The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley (28 page)

“It
was
rather cheap, but so like you, Susanna,” said a charming voice in the dark, or perhaps in a dream I was having.

“Hadriel, you’re back!” I think I said or dreamed. There in the damp, dark cool stood a quiet shape, with a soft, glowing face and the funniest, knowing smile. “Stay with me; I’m frightened here,” I said.

“Oh, I can’t do that,” he answered. “I’m so busy inspiring people. Now here, now there. Such a job! I haven’t half gotten through my list.” I thought I saw him hold up a roll of pale vellum. He opened it partway, and I saw it was crammed with thousands of names, written very small, all in gold. “Just look at all these!” he said, pointing to the letters with a pale finger. “Italians, French, Flemish, and everything in between, and not a woman on it. All over the place! I tell you, I spend most of my time traveling these days.” He stretched his wings, first one, then the other, the way a cat stretches its legs. Then he ruffled the feathers on them with a soft,
brrrr
sound. “Now tell me,” he said, “how do they expect me to have a bit of time for my own ideas? But I just
had
to stop by anyway. You
are
one of my favorites, you know, list or not.”

“But, Hadriel, I’ve never done these things before. There’s no one to show me the way. I’m in the wrong place. You know I’m supposed to stay home and be married and cook, except that Master Dallet spoiled it all.”

“Show you the way? You
are
funny, Susanna. Here I’ve gone and broken all the rules for you, and you want me to just stand about being a signpost in the bargain! Honestly! Now that was a very nice little face you did today. And watching you use it to put them all in their place like that; why, it was worth coming just for the entertainment of it! You know, it was all getting so
ordinary
before I ran into you. Susanna, can you believe how
dull
the archangels would have the world if they could? Now, listen to me: just you look closely, and the way will show you itself.” He started to fade.

“Stay, just stay another minute,” I begged.

“Oh, my dear, if you only knew how many visitations I have to make tonight. Simply
impossible
! They really ought to give me more assistance. Busy, busy, busy. It’s just a
whirl
! And you have to take
time
to do things right. You’d think they’d understand that. Really, pottery, gold and silver-smithing, jewelry, sculpture, stained glass, and painting, too! The organization’s so old-fashioned! But do they listen to me? Oh, no. What does Hadriel count? Hadriel’s only the one who does the job. What does Hadriel know? Surely nothing worthwhile. Susanna, darling, if you could even
begin
to understand all that I had to put up with, you’d feel sorry for me….” The room was empty. But my heart felt easy, and the warmth Hadriel had left in the dark seemed to settle on the sleeping figures like a blessing.

Now here is the problem we woke up and found in the morning. No one could sail for France after all until the weather was better, which looked as though it might not be for weeks. That whole castle and city and every manor house roundabout were all crammed full of people who had come to escort the princess to her ships for the honor of it and also to rub shoulders with anybody important whom they might meet. So it started out like a celebration, except that it rained, which spoiled it. Nobody could leave before the king, because he is king, and the king was going to sail out to sea in his very favorite ship, which is named after himself, to accompany his sister partway. But he couldn’t sail, so they couldn’t leave, it was too wet to go out, everyone was bored, and even cards and dice weren’t enough.

Then Milord of Suffolk discovered that I was there, and since he was a simpleminded fellow with an eye for the ladies, he decided that it would be amusing, since they were all gathered up together there, to have a series of drawings made of the “great beauties of the court.” He put the idea to the king, who regretted greatly that his own court painters were not there to execute the idea. But then he was convinced by Suffolk and even helped to select the ladies himself. So that is how I got a bed in the castle after all, squashed in with three ladies’ maids and an embroiderer, which Nan said was beneath me, but I was glad of the close company of respectable folk. I was also kept plentifully busy in the week that followed, both with painting and with kneeling. For the King passed through the upper apartments of the tower right often, they being on his way from his chamber to the gate, and whenever the king passed through and his eye lit on a person, then that person must kneel, right in the middle of everything until his sovereign would raise him up. But it was all very fine and thrilling, and I had the honor of having the king himself view my drawings and pronounce them “very like.”

