The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley (35 page)
“Fashion? What is that, my dear Crouch? I told you, I need introduction to the affairs of men.” Already, Belphagor began to dream of greater elegance and consequence in the infernal order. Lucifer had such splendid manners. Now, if he could only learn that smooth way of talking Crouch had….
“Ah, fashion,” said Crouch, sensing the demon’s childish vanity. “The mastery of fashion is the first sign of a gentleman. That, and the art of carving. Yes, I’ll be delighted to show you. In Paris, a man’s gown must be longer, cut low to reveal the doublet across the chest, and the linen! Ah, the linen. You should have Spanish embroidery, the best.”
“Done by nuns?”
“Of course, done by nuns. It will become you most excellently….” Vanity, thought Crouch. With all the human sins he’s sucked up, he’s managed to drink in a hogshead of vanity—it’s gone all through him. It all goes to show you should watch what you eat. And what a convenient handle to control a small mind. I have him.
At every word, Crouch’s servants could feel their skins crawl. And yet—and yet they had to give credit to a man who could strike up a friendship with a supernatural monster without even seeming to turn a hair.
Three unknown knights in romantic disguise, their old-fashioned surcoats marked with red crosses in the manner of the crusaders, clattered through the muddy streets of Canterbury to the gates of the gray, Norman castle within the walls. Behind them, a horde of esquires, packhorses, and armed retainers numbering over a hundred proclaimed that these were hardly the wandering knights errant they pretended to be. These were England’s champions, bound to answer a challenge to the wedding joust issued by the Dauphin of France, Francis of Angoulême. Entrusted as the king’s lieutenant in these games of chivalry was his closest companion, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Beside him rode Sir Edward Neville and Sir William Sidney, partners in the affair. But neither of them knew that Suffolk had been given another, secret, task to carry out, the negotiation of an offensive alliance between France and England against Ferdinand of Aragon.
Suffolk had not yet dismounted when a messenger, his horse lathered, clattered into the castle courtyard. Looking about him, he recognized Brandon, fabulous disguise and all, and rode toward him. “My Lord, news!” he cried, and Suffolk, turning his head, recognized a fellow courtier, who had preceded him to France.
“What is it, Sir Gerard?” he asked, pulling his horse to a standstill. Behind him, his mounted guardsmen, his retainers, his pavilion-laden packhorses, all stopped, crowding the gates of the courtyard so as to make them impassable.
“The King of France has dismissed all the English servants, ladies, and attendants sent into France, even Mother Guildford. They are making their way home with great hardship, and the queen is left alone, and very distressed.”
Blood traveled up Suffolk’s thick neck. He drew his beetling, dark brows together. The muscles in his massive jaw twitched with rage. “It is the Howards,” he said. “The Howards and Norfolk. They have done this. They have influenced the French king to send away these attendants.”
“Doubtless, my lord, doubtless. Norfolk, who accompanied the queen, agreed to the plan.”
Then it is sure, thought Suffolk. He was never swift of thought, but once his slow brain had seized upon an idea, it worried it and tore it apart like a bulldog. The king wanted the alliance with France because Wolsey thought it was good. In this, Suffolk had risked all to stand with Wolsey. A nice little side payment from Wolsey had not hurt his conscience on this matter, either. Now, Wolsey had chosen the servants. If they were gone, Wolsey’s influence with the queen was gone. But he knew Mary. She would grow frantic without her Mother Guildford to steady her. She would do wild things, imprudent things. She was a woman; no, worse than a woman, a girl without experience of the world, her head easily turned, her will easily deceived. She would misstep, she would alienate the king, she would undo the alliance, and with it Wolsey’s and his own fortunes. Who knows? Grief might make her lose the child she had conceived. Or worse, without faithful attendants, some French enemy might drug her food, so she would miscarry, and with the child would go England’s hopes. Yes, it had to be his enemies the Howards. They would ruin the alliance to ruin Wolsey and himself. Anything to gain the exclusive right to influence the king. A family of wolves they were; they were capable of anything that would advance their clan. He must abandon his heavy horses and ride full speed to the coast. He must get to France to negotiate the treaty before the Howards could stop him.
That night, Suffolk sat up by the light of a candle, writing his alarming news to the king in the unformed hand and outlandish spelling of a man who had spent less time with his tutor than in the lists. The next day he and his two companions rode alone at full speed to take a ship for France. With gray, hooded cloaks thrown over their curious disguises, they were the very picture of knights errant hastening to rescue their queen from her distress. And as far as Neville and Sidney knew, that was exactly the case.
“This Duc de Suffoke has landed at Calais, and my son has gone to meet him and invite him to the boar hunt before they arrange the tourney in Paris.” Louise of Savoy’s tone was meaningful. Her eyes were as bright and hard as a ferret’s on the hunt, and her nostrils tight with the smell of conspiracy aborning. “The King of England sends him as ambassador with a purpose, an evil purpose, my daughter.” At the news, Louise had at long last deemed it politic to recover from her “illness” and leave her country seat at Romorantin posthaste to come to Paris for the coronation. She had arrived the very day before, reclining in a litter, pale with rice powder, and stewing with pure rage. Now she had come to the very house in Saint Denis in which the uncrowned queen was staying, attended at the king’s order by Claude, her son’s wife, her own daughter, Marguerite, and her dear friend, the Baronne d’Aumont. Keen and fierce eyed, she had taken up the reins of the conspiracy for her son once again, drawing informants to her, counting her allies and her enemies. She must undo these rival conspiracies. Nothing must keep Francis from the throne. Her son would rule France, and she would rule her son.
