Reign of Madness

by Lynn Cullen

  “She knows,” said Papa.

  “Well, it’s not such a foolish question,” Germaine said petulantly. “I have not seen a single coach since crossing into our lands. I don’t know how you can live without them,” she told me. “Fernando, you must order me one this moment.”

  “This moment we must talk to Juana,” he said, rather more sternly. He smiled at me. “We have news.”

  “News?”

  “The Cortes of Castile and León have made their ruling. I have been officially granted full powers to use in your stead. You need not worry about anything.”

  “Ever,” Germaine chimed in.

  Papa cleared his throat. “Well, at least however long you want.”

  “That is good, Papa.” I smiled as if pleased to hear this news, although word of it had trickled into my cocoon many months before. I tried not to be hurt at how long it had taken Papa to come to discuss it. I supposed that the production of tadpoles did take time.

  Germaine returned to him and clung to his side like a child at her nursemaid’s skirts. He patted her as he spoke. “I have recently made a minor appointment when meeting with the Cortes. I tell you only because you seem to have taken interest in the family. Like your mother, you have always been partial to the Colóns.”

  My heart lurched. “Colón?”

  “I granted the elder son, Diego, governorship of the Indies. I had promised Isabel I’d do so, and God knows that he’d been pushing for it.”

  For me. Diego had been pushing for it for me.

  “Truly, I have never seen a man so hell-bent on proving his nobility. But that often seems to go hand in hand with those who feel inferior, doesn’t it? He told the Cortes that he wanted to be worthy of a most noble wife. That raised a few chuckles, that.”

  I struggled to keep my voice level. “Those were his words?”

  “As I thought—you do seem quite interested in that family. So I thought that just for you, since you have been so”—he glanced down at Germaine, picking at the buttons of his tunic—“supportive of me, I would do him a favor.”

  My pulse pounded in my ears.

  “If the lad wanted a noble wife, I thought I would give him one. The Duke of Alba had a daughter he’d been needling me to settle upon someone. You know María de Toledo y Rojas—your second cousin. A pretty-enough girl. She’ll be a marquise in her own right. I gave her to Colón.”

  I could not see, or hear, for the blue-black roaring in my head.

  “No,” I whispered. “He did not take her.”

  “Strangely enough, he did resist. Here I gave him what he wanted, and he rejected it. I had a notion to rescind my offer, but the girl was quite set on it and so Alba would not relent. You have never seen a groom with colder feet. Alba had to hold him at the church step at knifepoint. I would not have wanted to be in their marital chamber that night.”

  I felt my lips move. “They wed?”

  “Oh, yes. I suppose they’ll have plenty of time to sort it out on the ship. Both bride and unhappy groom leave for the Indies in a fortnight.”

  “The Indies.”

  “Where else is its governor to go?”

  Germaine reached up to peck Papa’s cheek. “My shining knight.”

  Papa grinned, then peered at me.

  His smile faded to a frown. “Juana, are you unwell?”

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  2 May anno Domini 1543

  TORDESILLAS, SPAIN

  The woman looks up to see her grandson, twitching his jaw—that jaw, and those terribly familiar puffed lips—with concern. jaw, and those terribly familiar puffed lips—with concern.

  “I’m sorry, ” she says. “I get caught up in my thoughts. It is a hazard of spending so much time alone.”

  He frowns guiltily.

  She truly must be more careful. She is frightening him.

  “So you’ve come to get my approval for your marriage?” she says as brightly as she can manage.

  “Yes, Abuela.”

  She refuses to let her mouth turn down, though, Hostias, this sham has gone on too long. Sometimes it is all she can do to bear it. If she had not promised Diego that she would wait, she would have gone mad. Her smile becomes more genuine as she savors the humor of that thought.

  She looks around her grandson, at his nobles. “Is there something I’m supposed to sign? Quick, quick, get it out. I don’t want to waste the time I have with Felipe.”

