by Lynn Cullen
They studied each other as if the rest of us were not there. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “So when is the wedding?”
“Here comes the rest of your party,” said Don Alessandro.
The Queen turned toward the carriages, of which the lead was now close enough that we could see the sun glinting from the condesa’s silver pomander just inside the window. Before anyone could react, the Queen tugged the reins from Don Juan and snapped our horse into a trot.
I snatched at the chariot to keep from falling as it bounced forward. In doing so, I dropped the Queen’s train. Frantically I fumbled at the slippery silk even as a length slid onto the turning wheel and caught on the axle. In one sickening jolt, the train ripped from the Queen’s shoulders and the chariot flipped.
I hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud.
Later, inside the palace, into which the bleeding Queen had been carried in the arms of Don Juan and I in the arms of Don Alessandro, the King paced in the reception room outside the Queen’s bedchamber. Don Juan, Don Carlos, Don Alessandro, the condesa, madame, and I stood in a miserable row before him. My right shoulder throbbed. I could not move it without searing pain. What if I could not paint?
The King’s face was tight with contempt. “How could you have let this happen?” he said to us. “It is your duty to keep the Queen from doing foolish things. She is only a child. It is your place to protect her.”
“You, señora,” he said to the condesa, “I gave you my full trust. You have disappointed me, and I shall not forget it.”
Although she held her head high, the condesa’s eyes brimmed with tears.
“And you, señorita.” He turned to me. “What will your father say when he hears that it was in your company the Queen received her injury?”
I held my hurt arm and tried not to cry. Francesca’s frightened scolding when I’d returned to the palace was but the buzzing of a fly compared with the thought of disappointing Papà. Even without the revelation of my deed in Rome, I will have managed to bring shame to him and my family.
“Are you injured?” the King asked.
I curled my scraped palms upon themselves. In addition to damaging my shoulder, my left leg stung where the skin had been laid bare, my hip ached, and somewhere out on the plain lay my veil and one of my shoes. “No, Your Majesty. Thank you.”
He blew a breath from his nose, then turned to the caballeros. “And you. Brother.”
Don Juan looked up. Though his hair had fallen over his eyes and his face was streaked with dirt, his anguish was undisguised.
“Is this how you repay our father who has lifted you so high? By encouraging my wife to act rashly? My son says you were holding her horse’s reins when she made to get away. Be glad that our father is dead, and cannot see what you have done.”
“Papá,” Don Carlos groaned. “Tell Us how she fares.”
The King took in his son in one dismissive gaze. “I have no words for you. Begone. Before I say something I regret.”
Before Don Carlos could move, doctor Hernández came from the Queen’s chamber. The condesa stiffened.
“Doctor!” Don Carlos cried. “How is she?”
The doctor scanned our wretched group as he pulled the heavy carved door behind him. His long face, with its skin as pitted as a lichen-covered boulder, was impassive. “Your Majesty,” he told Don Carlos, “she has a bump to the head and wounds to the flesh of her shoulder, hip, and ankle, but all are superficial.”
“I saw blood running down her leg,” the King said. “A great deal of it. Should you not consult a surgeon?”
“Your Majesty, may I have a private word?”
That was yesterday afternoon. It was only this morning that I learned from Francesca, who learned it from the Queen’s laundress, the source of the Queen’s blood. At last, at the age of fifteen, Her Majesty’s courses have begun.
The King has not left her bedside. He tends to her himself, having sent all of her attendants from her chamber. It is just the King, the Queen, and her little Cher-Ami. I believe she will recover, and pray that I will too, though it hurts each time I lift my arm.
But I am troubled by what I heard in those few moments during which I had lain on the dusty plain with the Queen as the overturned chariot, dragged by our frightened horse, receded into the distance in a cloud of dirt. As I rolled onto my back, with grit in my mouth and my hair in my eyes and the ground trembling from the caballeros’ approaching horses, I could hear her whisper.
“Juan.”
