The Creation Of Eve (46 page)

At least
I
could get out of the palace. The moment the King claimed My Lady after Mass, I grabbed my shawl and, with Francesca muttering behind me, set out to get some air. Past the flagstones of the palace courtyard I wandered, down the steep Calle de Balien, then through the Plaza de la Villa with its ancient tower. I was glad for the sharp winds from the Guadarramas that tugged my skirts and stung my face. I was alive and well, and as soon as the Queen could safely be left, I was going home.

For I have decided. I need to be back again in Cremona, painting in my room as the bells clang so stolidly out of pitch in the tower of San Giorgio across the piazza and the hens cluck in our courtyard. Once surrounded again by familiar things--Papa, my sisters and brother, the servants gathering around our well, chatting as the bucket lowers once more from its squeaking pulley--I might find again the stillness in my mind into which God can whisper. I might glimpse once more that gossamer connection to the other world that resides in each of Us, that essence so rare, so beautiful, so completely true that we can bear to comprehend it only for the briefest of moments. At home, God willing, it will come again to my brush.

It shall never come to me in the stifling atmosphere here.

Thinking how I might broach the subject of my dismissal with the Queen, I began the steep climb Up the Costanilla de San Pedro, stopping for breath in front of the Church of San Pedro el Viejo. My hand to my heaving breast, I gazed Up the apricot-colored brick wall of the bell tower. Above the Moorish arches of the belfry, Upon the red-tiled roof, sat the empty nest of a stork, its tumbledown pile of sticks outlined by the stark blue sky.

"No storks for two months, my lady."

I looked down. An elderly woman held out a bowl from the shadows of the covered church porch. "Alms," she croaked, in a voice as rusty as the gate to a family crypt.

I nodded to Francesca, who took a coin from the purse at her waist.

"Already I feel better," I told Francesca as the coin clinked in the beggar's battered tin bowl. "I could not stay in that palace another moment."

Francesca rejoined me, pulling closed her purse.

I stopped to rearrange my shawl Upon my shoulders. "Poor Carlos. I wish he could have convinced the King to let My Lady have an outing. But he spoiled any chance of it by arguing with his father. His rashness Undoes him every time."

Francesca tightened her shawl around her head. "The Prince, he have a kind heart."

"If only that were enough to see him through. As fond as I am of him, I shudder to think of him as ruler of half the world. I fear that it is only a matter of time before he goes completely raving mad like his great-grandmother Juana."

From the shadows, the old woman rasped, "Dona Juana was not mad."

I drew in a sharp breath. What was I thinking, speaking so freely in public? My words were not ones that should get back to the King.

The woman's voice came again. "It only suited her son to make her seem that way."

I picked Up my skirts, a signal to Francesca that we should leave.

The woman stirred within the dimness of the porch, her coins--precious few of them, by the sound of it--swishing against the sides of her bowl. "My mother was a servant to Queen Juana. I grew Up in the convent where she was kept. And I tell you--her mind was clear."

"Come, Francesca!" Why did she tarry so?

"The Emperor stole her crown, then made his son keep it. What a different place Spain would be now if she had ruled. Instead, what did we get? Wars. Fighting for a piece of dirt. Kings and their pride! They would have Us all dead before giving an inch."

"Francesca! Now!"

The woman quickened her speech as if afraid we would get away before she finished. "I am not the only one who loved her. Did not Juan Bravo and the other rebels lose their lives in trying to rescue her from prison? But her own sweetness was Used against her--she had not the stomach to fight her own son. She went to her grave grieving over him and her grandson."

Francesca regarded the woman, her peasant's face cautious. "You say like you know her."

"Francesca! I am leaving."

"I was the playmate of her daughter. We were the best of friends Until Catalina was sent to marry. She was more useful to her brother as a bride than as her mother's only companion."

I caught Francesca's sleeve. Most people are well versed in who was who in the Royal Family--this knowledge was not exceptional. The woman had delusions, claiming to be the friend of Queen Juana's daughter.

Francesca pulled away from me. "Why are you here in Madrid?"

