by Lynn Cullen
“Very well! Give me an arquebus, then! I will make short work of this.”
Don Carlos leveled his sword at her. “Hush.”
“Insolent,” she muttered Under her breath as she settled into a seat.
“Sofonisba,” she said before I could sit. “You did not ask me why the decision was made against your Michelangelo.”
The Queen’s hand tightened on my arm. A stag was plunging down the chute, its eyes white in their sockets as hounds tore at its flanks. It leapt for the top of the wall. Three huntsmen rushed over and clubbed it down.
“The Sistine Chapel is only half his problem,” said Doña Juana. “Several of his poems to a certain young man have come to the Pope’s hand. They are sickening. The old man moans of how at his age he was hit by Cupid’s arrows, how he thought he could change but could not. He told the Pope their intended recipient never got them, indeed his desired one has no notion of their existence, but no one believes this. Of course Michelangelo is protecting his lover.” She saw my expression. “Do you know who this might be?”
“No, Your Majesty.”
She kept her white-lashed gaze fixed Upon me. “Are you sure?”
The King stepped into the path of the panicked deer. In one last desperate burst, it bounded over the King’s head. The King thrust Up his sword.
The deer crashed to the ground. Legs flailing, it struggled to rise, then stood, trembling, as glistening ropes of guts slithered from its belly.
ITEM: The pelican, when its young are hungry, will peck its own breast until it bleeds and will feed its children upon its blood.
ITEM: Oil is not as impervious to water as you might think. Water can seep through a fresh layer of paint.
16 AUGUST 1564
El Alcázar, Madrid
The King’s father, the Emperor Charles, was always on the move, tramping here and there across Europe, fighting wars, brokering deals, and marrying off his children to solidify the greatest empire since the days of ancient Rome. Only after he’d passed the burden of his many kingdoms to the eighteen-year-old Felipe did he settle down in a small but comfortable monastery hidden in the Gredos Mountains, where he spent the last two years of his life eating and drinking and gazing Upon his illegitimate son Juan when the fancy struck him.
Not wishing to live the nomadic life that had exhausted his father, the King chose to base his courts in the central location of Madrid, limiting his travel to pleasure palaces within a few days’ journey, going farther abroad only when political Unrest required it. The dim brooding pile of El Alcázar, built over the centuries Upon a sultan’s fortress, now is the chief home of the King of Two Worlds. But Unlike the bucolic Flemish-style palace of Valsaín in the Woods of Segovia, where sweet summers are whiled away in the cool mountain air, or the riverside jewel box of Aranjuez, where spring and fall are savored in an oasis of green in the arid foothills of the Toledan mountains, there is no easy season in Madrid.
It is said of Madrid that there are nine months of winter and three months of Hell—not so far from the truth. Winter blows in from the Guadarramas in late October and has one thawing one’s fingers over the brazier in May. But by July, if you are so foolish as to stand in the sun after mid-morning, it feels as though your skull has become a cookpot for your brain. Strength evaporates from your limbs as your brains boil and your blood bakes, making escape all the more difficult each minute you remain exposed in the sun. Francesca says the bodies of three beggars were found on the steps of the Church of San Pedro el Viejo this afternoon, dead from the heat. I do not tell this to the Queen. She is in her sixth month of pregnancy and must not be disturbed in any way.
How the King does dote on her. He has her drinks iced with snow brought by mule train from the peaks of the Guadarramas. He, master of much of the earth, personally fans her as she lies Upon her bed. Her mother’s weekly letters exhort her to take exercise. “Knowing you, my daughter,” the French Queen Mother writes, “you will be inclined to stay in bed, but you must resist this impulse for your good and the good of the child.” How well My Lady’s mother knows her daughter. Her Majesty wishes to dally away her time in bed, playing cards with her ladies or, if propped Upright with a paintbrush in hand, depicting in tandem with me little portraits of her ladies’ children with their favorite pets.
But even if My Lady were inclined to exercise, how much could she take when the King will not allow her to leave her summer rooms in the lower part of the palace, let alone the city, fearful as he is of her traveling in her delicate state? This is why we cannot escape to the cool of the mountains at Valsaín, why we must spend our afternoons trapped here in darkened rooms, prostrate amongst the water jugs, touching our wrists to the condensation that beads Upon their sides. He demands that we think of nothing but My Lady’s health, and perhaps it is for the best. What good does it do to let my mind wander to the identity of Michelangelo’s lover, and to how this might possibly be connected to the reason why Tiberio has not replied these six months?
As delighted as the King is with Her Majesty’s pregnancy, he seems not to notice the temperature. Only yesterday he strode into her chamber at the end of siesta, a spring to his step in spite of the heat that had sapped the life from the rest of Us. The condesa and madame de Clermont rose from where they languished on their pillows and straightened their gowns as Cher-Ami waddled forth to greet him.
The Queen raised herself on an elbow for his kiss. “You have spots on your sleeves, My Lord.”
He examined his sleeve. “Indeed I do. It is raining mud outside.” He saw me look Up from the table at which I was idling Upon an Uninspired sketch of the Queen. “Sometimes in the summer here,” he explained, “when it rains there is a bit of sand in each drop. It comes, they say, from the African desert. Quite a way for a cloud to travel.”
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. “Doña 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 Qu
een. “I know you thought much of Michelangelo. I’m sure you would have known sooner if Doña 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 Alcalá are good. Thank you for asking, señora.”
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—ohimè! 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.”