by Lynn Cullen
39.
6 January anno Domini 1505
Charles reached into his shoes, so carefully filled with barley and hay and put by his bed the night before. He pulled out a little silver donkey the size of a mouse, and a little silver cart with leather leads. Instantly he jumped up and brought it to me. “Put it together!”
The sleeves of my night robe dragging, I reached over Isabel, sucking her thumb in my lap, to take it. “Look, Charles, the Three Kings took all of your hay for their camels. You must have been a good boy for them to bring you such a nice present.” I worked the leads over the donkey’s neck. “Leonor, are you not going to look in your shoes?”
She sat back on her heels, poised even with her hair crumpled from sleep and a stripe imprinted on her cheek from her bedclothes. How Mother would enjoy her, such a dignified little soul. How odd to think that they had not met. I hoped there would be time. “We did not have Three Kings’ Day last year,” she said.
“Ah, well, maybe we can make up for it this year.”
“When I was a child,” said Beatriz, “Día de los Reyes was my favorite day. I waited all year for the sixth of January. Once I got a book on the saints. I felt very rich and very good—no one got books. Too expensive.”
“Those Kings knew you well,” I said. “You would treasure a book. Go on, Leonor, look and see if the Kings brought you anything.” Had Philippe and the Viscountess been so very busy with their lives that they could not remember this tradition, so important to the children?
Pursing her lips, Leonor reached into her shoe, then brought out a gold necklace with a pearl the size of an orange seed suspended from it.
“Pearls are special stones,” I said. “They help you to remember someone.”
“Who?”
“That is up to you.”
“Grand-mère Margaret,” she said with characteristic finality.
I drew in a breath. Of course she missed her great-grandmother. The Dowager had raised her during the time I was in Spain. “I’m certain she would like that.”
I slid Isabel off my lap and led her to her shoes to see what was within. She was examining the miniature gilt dog she’d found, when I saw movement behind the lumpy glass of the window. I heard a nightingale sing. I frowned. There were no nightingales in winter.
Just then the Viscountess entered with a troop of Burgundian ladies. “There you are. We had gone to your chambers but could not find you.”
“It’s Three Kings’ Day.”
She looked blankly at the children. Outside, the nightingale burst into song. “What is that?” She crossed to the window and opened it. Cold air rushed in and the bird flew away.
Now Philippe entered, with Delilah on his wrist. He was in his night robe and his hair hung straight, as yet uncurled. “By Saint John, it’s cold. Why did you open that window?”
“There was an irksome bird,” said the Viscountess.
“Then by God, let me send Delilah after it.”
“No!” I cried.
Philippe gazed at me, then made a little shooing motion at the Viscountess.
“But we’ve come to dress Madame.”
“Go. Get. All of you.” When she and the ladies had gone, he said, “You, too, nun.”
She looked at me.
“What is this, Philippe?”
I nodded for Beatriz to leave. The bird returned. I saw its rippled image through the glass, hopping on the windowsill. I glanced away, hoping Philippe wouldn’t see it, but he was sprawled on the floor with the children, admiring the gifts he had nothing to do with.
He encouraged Charles to pet Delilah, then looked up. “I thought I should be the one to tell you.”
My stomach filled with dread. I did not want to hear.
“Your mother is dead.”
On the other side of the wavy glass, the bird pecked at the sill. We would never get to talk. She would never truly know me, nor I truly know her.
It was too late.
“Happy Three Kings’ Day.” Philippe reached into his robe and drew out a packet of letters. He held them out to me.
“Mama, what are those?” asked Leonor.
I shook my head, unable to speak for the swelling in my throat.
“Mama has to get dressed,” said Philippe.
“I’ll be back,” I whispered to the children.
Alone in my chamber, I stood by the light of the window, staring at my name written in my mother’s hand.
“Knock, knock.” Philippe entered. He came as far as my desk, stopping to toy with the writing things upon it. “Look, Puss, I know this is bad for you. Is there anything I can do?”