  Her grandson’s melon-haired fool scoots out of the way like a kicked dog, as a noble steps forth with a parchment. She goes to her desk and holds out her hand. He gives it to her, then backs away with such a flowery show of deference that she nearly laughs. Hostias santas, the man overacts. She is not the Great Khan, you know.

  She uncaps her inkhorn, dips her pen, then signs.

  The youth glances from her to the parchment in astonishment. “Are you not going to look at it?”

  “No.” She sits back. “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. I could have put anything in there.”

  The woman smiles affectionately. Dear boy, does he not know how many documents she has signed over the years that have been filled with lies and misrepresentation? What bothers her most about them is that the perpetrators always think that they are pulling the wool over her eyes. Do they never suspect that she sees through all of their duplicity, that she lets it go because her life is as she wills it?

  “My father says that I should read every document carefully. That a king—or a prince—must not trust anyone. Not even his advisors—perhaps especially his advisors.” He glances at his men, who stare back in innocence.

  “That would be just like my Charles.” The woman does not add the rest of her thought: Those who mistrust most should be trusted least. Neither her son nor her father nor her husband could ever believe that what was hers was theirs, just for the asking. They thought they had to take it by force, then guard against her taking it back. It hurt her especially that her Charles would treat her thus. Perhaps it was his deformity that had turned him cold, though she would rage against anyone who dared to trouble him about it.

  She holds out the parchment. “I am done.” The noble comes forward once more, bowing and scraping, again drawing a smile from her lips. When she glances at her grandson, she sees that he is scowling at the falsely humble supplicant. A spark glimmers in her heart. Could the boy hate this cruel jest, too?

  After a moment, she says, “Felipe?”

  “Yes, Abuela.”

  “Felipe, would you like my crowns?”

  “Your crowns?”

  “Of Castile, León, Aragón, Granada, Gibraltar, Sicily—all of that.”

  “No, Abuela,” he says sheepishly, “ but thank you.”

  She thinks of her mother, once brought upon a mountaintop and offered, as was Christ, a kingdom that was not rightly hers. She had taken it. How she came to regret it. So much heartache it brought her, and so little joy. What was the use of such power when it could not bring her what she truly wished, the man who held her heart? Was this why her mother sent her off to marry a mere duke? To spare her from the knives of power?

  She turns her attention to the youth before her. “Felipe, if I made a big-enough stir, I could get the pack of crowns for you. I have much more power than you know.”

  The men behind him pale. Once rebels came to free her. The Comuneros shouted that she was the true king, and that they dedicated themselves to restoring her power. She thought about it. Escaping from her rooms did have its appeal. But when she heard that Diego Colón was not behind the rebellion, she let Charles’s men seize her and toss away the key. She would wait. She had said she would.

  “Please, Felipe. I want you to have them. It would be my one true act as Queen.”

  From a back door, two women enter, their arms full of canes of roses. The younger one, a woman of perhaps thirty, barely flinches, her face impassive within the white linen wings of her Flemish headdress. She is a cool blond beauty, apparen
tly used to taking her mistress’s catastrophes in stride. The slight pouches by her mouth remain slack with dispassion. But the older woman, a dame old enough to be the other’s mother, gasps in surprise. The white wings of her headdress nearly quiver with her dismay.

  “Don’t stop,” the woman tells them. “Come in. Please.” She turns to her grandson as the two women take their armfuls to the window, where a pitcher awaits on the sill. The youth stares at them in astonishment.

  “What is it?” asks his grandmother.

  He lowers his voice. “The younger of your servants looks much like the portrait of my betrothed. They—they could be sisters.”

  “I see the resemblance. Yes, one might say they could be related.”

  The older woman casts a glance over her shoulder, her eyes round with alarm. The boy’s grandmother sighs. Poor Katrien, she thinks, rubbing the crucifix on her rosary. Will she ever stop worrying about being found out? Even after I fetched her child from the nunnery in Segovia—the same one where Mother had so lovingly doted on Papa’s bastards—and helped her raise the girl, she still disbelieves my goodwill. But how could I punish her for doing what so many people wished to do? Philippe’s use of her, and then his abandonment, pushed her to madness. She did not wittingly poison me, but she knew, oh yes, she very much knew, what a deadly draft she had given him.

