Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters (The Katherine of Aragon Story Book 1) (11 page)

Free from layers of head-dressings, Isabel’s naked head showed no longer the silken, glorious red-gold hair once envied by so many at court, but a skullcap of reddish bristles pressed against the breast of the queen’s black velvet robes.

Beatriz strangled back a cry. Jagged, ugly, half-healed scabs scored Isabel’s scalp. The rumour then was true. The princess had slashed her head with such frenzy she drew blood. Some of the wounds looked already scars. No wonder her women feared for her. No wonder there were mutterings about her sanity.

Beatriz saw in her mind Prince Alfonso standing eagerly at Isabel’s gold stirrup, his blue eyes looking at her, lit with love. She remembered Isabel bending to speak to him, her tresses curtaining them in a shimmering veil. A gust of wind had intertwined his hair with hers, and their two right hands clasped, as the young woman and man took an unspoken troth, in love and faith before all, and an unspoken vow to share a life together. Only eight months passed before she returned a broken-hearted widow.

Maria and Catalina gazed at one another, their faces pictures of bewilderment.
Still so young.
Beatriz sighed. She tried hard to shield the girls from the harsher realities of life. Now Isabel’s grief was as if a dark, heavy cloud covered the sun. About to shut the door, Beatriz paused. Isabel spoke, her voice hoarse, drowning in tears. “Mother, oh, my mother, please, I beg you, please let me go! Please let me take the veil. There’s nothing left for me here. Nothing!”

Through the narrow crack, Beatriz saw the queen close her eyes. She grimaced in pain and stroked her daughter’s shorn head. Grief and unhappiness etched deeper the lines on the queen’s face and dragged down her mouth. She held Isabel’s face between her hands. “Dear one, you ask for the impossible. I wish I could say otherwise, but I cannot. You are next in line to my throne after Juan and perchance your father’s throne, too.”

Anger lit fire and life to Isabel’s eyes. “I never wanted any other crown other than that of Alfonso’s consort. Father never wanted me to marry him. Time after time he delayed our match, or suggested Alfonso wed Maria instead, even knowing Alfonso and I already loved one another! Mother, you never told me Father attempted to bribe the pope to dissolve our betrothal. Alfonso’s father spoke of it to me.”

The queen blanched. “Your father believed he was doing right. I too was not in favour of this match, but I knew you’d set your heart to it.” Queen Isabel lifted her daughter’s chin, forcing her to meet her eyes. “Fortune did not look kindly on it. It was not meant to be for you to remain long Alfonso’s wife. It must be as it was before.”

Isabel jerked her face away, as if burnt by her mother’s touch. “I have three sisters. You don’t need me. Let Juana take my place. She’s old enough. More, Mother, she hungers for it!”

The queen rubbed her temple. “Isabel, ’tis not as simple as that. Your life is given by God for the good of Castilla and Aragon. It is your duty to serve, just as it is mine. Nothing changes this. Not even Alfonso’s death.”

Clasping the sides of her shorn head with her hands, Isabel collapsed onto her mother’s lap, and the floodgates opened to even rawer grief. The queen, appearing torn apart herself, rocked her daughter, attempting to console her.

Catalina grabbed Beatriz’s hand. She pulled her from the door and closed it, shutting away the darkness within. “No more!” The small infanta stamped her slippered foot. “No more, I say! Let’s go somewhere else. Let’s go now!”

Dragged along by Catalina, out of her mother’s ante-chamber and into the corridor, Beatriz’s stride quickened to keep up with her. She looked at Catalina – not knowing what to do. She felt swept into Catalina’s whirlpool of unhappiness.

Catalina no longer seemed to see the long corridor before them, and not just because of her short-sightedness. Without warning, she dropped Beatriz’s hand, picked up the skirts of her black velvet habito, and ran.

Gathering up her own skirts, Beatriz sped after her, catching up when she reached the library. Catalina leaned her face against the wall, her hands on either side of her. As if fighting for air her breaths rasped fast and uncontrolled. Beatriz gripped her shoulder. “Child...” She swallowed. “I am here. I am here.”
Oh dear God –
w
hat else can I
say?

