The Creation Of Eve (23 page)

ITEM: In preparation for transferring a drawing to a canvas, take care not to overfill your pounce bag with charcoal dust, for patting an overfull bag to the canvas will send dust into your eyes. As a preventative measure, it is best to keep on hand the eyewash solution made in the following manner: Steep one ounce of dried chamomile flowers in a glass horn of boiling water for ten minutes. Strain and use when cool. Also soothing for eyes swollen by an excess of tears.

13 OCTOBER 1561

El Alcazar, Madrid

Almost eight months have passed since I last wrote. Once the Queen regained her strength, court was moved from Toledo to the recently refurbished El Alcazar in Madrid, the palace the King wishes to establish as his seat of power. To this effect, he has added towers and chapels and gardens to the old Moorish fortress. Shopkeepers have set Up stalls in the courtyard; courtiers build their palaces nearby; international merchants and ambassadors stride through the streets. Overnight the sleepy town has become a bustling place of commerce and influence. But more has changed here than the scenery.

"Why, Sofi?" the Queen lamented to me yesterday morning as I helped her into her robe of sheer black silk embroidered with gold-work leaves. Francesca hovered in the background, folding the Queen's night garb. The condesa and madame de Clermont were busy discussing who would receive the Queen's garments from the previous day, since Her Majesty does not wear the same clothing twice. Meanwhile, over in a corner, little Cher-Ami chewed on a lady's calfskin slipper he had dragged in from another chamber. "Why does the King come no more?" said the Queen. "Is it my reddened skin? My thin hair? My weak vision?"

"You know none of that is true," I said. "You have made a complete recovery from your illness. Your skin heals by the day, and your hair"--I twisted a lush hank of it away from the Upright edge of her wire-stiffened collar--"is thicker than ever. Darker, too."

"So are my eyebrows," she said. "Pluck them, Sofi. I look like a bear. Mamma would think me a fright."

"Has My Lady thought of letting them grow in the Spanish fashion? They would only accent your lovely dark eyes. But regardless of any of this--you cannot say the King does not come to you."

She made a pouting face. "Oh, he comes--every Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday after vespers--he did not even make an exception for my birthday. You could set a clock by him. Indeed I think I shall. Where is that annoying buzzing piece of German frippery he gave me? I shall melt it down to a lump of gold."

"What is your complaint, My Lady?" asked the condesa, who was now l istening in.

The Queen folded her arms over her chest as I began braiding her hair. "Nothing."

The condesa cleared her throat. "
Perdon
, My Lady, but did you not wish for madame de Clermont to have your gown from yesterday?"

Poor madame. She fared less favorably than My Lady in her battle with the pox. She was so disfigured she has taken to wearing veils over her face, even now, when it is warm, and indoors, in the company of ladies. It is a shame. She was a beautiful woman, in the French way, with her pale blond hair, long nose, and hooded eyes. Now that madame is less a source of jealousy, the condesa smothers her with kindness, forcing the Queen's castoff clothes Upon her, allowing her to take the place directly behind the Queen when we venture out in public. Unless I can manage to slip back farther in the pack, I am third now, behind the condesa, who tips Up her head so high Francesca hopes she will trip over a mule pile.

Now madame 's eyes closed wearily in the slit between her veils. "I am drowning in Used gowns, condesa. Please, take this one or I shall scream."

I clung to the Queen's hair as she shook her head with impatience. "Give it to Sofi."

"My Lady," I said, "the King has already been too generous, giving me five new gowns since Michaelmas."

"Give it to Sofi's Francesca, then."

Francesca looked Up, startled. A smile grew on her square peasant 's face. She was still smiling when the Queen excused her to take the gown to our chamber.

Then the Queen shooed madame and the condesa from the room and picked Up her hand mirror as she waited for everyone to leave, save me.

"I am so bored," she told my reflection when they were gone. "He comes to me now as if to an appointment with his ministers. Bedding me has become a duty he must perform."

"That cannot be true, My Lady. He loves you. Do you not see the pleasure he takes in you? How he smiled when you sang for the Dutch Lord Egmont after supper last night!" I fought to keep the irritation from my voice. I grow weary of reassuring her by the hour. She has the eye of the most important man in the world and finds no joy in it.

"The King was laughing at my stumbling over the words." She scrunched her nose, which has lost all vestiges of its childish stubbiness. "Thank you for covering for my blunders on your clavichord. You play far better than I sing."

"That is not true," I murmured. Stray wisps sprang free of her braid to curl at the nape of her neck. I wished I could seize my paintbrush and capture their sweetness on canvas. I have done so little painting since Her Majesty's illness.

The Queen saw my averted eyes. "So you do think he has lost delight in me!"

"Your Majesty! Any fool can see his love for you. He is just being careful with you, as his father advised."

She put down her mirror. "You remember that stupid letter? Ridiculous, telling Felipe to curb his desire. Why should he heed such poor advice? He didn't heed the part about learning French. Why should he obey the part that is boring?"

"My Lady, it is because he cannot bear to lose you. Your illness impressed that fear upon him. Can you not see how much he cares for you?"

"He cannot keep me like a vase on a shelf, Sofi. I am sixteen and alive." She raised her mirror to smile at me ruefully. "You would not know what it is like, never having been awakened as a woman to a man, but believe me, once you've known carnal pleasure, it eats at you night and day if you don't get it. You become a seething mass of need, just burning for--" She blew out a breath. "I cannot think about it."

I pushed a comb into her braid.

"I am sorry, Sofi, I should not speak out so crudely. But he is cruel to put me off. It makes me look foolish, an Unwanted Ugly hag, like Anne of Cleves, rejected by my godfather King Henry when she came to his wedding bed."

