Reign of Madness

by Lynn Cullen

  “I don’t believe you. Why would you say this? Why would you take the crowns from their rightful owner?”

  “Oh, Juana. You are not so naive as that.”

  The nightjar’s trill waxed louder; it must have flown closer. There were plenty who would do whatever it took to seize the power of the throne. Luna had done it with my grandfather. Someone had poisoned Mother’s brother Alfonso. To keep their line safe, the Dowager Duchess’s brother Edward had killed his own brother George, and her other brother, Richard, had murdered his nephews. As long as there was a crown, people would kill to keep it. Or put their half brother’s daughters in convents.

  “Who were these others who helped you to the throne?” I asked, not wanting to know.

  “Who would you think—those who then gained from it: Cardinal Mendoza and his followers. The Admiral of Castile.” She drew in a breath. “The Archbishop of Granada.”

  “Fray Hernando? The most holy man in Spain? What cares he about earthly power?”

  Mother grimaced. “He doesn’t. He cares for me.”

  “What are you saying?”

  We stared at each other. At last Mother bowed her head in the silvery moonlight. “I am not the hero you think I am.”

  A soldier called up: “Is all well, Your Majesty?”

  Mother lifted her voice. “I am comforting the Princess. She is lost in love for her husband and needs my aid.”

  “Why do you say that?” I whispered. “You know that it is not true.”

  She shook her head slowly. “It would be better for you if you were.”

  A shriek from Leonor now jolted me from my thoughts. I looked up to see Philippe lunge at the children as they dodged around the climbing roses.

  “Don’t let him catch you, chickens!” I called, trying to sound cheerful. I thrust the needle into the cloth of Philippe’s shirt. I had noticed it on the floor after he had taken me the previous afternoon, the shoulder torn by Delilah’s talons. Mending it signaled my hope for reconciliation.

  Philippe caught Isabel. He rubbed his face against her belly until she was breathless with laughter.

  He put her down. Panting, she asked, “Why does she call us chickens?”

  Philippe snatched her up again. “How about I call you ‘gyrfalcon’?”

  She pounded him with her balled fist. “I’m a girl!”

  He grabbed her fist and kissed it. “I’m a boy.”

  She giggled. “You’re funny.”

  “She thinks her father’s funny,” Philippe announced to me. He turned to her. “Will you think I’m funny when I’m King? Or am I funny only as a prince?”

  Her soft brow buckled.

  I pulled on the needle and thread. “She doesn’t understand you, Philippe.”

  “Charles understands. We’re going to be Kings someday, aren’t we, Charles?”

  “Yeff, Papa.”

  A tender look raced across Philippe’s face, quickly replaced by a grin. He smacked his fist against his hand. “We’re going to crush anyone who gets in our way, right, son?”

  Charles pounded his own bony hand. “Cruff ’em.”

  Philippe laughed. “I wish your great-grandmother could see you. She rather liked crushing things.”

  I thought of my own mother. She was not as tough a creature as I had once believed. Perhaps I had been wrong to not question her about her failures. Perhaps she had only been waiting for me to do so. But it was I who was afraid to let her be less than a goddess.

  Philippe motioned to a man standing nearby to bring him wine. “I’m having a feast tonight, welcoming you home.” I watched him drain his goblet. “Nun, dress her up.” Beatriz looked up as he came over and kissed my cheek. “My people need to start thinking of you as Queen.”

  “But I’m not their Queen.”

  “My father is making arrangements to change our titles here once I am King of your lands—oh, excuse me, Consort King. Anyway, here I will be full King, not some meek companion to Her Majesty. Finally, Burgundy will get its crown. Grand-mère would be so pleased.”

  “That may not be for a long, long while.”

  “You have not heard the reports of your mother’s illness?”

  I put down my sewing. “No.”

  He glanced away. “Oh, they are probably nothing. Her ambassador is given to exaggeration. The man would call a hiccup a death rattle. Do not give it a moment’s thought, not on a pretty day like this.”

