The Mapmaker's Daughter

by Laurel Corona

  We rarely leave our quarters for fear of running into the king’s retinue. Usually, after Eliana finishes her lessons, she runs off to spend the day with her Jewish friends. One of them has a handsome older brother, so I imagine they whisper and plot as Elizabeth, Beatriz, and I did, doing very little of the sewing for their wedding trousseaus that is supposed to keep them occupied. Eliana hasn’t gone out since Enrique arrived, though, and stuck here in the palace with little to do, she is again the morose company I had when we first came here.

  Elizabeth has been beside herself with anxiety. At the age of three, her daughter was betrothed to Ferdinand, son of the King of Aragon. Enrique broke this engagement when Isabella was nine, preferring that she marry Carlos of Navarre, another son of the same king. When Carlos died by poison on his way to formalize the arrangement, Isabella became unbetrothed. Enrique is here to take up the issue with Elizabeth again, although in the end he will make whatever arrangements he wants, with or without her approval.

  As Elizabeth’s privada, I sit in on their conversations, though it is clear Enrique would prefer to browbeat his stepmother alone. His huge feet and hands are visible outside the coarse and foul-smelling cloak he favors, which hangs over a corpulent body clothed in a tunic spotted with grease from his last meal. His auburn eyebrows are bushy and almost as curly as his beard, which points forward at a peculiar angle. He has a crooked, smashed-looking nose as a result of a childhood fall, and this, combined with his beard, makes his profile as concave as a quarter moon.

  Colorless eyes look out coldly at Elizabeth from under reddened, crusty lids. “I must say I am rather disappointed in you,” he says. “I thought you would favor a marriage between your daughter and the King of Portugal. Afonso is your cousin, and my God, woman, you still insist on speaking Portuguese here.”

  Enrique reached down to scratch his dingy stockings, and my eyes follow his movement. I inherited keen vision from the mapmakers in my family, and I see the tiny black specks. Fleas, I think to myself. The King of Castile has fleas.

  “I love Portugal,” Elizabeth says, “but the king is twenty-nine, and my daughter is eleven. She is too young to marry, and I am hoping for someone closer to her own age when the time comes.”

  Enrique laughs. “Afonso and Isabella are far closer in age than you and my father.”

  I can see Elizabeth struggling. She’s been in tears most of the time since she learned the purpose of Enrique’s visit, and she was so horrified by the prospect of meeting with him today that she vomited in her dressing room before he arrived.

  “Yes,” she replies, “I realize that such marriages can succeed, but as you see, when one person is much older than the other, the time to be together may be sadly short.”

  Enrique pulls himself up in his chair. “Who are any of us to say how long God wills us to be here?” I have the urge to pick up the knitting in my lap and stab him with the needles for invoking the Holy One in such an unctuous and self-serving way.

  “And really,” Enrique goes on, “isn’t marrying for happiness a bit quaint?”

  I open my mouth to reply, but I lack the status to be critical of him or even to speak at all. Elizabeth sees me, though, and says she wants to hear what I think.

  Enrique leans back and drapes his elbows casually on the arms of his chair. His eyes hint of menace as he takes me in.

  “I think everyone hopes to find happiness with a spouse, and parents are right to prefer that their children enter marriages with at least a reasonable chance of that.”

  Enrique stares coldly, and prickles of anxiety crawl down my back.

  “I don’t wish to speak cruelly of your own difficulties,” Elizabeth says to him, “but perhaps the feelings of a parent for a child are something you don’t understand.”

  A smile slowly curls his lips. “My, my,” he says, “how delicately put.” The smile vanishes. “And how reasoned. How sane.” I see Elizabeth’s face grow paler. Her vacillating moods are famous, and Enrique has been spreading rumors that the Queen Widow of Castile is mad.

  He leans back in his chair. “And besides, I have news I want you to be the first to know.”

  He smirks, forcing her to wait before he speaks. “My wife is with child.”

  “With child?” Elizabeth’s eyes widen. I manage to keep my jaw from dropping, but barely. After all these years, is El Impotente suddenly able to perform?

