by Andrew Rowen
King Enrique—her guardian—now claimed as heir and successor his Queen Juana’s daughter, also named Juana, not yet three years old. Prior to little Juana’s birth, Enrique had been childless for his entire life, both in and out of wedlock, including for more than a dozen years of barren marriage to a prior wife,7 whom he had divorced for failure of child, and a half dozen years of marriage to Queen Juana before her pregnancy. Isabel pondered that his own servants jested behind his back that the childlessness was his fault—owing to a deformed member—and scorned that he was a blasphemer with young men and boys. Whether these rumors were true or not, she found him a strange man indeed, withdrawn, reclusive, and brooding, and much of what she had seen of his court had shocked her. The women of the court—including even the queen and her attendants— wore scant clothing, and it was obvious the attendants frolicked with the court prelates and noblemen.
Enrique had summoned her and Alfonso to court prior to little Juana’s birth. Isabel had attended the girl’s baptism as a sponsoring godmother and dutifully recited the customary oath recognizing the child as heir to the Castilian throne. But some nobleman since had alleged that Enrique himself had invited a cohort8 to the queen’s bed to produce an heir, intent on precluding the nobility from passing the kingdom to Alfonso before Enrique’s death. Last year, noblemen promoting Alfonso—including the powerful archbishop of Toledo, Alfonso Carrillo—had forced Enrique to recognize Alfonso as heir instead of little Juana. When Enrique continued to deny the child’s illegitimacy, they then had required him to release Alfonso, but not Isabel, to their custody.
Isabel overheard counselors greet Enrique in the alcazar’s throne room on his arrival from a city palace, where he had resided since entering Segovia some nights before. Their speech was indiscernible at the distance she stood, but she strained to understand their voices’ verve and tenor, whether revealing decisiveness, fear, loathing, or something else. Alfonso’s proponents recently had criticized Enrique severely for religious depravity in tolerating the Mudejar,9 Jews, and heretical Christians living in Castile, and they had forced the appointment of a commission to recommend reforms for the kingdom’s governance. But Enrique had rejected the commission’s recommendations—including election of noblemen to the Cortes, enlargement of the king’s council, and restrictions on royal taxation— in their entirety, furious that the recommendations were but a manifesto to eviscerate the Crown. Just days before, he had renounced Alfonso as heir, accepting that warfare could follow.
Isabel waited for Enrique to settle at work, and then entered to greet him, permission for a sister’s informal audience being unnecessary. He was dressed plainly in a dark wool hunting coat and trousers, as if to proclaim disdain for sovereignty rather than celebrate it, slouching over a table set by his counselors with letters and orders for his signature, resting his large head in his puffed hands, and, at forty years old, weary and dejected. He gazed up at her, and she caught that his eye appreciated her womanly figure.
“How are you, my sister?” He studied her intent blue eyes, plump cheeks, and auburn hair, parted at the forehead to curl back over the ears and fall to the shoulders upon a wool shawl wrapping an amber, long-sleeve dress cut squarely above her breasts.
“I’m lonely here, my lord.”
“I’m lonely, too, most of the time.” Enrique hid an anger that welled within, a rage that noblemen who filled his court, shared his bread and wine, and offered him gracious salutations daily had entreated young Alfonso to challenge succession. He was vexed how much his sister understood of the commission recommendations, the approaching confrontation, or Alfonso’s intentions. “A king can be lonely even though people fill the room.” He paused and smiled. “If you took a husband, you wouldn’t be lonely.”
“I have the Lord.” Isabel smiled in response, aware that Enrique had and would promise her in marriage solely to achieve an alliance that gave him advantage over Alfonso’s proponents or, as Mother and Grandmother had warned, simply to remove her from Castile. Years ago, at different times, he had sought to marry her to each of the legitimate sons of King Juan II of Aragón, marriages that would have been appropriate to her stature and taken her from Castile. But Enrique had broken the arrangement for the younger son, Fernando, as alliances shifted, and the elder son, Carlos, had died. Enrique had also offered her to the English king Edward IV and, when Edward declined, introduced her to Queen Juana’s older brother, the widowed Portuguese king Afonso V. Isabel was now a woman, and any marriage could be consummated promptly.