  I saw Isabel stumble and fall toward a trailing rose. She jerked her hand from the thorny cane and, with outrage gathering on her face, studied the thumb-prick welling with blood. Leonor scooped her up as she howled.

  I took Isabel from her sister. When her sobs had subsided, I said to Philippe, “I would like to dismiss the Viscountess of Furnes as governess. Now that I have returned, I shall fill that role.”

  He signaled again to the servant for more wine. “You’re a funny thing, more concerned about the title of governess than Queen.” He took a drink. “But that is why you amuse me.”

  He gave the man his cup. “Look pretty tonight,” he told me. And then, hunching like a monster, he chased after Charles, who ran, his little cries of delight distorted into growls by his deformity.

  That night, music mixed with the clink of knives and spoons and the hum of conversation as we dined. In the torchlight, made brilliant by mirrors hung from every wall, the sharp petals of Philippe’s tree of serpent tongues glistened as if wet. Drawn to the sheer malevolence of a pointed tip, I gingerly put my finger to it and slowly applied pressure.

  “Watch out,” said Hendrik, sitting next to me, “you’ll cut yourself.”

  I drew back and smiled. “Dear Hendrik, thank you for your concern. But there are other things at this court more likely to wound me than serpents’ tongues.”

  His broad face was etched with sympathy. “We are your friends, Your Highness.”

  “Some of you may be.”

  I glanced at the Viscountess of Furnes, leaning over her plate to flirt across the table with the Margrave of Baden-Baden. Like a fish being angled, the fresh-faced young man bent toward her as she spoke, then, as she sat back, bent farther forward as if tethered to her by an invisible line. She smiled privately, fingering a jewel suspended from a ribbon and hidden in her bodice. Whatever the gem was, it was large enough to make a lump under her neckline.

  The past year and a half had only served to ripen the Viscountess, silkening her cheeks and intensifying her pale blue gaze. Her golden hair, upon which she wore her hood far back to reveal her sleek temples, gleamed in the torchlight. She shone like a goddess and she knew it.

  Philippe turned away from the Margrave’s wife, a plump young thing whose lips looked as though they had been inflated like a sheep’s bladder. “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing, Monseigneur,” I replied.

  “Where’s my surprise, Hendrik?” Philippe took a swallow of wine. “Hendrik said he had a surprise for me tonight.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Highness,” said Hendrik, “you misunderstood. The surprise is for the Princess.”

  “For me?” I asked.

  “For her?” Philippe stuck out his lip in a pretend pout.

  “The feast is in her honor, is it not?”

  “Well, it had better not be a silly painting,” Philippe grumbled. “I remember that ugly piece you tried to jolly us with in Brussels a few years back.” He nudged Hendrik’s arm. “If you are aroused by the sight of a man doing it with a strawberry, fine. I prefer women.”

  “I liked that painting,” I told Hendrik. “I like to imagine what the artist might have meant by it.”

  Philippe knocked back his wine. “He was drunk.”

  “Have you decided what that might be, Madame?” Hendrik asked.

  “I think he meant it to illustrate how the natural world would appear if Adam and Eve had not fallen in Eden.”

  “Correction.” Philippe stabbed a piece of fish with his knife. “Eve is the one who fell. Adam was forced t
o follow her.”

  I could no longer ignore him. “So you think that women are the weaker sex?”

  “Of course they are.” He grinned. “We like them that way.”

  Hendrik cleared his throat. “I think it might be time for the surprise.” He whispered something to his man, who went to the musicians’ balcony.

  Trumpets blared. Diners stopped their conversations and the great wooden doors swung open. Into the chamber danced Flemish men dressed in red loincloths and clamshells, great green-feathered masks upon their faces. Some carried parrots on their shoulders. Others paraded with monkeys on silver chains or, in the case of little greenish monkeys the size of squirrels, balanced atop their heads.

  I laughed when a costumed gentleman led in a herd of long-legged ratlike creatures with crimson ribbons. “Hutias!” I exclaimed. “Admiral Colón brought them to court when I was a girl. My dog chased after them.” I marveled how I could say the name Colón as if it meant nothing to me.