  “And of course, if it’s a boy…” He pauses to make sure Elizabeth is listening. “Your son won’t be heir to the throne anymore.”

  Elizabeth must be stunned to the core, but she composes herself. Her voice is eerily calm. “And if it’s a girl,” she says, “why don’t you promise her to the King of Portugal instead of my daughter? After all, you don’t think age is important in a marriage.”

  I want to applaud. She has summoned this self-possessed person from somewhere inside her, and I only wish she could do it more often.

  “I would, if it were best for Castile,” he says, ignoring the acid in her tone.

  Best for Castile? That stinking carcass of a man cares only about himself. When he shifts his weight to let out a loud, noxious fart, I can’t help but think that is his answer to, and his true opinion of, his stepmother and his country.

  ***

  With Enrique’s men wreaking havoc in the town, Eliana and I leave with some reluctance to go, as we always do, for Shabbat dinner at the home of Jewish friends. I love these afternoons with my daughter. Now, just turned fourteen, she has forgotten her anger with me at leaving Granada and has become a pretty and poised young woman. After we eat, she and her friends usually go off to share secrets out of earshot, but they always return for the songs and dancing.

  Eliana is more skilled than I on the castanets, and she has a beautiful voice. Hearing her sing the same melodies my mother did sometimes leaves me in tears. My grandmother is dead now too, and I imagine they are looking down, watching my daughter with the same pride I feel.

  By now, the news has spread that Queen Juana is pregnant, and no one wants to talk about anything else. Sadia, our host, seems to know every rumor. “There’s something wrong with his prick,” she tells me when her husband isn’t listening. “It’s corked up at the top, I heard. That’s why he can’t put his seed in a woman.”

  “That can’t be right,” I tell her. “If Blanche of Navarre was a virgin when their marriage was annulled, he never got it inside her. It would have to be more than corked up at the top.”

  Sadia shakes her head. “It’s probably what they say, then—that he likes men.”

  Unbidden memories of Diogo make me shudder. “I think he prefers dogs,” I say. “He already smells like one.”

  Sadia laughs so hard she almost chokes. When she recovers, she puts her hands on her hips in mock indignation. “Amalia, you are wicked—and on Shabbat too!” She looks around and moves closer. “Tell me more!”

  “I don’t know anything. I stay away from him.”

  “Well, you hear what the servants are saying, don’t you?”

  “Not really.”

  Sadia always learns more in the square than I do in the palace.

  “Queen Juana is a wild one,” she whispers. “She’s been having an affair with someone named Beltrán de la Cueva, and he’s the real father of the child.”

  “Does Enrique know?”

  “He must if he’s never stuck it in her, don’t you think?”

  The importance of this hits me like a falling stone wall. Normally Beltrán would pay with his life for cuckolding a king, and Enrique’s unfaithful wife would find herself banished to some distant castle or nunnery, but oddly, they have done the king a service. Enrique wants an heir so badly he apparently doesn’t care if the blood of the royal house of Trastámara, the line chosen by God to rule, is replaced by some minor nobleman’s. Will no Trastámara blood flow in the next ruler’s veins? How will Castile pay for this disrespect of God’s will?

  It is getting late, and since the palace is not
far, I decide I am sufficient escort for my daughter. We are in one of the narrow streets leading into the main square when two of Enrique’s guards block our progress.

  “Look what we have here!” one of them says. He reaches up to stroke Eliana’s cheek. She struggles to pull away and hide her face, but the weather is warm and she is not wearing the hooded cloak that might have protected her.

  “Get away from her!” I scream as the other one grabs me by both hands.

  “What’s the matter?” he says. “You’re Jews, ain’t you? You’re the king’s property, and Enrique is always”—he leers—“most generous with what’s his.”

  Bile rises in my throat at the foul smell of stale beer on his breath. His teeth press so hard against my mouth as he kisses me that I think my lips will split. He presses me against the wall, and I feel fingers grinding one of my breasts as he tries to loosen my bodice with his other hand.

