The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley (5 page)

“You tell him to come and take care of the orphan he’s made, or the world will know,” said Nan, still hard against the door.

“Blasted magpies—now look what he’s done. I
told
him to get rid of it. Now he has to shut them up,” muttered the tall one with the earring.

“A man who does his Christian duty by widows earns only praise,” said Nan, firmly righteous.

“Yes, and silent prayer—silent—be sure to tell him that,” added the widow, as Nan let them escape through the front door at last. Then she turned to me where I still lay on the floor. “We’ll see his burial paid for at least, and perhaps a tidy little purse for us—have you had another pain yet, my poor little dove?”

“I’m sure I felt one—”

“Oh, my, then, it’s coming,” said the widow, “and much too soon by my count.” Oh, that nosy widow. Of course she’d been counting. Old ladies always do, after a wedding date. As she and Nan helped me get up, she announced, “The problem with men, as I see it, is that they never tidy up after themselves. It’s the job of women to make sure that they do.”

“True enough,” agreed Nan, “but we need to help my mistress upstairs to bed before she has another pain.”

“But, Mother,” I could hear the widow’s daughter wailing behind me, “what about that, uh—Master Dallet?”

“We’ll lay him out downstairs. What else? Would you have a corpse in the same room as a woman in labor?”

As I lay down in the bed, Mistress Hull took advantage of the opportunity to peer into every corner of our rooms, which I am sure she had been perishing to do for a long time. “Goodness,” she said, “your featherbed is very thin—oh, what’s this in the cupboard, only wooden dishes, no pewter?” She took her long, prying nose out of the cupboard and turned to the fireplace, where she lifted the lid on our kettle to spy the quality of the soup inside. Old ladies like that never like to miss anything. “This cooking pot looks old—”

“I had it from my mother.”

“I’d have thought he’d have bought you a better one.” I could see her skinny old body practically disappearing into my parents’ big old armoire. Her voice came out all muffled from among Master Dallet’s best suits. “And these clothes—they’re all his? Didn’t he even buy you a ribbon or two? And here I thought he was a wealthy man, just waiting to take away my poor little rooms….” I pulled the bed quilt over my face, because it was a trial to have to watch all her nosiness and quite bad enough just to hear her rustle, rustle, rustle among all my things. I could hear Nan answering her back, old lady to old lady.

“You’ve never met a stingier man than Master Dallet. Every penny went for show and nothing for my mistress, that I’ve looked after ever since she was a little slip of a girl. You have no idea of the wickedness of that man!” Her voice lowered. “Pray for me, Mistress Hull. I—I did a terrible thing. And now I’ve brought all this misfortune on us, and I daren’t tell her.” I could barely hear her whisper. “He set her so crazy, with his philandering, and her an innocent that didn’t even understand what was happening, that I begged the devil to fly away with him. And now it’s happened, and he goes to his grave unshriven, and it’s all my fault….”

Suddenly I began to feel better. Maybe it wasn’t all the fault of my lies and painting after all. I poked just my eyes out above the bed quilt. The pains seemed to have gone away.

“God forgive me my wicked wish, now we are left in debt and want.” Nan’s voice was sorrowful as she followed the widow as she went into the studio. “Want? I’m an expert on that,” answered Widow Hull, prying into a packet of pounded serpentine. “Oof, painters! Not much worthwhile here. You’ll have to find another painter to buy this, and even so, half of it’s junk. Perhaps the guild can arrange to aid you—hasn’t he left anything you could sell? Religious paintings? My husband left twelve Christs, but I haven’t been able to sell any. God is forgotten in these wicked times. It’s Master Hull’s Adam and Eves that I sell. And do you know why? It’s because they haven’t any clothes! Eve in the Garden, Eve tempted by the serpent. Eve braiding her hair, with serpent. Eve being spied on by Adam, with serpent. My husband couldn’t deliver enough of them, I tell you. Half the monks in Christendom must own one. Luckily, he left me a good two dozen of them, though not all were finished. Ah, me, when those are gone, I don’t know what I’ll do for a bit of sausage in my soup.”

“Naked pictures? But I’ve never seen any in the shop.” Nan seemed puzzled. I put my head entirely out from under the covers so that I could hear better.

