The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley (45 page)

“It’s none of your business, Mistress Susanna. Great people must look after themselves, and small people must get out of their way. You keep yourself to yourself, and don’t go listening around corners anymore. But I’m glad you made that nasty fellow cough up your fee.”

The king’s physicians were arguing at his bedside in Latin, holding a glass retort filled with the royal urine to the light from the window as they debated. On either side of the bed, his gentleman attendants stood in clusters in front of the arras, trying to follow those fragments of the language that they could comprehend.

“They’ve said another dose of purgatives; I’m sure that’s what it was.”

“It’s the urine. I think they said he’d passed a stone.”

“The stone. A man recovers from the stone.”

“I thought they said bleeding.”

“They’ve tried bleeding.”

The long-robed physicians nodded at each other learnedly and spoke of the overbalancing of humors and the value of a compound of mercury often used in such cases.

The king, the center of all this interest, lay in the ending throes of a gout attack. The covers over his feet and legs had been put on a frame to keep them from contacting his twisted lower limbs, but all night long he had writhed and tossed, shaking with chills and fever. The physicians had tried applications of heat, then applications of cold. At last repeated bleedings, the applications of certain holy medals, and doses of opium seem to have brought the attack under control.

“Tell me, Duprat, has my wife inquired of my health?”

“Only the orders of the physicians barred her from your room, Your Majesty.”

“My affairs…I am better now. Bring me my foreign correspondence.”

“Your Majesty,” said the shocked voice of the chief physician, “you must have absolute bed rest to recover. Do you hear? Absolute. Only the lightest food. And then, when you are up, regular hours, rest, no feasting. It is the great effort, the late hours of these last months, the travel…”

The king struggled to sit up. Immediately, two of his gentlemen assisted him, propping up his head with additional pillows. There seemed to be an evil smell about the bed. Sulfur, perhaps, or a bit of brimstone, but the gentlemen took it for the smell of illness, or perhaps medicine.

Sitting on the head of the king’s bed, Belphagor, his old smoky self, too transparent now to be seen at all, leaned his head attentively toward the king, taking in the whole scene.

“Rest, Your Majesty. You must rest to get well,” said the first physician.

“Get away from the foulness and the smokiness of the city air. You must travel to Saint-Germain and rest,” said his assistant.

“Ask about the queen,” whispered Belphagor.

“My wife, how did she spend the night?”

“In prayer, Your Majesty. She worked on Queen Anne’s cope all the afternoon with your daughter, Claude, and in the evening went to the chapel to offer prayers for your recovery.”

“They lie,” whispered Belphagor. “She tapped her foot impatiently and yearned for dancing and music. Do you remember how bored she acted the last time you gave her one of the crown jewels? That kiss was hardly a peck. She has eyes only for jousting champions. You must show yourself young or she will take a lover.” Belphagor’s voice was cynical and insinuating. The king started.

“Never!” he said, into the air.

“What was that, Your Majesty?” asked Duprat, but behind him the physicians began to mumble in Latin again about dementia. The last sign.

“Duprat, I wish to plan a grand feast, to thank the burgesses of Paris. And after that…”

“Your Majesty! Your health!” said the physician.

“Nonsense. Who is the best judge of my health but me? I’ll have entertainment. I am still young. A day or two in bed is all I need. Send for the queen.”

“Never let them see you are weak,” came Belphagor’s sly whisper. “They will try to steal the throne. Feasts, parties, dancing. Live like a king! Confound your enemies! Captivate the queen anew!”

“Why should I live, if I cannot live like a king?” said Louis the Twelfth. “I want feasts, parties, dancing! In the spring, I shall go to Blois, and hunt again. I am renewed!”

Belphagor, finer than a vapor, passed through the tiny circles of frosty glass in the window, well pleased at the damage he had wrought. The plan for the regency was afoot.

