Reign of Madness

by Lynn Cullen

  Outside the door, he kissed my hand. “Adieu, Madame.”

  The chanting of the choir issued forth as he shoved into the chapel. Head held high, he strode down the center aisle. I saw his men at the front of the church turn to him grinning, and then the door swung back, leaving me alone in the dreary hall.

  In the Spains, to miss daily Mass or any part of it was a sin deemed barely forgivable. I could think of no day Mother missed hearing it sung at least once. If she was ill, her portable chapel was brought to her. If she was at war, a chapel was erected on the field before the first tent of her camp could be raised. If she was laboring in childbirth, her pangs were ignored until she could receive the Host. It is part of our family lore that Catalina just missed being caught by Fray Hernando at her birth. In the history of the Spains, women who gave up their lives to receive the sacrament of Communion when denied it by their pagan fathers or husbands were called saints. To willfully miss a part of Mass—there was a name for those women, too.

  The longer I delayed outside the chapel, the blacker my reputation would be in the eyes of my Spanish ladies. I drew in a breath, then pulled the door open.

  I took my place with my ladies in time to say the Our Father. Feeling keenly the Spanish ladies’ disapproval, I knelt in preparation of receiving the Host. Fluid trickled down my leg. In the quiet marked only with an occasional cough or sniffle and the priest’s murmured words, we were fed Christ’s body. I prayed not for my soul, nor for the good of the Church, but that I would not drip onto the floor when I stood.

  After we had been sent to go in peace, I spoke to my Spanish ladies about the weather, wondering if for once we might have some sunshine. They responded quickly, and kindly, though the current of disapproval that flowed under their polite words was as cold as the drafty air of the castle. Beatriz would not look at me. The Burgundian ladies watched our exchanges, glancing among themselves, and then, when they caught my eye, flashed me conspiratorial smiles. Uncomfortable with all of them, I sent word to Philippe, asking to meet me for a stroll along the river, but my message was returned by his page, who said his master had gone hunting with his men.

  “Why is everyone acting so strange?” I asked Beatriz. The two of us were breaking fast in my antechamber, with cold meat and bread, a book of Livy spread open on the table. I had bidden the others to leave us so that I could receive a quiet hour of instruction in Latin. They seemed only too happy to comply. “Yes, I did exchange a few words with my husband during Mass, but—”

  Beatriz’s shapely brows disappeared under the white bandeau of her coif. “A few words?”

  “A few embraces, then. I did nothing wrong. I was with my husband.”

  “Perhaps it was the timing of these embraces that offended.”

  “So it is true—I offended my ladies.”

  “Perhaps—”

  “I cannot help it! He desires me. And I desire him. And oh, dear Beatriz, it feels so good.”

  She turned down her face.

  “I am sorry. I am just being honest. If you would lower yourself to marry Francisco Ramírez, you would know of what I speak. He still waits for you, I know. María writes of it—the little dreamer cannot stand for you two to be apart. Why will you not wed him?”

  “There are more important things besides marriage.”

  I laughed. “Truly? Like what?”

  “Like teaching at Salamanca.”

  “You are jesting.” I looked into her face. “You are not jesting. Why have you never told me this?”

  “You have never asked.”

  “But you have already studied at Salerno—few women can make claim to that. You became so famous for your skill in Latin there that even Mother knew of you. She dragged you back here and made you teach every one of my family except Papa our Latin—how many feathers in your cap do you need?”

  She gave me—for her—a defiant look. “I wish to be a professor.”

  “But women are not professors.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—” I stopped.

  “You see? There is no real reason, other than tradition.” Within the frame of her wimple, her delicate face was pinched with earnestness. “Believe me, Your Grace, I feel the pull of a man’s body as much as anyone. Do you think that I am inured to Francisco’s caress? Do you think I don’t find him handsome? But once married, I will be expected to serve him only and to bear his children. I will have to give up my dream.”