“So you do. We all have the Lord, although it’s frequently difficult to discern how he dispenses his grace.”
“How’s the queen?” Isabel asked, aware Enrique cared nothing for the queen except her womb.
“She’s healthy,” Enrique replied perfunctorily, as he was unsure. “She sends her love.”
“And the princess?” Isabel continued, maintaining a facade of loyalty but pausing slightly to signal the last word was chosen advisedly.
Enrique noted the acknowledgment of little Juana’s hereditary entitlement and scrutinized the blink of Isabel’s eyes and the purse of her lips, certain of her insincerity. “She’s healthy, as well. Any word of Alfonso?”
“As you know, I have none, my lord,” Isabel lied. Her heart swelled that Alfonso was Mother’s child as well as Father’s and had been her companion throughout childhood. She would embrace his ascension to the throne and decry its usurpation by an illegitimate.
Isabel recognized Enrique wanted to attend to other business and that he knew she knew it to be a crisis. For a moment, she sensed that, as ever, he appeared to believe that little Juana was his child, and she remembered that he was the king their father had chosen, decades her senior, and that important noblemen yet supported him, warning that his crown could not be usurped prematurely regardless of successor. But she scorned and pitied that he was neither a good nor powerful king. His shabby dress and demeanor invited disrespect rather than loyalty. He cared little for worship, and his failure to lead in faith undermined his authority. He insulted every Christian by ignoring Christian tradition, sometimes wearing Mudejar clothing and eating as they did by reclining on the floor, and he employed Mudejar soldiers rather than Christian for his own protection. He had failed—as had Father, she confessed—to complete the Reconquista by driving the infidel from their last bastion, the kingdom of Grenada on Hispania’s southern coast.
At the same moment, Enrique studied Isabel and knew he enjoyed her company but could never trust her. Alfonso’s claim was also her own. Discussing the current situation would result in nothing but friction between them, and he ended the audience as quickly as it had begun. “We should dine and hunt together later this week, if there’s time.”
“That would be my pleasure, my lord.”
Isabel was relieved. They had greeted each other, affirmed civility, and parted without hostility, and she was free to pass the time outside his presence, although his informants filled the alcazar. She strolled from the throne room to the alcazar’s chapel and sat alone, longing for a kind word or embrace from Mother and Grandmother. But she realized neither could help anymore. Mother had grown mad, believing her castle in Arévalo haunted by ghouls and demons, including the ghost of the nobleman Father had executed to satisfy her. Grandmother was close to death. Isabel gazed to the altar cross depicting Christ and would talk with him.
The queen sends her love! For a moment, Isabel was overcome by contempt for Juana, whose frivolity, coquetry, and moral laxity she despised. Her education had been entrusted to Juana, and she had suffered for years to feign attention to Juana’s lessons on how to dress for and please such suitors that the king might choose for her. The contempt was mutual. Ignoring Christ’s presence, Isabel gloated at the rage Juana must have felt when Enrique recognized Alfonso as successor and forsook her daughter. She exulted that, two years before, the queen had miscarried a baby boy. Juana now had lost two purported heirs to the throne! But Isabel’s eyes quick
ly reverted to Christ, and she was certain he didn’t approve all her thoughts. His serene visage forgave her.
Yet her anger continued to simmer. Juana’s lessons weren’t the only lesson at fault—far from it! An entire lifetime of education—lessons from Mother, Grandmother, and tutors in Arévalo— had schooled her to be but a wife to the most powerful prince she could marry! She’d been taught to read and write, faith, the glory of Hispania and the Reconquista, and how to sew. But she hadn’t been taught court politics, how a king ruled noblemen, or that the motives of noblemen were rarely pure—simply because she was a girl. Archbishop Carrillo had always sought her well-being—insisting that she live with Mother rather than Enrique—and now championed Alfonso’s succession to the throne, but this protection and promotion served the archbishop’s own empowerment. The commission had sought to eviscerate Enrique’s authority, but the evisceration was designed to apply to any king hereafter, including Alfonso—for the nobility’s permanent benefit. Her lessons on the glory of Hispania hadn’t taught that noblemen thought they had the right to influence succession for their own ends.
