The Creation of Eve

by Lynn Cullen

  They regarded each other in silence. Between them, the workings of the golden clock clicked and whirled in their continual rounds.

  A voice came from across the room. “Then perhaps you will want this when you go.”

  I cannot say who was the most surprised to find Don Juan standing at the door, but I can say who seemed least glad.

  “Señor,” the King said icily. “What brings you here?”

  Don Juan bowed, then asked the Queen, “May I enter, My Lady?”

  “Certainly—if my husband permits it.”

  “Of course,” the King said.

  Don Juan’s young countenance was lit with a friendly smile as he approached. “I did not mean to interrupt, Your Majesty. I am here as a favor to His Majesty the Prince Don Carlos.”

  The King drew an irritated breath. “What does my son want?”

  “I am sorry to say that Don Carlos’s fever has risen this afternoon, and the only way any of Us could convince him to return to bed was to promise to give you this, My Lady.”

  “Something from Don Carlos?” said the Queen.

  Don Juan opened his hand, revealing the black pearl the Queen had ripped from her dress to throw at the Prince.

  “He said to tell you that it fell from Heaven,” Don Juan said in rapid French.

  “Perhaps an angel sent it,” the Queen said in the same tongue.

  “Yes.” Don Juan’s smile was genuine. “I believe one did.”

  The Queen turned pink.

  “What is it?” snapped the King. His face was so hard it was difficult to imagine I’d seen a gentle creature in it only moments before.

  “Nothing,” said the Queen. “A pearl that had fallen from my dress.” She reached for it quickly.

  “You may not take it.”

  She stopped, her hand above the pearl.

  “It has left your person,” the King said. “It cannot be returned by common hands.”

  “But My Lord,” said the Queen, “your son Don Carlos picked it Up. He is family.”

  The King’s chill gaze went to Don Juan.

  An edge of incredulousness crept into the Queen’s voice. “And so is Don Juan.” She took the pearl.

  The King lifted the Queen’s hand, the pearl still clasped within it. “Keep better watch over your things, my dear.” He kissed her hand and left.

  When he was gone, Don Juan said in the Queen’s language, “I did not mean to interrupt, Your Majesty.”

  “How can you interrupt when there was nothing to interrupt?” she said lightly in French.

  With a quick brush of his lips to her hand, he left immediately, the very model of decorum.

  So why do I feel that I was a witness to wrongdoing, when no one has committed a wrong?

  My Dearest Daughter,

  I am glad to hear you are faring well in spite of the many bull runs you are forced to witness. Do not judge the Spanish too harshly. The grisly spectacle you describe is no more gruesome than the bear-baiting preferred by the Cremonese, and at least it is economical in that it provides meat at the end of the ordeal. Just be grateful that the bulls’ terror is short-lived and that soon they are in God’s hands as are all His beloved creatures in the end.

  My own beloved creatures do well here. Lucia has completed a portrait of your mother that captures her delicate beauty. Gazing upon it gives your mother a moment’s respite from her worries, which is a relief to me as well, for the poor woman’s anxieties grow greater by the day. Her prayers are so endless she will barely eat or sleep, for she feels that if she stops, something terrible will befall the family. The weight she must feel! But you must not think it is all gloom and sorrow here. On the contrary, Asdrubale still charms us with his clowning as does Anna Maria with her sweetness and Europa with the predictability of her willfulness. Minerva is working on drawing, inspired by your having told her how messer Michelango said the basis of all good painting is to master drawing first.

  By the way, I did not tell messer Michelangelo that you were the Painter to the Queen. Why did you ask me about that in your last letter? In the note I wrote thanking messer Michelangelo for his kind attention to you in Rome, I mentioned that you were now serving as a lady to the Queen, as the King wished for you to teach Her Majesty her colors. Have Their Majesties asked you to be their painter? If they have not yet, I am certain they will. Show them your work—they will clamor for their own likenesses to be done, I promise.