  Margaret of York, my husband’s step-grandmother, swept into the chamber, her two favorite ladies in attendance. The Dowager Duchess was a tall woman, taller than most men, and to judge from her face and neck—the only parts of her person not engulfed in yards and yards of costly stuffs—as lean as a hungry greyhound. She wore an ermine-trimmed surcot over a flowing gown of russet and gold brocade, and a black pointed hennin draped at the tip of its cone with a veil of sheerest lawn. This attire must have been the height of fashion in her youth, but now was so outmoded it would have been humorous on anyone but her. On her, it was an aggressive statement of personal taste. In keeping with the style of this tall headdress, a velvet loop descended from the base of its steeple onto her forehead, where age had etched fine lines into the soft skin. Her aging skin seemed to be the only tender part of her.

  Around her arm she rewrapped her voluminous skirt, several lengths too long to allow walking—a fashion of generations past—then waved her hand at Beatriz. “You, girl who dresses like a nun. Be off.”

  Beatriz arose from her bench with a look of worry. It was not correct for the Dowager to send away my lady in my presence. That was my prerogative, not hers.

  Once Beatriz was gone, the Dowager sniffed. “We have not talked for a while.”

  We had not talked ever, except at feasts, and then only she had done the talking, mostly about the superiority of things English.

  “No.”

  “How are you finding our lands?”

  “Most lovely, Madame.”

  “Truly?” She sniffed again. “A more dank prison on earth, I cannot imagine. Even England, with its tendency to rain, excels it, for at least in England there are rolling hills sweet with flowers in May. Here—mud and marshes, marshes and mud, with fields of plowed gray muck dug in between. But I did not come to talk about the scenery.”

  I lowered my head. “Madame, I shall never be late to Mass again.”

  “You were late to Mass? When? Today? I did not see. I did rest my eyes until my lady woke me to receive the Host. This is what comes with age—you cannot sleep at night or stay awake by day. Why were you late?”

  I tried to find words.

  “Come, come,” she said. “Spit it out.”

  “My husband, he … desired …”

  “He needed to sharpen his sword? Leave it to Philippe to want what he wants whenever the mood strikes him. Well, no harm in that. Your duty is to fill a cradle. I might have filled one myself had my husband stopped fighting his wars long enough to dip his lance with me. He seemed to think fighting would bring him more land than would producing children whom he could wed well. And look where it got him. Dead, in a frozen ditch, stripped of everything including his own two hands, in hale middle age. Where do you think that left me? No, it is your fatherin-law and the rest of those overambitious Habsburgs who have it right: ‘Bella gerant alli; tu, felix Austria, nube.’ ”

  “‘Let others make war; you, happy Austria, marry.’”

  The Dowager sniffed once more, a practice, I now realized, that she used in lieu of a smile. “Good. You know your Latin. You might be as learned as your ambassador said you were. I believe only half of what those little men say. They produce a portrait and call it the truth, as if we were so gullible as to think painters have no imagination. Why your portraitist felt he had to make your hair ginger-red, I do not know. It is a serviceable-enough brown.” She tugged the rich cloth of her skirt off the floor and rewound it around her arm. “Well, how did your ladies take your late appearance at the liturgy?”r />
  “They have said nothing to me about it.”

  “Did they smile and speak cheerfully to you afterward?”

  “Yes. At least the Burgundian ladies did.”

  “That is what I was afraid of.”

  “But they were merry.”

  “They do not respect you enough to be concerned.”

  “Perhaps they do not know what transpired.”

  She snuffled bitterly. “Lovers think everyone else is blind.”

  “Then perhaps they were afraid of offending me.”

  She closed her eyes, then, shaking her head, opened them. “How old are you again?”

  “Seventeen.” Though at that moment I felt like a child of seven.

  “How are we going to undo this damage to your ladies’ respect for you?”

  “Is there so very much?”

  Her sniff verged on being a snort. “My dear, my dear.”

  Hugging her extra length of gown against her chest, she commenced to moving about my chamber, touching my possessions as if weighing their value at a market stall. “You may ask yourself, why does the Dowager come to me today? She is an old widow woman, with neither wealth nor health to recommend her. Why should she care about me, a little girl from Spain?”

