Free The Creation Of Eve by Lynn Cullen Page A

lodged her pomander, with its attendant reek of civet, into her nostril. "Please close the curtains."
    I sat back with a pang. I remembered Tiberio and me, notebooks and charcoal in hand, sketching the ruins on the Palatine Hill on my first visit to Rome, four years ago. Cows were cropping weeds around the fallen stones as I worked.
    "Well done," Tiberio had said, looking over my shoulder. He backed away as Francesca inserted herself between Us. "Clever how you portray Time reducing the great to rubble, signorina . I can feel the sadness in the air." His gray-green eyes lit in a smile. "The Maestro will love it. He is the King of Melancholia."
    "I don't Understand it," I said. "He is the most beloved and respected painter and sculptor in the world. Popes, dukes, everyone sings his praises. If I were he, I would be insufferably joyous."
    Tiberio shrugged before Francesca blocked him from my view. Now the mules stopped, jolting me back to the present and the condesa's watchful frown. We had come to the playing field for one of the cane tourneys of which the Spanish are so fond, where the gentlemen form teams and challenge each other on horseback, throwing darts made of river canes at each other. It was the first of such events since Her Majesty's arrival. Curious to see at last this uniquely Spanish spectacle, I let Her Majesty's page hand me down from the litter and escort me to my place among the lesser ladies lined Up to either side of the Queen at the edge of the tourney field.
    The wind tugged at the voluminous veil I wore in the style of the women of this country. Unless given permission by her husband or father, a lady never goes abroad in public without one. How I wished to cast off the bothersome thing, itself a castoff from the condesa--it smelled of her, like old fur, masking the pleasant weedy scent of the field and the aroma of horse and leather. But good manners and Francesca, free of the servants' wagon and tottering my way, kept me wrapped in my cocoon.
    The gentlemen lined Up to parade before Us. They looked so very manly on their prancing steeds, their armor shining in the brilliant winter sun, the tails and bright trappings of their horses blowing in the wind. I peered down the row of ladies and toward the Queen, expecting to glimpse her enjoyment of the caballeros , but saw instead that she was biting her gloved fingers Under her veil and fidgeting with the Great Pearl she wore then as on all occasions.
    Then I remembered: Not yet eight months before, the Queen's father, Henri II of France, had died at a tournament celebrating her wedding by proxy in Paris, though it had been a different sort of tourney from the one here. It was the kind where men rode at the lists, trying to Unseat each other with their lances. A splinter from a breaking lance had shot through the French King's visor and pierced him through the eye, resulting, ten days later, in his death. All of Europe had been in shock that so powerful a man had been felled in his prime, all in the name of sport.
    I looked around. Had no one thought how disturbing even a cane tourney might be for the Queen? Though the condesa de Uruena and her ever-present pomander stuck to Her Majesty's left side like sealing wax, and the Queen's chief French lady, the beautiful madame de Clermont, attached herself with equal persistence to Her Majesty's right, both seemed more aware of each other than of their distressed Lady. The Queen's other French ladies were busy, too, still voicing their humiliation and outrage over having to wear the same tired clothes day after day since their trunks had not arrived, while the Spanish ladies were occupied with arranging their veils just so, as to attract the attention of the gentlemen. Francesca, allowed only as far as the huddle of servants at the end of the row of ladies, met my worried gaze.
    As the eldest of our family, I am accustomed to giving comfort. With six girls, a boy, and only one nurse, there is often need for