The Creation Of Eve (27 page)

But the King did not pick Up his challenge, and the excitement of arriving at El Sotillo dissolved any remaining ill feeling in the air. The mules' hooves rang out sharply against stone as our carriage rattled over the Toledo bridge. The heralds riding before Us announced our presence with their trumpets; the coachmen shouted; the carriage wheels ground into the dust. Even as I drew back the curtain, the people processing on foot began to turn away. One by one, they rotated on the crowded path along the river Until, to a person, they stood with their backs toward Us, the plumes in the men's hats and the tasseled edges of the women's shawls fluttering in the wind. Only the cry of an infant broke the odd hush.

"It is a marvel!" the Queen whispered. "Just as you say, Don Carlos."

"These people know who their master is." He leaned over Don Juan and banged on the door. "Open Up!"

"Carlos, let them be." The King spoke quietly so as to keep his words from the wall of humanity just outside our window. "The people turn away as a show of their respect."

Sunlight poured into our carriage as the door opened, framing in the doorway the coachman in his crested helmet. "Yes, Your Majesty?"

Don Carlos clambered over Don Juan, pushed past the coachman, and spilled outside. Before anyone could react, he picked himself Up and rushed to an ancient
caballero
garbed in the long robes of the previous century.

"!Buenos dias!"

The old man pointed his white beard as far away as he could, but the Prince thrust his face into the elderly gentleman's view, forcing him to hobble in a circle.

"I said hello, old man!"

The Queen shrank back next to me. "What is he doing?"

Don Juan sprang from the carriage and to Don Carlos's side. "Your Majesty," he said, swinging his arm around Don Carlos, "look at how this gentleman turns away. How he must love and respect you."

"He does, doesn't he?" Don Carlos peered into the open carriage to see if the Queen was watching.

"Carlos." The King's jaw was rigid with mortification. "Come back here now!"

Don Carlos's happy expression faded. He shrugged off Don Juan's arm, then threw himself before a one-legged soldier. "You there!"

The soldier pivoted on his crutch, but Don Carlos would not let him escape. "
!Buenos dias!
It is your Prince! Speak to me!"

"He shames himself," the Queen whispered to the King, her eyes full of tears. "You must do something!"

In a low voice, the King told the coachman, "Bring him here.
Now
."

But before the coachman could move, Don Carlos sidled Up to a toddling girl whose mother could not tug her away fast enough. He stuck his face before the child, a girl so young as to have only a few pale wisps for hair. "Boo!"

The child pulled back.

He galumphed closer, his pasty face lit in a goblin's grin. "I'm going to gobble you up!"

The child broke into tears.

Don Carlos stood Up, hands on hips. "Mother, get your child. She cries like a baby."

"She
is
a baby, Carlos." Don Juan got down on his knee to comfort the child.

The King nodded at the coachman and a herald. They snatched Don Carlos by the arms.

"What are you doing!" He writhed as they wrestled him toward the carriage. "Let go of me! Let go!"

The men pushed Don Carlos inside the carriage and slammed the door. The Queen flinched with each blow as he kicked the walls.

"To the palace," the King told the driver. "Quickly."

The carriage bounced as the driver swung onto his post at the front of the vehicle.

"You make a fool of me!" Don Carlos cried. "I was only playing!" With a whip-crack and a shout, we jerked to a hurried start.

"You shouldn't have done this!" Don Carlos sobbed. "What will everybody think? I'll never forgive you. Never!"

Rocking in the thundering carriage, I caught one last glimpse of the riverbank, where Don Juan still knelt next to the child as he spoke to her mother.

Except for the mother, whose shyness was evident in her posture even as she receded in the distance, the people surrounding Don Juan kept firmly turned away.

ITEM: To beautify your face: Soften white beans in white wine for nine days, then pound them and return to the wine. Take the milk of a goat, whole barley, and boil them until the barley is broken. Mix these things together and add six egg whites. Distill for two weeks, then use to wash the face.

ITEM: While extracting the tooth is the most efficacious cure for toothache, it has been suggested that one might hold a candle close to the offending tooth so that the smoke might flush out the worm causing the pain. A cure might also be found in touching a dead man's tooth.