I was in the upper apartments, all surrounded by chattering ladies pointing out the corrections and improvements they wanted in their drawings, when I noticed Master Ashton’s man, Will, standing beyond the open door of the antechamber, his hat in hand, motioning silently for me to come. Having promised the ladies everything, they at last dismissed me and I tied my drawings into the portfolio and fled toward the door.

Outside, the rain that had battered at the apartment windows for days had turned into a heavy ocean mist, obscuring such light as had managed to make its way into the castle apartments. The feeble illumination dulled the colors of the arras and the stiff, silk dresses of the ladies. Even the smoldering oak logs in the great fireplace scarcely took away the dank. Not a day fit to go out, even if it
has
quit raining, I thought. As I passed the door, Will pulled at my sleeve, and Nan turned to stare at him with a disapproving look.

“What is it?” I asked. He was muddy and disheveled. The gray was showing in his beard.

“Mistress Dallet, you must come. You have to come!” Will burst out. “He has work, he has messages, he has errands, and all he does is lie before the fire, dead drunk! He’s scarce moved to get up and piss for the last three days. He won’t eat, and he won’t say a word, except sometimes, ‘Damn Tuke,’ or ‘Devil take them all.’ Sometimes he says your name, and spits.” At that, I felt insulted.

“Well, what am I to do about it?”

“Come and take the spell you’ve laid off him.” I could feel my mouth purse up. Spell, indeed. Not that I haven’t been tempted by money powders and lucky pieces, but I would never do something like a spell, which is really very wicked and, besides,
The Good Wyfe’s Book of Manners
says that women who resort to spells come to no good end. That is probably what happened to Goody Forster, who had the tiles fall on her head.

“Nonsense. It’s his head. Change the bandage.”

“No, it’s not his head or his ribs either, though they’re right properly cracked. It’s a spell, and you know it. He talks like a man bewitched. All nonsense. Your name, over and over. He says he sees you standing there in the corner, like a succubus, dressed only in your nightgown, holding a paintbrush as if it were a dagger. Admit you’ve done this to him! And he drinks as if quenching a fire. Why did you do it? Haven’t you had vengeance enough? I beg you, mistress, free him before he pulls down the archbishop’s business and us with it.”

“I don’t do spells, Will. I paint.”

“I swear, I’ll never tell. I keep secrets. I keep his. I told Tuke he was up and busy. But if he doesn’t get up off his back, he’s ruined. Have mercy, just this once, mistress. I beg you, for the services he’s given you, come and take it off.”

“Just this once?” sniffed Nan, as we followed him down the muddy trail to the town beneath the castle. “Well, I like
that
! Who does he think we are? And if we
could
place spells, why would we bother with him, anyway? I can think of dozens better.”

“Nan, what’s wrong with you? You’re acting so odd.”

“It’s just a trick to get you close. And after all he’s done to you. He has designs, that’s what. I can tell. Now that genteel Frenchman, that Master Bella-whatchamit, he’s a good one. He’s got a house. What has that Ashton got? He can’t support you.”

“Why, Nan, I do believe you’re jealous! I’d never abandon you, Nan. Don’t even think it.”

“Still, a house is better,” Nan grumbled. Above and behind us, the castle walls loomed, scarcely visible in the mist. Water glistened on the stones of the road, and drifting swirls of mist hid the buildings below. Beyond us, we could hear the roar of the unquiet ocean.

The town below the castle was filled with the sound of horses and the clatter of carts being unloaded at the docks. Not all the ships of the fleet had arrived yet, due to the weather, but the crates and barrels of the dowry were being hoisted aboard those that were there. The streets were full of people on errands, goodwives with baskets, drovers, cattle and swine, and pack animals laden with food and goods to keep the crowded town well fed. There was a kind of nervousness in the misty air. When would the great enterprise be undertaken? Would the rest of the fleet arrive safely? The dank, cloud-filled skies did not bode well for the wedding fleet.