  Hendrik grinned. “I wanted to remind you of your lands, where many worlds come to pay honor at your court.”

  I squeezed Hendrik’s hand. “Thank you.”

  “If you were really going to do something for us, why didn’t you get us some real natives? By all accounts, the she-Indios are quite the tigers—in a good way—once you pin them down.”

  I shifted away from Philippe. All his natural sweetness evaporated when he drank. “The Indios are people, Monseigneur, and as such are Mother’s subjects. She specifically has granted them her love and protection.”

  “Your mother,” he grumbled.

  “There are times when I see her great wisdom.” I looked at him in wonder. “How long it has taken me to say that.”

  Now the trumpets announced a call to dance. The players of Hendrik’s surprise exhibition marched out of the hall with their beasts. Soon I was with the other dancers, holding Philippe’s hand while performing the lively leaps of a saltarello, wishing the evening would end so that I could go to bed. I would be rising early—I had promised my children that I would take them for a walk along the river in the morning.

  Philippe jerked me toward him. He gazed at me as I righted myself from my stumble. “Do you love me, Puss?”

  “You’re drunk.”

  He stopped dancing. “I asked you, do you love me?”

  The other dancers exchanged uneasy glances.

  “Yes, of course I do.” I looked away, upset that others should see him like this.

  A gleam caught my eye. I followed it to the Viscountess, where a great egg-shaped pearl had slipped from beneath her bodice and now rested on her breast.

  As awkwardly as a man underwater, Philippe followed my line of vision. He squinted, then frowned, then looked at me. “It means nothing,” he said.

  I pulled out of his grasp.

  “She is the children’s governess!” he called after me as I strode across the floor. “I rewarded her. What’s wrong with that?”

  I kept walking.

  There was a disturbance behind me, then a woman’s gasp. I heard the plodding of Philippe’s uneven steps as he strove to catch up with me.

  He thumped my shoulder. “Here.”

  When I turned, he thrust the pearl before me on his palm. “You want it. You keep it. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  I gazed into his face, beautiful even when distorted with drink. “Dear Philippe, that is precisely the problem.” I turned to go.

  “What does that mean?” he cried. “What do you mean?”

  As I strode by, my skirts brushed against the tables emptied of all but those nobles who were too infirm or aged to dance. Lesser court officials stood against the walls, gaping.

  “Stop!” Philippe ordered. “You cannot leave until I’ve dismissed you!”

  A dog gnawing on a bone jumped out of my way.

  “She’s not stopping!” Philippe sputtered in amazed fury. “Do you not hear me? I command you to stop!”

  I pushed through the doors, leaving the roar of shocked silence behind me. Alone in the torchlit passageway, I did not cry, but felt the hollow black ache of despair.

  36.

  18 May anno Domini 1504

  The following day, the children’s little spaniel raced ahead along the riverbank, ears flying, belly fur raking refuse, mouth pulled back in a wide doggy grin. “Catch her!” I called after Leonor and Charles, who ran after her, shrieking. Behind them Isabel churned through grass up to her knees. She stumbled, fell, then popped up, crying for them to wait.

  “I’ve been reading,” said Beatriz, strolling next to me. It was a fine morning. The air smelled of the muddy river, where ducklings scudded after their mothers, and of the wild roses blooming along the towpath, to which fat-legged bees paid visits like greedy proprietors checking on their holdings.

  I laughed. “When are you not reading, Beatriz?”

  Her graceful features were arranged in a frown within the white oval of her wimple. “I’m a little … concerned … about something.”

  “Yes?” I said absentmindedly. Across the river, a stork sat on its nest atop an old church tower. Its devoted mate stood next to it, not moving, though a breeze raised the feathers on its head.

  “I found a book in your husband’s library—”

  I turned to her. “You mean the Dowager’s library. Philippe does not read.”