Isabel pondered what her lessons had taught, and she realized that the conflict between her brothers now invoked appeals to religious concerns, fears, and hatreds that had smoldered and flared in Hispania since her birth and for centuries before. She averted her eyes from Christ’s stare, uncertain he approved of what was happening.
The commission had proposed that all Jews and Mudejar live in separate quarters within one year and restrictions on their employment. It also advocated the establishment of an inquisition to punish Christian heretics, intending that it be directed only against Jews who had converted to Christianity, the conversos. Isabel had heard one of Enrique’s confessors10 preach that, for their betrayal and murder of Christ, the Jews should be barred from official positions and decent occupations and their property and synagogues seized, and that all conversos were heretics, secret Judaizers denying Christ, thereby deserving punishment. But Enrique had rejected these visions. As Father and kings before, he had recognized the Jews as the Crown’s direct subjects, entitled to the Crown’s direct protection. He accepted the views that a converso who erred in faith was no different than a longtime Christian—an “old Christian”—who so erred, and that any inquisition should be directed at both with the purpose of teaching the heretic the salvation of conversion, not punishment. Isabel realized many Castilians were moved by the confessor’s harangues and favored these commission recommendations and that Enrique’s rejection of them diminished his popularity to Alfonso’s advantage.
Isabel’s gaze returned to Christ, and she asked him what was right and true, regardless of the insincerities of men. Revulsion rose within her—surely his response—to the bald assertion that all conversos were heretics. It belied his and the pope’s instruction to bring and welcome all to the faith and effectively meant that Jews could never achieve salvation. Many of her friends were children of conversos. The scriptures taught that the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.
Below Isabel, in the valley just north of the city, Fray Tomás de Torquemada, then forty-five and prior of the Dominican convent of Santa Cruz, was also speaking with Christ, sensing his presence and seeking to emulate him and strive for his perfection.
Fray Torquemada had been introduced to the Dominicans as a teenager by his uncle, a cardinal raised in a converso household, and had embraced an austere abstinence ever since, never eating meat, wearing no linen undergarments, and worshipping in a bare cell, where he slept on a plank. He had administered his convent for ten years with the same austerity.
Fray Torquemada often gazed up to the city of Segovia—teeming with the impious, swindlers, prostitutes, and Jews—to remind himself of the actions and teachings of Christ. He adored that Christ had thrown the animal keepers and money changers from the temple so that God’s house not be desecrated with merchandise and thieves. He revered that Christ had taught the apostles he came to earth not to bring peace but with a sword, to set son against father and mother against daughter, for a person who loved his father or mother more than Christ was not a sufficient believer. He raged that Christ had warned the Jews of the Day of Judgment—whereafter nonbelievers would burn in hell’s furnace forever—but the Jews had sought to stone him to death and then delivered him to Pilate. For Fray Torquemada, heaven and hell, and this sword and final judgment, were ever present, as real as his cell and convent. He was incorruptible from this perception and in his belief in Christ’s teaching that those with a pure heart would be blessed in seeing God.
As Isabel and Fray Torquemada worshipped, so did Professor Hernando de Talavera—to the northwest in Salamanca. At thirty-five, Professor Talavera was the chair of moral philosophy at the university at Salamanca, a post he shortly would resign to pursue monastic life by entering the Hieronymite order as the prior of a small monastery nearby. He had been raised in a converso family and had studied St. Augustine and the same gospels as Fray Torquemada.
Talavera also sought to strive for Christ’s perfection so that he might see God. He embraced that Christ had taught the two greatest commandments were to love God with all one’s heart and to love thy neighbor as thyself. He was inspired that Christ had preached one should love his enemies and that God meant for the sun to rise on both the evil and the good. He venerated that Christ had protected the adulteress from being stoned, warning that no man who had sinned should cast a stone, and then told her to sin no more. Professor Talavera cherished St. Augustine’s teaching that God had made every soul and body and that faith was a matter of choice rather than birth.
