by Lynn Cullen
“They are no ordinary tombs. Mother ordered them built when I was young. They are just now finished. The sculptor was Flemish.”
“Of course. All good carving is Flemish, though I suppose the tombs won’t be as nice as my mother’s.”
“Probably not.”
He reached over the back of his saddle to me. “How about a roll in the rushes?”
“As appealing as that sounds, Monseigneur, no.”
His pretty lips turned down, puckering the pouches by his mouth. “What happened to you? You would have jumped at the chance when we first married.”
When we met I did not have three children. When we met I had not grown up while he had stayed a boy. When we met, I did not know that he thought a husband’s infidelities were harmless, that a wife was foolish to let them bother her, when that is just what men did. But in spite of all this, should he stop our horses and take me in his arms, with some coaxing he could mold me to his purpose. A few kisses to the neck, the feel of his breath on my ear, his lips upon my flesh, and given time, my body would betray me. Perhaps that was merciful. How would this man who lived by the word “yes” respond to a heartfelt “no”?
The path led up a wooded hill cloaked in waist-high grass, which hissed as it bent under our horses’ bellies. Above us, tufteared black squirrels leaped from tree to tree. I freed my skirts from the canes of a wild rose.
“It’s not far now,” I said.
Philippe frowned at the stone walls of the monastery now visible through the woods. He snorted with exasperation. “Let’s get this over with, then.”
The Royal Chapel smelled of cold marble. A chill emanated from the pale limestone floor, from the rough-hewn walls of granite, from the white alabaster tomb before us that bristled with dozens of masterfully carved saints and animals. How had the sculptor teased these beings out of stone? They were lifelike down to their individual expressions, to the very hairs upon their gleaming heads. Their magnificence was matched in the carved wooden altarpiece looming overhead. The saints and angels—and Mother, kneeling in the foreground—were drenched in brilliant gold.
“Juan the Second, King of Castile.” Philippe leaned against the intricately wrought gilded fence that surrounded my grandparents’ tombs. His voice echoed from the vaulted ceiling. “Was he a good king?”
“He was my mother’s father.”
“But was he good?”
I gazed at the robed figure reclining on the sarcophagus of whitest alabaster. His crowned head rested on a stone pillow; a stone dog slept at his feet. Beneath him, a lion roared, a wafer-thin alabaster curl of tongue lolling between its teeth. “He had a favorite whom he let rule while he played at his jousts and hunts and tourneys. Álvaro de Luna. He ran Castile for my grandfather.”
“That’s unwise.”
“Most unwise. Atrocities happened right under Grandfather’s nose, but he could not see this. If people complained to Grandfather, Luna had them killed. He poisoned Grandfather’s first wife when she tried to sound the alarm, and still Grandfather did not see. He was too busy … hunting.”
Philippe ran his hand along the fence rail, then inspected his finger to see if any gold had come off.
“Grandfather trusted him completely,” I said. “Luna was like a father to him. Grandfather’s own father had died when he was a toddling child, and Luna became his tutor.” I glanced at my husband. Did he not see the resemblance to his relationship with the Archbishop of Besançon?
He looked up. “Go on.”
“Luna was a hated name around our home, for making my grandfather look foolish, but even more so for what he did to her.” I nodded to the marble figure lying next to my grandfather.
“Isabel of Portugal,” he said. “The mad one.”
“Who told you that?”
“Everyone.” He shrugged. “Grand-mère. François. It’s no secret that your grandmother was zielsziek.”
“But she wasn’t, unless it was madness to challenge a monster like Luna. When she tried to tell Grandfather that Luna had murdered the first queen with poison, and that Luna threatened to poison her, too, if she tried to expose him, Grandfather wouldn’t listen. He couldn’t imagine Luna as anyone but the kindly father figure who had bounced him on his knee.”
“So did this Luna kill her?”
“You don’t have to kill to do damage. He gave her just enough poison each day to sicken her. When Abuela was ill from the poison, he spread rumors that she’d gone mad, and she was too sick to refute him.”
