The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley (16 page)

“Master Ashton,” he said, “I’d like you to keep an eye on that woman.” Wolsey’s look was bland and avuncular as he admired the way Ashton’s eyes rolled sideways in his head with ill-suppressed horror. “When I dispatch her on assignment, I want you to make the arrangements for her travel.” A muscle twitched on the side of Ashton’s jaw. His neck was growing red. Better and better. “And, of course, I will hold you responsible if she is lured away from our service.” Ashton stared at him, and his jaw dropped. How unpolitic, thought Wolsey.

“But…but…” Ashton began. Tuke smirked. “I’d…I’d have to follow her everywhere, like…” Like a lapdog, his eyes seemed to say. How could you? The wounded look. Outstanding, thought Wolsey.

“She’ll need instruction, I’m sure, in proper court etiquette…” Wolsey could not refrain from driving home the knife and giving it a turn or two.

“I’m not a governess…um, I mean, Your Grace, I’m not
fit
…”

“It’s a
very
important assignment,” announced Wolsey firmly. From behind him, Wolsey heard Master Tuke’s faint snicker. He’s next, thought the bishop. I think I’ll give Master Warren the dispatch case next time. “Master Ashton,” he said, “I wish you to order two gold cases made. I intend to try her out with portraits of my niece and nephew.” Yes, nothing less than gold for his daughter, Dorothy, and his son, little Thomas Winter, whom he would make a prince of the Church in his turn. After all, hadn’t the Pope had a son? And Wolsey had every intention of becoming the first English Pope.

For all the problems there were with being a dead man painter, there were even more with being a live woman painter and it started getting uncomfortable right away. Almost the same day, that man of Wolsey’s, who was all full of himself from discovering my secret, came snooping up to the studio and looked about at everything as if he didn’t approve of it. Then he shifted from one foot to another and said he would assist and instruct me so that I would understand the etiquette of great houses better, which he thought was very subtle.

This little condescension irritated me worse than a whole mattressful of fleas. Ordinarily I would have just thanked him for all his concern to get rid of him, but I was in my own studio and it made my tongue freer. So I looked at him and said, “I suppose every dancing bear needs a keeper.” He just stood there, looking large and out of place in my little room, as well as humiliated, among all those round pink Eves, and I could see an odd look flash through his eyes, a look as if we understood each other. “Does he always send you on jobs like this?” I asked.

“It is a privilege to be the humble servant of a man so great and noble,” he said.

“That’s exactly what I think,” I answered.

“These things will have to go,” he said, waving his hand around him.

“I know,” I answered. “They aren’t very respectable. Good women shouldn’t be seeing them.”

“Let alone painting them,” he said. “What gave you the idea, anyway?”

“Oh, the painter downstairs used to do them before he died. So when Mistress Hull said she needed some more, I obliged.”

“So you were actually two dead painters.”

“I guess so,” I said, sighing regretfully.

“You should be ashamed,” he said.

“I would be, but I hadn’t time for it. It’s not easy, trying to make a living, you know. Everybody says good Christians should care for widows and orphans, but I guess they just overlooked me—and I’m both.”

“I’m aware of that,” he said and looked away. And I knew he wouldn’t be saying more, even though there was more inside. I couldn’t help wondering what it was. But I thought I might know because the edges of his ears turned red in a way that would have been almost endearing except that he was promising to be such an interfering burden in my life.

Gusts of rain blew down Seacole Lane, rattling the house signs and rushing in noisy torrents from the leaden-faced downspouts at the corners of the steep tile roofs. Beneath the overhanging second stories of the houses, a slight man wrapped in a heavy black cloak and hood made his way toward the Saracen’s Head. Hurriedly, he pounded up the outside staircase in the courtyard to a little room under the eaves and threw open the door without knocking.

Maître Bellier sat at a table lit by the feeble light and warmed by the even-feebler heat cast by a charcoal brazier that stood on a tripod in the corner. He was wearing a heavy, fur-lined robe and hat with earflaps. On the table before him lay a series of curious antique medallions, which he was inspecting with the aid of a glass. The room filled with the smell of wet wool as Eustache threw off his long black cloak.

“Well?” said Maître Bellier. “What is the news?”

“I began by making inquiries. This man Crouch is a well-known occultist, given, they say, to the most dangerous practices of diabolism and necromancy.”

“
Hmm
. Interesting, but not unexpected, given the nature of the manuscript he was in search of.” Bellier’s face was calm, as he inspected the agitated servant who stood before him.

“More to the point, last winter he engaged a dowser called Blind Barnabas, who lived with his widowed daughter, a midwife, in Chicken Lane, to assist him in finding a treasure. Two gentlemen went with him, but Blind Barnabas never came home. He was found with his throat cut the next day, outside the walls, at a building site in the ruins of the Old Temple.”

“Aha, Eustache, our lost treasure. A determined man, this Crouch.” Bellier looked quietly amused.

“Some time later, a roof tile fell mysteriously on this Goodwife Forster, the daughter, and killed her. But not before she had told everything she knew to her gossips, one of whom is called Mistress West, the wife of the proprietor of a sordid tavern in Fleet Lane called,
hmm
, the Goat and Bottle, I believe.” Eustache rubbed his hands together to warm them at the brazier.

