The Scroll of Seduction

by Gioconda Belli

  Cadaver, I murmured, cavern, calamity, calvary, corpse, catafalque. What an awful word. The very sound of it was rigid, cold, putrid. That and nothing else was my husband now, the father of my children. After just four months in Spain he’d gone from the throne to the catafalque. I cried, imagining my children’s faces when they heard the news, but my tears were short-lived downpours, like sorrows that wouldn’t condense. I could hardly weep because I could hardly think. Ideas appeared in my mind, but they came crashing down with the weight of pebbles dropping into a void. I thought that if I stayed with the body, eventually I would have to convince myself of the reality of what had happened, but Philibert de Veyre–Philippe’s ambassador in Spain–and Archbishop Cisneros appeared a short while later and compelled me to leave him. I gave in. I let him go with them. That night, a Burgundian-style wake was held. Philippe was laid out on a dais in the Casa del Cordón, dressed in his best clothes and surrounded by beautiful tapestries. The following day, doctors embalmed his body, and on the third day we held a procession that went from the constable’s house to the Carthusian Monastery of Miraflores. I took part in the funeral services. The fluttering of life in my belly was the only thing that kept me from feeling as dead as Philippe.

  When at last I was able to lock myself in my rooms, alone, I suddenly felt clearheaded and I plotted, coldly, exactly what I would have to do. My mother, who died in Medina del Campo, had been taken to Granada. Philippe, as the anointed king he was, should lie beside her. He himself had made that clear in his last will and testament and repeated it to me on his deathbed. Carrying out his portentous request would give me the opportunity to travel to Andalusia, surround myself with supporters, and, once I had backing, assume my responsibilities as queen. I thought that under those circumstances, going to Granada would give me a chance to renew alliances, rid myself of Flemish courtiers, and guarantee that my son Charles’s succession was assured beyond any shadow of a doubt.

  My isolation at court, and the suspicions and fears all around me, turned out to be formidable obstacles that hindered my plans to take charge of the kingdom. I was informed then that while I was attending to Philippe on his deathbed, Archbishop Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros had managed to get appointed regent of Castile and had forced all the grandees in Spain to swear that not a single one of them would attempt to make use of my power or approach me to have it vested on them.

  But Cisneros’s regency wasn’t to everyone’s liking. After a few days, camps had divided into those who advocated my father’s return and those who thought my father-in-law, Emperor Maximilian, should rule until Charles reached the age of majority.

  Not a single one of the nobles–not even my good friend the admiral of Castile, Don Fadrique Enríquez–deigned to consider that I might be capable of taking charge. They must have felt it was more in their interest to obtain the favor of Ferdinand or Maximilian than that of a woman–a lonely, very pregnant widow. And as for me, I had not even the money required to buy the unconditional loyalty of soldiers and servants. The Andalusian nobles were the only ones willing to defend me, and they were several days’ journey away. Maybe the people who did recognize me as queen would have opposed an attempt to cast me aside, but while I was seeing to the funeral rites, Archbishop Cisneros issued a number of edicts promising exrtemely harsh punishment to whoever dared rise up in arms. That way he made sure there would be no popular uprising in my favor.

  With Philippe dead, I reorganized my household, employing ladies I considered loyal, but they slowly proved themselves to be subservient to my father. His influence over the court was so great that, faced with the facts, even Cisneros chose to surrender and wrote him a letter requesting that he return from Italy: despite his repeated demands, I refused to sign this request, given that it could be read as an indication that I declined my right to rule.

  When he received Cisneros’s letter on his way to Naples, Ferdinand replied, recognizing my authority and my right to the throne, and affirming that Cisneros’s regency was baseless. But as isolated as I was, my only means of disavowing the prelate’s authority was to refuse to sign documents he presented me with, so that for several weeks the country was rudder-less, while at the same time my poor subjects were being decimated by the plague. The nobles–each more ambitious than the last–tried to turn things to their advantage by using their armies and privileges in order to sow chaos and settle old scores in an attempt to acquire influence they might keep once the situation had settled down.

