The Creation Of Eve (30 page)

"Good-bye," Francesca said from her clump of grass.

I watched him sprint off like a youth, then lay back with Francesca, Cher-Ami still tucked Under my arm. I admired the wind playing in the trees and amused myself by snatching at bits of poplar fluff as it wafted by.

"Where is Madonna Elisabetta?" Francesca said from our bed of grass.

"Oh, I don't know." Cher-Ami buried his moist snout behind my neck. A breeze picked Up, twirling the silver-backed leaves of the trees. How I would like to paint them now, flashes of green, yellow, black, and white.

"Signorina?"

"Yes?"

"Did that student, that one of the Michelangelo--did he make you a promise?"

I turned my head to look at her, grass crunching in my ear. "What?"

The knob of her chin quivered as she stared Up at the trees. "Oh,
signorina
, I know how the woman can give herself to the passion--oh,
signorina
, I know. Have you never ask yourself, how can Francesca have milk for all the babies in your family? Where her baby, to start her to make milk?"

I sat Up. "Francesca, do you have a child?"

"This
scultore,
this Tiberio"--she reached over and stroked Cher-Ami, still lying in the grass--"do he promise himself to you?"

My heart pounded, from the herb or guilt or astonishment. "Where is your baby, Francesca?"

She kept her gaze on Cher-Ami. "I left her at the door of the convent outside my village. She is the nun now. No men to cause her trouble. Happy"--she looked Up, then drew in a breath--"I hope."

We stared at each other. I marveled at the enlarged size of her shining pupils--an effect of the coca?--at the smooth olive skin of her face. How little I knew about this woman with whom I'd spent nearly every moment of my life.

A man spoke in the distance. Cher-Ami lifted his head.

Francesca struggled to sit.
"Madonna."

"I shall get her." I sprang Up before she could get to her feet. "Keep Cher-Ami."

Unbothered by the tightness of my corset, I strode along the riverside path that the Queen had taken, my body powered with energy, my mind in a confused twist. Francesca had a child out of wedlock? Why did she speak of Tiberio?

The man's voice came again, closer now. I heard the Queen laugh.

The path ended abruptly at a stand of reeds. The only way past them was to wade along the shoreline. I looked behind me. Had I missed a fork in the path?

I leaned forward. I could hear the Queen speaking. She did not sound afraid.

I parted the sharp-edged reeds with my elbow.

On the other side of the reeds, the course of the river curved sharply to the right. Ancient alder trees leaned from both banks, forming a green tunnel down which the call of birds echoed and fluffy stars of poplar down twitched. There, in the tunnel, sat the Queen, on a rock at the river's edge. Don Juan stood above her, his foot Upon the rock. They looked like Adam and Eve, content in their earthly Paradise.

I batted away an insect darting for my eyes. If I barely breathed, I could hear Don Juan.

"We should go back," he said.

The Queen nodded to the pair of swans meandering farther down the verdant tunnel. "Tell the swans to stop. I don't want them to go away. You can tell them, can't you?"

"You listen too much to Alessandro," said Don Juan. "I have no power over swans or anything else."

"That is not true." The Queen waved away the fluff floating around her face. "You have a good effect on Don Carlos."

"Be still."

He moved his hand to her sleeve, where a blue-black dragonfly sat, rhythmically lifting its shiny tail. Carefully, he eased his finger Under its glistening black legs, then brought the insect, still raising and lowering its tail, to the back of her hand.

"El caballito del diablo,"
he said quietly.

They gazed at their joined hands. "The little horse of the devil," she repeated.

"He likes you," he said. "It is you who has the way with the beasts."

The dragonfly flew off. Don Juan withdrew his hand.

The Queen drew in a sigh, then plucked Up a blade of grass growing by the rock. "What was it like? Your childhood, I mean."

He pushed away from the rock. "Like any country boy's, at least at first." The swans drifted forward as he started out over a chain of low stones that crossed the river. "I'm sorry," he said, balancing himself, "you would not know what that is like, would you? Well, let's just say I got in trouble throwing apples in a farmer's orchard."

