by Jean Plaidy
“How long?” was the frequently uttered question. “Surely her time is at hand. Will it be a son, think you? A prince for Spain?”
They hoped so, for then the great bells of San Pablo and Santa Maria la Antigua would ring out; there would be rejoicing in the town; the best bulls would be brought forth, and there would be processions bright with the purple and gold of royalty. There would be free wine for the people. Girls with flowers in their hair would dance—Castilians, Andalusians, and luscious gypsy girls. There would be feasting and merry-making throughout the country. That was what the birth of a prince would mean. So eagerly the people waited, asking one another: “How long?”
In the mansion of Don Bernardino de Pimentel, which was but a stone’s throw from the Church of San Pablo, a young man of twenty-seven sat alone in one of the great rooms. The room was dark and sparsely furnished, but the walls were hung with tapestry, some of which had been worked by Queen Isabella during her pregnancy.
The man stared moodily before him, his hands on his knees, his prominent lower lip jutting out as he stroked the hair on his chin. He was straining his ears for the cry of a child: he did not wish to go into his wife’s chamber until he heard it. There would be women everywhere—his wife’s attendants, and the ladies of the court, as well as those who had come to assist at the birth. It was too important a moment for him to be there, for to these people he was a legend. He was the greatest monarch in the world; he was hard and ruthless, and men and women trembled before him. Now he felt as he did before a great battle—strong, unconquerable, ready to efface himself if necessary for the sake of victory. He, Charles the First of Spain and the Fifth of Germany, would not disturb those women at their all-important task, any more than he would disturb his soldiers in the process of ravishing a town they had won.
He knew how to act, and what was more important, when to act. He was not the most feared man in Christendom for nothing.
He prayed now for a son—a prince, another such as himself, a great ruler who would combine the lusty strength of a Hapsburg with the subtlety of a Spaniard. He himself was all Flemish. He had been born in Flanders, and this land of dark, fierce-tempered people often seemed an alien land to him although he was its king. An accomplished linguist, able to converse in dialect with the subjects of his wide Empire, he spoke Castilian as a foreigner speaks it. He had inherited his love of good food from his Hapsburg ancestors; his fair, florid face was Hapsburg. He had great physical energy which he enjoyed expending on war, jousts, and plump German women.
He was, nevertheless, too clever to deceive himself. There were times when moods of melancholy would envelop him. Then he would remember his mother, Queen Juana, who lived out a poor mad existence in the Alcázar of Tordesillas, refusing to change her filthy rags, letting her gray hair hang in verminous strands (unless the fancy took her to have it dressed with jewels), screaming that she would kill her faithless husband (who had been dead more than twenty years) unless he would give up his six newest mistresses. She had been called a witch; the Holy Inquisition would have taken her long ago and have put her to torture and death by the flames, but for the fact that she was the mother of the Emperor.
The mother of the Emperor a raving lunatic! Such thoughts must bring with them considerable uneasiness when, in a nearby apartment, that Emperor’s son was about to be born.
Moreover, the Emperor’s wife, Isabella, was his first cousin, and she came from the same tainted stock. Could the child escape its heritage? Could it be bodily strong and mentally strong?
The Emperor felt the need to pray.
“Shut out the light. Shut out the light,” cried the woman in the bed.
Doña Leonor de Mascarenhas leaned over the bed.
“No light comes through the window, dearest Highness. All light is shut out.”
Leonor, plump and Portuguese, lifted the Queen’s heavy dark hair out of her eyes before she returned to her stool at the side of the bed.
“It must be soon now, your Highness. It must be soon.”
Queen Isabella nodded. It must be soon. This agony could not long endure. Her lips moved: “Grant me a prince. Let me delight my lord with a prince…a prince who will live in health to please him.”
