The Creation Of Eve (34 page)

"Sofonisba."

Dona Juana dropped back from strolling with the King and Queen. "Thinking about something?" Her lips curled in a knowing smile.

I blushed, fearing she could hear my thoughts. She seemed to have that power. "Your Majesty, how may I be of service?"

"I have decided to remove the portrait you have done of me from my convent."

"Your Majesty, would you like me to make some changes to it?" I glanced at Don Carlos, sidling Up next to the Queen to take Dona Juana's position.

"No," said Dona Juana. "I suppose you have done the best you are capable of with it. I have given it to Inquisitor-General Valdes. He has always wanted a portrait of me."

"That is most kind, Your Majesty."

"I thought he could hang it in his Hall of Justice, next to the portrait of the King. After all, I was the Regent for those years the King was in England with Queen Mary--the people have come to associate me with justice."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Conscious of Dona Juana's gaze Upon me, I kept my own gaze fixed straight ahead, to where Don Carlos whispered earnestly to the Queen. The King laid a languid hand Upon the back of the Queen's neck.

"Well," said Dona Juana, "Inquisitor-General Valdes says your friend has certainly benefited from his friends in high places, hasn't he?" She smiled at my puzzled expression. "Michelangelo Buonarroti, I mean. If he were not a favorite of the Pope, his punishment would have been greater." She watched my face. "You do know of the decision?"

I concentrated on plucking a leaf bit from my shawl. "No, Your Majesty."

She lowered her broad brow to watch me with those fierce bone-lashed eyes. "His work in the Sistine Chapel is to be destroyed."

Her neck in the King's grasp, the Queen turned slightly, interrupting Don Carlos. "Have you not been speaking of such for years, dear sister?" she said to Dona Juana.

"Actually, this decision was only just made. As busy as you have been, my sister, with trying to fill a cradle, I can Understand how you have not been able to keep Up with current affairs."

Dona Juana smiled as the Queen returned her face forward. "At any rate," she said to me, "I would venture to say the chapel will be improved by whitewashing the walls. Good-bye to the young louts with their acorns."

The King frowned over his shoulder at her.

We continued our stroll, the ladies' skirts dragging on the damp stone of the path. A knot clenched in my stomach. Adam receiving the touch of life from God; the story of Noah, rendered with Understanding and love; the human body celebrated in all its glory; even the curious quiet painting of Eve: all of it, destroyed.

She brushed her slipper against a withered stalk that had sprawled Upon our path. "Really, Felipe, you must have your gardeners pull these. I cannot Understand why you will not let them. I care not if it came from the New World--truly, it is no better than a weed."

"The seedpods were quite interesting," said the King. "They are said to be quite nutritious, though they do look a little off-pUtting."

I gazed at the shriveled brown stalks

"What is the name of the ridiculous weed?" asked Dona Juana.

The King patted the Queen's neck as she turned to look. "I believe," he said, "they call it 'maize.' "

A mule-drawn coach lumbered Up at the end of the garden to take Us to the hunt. The King and his son, as well as the Queen and myself, took seats in the first conveyance. Off we went with a jerk.

In time we passed through the leafless brown ranks of the mulberry grove to the east of the palace. "How are the silkworms doing that came last year from China?" the King asked the Queen.

The Queen turned slowly from where she'd been looking out the window, stroking Cher-Ami's head. "I have not attended to them, My Lord."

"I thought we agreed that you would tend to the silkworms in the afternoons, when I was working in my office," said the King.

"I have been resting, My Lord," said the Queen.

"Well, I must not argue with that." He kissed her fingers.

Across the coach, Don Carlos slumped against the leather paneling, his blue-veined eyelids fluttering as he fought off sleep. The King sighed. "I have such fond memories of my mother collecting silk. I wish for you only the same contentment that it brought her. I can still see her wide brow--Juana's brow, Juana resembles Mother in that way--crumpled in concentration as she unwound each little cocoon."

Don Carlos didn't bother to open his eyes. "Did she not have servants to do that?"

"Mother enjoyed it. She spent hours at it. It was intense, meticulous work. I believe I have inherited her ability to concentrate on details for long periods of time." The King smiled. "Still, as a young child, I saw not the merits of her concentrating on her work for hours on end. All I wished was for her to pay attention to me."

The King kissed the Queen's fingers again, then put her hand in his lap. "I remember once I climbed Up next to her on her bench, trying to get close to her as she Unraveled a silken filament from a cocoon and wound it Upon a golden spindle. She must have momentarily rested her hand Upon the bench--perhaps her fingers had gotten weary. I did not see them. All I knew was that I wished to be close to her.
^"
He grimaced. "I could hear her finger crack, just like a stick, as I sat Upon it."

Don Carlos's blue lids folded open. "You broke your mother's f inger?"

"I did not mean to. There was a crack and she cried out. Then someone snatched me Up and took me away. I could hear her sobs all the way back to the palace. I thought, I have done that to her. I am little, and I have done that. I could not believe a little shoot like me could hurt my all-powerful mother." He looked out the window. "It is my earliest memory."

The Queen raised her gaze to him.

"I did not mean to hurt her," he said.

"Whether you meant to or not," said Don Carlos, "the effect was the same. Did she forgive you?"

"Yes. She knew my intentions were good. After all, I acted out of love."

Our coach hurtled down the narrow lane, then through an almond orchard, past black limbs budded with pearls of white. Into a deep wood of naked oak we soon passed, then came Upon a raised platform fitted out with cushioned benches. From either side of the platform, a billowing wall of Unbleached cloth stretched deep into the forest, forming an ever-widening chute. Alighting from the coach, I could hear hounds baying and beaters hallooing as they whipped the brush to raise deer from their hidden nests.