  In the solitude of my nights, I pondered my true duty, and yet my strength or desire to act could not surmount the apathy I had fallen into despite my best intentions. I suffered from a constant headache since Philippe’s death. My only company was the child in my womb, who I dreamed was a boy that I would call Philippe. I pictured him as handsome as his father. I imagined that Philippe’s spirit would live on in him and that somehow, mysteriously, his father’s life would alight next to me once again when he was born, this time without causing me pain. Twice during that time I visited the Cartuja of Miraflores, where my husband’s coffin lay. Both times, I had it opened to ascertain that his body was still there. I knew that the Flemish had taken his heart in a gold urn to bury it beside his ancestors, and I feared they had made off with his body too, given that they had no qualms about taking every possession Philippe had brought to Spain. They carted out tapestries, furniture, armor, jewels, horses, paintings, and more, as payment for services that I had no other means of reimbursing. I did nothing to stop them because at the time nothing mattered to me, but I did want to make sure they had not robbed me of his bones.

  The second time I had the coffin opened was before I left for Torquemada on December 20 (I planned to stay there until I gave birth, far from the intrigues and pressures of the nobles who surrounded me at Casa de la Vega. I had stayed there since Philippe’s death, for I had no wish to ever go back to the house where he had died.) So opposed were the clerics to delivering Philippe’s catafalque to me that I suspected his body was no longer inside. They opened the wooden box and then the lead one, and just like the first time, I saw him lying there, immobile, swathed in bandages and lime. The ambassadors and prelates were horrified that I could approach him and even touch him, but anyone who has loved as much as I would understand that seeing his corpse was no shock to me. In any case, there was nothing to see except the bandages covering his shape. For me what mattered, given my general distrust, was to corraborate with my own eyes what I had been told and free myself from the torment of speculation.

  Finally, after praying before the coffin at the charterhouse altar that day, I made some decisions aimed at restoring order and royal patrimony.

  My first act was to revoke all of the favors Philippe had conceded to nobles, since many of the legal disputes that had arisen were the result of my husband’s munificence when it came to taking my father’s supporters’ possessions and distributing them among his own followers. I got rid of the members of the Royal Council that had been named by Gómez de Fuensalida, and held an audience with the procurators of the council. I ordered all things to revert back to the way they had been during my mother’s life, and the government to be run in the same manner as when she was alive. Echoing Cisneros’s wishes, they proposed that I invite my father to return from Naples to take over the matters of State. I neither agreed nor disagreed. I expressed affection for my father but signed no letter. Instead I reaffirmed my desire that they follow through what I, their queen, had commanded.

  For me to assume my royal authority seemed to disconcert them, but I let them be disconcerted and ordered my entourage to depart for Torquemada with Philippe’s coffin in tow.

  NEITHER I NOR ANYONE WHO ACCOMPANIED ME NOR THE PEOPLE who watched our procession go by would ever forget the images of that night. It was the source of endless stories and legends, since after all of the setbacks we did not leave that day until an hour after sunset, amid a dense fog that seemed more like an eerie sea whose waves swelled and broke on terra
firma. In order to light the way through the white clouds that enshrouded us, I ordered a great number of torches to be lit. Through the mist, my caravan advanced, led by the four horses that carried the coffin–covered in black-and-gold cloth–and Flemish cantors. We followed behind, the court and the clerics intoning funeral services. It must have looked like death itself was parading through the night, decked out in ghostly gauzes and ashen curtains.

  I walked for quite a distance. I can recall the women who lined the roads to see me pass, and the way they gazed at me. They showed the veneration befitting a sacred personage, but in their eyes too was boundless understanding. As women, they knew the most hidden sorrows of my heart, and silently they showed me the support and compassion due to a widow about to give birth.