“The two outsiders who knew of his discovery conveniently dead, eh? He might as well have written us a letter saying that he has our book. His tale of sharing it was an invention.” Bellier was now listening intently, his chin sunk in his hand as he thought.

“No, wait, I think not. Two men accompanied him on that midnight expedition from which Blind Barnabas did not return. One was some sort of painter, whom the tavern keeper’s wife knew by sight, since he lived across from her establishment; the other was a lawyer, she thought, but she didn’t know his name. There was a great scandal in the neighborhood when the painter’s corpse, as full of holes as a dovecote, was delivered to his widow by a man who claimed he had been beset by robbers. Shortly thereafter, the lawyer appeared and searched the house, taking away all the furniture, leaving the painter’s widow bereft and lunatic.”

“A charming trio of adventurers,” said Maître Bellier, and an infinitesimal, pale smile crossed his face.

“But wait—a little while after that, the occultist Crouch came and made inquiries, offering to assist the widow, but when he found that the lawyer had taken away everything in the house, he was beside himself with rage.”

“Aha. Then we must find this lawyer. He is the one who has what we want. He obviously got hold of the manuscript when he took possession of the painter’s goods.” Bellier tapped his fingers on the table impatiently. Eustache was so often slow to perceive the obvious.

“That is what I thought, but hear what I have just heard this past hour and you may come to another conclusion. The widow of the painter, the lunatic, has been given a position and pension by Bishop Wolsey, the King’s Almoner and closest advisor, who had, before this time, no previous connection with this family. They were all abuzz with it at the tavern. No one can understand how it happened. They say she must have become his mistress. She has new dresses; her debts are paid; she has bought new furniture…”

“
Mon dieu
,” whispered Maître Bellier, turning linen white. “This could only happen if she had provided him with something of great value…”

“Or it could be to buy her silence.”

“If that is so, then our worst nightmare is fulfilled. The Church is on the trail of the Secret. Our mortal enemy…We are all dead men when this news reaches Rome…” Bellier stood, bracing himself by placing his hands on the table. They were trembling. To be burned alive for heresy was a fearful fate.

“Master, you must examine all the possibilities logically…”

“Yes, logic, logic…” muttered Maître Bellier, now pacing the room, his eyes desperate. “We must see whether the lawyer experiences a similar turn of fortune. Do we have anyone in Wolsey’s household?”

“No, but we can warn our agent in Rome to watch this Wolsey’s correspondence…”

“Good, good. But wait—the King’s Almoner is an ambitious, worldly man, they say.” Bellier’s face looked suddenly hopeful. “What good would our Secret do him in Rome? None! No, he will serve his king before his Pope. There is a good chance he will keep the Secret to himself, if he has it, and bide his time…” Bellier paused, looking back at where his servant was still trying to warm himself. He was nearly wet through, and shivering. “I want you to discover, Eustache, how much this woman has revealed. Or if, pray God, it is only a carnal relation that brings her this good fortune. Follow her. We must know. In the meantime, I myself will make subtle inquiry about this lawyer. I will pretend to have legal business, perhaps a land title, yes…we may have to end by silencing them all. If it is not too late…”

Ashton sat alone at a narrow scribe’s desk in the antechamber to Bishop Wolsey’s cabinet, his even-featured, pale profile intent on the papers before him. With an oddly precise motion, the quill in his big hand traced across the pages, recopying and then translating annotated drafts of the King’s Almoner’s latest letter to France. A few coals glowed in the grate, and dismal gray light shone through the narrow window onto the page. He paused and with one hand brushed his unruly dark curls back from his forehead. The flickering firelight caught on his intent face. He frowned, bringing his brows together almost across his nose. His whole face managed to look truculent and grief stricken all at once.

Spring, cold and damp, had made his heart melancholy. Once again, it was Master Tuke who had followed Wolsey to the council, but for once Ashton hadn’t minded. He wanted to be alone, to hide his confusion. It was the very season two years past when Mistress Lucas had sent the letter breaking their engagement in favor of a betrothal to a wealthy older neighbor. Putting down his pen, he saw the whole scene again in his mind; still yellow with fever, his future shattered by an Italian crossbow bolt, he had stood in front of her father’s door, to find it barred against him. There on the steps, with the birds singing, he had read the cutting words, penned in simple girl’s handwriting.

“I did not know my own heart well enough,” she said, but then she had listed his faults, so many faults! He could see her father’s hand in that list. He had called him a “little man of no estate.” He ground his teeth with the memory of the insult. His left hand began to draw inward, his fingers folded in, half paralyzed, as it had been before his recovery. Unconsciously, he unfolded them with his right hand, pushing them straight again. He had willed his hand well again, willed it with pure rage, and the determination to be avenged. Ha! He wished he could show them now the rewards open to the servant of a great man like the bishop. How poorly they had calculated, that ambitious chit and her father. They had made one mistake. A man of intellect can go anywhere. Too bad a humble country esquire wasn’t worthy of being received at the great bishop’s court. He felt aching and feverish, as if the surgeon had cut away the bolt a second time. Damp weather, he ruminated. The damp brings it back.