The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley (31 page)

“Start studying. No visits until you figure it out.” The rain was beginning to lessen, and the sound of thunder became distant again.

“I can’t read, Hadriel. You have to help me.” The waves began to subside.

“Help you? Whatever for? I’m the angel of art, not the angel of helping demons. Besides, you called me a feather ball. No, it’s your job, Belphagor.”

“But how will I begin? How can I do it?”

“Give up on these ships, Belphagor. You have to make a trip to Paris. Maybe a nice tour down the Loire, and a visit to some monasteries—French heraldry, it’s difficult, you know. All those quarterings.” The rolling clouds were beginning to separate. The ships were spread all over the channel now, only three others within sight of the flagship. Beyond them, the dim gray line on the horizon grew taller and formed itself into the dappled outline of rocky cliffs. France, and safety. The galleons pitched hideously on the choppy seas, the still-gusting winds driving them farther from their destination. The admiral ran his signal flag up the masthead to gather his ships to him, and from ship to ship, across the deadly gray ocean, the sound of trumpets calling into the emptiness reverberated and was lost.

There was no view at all from a gun deck except of cannons being lashed down and everyone being sick as the ship rolled. The passengers were all weeping and praying, and even the horses below in the hold were making a horrible noise. There were five hundred people squashed onto that ship, and hardly anyplace to hold on, so when the ship tipped first one way and then the other, Nan and I were bumped around considerably. Then the ship slid so far we could see water coming in at the holes where the guns are supposed to go out, which I am sure was not the way things were intended to be. Then I prayed very hard and recounted all my sins and said I was very sorry, but in the middle of it I thought of Robert Ashford and that kiss which surely must have been a sin and I couldn’t keep my mind on being sorry, so I tried to pray for him, too. But it was hard not to be selfish in my praying because I kept thinking about how very awful it would be to drown in that tiny dark space with all those people clawing and grabbing and trying to open the hatches, which had been shut tight somehow, I think to keep the water out.

But then we heard a sort of grinding sound and a lot of curses, and the ship stopped moving, and the gunners said we had run aground. The ship was sort of tilted, but at least it was not moving around and making everyone sick anymore. Then I heard a lot of rattling and clattering above, and also footsteps and voices, and so Nan and I peeked out of one of those little holes for the cannon and sure enough, they were lowering the boats to take the princess and her escort to the beach. First they sent her knights out, but the waves were very high and they had to row very hard in those little boats to get them there, and they had to leap out and wade to the shore anyway. Then they took her and her ladies and Mother Guildford, who were quite a few, and a big wave came and splashed all over them. Then they all had to wade to the beach through that cold water, except for the princess, because one of her knights carried her through the water to the beach.

“Well, I imagine
that
will be worth something,” said Nan, who is cynical about chivalry and says if you think about anything, it all boils down to money.

“Nan, he is devoted. My book has told me all about how it is a gentleman’s pleasure to serve his lady honorably in such ways.”

“You and that book,” growled Nan. “You live in a cloud. What will you do when it rains?”

“It’s rained quite a lot that I can see, Nan, and my cloud’s still here. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I like it that way? I’m grown up, Nan, and I can choose. I choose to be in a cloud instead of in the gutter.” Nan shook her head. There was a clattering sound, the hatches were thrown open, and daylight came in. The ocean air smelled better than the awful smell of sickness on that crowded, dark deck.

“Where are we?” called someone to the sailors above.

“Outside Boulogne. We went aground at the entrance to the harbor. You should see those French grandees all waiting on the dock.” Nan and I scrambled up onto the slanting deck with all the rest, but I would not be parted from my box and my folded easel that was all tied with twine even though they told us no baggage. But then I looked over the side at the very tiny rope ladder that swayed and wiggled, and the very small boat bobbing up and down at the bottom of it, and I was frightened of climbing down even without my things, just by myself. I think I must have looked very dismayed because a nice man with an earring who was a sailor laughed at me and asked what was in my boxes, my jewelry? And I said more important than that, it was my paints and my easel that I couldn’t get another of, and I needed them for my living and would have to be a beggar if they were lost. And so he climbed down the rope himself with my box and his friend took my easel. They also helped me and Nan, although I did cling on in the middle of the ladder and couldn’t move even though people were talking to me from the deck and also from the little boat and saying I should let go and keep moving or I would be there until doomsday. I think I hate ocean voyages.

We were all wet, and the sky being all gray and cold did not help any. It was also very confusing and people were shouting, and the grandees were making speeches of welcome, and people seemed to have forgotten everyone else, particularly people of no account like ourselves. So while they were taking the horses off and making them swim behind the boats Nan and I went to find a place to get warm. We found a tavern with a sign of a giant eating several whole sheep in his huge mouth, where they were all speaking French, it being in France and all. But it was a problem, with all that strange language just rattling by my head, managing to get a place by the fire. Besides, all these horrible foreign sailors just crowded around and said things that were not in my French lessons.

“I thought you knew French,” said Nan, after she slapped some man who tried to put his hand in my bosom.

“I do know French. The right kind. This is the wrong kind. Besides, it’s much too fast.”

“In short, we’re trapped in a foreign country where we can’t even make them understand we want to buy a meal, not sell our favors. What on earth are we going to do?” I had never seen Nan so rattled.

“
We
are going to order something to drink,” I said, and, speaking in my very best court French, I said we had just come from England and we were servants of the princess and we would have food and drink. I am not sure it came out right, because everyone laughed, and some man puffed himself out and pretended he was a lady with a long train, and some other people shouted to the proprietor using my exact same words and also my accent, which I gather was humorous to them, and a big striped cat came and lay on my feet. In short, it was the Goat and Jug all over again, except that we were inside, which is always a mistake. Then some woman in a foreign headdress came and whacked them all with her broom and said more things I did not understand, and her husband came and asked if we had money, which I did understand, and soon all things were settled.

