by Lynn Cullen
Before I could make sense of her, a page flew in. “Your Majesty! You must come. The King has fallen ill.”
With a glance at each other, Beatriz and I followed him to Philippe’s chambers. We arrived as the gentlemen shuffled in with their burden, then laid him upon the Bed of State. Don Juan sank to the floor and crossed himself.
“What has happened?” I cried. I bent over Philippe. His golden skin had turned the pale blue of skimmed milk.
“He asked for you, Your Majesty, when he fell.”
“What do you mean? Did he stumble on the court?”
I took his hand. It was as cold as death.
“We had not yet resumed playing,” said don Juan, “when all of a sudden he clutched at his belly and dropped to his knees.”
“Where are his physicians?” I demanded.
I leaned down close. He smelled of metal, like blood, though he had nary a scratch.
“Philippe!”
He opened his eyes, then, unseeing, closed them. They seemed to sink back into his head.
“What brought him to this state?”
“We did nothing unusual!” don Juan cried. “I promise. He drank water after our game—a pitcher of it, in fact, it was so hot. He collapsed soon after.”
The hair stood up on my neck. Diego had brought him the water.
“Philippe!” I said. “Look at me!”
He opened his eyes once more. He struggled to bring me into view.
“You are going to be well, Philippe. Don’t give up!”
His eyes drifted closed, his lashes a pale gold fringe against the blueness of his skin.
I scanned the ashen faces of the men crowding the bed. How I wished for his old friend Hendrik—No. No! He might suspect Diego. I looked around wildly. The Viscountess was slumped near the door, sobbing into her sleeve. My ladies patted her back as if she were the grieving wife.
A physician whisked into the room, his long sleeves aflutter. I stepped back to allow him space, then crossed myself. Dear God, let Diego get far away. Let no one lay a hand on him. Spare him, God. Please. He did wrong, but he did it for me.
44.
18 August anno Domini 1507
Tórtoles de Esgueva: a village named after the turtle doves that live in the cliffs above the River Esgueva. Such a soft name for such a harsh land. Here towering escarpments, beaten by the wind and the sun, crumble onto barren plains. Grasshoppers spring from dry stubble too sparse to sustain a herd of sheep. The acrid dust that clings to one’s veil and teeth also fouls the river. Pure water is as precious as gold. Centuries ago, a band of Poor Clares seeking solitude built a monastery around a spring that bubbles up in this wasteland. Word of this miraculous place soon spread, for not only was the water from the spring without impurities, but it had special healing powers. Persons journeyed great distances for casks of this health-giving water. A village formed outside the walls of the monastery. Today the nuns support themselves by selling their blessed water, as they prepared to do that hot afternoon nearly a year after Philippe’s death.
I sat with my baby, Catalina, watching two sisters draw a bucket from the well.
“Are you thirsty, Mevrouw?” asked Katrien. “May I get you some water?”
I looked up from Catalina, suckling at my breast. Beatriz was not there to see the humor in Katrien’s question. Beatriz had wed her longtime suitor, don Francisco, and the two had been blessed with a daughter who, some murmured, was oddly blue-eyed and fair, though both of her parents were dark. Of all my former attendants, only my humble laundress remained with me. It was as I wished. I had no need of ladies to accompany me on my journey to take Philippe’s body to its final resting place.
“Thank you, Katrien—yes.” Indeed, I found that as a nursing mother, I always had a great thirst. It was a small price to pay for the pleasure of watching my child tugging steadily at my breast. I had not experienced it with my first five children, as my body had always been made ready to receive my husband’s seed as quickly as possible. So for this reason, and many others, I refused the offer of marriage from old King Henry of England. Although it might have been a good jest to wed the Dowager Duchess’s great nemesis, I did not wish to be the King’s broodmare to produce little English heirs.
And, too, I waited for someone else.
