The Creation of Eve

by Lynn Cullen

  But it seems my mind is drawn to portraying people. It is a thrill to capture in paint something so elusive that we seldom see it even when it is before our very eyes—the inner self. I had done so before, once, in the painting of my sisters playing chess, with Francesca watching them in the background. A glimmer of each one of their dear souls had peeked out from the canvas. Even Michelangelo had remarked Upon it. But limning one ’s sisters and nurse well hardly made one a maestra.

  “Your Majesty,” I said to the Queen, “perhaps we ought to step back.”

  The Queen glanced at the condesa, now loudly haranguing one of the lesser French ladies, which served to embroil madame de Clermont in an argument. “I don’t care if she has been at this court since she was a child,” the Queen whispered, “and the King wants me to learn Spanish ways from her. I won’t give in to her. She is just like my mother.”

  A trumpeting and shouting arose from below. A cavalcade issued forth from the side of the palace—the great lords of the land were riding to the ceremony.

  The condesa rushed to the window. “Come away, Your Majesty!”

  “Do you see him?” The Queen’s hair tumbled over her shoulders as she strained to distinguish among the riders.

  “Who?” I asked over the condesa’s frantic bleats.

  At that moment, Don Carlos, his slight figure wrapped to his crown in fur of ermine, trotted into view on a white charger housed in trappings of gold. Behind him rode Don Alessandro, in a cape of lynx, then Don Juan, his blond hair free in the wind.

  The young bloods pulled aside their horses. The King came galloping through, his jeweled hands gripping the reins of his black stallion, his cape flowing over the horse ’s muscular haunches.

  “There is your King!” the condesa cried. “Does he not look magnificent?”

  The Queen shrank back inside.

  “Shame!” The condesa drew the mullioned windows closed with a bang. “Heaven knows who saw you in such a state!”

  The Queen said nothing, but went over to her embroidery frame, called her little spaniel to her lap, and listlessly began to stitch. I withdrew to my table and took Up my chalk and paper. Before me, the German clock the King had given the Queen ticked on like Time itself, its golden parts spinning and whirling.

  The Queen fell into a nap, her dog snoring in its nest in her skirts. Around the chamber the other ladies slumped on their pillows in various positions of slumber. Only Francesca remained awake, now plunging, now pulling her needle through the torn lace of my chemise. I scratched wanly with my chalk, my thoughts drifting to where they should not go—to Tiberio.

  If only I could touch his arms again. From wielding his sculptor’s chisel with Michelangelo, they are roped with veins and as hard as the stone he hews. Just the memory of their feel stirs me. But as firm and thrilling as are his arms, it is the skin on the Undersides of them that I most crave to touch. It is as soft and smooth as an infant ’s cheek.

  With a sigh, I closed my eyes.

  I woke to the sound of muffled voices outside, and the Queen easing open the window. I slipped to her side as the cavalcade, all flapping banners and capes and clashing hooves, poured through the street below.

  The Queen wrested some crumbling plaster from the window frame. She searched the stream of riders and then, when Don Carlos approached with Don Juan, flung the plaster hard. It smashed on the stones next to Don Carlos, Unnoticed.

  She scrabbled at the frame again. When it yielded no more grit, she scanned her own person, seized a black pearl from the clasp of her robe, and hurled it with a grunt. It bounced off the hilt of Don Carlos’s sword with a bright ping.

  He looked Up.

  “Hey!” A grin swallowed his pasty face as he pointed at her window. “You!”

  The Queen laughed and ducked inside even as the condesa sailed toward Us with all the fury of a gale sweeping across the Toledan plain. I tugged at the windows as the King cantered Up behind the young gentlemen. I could see his long jaw lift from the folds of his ruff as he looked Up.

  I drew back, heart lurching. The condesa was waiting for me when I turned.

  “Do you think you are doing her a favor, letting her lessen herself in the eyes of Our Lord and King? Do not think he will not hear about this. He hears all. He has eyes and ears everywhere. Your Majesty, you have erred!”

  “You cannot chastise the daughter of the Queen of France!” said madame de Clermont, Up from her pillow now. “Where is your respect?”

