The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley (46 page)

Outside, he shuddered. I feel filthy, he thought. And I’m in trouble, too. I’d better quit now. I’ll change my room. But could he find me through the university? And all this gold. I could get anything I dreamed of. Books. The thought came to him of a beautifully illuminated missal he had yearned for in a shop he had stopped by once, but couldn’t afford to patronize. He could buy it now. Maybe it would make him feel better. Dirty money isn’t dirty if it’s put to virtuous use, he reasoned to himself as he rushed off in the direction of the Pont au Change.

“No customers,” said Hadriel. “The snow has made it such a slow day.” Hadriel fluffed his wings and lounged back on the counter, putting the
hautbois
again to his mouth and blowing a lovely, flowing melody. Two little cherubs were perched on the stairs that went to the loft above, accompanying the melody on the rebec and dulcimer, while another hung in the air on swift, iridescent wings, beating time on a tambourine. “Not bad, not bad, human music,” said Hadriel, taking the instrument from his lips, while the little angel with the tambourine lit at the top of the stairs. “One does get tired of the seraphs singing. And always the same words, too. Besides, they’re such snobs! Just because they have six wings each…”

“Hadriel, there’s someone coming to the door,” announced one of the little creatures.

“Probably Gabriel, to give you such a talking to,” said the little blond one.

“No, it’s a student. The one who liked the missal. I do believe he’s coming to buy it. I hear the clink of money in his pocket. And do look at his hood! He’s been stealing pies!” In the twinkling of an eye, the musical instruments were hidden, and Hadriel threw on his old gray cape over his tightly folded wings. The door opened and the snow blew in behind Nicholas in a gust, then melted in tiny drops on the floor.

“I wanted to know if you still had the missal,” he said to the proprietress, “the old one with the calfskin binding from Master Gregoire’s workshop.”

“Oh, I believe I do,” said Hadriel. “It was just waiting for the right person to buy it. And you’re a divinity student, right? You must have gotten lucky, finding so much money at once. And all those pies, too.” Nicholas blushed.

“They…they were given to me. Would you like one?” he said, his voice hopeful.

“Oh, me, I don’t bother with eating, usually,” said Hadriel, waving a pale hand.

Something about the proprietress’s face seemed so sweet and kindly, as if it were waiting for him to tell the truth, that the whole story seemed to just tumble out of Nicholas’s insides.

“This money was given to me by mistake by a foreigner who didn’t know copper from gold,” he said, “and I thought it must be for a purpose, and that I was meant to have the missal, but now I see I am unworthy to own it. I’ve betrayed the lord who hired me, whose servant paid me, and taken all his extra pies in the bargain, even though I think he meant me to have them because he said to eat all I want of them.”

“A curious lord,” said Hadriel. “Especially with servants who don’t know copper from gold.”

“Oh, he’s more than curious. And those servants! Black as pitch, and frightening as the Devil. They have red eyes, wear strange clothes, and the language they talk I swear sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard. Like growling and grumbling, it is, not like words.”

“
Hmm
. Sounds like imps,” said Hadriel, half to himself.

“I always thought he was odd. His house smells like sulfur, though it’s always cozy warm, and half the time I can’t afford a fire, so I’m grateful to be there. He’s so very polite to me, for all that he’s a great lord and dresses so fine, and says he regards me as a son. How could I have done it? Signor Belfagoro trusted me, and now, and now…” Nicholas’s bony face looked tormented.

Hadriel’s whole expression was one of delight. His smile shed radiance throughout the room. Nicholas was taken aback. How could she smile so at his confession?

“Signor Belfagoro? So now he’s Italian and dressed in the latest fashion? What a splendid joke. What is he up to in his too cozy but somewhat smelly house, with his pair of imps?”

“He says he’s improving himself. He hired me to read to him.”

“Read? What does an illiterate old buffoon like that want read to him?”