I shook my head.
He came over and put his arms around me.
Whether weakened by his act of kindness, or by the yawning chasm that had opened in my heart, I leaned against him.
He pressed his forehead against mine. “Is it too late to say I’m sorry?”
I kept my forehead to his. Gently, he began to sway with me.
It was all he knew to offer.
England
Possibly Catalina of Aragón
40.
12 February anno Domini 1506
My fur sleeves brushed against my gown as I held out my arms. “Sweetest Catalina!”
My sister hesitated for an almost imperceptible moment, then launched herself across the frigid stone chamber within the forbidding English castle at Windsor. “Juana!”
We rocked each other in an embrace, then held each other out. How lovely my youngest sister had become. At twenty, there were no more gummy smiles, no trace of her girlish awkwardness. She had my mother’s thick red-gold hair and Papa’s well-shaped lips and a sparkle to her blue eyes that was all her own. It was hard to imagine that this vibrant young woman was a widow—she had lost her husband, the King’s son Arthur, when she was sixteen. It was even more difficult to believe that another prince had not claimed her as his bride.
“You are well,” she said wonderingly.
“Yes.”
“I am so glad!” She hugged me to herself again. I drank in her oily-sweet smell, familiar to me since childhood. She let me go and beamed at me. “Thank God you are well.”
“You act surprised.”
“Your husband said—” She stopped, blinking blond lashes.
“Said what?”
She shook her head. “When you did not come to meet the King upon first reaching our shores—”
“I wanted to come. I wanted to see you! Philippe—” I took a breath, remembering how, the day after we had arrived, I had found the door to my chamber locked from outside when I had dressed, only to learn that Philippe had galloped off without me. “Philippe detained me.”
She smiled apologetically. “He said you might say that.”
“What else did he say?”
“Nothing, really. That you’d had a small incident that prevented you from accompanying him just then, that was all, but that sometimes, unfortunately, you were—”
“What?”
“I’m sorry—given to flights of fancy. But who isn’t?” she added hastily. “After Mother died, I kept thinking I saw her at the window, but when I opened the casement, it was just a bird. Indeed, I went quite mad from my grief. I cried for days on end. None of us were there when she passed from this world, Juana. Not even Papa. It makes me feel so terrible. She did not deserve that.”
Tears flooded my eyes. I had not known that Mother had died alone. No one had told me. To think what must have gone through her mind, abandoned, in her final hours.
She wiped at her eyes. “Only Fray Hernando was there.”
I looked up. “Fray Hernando?”
“He had come from Granada for the last few months of her life. I suppose that was a comfort to her.”
I thought of Mother’s reply that day of her first illness, when I had remarked that Fray Hernando, as the holiest of men, cared not for earthly power. No, Mother had said. He doesn’t. He cares for me.
“Yes,�
�� I murmured, “I suppose it was.”
“Well, I don’t know what is wrong with Papa. I shall not forgive him for marrying that girl. Mother was hardly cold in her grave! Have you met her?”
“Germaine of Foix? Yes, at the French court.”
“What was she like?”
I winced, remembering that awful visit, where I had been abandoned by Philippe and left to fend for myself with the Queen’s hostile court. “Of all of them, she wasn’t so bad.”
“I cannot believe you stick up for her.”
“She wasn’t cruel. At that court, that was quite remarkable.”
“She’s seventeen. Disgusting! How could he marry her? He and Mother were such lovebirds. Never has there been a couple as devoted as they. If I had a husband like that—”
“You sound like María—the starry-eyed romantic.”
“Like how María was. I hear she does not find marriage as magical as she had dreamed. Her husband will have nothing to do with her beyond filling a cradle.”
I thought of my newest infant at home, named for her once starry-eyed aunt. I, too, was but a filler of cradles. “No. Poor María.”
Catalina’s expression grew troubled. “How goes it with your husband?” she asked, watching my face.