The Second Notebook
ITEM: In times two centuries past, a lady threw herself on her knees before the Spanish King Alfonso, begging justice. She pleaded for relief from her husband, with whom she was made to lie thirty-two times in the course of a day and night. The King sent for the husband, who admitted the fact, claiming he did no wrong—were not his rights to his wife unlimited? After consulting his counselors, King Alfonso decreed that the husband must limit himself to six embraces in the twenty-four hours. At the same time, the King expressed a twofold astonishment: firstly at the extraordinary heat and potency of the man; secondly at the extraordinary coldness and continence of the woman, so contrary to the nature of her sex, for usually the woman is on her knees beseeching her husband or lover to give her more pleasure.
ITEM: In painting, darkness imbues everything with its hue. The more an item is removed from darkness, the more it shows its true color.
20 DECEMBER 1560
El Alcázar, Toledo
It makes me blush to think what a pair of spring rabbits the King and Queen have become. The Queen herself is delighted. Even in these dark days of December, when icy gusts of wind buffet blackbirds in flight and send roof tiles smashing to the cobblestones, she sings to herself and smiles in her mirror or teases the condesa de Urueña Until the old lemon retreats to the solace of her pomander. This morning the dawn blew in on icy winds that whistled through the shuttered windows. Yet when I entered the Queen’s chamber with the page whose job it is to replenish the charcoal in the brazier, and pushed back the hangings round the Queen’s bed, I found My Lady on her side, dangling the ties of her chemise over her puppy and humming a nursery tune.
“Good morning, Sofi!” she sang out.
Because of the King’s distaste for the bickering among the Queen’s other ladies, and the Queen’s embarrassing but satisfying preference for me, I am the only lady now allowed to help her rise each morning. Today the King was not there but must not have been gone long. The bed smelled strongly of man.
I could not look her in the eye. “My Lady,” I said, tying a bed-hanging Up out of the way, “would you like to rise and dress now?” I pulled her bed-warmer from Under the covers by its long wooden handle and handed it to the page, who gave the charcoal in the brazier a last jab, then shot out of the room. The Queen threw back her covers. I could not help noticing there was a stain on the sheets. She smiled demurely when she saw my gaze.
I looked away. The Queen’s sixteen-year-old brother, the King of France, died two weeks ago, and the Queen, as merrily as she now carries herself, is officially in mourning. Indeed, she has been given to tears in fits and starts since she first received word of his death—even more so than since her courses began and, with them, brief periods of melancholia—though her demeanor at the moment belied any sort of grief.
Francesca waited in the doorway with a clean white chemise embroidered with black-work, along with the black robes of mourning.
“Do you wish to just stand there, Francesca?” I said, completely Unnecessarily. If Francesca is zealous in her care of me, she is doubly zealous in her care of the Queen.
Francesca rushed forward. Her dark look at me changed to a worried smile for the Queen. “Madonna Elisabetta, are you well?”
“Why would I not be?” The Queen scooted to the edge of her bed and hopped off before I could help her, leaving her pup to burrow in the covers. “Though someone awoke foul-tempered,” she said to me.
I fussed with the towels on her dressing table as she retired to her close stool. “I am not foul-tempered, My Lady.”
“Oh, yes you are,” she said from behind the screen. “The very air bristles with your prickliness. Do you know what I think? I think you are Uncomfortable with the idea of a man and a woman coupling.”
I folded then refolded the towel.
“It is because you are a virgin,” she said. “You did not jest when you signed it on your paintings.” She came over to where I stood waiting with the pitcher and bowl. “ ‘Sofonisba Anguissola, Virgo.’ Shh, Cher-Ami—you bark too much.”
I could feel the fiery furnace of my face as I poured water over her hands. It was enough of a farce that I had to pretend I was a virgin. The irony was doubly compounded by the fact that as a lady to the Queen, I can no longer sign my name, with its false appendage or not, to anything that I paint. A Queen’s lady may not broadcast her skills like an artisan seeking work, and now, more than ever, as high as I have risen in the Queen’s household, my efforts at painting must appear like a genteel game. My drawings may amuse, but to excel at painting—that is best left to the hands of a male expert.
