“But you’re relieved. You never wanted His Highness to be heir; you made that quite clear.”
“And you, my lord, should have a care,” I replied, “for you forget with whom you speak.” I braced my hands on my chair arms and came to my feet. “If that is all, please tell my husband I wish to see him.”
Besançon regarded me. “His Highness is most aggrieved by this matter and has gone riding.”
Despite my effort to remain calm, my voice edged. “Then you will send word to wherever he is that I too am aggrieved but am not to blame. I did not tell my mother to refuse this proposal, nor was it I who had the idea to set it before her.”
“Ah, yes,” he said, to my disbelief. “And yet Your Highness is Spain come to Flanders and therefore must understand that in refusing us this request, Spain has insulted Flanders.”
“Us?” I took an angry step to him. “There is no ‘us,’ my lord, except for my husband and I. And I did not insult him. I would never insult him as you insulted me, and him, by treating my matrons as you did.”
His eyes were like shards of ice. “You forget I chose you. His Highness could have wed elsewhere had I deigned it so.”
I trembled from head to toe, longing to fling the paper in my hand at his face. “The moment my husband returns, I will tell him of your presumption. You are not so well favored that he’d take your side over mine. Lest you forget, my lord, I am to bear his child and heir, not you.”
He bowed, went to the door. He paused, looked over his fleshy shoulder. “I suggest you reconsider testing His Highness’s patience,” he lilted, as if we’d just had an argument over the starching of my linens. “He is not accustomed to having his actions questioned by anyone, much less his wife and her mother. He might take it amiss that in your zeal to defend Spain, you apparently disregard the fact that he too is a ruler, with his own realm to consider.”
I breathed, “You will not get away with this. You have my word as an infanta of Castile.”
He inclined his head. “We offered to assist Spain in her time of difficulty. Seeing as that wasn’t good enough, so be it. Flanders has been forced to choose, and choose we will.”
Before I could react to this implicit threat, he opened my apartment door. “I wish you a pleasant evening,” he said, and he walked out.
My teeth cut into my lip. I unfolded my mother’s letter. I forced myself to read it, every word, and it was as though she stood in the room with me, her presence like immutable stone. It read just as I’d supposed—a matriarchal chastisement of a prince who had overstepped his bounds. Her high-handed treatment made me want to tear the letter to shreds, even as I knew she only did what Besançon had goaded her to.
Beatriz came in, her pallor showing she’d overheard everything. “Princesa, can I help?”
I nodded. “Yes. Go and see if you can find out when Philip is scheduled to return.”
She slipped out. Folding the letter into precise squares, I set it on my desk and went to the window. Outside, the day had started to fade, the ebbing sun casting gold over the Néthe and the hedges and flower beds of the gardens. I was not so naïve as to think Philip would not hear first from Besançon that we’d had an altercation, but he would still come to me. He would come and I would ask him to send that odious man away. I could not live under the same roof with him anymore. He had to go, for the health of our unborn child, if nothing else.
Beatriz returned to tell me Philip had indeed gone out riding but had taken only a small entourage and was expected back by nightfall. Throughout the rest of the evening, as my women endeavored to distract me, I waited. Soraya and Beatriz served my supper, but I picked at the food, looking at the door every time I heard footsteps in the corridor. I sent Beatriz back out; she reported on her return that Philip had just arrived and gone to his apartments.
“He must be changing his clothes,” I said. I took up my neglected embroidery and set myself to work, anticipating his arrival. The mechanical clock on my mantel chimed each hour with excruciating slowness. By midnight, I realized he had no intention of seeing me tonight. It was the first time we hadn’t spent an evening together while in the same palace, and as my women snuffed out the candles and retired to their pallets I paced my bedchamber, my mind awhirl.
I began to imagine the worst, Besançon’s words tumbling over and over in my head. The choice he’d mentioned could only mean Philip would turn to France. He’d forge an alliance with Spain’s enemy to spite my parents and bend them to his will, causing me no end of trouble.
