The Queen's Vow: A Novel of Isabella of Castile

by C. W. Gortner

  Before I could speak, his hand fell over mine. “You mustn’t fear,” he said. “I promise you, I will kick them out, every last one. There’ll be no witnesses in our chamber but us.” He paused, a gleam in his eye. “I think the display of the sheet afterward will be more than enough evidence to satisfy.”

  I dared not look away, even as I wondered if anyone at our table had overheard him. I didn’t know whether to be mortified or relieved as he drew me from my seat, leaving the ravaged trenchers on the soiled tablecloth to open the dance. We were only expected to perform once before being accompanied to our bedchamber, but as the music swelled, cocooning us in its invisible bubble, I remembered the first time we had danced. It now seemed a lifetime ago; then we’d been little more than children, strangers in a strange court. I had rebuffed him for his impertinence, not knowing that he had in fact foreseen our future struggles. Now we were husband and wife, about to embark on our new life together, and I found myself reveling in my newfound right to clasp his hand openly, and knowing that at long last, I was his. I forgot my trepidation over the upcoming nuptial night, enjoying the chance to indulge my passion for dancing, in which I’d had so little occasion to enjoy. I noted that despite his own travails in Aragón, Fernando had evidently not neglected his courtly training, for he danced with ease and exuberance. And the sudden kiss he bestowed me as we turned toward the courtiers caused a loud crack of spontaneous applause.

  I must have flushed to the roots of my hair, especially as we were swept upstairs by the cajoling crowd right after, ushered into separate rooms first, where our attendants waited to prepare us. Before entering his chamber, he glanced over his shoulder at me and I saw only that same unimpeachable confidence in his smile.

  Beatriz and Inés had laid out my embroidered linen shift and damask robe; as they divested me of my gown and veil, careful to not dislodge the flowers in my hair, I couldn’t bear the silence any longer.

  “Well?” I demanded, glaring at them. “Isn’t one of you going to say something? Or will you let me go into that bedchamber like a lamb to the slaughter?”

  Inés gasped. “It’s Your Highness’s wedding night, not a crucifixion! And what can I possibly tell you? I am a virgin.” She glanced markedly at Beatriz, whose lips pursed, as if she fought back a smile.

  “What is it Your Highness wants to know?” Beatriz said.

  “The truth.” I paused. My voice dropped to a whisper. “Will … will it hurt?”

  “Yes. At first, it usually does. But if he is gentle with you as he should be, after a few times it won’t hurt so much. And after a few more times … well, I’ll leave it to you to decide.” Beatriz couldn’t restrain her smile anymore; it curled the corners of her mouth, as it had when we were young and she’d committed some mischief.

  I almost began to laugh myself. I suddenly felt ridiculous, dreading the bed in which I must lie, after everything I’d gone through to get there. I lifted my chin, turned without another word and marched down the short passageway to the nuptial chamber, where the crowd had assembled outside the door. I ignored them, entering the candlelit room, which was dominated by a large brocade-draped tester bed. Fernando stood next to it, with his small entourage of gentlemen.

  He glanced up, goblet in hand. He wore an open robe of muted red cloth; I could see the muscles of his bronzed chest under the loose lacings of his knee-length under-chemise. I knew without seeing it that his goblet now contained wine. I could smell it in the air, a rich Rioja mixing with the scented beeswax of the tapers in the candelabrum.

  He looked at me in silence, his focus so intense that even the eager speculations of those gathered at the door came to a halt.

  “Out,” he said, without taking his eyes from me. “All of you.”

  Beatriz quickly came forward to help me with my robe, but I waved her aside. She guided Inés to the doorway instead, where she confronted the stubborn few who had remained, believing it their right to witness my deflowering, for such was the barbaric custom in every court in Europe. With an indignant wave of her hand she saw them out and clicked the door shut behind her.

  Fernando and I were finally alone.