Originally, Belphagor had thought to flit right home to the house in the Ile de la Cité that Crouch had rented for him, but he was simply too tempted on the way by the excellent possibilities he saw. He sent a runaway horse through a group of bundled-up children who had been playing ball in the street, then he dazzled the eyes of an elderly merchant with the reflection off a gilded saint’s statue in a niche, so that he did not notice the cutpurse who relieved him of his money with a single stroke of a sharp knife. Then he tripped an old lady carrying a basket of clean laundry and floated like a cloud of malice into a bakery, where he caused all the bread to fail to rise. By now he had quite forgotten to go home, but the bells of a church tower recalled the hour to him, and he whisked to his own house, where his new servant, a very promising young student of theology from the Sorbonne, awaited him. It was such a tempting little soul, all fresh and unused, and full of holy aspirations, that he simply couldn’t resist. Slowly, slowly, that’s how to do it, he had told himself, and so he’d begun by buying the starving fellow a dinner. Then he’d offered him a job—just a few harmless tasks. Reading aloud, running errands. The gratitude in the hollow, hungry eyes pleased Belphagor. If I get this tasty little priestling trained right, he thought, I can finally get rid of that Crouch. Between this little bookworm and those sly fellows in the cellar over there across the river, I can get anything I need to know. Besides, I know enough about being a gentleman already.

At the door, he was met by his imps, who were now in human form, dressed in the handsome Moorish regalia he had acquired for them. The house, an old, turreted place on a corner, had a cozy, homey smell to it: sulfurous. It looks quite elegant with those imps at the door, thought Belphagor. I think I should always maintain a town residence from now on.

“Has Crouch come back yet?” he addressed the first Moor in impish language, and the creature responded in the squealing, grumbling sounds with which it customarily spoke:

“No, he’s been off at the public baths all afternoon, being stroked by female humans and eating pies.”

“Wastrel. Is Nicholas here yet?”

“He’s been waiting this half hour in your study, Lord Belphagor. He’s been eating pies, too.”

“Has it done him any good yet?”

“No, he’s as thin as ever. Humans are ridiculous; no matter how they try, they are stuck with whatever shape they come in.”

But Lord Belphagor, dressed in a heavy, fur-lined, brocade gown in the French style, a handsome silk shirt and velvet trunk hose, his splendid flat-brimmed velvet hat trimmed with a diamond and an egret feather, had passed through his great hall, where an array of meat pies and cheeses and a large decanter of wine had been laid out on the table. Belphagor inspected them. Wine half gone. Good. Inside his study, Nicholas, his skinny cheeks distended and still munching, was sitting in Belphagor’s big barrel-backed chair and toasting himself by the fire while reading.

“Oh, Lord Belfagoro!” he said, jumping up so suddenly that the crumbs fell from his lap in a shower. “I was just reading ahead. This is a very interesting manuscript.”

“Don’t bother, my boy. Just give me back my chair. Mighty interesting, isn’t it? In my opinion, the man’s a genius. Took no end of trouble to get hold of this manuscript copy from one of his friends. They said it would be the book to change the world. Pity I can’t read. But you—ah, yes, you’ve opened the world of learning to me, a poor old gentleman. How grateful I am!” Nicholas’s eyes slid sideways, but Belphagor didn’t notice, he was so pleased with his new gifts of devious speech. “Now, let’s just start where we had left off, dear boy….”

“Here we are: ‘The Way to Govern Cities or Dominions That, Previous to Being Occupied, Lived under Their Own Laws.’”

“Yes, that’s it. Read on. I am learning all the time.” Nicholas read on in a clear, slow, voice:

“‘And whoever becomes the ruler of a free city and does not destroy it, can expect to be destroyed by it, for it can always find motive for rebellion in the name of liberty and of its ancient usages, which are forgotten neither by lapse of time nor by benefits received….”

“Ah, clever. Yes, clever. One must know when to destroy and when to keep, and what benefits may be expected by each course. That Machiavelli fellow is brilliant. How much I am learning from him! Yes, yes. ‘The unarmed prophet fails.’ What do you think of that, Nicholas?”

