The Serpent Garden (epub) by Judith Merkle Riley

Author:Judith Merkle Riley
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: ePub Bud (www.epubbud.com)
Published: 2008-01-07T22:00:00+00:00

Now here is the problem we woke up and found in the morning. No one could sail for France after all until the weather was better, which looked as though it might not be for weeks. That whole castle and city and every manor house roundabout were all crammed full of people who had come to escort the princess to her ships for the honor of it and also to rub shoulders with anybody important whom they might meet. So it started out like a celebration, except that it rained, which spoiled it. Nobody could leave before the king, because he is king, and the king was going to sail out to sea in his very favorite ship, which is named after himself, to accompany his sister partway. But he couldn’t sail, so they couldn’t leave, it was too wet to go out, everyone was bored, and even cards and dice weren’t enough.

Then Milord of Suffolk discovered that I was there, and since he was a simpleminded fellow with an eye for the ladies, he decided that it would be amusing, since they were all gathered up together there, to have a series of drawings made of the “great beauties of the court.” He put the idea to the king, who regretted greatly that his own court painters were not there to execute the idea. But then he was convinced by Suffolk and even helped to select the ladies himself. So that is how I got a bed in the castle after all, squashed in with three ladies’ maids and an embroiderer, which Nan said was beneath me, but I was glad of the close company of respectable folk. I was also kept plentifully busy in the week that followed, both with painting and with kneeling. For the King passed through the upper apartments of the tower right often, they being on his way from his chamber to the gate, and whenever the king passed through and his eye lit on a person, then that person must kneel, right in the middle of everything until his sovereign would raise him up. But it was all very fine and thrilling, and I had the honor of having the king himself view my drawings and pronounce them “very like.”

I was in the upper apartments, all surrounded by chattering ladies pointing out the corrections and improvements they wanted in their drawings, when I noticed Master Ashton’s man, Will, standing beyond the open door of the antechamber, his hat in hand, motioning silently for me to come. Having promised the ladies everything, they at last dismissed me and I tied my drawings into the portfolio and fled toward the door.

Outside, the rain that had battered at the apartment windows for days had turned into a heavy ocean mist, obscuring such light as had managed to make its way into the castle apartments. The feeble illumination dulled the colors of the arras and the stiff, silk dresses of the ladies. Even the smoldering oak logs in the great fireplace scarcely took away the dank.

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