The Creation Of Eve (35 page)

The Queen gazed languidly at the covered window. "It is raining?"

"Big muddy drops," he said, kissing the top of her head with each word. "It has probably stopped by now."

"Oh." She sighed deeply. "We cannot hear it down here."

He pulled Up a stool, then caressed the mound of her belly. "How is my little prince?"

"He kicks me."

"Perhaps he dreams of spurring his horse. He shall be an excellent horseman, our son."

She looked Up at him with a small smile.

"He will win all his jousts," he said.

"I do not want him to joust," she said. "My father . . ."

"Pardon me, My Lady. Our son shall never joust. I will command him not to."

"Oh, he will want to," she said bitterly, "just like Father. He had insisted Upon running at lists one more time the day of his injury. No one could stop him."

The King looked pained at her vehemence. "I shall outlaw it, then. There shall be no jousting in all of Spain. There will be nothing to stop him from. See, darling? So simple." He kissed her hand. "I am in control of everything."

"Yes. I know."

Cher-Ami jumped Up on the bed.

"How is Don Carlos?" she asked, idly stroking the dog. "I have had no news of him of late."

"As a matter of fact, I have just received word from him. He arrives in town today."

She struggled to sit. "He is coming today? And you did not tell me?"

"I was--"

"Why has Toad not come to see me before this? It has been so long."

"It has been only since Easter." He turned toward me. "Dona Sofonisba--"

I laid down my chalk and curtseyed.

He waved his hand to stop me. "I have news you may not have received. I heard it from my agent who just returned from Venice with the Tizianos I had ordered. Michelangelo Buonarroti died on the eighteenth day of February."

The air felt squeezed from my lungs. A great light of the world had been snuffed.

"Your Majesty, thank you for telling me."

"I'm sorry, Sofi," said the Queen. "I know you thought much of Michelangelo. I'm sure you would have known sooner if Dona Juana were not on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. She would not have missed an opportunity to Upset you with sad tidings of your old master."

The King had hardly had a chance to make a small sound of disapproval when the Queen grasped his hand. "My Lord, we must have a grand reception for Don Carlos. As soon as possible. Tomorrow!"

The King laughed. "What is the haste, my pet?"

"How is the Prince's health, Your Majesty?" asked the condesa, on her way to her embroidery frame.

The King swung his gaze from the Queen. "The reports from his physician in Alcala are good. Thank you for asking,
senora
."

The condesa brushed at her gown, trying to hide her pleasure.

"Can we have the reception tomorrow evening?" asked the Queen.

The King raised her hand and kissed it. "No, my darling. You know that preparations cannot be made that quickly."

"The next day, then. I shall wear the gown I have been saving, the one with the purled gilt embroidery."

"Oh, that's what this is about. Your wish to dress Up?"

She slid out her lower lip in a pretty pout. "I have been moldering in my rooms, My Lord. Do you not wish me to look nice?"

"I do wish for you to look nice. Very well, then, we shall have your reception. As long as you do not overexert yourself."

"I shall be a lamb," she said in a child's voice.

The chamber was in an Uproar the moment he left. The Queen called for her musicians, for her master of the household, for her hairdresser, her jeweler, her cook. At last, after the splendid affair had been planned down to the last sugared almond, her dressmaker was summoned to add a panel to Her Majesty's Undergown, to accommodate her growing belly.

My Lady obediently raised her arms as the dressmaker took measure of the expanded garment, marking it with pins.
"Madame,"
she said to the dressmaker, "please come to the reception as my guest."

The dressmaker, a round woman whose dark complexion was peppered with even darker freckles, took the pin from her mouth. "Your Majesty, I am honored, thank you. It will be a big occasion. I saw the Infante's cavalcade entering the palace when he arrived the other day."

"Cavalcade?" said the Queen. "Were there many gentlemen?"

"Quite a large party--please, Your Majesty, you must be still."

"Did you recognize any of them?"

