetch me. She received me in her chamber, alone but for two maids of honor. In the corner was a prie-dieu with my little picture set out on top for her to contemplate. Her poor squinty eyes were all red rimmed, and I felt sorry for her because she was the only person not using this waiting time for plotting about how to get more influence when Francis was crowned. “There is one who is more sorrowful than I. I hear the White Queen has called for her English doctor, but they won’t let him go. They never open the curtains. Oh, she has so clearly grown sick with grief, and they do nothing to console her. I, at least, have my picture. But I must sacrifice. I want you to take it to her to aid her in her prayers and make me another one just like it.”

  “That is generous indeed, Majesty. But will they let me in?”

  “I have asked the Duchess Marguerite to ask her mother, who is the one who gives permission to enter the White Queen’s chamber. She said she knew you and gave permission herself. ‘Tell her to take her gallery of little portraits. The White Queen is bored.’ Bored! Oh, poor Madame d’Alençon; she understands so little of loss.” Claude’s own liverymen took me across the river to the Hôtel de Cluny and through the wandering maze of narrow old rooms to the White Queen’s chamber, which they save just for putting queens in so it doesn’t usually get much use. At the door, Louise of Savoy’s guards looked through the coffer I had brought with me just to make sure there wasn’t a marriage contract with the King of Persia hiding in there, or maybe a live baby, or something else conspiratorial that the new king-to-be, or worse, his mother, didn’t approve of.

  Inside, big heavy curtains were pulled over the windows. There were very good tapestries, but you could hardly see them in the dark. There were candles flickering in iron sconces on the walls, and at the White Queen’s bed table, another candle, and pen and ink and a half-finished letter. I went and curtseyed very low to her where she was sitting up in bed, all dressed in a white gown with white embroidery, and said I had been sent by Queen Claude to console her in her grief so the old lady sitting in the corner wouldn’t become alarmed.

  “Oh, don’t bother. That’s not the Countess of Nevers. It’s her waiting gentlewoman, and she’s asleep.” The White Queen spoke in English, as if it were a great relief. “I don’t know what possessed Claude to send you, or how you got in, but I thought I’d go crazy without someone to speak to me in English! They’ve sent my English ladies away. I’ve been screaming with the toothache, and they won’t even send my doctor! All I do is sit here in the dark and write letters! And I’m not even allowed to get any back! They’ve trapped me here! I want to go home!” At this declaration, the old lady snorted and her eyes flickered open. I answered in French.

  “Queen Claude, knowing you to be consumed with grief, has sent her greatest treasure to you, her picture of her father and mother with the angels, as consolation.” The old lady’s head nodded again, and she began to snore.

  “Oh, that poor, silly thing. Let’s see it, then. Have you brought anything else to amuse me? Pictures? Stories? They’ve left me with nothing but a book of prayers. I’m losing my mind with boredom in here. I need my doctor. I’m ill. I need my ladies. I need to open the curtains. Oh, that’s Claude’s picture? Hmph. That picture of the king looks very like. As for Anne of Brittany, how did you know to paint her like that?”

  “The Queen showed me another portrait, then had me change it to be more beautiful.”

  “Yes, that sounds like her. I can’t keep this thing. Maybe if you tell her that knowing how much it means to her, I’ll borrow it only until you can make me another one, then they’ll send you back. Do you think that would work? I need to speak English, or I’ll scream.”

  “I think they might be satisfied to hear of you screaming.”

  “You know, you’re right. You have sense. I’ll tell her that while I hate to have anything disturb me in my grief, you are very discreet and quiet, and contemplating drawings of my beloved spouse will still the ache in my heart.”

  “It sounds as if you know how to deal with them.”

  “Ah, God, I’m learning. They’ve sent a horrid French physician with two midwives to poke and prod me. And never an English lady! This is purgatory. What will I do if Francis decides to send me to Blois? To keep me prisoner so he can make money from my remarriage? I hear he quarrels with my brother over who has the right to give me in marriage. Either one of them could decide to send me to the ends of the earth! Has my brother forgotten his promise that I might choose my own remarriage? I may never see home again!” She burst into tears, which was really a great intimacy for one so lowly as myself, but she was very desperate and even queens have to take what they can get, sometimes.

  “Refuse to marry, Majesty. A woman has the right to turn down a proposal.”

  “That is what the archbishop has written me. My lord of York—he is my last remaining friend. I am bereft—even my brother abandons me!”

  “The archbishop is very wise. He gives good advice.”

  “Ah, that’s right. You have been in his service. But what will I do if I am held prisoner, my ladies sent away? Won’t I have to say yes?”

  “They won’t dare treat you too ill. The scandal would be too great.”

  “But I must go home, I must. Yesterday Francis came to me and pressed his suit. Oh, how shameful, how odious! I, a queen, to hear such things! Just to get rid of him I told him I was secretly betrothed to another. Imagine! That horrible mountain of French vanity! I would rather leave this earth than yield to his suits! I have written to my brother to save me from him. What can I do? And then an old serving woman came to renew the candles and whispered to me that I should accept what came, for others thought of my good. Two nights by eventide and I should rule France. A conspiracy! Maybe more! Who knows where it will end? What if I don’t want to rule France? I can’t think of anything horrider!” Then she cried so hard I was afraid her mind would break, because after all it was a lot to bear for a girl only eighteen who would rather be dancing. This woke up the old lady for good, and she came over to inspect. But lucki
ly the picture of the king was open on the bed and I explained that the mere sight of it had sent the White Queen prostrate with renewed grief. But the old lady didn’t seem very convinced. Then a serving woman came in with food on a tray, and I had to leave.

  “Well, what news from the White Queen’s chamber?” inquired Duchess Marguerite, who had asked me to come to her after I had taken Claude’s angels to the White Queen. Bearing in mind that everything I said to her would go straight to her brother Francis, and to their mother, that crafty Louise, I didn’t say everything.

  “She is very bored and sad there in the dark, and cries and cries and writes letters.”

  “Has she confided a pregnancy to you?”

  “No, not at all. Though I am not the sort of person she would confide such matters to, I am sure.”

  “Oh, someone who speaks English, a woman, you never can tell.” That Marguerite was certainly clever. I guess I was another test, like the doctors. “There is a rumor out that she has padded herself up with linens to look pregnant, you know.”

  “Oh, I didn’t. She doesn’t look padded at all. Just a little fatter around the chin, from having nothing to do all day but lie in bed and eat.”

  “It is as I thought. Some people are too suspicious. They see conspiracies everywhere.” Some people. That must mean her mother, who was probably much better at conspiracies than the White Queen.

  “Well, um, what if there were a conspiracy, one that she loathed and despised and had nothing to do with, yet had nowhere to turn?”

  “I would say she needed someone in whom to confide, so that all could be dealt with in secret, to preserve her reputation.”

  “Then I would say eventide in two nights’ time, if you would promise your help and spare her good name.”

  “She wants you back, you know.”

  “Really?” I said.