  My travels over the course of those days gave me a little peace. The wide open country, pine trees clustered beside streams, red earth covered in olive groves, flocks of sheep and their tiny shepherds, and the blue sky after days of intrigues and imprisonment in Casa de la Vega did more for my spirits than all the incense and prayers for the dead. I was twenty-seven years old and life was coursing through my veins. The music of my Flemish cantors–the most precious thing I had held on to from my rule in Flanders–brought me great solace when we stopped to rest. During those days, Philippe’s spirit, young and enamored, returned to me. Without him there, it was easy for me to invent a tale of the indescribable happiness that, despite our rough patches, we had shared. Sorrow and nostalgia erased all of the bad memories, and before my eyes danced only pleasant recollections of the man I had loved so dearly, whose love I could now hold and cherish without the disappointments of life.

  I would have liked to carry on after a few days in Torquemada, but my body finally reminded me of the obligations my mind tried to forget and avoid. The moon waned, and with it, the baby in my womb announced its arrival.

  At the home of the Cortes representative, who so hospitably housed me, my waters broke. I was so fatigued I thought I would not survive childbirth. The women accompanying me must have thought the same, for never before had I sensed such anxiety around me when I delivered. At times I have thought that Catalina bore herself, because all I remember is the urgency with which she pushed her way through my entrails. I simply relented. Without will, I abandoned myself to my body’s labor, neither clinging to life, nor longing for death, but submitting to a destiny whose power was greater than me or my desire to challenge it. And when I was finally hollow and heard my baby cry, I closed my eyes and was happy to still be alive. Right after I saw her tiny face, a heavy torpor came over me. It was a girl, and she resembled me more than Philippe. Her eyes had a wise look from that very beginning. I had a feeling that more than a daughter, I had given birth to someone who would watch over me.

  Further on, I often thought that Philippe’s repentance moved my daughter’s spirit, turning her into both my companion and my solace. Her love sustained me during so many long years.

  CHAPTER 22

  I awaited the outcome of Juana’s story as if time went by only for her inside that house. I ran to the bathroom to check my underwear constantly. The slightest dampness made me jump up, and I’d rush to look between my legs, like someone expecting to see ice melt in red hot flames. A few days before Christmas the gray weather and dry cold of a Madrid winter made me gravitate toward the library with a book in my hands. I watched the Denias going about their daily routines. In the afternoons, Águeda phoned her friends in the Captives’ Club, as Manuel had dubbed them. But the phone hardly ever rang. Occasionally there were calls for Manuel. Students, he said, or his friend Genaro. After so many years of spending my vacations in student residences or in hotel rooms with my grandparents, the quiet family life was an unexpected gift. Laying on the sofa with my feet up, a blanket warming my legs, reading Jane Eyre, I was happy. Only at times when the book resting on my belly weighed on me, I would startle myself. Someone else was living beneath, I’d tell myself. I imagined the life of that concealed creature, swimming around like a fish in a dark aquarium. I’d run my hands over my skirt, measuring the space left between my clothes and my waist, with a fascination that sometimes turned to horror and incredulity.

  “Manuel, isn’t there some way of finding out for sure if I’m pregnant or not?” I asked that afternoon.

  “I have no doubt whatsoever,” he said, glancing up from his book.

  “But I do, and I’d like some proof.”

  He stared at me. It was a question of taking a urine sample to the lab and giving a fake name.

  “I’ve been trying not to leave any incriminating evidence, in case the nuns or your grandparents decide to go to the police, or hire a detective.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” I said, reassured that his excuse seemed rational. “Let’s wait till after Christmas.”

  I started pacing around the library. He stared at me from the sofa.

  “Juana must have been just like you. You know, I’ve often wondered if when we die, our conscience returns to its source enriched by new experiences, and then goes and fills other vessels, other bodies. That would explain the theory of the collective unconscious, the idea that when we’re born we already possess the knowledge of those who lived before us.”

  I THOUGHT OF THE MONTHS THAT MANUEL HAD SPENT TURNING MY body into a shell from which to listen to a sea that had existed before him or me.

  I looked at him and wondered if my little girl would have his blue eyes.

  That night he came to my room with the antique dress over his arm. It would be better for me to get changed there and come down wearing the dress, he said. That way I wouldn’t get cold. I asked what his aunt would think. She might be surprised, he said, but she would end up considering it was more than appropiate that another Juana wandered around that house.

