Hunger's Brides (55 page)

But for our good ladies, I've arrived at a dire prophecy of my own. That these, their pious petitions, clutched in bony hands better clasped in prayer, will be torn from them and scattered by the terrible energy of our times. By this bright whirlwind that leaves us all gasping and dazed….

The Marquise Leonor Carreto. The most extravagant of our Vice-Queens, yet none has been so often seen in the streets, or so widely, even in the humblest barrios. The
vulgo
†
take her curiosity for care and love her for it, grumble hardly at all at first as she spends enormous fortunes—mock naval battles on the lake; Roman baths and
placeres
on a certain ill-famed island; hunts and hawking on an imperial scale …

Though each vice-queen renovates, Leonor's wing of the palace is all but entirely remade. Fondly known as the dovecotes, the
camaranchones
under the palace eaves must be expanded for the large number of ladies in her retinue. A hundred women in all, counting the servants of her servants. Her ladies from Madrid are entitled to a strict maximum of three. Those of us added to her company here in Mexico get no more than one—always assuming we can afford so many. The Vice-Queen's patio, the largest of the palace's three, eventually encloses a garden and fish pond in the Asiatic style, a small orchard, arbours of flowering trees, flowerbeds, two fountains; yet there remains enough space free at the north end for official receptions and formal balls when the weather is fine. Around the patio, the great halls are renamed after those at the palace in Madrid. Hall of Comedies, Hall of Mirrors, Hall of Realms … She names the halls after the Alcázar, but she is determined to lead here in Mexico the court life Queen Mariana only dreamed of having, the life the enlightened are living in Versailles. It is Versailles we must follow now.

The season's fashions have just arrived on a last fast ship before the hurricane season. We are in the garderobe as her dressmaker studies the latest designs. Even on a bright day, little light infiltrates from the salon. Lamps burn at each end of the Vice-Queen's dressing table. She rests her hand on the dressmaker's shoulder as she bends to study the designs. Fuller skirts and tighter corsets are back, which can only bring Leonors
slenderness into even greater evidence. Necklines so wide and so low as to require the fuller figured among us to bow with a certain vigilance. A v-shaped stomacher—the jewelled and embroidered panel is to taper suggestively to the euphemism of a ribbon bow, well below the waist. Sleeves are to be shortened to the elbow. Falling bands and soft tassets are finally and definitively banished. Passable in embroidery, I know less about dresses than any of the others yet am singled out for the honour of dressing her on this special day. She stands in her silk underskirts, as if to exhort the dressmaker to work faster. “We have been at war with France for half a century, and this new peace, I assure you, is written in smoke, yet …” She takes the gowned doll from the dressmaker's hands, looks at it more closely, turns it over, as though to check the lady's bare shoulders. “One does not see the wings, Juanita, but though each book and post is examined for codes and Bourbon treachery, these dolls and fashion plates from Paris fairly fly to every capital in Europe. And now here, to me.”

“To
us,”
she adds, and gives my hand a little squeeze. Once her new dresses are finished, the best of her old ones will be altered for me. The honour is as unprecedented here as it is contemned by the wealthier ladies.

“Beauty,
mi amor
, is the empire that knows no borders.”

And Beauty's proper consort is Laughter.

Her first act as Vice-Queen is to solemnly inaugurate the New World chapter of the Academy of Improvisation, modelled on that of Madrid, in which all the writers and court wits contend for prizes and for the favour of a monarch's laughter. But, for our Academy, a startling improvisation: Here in Mexico women shall participate. It is to the Academy that I owe my presence here …

We had been summoned to the Hall of Mirrors, for an audience granted the three prize-winners of a poetry joust, and to my uncle, who had underwritten the whole affair. The Viceroy was again much taken with me, though with the Vice-Queen now at his side his interest was more clearly paternal than the first time we had met. But then, that was in a bullring. Uncle Juan had steered the conversation to the precariousness of commercial shipping and supply lines, to which the Viceroy responded by remarking upon the parlous state of the treasury just now, with so many silver ships being taken by privateers. The conversation was tailing off awkwardly, towards the parlous state of the empire itself.