"You? In trouble?"

He stepped to the next stone. "I rode every animal I could get my hands on--I cannot recommend cows, in case you ever wonder. I raced the other boys in donkey carts. I broke my arm falling out of a cypress tree, returning a bird to its nest. It was a terrible tree for climbing. Too prickly."

The swans watched warily, strumming the water with their thick black feet, as the Queen arose and stood, wavering, on the closest stone to the shore, her balance hampered by her voluminous skirts. "So that is a country boyhood."

"It was mine, at least."

"It sounds heavenly."

I smiled from my viewing point as she picked ahead carefully.

"Oh, it had its duller moments," said Don Juan. "It could get very lonely at times. My foster father was always gone, serving the Emperor Charles--" He stopped, letting her work her way closer. "Serving my father, I mean. That still sounds impossible."

He waited for the Queen to hop to the next stone. "Don't misunderstand. I loved my foster mother--I still love her. She was good to me, but I could always feel a distance. I tried to bridge it by being the perfect son. What I would do to see her smile! When I got older, I realized she was sad because she thought I was don Luis's Unacknowledged love child. How that shamed me, to know that my very existence hurt her."

"You said once that you wanted to be don Luis's son."

"Yes. It would have been easier if I had been." He swiped his arm over his face. I, too, was warm there behind my screen of rushes--sweat trickled down my back. "When I got older, don Luis made me wear well-cut clothes, too fine for a country boy. He gave me my own pony, a piebald with white stockings--I loved that horse! He also made the mistake of telling the teachers in my school to treat me with deference--without explaining why. The boys in my school just laughed. The teachers found new reasons to beat me. Who was I, a bastard not loved enough by don Luis for him to legally claim me, to put on such airs? I got tired of fighting every boy in the school who wished to knock me down a notch, so I was relieved at first when we moved to Cuacos de Yuste when I was eleven. Don Luis was to serve the Emperor in his retirement to the monastery there. But whenever I visited the Emperor at my foster father's heels, the great man stared at me with a strange smile on his face. I was sure there was something horribly wrong with me."

"Oh!" She slipped into the water with a splash. The swans scuttled off.

He came back to steady her. "Your gown," he said.

She held Up her dripping skirts. The bottom ten inches were dark and sagging.

"Did you hurt yourself ?" he asked her, his hand Upon her arm.

They stood face-to-face in the muddy water, the poplar down twitching aimlessly around them as in a dream.

She sighed. "I wish--"

He put his finger on her lips. "No."

She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, he drew his finger slowly down her lips. "No."

She stared at him through the meandering down. A breeze stirred the trees, setting the leaves whispering in silvery tongues.

"Just tell me that you feel this, too. That I am not going mad."

He would not answer her.

"Tell me, Juan, please, then I shall go if you wish."

I must have made some kind of sigh, for at that moment, they parted and turned in my direction. She saw me first.

"Sofi?"

Her chest rose, then fell in a sigh.

"Sofi," she said loudly now. "Perhaps you overheard me." She squared off before Don Juan. "I was asking the gentleman this:
Monsieur, s'il vous plait
, would you be so good as to tell me"--she kicked at the river, showering his doublet--
"do you like the water
?
"

He stood there, dripping.

"Can you not decide,
monsieur
? Here, perhaps you need just a
soupcon
more." She splashed him again.

Sorrow and gratitude passed over his face like the shadows of clouds Upon the river. "
Madame,
please. Allow me to return the favor."

He smacked the surface of the water.

"Oh!" Drops glittered in the Queen's loose hair. "Oh, you did not just splash me!"

"Oh," he said, "but it seems that I did."

"Beast!"

A war of splashing erupted between them. Their insults and shrieks of laughter ringing in the air, I grabbed Up my skirts and turned . . . directly into the King.