  “What are you fighting for, you Jewish cow?” he snarls. “I’ll just fuck you standing up while he’s busy with the little virgin.” He draws out this last word as a vicious taunt.

  I hear Eliana cry out, and I twist my head to see that one of them has backed her against a wall and is covering her mouth with one hand while lifting her skirt with the other. “Come on,” he says. “Let me show you what a cock that’s not been cut off at the top feels like.”

  I am screaming so loud I think my throat will rip, and finally a window opens above us. “You leave them alone!” I hear a woman’s voice say. “My boy’s gone to get help, and my husband’s coming downstairs to bash your heads in, you filthy swine!”

  “Mierda!” one of them mutters under his breath. The one holding Eliana lets her go, but not before grabbing a breast in each hand and kneading it like dough. “Little Jew slut,” he says. “You know you like it!”

  “Hey!” I hear a man’s voice and the sound of footsteps running down the cobbled street toward us. “You get away from them!”

  “Mierda!” The man repeats, giving my hair one savage twist and smashing his mouth on mine before tossing me against the wall like an empty tankard of ale.

  “Aw, come on now!” Eliana’s assailant gives our rescuers a cocky, cruel grin. He releases her with such force that she stumbles and falls to the ground, her chest heaving silently in terror as she cowers there. “We were just having a little fun with the ladies.”

  “They’re from the palace, you fools,” the woman hisses down from her perch in the window. “Don’t you get enough from the whores in the taverns?”

  “The palace, eh!” The man who had attacked me shrugs, knowing Enrique will exact no consequences. “In that case, my lady, thank you for the feel.” He bows with mock ceremony before joining his friend, who is ambling off down the street.

  “Little Jew girl was pretty sweet,” I hear the other one say. “Want to smell?” He passes his finger under his friend’s nose as they disappear around the corner.

  ***

  Back in our quarters, Eliana clutches me so hard I can barely breathe. “I don’t want to live here anymore, Mama,” she says. “Those men!” She buries her head in my chest.

  “Eliana, did he—?”

  “No.” I feel the heat of her exhalation. “But his hand touched me.” Her eyes well with tears. “Does that mean I’m spoiled?”

  I smooth her hair against her back, murmuring reassurance and resisting the urge to ask if it hurt or to check for blood. “No, it doesn’t.”

  I run my tongue between my teeth and the inside of my lips, examining with detachment the swelling from the man’s forced kisses. He touched my daughter. That’s all I care about. I want to rip the world to tatters for stealing Eliana’s innocence. I want to throw everything in this room against the walls, to wail at the top of my lungs to release my terrible guilt for having such bad judgment, but my child is so soft and vulnerable in my arms that I know I must be strong for her.

  I venture what I hope will be a reassuring thought. “I’ve heard they’re leaving in a few days. We’ll be safe then.”

  “I don’t care!” Eliana whimpers. “I’ll never be able to walk in this town without thinking about what happened. Can’t we leave, Mama?”

  “But your friends are here!”

  “I can’t face them. He—he put his hand there, Mama. I’m so ashamed.”

  “No one has to know.”

  I can’t believe what I am saying. I want to storm into Elizabeth’s quarters and tell her the injustice that has been done and then march to Enrique and demand the satisfaction of seeing his men horsewhipped.

  “Promise we’ll leave?”

  I continue stroking her hair. What can I tell her? The Queen Widow of Castile invited me to Arévalo, and it might not be easy to get away, especially when she’s desperate for one person she can trust.

  It’s time.

  The thought lances me with its absolute correctness. I couldn’t shield her today, but it’s not too late to protect her from what could never be enough of a life. The town is pleasant—or was before today—but there is no future for my daughter here, or for me either.

  I see the faces of the Abravanel family smiling at me. “It’s time to come home,” I hear them say. Whatever I had been holding back has found its way to the surface, and its clarity gives me courage.

  “I’ll talk to Elizabeth tomorrow,” I tell her. “We’ll see what she has to say.”

  ***

  The following morning, we wake to find the servants in a frenzy. “The king is leaving,” my maid tells me, “and he’s taking the children with him.”