This was more than the bearing of a child; she knew it well. This was to be the child—the boy—whom his father wished to rule the world. Never had she been allowed to forget her great destiny. As the daughter of Emanuel the Great of Portugal, descended from great Ferdinand and even greater Isabella the Catholic, it was meant that she should marry the man who, through his father, Philip of Austria, would inherit the German dominions of Austria, Milan, Burgundy, Holland, and the Netherlands; this wide inheritance, together with the Spanish crown, which came through the Emperor’s mother, mad Queen Juana, would, it was hoped, fall to the child as yet unborn.
Isabella was a bride of a year only, but there had been times, during her married life, when she had seen her burly husband lapse into deep melancholy. Then she had shuddered, remembering his mother; and she had wondered—but secretly—whether in the fanatical fervor of the great Isabella herself—Charles’s grandmother and mother of mad Juana—there had not been a seed of that which, fertilized in Juana, had grown to a lusty plant entwining itself about her brain and strangling her reason. For if Great Isabella had welded Spain together, she had also, with the help of her husband Ferdinand and the Holy Monk Torquemada, set in motion that mighty organization that brought out the sweat of all who dreaded its domination. Under Isabella the Inquisition had grown from a dwarf to a monster. New tortures had been invented, and from these none could feel entirely safe.
But such thoughts must not be hers at such a time.
The pain came and she could think of nothing but that. Tightly she pressed her lips together. She would not cry out; she dared not. Should the ruler of the world enter it to the sound of his mother’s anguish!
Leonor, large and comfortable, was leaning over her again.
“Highness…you should not restrain yourself. It is bad for you. Cry out. There is none but your ladies and those who love you who can hear.”
The long slender fingers closed about Leonor’s wrist.
“There, there, dearest Highness. There…there…”
Isabella said: “I will die, but I will not wail. Shall my son come into the world to the sound of his mother’s protesting cries? There must only be welcome for him.”
“He’ll not hear them, Highness. He’ll be fighting for his breath. He’ll not remember it against you. Cry out. It relieves the pain. It makes it easier, dearest lady.”
But the lips were tightly pressed together; the sweat ran down her face, but still she did not utter a cry. And the first that was heard in that apartment was the cry of the child.
Leonor took the baby in her arms, exulting, while Isabella lay back exhausted, yet contented. She had done her duty. She had given a boy to Spain.
The bells rang out. The people crowded into the streets. In the churches praises and thanks were chanted. All Spain was rejoicing in the birth of a male heir. They were bringing bulls into the town, for there must be bulls when any event was celebrated. On the way to the bullring, many would be trampled to death in the narrow alleys—relics of the Moorish occupation. Already bulls were struggling in the artificial lake, the water of which was tinged with the stain of blood, for men in boats and others swimming were prodding the bulls with daggers, goading them to fury; this was a new kind of bull-fight, a prelude to the great occasion. Girls with flowers in their hair were dancing the old dances, kicking up their tattered skirts, exposing their shapely yet dirty limbs. There would be much lovemaking under the stars tonight; beside the Puerta they would lie—in the Plaza itself—fighting for a flask of wine or a gypsy girl. Knives flashed; voices were raised. There was laughter; there were screams of anger; and all in honor of the new Prince.
Into the center of this revelry the rider came. He was stained and weary from a long journey; only his desire to be fi
rst with the news had given him the spirit and courage to ride so far and so fast in so short a time. Through the gates of the city he had ridden, right into the market square. He was making for the Palace, but the people had stopped him.
“What news? What news?”
“I seek the Emperor. If you detain me, it is at your peril.”
But these were the lawless ones, the robbers from the sierras, the beggars, the gypsies; they cared little for the Emperor’s wrath. They drew their knives and demanded news as they would have demanded a man’s purse when they faced him in a narrow mountain pass.
And when the news was told, they fell back; they crossed themselves—even the wildest of them—and they turned their eyes to the sky for a sign of vengeance. Silence had fallen over the alleys and courtyards.