"Thank you for listening,
senora
. When Queen Juana died, my mother and I were let go, too Unimportant to be thought a threat to the King. I married a guard who had served the King in the Indies. He joined a regiment and went to France, where he died fighting at Metz. But he did not widow me before giving me something he got in Mexico." She came out of the shadows.

I drew back with a gasp. Above her twisted lips was a gaping hole that had been her nose.

"See what the conquistadors brought back from the New World besides silver and gold."

"Leprosy," Francesca whispered.

"No," said the woman. "The French Disease. And my wounds are not the worst of it." She shrank back into the shadows with a sigh. "I passed the curse to my child at birth. Poor weakened thing, given to fevers and rashes. She did not live to see her eighteenth birthday."

"Give her another
maravedi
." I turned away, gagging into my glove.

A coin clanked Upon the woman's metal bowl. "God be with you," said Francesca.

I hurried off, though not before the woman's ghastly image had been engraved Upon my mind.

ITEM: In seeking an answer to a quandary, one must consider the Law of Parsimony, proposed by the English monk William of Ockham. Translated from the Latin: "All things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."

29 JANUARY 1567

The Palace, Aranjuez

I write this as fast as I can while everyone sleeps. Even Francesca has fallen into a restless slumber, thinking I am asleep. I am not. Too many thoughts rumble Unchecked through my head.

Five days ago, just after the Infanta's nurse had brought the baby to the Queen's chamber after Mass, the King surprised Us all by announcing that we were to travel to Aranjuez. I could see the Queen's blank stare at the King as she rested Upon the divan.

The King nestled the Infanta in the crook of his arm, then looked Up. "Do you not wish to go, darling? We do not have to."

"We can truly leave Madrid?"

"Of course we can. If you are Up to it. I know it is not the season, but perhaps it is warmer there than--"

She sat Up. "How soon?"

He let the baby wrap her fist aroUnd his finger and pull it to her wet mouth. "Not so very long. Tomorrow, if you wish."

The Queen paused, eyes alert. "Who else goes?"

The Infanta latched on to a lock of the King's hair as he pretended to nibble on her pudgy fingers. He looked Up, making her chortle as she hung on. "Those in the family who always go with Us to Aranjuez. Is there someone specific you had in mind?"

The Queen shook her head.

The condesa swept in with madame de Clermont. The little Infanta stared at them, bright-eyed, maintaining her grip on her father's hair as the ladies made their greetings and the King announced mildly that the Queen wished to go to Aranjuez on the morrow. Would it be possible to make ready her things?

In moments, servants were running to and fro, flinching as the condesa shouted a stream of orders from behind her pomander. Her whip-cracking produced the desired results. By morning the next day, I was swaying in a carriage beside the nurse with the baby Princess; the King and Queen were seated on the tufted velvet bench across from Us.

"Tired, darling?" the King said.

The Queen lay back in his arms, her head against his shoulder. "Not so very much."

"You can rest when you get there."

She nodded, then sipped from the goblet he held to her lips.

At that moment, little Isabel Clara reached forward from her nurse's lap and grasped the leather curtain at the carriage window. With a baby's spastic movement, she jerked a corner of the stiff leather sheet toward her mouth, eager to gum it.

The late morning sunlight poured through the uncovered opening. My Lady turned her head, shielding her face with her hand, but not before I noticed her eyes. Only the thinnest rim of light brown ringed her pupils. Her eyes were as dilated as a cat 's.

I caught my breath. I had noticed that her eyes seemed darker of late, glittering, as eyes do, from fever, but in the gloom in which the King kept her rooms, I had not realized how great a part her enlarged pupils played in the changed appearance of her gaze. Altogether the effect was Unnerving.

His Majesty took away the cup; My Lady let her head fall back Upon his chest.

The King lifted his gaze and caught me staring. Although I looked away quickly, I could see him frown.

He pressed the Queen's face to his heart. "Dona Elena," he said coolly to the nurse, "do you think it good for Isabel Clara to put that curtain in her mouth?"

The morning after we arrived at Aranjuez, after Mass, when the Queen was settled in the King's office and resting, I went to her mulberry grove, knowing that she would never cause her litter to go there. Although the King had ordered the mulberry trees be planted specially for My Lady, to encourage her in the pastime of tending silkworms, the thought of coddling a worm, let alone one that entombs itself in its own guts, repulses her. Even if she were well and capable of visiting the grounds with the King (for he no more lets her out of his sight than Francesca lets me out of hers), the mulberry grove is the last place in Spain one would ever find her.

