And then came the day that changed their relationship, when Cherubino walked in on La Lune, who was in her bed, servicing the king.
Cherubino’s jealousy was a wild and living force. It took him by surprise and left him defenseless. Soon his paintings of her showed her in suggestive poses. No longer a Madonna or saint, she was now a seductress. Cherubino left one out to dry, and that night the king discovered the erotic painting and, without asking, took it for himself.
When Cherubino found out, he went mad. Screaming and shouting, he demanded that La Lune ask for it back. It was not hers to give away. When she refused, saying she could never ask that of the king, Cherubino stormed out of her rooms and didn’t return for days.
After a week without him coming around, La Lune was bereft. Her education was incomplete. She hadn’t mastered spatial relationships. She didn’t understand perspective. She needed him back.
So La Lune told the king that Cherubino had been approached by the duke of Milan to paint her for his palace and that Cherubino was considering leaving the French court.
It was a lie, of course. But she needed to do something to force the king into action. She’d correctly guessed that the idea of her face and her body gracing some other royal chamber would disturb him.
The next day Cherubino returned, saying that the king had commissioned a second set of paintings, but only if La Lune was the model. So relieved that he’d returned, La Lune threw her arms around him and kissed him.
Until they touched that first time, neither of them had known they desired each other. La Lune believed she only craved art lessons. Cherubino believed he only wanted a muse.
In a fever, I painted them that afternoon consummating their affair. In one panel La Lune lay under Cherubino’s body as he thrust into her and she received him with delight. In another she hovered above him, her breasts grazing his cheeks. I painted him kissing the lips on her face and those between her legs. I painted her wanton expression. The sweat on his forehead. The single bright drop of blood on her lower lip from when she bit herself as she exploded with him inside of her. In my mural were sexual positions I had never known about—never experienced with my husband, nor with Julien.
In my delirium, I not only saw the lovers; I heard what they said, too. Cherubino promised that these embraces were for her alone and that these intimacies would bind them together forever.
Her poses for his private paintings became more lewd. He positioned her with her legs spread and her hand touching her nether parts. He painted her bathed in sweat and writhing with passion. When she saw how provocative the paintings were, how much of her soul he’d captured, she made him promise never to show them to anyone.
“No one will ever see them,” he swore. “They are for our own gallery. Just for our pleasure,” he told her. “To commemorate for all time the wonder of us.”
And it was wondrous. La Lune had taken men to her bed in exchange for payment since she was fourteen years old. She had been well schooled in the art of pleasuring. She knew how to be a lover, a confidante, a model to painters, a muse to poets and writers, and, when necessary, a mother. But she had never craved a man. Never been moved by one.
“I don’t just want to know how to draw . . .” she told him one night as they lay in bed, smelling each other’s sweat as their skin cooled.
“What do you want?” he asked as he stroked her hair.
She raised up her face and mouthed the words against the pink shell of his ear.
“To learn to paint,” she whispered.
“If I teach you, it has to be in secret. Here. Under the stars. With only the bells to know.”
“Won’t I need a model?”
“I will be your model.” He laughed.
Over and over she painted him, laughing with delight as she began to manage his likeness. He would stand behind her and correct her. Sometimes even taking her hand, putting his fingers on hers so she would feel the fluidity of the line, so she could sense how sensuous a movement painting a body should be.
Sometimes when her lover slept, La Lune sketched him, trying to capture the expression on his face while he dreamed. Painting each other was an extension of their lovemaking. They caressed each other all over again with brushes and sensuous oils.
Then came the scene of Cherubino opening a letter with a royal seal. Emperor Rudolf had invited him to Prague, to bring La Lune and create a royal gallery of secret erotic paintings. Gold coins came with the letter, along with a promise of more awaiting them.
It was almost as if the lie La Lune had made up for the king had come true.
“But how did he know about your erotic paintings?” La Lune asked.
“I sent him one as a gift.”
“Why would you do that?”
“He is well-known to collect paintings of a suggestive nature. The more explicit and varied, the better. He pays far more for them than your king is paying for my murals.”
La Lune hurled her paints at her lover, shouting that he had promised he would never show those paintings to anyone. That he had given her his word.
“So many men have seen you, what does one more matter?” he asked.
She slapped him for insulting her and not understanding, and then collapsed weeping, realizing she had done the unthinkable. Broken the golden rule that her mother had taught her, that her mother before her had taught her: Never fall in love. Do not become vulnerable.
“No man has ever seen me as you have seen me. With emotion on my face!” I was shouting the words. I was feeling the sting of the slap on my fingers. And when Cherubino bent to whisper to her and apologize and cajole her, I felt his lips on my lips, and I felt myself forgive him for what he had done to my ancestor more than three hundred years before.
Chapter 20
My grandmother’s scream contained no words. Neither was it the shriek of a woman in pain. It was an inhuman sound containing all that was terrifying about the dark, dreadful about a fire, and sickening about a massacre. The noise made me drop the brush. I saw crimson paint splash on the yellow carpet. I stared at the stranger in front of me.
Unrecognizable in her shock, my grandmother stood in the doorway to my room. Her face contorted with terror while her body spasmed in a series of tics. Her mouth was frozen open, and what emerged was never-ending.
What was wrong?
I turned away from her and looked at what she was staring at. Saw it all as if for the first time. But how was that possible? I must have been the one responsible for the mural. My fingers were paint-stained. I still held the palette. And yet I didn’t remember having painted what I saw.
The walls were ablaze with colors. I’d used bold strokes and painted better than I ever had before. As frightened as I was, for a moment I thought of Monsieur Moreau and how proud he would be that I had given voice to what was inside of me. Maybe I could bring him here to show him what I’d done. I was certain he would respond.
But what had I done? How had I done it? Fleeting memories of the last hours came to me as I concentrated. I began to remember how I’d felt while I’d painted, as if I were in the audience watching a drama unfold and simply illustrating the story.
What power had taken over me? From whence came what my brushes had painted? I had no answers but was certain the tale I’d told contained information that was crucial for me to know and understand.
“See, Grand-mère.” I pointed to the walls. “I found our history.”
She grimaced. It made me strangely pleased that I was causing her some distress. She had held this story back from me. She’d been at fault in doing that.
“I didn’t need you to tell me after all. Cherubino met La Lune when he came to Paris to paint for the king. They lived in the bell tower that belonged to a church on rue du Dragon, and that’s part of your house.”
“But how did you learn all of this?” She was staring at the walls.