Chapter Two Cleves
CHAPTER TWO
Cleves
She is far too busy to attend to the artist. A queen’s territory is like the innards of a clock: intricate, each part relying on the other to work correctly. And the queen must be at its centre. So it is with Cnothan: her pile of correspondence is extensive.
The artist sighs.
She has another letter from Ezzonid: I am already at the docks, cousin, so there is no point in telling me to turn around. Your missives will not reach me. With a fair wind, I shall reach your little castle …
She bites her lip to keep from swearing. Any guest, even family from her homeland, is unwelcome. She does not need people scurrying around her castle peering into her business. She sets the letter aside, since it requires no reply, and casts her eyes over the next.
I have something of a cough at present, and have been forced to take to my bed. I find my mind wandering to the past as I lie here …
Lady Paston – her first and, for a long time, only vulnerability. She must give her response proper thought.
The artist sighs again.
Cleves pulls her glasses from her nose and leans back in her chair, observing the man who sits with charcoal-sooted fingers in the corner of the room.
“Is my pose not to your liking, Master Holbein?” she says.
The man smiles apologetically. “I simply cannot draw you flatteringly at such an angle, Your Majesty.”
“And what makes you think that I would concern myself with flattering angles?”
“Everyone prefers to show the best of themselves, do they not?”
She supposes she must give him credit for saying “everyone” rather than “every woman”, but then again the people of Avahuc do not concern themselves with gender, so perhaps it is merely cultural.
“I believe that actions, not appearances, show the best of a person.”
Master Holbein offers a little seated bow, and his canvas – a piece of blue-washed paper secured over a wooden board – dips with him, offering a tantalising glimpse of his sketch. “And the best of my action lies in the mastery of my art, Your Majesty.”
Cleves laughs. She puts her glasses down upon the pile of parchment – accounts, correspondence, pleas and offers. She studies Holbein more carefully.
“You know I have no desire for this portrait. My husband is the one who commissions you,” she says.
“This is true.” There is a frown line between his eyes which grows deeper as he speaks. He is stocky, clean-shaven, and the only mark of status he wears is a single gold chain around his neck. His skin is a warmer brown than hers.
“Correan aspa pir esperido,” she says, stumbling over the lisp of the accent.
Holbein gasps, then grins. “Her Majesty knows my language?”
“A very little,” she says.
What follows is a stream of words in Avahucian. She barely recognises two of them, and can no sooner guess at his meaning than she can guess at the notion of enjoying lovemaking with a man. She laughs again. “Stop, sir, I beg of you. Do you mean to humiliate me to my face?”
Holbein covers his eyes with one hand. This she finds curious too – is his over-gesticulation nature or performance? The former, she decides.
“My humble apologies,” he says. “My homesickness made me eager for conversation in my native tongue.”
“If you answered my question in your native tongue, I am none the wiser,” she says.
Holbein licks his lips. The question she asked him in his own language – “has my husband not commanded you to make me appear ugly?” – should make him nervous. He cannot very well admit to it if those were Henry’s instructions.
“I believe His Majesty wishes to circulate a variety of portraits of his queens for the pleasure and education of the people,” Holbein says.
Nobility and royals across the known world have always done as much.
It is a way of offering a connection between subjects and their rulers.
It cements status, for if one is deemed influential enough to have a portrait – and to have that portrait replicated in multiple great houses – then one must be influential indeed. Recognition is power.
Artists like Master Holbein have amassed fortunes on their ability to take a likeness that flatters while reflecting the subject’s true features. She doubts that many of his patrons have ever requested that he make his subject less attractive.
“You take pride in your work,” she says.
“I do.” He hesitates, and she leaves him space to talk.
Cleves has several talents, but one of her greatest lies in being able to put anyone at ease, no matter their rank.
“There is a moment in the process where I know – aha, I have got them. Captured their essence. It might be a little fold in the chin, or a certain sharpness to the eye, or the texture of the skin. But once I have that, all else flows from there. The sensation when that happens … it is glorious, Your Majesty.”
Cleves leans forward, her elbows on the table. “And what if that is denied, or you never get that feeling?”
“Then I am very unhappy. I do not like those portraits to be seen.”
“But sometimes they must be. Sometimes I imagine your employer prefers the portrait that does not contain the … essence.”
Holbein juts his chin. “I have never permitted that to happen across my whole life.”
She sees the conflict in his eyes – he does not need to confirm his instructions from Henry.