“First I read him some Italian book he had, which tells the latest fashions in fine manners. Then he took to carrying a fork to use at banquets. Now I’m reading him some other Italian fellow called Machiavelli, who writes about how to take power and conquer your enemies.” Hadriel laughed out loud, and the sound was like a thousand silver chimes.

“So now, of course, he will try to take power and conquer his enemies. That old Belphagor always was transparent.” For the first time in weeks, ever since he had met Belphagor in a tavern, Nicholas felt safe. This was the right place. Madame Hadriel was the right person, so self-confident, so charming, even if she was deformed. She must have powerful connections, to mock Signor Belfagoro so. She might have ideas to help him. He would divulge his terrible secret to her.

“I…I haven’t said the worst. Today…a great lord, a powerful lord, the greatest lord in France, save for the Dauphin, came in secret to Signor Belfagoro.”

“
Humph
. I imagine he wants to be king, right?” Nicholas breathed a sigh of relief.

“How did you know?” he said. “I fear for my life now, if he ever even guesses that I overheard them…”

“Oh, I think I’d fear more for my soul, if I were you. Have you any idea of who Belphagor is?”

“Belphagor?”

“And you, a student of theology? What have you studied?”

“Well, um, I’ve studied the Gospels, and the Old Testament, though only in translation. And the Church fathers, Augustine, and…”

“Haven’t you studied Evil?”

“But, but, Evil’s bad. I want to be good. Someday I’ll be a priest and make my old mother happy.”

“Oh, my dear, dear little Nicholas. By not knowing the face of Evil, you’ve fallen directly into it. Did you not know that Belphagor is one of the princes of the underworld? And here you’ve been cozily closeted with him for weeks, reading him Machiavelli.”

“Then…then I should throw away his money, shouldn’t I?”

“Oh, no. You’ve tricked him out of it fair and square, so it’s yours. The problem is, what will happen to you next time you meet?” Nicholas began to shake. Cold chills ran up and down him. “Help me,” he said in a tiny voice, full of fear. “Please help, Madame—”

“Oh, just call me Hadriel,” said Hadriel. “I think I know what you need, and it’s not a missal. Luckily, I have one here. If you do the job right, I’ll give you the missal. Now, let me show this to you, and we’ll have a little chat. I’d like to know all about that plot he’s hatching, and anything else he’s been up to lately. And I need to show you this….” Fromunder the counter, Hadriel took an ugly little book bound in crumbling black leather. It was a grimoire. Nicholas’s teeth were chattering. Hadriel put an arm around him just as if he were an old friend, calming him with a touch while he said ever so sweetly, “Now, let’s leaf through this thing. See here? This one’s specifically for Belphagor. Now consider what a splendid priest you’d make if you not only knew the Good, but had conquered Evil….” Above them, invisible and unheard, the little brown-eyed cherub laughed and clapped his hands. “A trick!” he cried. “Five to three on Hadriel!” “No takers!” shrieked the other little angels, tumbling and diving together in the air the way porpoises play under the water.

“It’s colder here in Paris,” said Robert Ashton, pulling his heavy, gray wool cloak about him. “That’s the only virtue of being in the south this season.” A private crier passed us in the street, shouting the virtues of someone’s wines, competing with the noisy vendors in the used-clothing stalls that lined one side of the street. “Buttons, buttons! Fine buttons!” “Come here, monsieur, and buy that charming lady a rabbit-fur muff, hardly used!” Master Ashton had returned, crushed that he had found no answers, only riddles in the south, and then began to lay plans anew. He’d try this, he’d try that. We walked so close, me on his arm, basking in each other’s radiance, that no one could mistake us for anything but lovers.