Katrien brought me a dipper. As I drank, she smiled wistfully upon the child at my breast. With Beatriz gone, Katrien had gradually become bolder, taking on new duties in assisting my person, edging closer to me, and to my little Catalina, each day. As with a wild animal, I did nothing to startle her, to discourage her advances. I needed her humble company, and appreciated her genuine interest in my baby. From the great care and love she showered on my child, I suspected that she yearned to be a mother herself.
I stroked Catalina’s pale, wet wisps, stuck to her head with the sweat that came from the closeness of our bodies. “She woke several times last night.”
“Yes, Mevrouw. I heard.”
“Do you think it’s her gums?”
She nodded, setting the wings of her headdress aquiver. “She cried out much when her front teeth came. Now there is another.”
“I shall ask the sisters for oil of cloves,” I said resolutely.
We heard a banging on the outer door.
The nun cranking down the bucket paused. The other, holding the cask, straightened. But neither grew as alarmed as Katrien, who glanced about, then slid her hands under her apron.
The pounding came again. “Open up, in the name of the King!”
The King? For a moment, I thought wildly of the coffin kept in the chapel. Philippe was just wicked enough to burst from his shroud to haunt me.
Her rosary thumping against her thigh, the abbess strode down the arcade. I could hear her undo the bolt, then throw open the door.
The sisters ran from the courtyard. I plucked my child, now sleeping after her efforts, from my breast. As I wiped the baby’s milky mouth with my sleeve, Katrien quickly pulled at the laces of my bodice, throwing worried looks over her shoulder as she tied. I had risen from my bench, Katrien straightening my skirts, when my father strolled in.
“Papa?” I exclaimed. Katrien shrank against the arcade wall.
He opened his arms.
I went to him. He drew me up as I tried to kneel, then heartily kissed my cheeks. He tucked in his chin, grinning, to gaze at the child in my arms.
“So this is my new granddaughter.”
“Yes, Papa. Catalina.”
“She looks like …” He trailed off, frowning.
“Philippe.” I was not afraid to say his name. Yes, I knew it was whispered that I had planted the pitcher of poisoned water on the tray. I knew it was said that I had been watching from the window and thus would have known when to send out the tainted drink. I knew it was murmured that I had every reason in the world to kill my cruel husband for taking my rights and imprisoning me. If I had killed him, who was there to punish me? Not even Papa ranked above me. I began to understand how the English King escaped punishment for drowning his brother in that butt of wine. And though I would never have killed a spider, let alone my husband, I did nothing to set the record straight. Let them blame me, as long as they did not think to blame Diego.
Papa gazed around. I could see him taking in the sight of the cask next to the well, the basket of uncarded wool, the infant shifts strung across the patio to dry. Katrien, I noticed, had vanished.
“You live like a peasant, Juana.”
It was true. In my confinement at Philippe’s hands, I had developed a taste for living simply. I wished to prove to myself—and to someone else—that though Queen, I had no more pretentions than any of my subjects.
“Why do you do this to yourself?”
“I am comfortable, Papa. I will settle down to a court when I am finished.”
“Finished with what?” He grimaced as if he knew but did not want to hear my answer.
“When I have taken Philippe’s body to be buried next to Mo
ther, as is proper for the King.”
“To Granada,” he said quietly.
To Granada, where, against all expectation, Mother had insisted upon being laid to rest. She claimed that she wished to be buried in the city where she had had her greatest victory. What she did not mention was that it was in Granada that Fray Hernando lived and did his work with converts. That in Granada, there was a monastery where not only her yoke was carved upon the entrance arch, but Fray Hernando’s family crest joined her symbol as well. In Granada, she could be near her heart’s desire until the end of his days. In Granada, she could rest with him at last.
“You know that Fray Hernando was under interrogation by the Inquisition,” said Papa. “He was brought to Valladolid for questioning.”
I reddened. I do not know by what magic it is that thoughts can be heard, but it is potent just the same. “I was not aware of that.”
“He always had too much sympathy for converts. Your mother used to protect him, but”—he spread his hands in regret—“that was no longer possible.”
