Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters (The Katherine of Aragon Story Book 1) (23 page)

The queen crumbled, her sobs tearing from her as if something broke irrevocably within her. Her four children tightened their knot around her, helpless to stem her wild grief.

How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest
afterward
~ Castilian proverb

My love,

I beg your forgiveness, but I write to you with a sad heart. Everyone is sad. No – not everyone – those who hate the queen no doubt gloat at the signs of the queen’s weakness, her woman’s tears. They do not pity her for the loss of her mother.

Once I would have said there was no one more certain of her actions than our queen. No more. She is often lost, and disturbed by little things. She worries all the time about her children. Every morning, she goes to visit her mother’s tomb. On her return, I see she has cried.

The king seeks to distract her by the plans to celebrate the arrival of Prince Juan’s bride...

A
ll night the snow fell heavily at Burgos. By dawn, the flurries lessened and a messenger rode in before the snow fell again at the palace of the Constable de Velasco, where now stayed the king and queen. Soon, all the court knew his message. Her sea journey safely over, Prince Juan’s bride and her party slowly rode to Toranzo
.
King Ferdinand and his son broke their fast and set off to meet them, accompanied by a strong gathering representing both the nobility of Aragon and Castilla.

Beatriz stood outside with Catalina and Maria, watching them prepare to depart. Maria drew her thick fur mantle around her thin body. As yet she still had the body of a child. “How will they find her, I wonder?”

With the lightness of a dancer, Catalina stepped quickly backwards and forth, making it a game to keep warm. She shrugged. “As well as can be expected after such a rough sea crossing.” Catalina’s laughter sounded grim. “The messenger praised the princess, she kept up everyone’s spirits, but it must have been truly terrible. Mother told me my new sister came to shore bearing upon her a verse she had written when she thought they were all doomed to a watery grave.”

“A verse? She wrote a verse?” Maria stared at her, amazement widening her eyes.

Catalina giggled. “Not just a verse, but her own epitaph.” She closed her eyes, screwing up her face in concentration. “‘Here lies Margot, the willing bride. Twice married, but virgin when she died.’ My new sister has a good sense of humour. And she’s brave. She wrote that despite her terror. Mother told me my brother’s bride was so certain she was going to die she tied the verse to her hand with a purse of gold for her burial.”

Beatriz smiled at the story, gazing again at the king and prince. Juan brought his mount alongside his father’s. Gay and eager, and now fully grown at nineteen, Juan’s leanness was noticeable when compared to his shorter, stockier warrior father. Even from their distance the definition of the king’s leg and arm muscles was apparent. Prince Juan tossed back his head, laughing at something the king said. King Ferdinand looked at his son as if seeing him anew, joining in his laughter. Prince Juan was joyful that day – going to his bride.

Margot, fickle the ways of kings, was an unexpected bride for Prince Juan. The girl had spent most of her childhood in France, learning to be its queen, but the man she called her husband, Charles VII, cast her aside for a far bigger prize. He married Anne of Brittany instead. The shift of power to the side of the French caused a sudden scramble by her father and Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand to balance it, and Margot boarded a ship to wed Castilla and Aragon’s golden prince.

Beatriz shivered with cold despite her thick, fur mantle, beating leather-gloved hands together. Overhead, luminous clouds readied to burst forth more snow upon the already thick layer covering the ground. The long cavalcade, king, prince, grandee, soldiers and slave became smaller in the distance, as the snow’s bright, reflective light hurt and watered her eyes.

“Prince Juan at last to marry,” Maria murmured distractedly. Troubled, Beatriz glanced aside at her.
Not her, too?
So many maids at court dreamt of becoming Juan’s beloved, if only for a single day, a single hour. The unwed girls at court wept jealous tears on hearing of his approaching wedding. Handsome, noble and gifted, Prince Juan sang with a voice to make any maiden swoon. Plucking the strings of his lute, he strummed the cords of the hearts of many young girls to hopeless misery. Shadow, he called Maria. He cared for her as his cousin, but nothing more. Surely she had not allowed herself to hope for his love?

The years fell away, and Beatriz remembered the first time she too had loved without hope. She had been only thirteen when she awoke from a dream of bewildering desire, a dream when she had been naked with the boy, alone in a white bed, their bodies, a confusion of limbs, writhing together in a mysterious, rhythmical dance, coursing her with sweetness as thick as honey, and awaking her to guilt. Terrible, terrible guilt, trepidation and shame. Her heart beating fast, she had swung out of bed and fallen to her knees to pray.