“But she got well?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did she not simply tell people what he did?”
“She did. But it was too late. Her reputation for madness was sealed. It seems that an accusation is as powerful as the truth—once it is made, there is no denial that can completely erase it.”
He looked at me a moment, then, grasping the finials, stared at the tomb. After a time he asked, “How did he administer this poison?”
“I don’t know. But it was enough to temporarily damage her mind.”
The bells of the monastery now began to clang, slowly marking the hour as if it were Time’s last. I could feel the vibration under my skin.
Philippe pushed away from the fence. “Well, sad story, Puss,” he said, raising his voice above the bells, “but Pedro will be waiting. I’ve got ninety pieces of gold riding on our match. Have you seen enough?”
I drew in a breath, shaken somehow. My poor grandmother. No matter what she had ever said or done, she would be known to history as mad. How awful it must have been for her to endure the false smiles on people’s faces as they privately discounted every word that came from her mouth. Perhaps this had made her mad in itself. How does one keep one’s sanity after decades of being disbelieved?
Philippe glanced at the lovely tomb carved into the wall behind us. Above the booming bells, he asked, “Who is that?”
“Alfonso. My mother’s brother. The prince who was supposed to be King. He died when my mother was a maiden.”
The bells stopped, though the sonorous reverberations continued in my ears.
“So there lies the true King of Castile,” said Philippe.
“If he had lived, yes.”
He cocked his head, appraising me as if I were a stranger to him. “Odd, how things work out. He was supposed to be King, but your mother ended up with the crowns. Your brother, and then your sister, and even her son, were to be your mother’s heirs, but here you are, next in line.”
“And you.”
“Not really. In this land I am only to be your consort, not truly King.” He took my hand and kissed it. “But you never know, do you?”
24.
7 May anno Domini 1502
We were on the road to Toledo. Behind us were mountains, distant and purple; ahead of us, an undulating carpet of grassland, dusty green against the endless blue sky. Here and there hillocks pushed up from the expanse, crowned with gnarled gray olive trees. Who tended these trees? Some fifty leagues to the north, on the plains near Zamora, farmers had dug homes into the sides of the hillocks. On progresses of my youth, I had seen them crawl out from their grass-roofed dwellings to plow the fields and mind their goats. But here there was no sign of life other than the bustards that waddled frantically through the grasses, panicked by the cavalcade that raised the ocher cloud wafting at our knees. The dust muffled the rattle of tossing bridles. It muted the tinkling of the thimble-sized bells hanging from the Canopy of State just before me, under which my husband’s and my father’s horses ambled side by side.
Plodding behind on my palfrey, I marveled at the sight of them. There was my papa, sitting upright, his scarlet cape spread over his horse’s thick haunches, his black hair streaked with gray under a crown heavy with rubies and diamonds. There was my husband, father of my children, proud, young, and golden, in his purple satin doublet and robe. I had worshipped both, once. I wished I still could.
It had been two weeks since I had first seen Papa
. After we had kissed and embraced, he had held me out from himself. I could hardly bear the apologetic look in his eyes; it was as if he knew that I no longer idolized him, and agreed with my assessment.
“Juana.” His smile was heartbreakingly shy. “May I ask how that shirt you are making me might be coming along?”
Oh, Papa. So many things have changed. I am no longer a little girl. “Your shirt? I shall have it to you on Tuesday.”
Hope flickered in his eyes. “Then on Tuesday, I shall look like a king.”
My heart ached. For him, I would remain a child. “But Papa, you already are a king.”
The sweetness of reconciliation had warmed me as we had embraced again. If only one could forget as easily as one forgave. But in spite of the guarded happiness our fragile new détente gave me, the knot in my belly clenched even as I watched him and Philippe riding ahead under the Canopy of State.
I would see Mother today.
The jewel on Philippe’s cap swung out as he leaned toward Papa. “Monseigneur, how shall I address your wife when I meet her?”