"But the King does not reject you." Not as I have been rejected by Tiberio. My silence since his letter a year ago has not provoked even his curiosity, let alone his dismay; he has not bothered to write.

"Father said my godfather Henry called the poor dame the Flanders Mare. Sofi--oh! Does the King call me the French Mare? You must tell me! I will go into hiding."

"My Lady--please. You know better."

"I know people talk. Even my mother in Paris knows of his lack of interest. She badgers me in her letters more shrilly than ever. How am I ever to get with child, she demands, when he takes me only on occasion?"

I tucked in the last comb, pretending I did not hear the Unspoken thought vibrating in the air between Us: The blame for the Queen's inability to bear children could not be placed solely on the King's alleged lack of desire. His fertility was proven; he had fathered Don Carlos. Even on his regimented schedule for lovemaking, they should have coupled enough by now for her to conceive.

"There now," I said, "your hair is done." Though I grew impatient with her, even I wondered if the King's great love would be never-ending for a wife who proved to be barren.

To My Most Magnificent Signorina Sofonisba, In the Court of the Spanish King

From your silence since my letter of September past, I fear I have offended you. I had hoped you would understand that I had been away in Florence when you last wrote, and I replied as quickly as I could. I would cherish hearing back from you. I treasure our association and had never thought it would end so abruptly.

Meanwhile, my work here continues to consume me. As the representative of the Maestro, I am overseeing the building of two new churches here in Rome. While I am glad to do this for the old man, it is my work on the unfinished Pieta that intrigues me. For every step forward I take on it, a new problem presents itself and I must go backward. I cannot seek the Maestro's help with it. Even if he did not hold a particular grudge against this piece, I would not approach him on it, for he has grown more difficult than ever. His habit of walking in the evening in all weathers particularly alarms me. He is now seven-and-eighty, not young! but each night after supper he tramps off as if in a rage. When I bid him to at least put on a cape, he glares at me as if I had called his mother a whore. Although he has now offered me a room in his home as well as a studio, he has remained distant toward me since my return from Florence, or if not distant, agitated. I will admit this hurts me. Does he think I wish to take his mantle of the Greatest Artist in the World? I am hardly up to that. When I present his designs to patrons, I am careful to make it clear the designs are his and not mine. I know oh too well who the true Maestro is. Perhaps he has just grown weary from his many detractors. No man of his stature goes without acquiring his fair share of them. But in this current atmosphere of reform, with the Pope so anxious to give no one grounds to find fault with the Church, the Maestro's critics grow more shrill about his work not being sufficiently rooted in the Scriptures. They complain particularly about the naked figures in the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, questioning their appropriateness in a place of worship. He has heard it all before. Those jealous of his talent have attacked the frescoes since they were completed decades ago, with that loudmouth Aretino increasing the noise about five years ago, but the outcry has grown more serious of late. I fear time, now, is not on his side. The constant condemnation of his work wears him down, and I am laid low myself by seeing him thus. How a letter from you would bring me cheer, though the Maestro warns me that with your duties at court you will not have time to write one. I hope he is wrong, though I do understand if he is right.

From Rome,
this 12th day of March, 1562

Your servant,
Tiberio Calcagni

ITEM: You should have your subject sit for a portrait at the hour of the fall of the evening, for the light is perfect then, especially if it is cloudy or misty. Or have a courtyard fitted up with walls painted black and with the roof projecting forward for the subject to sit beneath. Strong light does not agree with beauty.

ITEM: As is said by Ovid in
The Metamorphoses
, the marten conceives and gives birth via the ear, thus enjoying its own form of an immaculate conception. Therefore it is considered to be fortuitous to include a marten in the painting of a woman who wishes to conceive.

6 APRIL 1562

The Palace, Aranjuez

Tiberio writes, and to what end? To discuss the health of the Maestro? I have too much on my mind to add him to it. He is bold to think that I care about him now.

It being spring, we are at the country palace of Aranjuez. After walks in the woods and gardens by day, I work on the Queen's portrait in the evening. It had been the Queen's decision for me to commence Upon the studies for her picture in February; her idea, too, to wear the Great Pearl in it. Mary Tudor's beloved trophy dangles like a trifling trinket from My Lady's jaunty velvet cap: her idea of a jest. It was her intention to jab at her enemies, too, by holding a fur meant to catch fleas.

"It will show how I am beset by pests," she had said last night. "And I do not mean just fleas." She wagged the gold-encrusted head of the marten whose pelt made Up the accessory. " 'Go, condesa!' she squeaked, as if making it speak. 'Go, Dona Juana! Shoo!' "

As I dabbed at the canvas, adding depth to the shadow of her browbone, I could not help looking over my shoulder for either of these ladies. In these past six months, as if reacting to the King's prudence in his bedding of her, My Lady has been wildly imprudent. Besides purchasing jewels and exquisite manuscripts and lavishly decorated carriages for herself, she is extravagant in her show of preference for me, awarding me with jewels, bolts of fine cloth, even, in secret, knowing my interest, books on the workings of the human body, forbidden for women by the Church. She does not think of the havoc her favor wreaks with the other ladies higher than I in rank. I am forever appeasing them, slipping farther down the row from My Lady at processions in town so that they might reap the glory of being seen with her in public, offering them the choicest dishes at dinner, dashing off flattering sketches of them, or, in Dona Juana's case, sketches of the Virgin Mary weeping. All the while, I must not show ingratitude to the Queen for lifting me Up so high. It is a fine line that I walk.