Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters (The Katherine of Aragon Story Book 1) (19 page)

The male is by nature superior and the female inferior; one rules and the other is
ruled.
~ Aristotle:
The
Politics

“I
require and charge you both, as you will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment, why you may not be lawfully joined together in holy matrimony, that you confess it. For you be well-assured, that so many as be coupled together otherwise than God’s word doth allow are not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful.”

Sunlight struck Beatriz’s indigo wedding dress as the priest’s words drummed in her ears. Clutching at her cloak to cover her gown, she looked aside at Francisco and consoled herself.
One of us is happy. Pray God, Francisco would always be this happy. Let the ceremony end before I run away.

Standing near the church door with Francisco, his grown children and a few of his friends as witnesses to their wedding, she once more confronted her uncertainty about marrying him. Si, she loved him, but could marriage change her life just like Francisco’s artillery changed the landscape of the war?
Pray God, I am barren.
She stared at the elderly priest and then at Francisco.
Did I speak that out loud?
Swallowing, trying to slow her breathing, her rising panic became difficult to contain.
Surely Francisco’s three children means he would not miss having
more?

“Will you have this woman to be your wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you love her, comfort her, honour and keep her, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, keep you only unto her, so long as you both shall live?”

Francisco’s smile after he said his firm “I will” began to calm her. He doted on her, was proud of her. He promised to place nothing in her way to prevent her from keeping her position at court, and the university. He would not make that promise to her unless he meant it. His years of patience, waiting to marry her, surely proved he was a man of his word.

“Will you have this man to be your wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you obey him, and serve him, love, honour and keep him, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, keep you only unto him, so long as you both shall live?”

“
I will,” Beatriz murmured. Gazing at Francisco, she swallowed, speaking the words louder. Wedding Francisco offered the best solution to her problem of the king. The king admired Francisco. He was not likely to pursue a woman married to a man he called friend.

The rest of the ceremony seemed a dream. It still felt like a dream when they feasted with his family and friends at Francisco’s home. The little she forced herself to eat lacked taste and made her nauseous. Hiding her disinterest in the festivities, her eyes kept returning to her wedding ring. A plain band of heavy gold, it fitted tightly around her finger.
Don’t be a fool. The ring is not already leaving its mark on you.

It was after midnight before she was alone with Francisco in his candlelit bedchamber. The night was cold and the fire in the hearth burned sluggishly. Francisco, now in his shirt and hose, went to the fireplace to stir it back into life. The embers glowed red and he carefully arranged twigs before placing a small log onto flames. Mindlessly, Beatriz began to undo the cords of the low neck of her gown. Glancing up, Francisco grinned, rose from the fireplace and came over to her. “Let me do it, love.”

Standing with him so close, watching his busy fingers, Beatriz felt a lump in her throat. Francisco was a good man. A good, good man.

Her untied gown fell to the ground. She shivered in her thin shift, and crossed her arms over her chest. The neck of her shift was so loose it threatened to drop from her shoulders and expose her breasts. Francisco grinned again. “We are married, love,” he said. Gently, he took her arms away from her body and the shift fell almost to her waist. Cold air puckered her breasts with goose bumps before Francisco’s warm hands cupped them. She stood there, gazing at him, aware of her partial nakedness, his hands on her body. He pulled her into his arms, kissing her mouth, first one side, then the other, his tender lips slowly claiming hers.
Thank God, thank God, the king never sought to possess my mouth. Don’t think of the king. Don’t let him destroy your wedding night. Just think of Francisco. It is time to experience what it is really like between a man and woman.

Francisco released her, loosening the drawstrings of her shift so it dropped to the floor from her naked body. He studied her for a long moment, and Beatriz raised her hands to her hot cheeks. As if she weighed nothing, Francisco gathered her in his arms and carried her to the nearby bed.