  The condesa rounded on her. “You are aware of how the King spent his time with her in the nuptial bed before her illness. Do you think her mother would approve of the King dozing away the night instead of trying to beget a child Upon her?”

  I glanced at the Queen. She hung her head like Europa caught stealing sweets.

  I did not know he had not been bedding her. My heart went out to my little Lady. “Her Majesty has not yet had her courses,” I said. “Perhaps he is being kind Until she matures.”

  The condesa fixed me with a look of disdain. “Unless you wish to see Her Majesty sent home to her mother due to breach of contract, I would think you would want to aid our Queen in gaining the King’s favor. I suggest that you stick to your chalks and leave matters of the Queen’s comportment to me.”

  Over in her corner, Francesca’s square peasant face took on an even grimmer set than was usual. Slights to me are taken doubly hard by her. But insulting or not, the condesa’s concern rang true. What man has ever been “kind,” when he has a chance to bed a maiden? Not even Tiberio had kept me at arm’s length when I had proved to be willing.

  ITEM: The King’s great-great-grandmother Isabella of Portugal suffered from derangement. Her daughter, Queen Isabel of Castilla, was forced to lock her mother in the Monastery of Miraflores, in the wilds outside Burgos. There Isabella of Portugal spent her last twenty years, wandering amongst the beautifully carved cloisters, unable to harm herself or anyone else.

  ITEM: The King’s great-great-great-great-grandmother was not mad, but perfectly sane and very stout. Cymburga of Masovia was so strong she could crack walnuts with her fingers and pound a nail into a board with her clenched fist. It is said she would not brook comments on her jaw, which jutted out as powerfully as a thrust elbow.

  ITEM : That most useful of pigments, white lead, is the better the more it is ground.

  28 FEBRUARY 1560

  El Alcázar, Toledo

  Although the talk at court may be of the frost that has nipped the buds of the almond trees, and of the continuing mystery of the disappearance of the French ladies’ wardrobe trunks, and of the word from Genoa that a virulent strain of the Great Pox is renewing its rounds among the men there, all thoughts here now are truly of when the King will tumble at last in the Queen’s bosom. Although he visits her chambers each evening, the sheets are not sullied when we come to dress the Queen in the morn. What will become of our little Lady if he continues to reject her in bed? Indeed, why does he bother to visit her each night?

  Perhaps the King simply awaits the Queen’s complete recovery. There are still vestiges of the great pimple Upon her forehead and the sores on her nether-quarters, though they are fading fast and the King discontinued My Lady’s treatment without consulting her mother. Indeed, the ailment that now plagues Her Majesty most is boredom, a malady compounded by the condesa de Urueña’s hectoring to maintain proper Spanish decorum even in the sickroom.

  Among the court rules:

  Her Majesty is not to allow servants to speak to her first.

  She is to insist that everyone curtsey to her before addressing her.

  She is not to Use anything a commoner has touched, even if it is something she herself has dropped. Thus, if she should drop a handkerchief before the cook’s boy and he should pick it Up, it would become of no use to her. Only one of her ladies or someone of the Blood can retrieve it. I saw Her Majesty lose a perfectly good glove this way, a rose-colored kid one perfumed with civet. The goldsmith the Queen had brought
with her from France retrieved the glove she had dropped when trying on a new ring. How the condesa smiled with grim approval when the Queen reluctantly let the glove go, telling the goldsmith to keep it, though it had been a present from her brother the King of France and was dear to her.

  Doctor Hernández has ruled that Her Majesty is still too weak for me to teach her painting. It is too great a strain, he says, on her woman’s brain. The only antidote to her boredom that I can offer her is to sketch her in various poses and then show her the results, though I swear the condesa looks for ways to outlaw even this. Why she takes such enjoyment in irritating Our Queen, I do not know, but irritate her she does, like a burr in one’s chemise.

  The Queen was sitting in one of these positions for me to sketch this afternoon, with her hand to her chin as if thinking, when she broke her pose to examine my progress. “Do I really look like this, Sofonisba?”

  “To me you do, My Lady.”

