Wolf on a String Page 15

  “Madam,” I said, my voice thickening, “I am not so qualified as you may think. I’m sure that Dr. Kroll—”

  “Oh, a fig for Kroll! I tell you, he knows nothing.”

  I gave my hand a gentle tug, but she held me fast by the wrist.

  “Do you find me pretty?” she asked, peering closely into my face.

  “Certainly, madam,” I answered.

  I glanced towards the window and the pallid wintry day outside. I thought of Jeppe the dwarf, how he had stopped there and peered in. What if someone were to do the same now, and spy me fondling the bosom of the Emperor’s mistress?

  “I’m not so much as I once was—pretty, I mean,” she said. “But I am shapely still, do you not think? Infants are a burden, but I gave all of mine out to wet nurses, as I’m sure you can tell.” She had taken on a feline stillness, her gaze at once piercing and softly remote. “You’re trembling,” she said. “I can feel it. Do I disquiet you? Are you afraid of me?”

  “I worry, madam, that someone in the street might—”

  “Might see us? Might see you, with your hand in my bodice? You must not worry. His Majesty doesn’t care, you know, what I do, or whom I do it with. He has his toys, his games, his naughty pictures that his court painters make for him. And his girls, of course, and boys, he has them, too, by the score.”

  There was a vein throbbing in the flesh of her breast; it was as if I held some plump warm living creature in my hand.

  “How much of the hour has elapsed, I wonder?” She looked about vaguely. “You have no clock. Rudi has hundreds—did he show them to you? Such a clamor when they chime! When it does not give me the megrims it makes me laugh, which makes him cross. He’s such a booby.”

  She stood up suddenly, freeing my hand and letting it fall to my lap. She did up the hooks of her gown.

  “So I shall not die, you say, and old Kroll is right.” She shrugged. “Oh, well. I rather liked the notion of myself a corpse, all pale and still and at peace. Do you ever wish to be released from this bad world?”

  “To die, you mean?” I asked.

  I was looking up at her. My own heart now was making a sort of agitated booming in my breast.

  “Yes, to die,” she said. “I do, often. My life is nothing but tedium; I cannot value it.”

  Her tone so belied her words that I had to smile. She laid her fingers against my cheek, and then sat down again.

  “Ask me something,” she said.

  “Ask you what?”

  “Anything. Anything in the world.”

  I did not hesitate, although no doubt I should have.

  “Why will His Majesty not marry you?” I said.

  She stared at me blankly for a moment, then drew back her head and laughed. I had a vivid picture of myself taking her by the shoulders and fastening my lips to her tender throat, yet at the same time I was in a sweat of terror—anyone might look in at that window, at any moment.

  “Well,” she said, still laughing, “I did say you might ask anything.”

  She put a fingertip to her chin and pursed her lips and turned her gaze upwards, considering.

  “Let me see.” She crossed one knee on the other and jiggled her foot. “He never wished to marry, I believe. His mother, that hag, persuaded Philip of Spain to engage his daughter the Infanta Isabella to him when the girl was five, but nothing came of it. Later on Maria de’ Medici was offered to him as a bride, but he eluded her, too. He can be very clever and cunning, when he wants, you know. Of course, he could never marry me, even if he wished to—the court would not have it.”

  “And are you not more persuasive than the court?”

  “Ah, fear not,” she said, with wistful amusement, shaking her head, “Anyway, why do you think I would want the old goat to marry me? I’m happy as I am. Behind my back they call me the Invisible Mistress, to mock me, not realizing that is exactly what I wish to be, and to remain—invisible.”

  She took my hand again, but this time only to hold it between both of hers in a way that was hardly more than amicable, as if we were two children, playing at being grown-ups.

  “And now it’s my turn to ask you something,” she said.

  “Of course, madam.”

  She gave my hand a reproving little shake.

  “You must call me Caterina, or Cate. That is how my friends address me, if I have any friends—though you are going to be one of them, of course.”