He put her down gently on the bed and pulled his shirt over his head. Stepping out of his hose, he almost bounded on the bed beside her. Lying on his side, keeping a little distance between them, he turned her to face him. Francisco traced a finger from her temple to the side of her mouth. “My beautiful wife,” he said, before kissing her again. This time, she kissed him back, first experimentally, then with greater confidence. He tasted of honey, and a hint of good wine. When his tongue went into her mouth, she drew her head away in surprise and looked at him, lifting an eyebrow. “You’ve never done that before,” she said.

“If I had, I would have found the years of restraint too hard. You didn’t like it?”

“I don’t know.” She moved her face closer to him. “Pray do it again and let me decide.”

Kissing him again, she found her mouth opening to his. The feeling of his tongue in her mouth stirred her. Without thinking, closing her eyes, she began to do the same to him. Her heart drubbed fast in her ears.

Francisco pushed her back down on the bed. He must have felt her tense up because he smiled, caressing her face again. “Don’t worry. I have waited too long for this day to spoil it now by hurrying. We have tonight, tomorrow night, all the nights of our lives. I want you to want me as much as I want you.”

Francisco stroked from her cheekbone to her neck, his finger following an unseen line to her breast. Smiling, he traced its large areola, and her nipple hardened. Francisco lowered his head and kissed her breast, before sucking the nipple softly. She moaned a little, a strange feeling beginning to course and pull in her woman parts, making her move closer to him. He gazed up at her, grinning like a youth. “You like that, love?”

Trying to chase away her shyness, she smiled back and reached up to touch his face. “And what do you like, Francisco?”

He smiled again. “That answer can wait for another night. We have weeks before us for you to learn what I like.” He cradled tenderly the side her face with his broad hand. “Tonight... tonight let me show you men do not always hurt. I want you to know true lovemaking is about mutual pleasure, not pain. I want tonight to forever cast from you the memory of being ill-used.”

She placed her hand over his mouth. “Shhh – do not speak of it.” Her hand going behind his head, she pulled him closer to kiss him. Her mouth seemed to dissolve into his. She felt his hand go between her thighs and opened them up to him. She froze when his fingers slipped into her, but became relaxed and loose-limbed at his gentle touch. She laid back, letting his skilled fingers give her sensations she had never known before.

“Is this the sin the priests warn against?” she murmured, her blood coursing with sweetness and delight.

Francisco laughed. “The priests can go hang. I will never call loving my wife a sin.” His lips went to the side of her neck, kissing from just under her jaw to where neck and shoulder joined. She gave a moan, and he kept kissing and sucking gently at her neck until she embodied pure pleasure. His erect penis pressed into her side when his gentle fingers entered her again, this time with greater ease. Aware of wetness between her thighs, she tossed her head back, shut her eyes and moaned.

“Are you ready for me, love?”

She turned, met his eyes, and took a deep breath. Unable to speak, she nodded.

Francisco shifted his body over hers, and opened up her thighs to kneel between them. Skin touching skin, she felt a moment of surprise at his hairiness but, unlike her past experiences, he only hurt a little as he eased himself into her body. She wound her arms around him, her hands caressing his back muscles. He began to move, and she found herself moving with him. A flash of memory. Strong, vice-like hands tearing at her clothes, refusing to let go, forcing, hurting, debasing.
Hear me. I deny you now. You will not destroy this moment. You are nothing to me. Nothing.

She began to move rhythmically with Francisco, her pleasure intensifying. Beatriz felt swept on a wave taking her beyond the constraints of physical flesh to where Francisco and she fused, as one.

···

A lull in the flare ups of fighting between Christians and Moslems meant Francisco expected to stay at court for several months. Beatriz still tutored Catalina and Maria in the mornings, but now spent most of her afternoons with Francisco. Often, they would go into the countryside. Her hands already ink-stained from teaching, she dirtied her hands even more by helping him experiment with small parcels of gunpowder and small hand weapons he had designed. She had designed something too, thick woollen hats with ear muffs to protect their hearing. Francisco had burst out laughing at seeing them.

“I’m not too certain if I can wear these at the battle-front,” he told her. “But I’ll wear them here for you.”