The dressmaker sat back on her heels, holding together the seam of the dress. She brushed back her sweat-dampened veil with her arm. "Yes, Your Majesty. Some were quite illustrious. There was the Duke of Eboli, the Duke of Mendoza and some of his family, Margarita of Austria's son--"

"Don Alessandro was with him?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

The Queen glanced at the condesa, stitching on yet another altar cloth at her embroidery frame. "Anyone else?"

"Oh, quite a few others."

"I see." She drew in a breath. "Did you happen to see Don Juan?"

I glanced at Francesca, who was squatting with the other servants, waving her skirts to create a cooling draft on her legs. It was Francesca's opinion that the King had done Us all a favor by sending his half brother to Rome. The less the Queen saw of Signore Juan, she muttered, the better.

The dressmaker rocked back onto her knees. "I cannot say that I saw him, Your Majesty." She took a pin from the cushion tied to her wrist. "Is he a cardinal yet?"

The condesa paused in her needlework.

"He may be by now," the Queen said, "though I have not heard from him."

"Such a pity, that gentleman becoming a religious." The dressmaker pushed a pin into the heavy fabric of the seam. "Young ladies across the kingdom will weep at the loss of such a handsome prospect."

The Queen's color heightened. "He would not marry them."

"A shame," said the dressmaker mildly, not noticing the bright, hard look in the Queen's eyes. "He would make a good match."

"He would not have my sister, my cousin Mary Stuart, or the English Queen Elizabeth. He has not a mind to marry anyone."

The condesa stopped stitching. "Not now, at least, now that the King has wished for him to be a priest."

"A
cardinal
." Madame de Clermont spoke Up from within her veils as she cooled her hands against a damp water jar. "The highest position in the Church, other than Pope."

"He would not have had them, regardless," said the Queen. She winced, then put her hand to her belly.

"Kicking you again, My Lady?" I said quickly. "
The King's son
must be a fighter." Need I remind her whose son she carried? The condesa did watch her too closely from behind her embroidery frame.

The next day the Queen woke with a headache, apparent from the first glance at her puffy eyes. Her entire face seemed swollen, even her nose and lips. We tried splashing her face with Hungary water and giving her a piece of precious ice to suck, but nothing worked. Indeed, her pain grew throughout the day.

"It is the reception," said the condesa, sponging Her Majesty's brow. "You are too excited about it. This cannot be good for the baby."

The Queen looked Up, the brown of her eyes deepened from the pink-ness of her lids. "Excitement is good for
me.
And what is good for me,
madame
, is good for the baby."

The condesa frowned. "Not necessarily. You must put this baby before yourself, My Lady."

"Now, now." I took the damp cloth from the condesa's hands. "We cannot have the baby without the mother." I turned the cloth to find a cool side, then laid it across the Queen's forehead. "There now, My Lady."

The King came after
siesta.
His brows contracted with worry when he found the Queen lying on a daybed, her eyes covered with a wet cloth. At Francesca's suggestion, I had been reading Aesop's fables aloud in Latin. I laid down my book in the middle of "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing."

He knelt beside her. "Are you in pain, My Lady?"

"It is just this heat." She waved me away, then righted herself.

He took her face in his hands and turned it side to side. "You are not well. I will call off the reception tomorrow."

"No!"

"I will not risk your health."

"The baby is fine, My Lord. I am warm, that is all. Are you not warm, too? It is August!"

He felt her brow and glared at the condesa, who had been hovering nearby, fitfully sniffing at her pomander. "Why has no one told me of this?"

The condesa curtseyed. "We have tried to get her to rest, but she will not be bothered."

Outside, thunder boomed. A good omen. Rain would break the heat. The Queen sank back with a wince. "Just get me some more ice. That is all I need."

"Ice!" the King barked to the condesa, making her start. She swept from the chamber.

The Queen's brave smile only accented the puffiness of her face. "What do you plan to wear tomorrow, My Lord?"

"Shhh, darling, rest. My usual black--if we go."

"Do you not wish to wear something more festive?"

"I tax my people heavily to pay for my wars. I cannot ask them to sacrifice when I myself live a life of luxury."

She cast down her gaze.

"You," he said, kissing her neck, "on the other hand, shall have every gown you wish. The people take pride in your beauty. You give Us the courage to go on."