  I look back to that day and try to see myself as I was then—that is, I try to recall what I was thinking—but in vain. I was swept up in a mindless transport of mingled wonderment, fright, and confused desire. That such a woman, set so high in the great world, even if her position was unacknowledged, should be sitting here before me, confiding in me as if I were already her lover, seemed at once outlandish and peculiarly fitting.

  Her hands holding my hand were soft and cool. I could feel the smooth yet slightly brittle stuff of her gown against my fingers and, under the gown, the warmth of her lap. Her hair today was coiled in two braids above her forehead on either side; her lips glistened pinkly. I could feel yet in my palm the imprint of her bare breast that she had led me to caress, so tenderly, so teasingly.

  “What is it you wish to ask me, madam? Cate, I mean.”

  “Just this,” she said. “Did the Chamberlain’s men find what it was he set them to search for in the moat?”

  This was not at all a question I could have expected, and it sent a chill into me. I took away my hand once more, though she strove playfully to keep it captive.

  “I don’t know what they found,” I said, “if they found anything.”

  “And what do you think they were looking for?”

  “A blade, perhaps,” I said, “the one they thought Jan Madek used on Magdalena Kroll. But the effort was wasted.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “Madek did not kill the girl. He was dead before she died.”

  She frowned.

  “Before?” she said.

  “Yes. Her father examined Madek’s corpse. The young man was already dead when Magdalena Kroll was murdered. And he did not drown himself, as I at first imagined he must have done.”

  “Then what killed him?” she asked.

  “First he was tortured and his eyes were put out; then he was strangled with a cord.”

  I had meant my words to shock, which only shows how little I knew this lady yet.

  “Ah, I see” was all she said. She frowned again, thinking. “I thought it was something else.”

  “Something else?”

  “That the Chamberlain was searching for. He pretends to be my confidant, but there are things he does not tell me. A strongbox—did he mention anything like that?”

  “No,” I said. “But I have heard talk of it before.”

  At this she fairly pounced. “From whom?”

  “From Schenckel, the dwarf.”

  She made a grimace.

  “That toad,” she said, but distractedly, for she was still deep in thought.

  “And what would have been in this locked box?” I asked. “Something of value, something precious, surely?”

  She nodded, looking away, her brows drawn together in the shape of a chevron.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, “very precious, I think.”

  There was a tap at the window then, and she looked up with what I thought was, despite all her brave talk, a flicker of alarm. It passed when she realized who was there.

  “But see,” she said, “here is Petra, ever prompt.”

  She gathered her skirts close about herself and stood up. She was a changed woman now, flirtatious no longer, though not because of the maid’s sudden appearance; I guessed she was still brooding on that missing strongbox.

  I wanted to press her to tell me what exactly was in it—for I was sure she knew—but I did not dare. Sometimes even the mildest inquiry gives off an alerting flash.

  Petra was in the doorway. Caterina proffered me her hand, which I took lightly in mine
, and bowed.

  “Good day, professore,” she said, all coolness now.

  “Good day, madam,” I replied, my manner formal too.

  She went to the doorway and out into the street. Petra, behind her, turned to me with a fleeting, brazen grin. Then they climbed into the carriage and it rolled away.

  I waited all afternoon for Serafina to return, but there was no sign of her. At evening I went down and took my dinner at the Blue Elephant, despite the memory of that execrable dish of mutton stew. The innkeeper’s wife was not to be seen, which I was glad of—there had been enough of women about me for one day.

  The day, however, still had its night to come.

  Having finished my dinner, such as it was, I took up my mug of ale and went and sat in the inglenook, by the fire, as I had sat with the old soldier on a night that seemed so long ago now as to have been in another time, in another life. I fancied I could detect Caterina Sardo’s fragrance on my fingers yet. Why, really, had she come to me today? I was not so besotted, or so simple-minded, as to think it had been purely for the pleasure of having me put my hand on her heart. Why had she asked those questions about Chamberlain Lang and what he might have been hoping to find sunk in the mud of the Stag Moat? I had by now heard more mentions of the strongbox than I could count: what was Caterina’s interest in it? Once again I saw myself as a lost traveler starting awake at nightfall in a place I did not recognize, with only darkness before me, darkness and danger.

