History's Great Queens 2-Book Bundle: The Last Queen and The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

by Gortner, C. W.

  Cisneros’s face darkened. “What requests, if you please?” he asked through his teeth.

  “All appointments made by my late husband must be annulled. They were undertaken illegally, without my consent. The traitor Don Manuel and his flamencos are to be found and arrested. I understand they have fled into hiding, with a significant amount of gold plate and jewels stolen from my husband’s apartments in the castle. I command you, my lord archbishop, as head of the church, to issue my decree and you, my lord marquis, to enforce it. Anyone who dares give shelter to or hide Don Manuel faces immediate arrest and execution.”

  It was my first command as queen, and Villena’s reaction was predictable, his voice throbbing with barely controlled rage. “Though loved Don Manuel is not, I am no mercenary to hunt him down. Your Highness has perhaps spent too many years watching the Flemish scrape to the French.”

  I elected not to remind him that only a few weeks ago, he’d apparently scraped to Philip with quite the same lack of compunction. But his hypocrisy was expected. In fact, none of these so-called lords sought to support me. They might hold differing opinions as to who should ultimately rule in Castile, were probably at this very moment scheming against each other behind their backs, but on one thing they were unanimous: I must not be crowned. Either my son Fernando or, if worse came to worst, my son Charles. But not me, never me. They had lived too long under my mother’s whip to abide another woman on the throne. With Philip’s death, I had simply exchanged one set of enemies for another. Only this time, I had a weapon. Beatriz’s advice had served me well: There are two kinds of women inviolate in Spain: an expectant mother and a recent widow. I was now both. I’d hoped to forestall my plan until the admiral returned with my father but I could not wait anymore. I had no idea when they might arrive. I had to act.

  I lifted my chin. “Moreover, I want word dispatched to my sister-in-law the archduchess Margaret to send my daughters to me as soon as passage is safe. My son Charles, naturally, is now archduke of Flanders and will be obliged to remain there. But I gave birth to my son Fernando here in Spain and I’ve not yet set eyes on him. He too must be brought to me from Aragón. And you may issue my summons to the Cortes to assemble in Toledo, where I shall also see my husband’s body interred in the cathedral.”

  They greeted my announcement with an astounded hush. I had pondered it for days, ruminating over its outcome, wondering if it would free or ensnare me. For the moment I saw I had caught them off guard. Villena’s fists clenched. Cisneros considered me for a long moment before he said, “Does Your Highness wish to personally escort the archduke’s catafalque?”

  “It is not my wish,” I replied, “but rather my duty. Or would you rather we left his remains here? It’s hardly a suitable resting place for a prince of his stature.”

  Cisneros’s gaze narrowed. No doubt, he had intended on leaving Philip’s body here. He had let the embalmers cut it apart to send his heart and brain to Brussels in a silver casket, according to Habsburg custom. What did he care where the rest of it ended up? Under any other circumstance I too would have left him undisturbed in Miraflores, save for the fact that a queen escorting her husband’s bier afforded me a shield like no other to get out of Burgos.

  “It is a rather unorthodox request,” said Cisneros. “Unprecedented, even.”

  “It’s out of the question!” added Villena. “Your Highness cannot pretend to convey a corpse all the way to Toledo in the dead of winter.”

  “My mother’s body was taken all the way to Granada in winter without undue hardship,” I replied, even as I realized that Villena had guessed my purpose. He knew that not only did I seek to protect myself with Philip’s coffin but the people would see me as I passed through Castile. By putting my tragedy on display, I would reap the sympathy of my subjects.

  “Indeed,” added Cisneros suddenly, and I caught a furtive gleam in his eyes. “And when, pray, does Your Highness wish to undertake this journey?”

  “As soon as possible,” I said, thinking quickly. “Have a cart collect the coffin and assemble the funeral cortege. You and the other lords must of course remain here to oversee my dictates. I don’t require you for this endeavor.” I paused, aiming my next words at Villena. “My lord, you and the admiral hold equal power in the Cortes, yes? Since you deem the hunting down of Spain’s foes beneath you, would you do me the honor of establishing Don Fadriqué’s whereabouts? We cannot convene in Toledo without him.”