  From Cremona,

  this 1st day of March, 1560

  With deepest love and affection,

  Your Father

  ITEM : The pearl called La Peregrina, which means “The Wanderer” or “The Pilgrim,” came from the shores of Panama in the New World. It was given by a conquistador to Isabel of Castilla, who in turn gave it to her daughter Juana the Mad. Juana’s son the Emperor Charles took La Peregrina from his mother, assuming she would not want to waste such a precious thing, locked within her tower.

  ITEM: Grind bone black for half an hour, an hour, or as much as you please. If you were to grind it a year it would be the better for it. Ochre, ground for ten years, would only be improved. Of vermilion, it cannot be said twenty years of grinding would be too much.

  23 MARCH 1560

  El Alcázar, Toledo

  The dull winter days of Lent, Unmitigated by parties or meat or warm sunshine, have fallen Upon Us. I have been allowed to begin to teach the Queen to draw, which has raised her interest in art to the point that she has asked for her portrait to be made. I leapt at the opportunity, only to be shot down by the condesa, who insisted that the Queen employ the official court painter, the Netherlander Anthonis Mor, not a mere lady-in-waiting. The condesa did find it in her heart to allow me to accompany the Queen to her sittings. But now I fear I have alienated myself with maestro Mor.

  I had only been curious. At his insistence, I had been completely silent as he worked on Her Majesty’s painting. Other than myself and his assistant, Alonso Sánchez Coello, a painter Doña Juana had brought with her from Portugal, all attendants had been banished from the chamber— musicians, too, save for one boy, who was bidden to play a single melancholic melody Unrelentingly on a shawm. During the first few sittings, as the shawm squawked and señor Sánchez Coello mixed pigments and the Maestro flicked the tip of his tongue in concentration as he worked, the Queen had darted amused looks at me from where she sat by the window opened for the light, though her teeth did chatter with cold. I cringed, fearing she would burst into laughter, for I could just imagine the Maestro, a wiry man with a rat’s shining eyes and a sharply forked beard, furiously smashing into splinters the wood panel Upon which he worked. But the droning shawm and stinking linseed-oil fumes eventually dulled My Lady’s spirit, Until at last she lapsed into silent stares, entertaining what thoughts I did not know, as the glowing mound of charcoal, heaped Up against the chill of the open window, groaned in the big brass brazier. Reduced to standing to the side, I was painfully reminded of the irony that Tiberio should think I was Painter to the Queen. Papà had not told Michelangelo that was my role here—why had the Maestro told Tiberio such a thing?

  Finally, as maestro Mor painstakingly painted the bluish shadows Under Her Majesty’s worried eyes, I blurted out a question that had nagged me since he had begun laying in the greenish-gray shapes of the Underpainting, three weeks ago.

  “Signore, I beg your pardon, but do you always prefer painting on wood?”

  The shawmist looked Up, though he kept Up his dreary bleating. Maestro Mor stepped back from his easel, his fist bristling with five different brushes. Under his floppy Flemish cap, his small black eyes flashed fire. “Excuse me?”

  Señor Sánchez Coello, a thin-faced fellow with sad dark eyes, shook his head from where he cleaned brushes behind the Maestro.

  “Signore.” I curtseyed. “I am so sorry to have interrupted.”

  He readjusted the square palette, loaded with Uniform dabs of paint, that was hooked on his thumb. “Well, you have now, so spit it
out. What?”

  “Wood, signore—do you always paint on it?”

  “What else would you suggest?”

  His tone of voice did not invite suggestion. I rephrased the thought that was needling me. “I notice you Use softer brushes than I am familiar with.”

  “Not surprising, with your limited experience.” He gazed at the smallest brush, from which a thin bundle of hairs sprang from the goose-quill ferrule. “This little beauty is of finest miniver tail. She has caressed the likenesses of two kings, three queens, and I cannot count how many princesses—too many.”

  Her Majesty’s whalebone stays crunched as she raised her arms to stretch. “Is there such thing as an excess of princesses?”

  Maestro Mor pointed the forks of his beard at her in a prideful smile. “There is when they demand the impossible. Even I cannot make a mare look like a filly, though I did try my best with Mary of England. H’m, though she was a Queen then, was she not, not a princess.”