Confident of my temporary solitude--save for Francesca muttering within her shawls--I paced among the young trees. The winter sun shone steadily through their naked limbs, creating a lacework of shadows Upon my skirt. I hardly marked their pattern. I was desperately trying to recall my lessons on the four humors. Which of them in imbalance is implicated by dilated pupils? Black bile? Phlegm? Blood?

I kicked at the dead, bent grass of the grove. Even if I could recall which imbalance had caused the Queen's pupils to swell, I was not a physician. Indeed, even if I had the answer, who would listen to a mere lady of the court? Why was the King's new physician not acting Upon this, bleeding her, cupping her, sampling her Urine? How could he--and the King himself, as learned as His Majesty is in medicine--stand idly by when My Lady exhibited this symptom? It seemed a clear clue to her Unshakable weakness. Something was wrong, I could feel it in my bones.

I was turning these thoughts over in my mind as I trod, Francesca's heavy step crunching in the long grass behind me, when I heard a man's voice.

"Juffrouw Sofonisba?"

I started.

Doctor Debruyne raised himself from a patch of tall grass by the trunk of a mulberry tree and dusted off his breeches. The cloud of his breath dissolved in the chill air before him. "I am sorry,
juffrouw
, I am afraid I have found none."

Francesca cleared her throat loudly.

Doctor Debruyne smiled at her. "Oh, yes,
mevrouw.
Thank you for reminding me." He gave me a quick bow.
"
Good afternoon
, juffrouw."

Having dispensed with court formalities in one swift move, he resumed his train of thought. "I have not found a one."

"A one?" I was confused, flustered, and embarrassingly glad. I had given Up hope of ever seeing him again since he had been sent to Sevilla with doctor Hernandez, though I hardly hoped doctor Debruyne would ever miss me.

"Cocoons," he said.

"Cocoons?"

"For the Queen." He tossed back the hank of shining brown hair that had fallen in his eyes. "Forgive me, juffrouw Sofonisba. It was foolish of me to presume that because I was sent here to look for any cocoons that might have survived the winter, you had been sent here for the same purpose. There was a bit of logic to my thinking, though. The King said the Queen might wish to expand her industry amongst the silkworms, and you being the Queen's favored lady, I thought she 'd sent--" His high forehead rumpled in a frown. "Perhaps my line of reasoning was not so logical after all."

"Oh, I see the logic now," I said qUickly, "but no, it has no bearing on why I am here. As a matter of fact, the Queen would never send me here on such a mission. She despises silkworms." I closed my mouth. A simple 'no' would have done.

"She does? Why?"

"Well, they are worms."

"I see. Perhaps it would ease the Queen's mind to know they are not truly worms, but caterpillars--yoUng moths, that is. Who would ever think such a beautiful thing as silk would come from the efforts of a lowly caterpillar?"

Francesca shifted on her stocky legs, seemingly torn between cutting short an Unsanctioned private meeting between her mistress and a gentleman, and making allowances for the man who had removed her bad tooth.

I could not help it. My curiosity got the best of me: "I thought you were in Sevilla."

A corner of his mouth lifted in a surprised smile, as if he had not expected me to have made note of where he had gone. "I was. Receiving shipments of herbs directly from the New World as they came into port there. Doctor Hernandez and I have been able to keep a few more specimens alive that way, as opposed to waiting for them to reach Aranjuez or El Escorial. The King was quite right to suggest that we station ourselves there."

"The King had sent you?"

He nodded. "I have just now come back to Aranjuez to transplant some of my Chile pepper specimens." He smiled more fully. "Have you made any interesting discoveries since we last met?"

I frowned at the grass, ashamed of letting my studies, my art, my own self-worth, run to ruin over these past two years. I had blamed my situation, my worry about the Queen, even my hopes for Tiberio, for my inability to pursue my dream, but at that moment, as the lacy net of shadows danced Upon my skirts, it suddenly became apparent: However I reacted to what life dealt me was my own damnable choice.