“Surely you’ve heard.”
“His ambassador tells us he’s a benign ruler, gentle, kind. A friend to England.”
I laughed in spite of myself. How Philippe’s grand-mère had despised the Tudor King. She would have personally held his head in a butt of malmsey if she could have. She had brought up her grandson to hate him equally, though now Philippe, as a prince, was coming to admire the shrewd older man’s political maneuvering. As for Philippe’s being gentle and kind, I had bruises on my forearms where he had grasped me the night before. He had been so excited by his talks with the English King that he expelled his energy by bedding me roughly, against my wishes. But to admit to my miserable marriage was to confess my inability to earn a husband’s love.
“The ambassador is well trained,” I said in answer to her questioning gaze. “Tell me—what is the English King really like?”
“Old Henry? As sharp and cold as a dagger pulled from a snowbank. He won’t let me go home and he won’t let me marry his son Henry.”
“Until he comes of age.”
“No. It’s a matter of the King’s having lost interest in the Spanish alliance, but he suspects I might be too valuable to be let go of just yet. I did not mind being betrothed to young Henry.” She sighed. “But now there’s not even that.”
I smiled. “María did have her influence on you.”
“You would understand if you met him. He’s tall, and handsome, with hair the color of a fox. He is very intelligent—he composes music—and he is exceedingly wise for his age—”
“Which is?”
“Almost fifteen.”
I laughed. “A wise almost fifteen-year-old boy. I remember Juan at that age. ‘Wise’ was hardly a word to describe him. Loud, maybe, impertinent, cocky, vain …”
A merry voice came from the doorway. “Who is cocky and vain?”
Philippe entered with a slight man whose gray skin and hair belied the youthful sharpness of his eyes.
“Henry, please excuse the informal meeting. May I introduce you to my dear wife, Juana of Castile?”
The English King cautiously kissed my hand, then seemed surprised when I did not open my mouth and quack. What tales had Philippe told him about me? His campaign to slander and belittle me was astonishing. Yet he achieved his purpose. Because of my alleged incompetence, he had declared himself Mother’s rightful heir before his court at Brussels, and no one had protested on my behalf. There was no one Spanish left to protest. My only hope was that once we arrived in the Spains, the Cortes would see through his lies. He would be my consort and nothing more, no matter what untruths he told.
He kissed my hand. “Are you feeling better, sweet?”
“I was never ill.”
Philippe gave the English King a meaningful look. “You are so brave, darling,” he said to me.
“You must have been, to survive a shipwreck,” said the King. His smile was surprisingly courtly for such a plain little man. “Did you have a moment when you feared you would not make it?”
In my mind’s eye I saw Philippe, drenched and sobbing, on the deck of the ship that was to carry us back to the Spains. A violent storm had struck when we were within eyesight of England’s white cliffs. We watched in horror as the vessel next to us tipped, then was swallowed, sails and all. Bring my jewels! I had shouted. I waited for Beatriz to put them on me so that my corpse would be known, and had the captain lash me to the mast to keep me from being swept overboard. Meanwhile Philippe had bawled in terror, flailing his arms so that his men could hardly tie on the buoyant wings they had made for him of ladies’ inflated skirts. Our ship broke up just offshore. We were plunged into the icy water. Let me live for the children, I prayed as Philippe thrashed next to me, his wings ballooning. Waves had crashed over our heads. Let me live for them.
“I think,” I said, “that drowning was a reasonable fear for us all.”
“She still has not recovered,” Philippe said quickly. “She is weary, and needs to return to rest now. She will protest—brave girl that she is, she wants no one to know of her troubles.”
“I’m not weary,” I said.
“See?” Philippe laughed. “Just as I say. Sometimes you are not a good judge of your own fitness, sweet.”
“His care for you is admirable,” said the English King.
“Yes,” I said. “He is Philippe the Good.”
My husband flashed me a look of warning and then turned to the King. “Will you please excuse us?”