“Holy Mother of God!” murmured the revellers. “What now? What an omen is this! God will be revenged. Holy Virgin, have mercy on us.”
Here was calamity, for shortly before the royal Prince was making his way into the world, Imperial soldiers had been sacking the City of Rome.
Surely the saints, surely the Holy Mother, surely God Himself would never forgive the outrage.
The Emperor Charles heard the news with horror. Hastily he crossed himself. He threatened to sentence the messenger to death in a cauldron of cold water slowly brought to the boil over a wood fire if the news should prove false. The messenger could only bow his head, tear his hair, and protest his innocence of any mischievous intent.
“I speak the truth, Imperial Highness. I have witnessed such sights with mine own eyes.”
“At such a time!” groaned the Emperor. “At such a time!”
He was accustomed to misfortune; but had there ever been such misfortune as this? The Holy City sacked, the holy virgin nuns dragged into the squares of Rome and publicly raped; and all the drink-crazed soldiers had been starving until they scaled the walls of the city under the command of that fool the Connétable de Bourbon. And Bourbon, who had rebelled against his sovereign lord, the King of France, was an ally of the King of Spain. Hence it would be said that these soldiers, who were guilty of surely one of the worst times in history, were Imperial troops.
“At such a time!” repeated the Emperor. “My son just born…my country celebrating his birth…and now, instead of banners of scarlet and gold, we must plunge our city into sack-cloth and ashes. Let this not be made known. We must keep this secret.”
But already he had heard the sound of wailing in the streets. He strode to the window and saw the people standing about, looking up at the sky, waiting for a sign from Heaven that the wrath of God was about to fall upon the land.
Charles dismissed the bearer of the dire news. He would be alone.
And when he was alone, he smiled slyly. The Pope had escaped to Castle Angelo and so saved his life. He was a prisoner there. There let him remain…the Emperor’s prisoner. In the greatest disaster—any soldier knew—there was often brightness to be found. The Holy City had been desecrated by Imperial troops and the displeasure of Heaven would be directed against Spain just when that land had thought itself blessed by the birth of a prince. Alas! that was a great misfortune. But it must be remembered that the Pope was virtually a prisoner of the Emperor, and that was not such a bad thing. The wily Medici Pope had given Charles much anxiety; well now it would be the turn of Master Clement to feel anxiety on account of Charles. Henry of England was urging Pope Clement to grant him a divorce from Catharine of Aragon; and Catharine of Aragon was Charles’s aunt. He believed that Clement would have granted the divorce in order to placate Henry; but now he would be obliged to reflect deeply. He must ask himself how he dared humiliate the aunt of a man whose captive he was.
Charles laughed his loud Hapsburg laugh. But he was sober almost at once. Melancholy was never far off these days; in the midst of pleasure and triumph it would overtake him.
Wily Clement was his prisoner, but the Holy City was desecrated, and many would mention his name—although he had had no part in it—when the Sack of Rome was recalled.
“Holy Mother of God,” he prayed as fervently as any in the streets below, “let this not prove an evil omen to my son.”
When the Queen heard, she had the child brought to her and held him fast in her arms.
Leonor, watching her with frightened eyes, made the sign of the cross. Her lips moved. “Holy Virgin, intercede for us. Let not the wrath of God fall on this newborn child. Strike not through him, Holy Virgin, Holy Mother of God.”
She rocked to and fro on her stool, weeping for this evil thing, which had fallen on Rome.
Queen Isabella touched the baby’s fair head and prayed. The baby cried for his milk. He was small and delicate, and everyone was now looking at him with trepidation. Any day the wrath of God would strike, and how could God strike more effectively than through the Prince?
But the weeks passed and the baby began to thrive; and now it was said in the streets of Valladolid that God did not intend after all to avenge the Sack of Rome on little Philip of Spain.