4 MAY 1562

The Palace, Aranjuez

I shall not mince words. The trip to Madrid was a disaster. The blow to Don Carlos's head has altered him completely. While he is not the cruel beast of Don Alessandro's jest, forcing cobblers to eat their boots, he is completely Unpredictable. It is as if his injury has robbed him of his self-control. At dinner that night in Madrid, he spit his soup all over his page when he deemed it too hot. The next day, he threw an apple (which hit the condesa) at a bullfight, after he had taken a bite and found a worm. He shouted something vulgar during a play. These were but a few of his eruptions. In the space of three days, there were too many, and it is too painful to recount them all here. The King deals with his son's aberrant behavior by determinedly pretending the problem doesn't exist; the Queen is tense and watchful. It tears my heart to pieces.

This is why I was particularly susceptible to Upset when I arrived back in Aranjuez this afternoon and Francesca wasn't there to greet me. I searched the palace only to find her outside, pacing in the stable yard.

"What are you doing here?" I asked tiredly. "I looked everywhere for you. I would have never found you if madame's woman had not told me you'd gone out-of-doors."

She kept walking, her head down. Next to the stable yard, horses cropped grass in the pasture. The place smelled of straw and manure.

"At least you could say hello."

"Buongiorno."

I trudged toward the palace. A horse nickered from the pasture.

I stopped and looked behind me. "Are you not coming?"

"Go. I catch Up."

"What is the matter with you?"

"Tooth."

I stopped to frown at her.

She touched her left jaw and winced.

"Francesca!" I rushed to her side. "Why did you not tell me? How long have you been suffering?"

"Six day. Today, yesterday--the worst."

"Oh, dear Francesca! I am so sorry. What have you done for it?"

"I put the clove on the tooth, but it no good. Then I try holding the candle to it. The worms, they no fall out."

Tenderly, I turned her sallow face by her chin. "Your left side is swollen. Why don't you go back to bed?"

"No.
Grazie.
I want to walk."

I had no choice but to leave her to stump along in the stable yard, a sturdy bowed figure with her hands knotted at her chest, her hair scraped into an iron-gray bun. The Queen expected my attendance as soon as I could manage, for I'd left her in the care of the condesa and madame de Clermont. The two fared worse than ever of late, with the condesa's condescending pity only fueling madame 's distaste for her rival. Indeed, their present hostile silence was even more discomfiting than their former bickering had been.

Later that afternoon, I was walking with the Queen and her other ladies in the King's woods, scarcely listening to a silly argument between the condesa and madame about which is best, French wine or Spanish. (Neither--it is Italian.) The Queen herself was quiet, as she had been since our trip to Madrid, Upset, I assume, from her new awareness of the extent of the damage Don Carlos had suffered in his injury. My mind was shuttling like a startled hen between worrying about Francesca's tooth and painting Dona Juana, when we came Upon a gardener in a countryman's smock and boots, digging Under an elm tree. Cher-Ami scuttled over to greet him.

"Why, hello, little one," he said, petting the dog. He stood as soon as he saw the Queen. I drew in my breath. It was doctor Debruyne.

He kissed the Queen's hand, then that of the condesa. He waited, smiling, for madame de Clermont to gingerly offer Up her pox-scarred hand from the depths of her veils, then kissed it gently before taking mine. I must confess my heart pounded like a foolish child 's as he released me.

"And how fares your grandmother?" the Queen said.

"How kind of you to ask of her," he said with his warm smile. "She 's fine, I assume. I believe her herbal teas will keep her going forever."

I don't know what possessed me. My lips did move of their own volition--

"Might she take the coca plant for her health?"

He turned his disconcerting smile Upon me. I meant to hold my ground, but its warmth Undid me. I dashed a frown to my feet.

"The coca plant," he said. "You remembered. I wish that I could send her some. She would find all sorts of Uses for it."

Though I kept my eyes downcast, I could feel the condesa's appraising gaze Upon me. "Doctor Debruyne has been growing this plant from the New World," I explained to the leaves in the path. "It is supposed to have great medicinal powers." A curse on his beautiful teeth. I am thirty, not some silly girl.

