The Queen's Vow: A Novel of Isabella of Castile

by C. W. Gortner

  “Push, Isabella,” murmured Beatriz at my ear, her hand cool as a blessing through the dripping veil. “The midwife says the head is visible. Just a little more …”

  “Sweet Mother of Christ,” I whispered as I rallied my muscles for one more push. “Let it be a son. Please, let it be a prince.”

  Everything I knew, everything I aspired to, was reduced in that moment to a single shuddering breath; a painful gasp and agonizing contraction of flesh, and then the welcome gush of hot blood.

  “It’s here!” I heard the midwife cry. “The child is born!”

  Through the flurry of skirts, I gazed up desperately from my stool and watched as the hunched midwife sliced and tied off the cord, swabbed the tiny white body clean of gore, turned and dripped honey in its open mouth. I waited, my body throbbing as if on fire, until I heard the first bewildered wail and the midwife lifted her triumphant face to me.

  “Castile,” she declared, as if she’d personally orchestrated the event, “has a prince.”

  WE NAMED HIM Juan, for both his grandfathers and our patron saint, the Baptist.

  I heard later that Fernando presented him to the court with tears in his eyes. Recovering in my apartments, I would make my official appearance after the Baptism and my churching. But Beatriz kept me apprised of every development, from the pride in my husband’s stance as he held our little infante aloft to the court’s acclaim (prompting Juan to burst into tears) to the cacophonous revelry that seized the entire realm. In Segovia, people danced around bonfires and a hundred bulls were slaughtered in Salamanca—a horrid spectacle I was furious to hear about and refused to sanction. From Aragón, old King Juan sent us an enormous gold baptismal font; it took six men to carry it into the Church of Santa María. He also sent a private note asking us to grant Carrillo a pardon for his past offenses and restore his income, both as a gesture of compassion for our son’s birth and out of respect for the archbishop who’d fought so hard to gain us the throne and was now “a sad and ruined man.”

  I agreed. I had no room left in my heart for anger. I’d been vindicated; after eight years of marriage, I had safeguarded our dynasty with a prince who would inherit both Castile and Aragón upon our deaths. I had earned the admiration of our most unrepentant subjects, and within days of Juan’s birth, the last remaining criminals in Sevilla fled for refuge in the Moorish-held port city of Málaga. Bells tolling throughout the realm prompted priests to hide their concubines and bastards and clutch at their Bibles, fully aware that with the arrival of a male heir, I would soon be free to turn the full force of my attention to the reform of our Church.

  On the Feast of Santa Marta, six weeks after the birth, Fernando and I appeared together to formally present our son to Sevilla. We rode into the congested streets, cordoned to allow us passage on our horses, under a sun so hot it bleached the sky. Sweat pooled underneath my pearl-encrusted brial and crown. My stalwart Canela, bedecked in equally excessive finery, pranced nervously, his hooves ringing sparks from the steaming cobblestones.

  The crowd’s cheering scattered pigeons from the tile rooftops. Juan rode before us in a canopied carriage, cradled by his godmother, the duchess of Medina Sidonia. The marquis of Cádiz escorted the infante, basking in the acclaim with a handsome man’s insouciance; Medina Sidonia rode before us with our standard, a privileged position that denoted our high esteem.

  Then, all of a sudden, the cheering faltered and faded to silence. As the people looked up in unison, a pall came over the day, tinting it opaque, lengthening our shadows. At my side, Fernando drew rein. He peered upward, his ruby-studded gold coronet tilting on his brow.

  He froze. “Dios mío,” I heard him whisper. “El sol se apaga.”

  “What? The sun can’t go out,” I exclaimed, craning my face to follow his fearful gaze, though the weight of my headdress and crown hurt my neck.

  In the scorched sky, I saw a shadow slicing across the edge of the sun like a black scythe.

  Around us, I heard terrified gasps. People collapsed to their knees. But I remained calm; during my scavenging in the library of Segovia as a princess, I’d come across several writings describing this phenomenon—eclipse, I believed it was called. I informed Fernando of it as he sat frozen on his horse.

  “Eclipse?” he echoed, as if the very word were incomprehensible.