“Isabel?” Papa grinned. “Isabel.”
“I can hardly call her that.”
“She’s not one to stand on ceremony, my boy. Address her any way you like, as long as you don’t wear that wig you wore in Medina.”
They laughed like old friends. Indeed, they seemed to have taken to each other immediately, in spite of Papa’s meeting Philippe under the most ignoble circumstances. We had been two leagues out of Toledo when Philippe had succumbed to chicken pox. The father of three, Archduke of Austria, Good Counselor, lover, and hunter, had been laid low by a child’s disease.
Father had ridden out from Toledo to meet us in our makeshift lodging in Olias. Poor Philippe had to receive him in his shift and shivering under a blanket, with clear pustules bubbling upon his face.
Now Philippe said, “I wish you had been in Medina, Monseigneur. The things you can do as the common man! It was brilliant of Pedro to think of disguising me in the wig and leather doublet of a soldier. I pinched all the titties I wanted without having to flip some proud papa a maravedí for the privilege. It’s pay the piper if you have a title to your name.”
Papa gave him a sidelong look, then mostly regained his amiable expression. “I dressed up once, to go meet my wife. Her brother didn’t favor the match and would have had me murdered had he known I was in Castile. I was costumed like a muleteer—did Juana tell you about it?”
“No, Monseigneur.”
I had. He did not remember.
“Surprising,” Papa said. “Well, it was quite a role to play. I had to curry the mules and feed them. To tell you the truth, I got to where I enjoyed it. Anyhow, my daughters love that story.”
Correction: Daughter. María. And to be honest, Catalina, too, now sixteen and in England, meeting, at last, the boy to whom she had been two years wed by proxy. Would she find young Arthur to her liking? Not that it would change her fate to become Princess of Wales, and someday, Queen of England.
A cough came from behind me.
I turned to see Beatriz, leaning forward on her pillion as she urged her horse ahead of madame de Hallewin’s gray palfrey. She caught my eye and nodded toward Papa and Philippe, indicating that I should join them under the canopy. Rightfully, I was to be at the head of the procession, since I was Mother’s true heir, not Philippe. Indeed, I was surprised to see Papa endorsing Philippe so openly. In this country, Philippe the Good was fast becoming known as Philippe the Drunken Reveler.
How happy he looked now, riding with Papa. He savored these ceremonies in a way I never could. But the more deference the Spanish showed him, at least to his face, the more he seemed to hunger for the crowns. He was as his grand-mère had said: a man whose appetite grew more voracious from eating.
I heard quickened hoofbeats behind me. The Archbishop of Besançon trotted his horse up next to Beatriz, the lappets of his miter flapping. He guided his mount into her path, forcing her animal to step back so that madame de Hallewin’s palfrey could come cantering around her. The Viscountess of Furnes, as creamy as ever in silvered blue, followed in madame’s wake, a sweet smile upon her lips.
I turned around, the fist doubling in my gut.
“Does the Queen’s health improve?” Philippe asked Papa.
Papa had come to Olias without Mother, who said she was ill. But it was rarely sickness that kept Mother in her bed. If her nobles disobeyed her, she would not punish them at the rack or by whipping but would stay under her covers, claiming her body suffered from the blows of their contempt. Only when they bent to her will would she get up, and then all of the Spains would seem sunnier. It did not bode well that she had not risen to meet me.
“The herald said she was sitting up,” said Papa, “and able to take some broth this morning.”
“I must admit, Monseigneur, that she frightens me just a bit.”
Papa chuckled. “You must not worry. She has that effect on everyone. You should have seen the Moorish army when she charged up to the gates of Granada on a warhorse.”
“I cannot see Juana doing that.”
Papa smiled at me over his shoulder. “Oh, Juana’s a good girl. I never have to worry about her.”
Philippe twisted around in his saddle. “Are you doing well, Madame?”
“Yes, Monseigneur.”
He nodded, then turned back quickly, as if afraid I might claim my rightful place in the procession.