Francesca stepped forward with a clean chemise.
“See how Sofi blushes,” the Queen said.
Francesca would not look at me. “Sì.”
Gooseflesh rose on the Queen’s skin as she raised her arms for me to lift off her chemise and slip the clean one Upon her. “Hurry, Sofi. I should not catch a chill if I am with child.”
“No, indeed, we must keep Your Majesty warm and snug.” I tugged her chemise into place.
“Would that I were carrying the King’s heir,” said the Queen. “Then maybe Mother would quit writing to me each night and day. I cannot believe there is a courier left alive between here and Paris.”
I finished tying the black-work strings of Her Majesty’s chemise and took her robe from Francesca. “Your mother means well.”
“You know she does not. All she cares about is getting her clutches firmly into Spain now that France is falling apart.”
It is true that trouble hounds the French Queen Mother from all sides. She herself had written to My Lady Upon her son the King’s death that she was left with three little children and a divided kingdom in which there was not one man whom she could trust. The great noble family of Guise have positioned themselves against the Bourbons; the Huguenots have lined Up against the Catholics; none of them has love for the Medici Queen. No wonder she was more frantic than ever to cinch her tie to Spain.
The Queen let me help her into her robe, then lifted her chin as I fastened it. “Sofi, I want you to paint my portrait.”
She noticed my look of surprise. “I liked what you did with Don Carlos’s picture, and now it’s time that you did me. If we wait much longer, I will be with child, and the smell of paint might make me sick. My mother said when she was with child, odors were the death of her. She especially could not stomach the smell of cooking meat.” She put her dog on the floor. It immediately went to a corner and pissed.
“As you wish, Your Majesty,” I said, knowing the job would go to Alonso Sánchez Coello, and even if it did not, señor Sánchez Coello would get the credit.
I do not invent this result. It had happened in the case of my portrait of Don Carlos, a picture that was, out of necessity, mostly gorgeous tawny lynx-fur cape and golden quilted doublet, and very little of the fragile youth peeping warily from within. I had solved the problem of portraying My Lady’s dear Toad as a beloved prince by painting him in another creature ’s beautiful skin and then bathing the painting in gold. Not a single sharp line disturbed the tranquillity of the painting—it was all softness, warmth, and mellow gold. For once, Don Carlos was the golden child he always wished to be.
But when the picture was unveiled last week before the King, Doña Juana had asked if I had done the picture alone, and when I replied that I had, with my thanks to señor Sánchez Coello, who had lent me several of his brushes, a knowing smile had grown on her face. After that, even though señor Sánchez Coello protested that he had not contributed to the work in any way, some at court thought he was merely being gallant—and the more he protested, the more gallant he appeared. At least the Queen believed in me.
The Queen sat at her table. I began to brush her hair.
“Are you still stewing about being a virgin? I’ll have the King get you a husband—you will still be able to serve me.”
“No!”
She raised her hand mirror to look at me. “No?”
The brush made a rich scraping sound as I stroked her hair. “No, thank you, Your Majesty.”
“Why?”
I pulled the brush twice down the length of her hair. “I do not wish to be like a mare in the King’s stable, with His Majesty pondering my blood-lines and temperament in considering a suitable match.”
She laughed. “Dear Sofi, must you be such a bore?” She picked up the ruby necklace the King had sent her and shuffled it from hand to hand. “Trust me, having a husband is not all bad.” She put the jewel to her lips and closed her eyes. “Oh, Sofi, if you could only imagine how divine it feels to be with a man. I could lie with the King five times a day.” She opened her eyes. “How many times do you think a pair could couple in a day?” She smiled privately, rocking the ruby against her lips.
“There is more to a relationship than coupling, is there not?”
The Queen pulled away from the hairbrush. “You’re hurting me.”
“Pardon, My Lady.” I had not realized I was brushing hard. I lightened my strokes. “You might educate yourself on the King’s interests so you may share them with him.”
