The Creation Of Eve (26 page)

"I fear his headaches grow worse," said Don Juan. "I mentioned it to doctor Hernandez just now."

The King beheld his brother dispassionately. With the two standing together, I could not help noticing the growing inequality between the brothers, a phenomenon only increasing with time. It made me wince for the King to see how much more handsome their shared features were in Don Juan.

"Thank you for your concern for my son," said the King, "but I am keeping an eye on the situation."

"Of course," said Don Juan.

"How are your studies coming along?" Dona Juana asked the two
caballeros
.

The Queen spoke Up loudly, as if wishing to assert her place. "They are debating whether God replaced Adam's rib with a fresh rib or with flesh after giving it to Eve. Don Alessandro thinks it was just flesh."

The King stood his gun back on the ground, causing one of his mastiffs to start forward. Its handler jerked him back.

"What did you argue, little brother?" Dona Juana asked with a brittle smile. She picked Up her dog, leaving dona Eufrasia's pet and Cher-Ami to snuffle companionably in the leaves. "About the rib?"

Don Juan opened his mouth, then settled into himself with a frown. "I think trying to Understand God 's mysteries is a waste of time."

"Oh?" said the King. "You wish not to know Our Lord?"

"I think that we cannot know the workings of a being greater than ourselves, Your Majesty. To think that we can is to give ourselves more credit than we deserve."

"Well spoken," said the Queen.

The King swung his gaze at her, then readdressed Don Juan. "So you think Scripture study is unnecessary?"

"I am not saying that at all. I am saying only that time is better spent on problems we can solve for the good of the living than on theoretical questions we can never answer."

The King's lips formed a thin red crescent in his beard. "Are you sUre that is not just lazy thinking?"

"Dear little brother," said Dona Juana, "I would not recommend speaking of this too loudly before Inquisitor-General Valdes. He has a poor sense of humor these days, with the Protestants renewing their rioting in France and emboldening heretics here."

"Who is joking?" said Don Juan.

"You are," said Dona Juana. "If you are smart." She turned to me with a smile. "Dona Sofonisba. I have been meaning to tell you--Inquisitor-General Valdes says some poetry written by your Michelangelo to young men has recently come to light. There has been talk of his wickedness before, but his friends have always managed to hush it. Would you know of a young gentleman named--"

One of the King's mastiffs rushed out and bit Cher-Ami, who had just snatched something from the pile of leaves. Cher-Ami screamed sorely as the handler yanked away the mastiff, with Cher-Ami's trophy--a dead canary--now in its own jaws.

The Queen clutched her pet to her breast.

"Is he hurt?" said the King.

Don Juan stepped over to examine the pup, who licked him fearfully as Don Juan gently manipulated his leg. "Try setting him down," he told the QUeen.

She placed him on the ground. Cher-Ami yelped, then scuttled Under his mistress's skirts.

"He moves well," said Don Juan. "I think he is more afraid than hurt."

"Who are you, Uncle?" Don Alessandro said with a laugh. "Saint Francis?"

The Queen scooped Up her dog.
"Merci, monsieur,"
she said gratefully.

"Juan didn't do anything," said the King. "The dog was Unharmed."

Francesca appeared, winded and sweating and mumbling in Italian as she struggled along the path with a basket the size of a soup kettle. She gasped when she looked Up and saw Us with the new members to our party. She dropped the basket and scuttled forward to kiss the King's hand and curtsey to Dona Juana. The King bade Us to repair to our picnic, and we did so, though without Don Juan, who did not want to leave Don Carlos waiting at the palace. Our smaller group picnicked on the banks of the river, eating cheese and ham and the famous strawberries of Aranjuez, as diving ducks popped Up from the water, drops rolling off their curled tails, and shiny green dragonflies poked among the bulrushes. Don Alessandro entertained the Queen and me with humorous stories about his life as a student at Alcala while I sketched him, though I fear we were not the most appreciative of audiences, for the Queen's gaze did rove toward the palace and mine toward the sunny slope on the other side of the woods. Even as I thought of doctor Debruyne kneeling in the soil, tending his miraculous coca, I wondered: To whom had the Maestro addressed his poems?