  “She’ll think you’re Juana’s ghost.” He smiled. “But she won’t mind walking into that ghost.”

  I got changed, pulled my hair up into a bun, and then went downstairs to find Manuel.

  At the bottom of the stairs I crossed paths with the aunt, who was just coming out of the kitchen. I tried to explain to her that my disguise had been her nephew’s idea, but rather than surprised she seemed fascinated. Lifting a finger to her lips to silence me, she left me bewildered when she curtsied and walked ahead to open the door of the library for me. I smiled and, keeping in character, I walked by her as if I were a queen.

  Manuel was waiting for me beside the fire.

  “Let’s continue,” he said.

  He was dressed in black. Dark clothing made him look taller and thinner, accentuating his angular features. I thought he seemed somber, almost sad, which was unusual for him; he always seemed so in control of his emotions.

  GIVING BIRTH TO CATALINA WHEN I HAD SO BONDED WITH DEATH was a supreme effort that consumed all of my energy and left me physically and mentally weak at the worst possible time. The first year of my widowhood was inaugurated by the cries of my daughter, born on January 14, 1507; it was a year marked by long sleepless nights. I was afraid to sleep. In my dreams, Philippe appeared before me and begged me to come to him, for he was so lonely and so cold. His appeals were so vehement that I felt the icy cold of his leaden coffin in my bones, and my teeth chattered. In seven months, I spent thousands of maravedis from my meager savings to have wax candles burning around him at all times. I paid for services to be held every evening and maintained the salaries of the Flemish cantors, thinking that their melodies would sweeten my husband’s sorrow at having died so far from his beloved Brussels. I was sure that Philippe had still not managed to cross the threshold of his new existence. I harbored the notion that he would only die for good when he was put to rest next to my mother, because she would forcefully pull him inside the marble of her catafalque in Granada. To explain this to anyone was a useless endeavor. Yes, I admit it: Philippe’s death seduced me with a passion as acute as the one he had inspired in me during his life. My certainty that inexplicably he continued to
exist flanking my life had led me to try to shield other women from his charms. I had refused to spend the night in convents fearing he would wander among the cells at night, cosseted in his incorporeality, stroking the impure fantasies of the nuns, slipping beneath the vapor of their foul-smelling habits. Other times I had imagined he could take over soldiers’ bodies and take solace in the barred sexuality hiding in the nuns’ nocturnal cells. I refused to accept a simple end for my Philippe, perhaps because well disguised beneath my bereavement there was the joyous feeling that I was at last free from his cruel machinations and his ambition, and I was afraid he might discover that darkest secret of my heart and avenge himself.

  Daily I was beseiged by nobles and priests who tried to confound my reasoning so that I would betray one group or another. Cisneros moved his army to Torquemada, claiming that it was to protect me. To free myself of his pernicious meddling and his spies, I recommenced my progress to Granada, but not before I confirmed the orders I had issued to revoke the favors Philippe had granted. I also held a hearing with council members to insist they continue to govern in the same manner as when my mother was alive.

  Any sign of my reason or authority was enough to fill the prelates and nobles with apprehension. On the one hand, they lamented my alleged madness, and on the other, nothing upset them more than the evidence of my good senses and the possibility that I might decide to claim my royal rights. Gradually it was becoming more and more clear that I was up against many odds. That I would reign didn’t enter into anybody’s plans. For them, the question at hand was who would rule in my name and who might I nominate to do so. Alone, with no armies, no money, my position was precarious. I realized that my only way out was to form an alliance with my father and establish a form of government similar to the one he had shared with my mother. I knew that he had left Naples and was on his way to Spain. I didn’t want to appear to be the one calling him to my side, so I used evasive tactics to avoid signing a letter that Mosen Luis Ferrer–his emissary–insisted I send to request his presence. I could not, however, refuse his petition that I order rogations throughout the country for my father’s s safe journey home. In the end, I could not avoid appearing to have encouraged his return.