  “But I look like I am full of—”

  A male voice broke in. “—secrets?”

  Her Majesty and I turned in surprise as the King made his way across the room to Us, the Queen’s ladies falling into curtseys beside their embroidery frames as he passed, his sword swinging at his side.

  The Queen’s chin receded in a smile as he kissed her hand, something he’d not shrunk from doing after doctor Hernández had pronounced her free of contagion. “I was going to say ‘laughter,’ ” she said in French.

  He smiled as if not quite certain what she said. His Majesty knows little French, so the Queen must always converse with him in Spanish. Although the King is a renowned scholar in many other fields, he is not gifted in tongues, and being King, others must accommodate him, not he make allowances for them. It was a surprise, therefore, when he said in halting French, “Are you comfortable, My Lady?”

  The Queen’s face lit Up. In rapid French, she launched into a young girl’s complaint of being restrained indoors due to her illness as the King looked on helplessly.

  “I am sorry, My Lord,” said the Queen, switching to Spanish when she saw his incomprehension. She laughed. “It was a rambling best Unheard. As my mother says, ‘If you cannot say anything good, then say nothing at all.’ ”

  “A wise woman,” the King said in his own tongue. He rested his hand on the pommel of his sword, as if waiting for her to continue.

  The Queen gripped together her hands in thought. She wore the Great Pearl pinned to her day robes, giving her the air of a child playing dress-Up in her mother’s clothes. “And how fares your son the Prince Don Carlos? I hear he has taken ill. I hope he is better now.”

  “Yes,” said the King, and nothing more. He cast his gaze about the chamber. Madame de Clermont smiled at him from behind her embroidery frame; the condesa nodded. I myself made a show of drawing, though I was only adding crosshatching to a shadow.

  “Doña Sofonisba.”

  I nearly jumped from my skin. I put down my pen to curtsey.

  “No, don’t stop,” he said.

  I hesitated, then resumed my appearance of drawing.

  He stood over me, close enough that I could catch his scent of cinnamon and hair pomade. “I see you are keeping company with the Queen, as I had hoped. Have you taught her to draw?”

  “Doctor Hernández wishes the Queen to regain her strength before she takes on a new endeavor, Your Majesty.”

  “I see.”

  He glanced at the Queen as if he wished to speak with her. A lady coughed quietly into her hand; my pen scratched against the rough paper.

  The King drew in a silent breath, then looked down again at me. “I Understand that you were a great favorite of the artist Michelangelo.”

  My heart missed a beat. “He allowed me to study with him briefly. Very briefly.” I tried to keep drawing. In my side vision I could see madame de Clermont slowly edging her way over to My Lady in a tortoise’s race with the condesa de Urueña.

  “He must be an interesting individual,” said the King, still watching me, “so favored by God with an otherworldly talent. I would say he is the most revered artist alive.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  The condesa spoke Up, having reached the Queen first. “Your Majesty,” she said to the King, “they say in Michelangelo’s painting of the Last Judgment, he outstripped even himself in portraying the punishment for those who have not lived well. The demons he imagines pulling the sinners into Hell are quite horrific.”

  “I have seen copies of the painting.” I could feel the King’s cool gaze move from me to the condesa. “I would say the true terror comes from how well Michelangelo Understands the sinners’ agony. He captures their fear of having to pay for what they have done.” Behind me I heard the rustle of the King’s voluminous sleeves as he crossed his arms. “I am pleased that my wife should receive instruction—when she is well—from someone who has learned at his feet.”

  The Queen swallowed. “Sofi,” she said in the shrill voice of a child trying to please, “show the King your other drawings.”

  I got Up to retrieve the other papers on the table across the room, my scalp prickling with the awareness that he was watching me.

  “Do you like art, My Lady?” the King asked the Queen.

  “Oh, yes.”

  He cleared his throat. “And which artists did your father prefer?” Over my shoulder I saw the Queen look at madame de Clermont. “Clouet,” madame whispered to the Queen.

  “Clouet,” the Queen said.