ITEM: In Rome, as in Spain, the penalty for sodomy is death, or five years' rowing in the King's galleys, which is the same as death.

1 MAY 1562

The Palace, Aranjuez

Francesca has been more irritable of late. True, that is like saying that vinegar grows tart. But this morning, as I readied to go to Madrid for El Sotillo, the festival of Saint James the Green, you would have thought Francesca would be pleased by the prospect of having a few days at her disposal, and would be in a light (for her) mood. And I especially needed her benevolence just then--Dona Juana's accusation that the Maestro wrote poetry to young men Unsettled me.

But no. Instead of attending me in a cheerful (for her) manner after she roused me before dawn, she tied my bodice as if strangling it. She plopped the rolls that pad my skirts onto my hips like a pair of saddlebags onto a mule, then jerked the strings of my skirt as if intending to rip them in two. When she braided my hair, she tugged it so hard that my scalp still tingled as I hurried down the corridor to the Queen's chamber.

"Your face, you cover it in the sun," she ordered, stumping behind me.

"I will," I said. "But I doubt if I will get out of the carriage at the parade grounds. I hear that Their Majesties do not."

"You stay in the carriage, then."

"You need not worry. When am I not a perfect lady?"

She clapped her hand to her jaw and scowled.

"Did you want to say something?"

She shook her head.

I tried to laugh it off. "You are just sad that you're not going."

"Bah!"

I did not believe her. The Queen's Spanish ladies are all astir about the festival. They say that everyone--from grand ladies and gentlemen in their mule-drawn carriages, to shopkeepers and their wives walking with their little ones gamboling between them, to servant boys, released for the day and loping along in freedom--wishes to go to the banks of the Manzanares for El Sotillo, so named for its location in a shaded grove near the Toledo bridge. The Queen, who has been too ill in past years to attend, is especially eager to see the crowd and to witness the custom unique to this festival: be they old or young, rich or poor, infirm or well, every last subject turns away when Royalty first passes by.

"I am sorry there 's no room in the carriage," I said.

"With the King and Madonna Elisabetta? With the Prince and Signore Juan? Bah! You not get me in that wagon." She spat.
"Fratelli, flagelli
.
"

"Francesca! The wrath of brothers is not the wrath of devils. Not these brothers. The eyes of the world are Upon them."

She shook her stubby finger. "You mark my words."

Hours later, joggling to and fro on the seat next to the Queen, I could still see Francesca's sour face as our carriage trundled along the stony road to Madrid. I tried to get her dire warning out of my mind as Don Carlos chattered merrily to the Queen.

Happiness lit the translucent flesh of his face, illuminating the webbing of thin blue veins within. "It is the most curious cUstom, My Lady," he said in an animated tone. "As soon as we arrive, the people will turn away from Us. If they are in carriages, they will close their curtains. If on foot, they will turn their backs. Even their horses are turned away. We can see our people but they must not see us."

"Truly?" The plume in the Queen's turban wafted as we joggled along. She glanced at Don Juan, staring out the window next to Don Carlos. "It makes no sense. Why do they do this?"

Don Carlos shrugged cheerfully. "Tradition."

"And here I wore my best gown--for nothing."

"Oh, not for nothing," Don Carlos said reverently.

I glanced at the King, sitting on the other side of Don Carlos. The sunlight beaming through the carriage window caught the clear curvature of his eye as he studied the barren landscape. I wondered how I might catch that transparency in paint.

"Your Majesty," the Queen asked him, "how did this custom come about?"

The King rolled his gaze across the carriage interior. Dust motes danced in the shaft of light between Us as he considered the question.

"It has always been," he said.

"Did they do it in Grandfather's time?" Don Carlos asked.

"Yes. They did. My father and I went together, once, when I was twelve."