“So you see, Nan, I
do
know French, after all,” I said, as we settled in to some very good hippocras and also a chicken and some bread.

“Not enough, that is plain to see. Whatever will become of us here?” she asked, looking around unhappily at the crowded, low-ceilinged room with its floor of pounded dirt. Around us were crowded sailors of all nations, drinking and playing dice. In a corner, a woman sat on a man’s lap, and several drunks were singing, each one something different. But there was a big, warm fire, and being dry again was a great encouragement.

“Why, I’ll paint old ladies young, and young ladies beautiful, and all men with fiery glances, and we’ll save our money and go home again,” I answered.

“You can’t do that,” said Nan. “Wolsey wouldn’t have you back if you left the princess, and she’s going to be queen, and then queen mother, and we are going to be surrounded by all these foreigners
forever
.”

“It will all work out, Nan, you’ll see,” I said. “We’re going to live in a palace and wear silk every day.”

“A
French
palace,” Nan growled.

It took several days for the princess’s wedding train to be reassembled, and while we waited for news of the ships, I did several small sketches of ladies in the great house where the princess and her suite were staying. While the gilded carts, and horses, and pavilions, and gowns were being made ready for the journey to Abbeville, where she was to marry the King of France, the terrible word came to us that the
Lübeck
had been lost. Of five hundred soldiers and sailors aboard, only a hundred had been saved, they said, washed onto the rocks with the loose wreckage of the ship. Everyone rejoiced that the ship was not one that carried the wedding plate. But my heart sank and my hands shook when I heard the news, and in hopes that it was some other ship, I sought out the officer who had brought the message and found him putting his borrowed horse in the stable. He was hollow eyed and unshaven, a ghost in the festive atmosphere, where livery-clad grooms were gilding the hooves of white palfreys, and whistling stable boys jostled past carrying jingling, newly shined harness.

“You are the man from the lost ship?” I asked, and at the sound of my voice, he turned from the stall.

“I am,” he said slowly.

“It…it wasn’t the
Lübeck
, was it?”

“The
Jesus of Lübeck
, yes,” he said.

“I…I need news. Of a man…and a boy.” His face was grim and silent.

“There were six boys on the
Lübeck
. None came ashore.”

“Not…not a cabin boy. A boy in a russet jerkin and gray hose. Brown hair. Just fourteen.”

“Your son?”

“No, my ’prentice. He…he ground my colors.”

“Him I don’t know. Was he on the roll?”

“Maybe…maybe not.”

“Well, then, perhaps there’s a chance he’s alive. They’ve brought the living into Calais, where many lie sick. You might send for word. Did you say your colors? Then you must be the paintrix I heard of.”

“Then you spoke with my boy? You must have seen him then…before.”

“No, it was Wolsey’s man. Ashburn, or something like that. He kept staring at the
Great Harry
, before we lost sight of her. He told me there was a woman on board that was a painter, bound for France. He said he was doomed, whether he lived or died. It made him as brave as a madman when the storm hit.” The hollow-eyed man looked at me, then shook his head. “Funny. You don’t look like a temptress. He asked me if I’d ever had a fatal attraction. I told him I wouldn’t think of it.” Master Ashton. Then he must have felt it, too. The white-hot silver in the veins, the pounding heart. The sin was in us both.

“Then he was saved, too?”

“Him? No. They say he was on the upper gun-deck, when one of the serpentines broke loose. I heard he was crushed, mistress, and swept overboard. Him and the others. Gone. So many gone. Their breastplates pulled them down. Two brothers I had on that ship. I keep thinking—” He shook his head, then turned toward the stable door.

“But Master Ashton wasn’t in armor, I’m sure.” I wanted to see him, to speak to him. How could he be gone? That strong life that mocked fatal bolts and deadly poison, taken by a common accident? I could see him as clear as clear in my mind, the torches sputtering above him, the lapping waves of the night harbor sounding beneath his voice. But already his features had begun to fade. Why hadn’t I ever made a drawing of him?

“Why me? Why was I, a sinner, the greatest sinner of us, spared? Why my poor Jemmy taken?” The hollow-eyed man was fast going away into his own thoughts.

“Couldn’t you see them swimming?”

“Swimming? No sailor can swim. It’s bad luck to have a swimmer on board. Why was I spared? Have you an answer, mistress? Does anyone have an answer?”

“God has the answers. It is His will.” I answered without thinking, a numb answer from a heart too frozen for anything but mindless speech.

“God! What good are His answers when He never says them? Those are no answers at all. God is silent! Why is our sin so great that God must be silent?” As I fled from the man I could feel tears running down my face, and at night his morbid questions haunted me. If only I had not paid Tom’s way; if only I hadn’t been so selfish, so willful, and so proud of my cleverness. I’d brought him to his death. And Robert Ashton. How strange, how stupid. Our lives had only touched, and then he was gone. Is it possible that all over the world there are people who might care for each other, but they never meet? Or if they meet, they say hard things instead of kind ones, and so never discover what was actually meant to be? What a cruel punishment, the cruelest of all, to know in the last moments of his life what could have been. Oh, where does all this wasted might-have-been love go, when it is vanished and thrown away? Is it all saved up somewhere, all the tears for something that, but for an accident, you might never even have known was lost? Stop this, Susanna. You will drive yourself mad.