“Oh, I think I know his interests.”
The condesa’s sharp voice rang out. “I said no!” She entered the chamber with madame de Clermont, arguing as usual, even at that early hour of the day. “I do not care that mademoiselle Noailles’s father has become a duke. He is French. This is Spain. She may not move Up her place at the table. Doña Teresa is to stay exactly where she is.”
For once, I was grateful for their rancor.We finished the Queen’s toilet, then accompanied My Lady to Mass. From there we went to Doña Juana’s quarters, where the King wishes that we go each day now that Don Carlos no longer visits Us. The King had ordered Don Carlos and his caballeros to attend University at Alcalá shortly after the Queen’s accident in Doña Juana’s chariot. It has been two months since we have seen them—I’d had to finish Don Carlos’s portrait without him.
How much happier Doña Juana had been when the Queen had been a scorned and malleable child. Now that the Queen is favored by the King, the friction between her and Doña Juana is Unbearable. So it is with held breath that I enter Doña Juana’s heavily perfumed quarters of late, but today was particularly disturbing. For sitting on a folding leather chair next to the brazier, his ample belly resting on his lap like a full sack of gold, was the head of the Inquisition in Spain, Inquisitor-General Valdés.
The Queen and her ladies exchanged stiff kisses with Doña Juana and her attendants, including doña Eufrasia, who has looked Uncharacteristically wan in recent weeks. We kissed the hand of Inquisitor-General Valdés, who then beamed Upon Us, his hands folded over his gut like a benevolent saint.
“How are you feeling, My Lady?” he asked Her Majesty in his jolly voice. “Have we produced a new champion for the Church of Rome?”
The Queen raised her chin. “I expect a son soon, Your Holiness.”
“Are you pregnant?” Doña Juana asked sharply.
“I shall be,” said the Queen, “if I am not.”
The Inquisitor-General patted the Queen’s arm as doña Eufrasia looked away. “Excellent, excellent. I shall call God’s blessing Upon you. The Church needs a new prince to root out heresy.”
The Queen’s smile was all teeth. Last month, she had been required to go to an auto-de-fé to watch the burning of a tailor who refused to recant his support of Luther’s Protestant edic
ts. As the fire crackled from the fagots at the tailor’s feet, the Queen gazed in disbelief between the King and his sister, marking the King’s expressionless countenance and Doña Juana’s grim smile of satisfaction. Afterward, the Queen had flung herself weeping onto her bed, vowing that nothing could force her to attend another burning. She had wondered aloud how anyone could be so cruel as to enjoy it. But to say such a thing to the Inquisitor-General—or to his supporters—was to risk having his attention turned Upon her. As the Protestant Elizabeth was finding out in England, not even queens are exempt from the wrath of the Church should they rebel against it. Now that Queen Elizabeth has broken with Rome, it is just a matter of time before the Pope openly calls for her removal. Then she would be forced to suppress the Catholics in her lands, and fires might rage Under the feet of Catholics as frequently as they burn under Protestants’ here. Who knows where this madness will end?
“My deepest condolences on the death of your brother, Your Majesty,” said the Inquisitor-General. “He was a soldier for the Church of Rome, a great crusader against heresy, as is his widow, your sister-in-law and cousin, Mary Stuart. The Church has no greater friend than Mary Stuart. All queens could learn a lesson in comportment from her.”
My Lady kept her lips raised above her teeth. “Truly.”
My poor Lady. All her life, from her father during her childhood, to the Inquisitor-General now, she has been held Up Unfavorably to Mary Stuart. Yet to her credit, she took no pleasure in hearing from Paris that Upon the death of her brother the King, her mother had stripped Mary Stuart clean of the Royal jewels, leaving Mary in a plain dark dress in a plain dark room in the palace at Orléans, alone.
My Lady reached for a prayer book in the neat stack of them Upon Doña Juana’s dressing table and began to turn its colorful pages. “How beautifully this is illuminated,” she murmured.
“Inquisitor-General Valdés brought them,” said Doña Juana. “Do take one.”