"Once!" cried Don Carlos. "Why just once?"

"My father was in Spain for only two years altogether during the time he ruled," said the King. "And when he was here, he had too much business to conduct to go to little parties. Our lands were not won by attending
fiestas
."

I stole a glance at Don Juan. He woUld not have been born if the Emperor had not spent so much time outside Spain. I wondered if he was thinking this, too.

"What good is being King if you cannot enjoy it?" Don Carlos exclaimed.

"When my father turned his kingdoms over to me," said the King, "he was a tired old man, far older than his fifty-six years. Believe me, my son, you should enjoy this time when you do not feel the weight of the crown Upon your head."

"I will not mind being King when my time comes. I will be a good one. But I have to have some practice, Father. How am I to know how to rule without experience?" He looked away, exposing the side of his head where the hole had been cut to save his life. Though it had been nearly six months, the scar in his temple was still an angry shade of red. He turned back to the King. "I don't Understand why you won't send me to the Netherlands as your representative."

The King drew a breath as if bracing himself for a familiar battle. "Carlos, you are too young."

"Too young! I am almost eighteen--you were sixteen when your father sent you to see our kingdoms."

"Times are different now. Then, the monk Luther was but a thorn in the side of the Church. Now bands of his followers wish to overturn our rule. The Low Countries in particular require an experienced person's statesmanship, influenced as they have been by rioters. Any false move could tip the balance and we could lose our grip."

"Why do we need to grip? Why can we not hold on gently?"

"If only it were that simple."

"It is that simple! The Dutch deserve someone young and full of ideas, a new way of going about things. They don't want boring old men like Cardinal de Granvelle, and they certainly don't want Don Alessandro's mother, an old meddler with a mustache on her lip. Why don't you give me a chance to show you?"

"His mother proved her loyalty to me, doing what I had asked of her when her husband had fought my rule in Parma. Her sacrifice was long ago--Alessandro was only seven--but I do not forget."

"That was then--this is now!"

The King sighed deeply. He glanced at me, then sat Up as if glad to find a diversion from their argument. "Dona Sofonisba, my sister has asked that you might do her portrait. She insists that don Alonso will not do."

I was so startled I am afraid I simply stared.

"You will be able to spare her?" he asked the Queen.

"It's not fair!" Don Carlos blurted. "I am almost as old as you were when your father abdicated and gave you the world. All I ask for is the Netherlands!"

We swayed in Uncomfortable silence, I in shock from hearing that Dona Juana admired my painting, the others on edge from the discord in the air. The carriage rolled along, its traces jangling and its wooden body creaking.

Don Juan leaned forward. "I think I see the city walls."

He pulled back so the rest of Us could peer out the window, though the King, I noticed, only closed his eyes.

Don Carlos clapped with eagerness, forgetting his fury as quickly as a child. "Look, My Lady! See the riverbanks? There 's a line of carriages."

"Oh! Now I do." The Queen pulled me by the arm. "Sofi--look very hard, you can see the people. Will they turn their backs on Us the whole day, Don Carlos?"

"Only when we first pass by." He crossed his arms, causing the ermine-trimmed sleeves of his cape to pool on his puffed velvet breeches. "I don't know if the rule applies to you, Uncle, since you are not full-blooded."

"Don Carlos!" the Queen exclaimed.

"I can't help that he is a bastard."

"Don Carlos!"

He shrugged. "Don Juan knows I mean nothing. Don Alessandro's mother is a bastard, too, and I don't think the people would have to turn away from him, either, if he were here. He 's not purest Royalty, since she is not." He saw my poorly concealed look of surprise. "What? Did you not know? Dona Margarita's mother was--I don't know, some nobody--but Grandfather was her father, just like he was Don Juan's. I thought everyone knew. That is why Grandfather married her so highly to the Duke of Parma, who turned out to be a crook. But she did what Father asked of her, and for that alone he lets her rule the Netherlands." He cut the King a pointed look. "Even though I would be much better at it."