“Our Lord Jesus Christ was unarmed,” said the theology student. A puff of steam came out of Belphagor’s ears, but he maintained his calm facade.

“And he came to a bad end,” said the demon. “Painful. Sad. No grandchildren to charm in his old age. It’s nothing a man would seek out. Now, wealth…”

“All over the earth his church converts the heathen, so the unarmed prophet…”

“That was then, and this is now,” said Belphagor hastily, for argument wearied him.

“But if something is truth, shouldn’t it be so for all times, not just one?”

“You’re tiring my mind, young man. Read on.”

But scarcely had Nicholas gotten to the chapter on controlling new dominions acquired by the power of others or by fortune, than one of the imps knocked on the study door.

“Lord Belphagor, it is the Duc de Bourbon who wishes to have an audience with you,” said the Moor in impish language. But Belphagor’s brain was still operating in French.

“Ah, the Helmsman! Show him in, show him in! That’s enough for today, Nicholas. My servant will give you your payment for the week. He speaks no French, but just show him your open palm, and he’ll understand.”

The Due de Bourbon gave the scrawny young man in the student’s gown an arrogant stare as he strode into Belphagor’s study, and Nicholas felt as if he were slinking out like some stray cat. But outside, he paused. The table was still full, and the wine only half drunk. The two Moors were chatting to each other in the oddest, grumbling tones, as if they hadn’t noticed him. Nicholas paused, reversed his hood like a huge satchel, and began to tuck away the extra pies into it. Then he paused. Voices were coming from the study, and Nicholas, who was very curious about Belphagor, who wasn’t like any Italian he had ever known, paused. Belphagor, who never noticed whether doors were open or closed because he was accustomed to passing through them, had left the study door open.

“The plot progresses, my lord of Bourbon. I visited Les Tournelles today, and I assure you, after what I have done, the king will die shortly. How goes the plan for the substitution?” Nicholas’s blood ran cold. A regicidal plot. Oh, Lord, he had already heard too much. He was frozen to the spot. Suddenly, the cheeses didn’t look as tasty anymore.

“It goes well. The society has undertaken to bribe one of the stewards, who will purchase an infant from the orphanage. Even if all are arrested, my role will never be discovered.”

“Well then, the fall of the Valois is assured.”

“It is that I wish to speak to you about. That is why I meet you here, without them, and not in the hidden chambers. The Priory wishes to return the True Blood to the throne. The closest descendants of the Merovingians are the Houses of Lorraine and Guise.”

“So?”

“Why Lorraine? Why Guise? Why shouldn’t I, Charles de Bourbon, become king? Why should the Helmsman serve others? I was not born to serve. With your help, Lord Belphagor…”

“Oh, delightful! The betrayers betrayed! I love a double deception….” Belphagor’s hoarse voice rose to a high-pitched squeak of pleasure.

“Now, this is how it must go. When they create the false heir, I want to be made co-regent with the English queen. I will control the military. Then, I will seize power with your help. The false heir will meet with a little ‘accident.’ But through my wife, I have a direct right to the throne. My son will inherit my crown, by right of blood and by right of power. I am as close to the throne now as was Henry Tudor, who has created the new English dynasty. Bourbon must rule….”

Nicholas paused over the pies, then swept them all into his hood and reversed it again, where it bulged like a peddlar’s pack. Whatever his politics, Belphagor’s pies were excellent. Then he stood behind the two imps, clearing his throat to get their attention, with his palm outstretched. They didn’t notice. He coughed gently. Still, they didn’t notice. Afraid to reveal his presence in the outer room by more noise, he tugged on the sweeping satin sleeve of one of them, who turned around with such a fiery eye that the poor student was suddenly terrified. The imp chuckled, then reached into a big purse and dropped Nicholas’s payment into his hand. Nicholas’s eyes grew huge. Instead of ten sous of copper, the imp had dropped livres of gold into his hand, as if he didn’t understand the difference. Well, I certainly won’t tell him, thought Nicholas, as he fled from the mysterious house and into the snowy street.