by Susann Cokal
More, more, always more. The thought strikes me that the one way I might please Nicolas is by invention. An ornate story could win me more security and perhaps a coin, a step closer to Copenhagen and Jacob.
I use the first name that comes to mind. “There’s been talk about Countess Elinor.” I pause briefly to decide on her sin. “They say she’s taken a lover.”
This does seem to interest Nicolas. He stops twirling the ring and sits up. “Oh?”
This must be what he wants from me. “Someone . . . highly placed. He shouts the name of his dog when he has his crisis.” This part comes from my father’s district; the guild master was said to call for old Fido when swiving his wife.
I thought to provoke laughter, but Nicolas is not amused. He scratches himself and looks at his desk as if he has something important to do there. I imagine him writing the order to imprison a clumsy, lying nursery maid.
He asks, “Do ‘they’ have a reason for their suspicions?”
“She might be with child,” I say desperately. “Not her husband’s. Some people say it, anyway, at least one.” (Myself.) “He was injured in the war — the Count was.” I think of the gossip my stepmother reported about me, the rumors that damned me in the parish eyes. “Elinor vomited at Mass on Sunday.”
Nicolas says, “Several ladies were ill. Saturday’s chicken had gone bad.”
(Only the nobles had chicken; the rest of us got lentils and leeks. We were not sick.)
I say, “The Countess heaved when the Queen took Communion.” This is, in fact, true.
“That sounds more like an accusation of sin against the Queen. Do you believe that gentle Isabel should not receive Heaven’s comfort?”
“I never meant that!” This is shaky ground, politics, even if Nicolas is only playing with me. Hastily I retract: “I’m sure you’re right. Fowl can be dangerous in summer . . .”
“Is this a common belief?” he asks, and for a moment I am confused — everyone knows about poultry. He clarifies, “About the Countess, that is.” (I hear him calling me a dolt in his mind.) “Do your set commonly believe that she’s an adulteress? And do they know the identity of her lover?”
I am too anxious to notice that he is not speaking as fluidly as usual; this will occur to me only later, and I will think I probably imagined it. “I don’t like to say.”
“But you must say, having begun.” He keeps scratching, and I think he must have worn a hole in his skin by now. “Tell me.”
I don’t know why the name comes so easily; perhaps because it is one name often on the lips, as people fear more arrests. As I fear arrest. “Sir Georg Oline, the King’s Secretary.”
At last, Nicolas stops scratching.
I fear I’ve gone too far. “But you’re right — she may not be sick with a baby at all.” I babble on. “There are the medicines that the Countess — and the nurses — feed to the children. It could be that they’re having some effect. I’ve heard Doctor Candenzius say that any posset can also be a poison if administered incorrectly —”
Nicolas’s face is smooth but tense, with a listening look that warns me to be careful. “Do you accuse the Countess of being a poisoner as well?”
“I — I wouldn’t — I mentioned only her own illness . . . ”
Nicolas stands and stretches, laughing suddenly as if this has all been a great joke. He seems willing to forget about the Countess for now.
While he seats himself again, he says, “Before you accuse the Queen’s chief lady of poisoning, have a thought for your tongue.”
I bite my tongue, stay standing straight, bones aching.
Nicolas uncaps a little inkwell and takes up a pen. “You may say anything you like to me, of course,” he notes as he begins to write. “That is your duty. But be careful elsewhere, or something might get your tongue. A lion, perhaps, or Sir Georg’s pet dog.”
I think of Midi Sorte and her split tongue.
He looks up and smiles; the white teeth gleam in a manner that appears overstudied but is nonetheless effective. He is in control of himself again. I notice the clock I heard ticking on a previous visit has been removed.
THE HEAVENS, CHRISTIAN V, AND HIS ISABEL
NO one sleeps in the long-lumened nights. Prostitutes do a brisk business. The nuns of certain convents pray through the brief bluish hours, while the Queen’s ladies wheel around her like stars around the earth. Christian’s men suffer from headaches and wear circles under their eyes as badges of honor, proving they are worn out with duties waiting on the King. For this is a time of joy: Queen Isabel has conceived again.