Over the next few months, Enrique’s and Alfonso’s supporters prepared for war. In June, standing on a platform set in a field near Ávila, noblemen led by Archbishop Carrillo removed a crown from a straw effigy of Enrique, pronounced Enrique deposed, threw the effigy on the ground, and then hoisted Alfonso, eleven, to the platform and acclaimed him king of Castile. There were then two kings of Castile, and the kingdom disintegrated into civil war.
GUARIONEX
Hurricane, Magua, Haiti
At dawn, a village behique studied the fiery red, orange, and purple glow of the clouds to the east, the direction from which hurricanes arrived, and grew alarmed. He warned the village cacique, who studied the sky and easterly wind. The weather did not appear extraordinary. But it rarely did before hurricanes, and the cacique decided they should walk to the beach to inspect the sea in the large gulf on Haiti’s eastern shore (Bahía de Samaná, Dominican Republic).
When they arrived, the easterly wind remained mild and the sea calm. But the water’s surface appeared strangely unctuous and without its typical ripple. It was a matter of judgment, but the behique thought the tide was higher than normal. A fisherman advised that dolphins had been jumping, which usually preceded storms. Another related that there had been a few sudden, brisk squalls since sunrise, vanishing as quickly as they had come. The cacique decided it would be prudent to warn his superior Cacibaquel, the paramount cacique of Magua, to prepare for a hurricane if the wind rose significantly, and smoke signals were dispatched to be relayed from village to village west through the cacicazgo.
Guarionex sat with Cacibaquel, his father, in their village’s central plaza, studying the clouds marching west. Magua lay almost entirely inland but for a few villages on the eastern gulf, comprising most of the immense fertile valley through which the rivers Yaque and Camú flowed, and their village lay among the Camú’s tributaries on the valley’s southern side (La Vieja Vega, near La Vega, Dominican Republic), nestled in the foothills of the Cibao. They had grown concerned with the weather by midmorning and, upon sighting the smoke signals, Cacibaquel retired alone to the ceremonial bohío where he kept his cemís to seek Guabancex’s forbearance and Yúcahu’s protection.
Guarionex recognized his father’s frequent consultations with the spirits comforted their people. In his late teens, of small, slender stature, Guarionex had experienced hurrica
nes and knew the risks inland were different than at the coast. The mountains surrounding the valley partially diffused the wind and its destruction, but the valley created an equally mortal risk of torrential flooding from the rainfall. The spirit Guabancex had an underling, Coatrisquie, who brought mountain floods, and Cacibaquel and many Maguans often sought to appease him as well as his mistress.
Guarionex joined his wife, Baisi, and young son, Yomabo, outside Cacibaquel’s caney, awaiting his father’s next instruction. Naborias were preparing a substantial meal, foreseeing the weather would preclude cooking thereafter. Baisi was with child, and Guarionex whispered to her that he sensed a hurricane would arrive and, when it did, she should rest in the caney’s center. He admonished Yomabo to stick close to her.
The sky darkened ominously during the afternoon, and the wind shifted to the northeast and rose to a gale. The paramount and local caciques living on Haiti’s coastlines recognized a hurricane’s unmistakable approach. They ordered fishermen to drag canoes safely inland and urged their subjects to shelter in caves before nightfall, if available. The paramount cacique of Higüey, at Haiti’s southeastern tip, ordered his subjects near the ocean to evacuate inland. Guacanagarí’s uncle, who ruled the northwestern coast, reminded villagers that those in sturdy bohíos should share them with neighbors less fortunate. The cacique of the Ciguayo, who governed from a village in the mountains on Haiti’s northern coast, admonished his people to beware of rock and mudslides and overhanging trees. Haiti’s most powerful ruler, the Xaraguán cacique whose cacicazgo comprised much of southwest Haiti, counseled his subjects that their ancestors welcomed them for the duration of the storm in the caves where they lay entombed.