The King narrowed his miser’s bright eyes. “I hardly got to speak with her. She doesn’t seem that unwell. But if you insist.” He kissed my hand, then that of my husband.
“Will I see you again?” cried Catalina.
“Of course,” I said. Philippe let me kiss her before he led me away.
We walked down a chill hall, the silence broken only by our footsteps on the stone floor and the rustle of our clothing. Near the entranceway, a youth passed us, surrounded by armored attendants over whom he towered. He looked over his shoulder at me, his fox-red hair falling over his eyes.
Philippe took my arm to hurry me along.
Outside, he pulled me aside as we waited for our horses. “Did you think”—his breath came in furious clouds—“to make friends with the English King?”
“I should think you would want me to. We are in an alliance with the English.”
“We? Who is ‘we’?”
“The Spains.”
“Oh? You are the Spains now?”
I held my tongue. It was best not to provoke him.
“Do you wish to enter in a secret alliance with him, to limit my power?”
“That is silly. Henry Tudor has no influence in the Spains.”
“And neither will I, if you have your way.”
“You will have power, as my husband.”
“No. I shall have more. Your insufferably proud Cortes will beg me to take control when they see how incapable you are. People are already talking. They whisper about the fit you had on the ramparts of La Mota.”
“Fit?”
“How you raged along the ramparts, unwilling to listen to reason and come inside, though it was a frigid night.”
“Do you mean the night I went outside to catch my breath? I had no fit. My mother joined me. We talked.”
“That’s not what they say. They say she begged you to come inside.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“They say after you gave birth to Fernando, you were weak and given to moods. They fear you have your grandmother’s blood, that insanity runs through generations.”
Realization swept through me in an icy wave. The flesh of my arms and scalp tingled in painful alarm. “It’s you. You started these rumors.”
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“Rumors? Even your mother was heard to say that you were lost in love without me.”
I should not have let that lie stand when she said it. But I thought it was only words, and words can never hurt you.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “they are saying all kinds of things. That I had to lock you up because you chased after the Viscountess and cut her long hair. That you threw a brick at me. That you set fire to your clothes.”
“I did none of that.”
“Jealous women are capable of anything.”
“You are mad,” I whispered.
“I can say that you must be locked up for your safety as well as that of others, and nobody will come rescue you.”
“Why do you do this?”
“You know why.”
A boy brought up our horses.
“Thank you, lad,” said Philippe. “Take care of the lady. She’s very fragile at present, and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to her.”
The Spains
Philippe I of Castile
41.
10 July anno Domini 1506
My view was of Papa and Philippe, swaying on their richly housed horses, their silk robes draped majestically over the haunches of their steeds. A hot wind sweeping off the Meseta and through the dusty streets of Valladolid stirred the scarlet brocade hangings of the Canopy of State held over their heads. A page walked before them, holding aloft the Sword of State, and before him clopped Philippe’s German guards, whose apparent readiness to trample any stragglers cleared the road for our procession as efficiently as Moses at the Red Sea. I had witnessed such a scene before, riding into Toledo to greet Mother upon my first return to the Spains. I had thought it an innocent and touching expression of camaraderie then, a young husband riding with his wife’s proud papa. I had been pleased to take a secondary position. Now, months after Philippe had started his campaign of lies questioning my fitness to rule, I knew better. Mother had warned me. How many more of her observations would come to haunt me, the damage already done?
Philippe looked this way and that, his perfectly curled hair swishing against the high collar of his satin robe. He was barely able to conceal his grin as men and women alike lowered to their knees as he passed. He clearly relished his role as King, even if it was of the Spaniards, whose restrained ways so perturbed him. He would happily be King of any peoples, be they Indios, Turks, or Cipangese, should they pay him enough deference. I saw now that he craved the enforced deference due him as King as a toddling child craves sweetmeats. He would crush anyone who was a threat to his supply, including his wife. Especially his wife.
