The Creation Of Eve (8 page)

"I hear you are an accomplished painter," he said, hopping close. "Is it true you have studied with Michelangelo Buonarroti?"

I flashed him a sidelong glance. "Yes. You have heard of him?"

"Who hasn't? He is the greatest painter of all times, is he not? My great-grandfather had him do all sorts of pictures for him."

I smiled briefly, struggling for breath. Who was this ancestor? Although I had studied a book on the King's family tree in preparation for my service, I had missed this branch.

"It was Great-grandfather who commissioned Michelangelo to paint
The Last Judgment
in the Sistine Chapel. Have you seen it?"

"Yes."

"So are the rumors true?"

We skipped our separate ways to the music, then back together, my heart rapping against my chest. "I don't know what you mean."

His dark curls bounced with his footwork. "That he loves boys."

My relief was charged with anger. "That is absurd," I said stiffly. "Maestro Michelangelo loves to work. That is the only sort of love I observed from him."

"That is not what I hear."

I was startled by a couple joining Us to our left, which is not customary in the middle of a pattern. When I saw it was the Queen, I started to curtsey. I had been introduced to her that afternoon, but had certainly not been included in her exalted circle.

"Oh, please, keep dancing!" the Queen cried. "Please--we will all of Us miss our steps."

I kept going, though flustered by whether or not I should have broken protocol by not stopping to acknowledge her. When I looked to Don Alessandro, he shrugged with a rustle of puffed sleeves.

I could hear the Queen's Great Pearl thudding against her flat chest as she hopped to the music. Her partner turned his face to me. "
Senorita
, be careful not to let that gentleman with you tread Upon your toes."

In my panic, I had not yet taken full measure of the Queen's partner. When at last I did, I fear my double look was as broad as a mummer's in a morality play. The young man, a youth near the same age as my partner, had eyes the clear, deep blue of my rich cousin's favorite sapphire ring, their brightness set off by the fresh country pink of his cheeks. His wheaten hair, certain strands of which glinted golden in the candlelight, caught on the lace of his high collar. Though he moved with a sinuous strength and grace, he kept his chin tilted down and his eyes were friendly and alert. His was not the guarded look of an experienced courtier.

"Perdon, senorita Sofonisba,"
said Don Alessandro, panting. "My new Uncle is very rude. He should be the one watching his feet. How long have you known a galliard, Uncle?"

"I am just this minute learning it," said the young man. To the Queen he said, "How would you say I do, Your Majesty?"

The Queen, her cheeks rosy with exertion and her dark eyes snapping with excitement, lifted her pointed little chin. "Like you have been dancing it all your life."

Don Alessandro made a scoffing sound. "How else is she to answer your question, Don Juan? Her Majesty is much too kind to say that you have the feet of an ox and the gait of a pig."

Don Juan smiled apologetically, then raised the Queen's hand to the music. As he whirled her away, I saw her lips curl into a laugh.

The King saw, too, from his throne at the edge of the dance floor.

The music played faster, hurrying my feet and making me laugh as I abandoned all thoughts of impropriety and Rome and Michelangelo. My heartbeat pounding in my ears, I leapt toward Don Alessandro in the final
posture
, but before I could land, he grabbed me by the waist and lifted me in the air.

Shocked, I did as my brain commanded: I raised my arms as if flying. The crowd broke out in a roar as Don Alessandro turned me above his head, and for six long beats, six long beats, I soared like a bird. And there on high, the crowd's applause and my own ragged breath ringing in my ears, I looked down Upon Don Juan. I saw his look into the Queen's eyes and her returned questioning gaze.

And then I was back to the earth again.

Too soon, the dance was over. When the music stopped, everyone turned and bowed to the Queen and Don Juan, then to young Don Alessandro and me in approbation.

"Well done," said Don Alessandro. He kissed my hand. "If you paint as well as you dance, you must be Michelangelo's match."

"You flatter me," I murmured.

Soon afterward all we ladies and lords of the court escorted the King and Queen to the bridal chamber, and after both were bedded in their shifts of finest linen, the Queen laughing, the King alternating between scowls at his men and sidelong frowns at his bride, we withdrew to find our l odgings.

Still glowing from the congratulations of many on my galliard, I retired with Francesca to our lodgings in the palace, to a room I was made to share with an older lady from Sevilla, dona Elvira de Herrera y da Silva. After receiving this lady's kind words of praise, I asked her a question that had been on my mind.

"
Senora
, who was the Queen's partner in the galliard? Don Alessandro called him his 'new uncle.' "

"Don Juan de Austria?" said dona Elvira. " 'Newly discovered ' is more the term." She shrugged off her gold-stitched black bodice with the help of her maid, a young woman with the dark complexion of a Portuguese.

Francesca Unlaced the back of my own bodice, the upturned knob of her chin raised in a frown. "I do not Understand," I said.

"Don Juan did not know he was the King's brother Until only recently," said dona Elvira. "He was brought Up as a common country boy."

"How could that be? Ah, thank you, Francesca, that feels better."

Francesca folded my discarded garment. "If the
signorina
did not throw herself around so much . . ." she muttered.

"His father was the Emperor, like Our King," dona Elvira said, "but his mother--Maria, please, can you not Undo these laces any more quickly?" She raised her arms as her maid finished her Unlacing and lifted off her corset. "He is a comely boy. I would not look for him to be at court too long. The King is Used to being the only cock in the roost. He cannot take too kindly to this golden youth showing Up in his middle age, in spite of their common blood--indeed, perhaps because of it."