Catalina’s hot tears dripped onto her hands. Beatriz’s eyes blurred with tears too. She remembered writing in her yet unfinished letter to Francisco: Queen Isabel’s daughters wept with good cause. Yes – they wept for good cause, and left those who loved them feeling helpless

···

A few days afterward Beatriz saw Isabel smile at last at her youngest sister. True, a faltering smile, but a faltering smile was better than none. By the end of the month, Isabel had resumed the long habit of older sister caring for the younger members of the family. Isabel never realised how many times it was her younger siblings doing the true caring.

Prince Juan spent all his free time at his sister’s side, often playing his lute for her ears alone. Almost every day her three sisters requested Isabel’s company while they sewed or embroidered together. When the princess took her needlework, either outdoors or indoors, to sit with her sisters, Maria, Juana and Catalina gently drew from her stories about her time in Portugal. The stories she told often diverted Beatriz from the book she brought to read. So many times Isabel seemed to speak of her months away from her mother’s court as if of a story of distant legend in which she played no part. She rarely spoke of the young prince she had given her heart to. Those memories she locked away with her ability to reclaim joy.

“This story is for our Uno Piqueño,” Princess Isabel said one warm, blue-skied morning. Lifting her eyes from her almost completed eagle of Saint Juan, she resettled against the cushions on a large rug flung out to cover the grass. With Juana summoned to her mother’s this day, to talk over her betrothal to Philip the Fair, the remaining infantas, accompanied by their more favoured attendants, took their leisure by doing needlework.

Beatriz dropped her book to her lap. Now returned to sewing, Isabel’s needle flew through the fabric without one mistake. Under the princess’s deft and experienced hands, the bold lines of the eagle took animated shape, wings spread wide, sharp beak opened as if about to swoop down on its prey. The warmth of the day made her drowsy and Beatriz drifted as if in a dream.

“There was a hidalgo at the king’s court, an adventurer called Hatchet-face. His true name was Pedro Vaz da Cunha, the victor, so he boasted, of countless battles. He must have come close to losing his life in one, for it left him with one eye and his face badly scarred, thus earning him his nickname.

“When I first met him, Hatchet-face had with him a page, a pretty youth of some seventeen years who answered to the name of Perkin Warbeck. Pedro claimed to his friends that the page was in fact an English prince. Dressed in rich brocade and silk, the page truly gathered to himself the presence of one. More bewildering and strange, some foreign men at court behaved unto him as if indeed in the presence of royalty.”

“A page treated like royalty? How can that be?” Perplexed, the infanta Maria reached into the shared sewing basket for a card of scarlet thread.

Isabel gave a small smile. “’Tis strange, my sister. But not as strange as the rest of this tale. Hatchet-face and his page accompanied the king from Lisbon to Evora and finally to the king’s favourite hunting grounds at Setubal. Hatchet-face also had with him Edward Brampton, a man I once met with our mother when you were but an infant, Catalina. He came as part of the English party negotiating for your hand in marriage to Prince Arthur. Brampton’s name and adoptive country well hid his tangled history. Whilst sponsored to the true faith by Edward IV, the man was a lowly born Portuguese Jew and, I believe, a bastard. I spoke to Brampton one day...” Princess Isabel’s lips tightened, her eyes slanting sideways from her sewing. A frown deepened lines between her fine brows. She gazed at the nearby budding white roses, her pale face strangely composed.

Isabel turned glazed eyes back to her sisters. Beatriz thought of still, deep waters that hid so much. Uneasy, she shifted on the rug.
Is Isabel keeping a secret from her sisters? Why do I feel a threat of some
kind?

Isabel started sewing again. “I thought Brampton treated his page strangely – sometimes like a son, sometimes with deference, but also like a man burdened by a responsibility he no longer desired or wanted. At those times, his eyes simmered with resentment. Once I asked him why the page distressed him so.” Isabel laughed briefly, noticing Catalina widened eyes of surprise. “I am a grown woman, Catalina...” Isabel took in a deep breath, “... and a woman then happily wedded. I can speak to men if I wish, and knowing Brampton in the past gave me the liberty to address him directly.” Seeing Catalina’s confusion, Isabel leaned towards her. “Believe me, my sister, there are times when women must question men, otherwise we risk knowing nothing at all.”

“And Brampton? What did he say, my lady princess?” asked little Maria.