After the physicians swear that it is so, Christian goes to Stellarius, the astrologer, for confirmation. Stellarius is a most talented man. On the flat west tower, now an observatory, he leads a nightly synod in which Christian and his favorites — Rafael af Hvas, Willem Braj, and always Lord Nicolas — with their assorted attendants and friends, even a dwarf or two, enjoy turns gazing through Stellarius’s new perspective glass. The clever contraption has a power for picking flecks of light out of an apparently uniform sky. Even when moon and stars crowd the heavens for the brief space in which the sun is gone, Stellarius manages to scry movements among them.
“It will be a fine baby,” Stellarius announces over and over. His clever machine makes him certain. He adds a further tidbit of prediction with each night’s work, ensuring that he will be summoned again and again. When a week has passed, his litany has built to “A very fine baby, to be born at the end of February, probably on the day of Saint Benjamin Deacon. And see how brightly shines the heart of Sagittarius? A masculine sign, almost certainly a boy. That is, if all goes well down here” — he would prefer not to make an absolute promise just yet —“the heavens are in favor.”
Delighted, the King and his men look through the glass, murmuring shrewdly, though none of them is mathematicus enough to recognize Sagittarius’s heart or even whether the constellation has one. At each given moment, some star or other is pulsing to catch the eye: that, they all think, must be the one of which Stellarius speaks.
Gazing heavenward, King Christian feels a rush of tenderness for his wife.
“I will give my Isabel a gift,” Christian declares. He avoids Nicolas’s gaze and turns surprisingly to his historian, who is both the chief scholar of his court and the man standing closest. “You will find something suitable. Or have something made. A ring. She has not had a ring in a while, I think. Make it poetic, with a line of metaphor inside. Or, no — make it a book of poems. With engraved illustrations and a decorated cover.”
The tall, bony scholar, not accustomed to being addressed this way, coughs delicately and begs leave to speak. “Your Majesty,” he says, “the Queen is known to be deeply devout. Perhaps, given the customary topics of poetry, you might consider a book on some religious subject instead. A book of hours or an illustrated history of female martyrs.”
Christian beams at him. “An excellent idea! Visit the bookbinders’ district tomorrow.” He is pleased with himself for having thought of Isabel, pleased also that he will be filling her time with useful occupation.
The scholar promises this will be done. The grooms stifle yawns behind jeweled hands. Lord Nicolas stares at the moon, and a stray beam picks out the spot of silver in his beard.
The Queen lies in a night-dark chamber, fretting herself. It has become impossible for her to sleep without light, but she cannot explain this to her women. They would think her weak. So each night the shutters are closed, Isabel confined blindly inside for the health of her womb. She would like to look at her painting of the Virgin Annunciate. She would like to look at something other than this nasty, infernal darkness.
If the Queen were to speak truth, she’d admit that one reason she’s kept watch over her children’s beds in the past years is that they provide an excuse for candlelight, and she is able to doze in the soft golden glow . . . until, that is, one child or another is seized with a fit for Isabel to dose. Then she might gather them
within the folds of her robe and hold them safe against her body, which gesture is also a comfort to her.
But on these nights, her own bed. The physicians have ordered her to it. It squats in the middle of her inner chamber, a relatively plain furnishing, not so elaborate or uncomfortable as the one she uses for ceremonial purposes (her husband, his awkward preferences). A maid on a pallet to each side snores faintly; Elinor, with her own pair of maids, sleeps in the small chamber adjoining.
Dear Elinor. Elinor does not snore. Elinor probably does not sleep, either. This thought is some comfort to Isabel as she follows the itch across her breasts (it travels), up her neck, and into her right ear. She digs down and comes up with a sticky little ball of wax. After experimenting with its texture awhile, she makes sure to lose it in the sheets lest anyone think it fascinates her.
The servants’ dinner was plentiful in onions. The room smells nasty.