"But who is Don Juan's mother?" I asked.

Massaging her ribs, which if like my own bore the aching impressions of her recently removed corset Upon them, dona Elvira dropped onto the narrow bed in her shift and, without answering my question, almost immediately began to snore. Such is the effect on the body of much feasting and dancing.

So now, with Francesca stirring in the bed and my robe Upon my shoulders and the frail light of the moon seeping in through the thick round panes of the window, I try to record my thoughts, though my head swims in the dimness. It is no Use. I can write no more. It is not the dark nor the grape nor this wretched quill that stills me, but the cold. I cannot feel my toes! Where are all the fireplaces in this country?

To the Very Magnificent Signorina Sofonisba,
In the Court of the Spanish King

Congratulations on your appointment to serve Her Sacred Majesty Elisabeth, Queen of Spain, as Painter to the Queen. How pleased I was for you when maestro Michelangelo, upon receiving your father's letter, told me you were afforded this honor. You must be very proud, painting the portraits of such important personages. My work on the Maestro's broken statue must seem like child's play in comparison. Still, I am satisfied. I have reattached the two arms. After I polished the seams, you cannot tell where they had been struck off. It is odd--I have not found the vein of emery which had so enraged the Maestro. The flaw he struck must have been very small, but he is such a perfectionist even the smallest imperfection will cause him to abandon a work. I certainly cannot ask him about it. He falls into a hostile silence if I merely mention the piece. But I will keep working on it. In my small way, I am honored to be a part of what I think will be his most important work when it is finished.

Again, my congratulations. I am humbled to say that I know you.

From Rome,
21st January, 1560

Your servant,
Tiberio Calcagni

ITEM: The King's grandmother is said to have gone mad from loving her husband, Philippe the Handsome, too much. Queen Juana attacked her husband's mistress with scissors, chopping off the woman's long hair. The Queen shrieked from the battlements of the castle at La Mota when not allowed to follow her husband to Flanders. She dismissed all her ladies, to prevent her husband from dallying with them. When he died, she wandered with the wagon carrying his coffin over mountains and plains, peeking in each night to see if he was still there.

ITEM: To size a canvas, one must scrape on a thin solution of rabbit-skin glue and powdered white chalk. The glue must not taste sour or salty when moistened; putrefied glue has little adhesive power.

ITEM: "A woman needs be graceful, mannerly, clever, prudent, and beautiful to excel at court."

--COUNT BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE,
The Book of the Courtier

13 FEBRUARY 1560

El Alcazar, Toledo

There was a play at the bishop's palace last night at which I cried overmuch when the shepherdess died, though I could tell the shepherdess was truly a shepherd and her swain was so drunk that he thrice forgot his lines. When I left the performance with the Queen and her other ladies, I wept again when I saw a
caballero
steal away from the window grate at which he'd been wooing a lady. This morning, on the way to the Cathedral with Her Majesty, the mere sight of a husband bowing before his wife as she stepped from her carriage made my eyes fill to overflowing. It seems I will weep at anything.

I can see the worry on Francesca's face. Perhaps she thinks I will go mad like the King's grandmother Juana the Mad. Perhaps I shall. For since receiving Tiberio's letter yesterday, I am Unbalanced.

Did Papa tell maestro Michelangelo my position here was greater than it is? If so, his boasting has Undone me, for Tiberio seems to believe that I think I am above him. If he ever had thoughts of wedding me, he does not have them now.

What cruel irony! I am less of a person here now at court than I was in Cremona. At least in Cremona I could still nurse my wild hope of becoming a
maestra
--as long as the truth of my transgression in Rome remained secret. Now, here in Toledo, I watch the last wisps of my dream melt away like honey in water. At best, I am a Useless, not particularly attractive, ornament of the court; at worst, a novelty akin to a white crow or singing cow. Courtiers peer at me in curiosity as I sketch scenes of court life while I stand in wait for the girl Queen to let me teach her colors. In the fortnight since my arrival, she did not acknowledge my purpose Until just last night, when we were in Her Majesty's heavily perfumed chambers, dancing for her as she waited for the King to arrive for his nuptial duties.

I was resting between measures, fretting about Tiberio's letter and desiring more wine but receiving only water from Francesca. Several of Her Majesty's French ladies, led by madame de Clermont, a young blonde beauty with long, hooded eyes and an aquiline nose, were complaining in broken Castilian to the Queen's Spanish ladies that their trunks had not yet arrived from Paris. It seems the poor ladies had been made to dress in the same tired clothing they had worn since they had entered Spain, a trial they could scarcely endure.

Though the Queen's Spanish ladies murmured their sympathy, I saw their smirks behind their handkerchiefs. I was drinking my cursed water and idly wondering if the Spanish ladies might have had anything to do with the delay of the trunks, when the Queen's chief Spanish lady-in-waiting, dona Maria de la Cueva, condesa de Uruena, a gaunt, thin-skinned, proud woman of perhaps fifty years, stalked Up to me in her stiff black gown. Hanging from her girdle was a silver pomander the size of a lime, from which exUded the musky scent of civet. She now lifted it to her nose as if warding off a bad smell.

"I do not think we have met," she said, though we had, in fact, several times. "I am the condesa de Uruena."

She stopped sniffing long enough to watch my curtsey, judging its length and style.

"I have seen your sketches," she said.

I lowered my eyes as I rose. "Yes, my lady."

She took another draught. "I have heard you do little portraits."