  The Queen looked more lively than she had in days. “Do you mean Mary, my husband’s previous wife?”

  I curtseyed at the Maestro, feeling my chance for resolving my question slipping away. “Signore,” I said quickly, “I have been taught in the Venetian style, which is to paint Upon canvas with stiff hog-bristle brushes. In practicing this technique, I have observed”—he frowned in dismissal, so I sped Up my words—“that Using stiff-bristle brushes on rough canvas results in softer edges than Using soft brushes on wood.”

  “Yes, that is the disadvantage of Using stiff brushes on canvas.” He stepped back Up to the easel. “Your Majesty, forgive me for referring to the King’s former wife so disrespectfully.”

  “Signore,” I said, “begging your pardon, but can it not sometimes be an advantage to have soft edges? If most edges in a painting are soft, then if there are a few edges that are harder, would these few not be more noticeable? If one wished to call attention to a certain feature, say the eyes or a gem, a softer brush and finer strokes could be Used to harden the edge and thus direct the viewer to that item, as one Uses the contrast of dark against light. Otherwise, how does the viewer know where to look in a painting, if every detail has equal importance?”

  “Whatever do you mean, girl? Everything Upon which the viewer’s eye falls should be a delight and a wonder.” He nodded at the Queen, tacitly ordering her to resume her pose.

  “Did she really have a voice like a man’s?” the Queen asked. “Had she a man’s beard as well?”

  “Your Majesty, to answer your questions, yes and no.”

  “Signore, but how do you get across what is unique about your sitter? What is it you wish to say about”—I lifted my palm to the painting—“our Queen? What is your message?”

  He laughed. “Message? That this painting is perfect and beautiful.” He moved forward from the easel to take the Queen’s hand. “As is My Lady.” Her Majesty scratched her nose as maestro Mor kissed the Royal knuckles.

  “What you learned is lazy painting,” he said to me. “I would expect that of those in the Italian states, pleasure-seekers that they are. What I do is give my patrons an accurate portrayal of their features illuminated in strong light, so that their subjects—and history—may know their face. It has been an agreeable enough method for most of the crowned heads of Europe.”

  “But their personalities—”

  “Stick to drawing pictures with Our Lady the Queen—you are good enough at that, yes?”

  Señor Sánchez Coello grimaced in sympathy.

  After that, I left the shawm to its squawking and the Maestro to his painting. But maestro Mor made me think about the Use of both hard and soft edges in a picture, to control what one wanted to say about the sitter. I would have to work on a painting with this concept firmly in mind, and since I had no other model, I would have to Use the only available subject—me.

  But even as my spirits lift in the Undertaking of a new project, I do notice the Queen’s spirits sink deeper. For the day after Don Juan had returned the Queen’s pearl, the King had chosen to go hunting with his men instead of joining her at the Shrove Tuesday entertainments. He then rode to Madrid without her, where he had gone into retreat for Lent at the Monastery of San Jerónimo, never leaving her word of his whereabouts. She had to learn them from Doña Juana, who was only too happy to demonstrate her superior relationship to the King. Now, several weeks into his absence, the Queen’s countenance grows a little more glum each day, made more so by the letters that pour across the border from France at an ever-increasing rate. Word has reached Paris that the King has found My Lady unsuitable for bedding, and her Most Serene Majesty, Catherine de ’ Medici, Queen Mother of France, does not plan to tolerate it.

  Like Spain, France sits Upon a religious powder keg. But Unlike the Spanish empire, where war threatens to break out only in its far-flung holdings, the Unrest between the Roman Catholics and the Protestant Huguenots seethes within the very heart of France. When alive, King Felipe’s father, the Emperor Charles, made it clear to his son that he believed allowing dissenters to hold their services within his realms only spread their discontentment. The Emperor thought it kinder to squelch Protestant dissention before it got started than to fight a full-fledged civil war. Thus the dirty work of the Inquisition that commenced Under King Felipe’s great-grandparents the Catholic monarchs Isabel and Fernando, to root out Moors and Jews, has now made its chief quarry Protestant heretics. Yet the French Queen Mother Catherine allows both the Inquisition to secretly prosecute Protestants and for Protestants to hold their services. The result is murder and mayhem and barely contained war. Thus Queen Catherine counted on her daughter’s ability to pleasure the King into helping France should a full-fledged civil war erupt. And to date, My Lady has accomplished very little in this way.