  “He will,” interjected Cisneros, before Villena could reply. “You may trust in us, Your Highness.” With a bow, he herded the marquis out like an unruly schoolchild.

  As soon as they left through the front door, Beatriz came in through the back. She had listened to everything through a peephole drilled in the wainscoting. She now stood in the doorway, regarding me with troubled eyes. “Princesa,” she said, “what do you intend?”

  “What else?” I met her stare. “Cisneros thinks I don’t have ears or eyes. He thinks I don’t know he only lets me undertake this journey so he can use it to spread more of his lies. Already, the legend Philip created for me grows. He would spread it far and wide, maybe all the way to Naples. With any luck, it will finally summon my father and the admiral to my side.”

  “Legend?” said Beatriz. “What legend?”

  I smiled. “Why, that I’m mad, of course. Mad with grief. Juana the Mad.”

  FROM THE FROZEN FIELDS OUTSIDE BURGOS, I EMBARKED ON MY voyage to Toledo, Philip’s coffin draped with its cloth of estate loaded onto a sturdy cart.

  I took special delight in ordering Joanna to stay in Burgos. Besides my small retinue of pages, Lopez, and my musicians, I had an escort of sentries and Beatriz, Soraya, and Doña Josefa. At long last, I would travel through Spain with my friends, free of restraint.

  My heart was so full, my hope so enormous I did not care at first that dreary fog and rain wreathed the land. We traveled along the confluence of the Duero, its yellow waters swollen by the rains. I rode a black-caparisoned mare, my women and other servitors behind me, dressed in mourning. A herald held aloft my sodden royal standard.

  We were hardly an impressive congregation but word of my approach went before me, bringing emaciated peasants to the roadside to watch me pass. Some kneeled when they caught sight of me in my black mantle and veil; others genuflected and called out for alms. The misery in their faces reflected the destitution of my native land. The plague had left countless villages deserted and the harvest moldering in the fields. Makeshift crosses littered the vast plains, marking the graves of the dead. Groups of ravens cawed and scavenged, but there were no dogs to be seen and the few cattle I glimpsed looked dead on their feet.

  It was as if all of Castile had become a graveyard.

  I seethed. This was what Philip and his henchmen had accomplished! This was their legacy: poverty and fear and destruction. Once I reached Toledo, I vowed, I would do everything in my power to restore Spain to its former pride. Love had served me nothing; only this land had remained constant, the place of my birth, which had borne witness to my vale of tears. Like my mother before me, I would wage battle against those who plundered and defiled it. I would put an end to the strife, the feuds, the bribery, and the ruthless quest for personal enrichment.

  I would prove myself a worthy successor to Isabel of Castile.

  This beacon of hope sustained me. I endured the pitched tents in fields, the bedding on stony ground, the dry foods and boiled river water. I braced myself with these minor travails for the larger ones that waited ahead, for the war I’d already mapped out in my mind; but I was not prepared, had not even paused to consider, that my own body might betray me.

  The pangs came upon me suddenly, as we rode across a desolate field just outside the hamlet of Torquemada. I gripped my saddle horn, wincing. It was too soon. I still had a month or so left. The child would have to wait. I was expected in Segovia, my first official stop. There, I would be in the care of my mother’s friend the Marquise de Moya and would find
refuge to give birth before continuing to Toledo. By then, I hoped to have word of my father and the admiral.

  I felt my water break and gush from under my skirts. Beatriz heard my stifled gasp and cantered to me. Gripped by pain, I had no choice but to let her help me dismount.

  Lopez raced ahead to commandeer a suitable lodging. Supported by Soraya and Beatriz, I was brought to the stranger’s house destined to be my final birthing chamber.

  SHE TOOK ALMOST TWO DAYS TO ARRIVE—TWO DAYS OF SUCH bloody, bone-sapping struggle that I feared she would be my death.

  Never had a child of mine so tested my endurance; never had one seemed so impossible to disgorge. It was as though after making her decision to emerge early, she had changed her mind and tried to clamber back into my womb. I screamed like a demented woman, railed, and wept. And yet when she finally came in the twilight hour of the third day, she stunned me with her beauty. Covered in mucus and blood, she still glowed like alabaster lit from within.