Slipping unnoticed from the back door of a squalid tavern, a short man in a black cloak hurried through the mist, turned into an alley, and climbed the outside staircase behind a tailor’s establishment, vanishing into a door up beneath the eaves. Inside, Bellier, dressed in traveling clothes, paced back and forth in that part of the room where the slant of the eves permitted standing. Behind him on the unmade bed stood a packed trunk and an open coffer of papers.

“Ah, Eustache, is it done? We must be going. I have passage for us both with the tide tomorrow. It must be of great importance that we are ordered back so soon.” He paused to shake his head slowly. “Still, I hate leaving loose ends behind me. The Sieur Crouch…at least the man of the scheming Wolsey will not be leaving.”

“I doubled the dose this time. It should finish things within the hour.”

“But did you see him take it?”

“No, but he will. Even his servant thinks he is drunk.”

“A sad end to a promising career, Eustache. Drinking oneself to death in a low tavern. There is a moral to this story: avoid low company.” Bellier shook his finger at Eustache like a schoolmaster. He then took up a list of names from the coffer. Several were crossed off with ink. With a little piece of chalk he marked out “Robert Ashton, servant to Archbishop Wolsey.” Beneath it was written “Mistress Dallet, wife of Rowland Dallet, deceased, above.” “I wonder,” mused Bellier. “What about her? How much might he have told her?”

“You wish her poisoned, too, Master?”

“How ungallant. The Priory, to go about eliminating women? No, Eustache. Perhaps I shall go courting. If she knows something, well—that’s regrettable. But if she doesn’t, just think…a court painter. Imagine an unknowing set of eyes and ears for the Priory in the heart of the Valois. A valuable connection, don’t you think? At first, I was disgusted. So very English, this vulgar life, those awful paintings of Eden. Then, as I thought it over, I began to see the uses. Besides, she is not unattractive.”

Susanna pulled her heavy cloak tightly around her and turned up her nose as she and Nan pushed into the tavern’s dank, warm front room behind their guide. Firelight danced across the long trestle tables and benches. It caught on the pewter cups and lit the dulled faces of the drunken, roistering sailors who sprawled across the tables, on the benches, and even in the mucky heaps of stale rushes on the floor. There was the smell of cheap ale, of cabbage, and of salt pork cooking, and the sound of quarreling from a game of dice in one corner. Several mongrel dogs lay beneath the tables gnawing on scraps, and an old yellow bitch dog with two rows of huge, freckled, pink teats lay by the fireside with her tongue hanging out.

“Ho, a woman!” came the cry.

“Who have you come for, mistress? Come for me. Hey, let’s see what’s beneath those skirts! A widow, and a young one. Who misses a piece off a sliced loaf? Ho, sweetheart, you’ve come to the right place….” A babble of drunken voices greeted their entrance. A drunk on the floor made a grab for Susanna’s hem, and she stamped smartly on his hand, leaving him howling.

Ashton was lying on a bench before the fire, flat as a worm, his points undone, and one shoe off. One arm trailed down beside him to the hearth, a full pewter cup of dark wine sat on the stones beside his limp hand. His eyes were sunken in black circles, his face was flushed, and the bandage on his head was filthy and peeling. At the sound of the howl, he turned his dulled eyes to the door, and saw several Susannas, all overlapping, advancing on him, elbowing sailors out of the way.

“See what you’ve done?” he heard Will say. “Take the spell off him, mistress, or he’s not long for this world.” Three Susannas leaned over him and peered suspiciously into his face.

“He’s been drinking,” the Susannas said. As they leaned over him, three beautiful pink bosoms peeped out of three tightly laced black bodices. The color, he thought. It’s exact. I’m right. Every one of those pink Eves is her. Then the three became one. One Susanna, with fog-damp curls escaping from her headdress.