“I keep them behind the Christs, they’re that filthy. But people who want them know where to come.” I could see Nan trying to distract her and lead her out of the studio, but she kept nosing about, turning over panels, inspecting shelves. Suddenly I heard her cry out, “Oh! What’s this I see here on the worktable? You can’t fool me, I’ve been a painter’s wife too long. Just look at the size of it, and the colors! The features are perfect; she looks as lively as if she could step from the case. And I can see her character from the eyes. That’s the test of a true portrait, you know. What a jewel! An emperor would buy that.” She stood back from the worktable and put her hands on her hips, inspecting the miniature with her head tilted to one side. “Now that I see his skill, I begin to regret this arrogant Master Dallet,” she observed.

“My mistress did that.”

“Your mistress? That’s a joke. Only a man could paint this well.”

“My mistress is the only daughter of the great master Cornelius Maartens.”

“Martin? Well perhaps I heard my husband speak of him, and perhaps I didn’t. He doesn’t sound like a liveryman. I hope he wasn’t a foreigner, come to steal good English livings. I tell you, if the guild didn’t burn their work, we’d all be living in the gutter.”

“Master Maartens was Flemish.”

“Oh—well—not that I haven’t seen some foreign work that wasn’t shoddy. Still, they can’t paint a proper coat of arms. It’s their strange ways….”

“My mistress was raised a painter from childhood. He taught her all his secrets before he died.”

“Now there
is
a strange custom, teaching a daughter to do man’s work.” The widow seemed disbelieving. She came closer to inspect the painting again. “Just imagine! It would turn her head from duty. How could she ever be a proper wife if she knew a man’s trade? No, girls should be raised girls, I say, or soon enough they’d all be wearing trunk hose and short swords, and then where would we be?” She picked up the miniature from the worktable, and her brain was thinking so hard I could almost hear it from the bed in the other room. “Still…if she paints like this…it’s a crime to waste…the damage is already done, so why not profit?”

Suddenly I remembered something. I sat up with a start.

“The miniature! Nan, those Frenchmen are coming any time now! We have to hide the body!”

“What Frenchmen?” asked the widow, sensing good gossip.

“The Frenchmen who commissioned that miniature from my husband,” I said, sitting up in bed, newly frantic. “If they know he’s dead, they won’t take it. Nan, we need that money.”

“You mean,” said the widow, “you’re palming off your own work as Master Dallet’s?”

“What else?” I answered. “Someone has to find money for this household, and it certainly isn’t going to be Master Dallet anymore—not that it ever was.”

“My dear,” said the widow, with a smile of discovery on her face. “I will help you hide the body on one condition—”

“We can’t afford to share the Frenchmen’s money,” said Nan. “We have to bury him, you know.”

“No, I wouldn’t think of depriving the poor man of his shroud. What I propose is that your mistress there renew my supply of Adam and Eves—we’ll go halves.”

A great cloud of worry lifted from me, and I felt suddenly that from now on, fate would look after my every need. “An excellent idea,” I said. “Halves it is.”

“Ah, blessed be God, who answers prayers in such strange ways,” said the widow, as she rolled her eyes heavenward. “Now, dear Mistress Dallet, rest yourself and repair your health, while we go hide that thing downstairs. Praise the Lord it’s cold; he won’t stink, and we can have him out by tomorrow.”

The Second Portrait

Lucas Hornebolt. ca. 1514.
Princess Mary Tudor.
1½-inch diameter. Gouache on vellum. Cherrywood case. Huntington Gallery.

Attributed to Lucas Hornebolt, this excellent early specimen of the English miniaturist’s art portrays Princess Mary Tudor of England (1495?–1533), third daughter of King Henry VII of England and younger sister of Henry VIII. Princess Mary should not be confused with Queen Mary I (Mary Tudor, 1516–1558, “Bloody Mary”), the eldest daughter of Henry VIII and half sister of Queen Elizabeth I. The Tudor strain is clearly visible in the reddish hair and stubborn lower lip of the portrait. This miniature, most likely a copy of a larger portrait, was painted as an engagement gift to King Louis XII of France, dating it sometime in the year 1514. In clarity of jewel-like color and depiction of character in a small space, no school of painting surpasses that of the English miniaturists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

—T
HE
E
NGLISH
M
INIATURE.
Exhibition catalog, October 1985

I
have
ALREADY TOLD YOU HOW
I
CAME TO PAINT THIS PICTURE, WHICH IS REALLY ONLY A COPY AND NOT FROM LIFE, BUT IT BROUGHT ME THE FIRST MONEY
I
EVER EARNED WITH MY BRUSH.
Faces are my strongest skill, because my father was a taskmaster who never let anything get by, and he made me copy an ugly old skull he had over and over again from all angles until I cried, because he said you can’t understand the flesh unless you understand the bone underneath. And my mother shook her head and said girls shouldn’t be drawing ugly bones and he was a madman, but here I am so perhaps he wasn’t so mad after all. I see a lot in faces. I can see thoughts and hurts and dreamings and sometimes very great evil well concealed. It is a special art to catch these things in the droop of an eyelid, or the way light shines on a cheekbone, and that is what I work at most of all, because I want to get better and better at it.