“Excellency, Spain so briefly on her knees,” I offered, “still stands taller than all Europe on its feet.”

It was a little moment he was grateful for, from a fifteen-year-old. I have since learned few at court express such sentiments anymore. We went on to discuss the bright prospects for peace with the French, after fifty long years. I sensed her studying me, but we had been instructed to avoid looking at her—at either of them—directly, lest she yawn, perhaps, and we inadvertently penetrate with our commoner's eyebeams an aperture of the Royal Person. I still had no idea how contemptible she found such protocols. But though I'd gained her interest, she waited to see how I would fare at the Academy before inviting me to come and serve her at the palace.

At the north end of the west wing, the staircase has been removed to make room for the Vice-Queen's personal study and gallery. From atop the south staircase, then, the weak-kneed visitor is led through an antechamber and a smaller reception hall, spirited through the Vice-Queen's gallery—lest, perhaps, the plebeian gaze deface a painting—and shown into the salon, glittering home of the New World Academy…. In each chandelier burn a thousand candles, their lustre glowing in the gilded cornices and on walls panelled in white marble.

If the Academy is in session, it is evening, unless it is well into the night. In which case everyone is drunk. The Viceroy has long since taken to his bed. The Vice-Queen has left her rock-crystal chair and the dais to join the others on cushions on a stone floor softened with deep Moorish carpets. A fire is blazing in a fireplace wide enough, in a pinch, to spit a bullock in. It is a fire which never burns down before dawn, at least while the pages who feed it live.

If the visitor is young, she has smoked tobacco, maybe once, sipped wine once or twice, eaten chocolate much less often than she would have liked. But never all together, not like this. Under the steward's disapproving eye, pages liveried in silver and satin circulate a dozen argent platters heaped high with cigarettes, a dozen gold braziers to light them; while chocolate offers itself in every form imaginable—sculpted or blocked, bitter or spiced, whipped or spiked with brandy …

In deference to the Vice-Queen's Austrian tastes, somewhere out of sight someone brightly savages on a clavichord a turbulent organ piece, which Leonor, giggling beside me, says is by the Werkmeister-designate in Lübeck, who has secured his appointment by marrying the old Werkmeister's daughter.

I have done little more than taste each thing to please her. Brandies,
sherries, ports … a wine from France that bubbles, hilariously, on cavalcades of trays that wobble past like upturned balustrades; and indeed within a few hours, the room entire is upturned and hilariously unsteady. Even without the fine tobacco smoke too thick now to see quite through, I might have been drunk on the perfumes alone. Yet I am far from the most intoxicated in the room. No, holding that distinction is poor don Alfeo, of a highly distinguished family in Seville.

It is the last round of the night. I have won everything so far. Hiding my condition is so far beyond me that I'm inspired to take things in the other direction and, as the incumbent, propose a round on drunkenness itself. Slurring very deftly, I improvise a ditty on don Alfeo who lies mellifluously snoring now behind a drape.

Falling in worship to my knees, I then finish with a flourish.

It is, I am told the next morning and to my great horror, not so much the verse as the besotted delivery that carries the final round. To close the session, the cleverest of the Vice-King's
sabandijas
,
^‡
the dwarf Perico, cheekily christens me
la Giganta
, and placing a coronet of salad greens on my head, proclaims me the evening's Mistress of Wit. I am especially honoured, for Perico was a fixture at the Academy in Madrid. He becomes my first true friend at the palace. He was once a great favourite of the Sovereign himself, but with death approaching, King Philip sent
his most beloved
sabandijas
to accompany the Viceroy to the New World. Land of prodigies.

“Our promised land,” Perico adds with a wry pout. “He thought he was sending us home.”

Perico has never used any other name for me, but says it with such warmth and open admiration, even now I wear
la Giganta
as a badge of honour.