It is imperative to Elben’s king that Cleves be perceived as a joke, a failure, an abomination.
Such humiliation is designed to keep Cleves in line, to remind those loyal to her that she can never be taken seriously as a ruler.
A woman scorned can harbour no thoughts of rebellion or defiance.
Here, in Holbein, is a man who wishes to reflect the truth of her, but whose paymaster wishes him to tell a lie.
Which shall it be? Integrity or survival?
Cleves knows which she would choose, but Holbein is one of those rare humans who will stake all on integrity.
There are more of them around of late. Queen Boleyn.
Queen Seymour. Look where it led them – death and exile.
Strange, poor creatures. She will never be one of them.
Her eyes land on the papers before her. The one on top is a report, in her master of horse’s scrawl, on the latest additions to her menagerie and their associated costs.
“Follow me, Master Holbein. I have a scheme that will make all parties contented,” she says.
She has never had a throne – the royals of Ezzonid have not settled for such things for nigh on twenty years – but she has her servants carry a sturdy wooden chair from the banqueting hall into her receiving chamber.
The space is, like the rest of Cnothan, a mishmash to its core.
She has adopted the Ezzonid manner of painting elaborate murals onto the ceilings.
She looks up at skies of palest blue and pink, rimmed with clouds and fharah – the many-coloured, troublemaking birds that are a common sight in the wildernesses of her home country.
But the floor is Elbenese terracotta, made by artisans in the neighbouring town of Cnorgleo from clay taken from the riverbanks of the Fietherford.
Holbein sets up his easel in the centre of the room, facing the chair.
Cleves settles into the seat, plumping the cotton sleeves of her blouse and smoothing her burnt-ochre gown.
She pats her hood, making sure that her hair is tucked beneath it properly.
She does not usually wear hoods, the informal nature of her castle not demanding it, and her hair rarely cooperates when she attempts to cover it.
She perches the glasses on her nose. She does not require them unless she is reading, but they will contribute to the look.
“This is excellent,” Holbein is muttering. “Straight on, so you are looking at me directly. No games. This might be it.”
“Not quite, sir,” she says, and gestures to Fergus, her master of horse.
He is leaning against the door frame, watching the affair with his usual sardonic smile.
He moves aside and ushers in an assortment of animals.
A single hunting dragon, a handful of small pigs, two greyhounds, a horse and six or so ferrets.
“Come to me, friends,” Cleves says, patting the bottom of her skirts. Holbein watches, eyes wide, as one of the pigs and a few ferrets settle themselves in her lap. The horse nuzzles her shoulder from behind, and the rest gather around her on the floor.
“Where is Lelij?” she asks Fergus.
“Behind me. He’s shy today.”
From the doorway, a snout appears, sniffing the room.
Cleves clicks her tongue several times and holds out her hand.
A servant places a segment of orange onto her upturned palm.
The snout sniffs again, and then a head follows, and then the whole creature.
It is a lopsided, crooked-limbed beast, with a tongue so large it lolls out of its mouth.
It lollops into the room and swipes the orange segment, before licking the remnants of juice from Cleves’s hand.
“Here, Lelij,” she says, gently drawing the creature by its collar to sit at her feet, displacing one of the greyhounds.
Holbein stares at it.
“What is such a beast?” he says, kneeling so that he is at the creature’s own level.
“Come now, Master Holbein, surely you have drawn many gargoyles in your time,” she says, raising an eyebrow. He looks between her and Lelij, and then both he and she begin to laugh.
“Oh, very good, Your Majesty,” he says, patting his chest. “Very good indeed.”
He begins to work, his fingers deftly swiping the charcoal this way and that, taking a brief likeness of her and her pets for reference.
When he returns to his studio, he will work the sketch up into a full painting.
Cleves will look like the foreigner she is, in her Ezzonid fashion, her glasses rendering her bookish.
Her animals will make her an oddity, will conjure the smells of unwashed fur and moulting hair.
Henry will be able to overlook the fact that Holbein has painted her as she truly appears – clear skin, eyes like flint, regal posture – because he will be able to point to the gargoyle, that ugliest of beasts, at her feet.
And he and his friends will laugh and compare the two.
I would rather marry the gargoyle, they will smirk.
And in their ridicule, Cleves and Holbein will both be safe.
“Yes,” Holbein mutters, his fingers moving faster. “I have you, Your Majesty. I have you.”