She twisted the lace of his cuff. "You are so good to me, My Lord. I do not deserve it."

"Shhh, darling. What kind of talk is that?"

Rain did not come that night. Thunder rumbled as I sprawled across my bed, trying to find a cool spot while avoiding contact with Francesca.

"Are you wake,
signorina
?"

My hair stuck on my cheek as I turned my head toward her. "Yes."

"I hear something today."

Crickets chirped outside our window. "Yes?"

"Before the King married the mother of Don Carlos, the condesa, she was promised to him in marriage."

"The condesa?" My shift caught under my hip as I raised myself on an elbow. "That cannot be." I tugged my shift free. "She's more than fifteen years his senior. And while she loves to brag about her rank, even she knows she is no princess. She could never expect to marry the son of an emperor. Who spoke this nonsense, servants?"

There was a hurt silence. "The lower the station, the more likely the truth."

"I am sorry, Francesca, I was not questioning you. But it 's an impossible scenario."

"All I say,
signorina
, is she serve old Queen Juana, the King's grandmother, and old Queen Juana's son, the Emperor, he treat his mother bad. He take away her crown, call it his, then he tell the condesa she can marry King if she keep her mouth shut."

"This has to be just rumor. The condesa has never said one ill word about the Emperor, the King, or poor mad Queen Juana, and the condesa would not be one to keep quiet if she had not gotten what was promised to her. Why do you tell me this now?"

"She is bitter,
signorina
. She hate the Queen to have what she think is hers, and then for the Queen to not appreciate it--
ohime!
She want to see the Queen fall."

"But the Queen has done nothing. And the King loves her so."

The thick air throbbed with the crickets' incessant cries.

"Better,
signorina,
to have a husband without love than one with jealousy."

In the morning, Her Majesty's headache was no better, though she tried to say that it was. Her swollen eyes said otherwise, as did the way she clenched her jaw.

I poured water over her hands at her morning toilet. "You can postpone the reception, My Lady," I said in a low voice. "You can have it another day."

Francesca, behind me Untangling my short train, nodded earnestly.

The Queen reached out affectionately to Francesca. "Don't worry, I will be fine--better than if I have to wait another day."

The condesa came over with a towel. "Feeling better?"

"Much!"

I watched the condesa as she went to retrieve the Queen's robe. Had she really been promised to the King? No wonder she wished the Queen such ill, when My Lady's only real crimes were to be impetuous and naive.

"I ask you to reconsider this," I whispered to the Queen, "for your own good."

"My good? You make too much of a little headache."

Truly, the excitement of the evening ahead did seem to buoy her Up through Mass and then breakfast, though the day was so stifling it stopped the breath within one 's lungs. By the time she was to get dressed for the reception, the only sign of her headache was a certain tension in her eyes and in her knotted jaw.

After we had tied the last diamond-encrusted bow of her bodice, My Lady stepped from our hands to swish her new gown. "How does it look?"

Every inch of her white silk overgown had been embroidered with tight coils of gold wire in the shapes of intertwining vines and flowers. From the center of each blossom winked a perfect diamond. Tiny diamonds glittered from the gossamer lace of her collar, which had been wired Upright to cup her face. Be it from fever or excitement, an otherworldly spark burned in her eyes. Together with her sparkling raiment, she looked every inch an angel from heaven.

"You shall steal everyone 's heart," said madame de Clermont, swathed in her usual veils.

The condesa raised her pomander to her nose. "Everyone's."

From the door, a male voice said, "Magnificent."

I snatched Up the Queen's train so that she would not stumble Upon it as she turned. The King stood in the doorway, his arms folded over his chest.

"You are a vision, my love."

She waited to receive his kiss, then pushed against him with her fingertips. "Your beard is prickly."

"I am sorry, pet," he said, caressing her cheek with the back of his hand. "I came to make sure you felt well enough to attend the reception."

"I am restored by your touch, My Lord."

A crash of thunder cut short his look of bemusement.

"Perhaps it will finally rain tonight," he said. "Our farmers certainly need it."