The Scroll of Seduction

by Gioconda Belli

  My husband was no malingerer, but his advisors would have been more than happy to join forces with the Valois and not the Spanish if it weren’t for King Maximilian. The Flemish nobility was much more influential than ours, and it did not take long for me to see that these men knew that with my parents so far away, they would eventually be able to increase their sway over me simply because they were constantly by my side.

  As soon as Philippe and I had settled in Brussels, the Flemish took on all of the most important positions in my royal household, or shared them with my aides and attendants, so that I could rarely be alone with those I knew and trusted. I protested, but Philippe used the burning passions of our intimacy to appease my discontent. He pampered me with endearments and fabulous gifts. Almost every afternoon, we would go riding through the forest close to the palace and make a game of galloping off at top speed to lose the nobles who’d accompanied us. Once we were alone, we would dismount in the nearby villages, stroll through the streets and visit the markets like two well-dressed commoners. Philippe liked to corner me someplace and kiss me passionately in full view of the passers-by. More than once, holding hands, we visited artisans’ workshops where they made jousting swords or beautiful tapestries. The master craftsmen would invite us in for a glass of wine and tell us about their simple lives. And then, after our antics, we’d return to the intrigues of the palace, the jealousies between Philippe’s courtiers and mine, the latent power struggles surging up around us that–when we were alone–we managed to elude. Then just our eyes making contact was enough to create a sheltered space protected from all else but the immense love we felt and that kept our blood rushing through our bodies like an impetuous river. Alas, our love was besieged by interests of State, and my naive infatuation suffered its first real disenchantment the afternoon I received the dreadful news of my brother Juan’s death.

  My sister-in-law Marguerite and the nobles at court had relayed the details of their lavish wedding ceremonies and celebrations. Like Philippe and I, Juan and Marguerite had fallen in love as soon as they set eyes on each other. But Juan did not possess my hearty constitution and he melted like a wax taper in the legendary passion of the Austrias. Or at least that is what people said: that he had given himself to Marguerite, and by the time he rose from the nuptial bed he’d already grown pale; that his body was unable to protect him when he came down with a high fever in Salamanca while visiting the city with his new wife. Barely seven months after his wedding, poor Juan died in my father’s arms on October 6, 1497.

  I never could have guessed anything like that would happen, especially because Marguerite had recently written to me to say that she was with child. Juan’s death unsettled my bones. I received the news on an opaque, listless autumn day in Brussels, and I was suddenly hit by the realization that Philippe had separated me from everything I loved. I had let my husband dismiss nearly all of my Spanish courtiers. I couldn’t even share my sorrow with my own kind. Aside from Beatriz and Ana de Viamonte, no one in that room cared about Juan’s death. In fact, sitting in an armchair by the fire, I could hear them chattering away animatedly. Crying for Juan, I regretted not having written to my mother, refusing to be influenced by her, as per Philippe’s counsel. I don’t know exactly when, but at some point I stood up and began to shout, banishing the Flemish attendants from my chamber because I could no longer stand the hideous sound of their guttural language nor bear to see their insincere expressions of condolence. They must have called Philippe, for he appeared almost instantly and, taking no notice of my sorrow, began raving like a madman, insisting we had to call the envoy–Señor Manrique–and tell him that since Juan was dead, we wanted the titles of Prince and Princess of Asturias bestowed upon us immediately. We had to avow our right to the crown. I told him he was mad. Not only was my sister Isabel alive, but his own sister Marguerite was pregnant. He in turn claimed that I was the mad one, for not seeing that this was the chance we needed to be considered heirs to the throne of Castile and Aragon. I can’t recall all of the other things he said. At a certain point his words blurred into an indistinct drone and his face–which I never thought I could find objectionable–looked like that of a bird of prey perched on my brother’s shoulder, waiting to disembowel his corpse. I covered my ears and ran from the room, telling him to do whatever he pleased. I didn’t care. He would have my mother and father to contend with, after all.

  And that was what happened. My mother and father reacted angrily to his audacity and confirmed Isabel as their heir. After the death of Prince Alfonso, she had married King Manuel of Portugal, and since Marguerite and Juan’s son was stillborn, there was no other option. I had to remain levelheaded in my husband’s presence, because the truth is that my parents’ pronouncement, though understandable, still affronted me. Philippe had been clumsy and aggressive in his pretensions, true, but by casting him aside they left me alone, bleeding, and swimming in shark-infested waters.