  Doña Josefa cut the cord binding us, cleansed and swaddled her; from my sweat-soaked bed I asked that she be brought to me. Soraya laid her in my aching arms while Beatriz sat and let tears slip down her weary face. My stalwart Beatriz was far more emotional than she ever let on, and I too felt my eyes moisten as I gazed upon the crying babe who, at the lightest touch of my fingertips to her lips, suddenly went silent.

  She gazed up at me. I could see already that her hair was light auburn, with threads of gold, and as she tried to suck my finger, I sighed.

  “Catalina,” I said, freeing my heavy breast. “I shall call her Catalina.”

  THE BIRTH LEFT ME LIMP AS A WET RAG. WHILE CATALINA LUSTILY suckled at my breast, Doña Josefa and Soraya trudged through that paltry hamlet, gathering whatever fresh foods they could find, tearing live chickens from the coops of astonished peasants too overawed by the fact that their queen had just given birth in their vicinity to protest. Soraya brewed draughts and ladled out soups; Doña Josefa cooked up poultry in a thousand different ways and insisted I eat every morsel. I had lost more blood than was considered safe, yet I wouldn’t hear of anyone sending to Burgos for a physician. I would live, I told them from my bed. I had given birth before.

  I tarried too long. I should have gotten back on my horse, even if I had ended up dying of it. For there, in Torquemada, they found me. They’d had second thoughts; I underestimated their tenacity. Cisneros and Villena and their retainers—they crowded into town and demanded I act as a newly delivered woman should and remove myself to “a castle readied to receive me.”

  The moment I heard those terrifying words, I hauled myself out of bed and issued orders for departure. Only my loyal few obeyed; as I angrily waved Cisneros’s protests aside and mounted my horse, I saw Villena watching from the shadows by the house, staring at me with his unsettling eyes. Did he suspect the limits to which they pushed me? Did he understand that no mortal being could endure this unremitting persecution?

  I think he did.

  The storm struck that night as we traversed the wide plateau. The rain fell in blinding sheets, churning the ground to mud. Finally, unable to go any farther, I ordered a halt and dismounted. I stood uncertain, my cloak slapping in the wind. Confusion and doubt waged a fierce battle inside me; my head pounded with unspoken fears. Where should I go? Where was there a refuge for me? I would never reach Segovia in this state, much less Toledo. I needed somewhere I could burrow in and hide: like a hunted animal I craved darkness and peace without high walls, without fortresses and waiting lords who sought to imprison me.

  Shivering, I whirled about. I searched the night. Then I felt him. Watching me, reveling in my desperation. He had not left me. He was here. Waiting. Anticipating the hour of his revenge.

  He was not dead.

  I let out a strangled gasp, turned, and ran past the astonished pages, stumbling over the muddied hem of my skirts as I reached the cart holding the coffin. I paused, panting. I heard his laughter in my head. He taunted me. He knew what I had done. He knew I had got the best of him, that I was a murderess. Now he would drag me down into hell with him. I must not let him. I must not let him get me. I must destroy him again. Destroy him before he destroyed me.

  Grabbing hold of the coffin’s rungs, I began pulling it from the cart. “Ayúdame,” I cried at the pages and sentries who stood as if paralyzed, gaping. “Help me!”

  My ladies rushed to me, Beatriz at their head. “Princesa, please. Do not—”

  I threw out my hand, sent one of them sprawling. Now the fury erupted, pouring from my mouth like poison. How dare they disobey me? How dare they! I was their queen! They must do what I commanded. They must never, ever, question me!

  “I said help me,” I roared. “Now, do you hear me? NOW!”

  The sentries leapt forward to the cart’s levers, sending the coffin careening onto the field. Mud sprayed as it hit the ground, splashing my skirts. I stood staring at it, afraid, half-expecting the lid to fling open and the cadaver to rear up with a leering smile.

  I heard him whisper—Mi infanta—and I said in a shivering voice, “Open it.”

  The sentries backed away. Lopez and the pages crept to the coffin, hoisting open the heavy lid. They gagged, dropped it, and reeled back, arms pressed to their mouths.

