The Scroll of Seduction

by Gioconda Belli

  We reached Juana of Aragon’s palace two months later, in September. I was looking forward to staying with my half-sister Juana in her beautiful palace–designed by Simon of Cologne–where my mother had once received Admiral Christopher Columbus. But mean-spirited Philippe accepted to lodge there on the condition that she and her husband, Don Bernardino Fernández de Velasco, move elsewhere during our stay. He feared the idea of a couple loyal to my father taking care of me and encouraging my rebellion. I didn’t know what Gómez de Fuensalida and the constable of Castile had negotiated over the palace that Philippe so inconsiderately usurped. But I later found out that the good constable agreed to cede his home in exchange for the promise that I would not be denied my freedom. Philippe’s capricious demands so upset me that I felt as if my heart had emptied itself from the love that for so many years had alternately made me soar up high and dragged me so low. I was overcome by despondency, and the only energy I felt came from the sparks bursting out of the rage forging in my chest. I found myself invoking the power of God and the devil against Philippe. The sound of his voice was enough to send the hatred coursing through my body like a raging river where I sometimes feared the child I carried would drown.

  Once they became masters of the house, Philippe and his counselors decided to liven up the nobility who favored them and the troops by offering several days of continuous festivities, banquets, jousts, and hunts. They wanted to ease the tensions around us, since the people and courts, who all over the kingdom had been extremely generous with their favors, were growing tired of lodging us and being charged heftily to feed, clothe, and pay the salaries of so many foreigners. As if that were not enough, the plague had reappeared, and there were rumors that peasants and animals were dying in neighboring towns.

  Despite the hatred that clouded my vision, I remember how beautiful and euphoric Philippe was on the third day of revels, when he came into my rooms to announce defiantly that he would think of me when his lance pierced the boar he was going to hunt that afternoon. Arrogant, proud, wearing a coat of mail, baggy breeches and a green tunic over his dark hose and high leather gaiters, he stopped beside the window and looked down at me, full of spite. “Look what your countrymen have turned you into,” he scoffed, “a bleak queen who dresses in black, just like her mother.”

  “The color suits me,” I replied. “You killed the scarlet of my gowns and my spirit.”

  That afternoon a tattered Philippe was brought back to me. He had collapsed on the hunt, after a dizzy spell. If just a few hours before he had been the defiant picture of health now he was shaking, wracked by fever and sweating like an oarsman. It happened so suddenly. To see him suffer, cling to my hands and my eyes, desperately ill and anguished, made me feel I would lose my mind. I felt guilty, wretched, and vile for the intense way I had wished his misfortune. I ordered for him to be lain out on my bed, and for damp cloths to be brought. Needless to say, no one pretended I was mad while I was doing what was required to restore his good health. Both physicians and advisors obeyed me willingly. Philippe seemed calmer on seeing me take charge of the situation. For five days that man, my man, surrendered himself to me the way a young boy surrenders himself to his mother’s arms. I held him, I sang to him, I wiped the pus from his festering wounds, and night after night I wet his lips again and again, cracked and parched as they were from the fevers. My poor Philippe. His eyes, which had once wrought havoc on my heart, lit up with love when I drew near to him. He whispered tender words, he begged my forgiveness for his tantrums and his ambition, he spoke of the love he had for our children and for my fertile womb. I swore I would let nothing bad happen to him. He had to be strong, I said, he couldn’t let the plague devour the body that I loved so. We were young, we could put our lives back together, our love, reign in peace and harmony. I begged him not to torment himself with remorse, thinking of what could have been. “I have never loved anyone like you, Juana, no one has ever taken your place in my heart, no woman’s arms have encircled me like yours do, no woman has your neck, the soft curve of your hair as it falls down the beautiful arc of your back, no one trembles beneath my kisses the way you do, no one has been so present nor put up with my stupidity, my vanity, the way you have.”