My hands bunched into fists. I had to put an end to this before it went any further. I would go to Philip. I would not have our love tainted anymore by Besançon’s wiles.
I slipped into a robe and low-heeled slippers. Doña Ana slept in a separate room, and as I tiptoed past my ladies in the antechamber I motioned to my ever-attentive Beatriz to stay put.
On fleet feet, I moved through the darkened palace, encountering only the occasional stray hound, dozing courtier in an alcove, and the night sentries.
At the door to his antechamber, I paused. In the small watching-room, the candles were doused, the fire ebbing. The page who usually slept here, ready to attend to whatever Philip might need in the middle of the night, was nowhere in sight.
I was relieved. Let Philip express his frustrations while I listened patiently, knowing there were no ready ears in the antechamber, recording every word. I had no doubt that I would win. The archbishop, for all his guile, was no match for a visibly pregnant and anxious wife.
His bedchamber door was ajar and I saw flickering candles within. I felt a rush of pity. He too was awake, probably unable to sleep, distressed as I was, uncertain as to—
I heard a burst of muffled laughter. I glanced over my shoulder. Was the page here after all, entertaining some guest in the corner? Another burst of laughter rang out, immediately followed by an unmistakable voice. “Be quiet, wench. You’ll wake the entire palace.”
I froze where I stood. The moment fractured about me. My hand poised over the door’s latch; without knowing what I was about to do, I pushed it open on its oiled hinges.
His bed sat directly before me, the silver and blue brocade curtains pulled back. I had a fleeting impression of rumpled white sheets before my gaze dropped to the floor. Clothing littered the trampled rushes. I stared at a woman’s overturned white satin shoe. All sound faded. I lifted my gaze, slowly, in mounting horrified disbelief, my entire body turned to ice.
The candelabra on the sideboard tossed his shadow onto the wainscoting, slashing light across bare skin. Fleshy thighs poked out at either side of his hips, lifted in midair, the red-nailed toes curling upward. I saw the supple muscles of his buttocks flexing, his spine tensing under his back as he increased his pace, plunging into the creature beneath him.
Sound rushed back to me in a sickening deluge. I heard groans, whimpers, the slapping of skin against skin, and a woman’s voice saying over and over, “Oui, mon coeur, oui, oui, oui…”
Philip arched, released a husky groan I knew well, then shuddered and collapsed. The white thighs beneath his splendid body splayed onto the mattress. He rolled over, a hand at his brow, his mouth curved in a satiated smile. The woman, half-submerged within the pillows piled against the bed’s headboard, gave a laugh, her large, blue-veined breasts jiggling as she pushed tangled flaxen tresses from her face and sat upright.
Her eyes flew at me. She let out a small high-pitched gasp. “Mon Dieu!”
Philip chuckled. “What now? Didn’t you get enough, you greedy slut?” and he looked about. I looked straight at him, at his still-hard and wet sex. Tears burned in the corners of my eyes.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, and I turned blindly back into the antechamber.
Behind me, there was commotion, Philip’s brusque order: “Get out!” Bare feet hit the floor. I pressed a fist to my mouth, fighting back a wail of pain and sorrow as I saw the woman creep past me, gown and undergarments and white shoes clutched against he
r.
I did not know who she was. I might have passed her a hundred times in the gallery or in the hall and never know she’d bedded my husband.
Then I heard Philip come up behind me. I whirled about. He’d tossed on a scarlet robe. “My infanta, I…” He looked chastened, like a boy caught misbehaving.
“How—how could you?” I heard myself say, the plaintive, distraught tone foreign to my ears. “How could you do this to me?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he muttered. He did not try to touch me, his hands awkward at his sides. I wondered if his fingers smelled of her. “It was a bit of sport. It means nothing.”
“Nothing?” I whispered. My tears broke free. “You call it nothing, when you betrayed me?”
“Betrayed you?” For a moment, he seemed bewildered. “What, because of her? I told you, she’s nothing. A pastime. I’ve had a dozen just like—” He stopped, his eyes widening.