I drew back from His Majesty's grim visage as would a mouse trapped by a cat. All good sensations drained instantly from my person, leaving behind a shell of horror.

Cher-Ami wriggling in his arms, the King eyed my bulging jaw then my chest. I looked down. A green trail of coca juice led down my rumpled bodice.

"Dona Sofonisba," he said, "would you be so kind as to explain what is happening?" Behind him, Francesca wrung her hands, her face ashen.

The same breeze that poured over my burning face ruffled the plume in the King's hat as he stepped past me to the riverbank.

Don Juan was bending down to paddle water at My Lady when he saw the King. He received a faceful before the Queen saw the object of his stare.

Immediately, she slogged through the water to her husband, the ropes of her hair catching on her sodden sleeves and back. Her shocked smile spoke more of her guilt than would have a gale of tears.

She gained the King's side. "My Lord," she said, breathless, "it is nothing."

The King cast a cold look at Don Juan, still standing in the river, and then Upon the Queen, now pressing his Royal hand to her wet lips.

He pulled away his hand. "My Lady, I assure you, it is not."

ITEM: Don Pedro, the two-year-old son of the Spanish King Pedro the Cruel, fell to his death from the north tower of the castle at Segovia, where he was playing with his brothers and sisters. Understanding her fate, the nurse in whose charge he had been threw herself immediately from the place where he had fallen.

20 MAY 1562

The Palace, Aranjuez

I have heard the English Queen, Kathryn Howard, had been feeding her dogs bits of boiled chicken when King Henry's men came and took her screaming down the halls of Hampton Court. Within days, her young head parted ways with her neck, leaving the dogs without a mistress and England without a Queen. It seems she had been carrying on a flirtation with her cousin, and her aging husband could not abide his young wife's taste for a virile kinsman. Not a soul in Europe had felt sorry for her. She should have known better. For when a King wishes to punish his wife for an indiscretion, it is not called murder.

This was the dark thought on my mind at supper in the Queen's chambers last night, when Cher-Ami suddenly sprang Up barking from his basket and caused My Lady to burst into tears. The page whose entrance had set off the dog was bewildered to find My Lady crying when he offered her some pears.

The condesa lowered her spoon and knife. "Are you well, Your Majesty?"

"Yes. Yes, of course." The blue-black rings etched into the tender skin Under her eyes said otherwise. She took a pear from the tray, then put it down, forgotten, before the page had bowed and backed away.

My poor Lady. It is my fault that she has suffered in purgatory these past fourteen days. If I had been in my right mind, I would never have let her wander off with Don Juan. Why, oh why, did I take the coca from doctor Debruyne? Me and my pride, pretending to be a scholar! I thought I could partake in the experiment of a learned man--ha! I am no scientist.

The condesa frowned at the Queen. "You have not a new rash, have you? Does your throat hurt?"

My Lady shook her head.

The condesa blinked in thought. "Well, your courses are due next week."

The Queen's forlorn expression lifted into one of hope. "I could be with child, couldn't I?"

The condesa knows nothing about the incident at the river. No one does. After Francesca and I had braided Her Majesty's hair and straightened her wet attire, the King had made our guilty trio return to the palace without him. Don Juan had been ordered to depart on the spot. The Queen and I had slipped in through the kitchen. No one saw Us enter, not the condesa, nor madame, nor even doctor Debruyne, since we had left before he could return with the extractors. He had to do the job on Francesca's tooth later that night, after the effects of the coca had worn off. Poor Francesca had to pay for my misjudgment, too.

Now I grasped at the hope that the Queen could be pregnant. If she was carrying the King's child, her splashing game with Don Juan might well be forgiven. These past fourteen days would be soon forgotten, fourteen terrible days in which I would be sorting through My Lady's combs or kneeling in Mass or spooning in a mouthful of soup, and be gripped by a sudden chill, knowing that at any moment one of His Majesty's fierce German bodyguards could storm in and drag my little Queen--and me--away.