Beatriz gazed at Catalina and Maria. The girls were almost the same age when desire first fired her heart and body. Maria’s eyes stayed locked on the prince. Beatriz gazed at her with pity. Twelve was very young for Maria to face Prince Juan embodied a dream of love and only that. Beatriz had no doubt that, for the girl, it would stay an illusion, a wisp, a daydream, a vapour dissipating like a morning frost in the harshness of cold reality. It is well to dream of love, above all at only twelve, but the grail of one’s heart often proves something else entirely. Her sweet, green passion for the prince was likely but the forerunner of the love one day to come, the love to flourish like a pomegranate tree, bearing fruit both bitter and sweet.

Threading her arm through her friend’s, Catalina sang softly the words from a song about Montserrat:

Resplendent star on the mountain.
Like a sunbeam miraculously glowing,
All joyous people
Come together
Rich and poor
Young and old
Climb the mountain
To see with their own eyes
And return from it
Filled with grace.

Beatriz went back to fetch the bucket she had left earlier at the entrance of the alcázar. Holding the rope of the bucket in one hand, she clutched her dress with the other to keep it from the snow. Already the sodden bottoms of her gown and mantle showed the ill effects of the winter day. A ruby and sapphire brooch, pinning together her mantle, sparkled in a haze of silver light. A gust of strong wind flapped open her cloak, revealing the gown of rich brocade with a pattern of red thread. About to enter the alcázar, Beatriz saw just inside the building a knot of servants waiting for Catalina’s return. They grumbled, pounding their hands and feet for warmth.

“Princess! Dońa Maria!” Beatriz called. “Come quickly. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourselves with colds on the morrow.”

Catalina dimpled with amusement. Maria laughed, stamping her feet in her own dance against the cold. “What about you, Latina? You’re more wet than us!”

Beatriz glanced at her dragging skirts, yanking them up from the steps and holding them away from her honey-brown leather boots.

“By all the good Saints, you’re right.” She shrugged her shoulders, shaking off flakes of snow. Maria glanced at the packed snow in her bucket, and then back at Beatriz. Dimpling again with quiet laughter, Catalina picked up her skirts and padded back inside. Beatriz and Maria followed her. Servants rushed all around, relieving them of their mantles. Beatriz passed the bucket to one of the women, murmuring low her instructions. The servant nodded, hurrying towards the private chambers, while other servants sped off with their damp mantles, disappearing in the opposite direction. Maria gazed at Catalina. Their eyes mirrored unbridled curiosity.

Without need to hasten elsewhere, Beatriz took the girls to the hall’s fire. There, the three of them warmed their icy hands back to life. Catalina lowered herself onto a stool. She pulled up her thick layers of clothes to her ankles, directing her feet to the fire’s heat. Maria seated herself beside her. Maria acted as her friend’s body servant. She undid the laces of Catalina’s wet boots, pulling them off with a plop. Twisting one side to the other, Beatriz studied her wet hem.

“Si, I wear one of my best gowns today, when we go out to stand in the snow.” She sighed. “The queen gifted this to me only two months ago. I don’t think she’d approve my lack of care.” She held the hem of the wet brocade out to the warmth of the fire. The red threads of its drenched embroidery seemed rivulets of blood.

The firelight flickered on her hands and the heat began to make her feel drowsy. Yawning, she turned back to the girls. “To be truthful, I am glad we went out to watch the prince make his departure. It offered us a pleasant escape for a time and gave me the chance to gather what I need to test an idea.”

Maria glanced askance at Catalina. “And what idea was this, Latina?”

“Si.” Catalina laughed. “Pray, tell us the reason for the bucket of snow.”

Beatriz pushed aside the two separate pieces of the brocade skirt from her legs and sighed, plucking at the layers of clothes underneath. “Saint Michael’s sword – even my stockings are wet. I must go and change.” She smiled at the girls. “Why don’t you both come with me to my chambers and see what I do with my bucket of snow? Hopefully the snow hasn’t all melted.”