  Indeed, a little girl who grew littler by the moment.

  “I remember when I came to meet my husband. I was older than you, twenty-two. I was the King of England’s sister—well favored by an illustrious family, though, like you, at good remove for inheriting the crown. I was accustomed to the finest England had to offer, which was very fine indeed, but I was charmed by the efforts the Burgundians put forth to impress me. As I rode through the streets of the little Flemish towns, I marveled at the precious tapestries billowing from every building, the carefully painted tableaux, the rich costuming of the actors portraying great women from history—dramatic scenes were played out at every corner. Fountains flowed with wine in the market squares. Banquets were held, the most magnificent of which was called the Feast of the Golden Tree. Ask about it. They still talk about it in Bruges. And it was all for me. All for me.”

  She picked up a jeweled cross given to me by Mother, held it to the light meekly filtering through the thick glass of the window, then put it down as if unimpressed.

  “I was supping with my new husband in Ghent, watching yet another spectacle of dancing unicorns and men bursting out of hot pies in honor of my marriage, when one of the ranking gentlemen at the feast leaned toward my husband, a gold chain thick as a ship’s rope thudding against his chest. ‘Your Highness must wait to see what we have in store for you in Brussels,’ he said. ‘It will make this banquet look like an almsgiving.’

  “And then, just as I was about to eat one more bite of minced peacock pie overseasoned with cloves, I realized: None of this was for me. Not the parades, not the tableaux, not a single dancing unicorn. None of it. It was all for the men, to show off to one another. Each was trying to prove he was richest, and the marriage of the Duke to me, sister of the English king—Margaret, if they bothered to learn my name—was just an excuse to do so.”

  I turned away.

  “Ah,” she cried, “I see you know of what I speak! We might as well be fattened beeves, sent by our kin to bring political favor. We were never meant to rule, just gifts to seal a treaty. Oh yes, I know how you feel. Though in your case, you are lucky. My grandson is a merry sort, unlike my ferocious Charles. I think Charles hated me from the minute we met and I had to bend down to receive his kiss, while he, all set jaw and beetling black brows, had to raise up on his toes to greet me. A man made to feel small all his life in comparison with his worshipped father does not take kindly to appearing short next to a woman.”

  “But I do love—”

  She spoke over my words. “You, however, do genuinely charm my grandson. I can tell. You would be mad to not enjoy his caresses. And say what your ladies will, a husband’s love is holy. Marriage is one of the seven sacraments, last time I heard. Your ladies are merely envious of your good match.”

  A page knocked on the door. He bowed to me, then bowed extra deeply, in true deference, when he saw Madame la Grande. He brought me a letter, then, with a petrified glance at the Dowager, bowed his way out of the room.

  She refolded her gown over her arm. “Something from home?”

  I frowned at the seal of the crowns of Castile and Aragón. Another letter from Mother. She had sent me six missives since I had left Spain. I had not responded after meeting Philippe, at first because all my hours were consumed by him, then because of the certain knowledge that my new life would displease her. I would have to account for myself soon, and I dreaded it.

  “Do not let me stop you.” She picked up the Book of Hours that Mother had sent with me from Spain and began to page through it.

  I broke open the red wax seal and unfolded two thick sheets of paper. Tears pricked my eyes when I saw who it was from.

  “Good news?” asked the Dowager.

  “It is from my sisters, María and Catalina.”

  “How sweet. Is not the younger one promised to Henry Tudor’s son Arthur?”

  Seeing their dear handwriting was like feeling the warmth of the Spanish sun upon me. I wished to take the letter to a corner and savor it by myself. “Yes. They are to marry when she is a little older.”

  “Your little sister will be Queen of England someday. How do you like that, when all you can hope to be is Archduchess?”

  “They are just titles,” I murmured, perusing the letter.

  “‘Just’? A title is the least we deserve after being offered to our betrothed like wheels of cheese.” She peered at the paper, then up at me, as if I should read it aloud.