  Alas, I thought, if only we could be as lucid in life as we are in death! Beside the decrepit body of the man whose children were borne from me, who burrowed into me like a man digging a tunnel to let go of the sea that drowns him, I watched scenes of our agreements and disagreements parade by like ghosts reflected in a foggy mirror. I clung to his life, refusing to accept that it could be extinguished like the thousands of candles that burned out, one after the other, in the darkened room. Despising my parents’ God, who listened to my prayers so selectively, I prayed desperately to other, more compassionate gods that I invented in imaginary Olympias. All to no avail. On the fifth day of fever, Philippe died in my arms.

  It was September 25, 1506. Philippe was just thirty years old.

  CHAPTER 20

  In the library beside Manuel, who so desperately wanted to feel Juana through me, I cried over Philippe’s death.

  “It’s not him that I feel for, it’s her,” I explained, trying to make light of my sentimentality. “She was so full of love, she created a Philippe worthy of her feelings. From broken pieces and shards, over and over, she made him into what she dreamed him to be so that the reality of who he was and his pettiness would not demean the tremendous love that made every sacrifice of hers worthwhile. I can identify with her. You find excuses for the people you love because if you condemn them, you’re condemning yourself. I mean, even knowing what I know about my father, I can’t curse him. I feel like it wouldn’t hurt him; it would hurt me, because my love for him is part of who I am. “Does that make sense?”

  “Philippe dying so young, and so suddenly,” I continued, thinking aloud, “must have contributed to Juana’s adoration of the ‘other’ Philippe, the idealized figure that she so desperately wanted to believe in. Nostalgia probably diluted her hatred, taking the sting out of her bad memories.” I hadn’t been alive that long, but I knew how crafty the mind could be at smoothing out one’s memories until they became a soft wrap one could cuddle with. Manuel smoked with his glistening eyes fixed on me. He seemed to be moved by my display of emotions. For a minute I even thought he was going to start crying too. Instead, he took off my gown and made love to me next to the fireplace, as if he were trying to offer a different ending to the same story. Tenderness took hold of us, as if our exposed, bare, vulnerable bodies and the frailty of our own uncertain, unforeseen situation were a reflection of that sad moment in our characters’ lives.

  Gently, sweetly, he licked away my tears. He cradled my head against his chest and answered my sobbing with a plaintive, hoarse sound that rose up from the bottom of his lungs. He spoke of the paradox of loneliness being the emotion most deeply shared by human beings. Anyone could understand what it was like to experience it. It was hard to hate Philippe as he lay dying, as he went through that solitary transition, the most solitary of all. One could identify with him in that circumstance and feel compassion. Every time one imagined someone else’s death, it was like rehearsing one’s own. His theory was, he said, that the moment of transit from life to nothingness, the moment one consciously realized everything would be lost, that was hell; a hell where all sins were purged, an inferno no one could escape.

  “And yet, Miss Lucía,” he said, getting up to pour himself a glass of cognac as I got dressed, “life is such an ephemeral deceit. Only through knowledge can we achieve a certain degree of self-realization, because knowledge is the sum of all other lives, and that multiplicity is the only thing that gives our infinitesimal existence the illusion of permanence and purpose.”

  “Sex is another one of those eternal continuums,” he said. “If the solitude of death is hell, then copulation is heaven.” He smiled maliciously, raising his glass to me and making me laugh at his obscure philosophies. His affection made me feel much
better. I went to bed calm. I didn’t think about anything. I slept a deep sleep on that first night of what I imagined would be a long stay at the Denias’ house.

  When I woke up the next day and went down to breakfast, Águeda told me that Manuel had gone out.

  “Don’t let it bother you that he goes out. He likes to be alone. He goes to his apartment, but he’ll be back. He always comes back, and now that you’re here he’s got all the more reason. Why don’t I walk you through the house? You’ve never seen the whole thing.”

  I accepted, curious. Deep down I felt an almost canine sense of gratitude toward Águeda. Another woman in her place would not have agreed to be an accomplice and would have told the nuns or my grandparents. So I was willing to do whatever she asked of me. Águeda opened a small wooden box that hung on the wall and took out a large ring of keys. I had already realized that she was methodical and orderly. Her routines probably helped her pass the time. And now I was going to see how she spent her days. Weekends she’d hardly interfered in our comings and goings, because that was when she went to church and to have her hair done.