  I had returned to Golden Lane and was asleep in my bed, with the lamp doused, when a sound wakened me. I looked to see a dim figure in the room, shimmering towards me. I sprang up with a cry, thinking to be attacked—I was remembering the sinister visitant of the night before—but a hand reached out and touched me.

  It was Serafina.

  Naked under her flimsy shift, she slipped into the bed beside me. Her delicate hands were chill, and mine must have been too, for she shivered at my touch. When she kissed me I led her gently to open her mouth, for, although it shames me to say so, since the day when Bishop Malaspina told me of her disfigurement, I had been eager to explore inside that poor damaged hollow, where only the stump of a tongue remained.

  She clung to me and wept. I touched her face, the buds of her breasts, the soft, warm scrap of fleece at her lap. Yes, we kissed and touched, but all the same, though I know I will not be believed, fondling was as far as it went throughout that long night. It surprises me, to think myself so chivalrous. Or was it that I had been too distracted by recollections of another’s breast, another’s warm and warmly promising lap?

  II

  JANUARY

  1600

  15

  Surely there could be no better blazon to lift the heart on a clear, crisp winter morning than the brassy blare of a bugle. That day, in the first month of a new year and a new century, even Rudolf the Melancholy smiled to hear those raucous notes. He hurried to the nearest window, his pale feminine hands clasped at his breast in excited anticipation, and peered down into the broad courtyard below. A multitude of townsfolk were massed there, filling the entire square. Through it a squad of halberdiers were clearing the way for the royal bugler; following after him, four sturdy young men bore between them on their shoulders a wooden pole from which was suspended by thick leather bands a very large, flat packing case wrapped securely in canvas.

  I was among the band of courtiers gathered under the magnificently vaulted ceiling of the Great Hall of the Royal Palace, and counted myself the equal of any there, even Felix Wenzel—even, for that matter, the all-powerful Chamberlain Lang. You shall judge of the great transformation that had come about in my fortunes when I describe the outfit in which I disported myself that day.

  I wore a shirt of finest linen with a soft lace collar and matching lace ringlets at the wrists; a doublet of dark blue velvet boned to make a narrowing to the waist; wine-red trunk hose, paned, complete with a stiffened codpiece; silk nether stockings; and shoes of Spanish leather with silver buckles. I was, it pains me to confess, particularly vain of my hat, which was of soft velvet like the doublet, gathered into a high crown and decorated with a jeweled band and a jaunty white cockade at the left side. Over the weeks I had grown the beginnings of a pencil beard, which today was oiled and neatly pointed, and complemented by a fine stiff mustache; the beard and whiskers, to my pleased surprise, had come out a softly reddish hue. My hair was cut short and brushed well back—the Blue Elephant’s lice were the merest memory now—with a woven lovelock trailing gallantly over my right shoulder.

  I wore a ruby ring, too, a gift from the Emperor himself. It was not so large or ostentatious as the one Chamberlain Lang liked to display, but to my eye it was more tasteful, by far.

  So, as you see, I had undergone a marvelous transfiguration, overseen and financed by a great lady. I was, in short, quite the gentleman.

  “Come,” His Majesty said, “come, let us go down.”

  He scurried to the door, with the rest of us behind him in a rush.

  In the courtyard the four young men had halted, looking very solemn and self-conscious. They had come on an immense journey, by foot, all the way over the Alps from Venice, bearing their precious cargo.

  Rudolf thanked them, one by one, and presented to each of them a gold Joachimsthaler, specially minted for the occasion, while the crowd, held well back by the halberdiers, elbowed and jostled, craning for a rare view of the people’s reclusive sovereign.