  A year passed from the time we married. I was beginning to worry that all of our lovemaking seemed to bear no fruit when, finally, I realized that I was with child. Philippe was delighted, and I could not contain my joy. My body began to grow. The skin on my belly became a taut drum, crisscrossed with delicate blue subterranean rivers. Lying in bed with my hands resting on the round moon that wriggled of its own volition, I could spend hours imagining how that bouncy baby residing within me might turn out. But despite how I lost myself in my fantasies, I was not oblivious to certain unexplained absences on Philippe’s part. Aware of my terrible moods, Madame de Hallewin and Beatriz tried to console me, assuring me that it was an old custom for a husband not to threaten his child’s welfare by expecting his wife to fulfill his needs in the latter months of pregnancy.

  “Your own mother, Juana, endured the same. That was when your father’s bastard children were conceived, and you know that they were brought up at court, because Queen Isabel is magnanimous and sympathetic and she deigned that it be so.”

  “You must understand, child,” admonished Fray Tomás de Matienzo, the envoy my parents had sent who now lived in my court.

  “Well, I don’t,” I replied, glaring at him, feeling my cheeks burn with the feverish rage coursing through me. “Men excuse everything. I would have no trouble accepting this if Philippe–like my uncle King Enrique with his wife–were to consent to me finding my own lover and conceiving my own bastard children.”

  I repeated this remark that night at dinner, in public, in front of Philippe. If Fray Tomás had been shocked at my words, Philippe gave so much credit to my threats that from then on he spent every night with me and we found many creative ways to surmount the hill of my belly. I told him that not during that or any future pregnancies, so long as God granted me life and good health, he would need to seek others when it was I who best knew how to satisfy his hunger.

  My first daughter, Leonor, was born on November 15, 1498, in Lovaina. Ysabeau Hoen, a midwife from Lier, assisted in the delivery. I was extraordinarily nervous. Only two months earlier, on August 23, my sister Isabel had died in childbirth. My desolate mother had written to me. Isabel had died in her arms, an hour after giving birth. I knew how much my mother loved her. In under a year her two eldest children were no more. How could that be? And poor Marguerite. Her pregnancy had ended in a pool of blood. Her womb had not sheltered a child but a shapeless mass. Miguel, my sister’s Isabel newborn, was named then heir to the throne of Castile and Aragon. It had already been confirmed by the Cortes.

  In the throes of my labor pains, I kept seeing Juan’s and Isabel’s faces floating over my bed. Fortunately, Ysabeau not only had soft, skilled hands, but the presence of mind and fierceness required to take me by the shoulders and shake me from the panic that overcame me just when I should have begun to push the baby out.

  “Never! Do you understand? You will never die in childbirth,” she shouted in Flemish, shaking me so hard that I was forced to stop covering my face with my hands.

  It was an order, a spell, I d
on’t know, but from that moment on I never again doubted myself or my health when it came time to deliver. My body unclenched, and Leonor was born with no mishaps. I cried when Ysabeau placed the little girl in my arms. I fully understood the terrible sorrow of my mother’s recent loss, and fervently wished her to be there with me. If she had been there, I was sure she would have felt it as a rebirth, for Leonor was a Trastámara.

  As is the Burgundian fashion, Philippe did not arrive until I had been comfortably settled into the chamber of honor, and lay waiting to receive the court’s congratulations in a green canopied bed with an ermine-fringed gold blanket. He too was overcome when he took Leonor in his arms, but he glanced at me indifferently, as if the baby had transformed me into some other Juana. The moment my milk began to flow, though, he became a curious little boy, fascinated by my swollen breasts and by the sight of me suckling our baby. He would spend his mornings with Leonor and me in bed. Philippe and I were spellbound, gazing at her like two idiots. And Leonor wasted no time. She attached herself to my nipples with relish, and while she fed, I felt as if her gums were biting into my womb. It was a very odd sensation. Perhaps the vast love I felt for my delicate little girl made my insides crave to protect her once more.

  I told Philippe I didn’t want my children to have wet nurses. I would feed them myself, regardless of whether that was how things were done at court. He made no attempt to dissuade me. In fact, he came to love being around me when I breast-fed. He loved to see his noblemen’s expressions when I pulled down my dress. Afterward we’d laugh, discussing their reactions, and he’d encourage me to flaunt my breasts.

  “They’re so beautiful, Juana. I want everyone to be jealous. I want to watch my courtiers as they lust for you and have to hide their desires. It’s very entertaining.”