  “Yes. Sometimes, the moon slips over the sun, eclipsing its light, but then it goes away and everything returns to normal,” I said in irritation. It was blistering hot. I was drenched in perspiration. I wanted to reach the dais in the main plaza, fulfill our obligations, and return to the shelter of the alcazar before we all broiled to death in our finery. I also was worried for my son, who’d surely break out in a rash in this infernal heat.

  “But, it … it’s an omen,” stammered Fernando, to my disbelief. “On the very day our son is to be presented, this—this eclipse occurs? It cannot be a good sign.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. For all its far-flung territories and holdings, Aragón was still a land steeped in superstition, much like Andalucía.

  “It’s not an omen,” I said, more tartly than I intended. “Our son has been christened already, blessed by God. This is just the moon forgetting her proper place.” I smiled, lowering my voice to a quip. “You, of all men, should know something about that.”

  He tried to return my smile but I could tell he was truly frightened, as though he believed this insignificant celestial event presaged the future.

  I gestured impatiently to Medina Sidonia, who appeared utterly contemptuous of the collective fear around us. “My lord duke, if you would …?”

  He barked at the immobile retainers, arrayed like statues around us as they stared up at the half-covered sun. “Onward! Her Majesty commands it!”

  Our horses’ passage made a disconcerting echo on the now silent streets. By the time we reached the plaza and the crowd had assembled there, the light had begun to return, the moon’s intrusive sliver already ebbing away.

  I mounted the dais, taking Juan from the duchess and staring upon the anonymous mass of people, compelling them to stop looking to the sky, to turn their eyes instead to me and the child in my arms.

  I put no trust in auguries. I did not believe in any force stronger than God.

  And God would never let any harm come to my son.

  IN THE EARLY spring of 1479, we left the gardens of Andalucía and returned to Castile.

  We made the journey in slow stages because of little Juan, whom I kept with me at all times due to his alarming propensity for colic. I had changed his wet nurse twice in the last six months, to no avail; I was so concerned for his welfare that this time I allowed myself to be persuaded to not nurse him myself, though the change in nurses didn’t help. I also consulted a host of learned physicians, Jewish and Moorish alike, and donated a small fortune to Sevilla’s Virgin of Antiquity and her Christ Child, known for their curative gifts. Fernando tried to reassure me that many babies suffered colic and outgrew it, but I felt my son’s distress with every fiber of my being and could barely pay heed to anything else. Isabel rode with me, Beatriz, and Ines in our carriage, enduring the teeth-rattling jolts over pitted roads as she crooned and dangled silver rattles in front of Juan to keep him distracted from the pains in his stomach.

  Shortly after our arrival in Segovia, I discovered I was once again pregnant. As I looked up from the pail where I’d just retched out my morning meal, Beatriz gave me a long compassionate look. Fernando had insisted on resuming his rights in our bed well before I felt ready to accept him; he’d not been rough, but neither had he been accommodating, and I’d complained to Beatriz in a rare fit of candor that he seemed unable to accept “later” as an answer. Now, her one look told me why; Fernando wasn’t as immune to Juan’s fragility as he feigned. Babies died every day, of colic and other maladies. Our succession was still vulnerable; we needed another son.

  This need was reinforced when word reached us that, after years of failing he
alth, Juan of Aragón had died. Fernando immediately departed for his realm to attend the obsequies for his father and to meet with his Cortes, which remained separate from those of Castile by our prenuptial Capitulations. I wanted to go with him; with his father’s passing, our kingdoms were now truly united under one rule. But I couldn’t make the journey, not with a babe to care for and another on the way.

  My third pregnancy proved troublesome from the start. I was constantly at odds with myself, missing Fernando from the moment he walked out the door yet too exhausted to even walk across my chamber, plagued by constant nausea that made me dread the months of restrictions ahead.

  My temper hardly improved when I was informed of yet another uprising in Extremadura in Joanna la Beltraneja’s name, masterminded by that old goat King Afonso, whose defeat at our hands—and Rome’s subsequent refusal to issue him the dispensation he’d requested to wed Joanna—burned in him like brimstone. He’d bribed a pack of discontented minor nobles to spring their revolt the moment Fernando’s back was turned.