  I found it difficult to believe he was actually my husband. What he lacked in stature he more than compensated for in presence and vitality; with his strong nose and penetrating eyes, well-shaped mouth and broad forehead, I thought him possibly the most handsome man I’d ever seen. I reached this conclusion with a detachment that surprised me, considering the circumstances. My heart did not flutter. My palms did not sweat. I felt none of the agitation I’d experienced earlier, as if now that the moment was here, impervious calm had conquered the tumult I should be experiencing.

  Men and women had been doing this since time began, and as far as I knew, no one had died of it.

  “Would you like …?” He motioned toward the pewter decanter and extra goblet on the sideboard. “We were expected to drink from one cup together, in bed. Naked.”

  “I know.” I smiled faintly at this reminder of what he had spared us. “But I don’t like wine. It makes my head ache.”

  He nodded, set his goblet aside. “Mine, too. I almost never drink, but tonight it seemed necessary.” He paused. His hands, empty now of the goblet, hung awkwardly at his sides, as if he didn’t know what to do with them.

  “Why?” I asked.

  He frowned. “What?”

  “Why did you think it necessary? Are you nervous?” The question was out before I realized it. As soon as I spoke, I wondered why I had said it. As if any man would admit to being nervous on his wedding night!

  “Yes,” he said quietly, startling me. “I am. I’ve never felt like this, not even before going into battle.” He parted his chemise, showing me more of his chest. It gleamed like brown satin, tight curls of dark hair caught in the cleft between the muscled broadness. “My heart races,” he said. He stepped to me. “See?”

  I lifted my hand, set it on his skin. He was right. I could feel how fast it beat.

  “I can’t believe you are mine,” he whispered, echoing my own thoughts. He looked directly into my eyes as he spoke, for without our shoes, we were almost of equal height. I had a sudden memory of our hands entwined; of how I’d thought they resembled separate strands of silk off the same skein….

  “Tanto monta, monta tanto,” I whispered, and he blinked.

  “What?”

  “It is to be our saying. It means, ‘We are the same.’ ” I paused. “Did you not read it? I made it part of our prenuptial agreement, our Capitulations.”

  “I did read the Capitulations, yes,” he replied, a husky timbre in his voice. “But to be honest, I didn’t pay much attention. All I cared about was that they made you mine.” His hands came up to either side of my face and he drew me against him. “All mine,” he whispered, and his mouth covered my lips, drenching me with an abrupt blossoming of sensation, like a field of fiery petals unfurling within me.

  He guided me to the bed, his tongue probing, his fingers scattering my clothing, tugging a lace here, undoing a ribbon there, until I felt my shift fall with a whisper about my ankles. The brazier heat of the room flushed my pale skin to rose.

  He worshipped me with his eyes. “Eres mi luna,” he whispered in my ear. “You are my moon. So white. So pure….”

  Though I knew deep inside me that I wasn’t his first, that no man could know how to touch a woman like this his first time, I let myself believe we were both innocents. I surrendered to the garden of pleasure he sowed in me, my body growing taut, moist, desperate for his, until I was hearing myself gasp from the exquisite sensation of it all.

  When I felt him enter me, the pain Beatriz had mentioned was so sharp it tore away my breath. But I did not let him see it. I wrapped my legs tighter around him and urged him to plunge faster, deeper, even as the spoils of my virginity seeped beneath us, reddening the sheet.

  Afterward, as we lay entangled, my hair tousled across his chest, he asked, “Was I too rough?” I shook my he
ad, though I ached. He chuckled, his hands roving over my curves, lazily at first, then more quickly, with increasing ardor. I saw desire flare again in his eyes and I lay back to welcome him once more. Even if it hurt, I told myself, it might hurt less the more we did it.

  And as he shuddered and gasped, the heat of his passion easing that raw pain inside me, I heard him say: “Give me a son, my moon. Give me an heir.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I had thought of myself as a woman.

  I had imagined what being a woman entailed and had strived to fulfill those exacting requirements. But in the weeks that followed our wedding, as October was swept away by the first November snows, as fires crackled in the hearths while outside an arctic wind enshrouded our palace, I realized I’d not begun to experience what being a woman meant.

