Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters (The Katherine of Aragon Story Book 1) (20 page)

A fragrant place of peace, the arched entrance and the blossoming vine mirrored itself on the quivering pool of water. The drift and flutter of hundreds of butterflies were captured too on the forever-changing water’s surface. Columbus shook himself, as if ridding himself of his own visions.

“’Tis time for me to leave this place. I have wasted too many years waiting for the queen to make up her mind and keep her promises.” He shifted in what seemed to be anger. “Look at me now. Cast aside for yet another morning with excuses, the queen too busy to see me. Si, left to audience with her child’s tutor. By God’s good name!” Moved into sudden action, he lumbered up to tower over Beatriz. “But all is not wasted. This morning has served to clear my mind about what I should now do. Others in France or Genoa will listen to me. I shall leave for Códoba today.” Picking up his cap, Columbus turned and bowed. “Farewell, Dońa Beatriz Ramirez and thank you. I doubt we’ll meet again.”

Beatriz stood there, watching him stride away. Oblivious to their beauty, his passing unsettled a crowd of butterflies amongst the flowers flurried into the air, they flitted and interwove a dance around him in the morning light.

···

Later that morning, Beatriz resumed her Latin lesson with Catalina and Maria. She selected for Catalina a tract of Aristotle while watching Maria struggle with Galen. The child squirmed beside the infanta and sighed.

Beatriz placed her quill into the inkpot and turned her full attention to the child. “You have a question, Maria?”

Maria pushed the open book away from her. “Too many. He writes of the three principal members – heart, brain and liver – but I cannot understand his explanation about how they control everything in our body.”

Beatriz smiled. “You are reading
On Natural Facilities
, si?”

Maria folded her arms, her face puckering her annoyance. “Of course, Teacher! You told me to.”

Catalina, pressed against Maria’s side, piped up, “But Aristotle says ’tis the heart controlling all.”

Beatriz clapped and burst out laughing. “First, my student Maria and now the princess.” She turned to Catalina. “Aristotle is firstly a philosopher, my young scholar. Philosophers spout theories like the Earth awaking to spring – whether they’re right or wrong... that’s for you decide. You’re free to spout theories in their stead. I would be very disappointed if you didn’t.

“Maria’s tract, on the other hand, comes from Galen, a physician from hundreds of years ago. Again, life will teach her to agree with his theories or not.” She smiled at the girls. “Believe me, they are only theories. Stepping-stones flung out by men and women from humanity’s own journey, for their children to stumble across in search of truth. But I think Galen might be flinging out the right stones. Healers work so much in the dark, we need help to find stones, some substance to set our feet upon.”

Maria scratched her scalp underneath her roundlet. Pulling the book back under her nose, the pages opened to a complicated anatomical drawing inspired by Galen’s teachings, the child looked ready to weep. She looked up at Beatriz. “There is so much to learn, Latina. I’ll never know it all.”

Beatriz twisted on her stool, leaning towards the child. “Do you think I do? I don’t – none of us do. But think, and look back at the many hurdles you have now behind you. You’ve gone over so many since our first days together. Child, let the hurdles behind you now encourage you to go forward. One day, I promise you, you’ll thank God you didn’t give up. You might even thank me.”

The doubt on Maria’s face made Beatriz smile in reassurance. “You learn here the difference between life and death. The queen has every confidence in you, as does your mother. And I, of course, possess no doubt you’ll one day be a skilful healer.”

Maria glanced at Catalina, murmuring quietly: “Teacher, is it true the queen feeds us what we want to hear?”

Beatriz stared at her, hearing again the words of Columbus. “Who said this to you?”

Maria lowered her head. “Forgive me, I heard you speaking to Columbus in the garden. I did not mean to, but the queen told me to go back to you.”

Catalina lifted her gaze from the book, a frown puckered between her brows. “What do you speak of?”

Maria swallowed in her confusion. “I heard Latina talk with Columbus this morning. He told her he has had enough of waiting and will leave the court today.”

Beatriz cocked her head to one side, tracing a circle on the polished wood of the table.