  When Leonor was one month old, he appeared very gallantly in my chamber and gave me a pearl-encrusted pendant. Not long after, he organized a joust in my honor and wore yellow, which was my color. The proof of my fertility had magical effects on the Flemish nobles and ladies in my court. Although my economic dependence restricted my ability to govern my own household, I still felt happy and well loved. My body matured with motherhood, and our nights of passion became luxurious and indulgent. Often dawn would be upon us as we were still entangled in our lovemaking, our thirst unquenchable no matter how we drank. And thus I conceived again.

  Toward the end of my pregnancy, Ghent generously offered five thousand florins to be chosen as the city of our child’s birth, and Philippe accepted. My husband considered it a way to strengthen his ties to the city. He commissioned two new luxurious, velvet-upholstered carriages to transport me there shortly before I gave birth and even asked the Anchin Abbey nuns to loan me their most distinguished relic: a ring that the Virgin Mary was said to have been wearing when she gave birth to Jesus. Philippe was so attentive that my initial unease at what had seemed a commercial transaction at my expense evaporated.

  Once we had settled into the castle in Ghent, Philippe invited several of his friends to come and celebrate at the palace on February 24, Saint Matthew’s Eve. Once the guests had all arrived, I was caught up in the festive atmosphere. Though my belly was huge and I felt heavy, I was still agile and in high spirits. I played the clavichord for everyone and then began to teach the guests a Spanish dance. Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in my lower abdomen. I ran to my chamber with Beatriz, excusing myself and leaving the guests in the salon. Thinking I needed the lavatory, I went to the toilet and had hardly begun contracting my muscles when I felt my waters break and run down my legs. I called for Beatriz, who ran out like a madwoman in search of help. I got into bed, trying desperately not to push out the child, whose head I could already feel between my legs. But by the time Beatriz returned, the baby was already on the bed, having been expelled from within me. Madame de Hallewin, María Manuela, and Ana de Viamonte rushed in. Then Philippe arrived, pale and shaken. The midwife arrived next to cut the cord, clean the baby, and lend a hand. And the news that it was a male child was sent out in all directions as if carried by flocks of courier pigeons. Shortly thereafter we heard fireworks being launched from the bell tower of Saint Nicholas’s Church, and bells ringing out all across the city. I lay back on the pillows. I had worried about this birth, that it might not be as easy as the first one, that I might disappoint Philippe with another girl. And yet there had been no cause for alarm, and I had hardly felt a thing. I sent for Leonor and showed her the stern, wrinkled face of her little brother. She didn’t understand what was happening, but I wanted her by my side. I needed to make sure that she didn’t feel scorned. How differently did the world celebrate the arrival of a boy!

  “Charles,” Philippe said, holding his son proudly. “He will be named Charles, after my grandfather.”

  I had just given birth to Charles I of Spain, Charles V of Germany, the king in whose kingdoms the sun would never set, the one who was to be Europe’s most powerful monarch. My son, the one who knew no mercy toward me.

  I CAME OUT OF MY REVERIE. MANUEL HAD THROWN ME A BLANKET.

  “You ought to cover up,” he said.

  CHAPTER 9

  When I returned to the boarding school I said I had already eaten dinner and went up to my room. I walked down the narrow aisle and its small, wooden bedroom doors, lined up one after the other on either side. I could hear sounds coming out from behind several of them. Going into others’ rooms was strictly forbidden by the nuns. I knocked on Margarita’s door, but she wasn’t in, so I went to mine, thinking I’d take a shower. I got my things and went to the bathroom. The hot water from the showers had steamed up the mirrors. The girls there were laughing and talking about a movie they’d seen that afternoon. I got undressed and went to the farthest cubicle so I didn’t have to listen to them. Standing under the stream of water, I closed my eyes. It would have to be a quick shower because the hot water wouldn’t last long. I rubbed the rough, frayed washcloth over my arms, my neck, my breasts. “You’re very uninhibited for a virgin, especially such a young one,” Manuel had said. When I told him that I liked being naked he said that, as a man, he tended to think of women as being more reserved. It struck me as a ridiculous comment and I teased him for it. Both my parents were nudists, I told him. They had never hidden their bodies from me. I assumed that was why I had no hang-ups about being nude. Nudity is beautiful, I said, suddenly noticing the towel he’d tied around his waist. I thought you agreed. He had been raised in a very different sort of environment, he said by way of excuse, refusing to look at me, acting like a teenager who’d suddenly gone all shy.