But the hardest part of a painting is getting the money for it, which never gets any easier no matter how many pictures you make. So many people are tricky and they think the painting is already painted, so too bad, you’ll have to take what they offer, or maybe wait, or risk getting nothing, and have to bear the cost of the materials. That is why princely patrons are best, because they are not cheap. Also, always try to get an advance, even from princes.

Four

T
HE
light had already failed by the time the Frenchmen returned. They were heavily muffled, well armed, and had brought a third man with them, who was incognito in the Italian fashion, in a black velvet mask that covered his entire face beneath his wide, plain hat brim. But the soft leather cuffs of his tall boots were turned back to show red silk linings, and I caught the shine of gold embroidery embellished with seed pearls beneath a brief, inadvertent opening of his black cloak. A man of higher rank than the first two, I thought. Their master. And he must not be known to have been here.

The first two men set down their lanterns on the bedroom table. Apart from the glow of the lanterns, the room was lit only by firelight. Master Dallet always resented money spent on candles because he had plenty of them when he attended his great patrons and why pay extra for such expensive things at home? Now that he was dead, I was beginning to understand that he did not regard his home as a haven of peace from the cares and false snares of the world. The snares of the world were all he had ever wanted and his haven of peace got in the way. It made me very sad because if you cannot trust
The Good Wyfe’s Book of Manners
, then what can you trust? Now here I was having strange men in at odd hours and going very far from right things, which shows what happens when you get started on wrong paths. All I could think about was how I intended to be very bold and cover everything up so they couldn’t talk down the price.

The red, flickering light from the hearth cast great, black shadows that loomed like giants behind the strange men and seemed very frightening. But I was very firm because right is always on the side of widows who need money.

“Madame Dolet, has it been possible for your husband to finish the painting today?” asked the Frenchman who had first given the commission, the one who spoke better English.

“Yes, he has it finished. He has entrusted me with the sale, since he has been invited across town on an important commission. Would you like to inspect it now?” I answered him in English, the same language in which he had addressed me.

“Curious to leave only a wife here,” said the second Frenchman, in French, to the masked man. “It must be a very important commission, indeed. Still, it seems you have not wasted your trip, after all.”

“I would have said it was impossible to have it finished this quickly—I won’t accept it if the quality is poor,” he answered in the same language. Then in heavily accented English, he addressed me: “Show me the portrait.” I lit a rushlight in the fire and led them into the studio.

“Here it is, my lord,” I said, handing him the closed case. “You may wish to inspect it closer to the fire. I don’t want to risk spotting it.” I held the sputtering, grease-dipped rush well away from the little case. The lord sat down on the bench by the fire and opened the case. I could hear him take in his breath as the firelight illuminated the little image in the turned wooden case.

“It is a speaking likeness,” he said in French. “More exquisite than the original. It shows her exactly as I have seen her, even her character.” The man in the mask chuckled knowingly. “Madame can ask for no better.” He studied the portrait again. “Still…how was this done so quickly? Had she a copy made for a lover? Or perhaps the painter had made another to sell to some interested party…” He seemed to be talking to himself, thinking. I let my face look stupid, as if I did not understand him. The second Frenchman, the shorter one, turned to me and said in English:

“Tell me, did your husband have this already made up?” Oh, dear, who knows what troublesome rumor could come back to haunt us? Why hadn’t I thought of that before? It just goes to show how one little deception about a body hidden in the house can lead to all sorts of other things you might never have thought about. And after all, it is really important to look after the honor of your dead husband if you wish to be considered respectable as a widow and not unworthy of concern due to being connected with a wicked person.

“My husband is a man of honor. He would never do such a thing. I told him all about your princely offer last night, and he worked on it all day. It’s for the sake of his son that’s to be born, you know.” Now that he was dead, it was much easier to imagine him as a more considerate husband. “He was overcome with joy when he found I was bearing a child. It was the answer to his prayers, his candles burned before the Virgin at Saint Vedast. Oh, he was a pious man, for all that he put on an easy, affable front for his great clients.” Did I imagine that I saw one of them shudder?