Her face no longer clouded, Isabel smiled. “Nothing that day. But another time we were out hunting and I found my horse alongside his. He told me then his tale. I have repeated it to the queen since coming home.” Coming to the end of her thread, Isabel gazed at her sisters. “Mother said it was ludicrous – spun from moonbeams and an addled brain of a mad man.” With a flicker of annoyance, she pushed back a few strands of hair. Since her hair started to grow again, it often escaped from beneath her head veils, tickling the hollows of her cheeks.

“Brampton’s story was that the last York king put his nephew Richard into his care, making him vow to take him to Flanders if he lost the battle with Henry Tudor. When King Richard was no more, Brampton said he could do no other than keep his promise to his dead sire. Thus, Brampton claimed the page with Hatchet-face was the White Rose himself and the rightful King of all England.”

The full implication of her words spun around them a net of silence. Beatriz saw Catalina narrow her eyes. The child looked over to the same bush of white roses that had captured Isabel’s attention just moments before. The flowers trembled in a sudden gust of wind, and petals swirled in the air, drifting to the ground. She turned back to her older sister. “There were two sons of King Edward. What of the older one, the one named for his father? Wouldn’t he be the rightful heir? How did Brampton explain that?”

“Uno Piqueño, you’re learnt well from Latina. I did think to ask this question of Brampton. He said it was believed someone poisoned the older boy. Believing he protected the boys by placing them in the Tower, King Richard took the news of his nephew’s death to heart. The suspicion of poison just made it worse.

“King Richard hid the younger boy in the home of a man he trusted and made Brampton vow that if all went wrong for him, he would take his nephew to Flanders and to his aunt, the Duchess Margaret. This Brampton did, but with Flanders so close to England the duchess feared discovery by Tudor spies. She, in turn, entrusted Brampton on another mission, to take the boy to Portugal, and she placed him in the care of Hatchet-face. Proven loyal in the past to those who paid him well, this man’s protection would cause those wanting to capture the youth to think twice before treading on dangerous ground.”

“You don’t think the story is true?” Catalina asked, her sewing forgotten on her lap.

Isabel shrugged and rethreaded her needle. “Like I said, Catalina, our lady mother says no. But when mystery surrounds the death of princes, there will always be fables following soon after. I doubt we’ll ever sift the truth from this story, but what’s important for us to know is that the king who sits on England’s throne made it his by sword and conquest, and he’s the rightful king in our parents’ minds. Henry Tudor is not likely to welcome back one claiming to be the son of the York king, especially when he now has sons of his own.” She sighed. “As for this youth. He disappeared from the Portugal court not long after I first saw him. Mother now tells me he reappeared in Burgundy and declared himself Richard IV of England. If this young man is who he claims to be, I think he would be far wiser to forget all about England’s crown. It would be shrewd of him to make a new life elsewhere and just disappear, especially from those hoping to use him.” Her fingers paused, and Isabel gazed into nothingness. “If those of royal blood are fortunate to escape their fetters, let them stay that way.”

···

Later that same day, Beatriz made sense of Isabel’s sudden unease. Ushered from the room where the queen’s attendants sat and sewed together, once again Catalina pushed open the door of her mother’s bedroom to hear the faint voice of Isabel.

“Will you tell Catalina about what you ask of the English king?”

Beatriz peeped through the crack created by the open door. At the other side of the room the queen and her eldest daughter, heads bent over their sewing, sat close together, facing the shutter-less window.

“No. I want her to be a child a while longer.”

Isabel turned her head. In fright, Catalina almost shut the door, but not enough to prevent them from hearing further.

“Do you really think it necessary, Mother? All speak of Warwick as if he is an innocent, even weak-minded. No one, surely, would seek to place a crown on one such as he?”

“The weak and innocent are used and shaped to the purposes of the strong, my hija. I do not like asking for his death, but your father convinces me of its need. Warwick is now a young man of seventeen and is looked on by many as a strong claimant to the English crown. I will not allow my youngest child to leave me until I know this particular problem has been dealt with. Our Uno Piqueño will go to England in safety – as safe as I can ensure – or not all.

“We have been long in secret talks with Henry VII about this matter, but the English king refuses to do what we ask, even when we point out Warwick alive only places in danger Henry’s own sons. While I understand the queen cares not to forget her close kinship with the youth, she must understand I simply cannot send Catalina to England while he lives. Henry and his gentle queen must own the difficult responsibility in wearing a crown and the painful decisions that accompany it.”