  I washed between my legs, scrubbing so hard with the washcloth that it actually started to burn. I was determined to try to understand why Manuel’s comment had made me so uncomfortable. I hated to admit it, but suddenly and inexplicably, when he had tossed me the blanket, I got embarrassed. I had assumed that since women were nicer to look at, we would be expected to cover up less than men in bed. In all honesty, seeing him naked didn’t excite me. But there was no doubt that my nudity had an effect on him. Was I just acting overconfident? Manuel must have thought I was being distant when we said good-bye, because he tried to dismiss the incident, saying that my attitude was surely healthier than his, but the damage was already done. I got out of the shower and dried off. Back in my room, I put on my nightgown and climbed into bed, laying my head at the foot of the bed. That way I could look out the window that was halfway up the wall above my headboard and watch the golden tree outside slowly succumb to winter.

  If I tried to imagine that I was someone else, to look at myself objectively, I had to admit that the seventeen-year-old girl lying in that bed had spent the past several weekends way over her head. I was no longer a virgin. I’d made love to a man some twenty years older than me, a man who was obsessed with a fifteenth-century queen. He might well be imagining, when he touched me, that he was with her, a woman whose passion and temper were legendary. He claimed he wanted to understand her, but when he saw a refl
ection of Juana’s attitudes in me, he was afraid and tried to control and criticize the passion he had set free. There was no other way to explain the hostile, almost offensive tone he’d used when he asked me to cover up. And it made even less sense for him to blame me for feeling natural with no clothes on when he was the one who, the week before, had gone on about nudity being a symbol of innocence. It made me think of my mother and her contradictions. She tried to impart to me the notion that every natural function of my body was harmonious and wise, nothing wicked about them. But at the same time, she would warn me: don’t touch yourself down there, never talk to strangers. And it had been impossible for her to tell me about the birds and bees without blushing. In truth, I had learned about sex on my own, surreptitiously reading the books she kept under lock and key.

  My father’s image became superimposed over Manuel’s in my thoughts. That my father cheated on my mother should have been enough to prove to me that I had a very limited understanding of men’s minds. Maybe I should cover myself with a sheet next time. It seemed ridiculous, though. What could I do?

  I fell asleep unable to come to a conclusion.

  DURING THOSE WEEKS AFTER THE WALL CAME DOWN THAT SEPARATED me from the adult world, what I found most extraordinary was to understand what it meant to be an individual entity. I had a new awareness of the freedom I enjoyed within the boundaries of my mind and body. I was queen and sovereign of that realm. Until then, freedom–to me–had been an intangible concept, because other people had always made decisions on my behalf. Now, though, I was discovering it in all its splendor. Others might have thought that I was still a schoolgirl trudging from class to class with books under my arm, but inside of me every point of reference had changed. For the first time, I was beginning to see just how wide my horizons were, and this new awareness had a physical side too. I felt like I was breathing deeper, like I took up more space on earth. I loved the idea of being impenetrable, the idea that no one had access to my private world. I was amazed at how much information and insight, how many opinions, ideas, and projects I had without anyone suspecting what was going on behind my habitual demeanor. The loneliness I had to endure in order to keep my secrets seemed a trivial price to pay for the privacy and inviolability of my intimacy. My biggest challenge was in study hall, returning Mother Luisa Magdalena’s quizzical look innocently, without getting ruffled. For a nun she was very intuitive, and although she might not have admitted it even to herself, she had a fine-tuned radar that seemed to pick up any disturbance around me. But she had no reason to sound the alarm as long as I kept getting good grades and did everything I was supposed to do, offering her no evidence to justify her concern. And I had managed to get back on track, after having stumbled through my first weeks of the semester. I felt sorry for Mother Luisa Magdalena; she was clearly upset at the way we were drifting apart, but I didn’t know how else to protect myself from the power she had over me by virtue of her affection. I worried that she might interrogate me about my Sunday activities at any moment despite the number of lies I had spun to make her believe I was visiting every historical site Madrid had to offer. Weeknights, when she was on study hall duty, I made sure she saw me consult city guides to plan my Sunday excursions. Then I’d spend Saturday afternoons, when I said I was going shopping, visiting the places I had researched so I could answer her inevitable questions. Margarita lent a hand too. When I confessed to her that the man she shrewedly suspected had set up a “casual” encounter with me on the school’s street was my boyfriend now, she was thrilled to be in on it and only too happy to help keep the nun’s suspicions in check. We’d leave together and arrange a time to return together. Margarita said I would have to introduce her to my mysterious beau one day, and I promised that I would, that we’d arrange a date so she could meet him.