“You’ve done this before?” I echoed, and a sob thickened my voice.
“No, no.” He made a sudden move, his hand coming up as if to soothe me. I flinched, recoiled. “I swear, not since our marriage,” he said hastily. “Please, Juana, I promise you.”
I wanted to believe him. The betrayal I felt was so unbearable, so unthinkable, I wanted only for it to go away, for his touch to make me forget the searing memory of him pumping his seed into another.
But I didn’t, because I knew I could never forget. Something precious and irreparable had broken inside me.
“I must go,” I said, and I started to the door, moving like a woman underwater.
He caught my arm, not hard, but enough to pull me back. “Where are you going?” he said, and I saw a flicker of impatience in his gaze.
“Away.” I pulled from his grip. “Anywhere but here.”
“What? This is ridiculous! All husbands do it, Juana. When their wife is with child, they seek comfort elsewhere. It hardly matters.”
I felt my heart turn over. He was a stranger. I had made a terrible mistake. I had married a man I did not know. An intense rage came over me. “Is that what Besançon told you,” I said through my teeth, “that it doesn’t matter? That you may do as you please because I’m with child? Well, it does matter! It matters to me! I am your wife. And I loved you!”
“I was angry,” he flung back. “God’s death, I was angry and hurt. Your mother insulted me. She denied me my right as your husband and chastised me as if I were a snot-nosed brat. I didn’t mean for you to find out. Had you stayed in your rooms, you’d never have known.”
“Yes,” I whispered, “you’re right. I would never have known. And you would never have told me.” I turned away again, to the door.
He said, “Juana, come back. Please, let us talk about this. You’re being unreasonable.”
I moved into the corridor. I paused, looking around as if I had never seen this place before. He stood silhouetted by the open doorway, the candlelight behind him. I could not see his face.
I broke into a desperate run. I didn’t know where I headed, only that once I reached my chambers, I must have looked a fright, my hair disheveled, my bare feet soiled from the passageways, my slippers discarded somewhere behind me.
Beatriz and my other women were awake, waiting. They gaped when they saw me.
“Start packing,” I cried. “We are leaving. Now.”
TEN
I took my ladies back to Brussels. I would not confess to anyone, not even to my beloved Beatriz, even as my pain and humiliation and anger ate at me like a canker. I ordered the startled staff in Brussels to ready my rooms, and though they were only half-done cleansing the palace from our previous stay, without fresh rushes on the floors or laundered carpets, tapestries or linens, the stinking slop piles not yet carted away, I ensconced myself in my apartments and acted as if I had an entire court about me.
Not once in two full weeks did Philip’s name cross my lips.
At first, I made up wild plans to depart for Spain as soon as my child was born, return home to the Alhambra to raise him as a Spanish prince. I wept more tears than I care to recount when I thought of never seeing Philip again, but then like an injured person fingers their wound, I made myself recall that scene in his bedroom and feel again the terrible disbelief. I didn’t know if he had done it before or if he would do it again, but he had shattered my trust in him and as the days passed I began to wonder if everything we’d felt, everything we’d shared, the passion and laughter, the dancing and sleepless nights, had been an illusion.
I’d always known infidelity was an unfortunate but common part of marriage. My father adored my mother yet had had mistresses. My mother never raised protest, at least not publicly. In fact, when one mistress bore him a son, and another a daughter named Joanna, she had both children brought to court to be reared as befitted their rank. The mistresses were also found suitable husbands, once my father’s interest waned. But how had Queen Isabel felt when she first discovered this rupture in what she believed was the perfect union? Had she wept, railed at my father in private? Or had she displayed only equanimity, burying her pain deep within? If so, I knew I should do the same, if only because, like her, I had no other choice. Philip was my spouse; I had no say in how he chose to behave. I should consider myself fortunate he was young, comely, and that he cared for me. Other princesses contented themselves with far less.