  I followed her upstairs. Though I was still hoping that my pregnancy would fade away with the appearance of a big red stain on my underwear, the possibility that another member of that family could be taking shape within me made itself felt in the way I saw the house now. It had a square foundation and a high, coffered ceiling made of beautiful wood. The spiral staircase was off to one side and led up to the second-and third-floor hallways, with the bedrooms leading off of it. The top floor, as Águeda explained, had been rebuilt, which was why it looked more French, with rounded corners and cornices.

  “Because this is a very Castilian house. Have I already told you this? It was built by Juan Gómez de Mora, the same architect that designed the Plaza Mayor in Madrid. It dates back to 1606. Francisco Gómez de Sandoval, Marquis of Denia, was the first man to live here when he moved to Madrid at the behest of Philippe III, as his premier. I disagree with Manuel’s view of our ancestors, but I must admit that he was quite a schemer. There’s no doubt that he increased the power his family held, but he wasn’t completely honest in his methods. Ask Manuel about it. He knows all of the Denias’ black legends.” She smiled ironically. “Poor thing. I think denigrating the family is his way of reconciling himself to what they did to his mother. Well, anyway…”

  We were walking through the wing that I hadn’t seen yet. The solid double doors all had modern security locks on them, in addition to the original ones. Águeda opened door after door. Despite the semidarkness, I could see that the closed windows were all spotlessly clean and in excellent condition, the furniture covered with gray and white slipcovers. “Aunt” Águeda led me through the music room, the sewing room, and a tiny chapel that she still used, with a beautiful sculpture of Christ, burning votive candles, and a wooden prie-dieu. The floors and ceilings of each room were antique wood marvels, solid and gleaming, and beautiful tapestries hung on the walls. It was hard to keep the paintings and tapestries in their original state, she said, which was why the rooms had such thick curtains and dehumidifiers in the corners. Every month, Águeda explained, a professional cleaning company came to polish the floors and do a thorough job of cleaning everything. She had no patience for cleaning ladies, and besides, she didn’t trust them with all the fragile objects. She preferred to dust and polish them herself. It helped her pass the time. We reached a room smaller than the others, and she pulled a dustcover off of a beautifully shaped rolltop desk with a whole series of tiny drawers under its lid. It might be useful to me, she said, given that there was no writing table in my room. “And you’ll be writing a lot of letters,” she added, with a touch of irony that I didn’t find funny. We walked out and crossed a hallway with several closed doors on the third floor.

  “Our most valuable possessions are in there. Many of them date back to Doña Juana’s days. They used to be scattered all over the house, but I moved them into what used to be father’s study, so I could clean them and take care of them better. I’ll show you some other day.”

  “How did your ancestors end up being involved with Doña Juana?” I asked. “Manuel hasn’t really told me much about it. He clouds over when I ask him about it.”

  “It was on March 15, 1518. Emperor Charles I of Spain and V of Germany named Don Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas as governor of his mother Juana’s household, and of the town of Tordesillas. Don Bernardo had been first governor to Juana’s father, King Ferdinand the Catholic, since 1504. He was with him until his death, and his final act was to take the king’s body to Granada and place it beside his wife, Queen Isabella. They were cousins, you see. Ferdinand and Don Bernardo were cousins. That’s why King Charles trusted him. They were a very illustrious bunch. Grandees of Spain. Only twenty-five families in the whole kingdom had that distinction. Plus, Don Bernardo was married to Doña Francisca Enríquez, who was related to Don Fadrique Enríquez.”

  “The one who took Juana to Flanders, the admiral of Castile?”

  “The very same. And Spain was in a state of turmoil then. The Denias took their obligation to protect the crown very seriously. Perhaps they were overzealous. But Juana’s madness–or instability, if you prefer–was a risk. There was no lack of opportunists who tried to use the mother’s lack of wits as a means of robbing the son of his power. But the Marquises of Denia were utterly loyal to Charles, who was the legitimate king, given that his mother couldn’t rule.”

  “But that’s just it,” I said, “she could rule.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter who’s right anymore, child. Neither she, nor them can contest what history has judged to be true, nor can they argue with increasingly fickle historians. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Come, I want to show you something before we go back downstairs. Manuel will be back soon.”