  “They do not say much.” I wished she would go.

  The Dowager turned a page of my Book of Hours. “They took the time to write. I should not mind hearing what they have to say.”

  I scanned the first few lines. María wrote first. Was I well? How did I find my new husband? Was he as handsome as was said? Was he attentive? Chivalrous? Amorous?

  I sighed. My darling María, still yearning for a gallant knight.

  The Dowager sniffed. “Well?”

  I quickly moved down the letter. “My sister María speaks of … Colón.”

  “Colón?” said the Dowager.

  “Admiral Colón, Madame.”

  “Oh, yes. The Genoan. Your Mother’s golden goose, if only he shall lay. What did she say about him?”

  I read silently from the letter, then paraphrased for the Dowager. “He has returned from his second voyage. Mother and Papa received him in Burgos, in the Casa del Cordón.” I paused, picturing myself as a child, racing with María under the carved stone ropes over the palace door, both of us wishing to be the first to enter as we returned from Mass at the cathedral. I had tripped on the threshold, only to be scooped up by Papa, who carried me inside and gave me to my nurse to bandage my bleeding knee.

  The Dowager turned a page in the Book of Hours. “Read it aloud.”

  Though my heart ached with homesickness, I had no choice but to do as she commanded. “‘He brought a coffer filled with gold nuggets the size of chickpeas. He showed us several others the size of pigeon eggs, but when Papa asked, Colón said he had not yet found towns roofed in gold. He talked instead of God’s Heavenly Hand delivering him from hungry cannibals and warring Indios on many occasions.

  “‘Colón says that the Indios are not the good souls he believed them to be. They slaughtered the men he had left behind on his first voyage, the ones who had stayed in the fort he had made from the ruins of his ship Santa María, when it had run aground. When the Admiral came back for them a year and a half later, none was there to greet him. His experience has made him a man of God. He now wears the brown robes of the Franciscans. By my troth, he does look like a friar, too.’”

  “That should please a few people,” the Dowager murmured. “The Spaniards and their piety. They think they invented God.”

&n
bsp; I read on. “ ‘He brought with him some cannibals who had attacked him but whom he was able to subdue. I could hardly bear to look upon them. They crouched like animals and they hid behind great green-feathered masks through which you could see their eyes darting. I feared the beasts would jump up and eat me!

  “‘Mother called for the page Juanito to speak to them in their language, to see if they intended to behave. At first they seemed to have some trouble understanding each other, then suddenly all of them shouted at him. When Mother asked Juanito if there was a problem, he said no. All they wanted was to know where they were, and when they were going back home.’”

  “Seems reasonable,” said the Dowager. “Who is this Juanito?”

  “An Indio. The only one who remains from Colón’s first voyage. My brother Juan has made him a page in his court.”

  “My Marguerite will be exposed to a cannibal?”

  “He is not a cannibal.”

  “Oh?” The Dowager raised hairless brows and sniffed. “How do you know?”

  I saw gentle Juanito, squatting next to the mastiff pups as he petted Estrella. I heard him at the reception in Medina del Campo, speaking Castilian, proud to have mastered the language. I saw him earnestly dancing the saltarello, as Diego Colón and I looked on.

  “I know that he is good.”

  “Commendable, seeing goodness in a cannibal. Commendable, or mad.”

  But I was not listening. I was thinking of Diego. I had not seen him for more than two years. Soon after the evening in Medina del Campo, Mother had sent him to Salamanca, to study at the university.

  The Dowager looked at me pointedly, then waved her hand. “Read on.”

  A knocking sounded at my chamber door.

  “Come in,” called the Dowager, though it was not her place to do so.

  Eight of my Spanish ladies filed into my chamber with Beatriz. After curtseys to the Dowager and me, the highest-ranking of them, doña Blanca, petite and pretty as a rosebud, spoke up. “Señora la Duquesa Doña Juana,” she said, her sweet voice somber. “Your ladies wish to beg your leave to return to Spain with the fleet that sails with our Prince’s bride.”