“He came to the salon, a painter from Italy, looking for a model and a muse, and he found La Lune,” I continued.
My grandmother came to me, took me by both hands. Her eyes flitted from mine to the ruby necklace around my neck and then back to my eyes.
“You don’t know what you are opening yourself up to, Sandrine. Please let me help you. Take off the necklace.” Her voice was anxious and hoarse from the scream.
I wrangled out of her grip, put my hands up to my neck reflexively, and protected my treasure.
She pried my fingers away and grabbed for the necklace.
I jerked back and moved away from her before she could touch me. “Leave it alone.”
She came after me. My beautiful grandmother who entertained dukes and counts and Paris’s elite looked half mad as she lurched at me and the necklace, preparing to rip it off my neck. Maybe I should take it off? Maybe she knew something I didn’t? I reached up to help her. Found the clasp.
Suddenly, sickening nausea overwhelmed me. I wanted desperately to throw up, to get rid of something poisonous inside of me.
My grandmother was still pulling. The necklace dug even deeper into my flesh—it was choking me, it was going to break apart, it had to, it couldn’t hold under all her pressure—but miraculously, the necklace remained intact.
The nausea came again. I started to cry. Part of me wanted to take the necklace off for my grandmother’s sake, but instead I pried her fingers away and pushed her.
I watched her stumble and fall backward, landing in a heap on the floor. She only missed hitting her head on a chair by fractions of an inch.
What had I done? Why had I done it? I had shoved my grandmother. Almost hurt her. With shaking fingers I pulled my robe tight and tied it so my neck was covered, so she couldn’t see the rubies.
“What were you doing to me? You could have choked me. What are you trying to stop?”
She was still on the floor, staring up at me. Her fiery hair had started to come undone, and her own necklace was askew, the string of opals half flung over one shoulder. Her eyes blazed.
“You have to let me help you,” she pleaded, and gestured to the walls. “You can’t have guessed at this story. How did you discover it?”
“It came to me.”
“Yes, yes, it did. Don’t you understand what that means? Do you think it came unbidden? This should be all the proof you need that you aren’t yourself. The witch has taken you over. You need help. This isn’t your story, Sandrine. Don’t you see?”
“Not my story? Of course it is. Cherubino came to Paris to paint for the king and found the most important muse of his career. Because of him, the king gave her so many jewels and so much land she never had to lay with anyone who didn’t please her again. Not the way you do. If they are stinking or fat or ugly, you still have to open your legs for them to keep yourself in style. But not La Lune.”
“Stop!” she cried.
“Why? You don’t like the truth? You want to pretend that she didn’t exist? But she did. And Cherubino did. He chose her for his model, and he taught her to paint. To paint like a man. It was all she’d ever wanted. And when he went to Prague to paint for the emperor, they went together.”
My grandmother put her hands over her ears.
“No, you have to listen,” I said. “You need to hear all of it. Cherubino fell under Rudolf’s spell, or perhaps it was the other way around. But either way La Lune was of little interest to Cherubino any more as a lover. Yes, he still painted her, still needed her to pose for his sensual paintings . . . and she obliged, so he was able to create painting after painting of the most depraved acts. The more disturbing the sex act, the more Rudolf adored the painting. Cherubino posed her with other women, with other men, with several at once in orgies. Using myths, he painted her as Europa with the bull, Leda with the swan . . . He painted her debauched and conquered. And while he painted her, she would look at her lover and long for him to touch her again. To come to her bed. She asked him once why he stayed away, and he turned on her, railing and shouting and asking her if all that he was giving her wasn’t enough. She was living in a palace, had no want for anything. There were treasure chests of silks to dress in and expensive jewels to wear.
“But he never admitted the reason he’d left her bed, never told her what she suspected and then finally proved. He never came to her any more because Cherubino had become Rudolf’s lover.”
My grandmother talked softly as you would to a child. “You have to let me get you help, Sandrine. You desperately need help.”
I pushed her arm away. Took her by the wrist and pulled her over to the wall, pointing at the painting. “Why are you afraid of this story? It’s our story. Look at her. She’d learned from her mother that pining away for a man, giving your heart to a man, was to invite disaster and risk sorrow. Pain was not for her. No, never. Not for La Lune! Never for La Lune. But there she was in Prague, pining away for Cherubino, and he was lost to her.
“And so she went to the gold maker’s lane.” I pointed to the next section of the mural on the wall. “You can see it here. A winding road just behind the castle. Here in these eleven small shops all of Emperor Rudolf’s alchemists lived and engaged in a darker art than the making of trinkets. Rudolf was convinced that if he brought the finest minds to Prague—mathematicians, astrologers, mystics, scientists—together they would discover the secrets of the universe. These men all engaged in the search for the philosopher’s stone, the Elixir of Life, that fabled and elusive preserver of souls. There, on the golden street, magick was for sale. And La Lune had the money to pay for it—”
“Don’t you realize that you could not have found this out on your own? There is no way you could have learned this any other way?” my grandmother interrupted.
“La Lune visited the street every day for one month, working with the astrologer’s wife, Hertwig, whose magick was rumored to be the strongest of anyone’s in the city. First Hertwig made brews to mend La Lune’s heart so she would start eating again and regain some of her beauty. Sadness had robbed her of her appetite, and she no longer interested Cherubino even as a model. Too thin, she no longer fit the image of the lusty woman in the paintings.”
My grandmother had been standing, but now she sat down on the edge of the bed. She looked pale and pained, and part of me wanted to soothe her, but the other part of me didn’t care about anything but the story.
“Hertwig’s teas and infusions helped. La Lune’s appetite returned and with it the luster to her hair and the glow to her cheeks. Cherubino began to paint her again, but not to make love to her. She was determined to have him back. They had to be as one, the way they had been before they’d come to Prague. And to do that she needed to be more than a moist nest for him when he wanted a female vessel. She had to be irresistible.