Still, something was wrong. That speck in my heart. I yearned for it to be mended by Robert saying, “Blast the Helmsman, blast Wolsey, I am too madly in love with you to wait a moment longer. We’ll be married by the priest on the corner and tell all the souls in two kingdoms they’ll just have to accept it.” I know it wasn’t practical. I know he was struggling for my own good. I tried to see things the way he saw things. But still I wanted it. I wanted him to love me that much, that he could forget anything else, especially propriety. Hadn’t I forgotten propriety for him? What was wrong? Had he second thoughts that I wasn’t worthy of marriage after all? Maybe all these strange feelings were because of that cold schemer and deceiver Rowland Dallet who had said he loved me but didn’t offer marriage until he knew the terms of the dowry. But still I loved Robert Ashton; I loved him even so much that I could love him with that one thing missing, with that tiny piece of icy fear in my heart.

“I’m not cold a bit, thanks to the wonderful dinner you bought me,” I said to him. “And the music was something splendid. Who’d think they were only apprentices there? They could be masters, as far as I could tell.”

“I’m beginning to hate this chase. Muddy roads, when there were any at all, the worst horses in the world for hire, and corrupt innkeepers. The south can keep its weather, for all I care. It has nothing else.”

“Oh, listen, Robert! It’s the bird market! Let’s see.” We followed the sound of chirping, twittering, and whirring wings around the corner. There were the bird catchers and their boys with cages full of blackbirds, larks, and birds of every description whose names I did not even know. An old woman with pigeons cried out, “Pigeons! Nice and plump!” “No, no, try my starlings! Very fine in a pie!” “Songbirds, songbirds!”

“Surely, those don’t sing,” said Master Ashton, stopping before an old man with a cageful of finches. “And they’re too tiny to eat as well. What are they for?”

“For sellin’,” said the man, as if that settled everything.

“Look, Robert, they’re for themselves. They’re so tiny and yet perfectly colored, with every feather just so. I could fit three of them in my hand. They remind me of my paintings. What do they eat?”

“Don’t know. Ain’t fed ’em. I just catches ’em.”

“Millet, I imagine,” said Master Ashton.

“I was thinking bread crumbs. How do you know what birds eat?”

“Oh, when I was very small, I put out crumbs for the birds on my windowsill in winter. I thought if I trained them with food every day, I could get them to eat from my hand. I know what birds like.”

“Did you succeed?”

“Oh, no. My older brother waited until they were tame and then put lime on the sill and caught them and killed them all. My mother served them up for dinner. It’s not a kindness, feeding birds. It’s better to let them be.”

“Oh,” I said, in sympathy, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the tiny, perfect birds, who were painted with God’s strokes smaller than small, in speckles and soft shaded gray and brown and faded sweet yellow that was almost greenish. “Look, those two like each other. They are sitting together on the perch.”

“I see that,” he said, and before I could protest, he was negotiating a price for the birds, all six of them, and the cage, too.

“Then you don’t want me to kill ’em for you?”

“No, alive. With the cage.”

“Robert Ashton, how did you know I wanted those birds?” I asked, as we walked down the narrow streets toward the Pont au Change together, I holding one of his arms and he holding that big, tall wicker cage with the little birds peeping and fluttering about in it, with his other hand.

“I know things,” he said. “I know, for example, that any woman of sense would have hinted and begged for an ivory comb, or a little silver mirror to wear at her belt, or perhaps even a necklace.”

“I like the birds better. See their little black eyes? Look, that one is blinking. They remind me that working in small is not unworthy.”

“God works excellently well in small,” he said. He was not looking at the birds, though; but down on the top of my head. “I’m glad you like the birds best.” Why did it make me happy just to be walking with him? It frightened me to be happy that way. I didn’t think it was for me. Don’t let it be taken away, my heart whispered.

“Were there more birds in the south?”

“Oh, many more. They fly there for the winter. And farther, to Africa, where it is warm always. But I found them in plenty in the south. And answers there, although not enough. I found an old monk who told me there is a secret walled up in the fortress of Montségur. That I doubt, since many people have searched the ruins for treasure since the Cathar heretics were destroyed there. But the Secret, or supposed Secret, is tied to some sort of ancient cult of fanatics dedicated to placing the Merovingians on the throne. Why, I cannot imagine. The Merovingians were the most useless kings in the world. The ‘do-nothing’ kings they were called, and the country is well rid of them.”