  He directed that the package, which when seen close to was indeed a mighty thing, should be brought up to the Long Corridor. So the four carriers, a pair in front and a pair behind, shouldered the two ends of the wooden pole again and tramped up the stone stairway, with us courtiers in their wake. Rudolf skipped ahead of them, glancing back anxiously, as if he feared that, after lugging their precious cargo safely over the mountain passes in the depths of winter, the quartet of bearers might still come to disaster in this last short stage of the journey.

  Jeppe Schenckel, climbing the stairs beside me, snickered. “Look at him,” he murmured, gesturing after the Emperor. “Like a virgin on her wedding night, worrying for her maidenhead.”

  In the picture room the package was set down on the floor and stripped first of its canvas covering, then of layer upon layer of soft carpet cushioned on cotton wadding, until at last, to a general and deliberately exaggerated sigh of wonder and admiration, the gorgeous treasure was revealed, aglow in its heavy gilt frame.

  It was The Feast of the Rosary—how clearly I can bring it to my mind’s eye, even yet—a scene commissioned a century past from the master painter Albrecht Dürer by the banker Jakob Fugger and a guild of businessmen in Nuremberg, Meister Dürer’s birthplace. Since its completion, the picture had stood as a panel above the altar in the church of San Bartolomeo in Venice, a favorite place of worship for the numerous German residents of that seaborne city.

  For years Rudolf had been lusting after this masterpiece, in which not only his ancestor the Emperor Maximilian I is depicted, but also, in the background, the painter himself, peering out at us with a curiously uncertain eye. At last the painting was in his possession, and now he stood gazing at it, where it leaned in its glory against the wall, the packaging strewn at its base like the jumble of a lady’s petticoats that she had let fall at her feet.

  Without taking his greedy gaze from the picture, Rudolf flapped a hand at the courtiers crowding behind him, dismissing us from his presence.

  In silence we shuffled out of the room, leaving him to his pleasure.

  On the morrow there would be a banquet to celebrate the acquisition of His Majesty’s heart’s desire—his agents had paid nine hundred ducats for the painting—but for now he wished to savor it in solitude, as if indeed it were his bride and he must be left alone with her.

  At the foot of the staircase I was accosted by the Englishman Sir Henry Wotton, diplomatist and, as everyone knew, master spy, who plucked at my sleeve and drew me to one side.

  “How pleasan
t to see His Majesty so pleased,” he said genially, “eh, Dr. Stern?”

  He was a clever fellow, this Sir Henry, and handsome enough, in his way, clad in purple silk, with a beard fuller than mine, and a humorous though ever-watchful eye. I have an instinctive wariness of these silky-smooth Englishmen. But this one’s Latin was faultless and elegant, and I always would forgive a man much for a well-turned phrase.

  “Yes, Sir Henry,” I said, “His Majesty does love a picture.”

  “And this one in particular, it seems.”

  “It’s a masterly thing, and he is a connoisseur.”

  “Indeed, indeed.”

  He had an unctuous way of bowing, lowering his head but a little way and softly closing his eyes for the space of a moment.

  We walked out into the square, on the far side of which the great dark brown masses of the cathedral loomed somberly in the pale winter sunlight. The crowd had not dispersed and there was an air almost of carnival. After long weeks of bruised gray skies, a little early sunshine worked a remarkable effect in this ice-bound, land-locked city.

  “I am told, sir,” Wotton said, glancing carefully about him, “that you have close access to the royal ear.”

  I wondered who would have told him so, but then bethought myself that he would not have needed telling, since after all my standing with the Emperor was by now a broadly known fact.

  “His Majesty is well disposed towards me, yes,” I said, putting a certain stiffness into it so that he should know there was no intimacy on offer here.

  He nodded again, smoothly smiling.

  “You are almost, I hear, a member of the royal household.”

  I knew well what this was a sly allusion to, and gave him a cold stare.

  “You seem to be talked to by many people, sir,” I said.

  He gave again a slight bow, still smiling his bland diplomatic smile.

  “It’s true, I’m keen of hearing, and catch at things in flight—it’s what I was trained for, to listen well.”