"We hope to try it as a painkiller," the doctor explained. "It is reported that the people of the New World have endless energy and feel little pain when they chew its leaves. They chew it before working in the silver mines in Peru."

"If it is so good, why do you not Use it?" asked the condesa.

The doctor smiled with regret. "If only it were that easy."

"My maid," I stammered.

Doctor Debruyne raised his brows pleasantly at me as I looked Up. "Pardon?"

"She has a terrible toothache, and neither cloves nor smoke seem to help her. I wonder if this coca . . ." I felt myself blushing like a child. A wry smile crooked the corner of the condesa's mouth.

"I'm sorry," I said, "it is a foolish idea."

He regarded me soberly. "Actually,
juffrouw
, that is a most intriguing application. But there is the problem of testing it first."

"What is the problem?" said the Queen.

He made as if to speak, then crossed his arms with a frown.

"I am sorry," I said. "I should not have spoken out."

"No," he said. "I admire your thinking."

I turned away, hating myself for the smile that threatened to overcome my face.

Mercifully, the topic turned to herbal remedies for the condesa's bunions. After a few more pleasantries, doctor Debruyne took his leave. But even the Queen seemed to respond to his refreshing manner, for her step seemed less burdened as we continued deeper into the woods, the birds flitting in the tangle of boughs above Us, Cher-Ami snuffling off the trail just ahead.

A shot rang out.

We stopped. The condesa dropped her pomander. It rolled off the path, into some leaves.

Madame de Clermont patted the Queen's arm. "Perhaps you shall see your King now," she said, which was indeed the logical explanation behind the shot. Only the King and his family were allowed to hunt in these woods.

"Yes," said the Queen. Madame and I hurried to smooth the Queen's skirts and hair to prepare her for His presence.

Cher-Ami yapped ferociously as Don Carlos broke through the cover of the woods, his arquebus pointed at Us, with Don Alessandro tramping close behind.

The Queen's gaze darted behind them. The look of disappointment that flitted across her face disappeared as quickly as it had come.

"Toad!" she said stoutly. "Do you wish to kill me?"

He rushed forward and fervently kissed her hand. "Sweetest Elisabeth, I would never hurt a hair on your head! Tell me I did not truly frighten you!"

"Hush, Toad, I am fine." The Queen looked over Don Alessandro's shoulder as he took his turn at her hand. "What are you two doing out here? I thought you went back to University."

"School," scoffed Don Carlos. "What need have I for that?"

Don Juan stepped from the woods, though he carried no gun.

"There you are!" said Don Carlos. "He ruins our hunt, moving fast when he should move slow, and slow when he should move fast. You would think he is trying to make Us miss all our shots."

Don Juan quickly kissed the Queen's hand. She drew it back as if burnt.

"Now that I have further damaged your hunt," she said lightly to Don Carlos, "will you walk with Us?"

"You can never damage anything, My Lady." Don Carlos fell in step beside her, his arquebus on his shoulder.

You could feel the tension in the air as the rest of Us took our places according to rank. Although the Prince behaved himself now, who knew what would provoke him and how he would respond? I found myself behind Don Juan and the condesa, and next to madame and Don Alessandro, who shouldered his own gun then pantomimed painting, with a questioning grin at me.

The group walked along, our silence amplified by the rustling of skirts and the crunch of footsteps Upon the sandy trail. Wood doves cooed loudly from their nests in the crooks of the trees; a fly buzzed among Us. The Queen scooped Up Cher-Ami, who had stopped to smell something, then twirled around to face Don Juan.

"Do you truly Understand dogs?" she said, walking backward.

Don Juan pulled back, surprised at being addressed so suddenly.

"Don Alessandro said once that you Understood what they said," she explained.

"Oh, that."

She held Up Cher-Ami, exposing his naked pink belly. "Tell me what he says."

Don Juan smiled crookedly. "He thanks you for taking him with you on this beautiful day."

"Oh, brilliant, Nostradamus," Don Alessandro muttered.

Don Carlos brayed with laughter.

The Queen kept Up her backward tread. "Do you not truly talk to dogs,
senor
?"