  A silence ensued in which I was painfully aware of the scuffling noise I made in gathering Up my sketches. If this was how they conversed in the bedchamber, no wonder there was so little tumbling done in bosoms.

  “Oh!” The Queen brightened. “And Leonardo da Vinci. Grandfather had him stay in one of our manors. Monsieur Leonardo died there, in fact. He left behind a curious picture of a lady with a mysterious smile on her face. You cannot tell what she is thinking, yet her eyes follow you everywhere. It is most eerie.”

  I looked Up—she was speaking of La Gioconda, the portrait I had championed to Michelangelo. Her family had that painting in their possession? Oh, to be a queen!

  “I see.” The King cleared his throat. “Well. Has your father any Flemish work?”

  “Flemish, My Lord?”

  “My grandfather was Flemish. Philippe the Handsome—I am named after him. ‘Felipe’ is ‘Philippe’ in the Castilian tongue.” He stopped, frowning.

  I groaned inwardly as Her Majesty blinked at her husband. Flatter him, My Lady. Tell him he was well named, that he is Felipe the Handsome, too. Do not let this opportunity to ingratiate yourself to him get away.

  Her Majesty’s German clock ticked and whirred on the table. At last the King said, “I rather like the work of a man named El Bosco. A Fleming. Bosch, he is called in his own country. Hieronymus Bosch.”

  “Oh!” said the Queen.

  Madame de Clermont smiled broadly at the King, as if her mistress had just explained the Mystery of Life.

  I held my breath, my arms full of sketches. In a voice both desperate and hopeful, the Queen asked, “Does he draw dogs?”

  “Dogs?” the King said.

  “I like dogs,” she said, her voice small. She picked Up her spaniel, who had been nibbling at its rear leg.

  The King stroked his pointed beard. “Well . . . I do believe there are two dogs in the piece by El Bosco I have just acquired. It is a tabletop painting.”

  “Two dogs!” The Queen’s voice was full of gratitude. “Are they adorable, My Lord?”

  “Well, I do not know about that. They are acting out the Flemish proverb ‘Two dogs with one bone seldom reach agreement.’ The painting is of the Seven Deadly Sins.”

  “Envy,” the condesa said, as if explaining to an infant. “There are two dogs fighting over one bone, representing envy.”

  The King frowned at the condesa before turning back to the Queen. “So you like dogs, My Lady?”

  “Yes!” exclaimed the Queen, vi
sibly cheered by the King’s defense. “Very much. I like animals of all kinds.”

  “Then perhaps you wold enjoy the collection I have put together in my animal house in Madrid. Among various other beasts, I have an elephant, an ostrich, and some camels, and I just received a rhinoceros.”

  “A rhinoceros! I should love to see it. My mother has an animal house in Paris, but we have no rhinoceros. Does it not have a great wicked horn?”

  “Indeed.” A smile nudged at the corners of his mouth. “The wickedest.” He adjusted the clock’s position on the table, then regarded her thoughtfully. “What amazes me is that from one Heavenly Hand comes the rhinoceros, the snake, and the ostrich. Such diversity, but to what purpose?”

  “I had not thought Upon that,” said the Queen.

  “I often wonder,” said the King. “Why did He create thousands of creatures instead of twenty? Why did He think we needed them all?”

  My Lady gazed at him, her admiration real. “You are wise to ponder it, My Lord.”

  His Majesty glanced away quickly, his hand straying to his chin.

  “Doña Sofonisba,” he said gruffly. “Are we not going to see your drawings?”

  With a jolt, I stepped forward, then, curtseying, offered the King the sheets of paper. He began to turn through them, revealing my portrayal of Her Majesty looking out the window, of her sleeping, of her reading her Book of Hours.

  “These are good,” the King said. “Quite good. You capture her essence, señorita, her”—he looked Up at the Queen—“sweetness.”

  The Queen smiled shyly.

  The King handed me the drawings. “Pack them Up. Doctor Hernández says the Queen will soon be well enough to travel, and we will go to Madrid for Lent.”

  “Oh, I should like that!” the Queen exclaimed. She caught the King’s gaze. “My Lord,” she said softly, “I should like to be with you.”