  “Taking Isabella and Alfonso? Where?”

  “They’re going to go live with him in Segovia. We were told just an hour ago.”

  “What does the queen say?”

  Her face falls. “I’m told she’s taken sick. She won’t let anyone see her.”

  I rush to Elizabeth’s quarters. A maid and a manservant are huddled together outside. The maid is dabbing her tearstained face.

  “You can’t go in,” the manservant says. “She’s locked the door.”

  “Well, unlock it then!” I tell him. Shaking his head as if there is no explaining people who invite disaster, he produces a key and jiggles open the lock.

  The door creaks loudly, and before I have gotten through the anteroom, an object sails by my head, narrowly missing me. “Get out!” I hear her scream.

  “Elizabeth?” I pick out her silhouette in the bedroom, but she can’t see me because the torches are unlit where I am standing. “Elizabeth?” I repeat. “It’s me, Amalia.”

  “Go away!” She lifts both hands to her face, and with a groan, she collapses to the floor. I rush to kneel next to her.

  “I want to die,” she whispers. “Why can’t I just die?”

  I call for the servants to help me get her into bed. The maid scurries off for a potion to calm her nerves, and the man goes back to guard the door. I sit on the edge of her bed. “Tell me what happened,” I say, holding her thin, cold hand in mine.

  My touch seems to calm her. “Enrique says now that his wife is pregnant, there will be a family at court, and he wants Isabella and Alfonso to be part of it.” She dabs her cheeks with a soaked handkerchief, and silently I trade it for mine. “He says it’s too dreary for children here, but of course it’s still good enough for me.” Her jaw trembles. “And now he’s taking what little life there is in this godforsaken place.”

  “But a baby won’t make a family for them. Your children are too old to be friends with someone born now.”

  “It’s just another of his lies. He knows there are plots to put my son on the throne, and he wants him close by to control who can see him.”

  My flesh crawls for the mild and uninteresting boy who has the misfortune to be perceived as a threat by an unscrupulous king. Elizabeth’s husband once told her it would be better to be born to a journeyman than to the King of Castile, and when I think of Alfonso going off to Segovia with someone as unscrupulous and repulsive as Enriq
ue, I think that might be right.

  “I don’t know if he’ll be safe,” Elizabeth says, “or Isabella either. If the baby’s a girl and Enrique tries to claim the throne for her, people might say that if we’re going to have a queen on the throne, why shouldn’t it be Isabella? Enrique might want to stop that however he can, especially since people wonder whether the baby is even his.”

  Two children, unaware and without allies, among the jackals at court. We both know how often inconvenient royals have suspicious deaths, and tender age is no protection. I squeeze Elizabeth’s hand. “Enrique doesn’t inspire much confidence,” I say, “but I can’t picture him harming your children.”

  My mind has pushed aside the terrible scene in the alley, but now it overwhelms me. A man who has such men around him—what wouldn’t he do? At least Elizabeth is calm now, and after she drinks the elixir the maid brings her, she falls into a light sleep. I leave her side only long enough to fetch Eliana, and together we sit quietly by my friend’s bed, so she won’t find herself alone when she wakes.

  The following morning, a grim Isabella urges her brother not to cry as they mount the mules they will ride to Segovia. Eliana and I watch from a window as the procession disappears beyond the palace wall before we return to our rooms to begin packing.

  I spoke with Elizabeth while she lay in bed yesterday, and she gave me permission to leave. I am wracked with guilt because I know she was not fully aware of what she was saying. She kept repeating that she wanted to be left alone to die. Of course I could go, she told me. She didn’t need anything—not food, not company, not even air.

  It’s not how I would have preferred to end my time with her, but I know what I must do for myself and my daughter. We will leave for Queluz tomorrow before Elizabeth can change her mind.

  Eliana is in tears all day, between grief over leaving her friends and the lingering horror of the attack in the alley. She doesn’t want to eat the meal the servants bring us at midday, and when she decides, uncharacteristically, to take a nap in the afternoon, she is not awake to hear the disturbance outside the entrance to our quarters.