She inserted a triangle within the circle, crossed both circle and triangle with a determined line straight through the middle before she stopped doodling and instead drummed the table with two ink-stained fingers. “Columbus is a man who wants his own way – and now, not tomorrow.” Her gaze fell back on Maria. “Child, do you think he told the truth? Or was just venting out his frustration?”

Maria sat straighter, her eyes shining with delight. Beatriz hid her smile, pleased that her question made the child so happy. Scratching her head, Maria licked her top lip. “He said the words as if he meant them, Latina.”

Beatriz remembered the man in the garden, a seated man turned into one of action, disturbing the garden’s tranquillity and its butterflies by his sudden departure. She sighed, thinking the child was likely right. She gazed over Maria’s head and rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth. Coming to a decision she stood, the wood of her chair screeching its protest against paved tile, flinging her trailing skirts over one arm.

“The queen needs to know this,” Beatriz said. “Keep to your lesson while I tell this news to Santángel. Only yesterday he told me the queen is thinking seriously to sponsor Columbus in his quest.”

Catalina glanced at Maria with a shrug of her shoulders, and returned, without speaking, to her book.

···

Beatriz returned to the school-room near the time they usually ended their morning lesson.

“Did you find Santángel?” Maria asked her.

“Si, in the queen’s chamber.” Beatriz swallowed. “The king was there, too, playing chess with Fonseca.” She felt her cheeks flush with heat. “The Count of Tendilla, Ponce de León and Gonsalvo of Cordoba watched on while Santángel spoke to the queen alone. You know how serious a game of chess is to the king – I did not dare at first to speak, but then the queen herself directed a question to him about Columbus. She wanted the king’s thoughts on the matter.” She smiled. “Fonseca took advantage of the king’s distraction, made his move, saying, ‘Your Highness’s queen has acted like a rash navigator. She has come too close to the abyss and the black hand is about to seize her.’”

Fascinated by the story, Catalina put down her book, and even Maria leaned closer. “What did the king say?”

Beatriz shrugged. “What do you think the king said when he came close to losing? He asked the Devil to take the Genoese. But by then I had told the queen what you told me. Once the king had won the game, she told him there would be no great risk in granting Columbus his desire. When the king agreed, the queen summoned a page and told him to mount his horse and ride until he overtook Columbus, and tell him she had appointed him Admiral of the Ocean.”

···

Time passed. In summer of every year, Beatriz attended her duties at the University of Salamanca. Gone for over two months, she missed Catalina and Maria, and her husband, although he was often not at court, but at the battlefield. The long weeks at Salamanca returned her to her two charges full of zest and fire. Distracted with writing new treatises, she sat the girls down and read her work to them, treating them like true scholars. She knew this was true for Catalina, but Maria often struggled with boredom, especially when they detoured into areas of no interest to her. But Catalina was still determined her friend would learn, whether she liked it or not. Sometimes, Beatriz thought Maria’s Latin and knowledge improved simply because of that, rather than because of her skills as a teacher.

Now that the girls were older and able to read and write Latin and their mother tongue with ease, Beatriz handed over some of their learning to the Italian Geraldini brothers, scholars of high calibre who the queen employed to teach her children.

Catalina enjoyed the younger Geraldini’s lessons. One day, Beatriz found them at a table spreading out a large map, Geraldini’s black eyes flashing in excitement. “Princess, this is what we knew of the world yesterday, but today?” He stood tall, waving dismissively over the parchment. “Princess, the return of Columbus changes the world as we know it. This map is worthless now. Remember this day always, for ’tis not every day man discovers a new world and transforms the old forever.” He barked out a laugh. “Thank the good God the noble queen, your mother, honoured me by allowing me to speak to her of my countryman.”

Less than one year ago, Columbus had sailed to what many believed promised certain doom. Most called him loco, but from the day of his return, Geraldini never let them forget he was one of those to gain the queen’s ear, helping Columbus obtain what he most desired – the money for his ships. When he returned, he more than paid his debt to his royal patron. He opened the door to a new world of unbelievable wealth.

That very morning, wagons full of treasure struggled their way to the old alcázar at Barcelona, perched high over the city. The donkeys’ high-pitched screams, men whipping then to pull them up the steep road, ripped apart the quietness of dawn, and heralded later events. Not long after noon, the queen and king commanded the court to their presence chamber.