  For a moment, I could not move. From where I stood, I glimpsed cerements, submerged in lime. He did not sit up. He did not turn his dead-blue eyes to me, open his mouth, and accuse me of burying him alive.

  I took a step forward. He lay on a dark satin lining, shrouded head to toe. Even the hands crossed over his chest were wrapped in crusty cloth. As I sought to recognize something that would confirm this…this thing was Philip, the odor reached me, suffocating in its intensity. I resisted the urge to cough, feeling the wind snatch my coif from my head as I inhaled the stench. Whatever the embalmers had used had failed.

  He rotted before my very eyes.

  “The cerements on his face,” I whispered. “Take them off.”

  I felt all of them staring at me in horror. I looked at Lopez. He took a step back. Soraya came forth, past me. She leaned over the body and began to unravel the cerements.

  The seconds passed like years. My breath lodged in my throat. Traces of flesh became visible—an ear, a nose, part of a twisted, blackened mouth. I lifted a hand. She paused.

  “No…no more,” I whispered, and she withdrew.

  It was Philip. Or what they’d left of him. The surgeons who’d removed his brain and heart had butchered him. The eyes had fallen into his misshapen skull. He had no teeth. All that remained of the virile beauty I had once reveled in was his nose, still prepossessing in a face withered as an ancient’s. He looked as if he’d been dead a thousand years.

  There was nothing to fear. Nothing left to hate.

  My rage evaporated. “Close it,” I said. I returned to my horse. Doña Josefa regarded me, my baby girl cradled in her arms. Beatriz stood apart, her shawl clutched to her muddied face.

  “We must go on,” I said.

  THREE DAYS LATER on that long empty road, where only the barren plain stretched about us like a painting done in ocher and black, I looked up from under my veil and saw someone riding fast toward us on a lathered black stallion.

  It was the admiral.

  THIRTY-ONE

  “My father is here?” I looked at him in disbelief, the letter untouched in my lap.

  He nodded, his weathered face subdued. He’d accompanied me to Hornillos, another small town where we commandeered a house. As overwhelmed by relief as I was to see him, his exhaustion was so plain I would have insisted he take to his bed had his news not been so important.

  “We landed in Valencia a month ago,” he explained. “I came as soon as I could to tell Your Highness but you had left Burgos. I had to ride back and forth until I found you.”

  I nodded, the letter like a stone on my thighs. I could not lift a hand to break open the seal, as if my fingers had stuck together.

  I saw the admiral’
s gaze shift to the coffin sitting on the floor nearby like another table, its cloth of estate tattered, soiled. As a frown creased his brow, I wondered what he would think when he heard of that wild scene outside Torquemada, when I lost all control of myself and even struck Beatriz in my haste to get to my husband’s corpse. He had been to Burgos, had been apprised of my decision to bring Philip’s body with me to Toledo. What other lurid tales had been poured into his ears?

  “I used his body,” I said quietly. “He was my shield. I…I thought they’d not touch me if I conveyed his remains to Toledo.”

  Even as I spoke, I realized how bizarre my words sounded, how lacking in reason they must seem to a man like him, a grande who had never experienced the plight of a woman in fear for her life, the rigors of childbirth, the vulnerability of widowhood. How could he understand? How could anyone understand?

  Without warning, tears filled my eyes. I bowed my head. God help me, I would not weep before this proud lord, who’d ridden all the way to Italy to bring my father to me.

  He remained still, watching me. Then he did something he would otherwise never have done in all his years of service to royalty: he reached down and embraced me. I melted against him, felt his hand caress my hair.

  He murmured, “Your Highness need not fear anymore. His Majesty will protect you. This struggle of yours is too much for any soul. You must trust in His Majesty now.”

  Hearing the faint beat of his heart under his stiff black doublet, his breastbone sharp against my ear, I whispered, “I don’t know if I can ever trust anyone again.”

  In response, he retrieved the letter that had slipped unnoticed from my lap. He pressed it into my hand. “Read it. Your Highness will see that His Majesty has every intention of seeing you to your proper estate. He would never have left Spain if he’d known what your husband intended.”