New rhythms and new music, cultivated palates and clever tongues. The dangerous new ideas of Europe in free circulation and we,
amazed
by our daring. So many new friends, in my new home. Perico. Carlos, of course, who comes whenever he is back from Puebla. I make a few fast friends among the courtiers too. Fabio I help to devise a betting system for roulette, based on the new theories of probability of my dear friend the monk Pascal. Fabio is decent and light-hearted, nothing troubles him. Fabio I can learn from. He is in love with the Vice-Queen, I know, yet he finds the strength to love her from afar, knowing it is impossible. And among the handmaidens, there is Teresa, who for all her wealth and spirit will only ever be a Creole, as I am, and never accepted by the others.

And yet the Vice-Queen calls me her literary lady-in-waiting. I should call her
Leonor
whenever we are alone. Leonor comes to find me every afternoon down in her library, devouring the contents of each aromatic page like a glutton over a new dish. Hers are the intrusions I never resent. The times spent with her are an extension of my education. Her judgement is flawless, and yet she flatters me by asking my opinion of this or that writer, about the plausibility or structure of a given philosopher's arguments. Our impassioned conversations spill into her bedchamber, where we are more assured of privacy, and where, as we talk, I spend what seems like hours brushing her shimmering hair before a mirror. Sometimes she reaches back over her shoulder and fans my hair across hers, blue-black over palest blond. “Almost the same, don't you think?” Leonor says, laughing sometimes, her blue eyes looking into mine—mine, black and round with disbelief as I see us in the glass. I am not quite so blind as to fail to see, the contrast could not be more complete. Her nakedness is at first a shock to me, but she explains that the body of the Royal Person belongs not to her but to the Realm. All her most intimate acts are open for inspection by physicians and counsellors. In the Queen's case, notaries may be called to stand at the
midwife's shoulder as the heir is delivered, to warrant the integrity of succession. It was rumoured that Olivares
†
oversaw even the royal conceptions.

“Perhaps this is why so many were botched.”

She says this lightly. I tell myself the joke is aimed at the malignancy of Olivares.

A small brazier stands beside the dressing table to keep her warm. We begin with the unguents and pastes, working up from her feet, finishing with a lotion made with almonds. She has heard of a miraculous cream made with avocados in the mountains, wonders how it is I haven't heard of it. Her hair is next. By now her skin has absorbed the creams. I kneel and begin to apply the perfumes and powders with a feather brush. She stands, to assist me, steadies herself with two fingertips on my shoulder or the crown of my head, arches an arm gracefully over her head, then the other, lifts one foot to rest a toe on the chair, then the other. Finally her makeup.

If there are no distractions it takes an hour to finish dressing her for the evening. Leonor says it is important to be discreet: Some of the other handmaidens, with duties less exalted, are from rich and powerful families. There is resentment enough, now that I am so often called to dress her.

Flashing eyes, a Tartar's wide cheekbones and high—a ripe, smiling mouth, and yet her features are strangely delicate. Her figure is full and womanly yet so finely boned she is as small as a girl. Who dominates every room from the moment she wades lightly in, skirts flowing like a river. Playful and teasing, clever and intuitive. Sophisticated, in politics a subtle strategist. The Viceroy never comes to a decision without seeking her advice. Though descended from the House of Austria and married now to a Spanish Marquis, Leonor Carreto was a handmaiden too once, in the service of Queen Mariana.
“Exáctamente como tú, mi alma.”
Exactly as I am. The Marquise says this more than once.

She has decided I must accompany her to Spain when it is time for her to return, so I must learn all about the life there. Mariana was just my age when she came from Vienna to marry her uncle Philip. The palace protocol was odious, is still. The stories are legend. Once, Philip's first wife took a bad fall, and though badly injured, Queen Isabela de Borbón lay in the road for hours while the one man other than the King permitted to touch her person was fetched from the palace. Some time
later, a quite dashing Count had the temerity to sweep her up and out to safety during a fire at a theatre. A few days afterwards, he was murdered in the street.