Unusual smells greeted Beatriz when she entered the chamber – sweet, rich and spicy, thick and heady, all wafting towards her. Set against the walls, squawking monkeys threw themselves against the wooden frames of their cages whilst jet-eyed, rainbow-coloured birds, their bright colours putting the colours of the court to shame, cawed incessantly and competed with cries of excitement from men and women.

The royal family gathered below the dais of the queen and king. Her widow weeds making her slenderness painful to see, even the Princess Isabel seemed full of wonder as her mother relished the tangible harvest of Columbus’s voyage, strange animals, strange food for her to taste, and much, much gold.

Six silent, strange men, strange men with red skin, caught Beatriz’s eye. Bathed in golden sunlight streaming through the colonnaded arches, the men wore nothing more than scanty loin cloths and painted skin. Wild looking, lithe and wiry, the men had heavy gold rings in their ears and nostrils, feathers and ornaments decorated their long black hair that gleamed with oil. They appeared forlorn, frightened, alien, but still unshakeably proud.

Grinning, Catalina took Maria’s arm and pointed to the men, and Maria laughed. Beatriz could only see the men’s great unease and almost tangible fear. She looked again at the girls. They were so young – so young they forgot that one day they would be just like these men – these men fated to die far from their homes, in exile.

My sweet Francisco,

Has the news come to you about Columbus? Imagine, my love, a discovery of a new world. Two weeks ago, Don Columbus returned to court, bringing with him great bounty. Birds, treasures from a strange land, even food stuff. The queen gifted me with a necklace from the treasure chests. Its wooden beads, smooth and polished, stained deeper than the colour of blood, reflected back my face like tiny mirrors. My student Maria received a similar necklace. The older infantas each took into their possession the best of the caged birds, while the infanta Catalina was given a very young monkey. It clung to her as if to its mother, while Catalina cooed and sung to it.

The animal soon became a great nuisance. It was only in the princess’s care a day when it snatched Maria’s necklace from the small chest in their bedchamber. Hearing shrieks coming from the infanta’s room, I rushed in to discover the animal whipping the beads this way and that way. I tried to rescue the beads for Maria, but the string snapped, and the beads flew far and wide.

The next thing I knew, the monkey had scurried up the bed-head, and started swinging on the bed-hangings. It screamed like one possessed by demons. Poor Maria scrambled on the floor, gathering the beads together. The animal must have thought it was game. Dropping to the floor beside her, the animal fought with her for the beads. It became a race between them to see who could pick up the most. At last, the race over, the monkey scurried to the bed to innocently groom itself. Maria disliked the animal as much as me. I did not envy the girl sharing a bed with not only the infanta, but also her new pet and its fleas.

Day after day, the animal disrupted my lessons. When Catalina answered her mother’s summons, Maria became the animal’s lone attendant. Thank God we could call servants to clean up its messes.

Catalina loved the small monkey and took pleasure in its antics. What else could I do but bite my tongue and care for the animal as
well?

Maria found it cold and dead in its basket one morning, no more than ten days after the princess claimed it for her pet. How I regret all my ill thoughts about the animal. How I wish the annoying urchin was returned to life and back in Catalina’s arms…

Remembering the death of Catalina’s monkey made Beatriz wonder later whether Juana acted wisest of the four sisters about her wild pet. After Columbus’s return to court, the king found Juana laughing and dancing with her two female blackamoor slaves – and banished her to her rooms until the next day. The king always told her she was far too free with her slaves, but they were her truest companions beside her sisters and brother. Without her siblings and slaves, Juana would have been very alone at court. The king’s constant distaste for Juana caused others at the court to shy away from her. Even her mother’s attendants did not serve her with the same devotion they offered to the other royal children. Many feared to befriend her because they feared the king.

Summoned to her mother the next day, Catalina gave a sudden cry of dismay in the school-room. Coming to stand beside her, Beatriz glanced down at the open volume of
The Consolation of Philosophy
on the table, reading: “But now is the time for the physician’s art, rather than for complaining.” Beatriz gazed at Catalina and recited: “Are you the man who was nourished upon the milk of my learning, brought up with my food until you had won your way to the power of a manly soul? Surely I had given you such weapons as would keep you safe, and your strength unconquered...”