  “What am I to do?” I exclaimed to Beatriz. I sat at my desk, reading the latest reports sent by the admiral, whom I’d dispatched at the head of an army to quell the revolt. “Don Fadrique writes that he’s arrested all the nobles involved. They’ll be deprived of their estates and executed, of course, but he had to set torch to the fields, round up villagers, and chase the Portuguese back across the border like wild dogs.” I waved the paper at her, my fatigue incinerated by my temper. “Those miscreants fled with sacks of treasure looted from our churches slung over their backs! They pillaged what we can ill afford to lose and wagged their fingers at our men from across the border!”

  I flung the paper on my desk, making the candle flames dance erratically. “I cannot let Afonso get away with this. Clearly I’ve been too naïve to think that being exiled in Portugal would keep Joanna quiet. Fadrique says that, under questioning, most of the nobles admitted they rebelled against my rule because Joanna calls herself Enrique’s true daughter and Castile’s only queen! How dare she question my right to my throne, when everyone knows she is Beltrán de la Cueva’s love child?”

  Beatriz paused by the bed, where she scented my linens with lavender and anise before folding them into a coffer. “Maybe you should offer a peace treaty,” she suggested.

  I snorted. “I’d rather offer a barrage of cannon fire.”

  She chuckled. “No doubt, but gunpowder is expensive and Afonso is a coward. He’ll hide in his fortress and make you do all the work. But if you offer a treaty and insist on negotiating with your own mother’s sister, Princess Beatrice, then you—”

  “—could request that la Beltraneja’s custody be strictly enforced,” I cut in and smiled. “Beatriz, you should have been a diplomat. It’s perfect: Afonso will not dare refuse me, especially if I sweeten the offer with the promise that once my Isabel comes of age, we’ll consider a marriage alliance with the son of his heir the crown prince, whom he has not wed to la Beltraneja because of the age difference. I can trump him at his own game and still give him what he wants: pride of place, and a healthy dowry through Isabel to boot.”

  Beatriz nodded, picking up my stack of linens. “Get to work then,” she said. “Anything’s better than watching you mope and drag your feet for the next eight months.”

  I laughed, turning to my desk to ink my quill with renewed purpose.

  King Afonso returned word that he would meet me at our border to discuss my proposal. It was time we put an end to this quarrel, once and for all, he wrote. Yet after I’d undertaken the two-day journey by litter to the windswept castle of Alcántara, leaving my children in Beatriz’s care, I was informed that the king had fallen ill. I was left stewing for two weeks before I received word that he was dispatching Joanna herself, along with my stated preference for a representative, my maternal aunt Beatrice of Portugal.

  I embraced the tall, elegantly dressed blood relative I’d never met till now. Her blue-green eyes and oval face were achingly reminiscent of my mother’s. I sensed at once that Beatrice was an ally, and indeed, as soon as our pleasantries were dispensed with, she stated that she wanted lasting peace between our nations.

  “We are neighbors. It hardly benefits us to be at each other’s throats,” she said, with a lift of her fair brow, “seeing as we share a border and family ties.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I replied. “And is the king also in agreement that the child’s care should be transferred to you?”

  “He is.” Beatrice paused. “I fear the child’s opinion is another matter,” she added, and she rose from her upholstered chair to open the doors. Joanna appeared. She came before me, stiff as a pole in her rich dark velvet.

  I forced out a smile. “My child, how lovely to see you again; you’re a woman grown.”

  And she was—most alarmingly, in fact. I had forgotten she wasn’t the little girl I’d escorted about the gardens of the alcazar, not a plump underage pawn to be molded by my will. At sixteen, Joanna might have been beautiful, had she not a prematurely embittered cast to her features. As I covertly searched her for any resemblance to my late brother, I found only her mother, Queen Juana, in her features. She was slim as yew, with the same seductive black eyes, lustrous hair, and sullen lips. I tried to overlook her pointed refusal to curtsey or show me any other sign of deference, but the sight of her coiled thorns about my heart. She was a sworn foe, fully capable of making herself some other troublesome prince’s wife, if not Afonso’s queen; the last thing I needed was a rival shadowing my every move, a figurehead behind which malcontents, such as those in Extremadura, could rally.