Their nights were also happy times – when they washed from their bodies the grime and smell of sulphur, and Beatriz began to welcome marriage and the love she shared with her husband. Mornings, she returned to the school-room to share with Catalina and Maria what she and Francisco had learnt that day from setting off their explosions. There was another reason she roamed far with Francisco from court. Francisco remained at court because the king remained too. Beatriz prayed her marriage would finally end the king’s eyes falling on her with lust, but lived in terror lest she discover otherwise.

···

Birds chorused a morning ode to spring, the silver wash of a young day spilled out into the hall – pooling a path of light, one leading Beatriz to the outside garden. Alone this morning – Catalina, accompanied by Maria, commanded by the queen to talk with her after their early morning devotions – Beatriz wandered into the courtyard. There, wide archways encased her in a thousand shades of green shadow. Everywhere butterflies flittered and drifted around the flowering vines. Festooning blossoms, coloured pale to deep and bold, adorned a garden already glorying in the first weeks of spring.

Beatriz stepped deeper into the garden, her movements breaking apart the silver light. A few butterflies flew close to her face, the wings of one tickling her nose in passing. A haze of showering light rendered them into flying, living sapphires, their wings edged with bright rubies. Laughing with simple joy, Beatriz spun around, watching their beauty vanish into the dark recesses edging the garden. She stood there, her palms upraised, grieving again for beauty lost. She wanted to rail and weep at her empty hands.
How long must I wait to see them filled?
Then she scolded herself. She had so much more than most women she knew.

A man’s laughter frightened her, and she stepped back into the dark shadows, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw, seated on the far edge of the wide rectangular pool, the man called the Italian. His form half in shadow and the other half in light, he lifted a hand and beckoned to her. “Good morrow, Latina. Come. Come and speak to me.”

Curious, but also cautious, Beatriz padded closer to him. She kept her gaze fixed on him, stopping when only half a dozen steps separated them.

The man laughed again. Stretching out his long, thin legs, he considered her. “Strange, isn’t it, that I have been back at court for months now, and this is the first time we have really met? I remember seeing you with the youngest daughter of the queen, the day the Muslim king came out of the gates of this beautiful alcázar for the last time. The day the banners of Castilla and Aragon were lifted high on its towers. The day the queen made yet another promise to me. I hear you are the tutor of the youngest infanta.”

Beatriz smiled. “Si, since before she was five, Don Columbus.”

He tossed back his head as if surprised, the moment casting dark shadows on his face. A man in his forties, there also seemed an air of youth around him. He peered at Beatriz more closely. “You know my name?”

Treading on the dry leaves beneath her feet, Beatriz listened to their crackle, and then looked at him, remembering seeing him with the queen before the fall of Granada. “Si, I know your name.”

Columbus rocked a little, rubbing the heels of his hands on the sides of his black tights, where leg joined body. He took off his black velvet cap and put it beside him, scratching the thinning, reddish-white hair on top of his head. “You have an advantage over me. The La Latina
is all I know of you. May I ask you for the honour of your real name?”

“Dońa Beatriz Ramirez, recently known as Dońa Beatriz Galindo.”

Columbus considered her again.

“Is your husband Francisco Ramirez? He who serves the queen as one of the men in charge of the gunpowder?”

Beatriz smiled. “The queen calls my husband one of the bravest men she knows. He left two days ago to return to his work.”

Columbus boomed out laughter, slapping his legs with a resounding smack.

“Why do you laugh, senor? I speak the truth.”

A wry look settled on Columbus’s face. He rocked again before he spoke, crossing arms over chest. “Forgive me. The laughter wasn’t directed at your good and most esteemed husband. No, I laugh at myself. Heed my words of warning, Dońa. The queen is good in feeding us what we want to hear. Perchance she means what she says for your husband, but for myself, I am no longer so sure. There have been far too many promises made and not kept, all mixed with too much honey.” Columbus gazed around the courtyard.