"Men, take your positions. Women, steer clear!" shouted Don Carlos. His weariness seemingly forgotten, he drew his sword and ran ahead of his father, ducking Under the cloth raised by one of the many men stationed along the temporary wall.

The next coach arrived. I tried not to think of the frightened animals that would soon be leaping down the chute and to their deaths.

Dona Juana trudged Up the steps to the platform. "I wish they would get this over with. I have more important business than watching menfolk skewer deer."

The King shaded his eyes to look Up at his sister, whose loud voice must have been audible from where he stood. "I seem to recall your eagerness to hunt when allowed to shoot deer from a coach."

"Very well! Give me an arquebus, then! I will make short work of this."

Don Carlos leveled his sword at her. "Hush."

"Insolent," she muttered Under her breath as she settled into a seat.

"Sofonisba," she said before I could sit. "You did not ask me why the decision was made against your Michelangelo."

The Queen's hand tightened on my arm. A stag was plunging down the chute, its eyes white in their sockets as hounds tore at its flanks. It leapt for the top of the wall. Three huntsmen rushed over and clubbed it down.

"The Sistine Chapel is only half his problem," said Dona Juana. "Several of his poems to a certain young man have come to the Pope's hand. They are sickening. The old man moans of how at his age he was hit by Cupid's arrows, how he thought he could change but could not. He told the Pope their intended recipient never got them, indeed his desired one has no notion of their existence, but no one believes this. Of course Michelangelo is protecting his lover." She saw my expression. "Do you know who this might be?"

"No, Your Majesty."

She kept her white-lashed gaze fixed Upon me. "Are you sure?"

The King stepped into the path of the panicked deer. In one last desperate burst, it bounded over the King's head. The King thrust Up his sword.

The deer crashed to the ground. Legs flailing, it struggled to rise, then stood, trembling, as glistening ropes of guts slithered from its belly.

ITEM: The pelican, when its young are hungry, will peck its own breast until it bleeds and will feed its children upon its blood.

ITEM: Oil is not as impervious to water as you might think. Water can seep through a fresh layer of paint.

16 AUGUST 1564

El Alcazar, Madrid

The King's father, the Emperor Charles, was always on the move, tramping here and there across Europe, fighting wars, brokering deals, and marrying off his children to solidify the greatest empire since the days of ancient Rome. Only after he'd passed the burden of his many kingdoms to the eighteen-year-old Felipe did he settle down in a small but comfortable monastery hidden in the Gredos Mountains, where he spent the last two years of his life eating and drinking and gazing Upon his illegitimate son Juan when the fancy struck him.

Not wishing to live the nomadic life that had exhausted his father, the King chose to base his courts in the central location of Madrid, limiting his travel to pleasure palaces within a few days' journey, going farther abroad only when political Unrest required it. The dim brooding pile of El Alcazar, built over the centuries Upon a sultan's fortress, now is the chief home of the King of Two Worlds. But Unlike the bucolic Flemish-style palace of Valsain in the Woods of Segovia, where sweet summers are whiled away in the cool mountain air, or the riverside jewel box of Aranjuez, where spring and fall are savored in an oasis of green in the arid foothills of the Toledan mountains, there is no easy season in Madrid.

It is said of Madrid that there are nine months of winter and three months of Hell--not so far from the truth. Winter blows in from the Guadarramas in late October and has one thawing one's fingers over the brazier in May. But by July, if you are so foolish as to stand in the sun after mid-morning, it feels as though your skull has become a cookpot for your brain. Strength evaporates from your limbs as your brains boil and your blood bakes, making escape all the more difficult each minute you remain exposed in the sun. Francesca says the bodies of three beggars were found on the steps of the Church of San Pedro el Viejo this afternoon, dead from the heat. I do not tell this to the Queen. She is in her sixth month of pregnancy and must not be disturbed in any way.

How the King does dote on her. He has her drinks iced with snow brought by mule train from the peaks of the Guadarramas. He, master of much of the earth, personally fans her as she lies Upon her bed. Her mother's weekly letters exhort her to take exercise. "Knowing you, my daughter," the French Queen Mother writes, "you will be inclined to stay in bed, but you must resist this impulse for your good and the good of the child." How well My Lady's mother knows her daughter. Her Majesty wishes to dally away her time in bed, playing cards with her ladies or, if propped Upright with a paintbrush in hand, depicting in tandem with me little portraits of her ladies' children with their favorite pets.

But even if My Lady were inclined to exercise, how much could she take when the King will not allow her to leave her summer rooms in the lower part of the palace, let alone the city, fearful as he is of her traveling in her delicate state? This is why we cannot escape to the cool of the mountains at Valsain, why we must spend our afternoons trapped here in darkened rooms, prostrate amongst the water jugs, touching our wrists to the condensation that beads Upon their sides. He demands that we think of nothing but My Lady's health, and perhaps it is for the best. What good does it do to let my mind wander to the identity of Michelangelo's lover, and to how this might possibly be connected to the reason why Tiberio has not replied these six months?

As delighted as the King is with Her Majesty's pregnancy, he seems not to notice the temperature. Only yesterday he strode into her chamber at the end of
siesta
, a spring to his step in spite of the heat that had sapped the life from the rest of Us. The condesa and madame de Clermont rose from where they languished on their pillows and straightened their gowns as Cher-Ami waddled forth to greet him.

The Queen raised herself on an elbow for his kiss. "You have spots on your sleeves, My Lord."

He examined his sleeve. "Indeed I do. It is raining mud outside." He saw me look Up from the table at which I was idling Upon an Uninspired sketch of the Queen. "Sometimes in the summer here," he explained, "when it rains there is a bit of sand in each drop. It comes, they say, from the African desert. Quite a way for a cloud to travel."