We stared at each other. It was then that I realized that he knew, oh he knew, exactly what Fray Hernando meant to Mother.
“Where is your wife?” I asked.
“In Barcelona. I have settled her there.”
“I am surprised you were able to leave her.”
“My daughter was in need.”
“But I am not, Papa. I am fine.”
He made a ring with his finger and thumb and held it out to me, smiling as if I were still a little girl.
My heart aching, I shifted my infant so that I could slip my hand through. When it did not fit, he expanded the circle so that I could pretend it did.
“Still fits,” he said. “Let me help you, Juana.”
I swallowed back my sadness. Would that we could go back in time. “Thank you, Papa,” I said gently, “but I truly am fine.”
“Are you? Hiding in a remote nunnery. Keeping your husband’s body nearby. People talk.” He lowered his voice. “They say you open the coffin to look at him.”
I laughed. “Papa. I hardly have a wish to see Philippe now. It was painful enough when he was alive.”
He opened his arms, the concerned paterfamilias. “I only repeat what people say.”
I smiled uneasily. “And what do you think would make them stop talking?”
“If I could take you home.”
“Home?” It hit me hard—with Mother gone, there was no such place.
“Yes.”
“Where would ‘home’ be?”
“I had thought perhaps Tordesillas. The palace has been recently refitted and has a beautiful view of the river. It is quite comfortable.”
“Papa, Pedro the Cruel locked up his wife there.”
He frowned, then cleared his face. “Very well,” he said soothingly, as to an unreasonable child. “Where would you like to go?”
I rubbed my brow. Why did Diego not come to me? Had he regrets for what he’d done? Surely he had heard where I now stayed, remote as it was. Talk, I had learned, traveled fast. “I don’t know.”
“Obviously you are”—he smiled with concern—“not yourself. Please, Juana, I want to help.”
“I don’t need it.”
“Surely you do.” He gazed at baby Catalina in my arms, her mouth wetly ajar as she slept. “You have the infant. Fernando calls for his mother in Burgos. And you must be busy making arrangements for your other children to join you.”
A black pall of sadness descended upon me. He had struck my Achilles’ heel. I was miserable with guilt over leaving my children for so long. Why did Diego not hurry?
Papa saw his advantage. He drew himself up. “Until you have restored order in your life, I would like to offer my services. I can manage all your duties. You know that I know how. You wouldn’t have to worry about anything.” When he saw my frown, he added quickly, “It would be only temporary. Just until you are yourself again.”
When I said nothing, he drew in a deep, regretful breath. “It would mean so much to Germaine. She can’t get the French court out of her head. She complains that compared with it, Aragón is a pitiful backwater.”
A chill raised the hairs on my head: Did he want my crowns?
“I know,” he said, “I should not care what she says. But I’m an old man with a young wife—there is no more foolish creature in the world.”
My heart beat faster as I pondered the possibilities. What if I did turn over my duties to Papa for a while, if I asked the Cortes to temporarily grant him my crowns? It would certainly make him happy. And it was true, he did have experience in ruling, albeit over little Aragón. Still, my people would do well by him. What harm was there in his managing the kingdom until I was ready to resume my reign? Until Diego could become governor, and rule the Indies, and feel that I was not above him. Until I could be Diego’s wife.
“It would be only for a little while,” Papa said. “You could have your say in whatever you want. I would just—”
“Papa?” I touched my bodice, behind which the pearl hung from its ribbon. “When can we speak to the Cortes?”
45.
March 2 anno Domini 1509
Katrien came to the door with two-year-old Catalina on her hip. “You have visitors, Mevrouw.”