But the great lord turned to me and asked, his voice at once stunned and curious, “Did you see him paint it?”

“Oh, yes,” I answered. “He sat here all day, quiet as a ghost, just working. I didn’t dare disturb him. He didn’t even touch his meal. When he was done, he just vanished, without even taking leave. He is so busy these days.” At this, even the lord stiffened slightly and seemed to turn pale beneath his mask.

“Tell the woman to tell her husband that this is a masterpiece and well worth the fee he asked,” the lord said in French. He nodded at the shorter man, who told me the same thing in English and produced a purse.

“I’ll be happy to tell him of your distinguished judgment, my lord. He will be most grateful for your opinion,” I answered. Clutching the money and scarcely daring to breathe, I curtseyed, all ungainly, in farewell.

“Tell no one about this painting, or by whom it was purchased,” said the short Frenchman with the better English. Was it warning, or fear, or perhaps both, that I heard in his voice?

“Yes, of course, my lord.” But as Nan showed them to the door, I stood by the fire, wondering why they had not asked me to tell Master Dallet that he must be silent, too? Their heavy boots creaked on the narrow stair. I could hear the front door bang shut behind them. There was the sound of clatter and company rising from the widow’s kitchen downstairs. I thought it must be very amusing company, from the way she was carrying on and giggling and shrieking like some girl instead of a proper old widow who likes disasters.

I was just hiding the money when I heard Nan shushing them at the foot of the stair. “She’s in a terrible, terrible way. Prostrate with grief. Poor little lamb, so innocent, to see such dreadful things. Why, the sight of it nearly killed her on the spot.” Nan was talking very loudly even for Nan, so I took it as a sign that she was warning me about someone who might be coming up and catching me gloating over money instead of lying in bed like a martyr. So I tucked the money under the straw beneath the featherbed and got into bed and pulled the covers up over my neck so whoever it was wouldn’t see that I was really dressed and deceiving him. I felt especially guilty about deceiving and conspiring when I saw that Nan had brought in a holy person who might well see through all my wickedness—that is, a friar, except that he was fat and out of breath and he had been drinking downstairs, so he might not see through anything.

“Master Pickering’s confessor, Mistress Dallet,” Nan said hastily, so I’d make no mistakes. “Brother Thomas has come on behalf of the captain.” I could see him looking around our little rooms, which were all darkish and sort of pitiful without candles because rushlights always look so cheap.

“Oh, Brother Thomas,” I said faintly, “please forgive me if I don’t rise. I have been ill, and am afraid of losing the child.” I really did feel exhausted, and my belly felt all in knots which might have been labor pains but I really didn’t know for sure.

“Oh, never, never,” he said, looking flustered. “Don’t risk the child. You must stay just as you are.”

“You are so understanding. Heaven bless you, good friar,” I answered, all soft and weak so he’d be sure to know I was ill from grief and be sorry. Brother Thomas looked unsure of what to do. The only bench was by the fire. So he sat on the edge of the bed, looking nervous, as if I might tempt him to sin which was in fact the farthest thing from my mind.

“I cannot even describe Captain Pickering’s distress on hearing of your difficulties. Since it was he who first discovered the dreadful accident to your distinguished husband, he takes your own loss almost as if it were his own—” Aha, I thought, you saw the great lords leave and now you are dying to know what they were here for in case they were good friends with designs of vengeance. Well, you should be worried—after all, Captain Pickering didn’t just go and murder a nobody. And he had the gall to deliver the corpse that way—with the arrogance of a lord. I imagine he’s sorry now.

“How noble of him,” I said, making my voice sound ever so weak and frail.

“He consulted with me at length concerning the biblical texts on the assistance of widows—”

“Most devout of him—”

“—and he has sent this purse to assist you and your unborn child in your hour of need.”

“How truly charitable of him to take an interest in assisting the unfortunate victims of fate.”

“He is a good Christian, unwavering in his duty.”

“But, blessed Brother Thomas,” I murmured through my pale, bloodless lips, “one thing still causes me great agony. Oh, dear God, is that another pain I feel? Just one thing—”

“What is it, Mistress Dallet?”

“The funeral. I am too weak to make the arrangements. I can’t bear the thought of Master Dallet being shamed by a poor funeral. He’ll need candles and a coffin—” Brother Thomas looked alarmed. Did you think I’d let you off so easily? You’re not throwing a purse to
me
and walking out of here, you hypocrite. “I want a lead-lined one—carved—in good taste—no cheap material. Master Dallet was a distinguished court painter, after all.”