The girls exchanged a look and let loose a short ripple of laughter. Catalina broke into a wide, unrestrained smile. With Beatriz and her friend Maria, Catalina slackened the knots tied upon her by her position as a royal daughter. “Si, why not? It will give us both something to do while we wait for my brother’s return.”

Yanking off her own boots, Beatriz grabbed their slippers by the fire. With foresight, she had left them there to warm before venturing out on the cold morn.

Beatriz led the two girls to her chamber – conveniently not far from the queen’s rooms. Valuing her opinion, morning and night, Queen Isabel would often call on her to speak over matters of state. The passing of years had made her one of the queen’s most trusted advisors, rivalled only by the cardinal, the queen’s confessor.

A roaring fire and half dozen or so lit candles gave the large, spacious room as much light as could be expected on a winter’s day. The court had settled at this alcázar for all of winter – long enough for Beatriz to set up the room to her liking. A wide wooden screen, so dark it appeared black in the dim light of the far end of the room, was placed near a wall. A large bed, a table, a stacked bookshelf at one end, Francisco’s second best guitar, two stools set by the fireplace and a high-backed chair by the long table furnished the room. In the huge fireplace, over a thick bed of red-hot embers, a large steaming pot simmered.

Beatriz picked up the bucket of snow left at the side of the door and smiled, seeing the snow still packed tight and little melted. “Maria, please bring me my box from the table.”

Beatriz pointed to the long, wooden box lying across the end of the table, its wood blended so well with the dark wood beneath it. Maria padded over to the table and picked the box up, bringing it to her. A sweet, musky fragrance from the box brought to Beatriz’s mind hot summer days.

Beatriz pulled the cauldron away from the fire’s flame on its hook. Simmering water lapped halfway up an empty metal bowl. She held out her open hands to Maria. “Pray give me the box.” Releasing its sliding panel, Beatriz showed to the girls the rose petals filling the box almost to its brim.

“From my best roses this last summer,” Beatriz said. She scattered rose petals in the simmering water, all around an empty inner bowl, and then picked up the cauldron’s lid, placing it upside down on the pot. She gazed back at the two girls. “I thought this morning of another way to make rosewater. Now for my snow.” Reaching for it, she scooped handfuls of snow until the concave of the lid became almost full, then swung the black cauldron back over the burning embers. “We wait now and see if this works.”

Catalina peered at the snow filled lid. “Why the snow, Latina?”

Beatriz grinned. “Cause and effect.” Taking a chair from the table, she half-lifted and half-dragged it closer to the fireplace. “I beg you, princess, please sit down here. With permission, Maria and I can make use of the stools. But I am in need of a change of clothes first. Once I do that, you both can ask me whatever questions you want.”

Beatriz slipped behind the screen, tossing her wet garments over its top and ensuring the brocade gown hung straight. She chose a deep moss green velvet habito from her clothes chest and re-plaited her hair so it fell over her shoulder before covering it with a transparent toca. She strode back to the princess and Maria, and sat on the stool, holding her hands out to the fire.

“I must ask my servants to find a brazier for this room. Jesu’, the day’s so cold!”

Beatriz winced at her distorted reflection on the side of the cauldron. She looked pale and weary, her large eyes with dark rings beneath them. Maria must have caught her thought. The girl shook her finger at her, just as she did with the girls, on the rare occasion when she scolded them. “To get yourself in such a state, my good dońa! I’m surprised at you! Did not the ancients say a healthy mind in a healthy body? Wasn’t it enough to go outside to watch Prince Juan make his departure? Did you have to get a bucket of snow too?”

Beatriz laughed, turning aside to Catalina. “See, princess, my time spent with Maria is not wasted. Already she sounds like a healer, although a trifle disrespectful to her elder, and not forgetting the one who teaches her too.”

Catalina grinned. “Blame the disrespect on me. I tell Maria to always speak her mind in private, but she has right to be concerned. You look none too well...”

Beatriz shrugged before swinging the cauldron under her gaze. The snow mostly by now melted, she scooped the water back into her bucket and grabbed a thick towel from the floor. When her hand hit the lid to raise it, the sudden movement caused the heavy lid to clang upon the floor. A few droplets of water left over from the snow dropped like rain on the floor. Liquid filled the metal bowl almost to the brim. Beatriz smacked her lips. “Rosewater, my young scholars. When the pot cools, I’ll pour the water into flasks.”