  “Last chance, Felipe,” the woman says. “I do wish you to have my crowns.”

  “No, Abuela. They are Papa’s.” He steps up to her desk and pats her hand. “But thank you for your trust in me.”

  “Then take this.”

  She lays back the humped lid of a coffer on the desk. Carefully, as if she were lifting a chick from a nest, she takes something from its velvet depths. It is a pearl the size of a pigeon’s egg.

  “Give this to your bride. Let it help you to remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  “Whatever you need to.”

  “I can’t,” he says. “Obviously, it is special to you.”

  She beckons him near. “Hold out your hand.”

  Reluctantly, he holds it forth.

  She closes her hand around the pearl, then puts her fist on his hand. “Listen to me, Felipe. If you love this bride, you must cherish her. Forget your hunts, your sports, your pursuit of lands—everything—and savor her. You will think you will have plenty of chances to do so, but you won’t. I promise you, you won’t. Life is odd that way.” She opens her fingers and, turning her hand, lets the pearl fall to his palm. “Very well?”

  Seeing he is beaten, he smiles. “Very well.”

  As he surveys it, a noble takes a brand from the banked coals in the brazier and lights a taper of wax. The woman watches as hot red drops pool on a ribbon affixed to the document she has signed. She presses her seal into the liquid center.

  When the wax has cooled, she gives the document to her grandson. “Go, Felipe. Be a good husband and be a good king.”

  He kisses her hand and, with tears in his eyes, leaves, his gentlemen following after.

  When they are gone, the woman slumps back into her seat. It is so hard to see the young ones come and go. Her son Charles was brought to her only when near Felipe’s age, and her other children, later, or more heartbreakingly, never. Why she was denied even her children, she does not know. It was the cruelest trial of all.

  She feels something on her arm. When she looks up, the older of the two women is patting her.

  She smiles. “Thank you, Katrien.”

  The woman places the pitcher of roses on the desk. “No.” The white wings of her headdress waver when she shakes her head. “I thank you, Mevrouw. You are too good to me. I do not deserve—”

  “Shhh. Shhh. I have told you—people do mad things for love. Just as they say.”

  The woman’s smile fades into a look of concentration as she pulls on the lining of the coffer, revealing a hidden compartment. From within a nest of red velvet, she carefully plucks a ruby the size of a hazelnut. She holds it to her throat. She remembers the feel of her papa’s skin when she slipped her hand through his fingers. She remembers the smell of her mother’s hair, her stern smile, her laughter. She remembers the feel of the cold air as she and Philippe flew their sheets from the balcony; the chuckling sound of Leonor’s first laugh.

  She remembers Diego, his face aglow with youthful certainty as he talked of his plans for their future.

  She opens her eyes and leans forward, then smells deeply of the roses. Such a brief bloom, so unforgettably sweet. It is a comfort to her as she waits.

  Author’s Note

  Reign of Madness is a work of fiction, based on history. The challenge in writing this story was to make sense of the lives of actual people who lived in the past, on the basis of the records we have of them. My primary goal was to understand how Juana “the Mad,” Queen of Castile and León, heir to the most powerful and extensive kingdom in the Western world at the time, came to live under house arrest for more than fifty years, a confinement that began during her marriage to Philippe “the Handsome,” Archduke of Austria. How did her husband, a noble of lower standing than she, manage to take over her lands? This pattern would be repeated by her father, Fernando of Aragón, ruler of a kingdom smaller than the one Juana inherited, and later by her older son, who became Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Not only did they usurp her power; they also allowed her to be grievously mistreated. In her final place of incarceration, the palace at Tordesillas, where she languished from 1509 to 1555, she was continuously lied to by her jailers about the whereabouts and status of her family, and about current events. They kept up the elaborate ruse that she was still Queen, having her sign documents, many of them false, even as they enforced her isolation. Her only companions were her youngest daughter, until she was sixteen, and a lowly servant or two, one of whom was the laundress Catalina Redondo, on whom the character Katrien is based. Juana was treated as dangerously insane, and had to endure exorcisms and frequent solitary confinement. Yet when a group of citizens loyal to Juana, the Comuneros, stormed the palace in 1520 to free her, she would not take the reins of power from her son. I had to wonder: Could it be that Juana chose to remain imprisoned?