“A coffin, well, yes, a coffin.”

“You’ll need to send notice to the Painter-Stainers’ hall, to tell the wardens that he’ll be needing the funeral pall. And the procession—he needs more than just the liverymen—a man of his stature must have at least six hired mourners—”

“Surely, one or two—”

“Four. How could you even mention two? Two—so shabby—oh, I feel so grieved, the pain just won’t go away. Oh, the pain—it’s just shooting through me at the thought of only two mourners.”

“Four mourners,” he said, sighing.

“I need two lengths of black wool, ten yards each, for mourning dress.”

“Mourning dress, yes, I suppose that is needed. Is that all?” His pale blue eyes, buried deep in his round, red face, began to look at me with a strange new sense of appreciation.

“Oh, oh, what is it? Yes? Oh, I feel so weak. Ah, now I remember. A memorial brass—not so large as to be vulgar. My poor, dear husband. How ghastly he looked! He must have an engraved brass at Saint Vedast.”

“Understood—” Looking at his face, I couldn’t resist.

“With a verse. The finest brasses have verses. Perhaps by you? Some fitting tribute, for the sake of his grieving wife.”

“A verse seems excessive. They charge by the letter—”

“A motto, then? Something appropriate.”

“Why not ‘
Ars longa, vita brevis
’?” said Brother Thomas, his large red face bland, but his voice ironic.

“And what is that, my dear Brother Thomas? Latin? Is it sufficiently pious? Oh, my goodness, I wouldn’t want my pains to start again.”

“Indeed. It means that Art lives much longer than our frail, sinful lives.” A lot longer than you imagine, I thought, reflecting on Master Dallet’s future posthumous career in the religious painting business.

“That would be perfect,” I answered. “Master Dallet would be pleased, if he could know.”

“I’m sure he would,” agreed Friar Thomas, rising from where he sat on the end of the bed.

“Thank you for this visit of consolation, Friar Thomas,” I said, in my best fragile-sounding voice.

“Blessings be on you and your house, Mistress Dallet,” he said, backing cautiously toward the door, his eyes never wavering from my face. Suddenly he said, “He never understood what he had, did he? A man should put more value on a wife who is as determined as she is shrewd, and as shrewd as she is virtuous. Never fear, Mistress Dallet, I will personally make sure that the inscription is quite elegant enough to uphold your honor.”

Really not a bad man, I thought, as I heard him puffing down the stairs. And what an interestingly colored face. Very little massicot and more red lead in the carnation, the first shadings of the features in red, the blue of the eye very pale, a most curious contrast…

“Tap, tap!” cried Widow Hull, in place of knocking at the open door. “Come in,” I called from the bed, where Nan and I were counting the contents of the purse that the holy friar had left behind him. Quickly Nan put away the purse under the straw in the bed next to all that other money, as the widow came in with her candle. “My, you do look awful,” she said cheerfully, holding her light up to inspect my features. Her daughter was behind her, holding a soup tureen, which she set on our table. “I thought you might not be cooking tonight, so we’ve brought what’s left from supper—that is, what I managed to hide from that hungry friar.”

“You certainly sound cheerful,” said Nan.

“And why shouldn’t I be? He scattered money about him like a gentleman. And interesting! Why, he goes every day to Saint Paul’s to hear what’s new. What a tale he can tell! How the great Wolsey schemes every day to be made a cardinal, and that the queen in France is now dead, and she without a son, and a most marvelous storm that—oh, and they say women are gossips! You should have seen his face when I told him that those were great gentlemen upstairs, who had come to inquire after Master Dallet. Then I showed him how nicely I had laid out Master Dallet in the buttery, with two candles, and very expensive ones, I might add, all to keep his master’s wicked secret, and he vowed to have him out of here and buried tomorrow, and I said just as well, even in this cold weather, he won’t keep much longer. Oh, yes—a man of the world—What’s this? You aren’t eating?” I had just turned away the bowl of soup that Nan had offered.

“I don’t feel well. Tell me, what are labor pains like?”

“You’ll know ’em when you have ’em. That’s something no woman has to ask about. Goodness, your eyes look swollen—I thought you’d been crying for the good friar’s benefit. Let’s see your hand. That’s swollen, too—just look at how that ring cuts into the finger! Tell me, do you have headaches?”