“Suffoke? Which one is he, Mother? Not the old scheming one with the beard who left just after the wedding?”
“No, far worse. I have received a report from Longueville. He was the queen’s lover in England. King Henri must have fears our king cannot sire the son he desires. The son that will steal our throne for the English. He sends this Suffoke to do the deed, disguised as England’s ‘champion’ for the great tourney at the coronation. ‘Champion,’ ha! Champion stud, to keep our beloved Francis from his due.” Louise leaned back against the pillows of the bed on which she was “resting,” fully and immaculately clad in her black widow’s gown. Schooled in the hard court of the old queen regent, her enemy, she was incapable of perceiving anything as coincidence. Were there such a thing, and it did not favor her son, she would stamp it out with the same ferocity with which she had foiled the dozens of other plots against him. She passed the back of her hand across her brow. “I suffer greatly, my daughter. You must help me in this.”
Marguerite, standing by the bedside, looked alarmed. “The English…they are unscrupulous. What a schemer that Wolsey is!” Louise sat up suddenly, ramrod straight, and her voice was fierce.
“Listen, my daughter. Neither you, nor Claude, nor the Baronne must leave the queen alone for an instant. Especially when that Suffoke finally arrives. He must be given no chance to make an English heir to the French throne.” With strong fingers, she grasped her daughter’s arm, pulling her closer, as she spoke with quiet ferocity. “Impress upon Claude that it is her duty, her duty to France, her duty to her own children, who will be disinherited by her innattention, her inability to be suspicious and watchful enough. Make sure she understands and does not blurt out the Secret in some weak moment to the wrong person. I rely on you. Not an instant alone, if you love your brother.”
“Yes, Mother, not an instant alone,” said the Duchesse d’Alençon, taking leave of her mother and returning to the great gallery where the queen, Claude, and her ladies were whiling away the time before their great midday dinner.
Braziers at each end of the gallery flickered and smoked, chasing the damp chill from the air. Rich arras, tapestries hung on frames a foot or so away from the walls, stopped the cold breath of the stone from entering the room. Even so, the heavy silks and brocades of the ladies were lined with fur, and their elaborate, jeweled headdresses and hoods served the double purpose of warmth as well as display. The queen was playing at cards with Lady Grey and the Baronne, while Mistress Nan Boleyn, so pleasing with her charming French and the supple manners she had learned at the Regent of the Netherlands’ court, was explaining the game, an odd English one, to the French ladies who watched at the card table. Claude herself had requested that the girl stay, on the grounds that she “was so mannerly that she could hardly be called English.”
Claude herself was not playing. Cards confused her in general, and new card games even more so. Besides, listening to foreign accents made her head hurt. She sat apart on a wide, cushioned bench, while a lady attendant read to her from a book of pious meditations. She was holding her face curiously still, and Marguerite instantly saw the reason. Seated on a stool in front of a stolid and curiously carved little easel with folding legs sat a young woman in widow’s black, a black silk smock over her clothes, painting with the tiniest brushes imaginable. In spite of the importance of her errand, Marguerite found herself pausing. A brief smile played over her curved mouth, and the intelligent eyes above her long nose lit with instant recognition.
The little square of parchment pinned to the board, ready tinted with a pale flesh color and no bigger than a baby’s palm, told the whole story at a glance. The paintrix’s last strokes had finished the dim, reddish outlines of Claude’s likeness. Now she took a clean brush from the trough at the bottom of the little drawing board and dipped it in the color that filled one of the mussel shells that lined the niches carved up each side of the board. With a fascinating precision, the artist began to lay on tiny strokes of color, so fine as to be almost invisible. One brush done, she put it in the narrow cup fastened to the side of the board, then took another. Delicate blue violet was mingled with the flesh tone, and shadows began to form on the tiny visage. A flick of black created Claude’s dark eyebrows, the dark of the nostril, the shadow between the lips. Or was it black? So cleverly were the colors mixed that Marguerite could hardly divine the true tints. All she knew was that when they were laid on the drawing, the true color of a human face, scarcely bigger than a man’s thumb, emerged. Marguerite inspected. Claude’s homely visage, plump and squint eyed, peered back at her, the very image of life. And yet, somehow, the painter had caught her simplicity, her capacity for earnest devotion. Marguerite found herself touched, then marveling at the talent that had such capacity to arouse her sympathy. I would like my likeness taken, too, she thought. Something spiritual. Perhaps in prayer.
Now as the artist left the first work on the face to dry, she began to fill in blocks of color on the bosom of Claude’s gown, and on her elaborate sleeves and headdress. There was no question in Marguerite’s mind. It was the painter of the miniature, the woman of the ghost story, come over in the English queen’s baggage. So, she didn’t have a lover after all. She had painted the miniature herself and passed it off as a man’s work to get the fee. How had she come to emerge from her disguise? Marguerite, the lover of stories, hesitated for a moment, wanting to call over one of the last English attendants as a translator to question the painter. No, she thought. Later. This business is too important.
“Madame, I must speak to you alone. Send away your lady reader.” Claude, careful not to move her head from its pose, consented, and the lady folded her book and bowed gracefully before withdrawing. The artist continued to paint. Doubtless, she does not understand French, thought Marguerite. Even so, she lowered her voice. “My lady mother has arrived, and she has heard bad news. The rumor is about that the English king has sent the queen’s former lover, this Duc de Suffoke, to get her with child should the king fail. His position as ambassador is a pretense. The treaty with England is not his first task. Mother warns you that you must never, never, leave the queen alone, especially with that Suffoke, no matter what the pretense is, or you will have aided the disinheritance of your own children.”