TWO
The little boy with the fair hair and the pale blue eyes looked wonderingly into the dark face of the handsome woman on whose lap he sat. He loved her—loved the warm comfort of her plump breasts, the kisses and caresses which she showered on him. He loved to be rocked in her arms, to smell the scent of her—wine, onion-flavored food, and the perfume of her body mingling with the perfume she used to disguise them.
Secretly he loved her better than anyone—better than his mother, better than his little sister, the Princess Maria. His mother continually impressed upon him the need to be brave and strong; but to Leonor he was not so much Prince Philip, the heir to Spain and the Empire, as the baby boy. When with her he could suck his thumb in comfort; he could cry against her breasts; he could tell her that he was afraid of the solemn-faced men who came to look at him and talk of the greatness of Spain, and the part he would have to play in keeping it great; he could show her the bruise on his leg, the cut on his finger, and she would cluck and tut-tut and kiss to make it better. She would call him her brave little baby; and if he shed tears that would be a secret between them, because the rest of the world must believe that the Prince of Spain could never be so childish as to cry.
It was Leonor who made it possible for him to be the possessor of two personalities. Alone with her he was Little Philip, however grave and silent he was in the presence of the grandees. He was two years old, not yet breeched, still a baby, yet a Prince.
Lately he had grown jealous. Leonor loved him, but there was another. He saw Leonor’s eyes soften when she held the new baby in her lap; she would laugh with pleasure when she held up her hand and the little Maria grasped her finger. “You love her most!” Philip would accuse her. But then her eyes would flash and she would swear by the saints that that was not so. “Never…never shall I be guilty of treason to my Prince of Spain.”
“But,” the little boy replied to that, “I do not wish to be your Prince, Leonor. I wish to be your Philip.”
Then Leonor took him into her arms and kissed him tenderly. What thoughts went on behind those pale blue eyes? she wondered. They had feared his brain might not be strong; but it was. It was calm and capable of reasoning, if it was a little slow. All the delicacy was in his little body.
“Maria,” she explained, “is but a baby, and women such as I am love little babies. They do something to us. Our hearts turn over to see their helplessness. Thus it was when you were a baby; now you are my prince as well.”
And as she watched the children, Leonor compared them one with the other. Maria already showed her temperament. She was gay while her brother was solemn. Maria was a Hapsburg. There would be little to fear from Maria. But Philip…he was another matter. His gravity might please his mother and the statesmen about him, but Leonor thought it unnatural. She would have liked to see him laugh more often, not to think first: May I laugh? Is anyone watching? That was not natural in one so young.
Y
es. Leonor spoke truthfully when she said she loved her Prince the better. She felt that though he was a boy and heir to half the world, he was the one who needed her love and, as Leonor herself had said, it was helpless ones whom women such as she was must love.
She sat with her arm about the Prince while she held his sister in the other and she told him of the April day more than a year ago when the great Cortes of Madrid had paid homage to him. He listened, attentive and grave, because however many times he heard her tell of this, it always seemed to be the first time.
“It was to you they paid homage…to you…my little one. I was so proud. I stood there and the tears flowed down my cheeks. My little one, and all the great men bowing before him, kissing his baby hand…the little fingers that had curled about mine. They all swore that he was their Prince and that when he grew to manhood they would follow him to the ends of the Earth and they would serve him with their lives.”
“Did they then?” said the grave little boy. “’Tis a pity, Leonor, that I did not hear them.”
“You! You just blinked at them as though you did not think so much of them, for all their fine words.”
“And did I cry, Leonor?”
“Not you! Though you were tired out with it all, and there was a jeweled pin tormenting you. I found it later. But did you cry? Not you. You remembered that your great father would not have liked to see you cry.”
“And he was there, was he not, Leonor?”
“He was there, great and mighty, looking at you as though he cared more for you than all his kingdoms and his riches.”
“And my mother?”
“She too.”
“They love me dearly, Leonor.”
“They do, my little one. And the people in the streets, they love you too. You should have heard the shouts. But you did hear them, of course.”