  “Do you remember me?” I asked her, and I could tell by the flash in her eyes that she did, though it suited her to feign otherwise. She did not reply.

  “Answer Her Majesty,” snapped Beatrice, sharply nudging the girl.

  Joanna’s eyes narrowed. “I see no queen here,” she intoned, in a high nasal voice meant to carry. “Unless you would prefer that I answer my own self?”

  Beatrice gave her a withering look before turning to me. “The child has cultivated airs at court that ill suit her. She’s spent too much time absorbing others’ suppositions.”

  “Evidently,” I said. I did not remove my stare from Joanna, but to my disconcertion, she did not avert her gaze, returning my regard with such calculated effrontery I found myself clenching my fists under my sleeves.

  “So, you believe you bear more right to the crown than me?” I asked bluntly.

  Her slight flinch revealed she wasn’t as contemptuous as she’d have me think. She did not answer at once; her mouth was pinched, as if she gnawed at the inside of her lip.

  Then she blurted, “I believe I am King Enrique’s sole heir. I believe you, Princess Isabella, have usurped my throne and let it be bantered about that I am a bastard. But in my veins runs blood as pure as yours, for I too am of the royal houses of Portugal and Castile.”

  “Is that so?” I did not shift a muscle. Inside me, cold certainty took hold. She must be disposed of. I could no longer afford to disdain the threat she posed.

  I said to my aunt, “In this case, I believe we have much to discuss. Clearly my original plan was too lenient.” It was an unmistakable threat and Joanna reacted just as I hoped.

  “I will not be denied!” she erupted. “You cannot fool me with your arrangements and petty lies. I am the rightful queen of Castile! I will never renounce my claim to you. Never!”

  Spittle sprayed from her lips, her entire body taut. I watched Beatrice’s expression shift from discomfited embarrassment to resolution.

  “The child obviously needs a calming tonic,” she remarked, and she rose and came to me, linking her arm in mine to draw us toward the gallery. We left Joanna standing there, rigid, aware that all her scheming, all the indignities she believed she had endured, were about to be ignored.

  Though I didn’t look back, I felt her eyes boring into my back.

  A MONTH LATER, I bid my aunt a fon
d farewell. The winds buffeted me where I stood on the drawbridge, sending my cloak swirling as I watched the Portuguese retinue lumber off. It had been an exhausting four weeks of negotiation, during which I’d gamely fought off my daily malaise. Beatrice had proved a canny spokeswoman for Portugal, certainly far abler than the blustering Afonso in her eloquent support of her nation’s cause.

  Nevertheless, I prevailed. I steadfastly refused any concessions to lost territories or monies, citing the fact that Portugal had invaded us, not the other way around. While I agreed to the original proposal in which my daughter Isabel would be sent as a bride for the son of Portugal’s crown prince, and ceded crucial exploration rights on the open sea, on one point I was immutable: Joanna must renounce all claim to my throne. If she liked, she could wait a requisite number of years under guardianship in a convent until my son came of age, at which time a union between them would be considered. Or she could take holy vows now. To preempt further conspiracies in her name I stipulated that under no circumstances was she to continue to make unfounded assertions about her paternity.

  I allowed her six months to reach a decision. As the litter drew away I saw its curtains flick back and I was treated to a last glimpse of her face. The hatred in her eyes pierced me where I stood; but in her bitter pallor, I already read defeat.

  She would die before she submitted to my terms. Like her mother before her, she had too much conceit and not enough sense. She’d delay as much as she could, staving off the inevitable, but in the end she’d have no other choice. Immured in a convent, she would live out the rest of her days as an unwilling bride of Christ, forgotten by the world.

  Still, as she vanished forever from my life, I shuddered to contemplate the havoc she might have wreaked, had she been able to prove what she so fervently believed.

  FOLLOWING THE SIGNING of our treaty with Portugal, Fernando and I repaired to Toledo. There, on November 6th, I delivered my third child.