And still, I couldn’t accept it. The fact that he’d bedded another woman hurt me less than the realization that he hadn’t cared to deny himself. He’d thought of his own satisfaction rather than our love, squandering it the moment a difficulty came our way. It felt careless, callous, the act of a vengeful boy, and I feared I might never find the resignation I needed to forgive him.
Then one afternoon, as I prepared to take my daily walk in the gardens, Beatriz rushed in. “Your Highness, the archduchess Margaret is here! She insists that you receive her.”
I went still. “Here? Why? I thought she…” My voice faded. The door opened and Philip’s sister swept in, clad head-to-toe in black, her hands outstretched. “Ma chérie.”
She smothered me in her embrace, then drew back to regard me with a searching look. I saw at once, she knew. She had returned home from Spain and seen Philip. He’d told her of our estrangement and now she was here, to make amends. But why was she still in mourning?
I said quietly, “You wear black.”
“Yes.” Margaret lowered her eyes.
“But the six months of mourning for my brother are done.”
She whispered, “Oh, my dear, it’s as I feared. You don’t know. You haven’t been told.”
I met her eyes. The chamber started to keel. “Told what?” I heard myself say.
She did not speak. A tear slid down her cheek.
“Dear God,” I said, “what is it? Is it Philip? Has something happened to him?”
“No, my brother is well. He waits downstairs. He didn’t know if you would see him.”
I stiffened. “Philip is here?”
She took me by the arm. “I am not here for him. My dear, your sister Isabella…I am so sorry. She is dead.”
I heard her words in utter silence. Then I said, “No. That is impossible.”
“I know it must come as a shock,” said Margaret. “Her pregnancy went so well, almost perfect. No one expected the birth to be so hard on her. Your mother sent word, asking Philip to spare you the news until after your own child’s birth. But when I got to Lierre after that infernally long sea voyage and he told me what happened, I insisted we must come to you at once. I didn’t want you to be alone, in case you learned the dreadful news elsewhere.”
My breath evaporated from my lungs. I did not feel myself move as memories crashed over me. I saw Isabella in her widow’s garb, mourning her dead prince; her disapproval when Catalina and I escaped into the Alhambra’s gardens; and I remembered her words on the day I left Spain. She’d said we would never see each other again in this life. How had she known?
I buried my face in my hands. “God, it cannot be. Not again. Not my poor sister.”
Margaret moved to embrace me when a quiet voice said, “My infanta.”
I looked up. He stood in the doorway, his cap in hand. He looked pale, thin. “I have your mother’s letter,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s true. Isabella is gone.”
From my bedchamber door, Doña Ana let out an anguished wail. Beatriz guided my bereaved duenna away. Philip approached me. I met his eyes. “My sister’s child, is it…?”
“He is. A boy christened Miguel. But the birth nearly killed him too. Your mother has taken him to Granada in the hope his health will improve.”
“Granada. Yes, the air is pure there. Granada will heal him.”
I felt Philip take my hand. I was so cold. I wondered if I would ever feel warm again. He said softly, “Please, forgive me,” and the pain resurfaced, sharp as a blade.
I pulled back. “I can’t. Not now. Please, go. You’ve done your duty. Let me grieve in peace.”
His mouth tightened. “Juana, how long will you let this come between us?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered, and I walked into my bedchamber without a backward glance, closing the door on his frozen figure, Margaret helpless at his side.
I turned the key. Then I sat on the bed beside Doña Ana. Beatriz and Soraya flanked us like silent sentinels as I put my arms about my poor duenna and let myself weep.
I WENT INTO SECLUSION FOR THE OFFICIAL PERIOD OF MOURNING for my sister; this time I did not deviate from the prescribed protocol. Directly afterward, I entered confinement for childbirth in early November of 1498. After surprisingly few hours of labor, I gave birth to a girl, who was later christened Eleanor. The midwives and physicians hastened to alleviate what they perceived as my disappointment with the declaration that my apparent facility for childbirth indicated I would in time bear a son. I nodded, hiding my covert pleasure. In bearing a daughter and not the prince he had craved, I’d thwarted Besançon’s ambitions.
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