Ahead, the towers of Toledo rose above the plains. Inside the city walls erected by the Visigoths, fortified by the Moors, and now flying the colors of Castile and Aragón, Mother awaited.
Dear saints in Heaven, save me.
Mother’s hair was more white than I remembered, less red. In fact, I remembered no white at all. Pouches had been pulled out from under her chin, and gray bags from under her eyes, in the five and a half years that had passed. I could see them even at that distance across the hall. She wore plain black and her favorite crown, the one of delicate filigree upon a wide plain band of silver. I had tried it on, once, as a child, when she was meeting with her counselors. Its thick rim had slipped down my head and dug into the tender flesh at the top of my ears. How did she sit under that ring of pain for hours on end? I had prized it off and promptly dropped it on my foot. I would not tell my nurse why I was crying when she had come to get me, though my toe had throbbed as if broken.
My husband now took my hand and we started forward after Papa. I gazed in panic at the tapestries on the wall and the ladies and gentlemen lined up before them, dipping as we passed. Mother’s dear friend Beatriz de Bobadilla stood next to her, glancing nervously between my mother and me. A young woman near my age stood on Mother’s other side. Only the highest grandee or my kin would have such a place of honor. Did I know her?
Papa reached Mother and kissed her cheeks, and then kissed the cheeks of the unknown girl. Was she the daughter of the Constable of Castile, the older gentleman on her left, or of the Duke of Villena, at whose palace Mother was receiving us? No matter whose daughter she was, shouldn’t she be on her knees, waiting to kiss the hand of her King?
Philippe squeezed my fingers. Though he held up his chin and smiled nonchalantly, I could feel him tremble.
We came before Mother. We started to kneel.
I felt a touch on my shoulder.
“I had told your attendants that I would not have this. Up, Juana, up. You, too, Don Philippe.”
When I raised my eyes, Mother opened her arms.
She embraced me first. While we kissed, I heard the scrape of my husband’s shoes as he shifted nervously.
She let go of me, then held out her arms to him. “My son.” When she was clasping him to herself, I caught the glance of the young woman I did not know. Dark-haired, olive-skinned, she kept flicking me looks as if she wished to stare but was afraid to do so.
Mother released Philippe, then folded her hands over her belly, which had grown more substantial. “What a lovely couple you
make. My ambassador tells me your children are strong and beautiful. He says little Charles rides a pony like a man.”
Did her ambassador also report my son’s troubles with language? Or his small stature, from his difficulties with eating?
Philippe grinned, unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge his son’s struggles. “I’ll have him at the lists before you know it. I’m having a suit of armor made for him.”
“There is time enough for that,” said Mother.
“Juana.” She turned to me and searched my face. After a moment, she said, “You remember doña Beatriz de Bobadilla?”
Mother’s lady kissed my hand, then smiled coolly as if censuring me.
“And this is Juana of Aragón, the wife of Don Bernardino.”
I put out my hand for the girl to kiss. So she was the young wife of the aging Constable of Castile. I blinked away the image of tender flesh being kneaded by hardened hands.
Her lips were pressed to my knuckles when Mother said, “She is your half sister.”
This Juana raised herself, an uncomfortable smile twitching at her mouth.
I did not understand. I had no half sister.
“We welcome her to court,” Mother said.
A half sister would make her Papa’s daughter.
I looked to Papa, but his face was blank. The courtiers turned their gazes away as I sought an explanation in their expressions.
Concerned only with his own thoughts, and so immune to the tension throbbing in the air, Philippe spoke into the silence.
“Your Majesty—”
“Mother,” Mother corrected.
“My Lady Mother, we visited the tombs of your parents.”
Mother smiled with surprise. “You went to Miraflores? How is the work coming along?”
“Most magnificently, Madame. There was much gold everywhere, even upon the fence that surrounded them.”
“Don’t be fooled. A nugget the size of a pea can be hammered into a sheet as large as my veil. But it is beautiful, isn’t it? It came from the Indies, you know. Admiral Colón’s gold.”