  Then, into my research marched the older son of Cristóbal Colón (Christopher Columbus), Diego. It is known that Diego spent many years as a page in the court of Isabel of Castile and then served in her husband’s court after she died. Before that, he was a page to Juan of Castile, son of Isabel and brother of Juana. Diego was about the same age as Juana, and there were plenty of opportunities for their paths to cross. Add the known fact that Diego spent his life fighting to defend his father’s honor and titles—even after he himself became Governor of the Indies in 1509 and built the palatial Alcázar de Colón in Santo Domingo (now the oldest remaining viceregal residence in the Americas)—and a possible explanation for why Juana allowed herself to be imprisoned began to take shape. Besides wanting her son to have her titles, could it be that she wished to lower her standing, to be acceptable to someone of lesser rank?

  The relationship between Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragón, that famous pair who bankrolled Colón’s voyages of discovery, was my inspiration for this theory. During their reign, much was made about the equality of their power. Even today, a brief visit to Spain affords a view of five-hundred-year-old propaganda touting their glorious union. Isabel’s yugo (yoke—Isabel was spelled with a Y then) and Fernando’s fechas (arrows) are carved, painted, or plastered on buildings in many cities and towns. My favorite example is at the monastery of San Juan de los Reyes in Toledo, which is essentially a Gothic billboard advertising the fabulous marriage of Isabel and Fernando. Almost all the walls and ceilings there are emblazoned with their motto and symbols. I particularly like the chains draped over the façade of the church, supposedly the bonds worn by Spaniards incarcerated in Moorish prisons. The chains have been there since the late 1400s, hung as a potent reminder that Isabel and Fernando freed imprisoned Spanish men, women, and children w
hen they conquered the Moors and united the Spains. Isabel and Fernando were the power couple of the world, and were even named the Catholic Kings by Pope Alexander VI.

  I couldn’t help wondering how a proud man like Fernando of Aragón would react to having his wife considered his equal or, worse, to the reality that she was the main decision-maker in the realm. Early on, the couple had marital troubles when Isabel allowed herself to be crowned Queen while Fernando was away. They did not speak to each other for weeks. Fernando strayed. Even after they patched things up, his eye continued to wander. While Isabel made a point of cloistering herself with her ladies in his absence, he was out producing bastards—six that he recognized. They were billed as the happiest power couple in the world, yet there is evidence that their inequality didn’t sit well with either of them. Almost all of the incidents in the book alluding to their discord have been taken from contemporary accounts.

  But history can be slippery. Much general historical knowledge, even the history taught in schoolbooks, may be more legend than fact. For example, many people in the United States can tell you that Christopher Columbus discovered America on October 12, 1492. And that he was extraordinarily brave, daring to think the world was round at a time when everyone else thought it was flat. No wonder he was soon celebrated around the globe for his great discovery.

  Truth: Colón hoped to find a passage to the Indies. He was even equipped with a letter of greeting from Isabel and Fernando addressed to the Great Khan, should Colón find him. When Colón sighted land (in fact, one of his sailors did; Colón took the credit and reaped the subsequent reward in gold coin from Isabel and Fernando), he felt sure it was one of the outer islands of the Indies—perhaps part of the famed Cipango (Japan)—hence his name “Indios” for the natives he encountered. He made a total of four voyages from Spain and back, but even after probing the coasts of what are now South and Central America on his third and fourth journeys, he never realized that he had struck upon new continents. To have admitted that he’d come across something other than the Indies would have been to admit failure. So he did not call the areas that he’d bumbled onto the “New World.”