  Nestled in furs in our creaking bed, we explored the realm of the flesh like two ravenous children with nothing else to do. I imagine now that the servants and my ladies went tiptoeing about the icy corridors, attending to their duties with stifled giggles as they were regaled by the sounds emanating from our room, where we luxuriated in oblivion. We had to eat, of course, and this we did, from platters we picked over with our fingers, feeding each other cold chicken in pomegranate sauce and sliced cheese on figs, marveling that no food had a flavor as rich as the taste of each other’s skin. I lay back laughing as Fernando hopped barefoot across the freezing floor tiles to throw more wood on the fire, then rushed back to bed, naked and cursing, jumping beside me with hands and toes like ice.

  “Stop it!” I cried as he wrapped himself about me, his chilly fingertips probing. But soon enough I was arching against him as he tangled those hands, hot as cauldrons now, in my hair and plunged to fill me again with his seed.

  Epiphany came and went in a blur. We held a celebration for our household, paid for by a loan from Carrillo, and right after the Masses and exchanging of gifts, we retreated back to our cocoon, sheltered from the howling storms that turned all of Castile into a wasteland. Nothing intruded on our idyllic isolation, our luna de miel; we were content to bask in it, to see and be only with each other, to pretend the entire world had paused.

  But of course the world had not paused, and eventually we had to get out of bed to send a carefully crafted letter to my half brother. Carrillo had informed us that the moment Enrique learned of the marriage, he had lifted his siege in Andalucía and returned to Castile, riding in dead quiet the entire way; not even Villena had succeeded in cajoling him out of his dark silence. My letter, composed in bed between bouts of lovemaking, with both of us chewing the edges of our quills and spilling ink on each other, implored his understanding. It was our first joint effort as husband and wife, intended to promulgate our official new status while emphasizing our continued fealty. Still, when we sent it by courier, I worried that Enrique had already decided on retribution and that nothing we said or did could change his mind.

  With winter upon us, we could do nothing but wait and see. After a time, Fernando and I graduated from the bed to the hearth and began to explore our common interests. We discovered that we both liked chess and cards and had an abiding passion for riding. I was surprised to learn that while he enjoyed the hunt, he too detested bullfighting; he deemed it a “barbarity” and agreed we should never allow the corrida to be held in our honor. Excessive ostentation unsettled him too, for he too had been raised in an impoverished court, where every coin mattered. Most important, he shared my preference for erring on the side of optimism, to seeing the world in terms of what could be achieved rather than what had been lost. He was overly confident and disliked opposition, and in those early days I was content to let him express himself without interference, watching him stride about our chamber declaiming his vision for our future, while I sat by the fire and darned his hose and shirts.

  “Arrows and a yoke,” he said, his eyes alight. “That will be our device: flechas for Fernando and yugo for Isabella—our symbol, surmounted by our Tanto Monta. It’s the perfect device for a future king and queen of Castile, don’t you agree?”

  I smiled and held up his darned shirt, watching him slip his lean arms into its sleeves and hiding a pang of sudden fear as I glimpsed his body’s silhouette through the frequently washed and repaired cloth. Sensing the change in me with the uncanny perceptiveness he often displayed, Fernando cupped my chin, raised my face to his.

  “What is it?” he murmured. “What makes my moon sad?”

  “You know,” I replied.

  He faltered. “Enrique,” he said at length, and I nodded.

  “He still has not replied to our letter. How long do you think he’ll make us wait? We have no money, Fernando. As princess I was supposed to be given possession of various towns, but so far, nothing has been done. All of this—” I motioned to the room around us, encompassing the palace with my words—“is being paid for by Carrillo. We depend on him for everything.”

  “But we requested your due in our letter. Surely Enrique will not deny us the means to live according to our rank. It’s not as if we require much.”

  I sighed. “You do not know him. This silence of his disturbs me. I fear he prepares some kind of a trap for us.”

  “But we are married now and you are his declared heir. What can he possibly do?”

  I shook my head, reaching into the basket at my feet for another of his linens. “I don’t know. But whatever it is, we must be cautious. We must not let him win.”

