The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley Read Online Free PDF Page B

the wretched stuff.”
    “I’ve always wanted a Turkish carpet. Is it big?”
    “Little. They put it on the table. So now I have a fat Flemish wife, fat Flemish furniture, and a carpet on my table. And all for success in my trade. A devil’s bargain. The world in return for marriage to a dowdy woman. Pity me, O goddess.”
    She sat down beside him on the bed, reached behind her, and unlaced her bodice. As he saw it loosen, he plunged his hand down it, while with the other he pressed her backward. As she felt his weight on her, her mind soared. It was a special kind of triumph, to lead a newly wedded man by the nose like a prize bull. And married to a younger woman than herself. What a fool that woman was to think that a worldly man like Rowland Dallet would be interested in her for any other reason than advancing his trade. She enjoyed imagining the look on the silly sheep’s face if she could somehow magically see him there, and see her victorious.
    Once, just after the wedding, she’d seen the girl leaving Saint Paul’s, on Rowland Dallet’s arm. Now Bridget Pickering was envisioning in her mind the plump, almost childish little figure she had seen. What a fool: pink cheeked, round faced, with simple blue eyes, a spattering of ridiculous freckles across a tip-tilted nose, and gingery, unruly hair that crept from beneath her matron’s headdress. I’ve won, she said to the image. The girl’s freckled face vanished, and he was in her. The sweet sensation flowed through them both. The warm sweat mingled on their bodies, and his breath was coming in fast, broken gasps when there was the fierce crash of the bedroom door flung back suddenly. There was the heavy sound of men’s boots and the howling of women in an outer corridor.
    “There she is, the harlot! The whoreson’s letter was no lie.” Captain Pickering’s voice drowned out the frantic cries of her maid. “Damn you! Damn you both to hell!” he shouted. Fear and shock froze her to the bed in the very act. The painter shrieked as he was pulled off her by several sets of work-roughened hands. Before she could struggle away, the captain had grabbed her by the hair and pulled her face to within inches of his. Her eyes widened with horror at the sight of her husband’s weather-beaten, hard-boned face and ferocious blue eyes. “Liar, cheat! You’ve deceived me for the last time!” he cried. She could hear the thrashing and screaming of her lover as he fought to free himself from her husband’s sailors.
    “For God’s sake, no!” she heard herself shouting as the captain pushed her aside and drew his short sword. Mindlessly, she wept and clawed at his coat, crying over and over again, “No, no!”
    Captain Pickering, shaking with rage, plunged his short sword through the painter’s naked belly. The painter’s face distended in an unearthly cry. Two sailors held down the bleeding body while the captain pulled his sword free and, with a curiously cold precision, cut Rowland Dallet’s throat from ear to ear. Blood splattered everywhere. There were pools of it, rivers, oceans. It flowed between the floorboards and spotted the bed curtains. The blood seemed to enrage the furious husband even more. “Whore, whore!” cried the captain, as he battered at her with his bloody fists, then flung her like a bundle of old rags into the slippery puddle at the foot of the bed. But before she lost consciousness, to the very end of her days, Bridget Pickering would swear that she saw a hideous, naked, dark shape leaning over Rowland Dallet’s corpse, smiling and picking through it for something with long, scaly fingers, the way a greedy child might pick the silver coin out of a Christmas pudding.

    I woke up craving oranges, oranges from Spain. In all my life I’ve had but one. I’ll have oranges, too, I thought, as I popped my feet out of the bed. The rain had washed away the clouds, and new dawn shone pink and inviting through the studio window. Barefoot and in my