Suddenly Isabel starts to retch, and this is a relief. The maids sit up, the doors open, and Elinor floats in with a candle and a dainty embroidered towel for Isabel’s mouth.
“There, there, ma reine,” she says, stroking Isabel’s hair with her cool white fingers. “This is a good sign. It is a healthy baby that makes his mother sick.”
The maids, with faces blank, scrub at the stain on Isabel’s counterpane.
Christian bends again to Stellarius’s perspective glass. Knees and buttocks, elbows and feet jut at angles that would be called ridiculous if he were not the King. He is very aware of Nicolas somewhere behind him and would like to appear graceful. He changes focus to gaze at his family’s namesake, the moon: la pleine lune des Lunedie. Already it has begun to fade as the sun swings into its place.
This marvelous device is so powerful, brings the moon so very close, that only a quarter of the face can be seen. Christian has to swivel the glass along degree by degree if he wants to study all the porous surface, the gray flecks among the luminous white. Stellarius helps him do this, mentioning casually that soon there will be an even finer device with greater and clearer magnification.
Christian longs for Nicolas to join him at the glass but does not like to ask him to approach in front of the grooms, who strictly speaking are of higher rank.
Bored, the favorites and those all-but-nameless others begin to talk. They discuss a young lady-in-waiting with a handsome nose, the palace steward’s dewy wife, the talented tongue of an apron wearer. Several of Christian’s men are fascinated by a Negresse who works in the nursery. “O to smack my lips upon that skin,” says Willem Braj, who is famous for liking his meat burnt. He fans his mouth as if he’s charred himself.
Le Fariné, Christian’s broody-browed dwarf, stares at Willem with distaste. Or perhaps envy, or hatred; Le Fariné once had a black wife, small like himself, till she was given to the Dauphin of France as a gesture of goodwill.
Rafael af Hvas says the Negresse is available if any wish to try her. “She has no particular protector. When Countess Elinor first presented her to the Queen — remember, that masque about the end of the war? — she was coated in sugar crystals, with a plum in her mouth. And what could have been sweeter than the kiss of peace she gave the man who stood in for Justice? I believe, Nicolas, you were fortunate enough to be that man?”
Nicolas Bullen makes a small noise, then complains of a sore throat.
Christian looks harder at the moon, as if he might find some new part of it.
“Your Majesty,” Stellarius says in a low voice. “Do you see the declivity just in the center of the moon? Let me lengthen the glass for you. There. Look. It is a sign, of course, of the growth in your wife’s blessed womb . . .”
Christian adjusts his posture. He tries to lose himself in the silver slice of moon.
While King and astrologer take turns fitting their eyes to the little lens at bottom, conversation still seeps around them. The favorites declare themselves intrigued, too, by Countess Elinor herself, so unusually pale for a member of the nobility, with breasts that ride much higher than is normal in a woman of her age.
“Of course, time’s stood still for her since the war began,” notes a minor baron for whom Christian has no particular liking. “What with her husband off at sea so long — then his arm and leg truly off.” He laughs as if this is some real witticism, as if the once-great Count of Belnát is a clown who only apes an injury.
“True,” Willem Braj inserts, “who would take a maid when he might have a mistress? Or perhaps we should ask Sir Georg Oline. Quite recently I’ve heard that he’s tried them both. I heard it from a reliable source. In fact, it was —”
“Enough,” says Nicolas, despite his sore throat. “Show some respect to the lady if not the spymaster.” Chivalrous Nicolas!
But there come the predictable sniggers, the jealous pleasure one rogue takes in another’s triumph.
Christian feels himself turning red. To think it is his own Secretary who is talked of in such a way! Chief secret-keeper, Christian’s Groom of the Stool and official spymaster. This indignity weighs heavy on his mind, though he tells himself it does not matter. For a time the men (disobeying Nicolas) speak only of the lady’s beauty, her famous icy pallor, and how a bed might turn her chill into a fever.
“No harm in a little heat, eh?”
But what secrets might the Secretary murmur under fever’s influence . . .
“With a fair nurse like that at his pillow!”