  The most recent of the French Queen Mother’s missives to My Lady came two days ago. I was in my chambers, a small suite of rooms just below the Queen’s on the second floor, boiling down rabbit skins to make glue for sizing the canvas for my self-portrait, when My Lady appeared at my door. The condesa, madame, and Her Majesty’s other French and Spanish ladies were in tow.

  Francesca dropped the sticks of wood she had been feeding into the fire and sank into a curtsey. “Don’t,” said the Queen, when I stopped stirring and hastened to join Francesca. “You are busy.” She peered over my shoulder at the pot. “Is this part of preparing for a painting?”

  “We could smell the stench Upstairs.” The condesa’s voice was muffled by her firmly applied pomander. “Her Majesty insisted Upon coming down to see what you were doing.”

  “I am making glue for sizing a canvas, Your Majesty.” I glanced around at the pots scattered about the floor, at the canvas, stretched Upon the wood frame and flung Upon my bed, and at the stoppered flasks of cooked linseed oil on my toilet table. “I’m afraid it does smell most terrible.”

  “Most terrible indeed,” said the condesa.

  “You do right to make it,” said the Queen. “I would like to know all the parts of the painting process, even the basest ones. That way I might appreciate a painting more. Go,” she told the condesa. She waved at the other ladies. “All of you. You need not endure this stink.”

  “It is hardly right for a Queen—” the condesa began.

  The sizing boiled Up, spilling over the sides of the cauldron and into the fire with malodorous effect.

  Snapping out a few last admonishments, the condesa left, taking the other ladies with her. When they were gone, Her Majesty peeked into my cookpot, listening to my explanation of what was in the evil brew and why I was cooking it, then sank down Upon a bench with a handkerchief to her nose. She bade me to continue as she drew a letter from her bodice. She was poring over it, worrying the Great Pearl on its pendant as she read, as I took back the stirring stick I had given Francesca.

  “Almost done, signorina,” Francesca murmured. She wiped her hands on her apron, which was spotless as usual.

  I prodded the skins, immediatel
y splashing some of the milky brew just below my apron onto my skirt. Already my overgown was spotted with food, though each night Francesca, clucking, brushes my clothes as if killing them. Through no fault of hers, both of my overgowns are irreparably stained.

  With a loud sigh, the Queen dropped her letter in her lap. “How am I to catch the King’s heart when he thinks I am just a child? My mother insists that I make more progress with him. As if I had a shred of control over anything he does!”

  I stirred quietly, uncomfortable with being taken into her confidence. I did not need the condesa to tell me it was not appropriate for me to comment on my betters.

  The Queen picked Up her letter and read on, her young face Unhappy. “She says that I must get him to turn away from his lovers. How does she know he has lovers? I do not know that he has lovers. Does he, doña Sofonisba?”

  I recalled the warm gaze that bound him to his sister’s lady at the running of the bulls. I glanced at Francesca. She had told me she had heard from the other serving women that doña Eufrasia de Guzmán, Princess Juana’s chief lady-in-waiting, was the King’s lover before his marriage to the Queen, and that their affair still burned bright.

  “I see your looks,” cried the Queen. “I knew it—he does have a lover! Oh!”

  “Is not the King in retreat for Lent, Your Majesty?” I asked cautiously. “In a monastery in Madrid?” I hoped Her Majesty had not heard tales like the ones Francesca told me about the secret improprieties carried on within the monasteries around that city, how men had assignations with women and even nuns in them. The King, it is said, indulges in these forbidden pleasures as much as anybody.

  The Queen crossed her arms, the emeralds and rubies on her yellow sleeves rattling against each other. “I am not so easily fooled. Growing Up in my father’s court, I always knew who ruled my father’s heart, and it was not my mother.”