  I followed her to the end of the hall. She opened a door and we walked into what must have been a child’s room.

  “This is where Manuel spent his childhood,” she said. “I’d come up here to tell him bedtime stories.”

  It was tiny and narrow, like a cell. The furniture was dark, wooden, and somber, and I could see models piled up on all the bookshelves. Clearly, assembling them had been Manuel’s favorite pursuit since he was a boy. I pictured him as a pale, serious, ten-year-old boy, lying in bed, reading beneath the crucifix on the wall. I felt sorry for him. It was a sad room. Just one tiny window, high up on the wall, like an attic. Now it was just a storeroom for things no one used anymore. In one corner stood a crib with carved rails, the hook for a mosquito net carved into the chubby face of a wooden cherub.

  “This looks like my room at boarding school,” I said.

  “My parents were fervent believers in Castilian austerity. They said it built character. But the crib is lovely, don’t you think? And what’s more, it’s the family crib. This is where your son will sleep once he’s born,” she said without looking at me, gliding over it lightly with the feather duster hanging from her waist.

  “Or my daughter,” I replied.

  “Oh, it’ll be a boy, you’ll see,” she said with an expression that left no room for debate.

  I wanted her to be wrong. I didn’t want to give the world any more Marquises of Denia. I didn’t like the cold, severe faces of the ancestors whose paintings hung on walls all around the house.

  After we went back downstairs and Águeda began to make phone calls, I wandered around the rooms, sensing the presence of history in the air, staring at the Persian rugs, the tapestries, the grand piano in the corner of the salon. Aside from the ancient oil paintings, and unlike the house where I grew up, here there wasn’t a single photograph of the modern-day Denias.

  Manuel came back at lunchtime. He asked me how I felt.

  “Fine,” I said. “Your aunt showed me around the house. She told me a little about your family history.”

  “Her version,” he said.

  “And she showed me your old room.”

  “Ah!”
he said wryly. “If those walls could talk.”

  “Let’s go to the library,” I suggested. “I want to know what Juana did after Philippe died, what happened next. And you’ll have to tell me about the Denias.”

  “All in good time.” He smiled, pensive.

  CHAPTER 21

  I’ve already told you that Juana’s behavior after Philippe’s death has been interpreted in a variety of ways. In general, historians to this day have barely stopped to consider what it must have meant for a woman of her age, pregnant, in love, and besieged by intrigues of State, to have to face the sudden, unexpected death of her husband. Paraphrasing a poet, Juana and Philippe were an “ill-adjusted but tightly embraced couple.” That she got depressed would be considered nowadays a natural reaction, given the chain of events. Machismo might be the reason why, in her case, history has chosen to omit those considerations when judging her. Now, personally, I think Juana immersed herself so totally in last rites and funeral processions to avoid making decisions and allow Ferdinand time to return from Italy. Though her faith in her father had dwindled, she preferred this alternative rather than run the risk of the nobility casting her aside to set up her father-in-law Maximilian as regent until young Charles came of age. I think she realized she wouldn’t be able to take Philippe’s body all the way to Granada. She knew her time to give birth was fast approaching.

  BEFORE THE EMBALMERS TOOK PHILIPPE’S BODY AWAY, I ASKED TO be left alone with him and sat down by his side. I took his hands and stroked them, lifting each of his fingers in turn. Using the fingernail of my index finger, I cleaned under his nails, which were still dirty from his last game of pelota. He didn’t move. I stroked his forehead, straightened his hair. The submissiveness of his body was a new experience for me. I leaned over and tried to open his eyelids, so I could look into his eyes once more. For an instant I saw death stare at me in the total absence of light: the pupils dilated, fixed, opaque, like a door forever shut. I pulled my hand away in fear. Philippe, I whispered. Philippe, can you hear me? He made no reply. I was suddenly struck. With a clarity that left me breathless I realized that Philippe would never answer me again. I believe it was then that I became aware that ever since I saw Philippe for the first time, I had never imagined my life without him. And as I tried to visualize the future, I was filled with panic: I could only see myself keeping vigil over his cadaver.