  I saw in the firm cast of his jaw that Fernando wasn’t likely to let anyone get the better of us. But not even he could have expected Enrique’s answer when it finally came, conveyed by none other than Carrillo himself.

  Bundled in heavy wool, exuding the chill of the rain-drenched February afternoon, the archbishop flung the parchment onto the table in our sala, where Fernando and I took our meals informally, alongside our servants.

  “From the cretin and his degenerate,” Carrillo snarled, snatching the goblet of hot cider Cárdenas was quick to offer. Carrillo unraveled the layers encasing his bulk, until he stood, steaming, before the fireplace. He took a long draft, eyeing us as Fernando reached for the parchment. As he read, all color drained from his face.

  A pit opened in my stomach. “What does it say?”

  He looked up. For the first time since we’d exchanged vows, I saw him hesitate. “Isabella, mi amor … it’s … I don’t want you to—”

  “Just tell her,” interrupted Carrillo. “She understands the risk she took.” He grabbed the paper from Fernando and read aloud: “… thereby, I do not recognize Doña Isabella’s marriage to Prince Fernando as legal or canonically binding, seeing as the dispensation used to solemnize said union is false. Furthermore”—he lifted his voice against my gasp—“my sister has willfully disobeyed my royal authority, blah, blah, blah.”

  Carrillo dropped the letter onto my lap. “In other words, he defies the marriage and may seek to disinherit you in favor of Joanna la Beltraneja; at the very least, he’ll try to wed her to a foreign prince who’ll lend him aid, seeing as he and Villena have wasted their resources on that idiotic siege in Andalucía.”

  I sat perfectly still. I heard Beatriz’s knife clatter to the table as she rose in haste to attend me. Summoning my strength, I gripped my chair arms and came to my feet. The parchment slipped from my lap to the floor. Fernando was immobile but Carrillo gaped as I turned, and without a word, walked out. Beatriz and Inés followed close behind me. I did not look at the staring servants, though I did catch the complicit, troubled glance that Fernando’s treasurer, Luis de Santángel, cast in Fernando’s direction. It was like a stab in my heart, for it proved that Fernando had confided his dilemma to others, even as I had been left unaware.

  I felt as if I were suffocating as I climbed the staircase to our rooms. I closed the door on my women’s worried faces, turning the key in the lock before I tugged in desperation at my bodice, trying to ease its bone-hard edges so I could fill my lungs with air. I slid in a heap against t
he door, hands pressed to my breast. I closed my eyes, drawing in shallow breaths. Eventually, the knock came at the door.

  I knew who it was even before he said, “Isabella, please. Let me in.”

  I heard Beatriz murmur something and I heard Fernando’s curt reply. He knocked again, harder this time. “Isabella, open this door. I am your husband. We need to talk.”

  The anger in his tone made me consider leaving him to stew, but I didn’t want any more scandal, so I stood and turned the key. I moved into the center of the room as he entered, slamming the door shut again on Beatriz.

  “You knew,” I said, cutting him off. “When? Before or after we said our vows?”

  He met my stare. The skin under his left eye twitched as it did when he was upset.

  “Well? Are you going to answer me?”

  “Give me a moment,” he retorted.

  I took a step to him. “Why would you need a moment? It’s a simple question.”

  “It’s always simple with you, isn’t it?” he said tersely. “Good or bad, black or white, saint or sinner—that’s how Her Highness Doña Isabella sees the world.”

  I halted, taken aback by his contemptuous tone.

  “But I do not.” He paced to the decanter on the sideboard. Contrary to his avowed abstinence, I’d discovered that Fernando in fact enjoyed a little wine at night, in private, and I’d instructed Inés to make sure there was always some ready. I wondered now, as he filled his cup, what other surprising discoveries I was fated to make about him.

  “I see all the shades of gray in between,” he said. “I see that men are both bad and good, that we’re capable of great evil and great sacrifice. I know, as you do not, nothing in this world is ever as simple as we think.”