  Her frown deepened, as if that might be significant. “Yes. That’s true. He doesn’t, does he?” She blinked in thought. “Well, as I was saying, I found this book—by Pliny the Elder, it turns out. It stuck out a little from its neighbors and so attracted my attention.”

  The spaniel stopped and, panting, turned to wait for the children. Leonor came upon her first and scooped her up in a chokehold, to which the dog, rear legs hanging down and belly exposed, responded by grinning like a fool.

  “Pliny—one of your Romans,” I said. “You must have liked that. Was it in Latin?”

  “No. French. It was a miserable translation.”

  I raised my voice. “Leonor! Charles may pet her, too.”

  “Your Highness, Pliny was discussing some of the dangers to one’s health from the metal lead. He felt it was particularly dangerous in the form of the white lead paint ceruse. The workers who used it to paint ships often succumbed to a sudden death.”

  “Charles, why would you hit your sister?” I ran over to Leonor, who sat in the grass crying, as Charles cuddled the dog.

  “It’ff mine,” he said, holding the spaniel away from me. “Everyffing iff mine. I’m to be King ffomeday.”

  “Kings must share,” I said. “At least good kings do.”

  “Papa ffaid I get everyffing. Me and him.”

  I kissed him on his brow, wide and high, and with its silky blond widow’s peak, so very beautiful. “Good kings like to see everyone happy. It makes them happier. Do you see how that works?”

  He shook his head.

  “You might try it. Be nice to someone, and see how it makes you feel. Here, give Leonor the dog.”

  Begrudgingly, he handed her the dog. She smiled, then buried her nose in its fur.

  “See?” I said. “Just by something you did, you made Leonor happy. You had the power to do so. Doesn’t that make you feel good and strong?”

  “No.”

  “Think about it. You’ll see.” I gathered him in for a kiss, and then released him.

  “Now what were you saying?” I asked Beatriz.

  “There was a note in the book on Pliny. It quoted Vitruvius, mentioning that when lead in vessels comes into contact with a liquid, it leaches into the liquid. And lead, once ingested, is harmful to one’s health.”

  I watched the children. “Why do you tell me this?”

  “The symptoms of lead ingestion are weakness and lethargy. Not usually enough to kill, but to render a person helpless. Though in the case of white lead paint, the outcome might be even more dire.”

  “I still don’t know why you speak of this. Do you think such vessels
are used in our kitchens?” I had a sudden thought. “Is the health of my children endangered?”

  “Your Highness, the goblet from which you took the Prince’s potion was painted white.”

  Weakness, she had said the symptoms were, and lethargy. The bleak months of my wasting illness; my daily exhaustion; how hard it had been sometimes to walk and talk, even to breathe—all this played across my mind. “Do you think there was lead in the paint?”

  Beatriz drew in a shuddering breath. “I wonder, Your Highness, if the question is: Did someone wish for it to contain the poisonous metal?”

  Hooves pounded. I started. Grasping my throat, I turned to see four German guards riding toward us with a riderless horse.

  They reined their animals sharply. The commotion caused Isabel to latch on to my legs.

  I looked up, shading my eyes. “Gentlemen?” I demanded, angry that they had frightened my child.

  “Your Highness.” The leader’s pink skin and bristly yellow mustache were visible through his open visor. He dismounted and bowed. “His Highness asks that you return to the palace at once.”

  I picked up Isabel. She pushed away, making clear that she was still uncomfortable with me. “I am with my children now.”

  He frowned at Charles and Leonor, chasing the spaniel with sticks, their curiosity about the guards abated. “Your Highness, you are to come with us.”

  I looked at the riderless horse. It was saddled with a pillion.

  Beatriz stepped next to me. “What is it that is so pressing?”

  The men glanced at one another.

  “I won’t go,” I said, “unless I am told why I must leave my children.”

  “We are under orders from the Prince.”

  “Tell the Prince that the Princess shall be there shortly.” I turned toward Leonor and Charles, still running on the bank.

  The guard laid his hand on my arm.

  I stared at his gauntlet in shock even as I shifted Isabel away from him. “Do you know what you do?” I was incredulous.