Christian thinks of the hideous stumps where Count Belnát’s beautiful limbs used to join his body. Christian has never cared for the Countess, though her skin is fair enough to outshine the moon and she had suitors aplenty in her day.
“We must all have a care for our hearts — and our pillows!” Willem Braj crows. Rolling onto his toes, he mimics laying his head down for a rest on the high shelf of the Countess’s bosom.
Not receiving the laughter for which he’d hoped, Willem nudges the dwarf Le Fariné with a velvet-toed slipper. The small man plays along by tightening himself into a ball and tumbling till he knocks over Rafael af Hvas. Rafael rips a hole in the knee of his hose; the others laugh heartily at last. Rafael kicks Le Fariné’s backside.
Nicolas makes an impatient gesture and stands up. “With your permission, Majesty, I would like to go.”
The solemn night has been completely ruined. The men are making Christian’s belly hurt. He prays and wishes as hard as he can that they will vanish or he will.
His wish, his dream, is granted: Christian feels himself sucked up through the perspective glass. He becomes a black speck crawling across the luminous surface.
Imagine his wife, his son, his courtiers watching him from so far below. What must they think! The black-speck part of him dares to wave its arms at Nicolas.
There was once a princess who married a duke much older than she. At the ceremony, the girl promised her new husband the same obedience she had shown her father, the king, but she’d heard the duke whispered about and had some fears as to what he might require of her. He had already buried two wives and had no children thus far; it was said his desires were somewhat peculiar and not likely to produce offspring.
On the evening after her wedding, as she sat primly expectant in the great hall of the ducal palace, the princess received a visit not from her husband but from his steward, a cheerful man of flaxen hair and a ready smile.
He began with a bow, then asked, “Do you have anything you would like me to tell the master?” When the princess simply blinked, he clarified: “Any secrets not yet disclosed?”
She blinked again. “I have no secrets.” In fact, she might as well have had no conscience at all, for she had never been known to commit a sin.
At that, the steward handed over a candle and a basket containing keys to all the rooms in the castle, with instructions to use them judiciously and only after full consideration. The princess spent the rest of the evening exploring. She found that many doors were already unlocked — the kitchens, the laundry, her own bedchamber and dressin
g room, where maids waited to help her change into her night shift. She decided to lock none of these essential rooms; she searched on.
High in the castle attics, she discovered a door, a plain door, that did not open readily.
Deciding that this must lead to the most important place in all the castle, the princess rummaged through her heavy basket, trying key after key. The bright ones of brass and steel were all too big, but there was one small key of dull black metal that might . . . might . . . did fit.
Before the princess released the latch, she remembered the steward’s warning about judicious use of her new rights of entry. She also remembered a tale often told by her nurses about a locked door, a bloodstained key, a roomful of wives hanging from meat hooks and gutted like game.
She jiggled the black key, the works inside turned over, and the lock slid open like a bride.
When they come, it be a storm day with clouds black overhead. Elinor is standing in the yard with the Queen and tossing rocks in to the bed of the witch, to watch the earth bubble and her toys sink. She do this for amusement, to see what the witches take and what they let float on the skin of they bad-smelling hollow-bed. A stone go down, a chip of shatter bowl from the Crown Prince’s breakfast.
Elinor take the glove from the Queen’s clean hand. “Now you toss something, Highness,” she say, and put a pebble in Isabel palm.
Isabel close her hand upon the pebble. “No,” she say, thinking aloud, “this hole is a bad omen.”
The ladies rush to tell her all is well. Bridget Belskat, old Lady Drin, Duchess Margrethe, Countess Ditlevnavn, all the others given by her husband. They make a circle drawing her away.
Behind, some maids repeat the Queen’s word omen. Whisper but not heard. They fear that wet hollow.
It be more than omen when the King’s guards come through the inner gate. March, march, scuff, stop. Halberds point at cloudy sky, faces point at us; maids and ladies cross they arms and draw breath tight. No thing move then, not even Elinor. The air go quiet and the wind die. Only that stink wave up from earth’s belly.