I stopped playing the organ. It had not been a very satisfactory experience. The damp air rising from the Duero wreaked havoc on the instrument. It had lost its tune within days of arriving in Tordesillas, and the music master I had sent for from Toledo had yet to arrive. I was learning with even greater clarity since leaving Arcos, where I had cloistered myself for the past year and a half in hope that Diego would come, that my orders did not carry the same urgency they’d had before I asked the Cortes to let Papa rule as regent. I had thought I had been left alone by my courtiers out of respect for my wish to play the part of a mourning widow. But after finally giving in to Papa’s demand that I move to a palace more suitable for a queen, I found that I had little staff to relay orders to, and the staff I did have looked at me with a blankness behind their eyes that made me uneasy. It was as if they took their orders from someone else, and had been told to act as though they were serving me, while they actually weren’t. I would wait for Diego as long as he needed, but I feared that the longer I waited, the harder it would be to undo the constraints in which I was finding myself.
“Who is it?” I asked Katrien.
Her pursed lips indicated her disapproval of whoever it was. Nonetheless, I must greet them properly. I received so few visitors those days.
I had straightened my headdress and corset, and was pulling the painted cover over the keys of the organ, when my father and his young wife entered the room.
“Juana, dear!” Papa called.
My skirts swished as I rose to greet them.
“Papa.”
We exchanged kisses. He had gained weight since I had seen him last, and had a glow that I chose to attribute to his marriage.
“Juana, I am pleased to present my wife. Germaine, may I present the Queen of the Spains? This is my dear daughter, the lovely Juana.”
Germaine, heavily pregnant, came forward. She craned her neck over my shoulders, giving me a dose of her flowery perfume at each ear, but no contact with her lips.
I pulled back and smiled. “I am pleased to see you again.”
She nodded regally. Although her girl’s sweet features had changed little in the seven years since I had seen her, she held herself with the pompous authority of a child playing at Queen.
“Yes,” she said. “It has been a long time.”
“And do you like the Spains?” I asked.
“Well enough. Some of the churches are very nice.”
Papa chuckled. “She wishes to claim the cathedral in Toledo as her palace.”
She swatted at him. “I do not.”
He dodged her like a youth, belying, for the moment, the man who’d gone white at the temples and sported wrinkles that fanned from his eyes.
“You do!”
“I only asked how we might have a few of the carvings in the choir screen moved to my rooms at our palace. No one would miss them—there are so many. They reminded me of Notre Dame in Paris. I so love the carvings there. It is the most beautiful church in the world.” She stuck out her lower lip. “But he doesn’t care about what I think.”
Papa took her hand, kissed and then rubbed it. “Yes, I do.” Tucking it under his arm, he said to me, “How are you, Juana? How do you like Tordesillas?”
“I don’t know where my regular staff has gone. I am left with servants who stare at me oddly, as if I might be speaking in a language they do not know.”
He rubbed Germaine’s arm. “I am sure that you imagine it. You are Queen. I suppose they are simply not used to serving such a lofty personage here.”
“Perhaps. It’s not as if I require much.” I sighed. “I’ll like it better when you return Fernando to me, as you promised, and when the other children have finally come.”
“Well,” he said cheerfully, “that shouldn’t be long. I’ve arranged for an entourage to bring the children from Flanders, but you know how long outfitting such an expedition can take. They are not just any children, but future kings and queens. We must be careful.”
“Oh, yes.” Germaine rubbed her swollen belly. “They are very valuable.”
“Like nuggets of gold,” I murmured.
Papa gazed at me as though ascertaining whether there might be disrespect in my words.
Germaine extricated herself from Papa to stroll over to dab Catalina’s nose; the child responded by clinging tighter to Katrien. “Aren’t you a pretty girl? I do love children. I thought I’d have several by now, but Fernando …” She produced another excess of lower lip.
Papa’s dark face went purplish-red. “Patience, woman. There’s a tadpole in your belly now, isn’t there?”
She flashed him the closed-eye smile of a contented kitten. “A prince.”
She went over to the organ. “What a charming instrument! It must make the sweetest little music. In France, we play upon loud old beasts the size of a coach—oh, sorry—do you know what a coach is? A conveyance to ride in, pulled by horses?”