Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters (The Katherine of Aragon Story Book 1) (4 page)

Men shouted in sudden warning. Whips cracked, oxen bellowed in pain. The andas pitched forward and then violently to the left. The queen grabbed onto the stiff tapestry behind her, sewn securely into the wall. Her head whipping around, she looked at her daughters, as they fell hard against one another, crying out in pain and fear.

Flung one way and then another, Beatriz snatched at the stiff tapestry, grasping for a handhold. Loud cracks, snapping leather, bellowing oxen muffled the incoherent cries of her companions.

The andas jerked again, jarring to one side. Josepha, seeing her daughter perched perilously on her seat, reached out to little Maria. One more time the andas tottered, tilting over to one side. Josepha lost her balance and toppled between the facing seats. Her body thudded loudly on the floor, her cut-off cry smiting all to a terrible stillness. Josepha remained there, unmoving, silent. “Mama! Mama!” her daughter cried, her eyes entreating the queen for help.

A babble of voices rose to a crescendo outside. The andas now steady, Beatriz, with caution, followed the queen, moving from her place on the upward slope. Crouching over Josepha, they gently rolled her over to her back. She lifted her eyes to meet the queen’s eyes. Queen Isabel waved Josepha’s daughter back without even glancing her way. She gently shook Josepha’s shoulder. “Cousin?”

Fanning out her hands either side of Josepha’s belly. Beatriz let out a breath of relief. “I felt a kick. The babe lives!” she said.

Josepha moaned. Beatriz gazed at her friend’s white face and now opened eyes, and her heart skipped a beat. Her pupils enlarged and skin as white as pure alabaster, Josepha looked terrified, and in great pain.

Beatriz helped the queen seat the dazed Josepha between them. Outside, men’s voices boomed, shouting over one another until the sound became a cacophony of confusion. Horses squealed and snorted, their hooves thundering around the andas like a violent storm.

One side of the andas opened up with a loud slap of leather. Beatriz blinked her eyes at the sudden rush of light. Josepha’s husband appeared, the strong angles of one side of his face all harsh shadows, the other bathed in light. After an anxious glance at his drooping wife, he vanished from sight. Beatriz heard him take charge. “Heave! Heave! Heave! Come on, men, work together. Get your backs into it, keep it steady. Right that wheel on its axle! You – over there. Check the ropes of the oxen. Remember, the queen is inside!”

With another violent jerk and shake, the andas became level again. Emitting a soft whimper, Josepha’s head fell against the queen’s shoulder. Queen Isabel bit her bottom lip and glanced aside at Beatriz. “How far to Sevilla, my friend?”

Trying to hide her growing fear and alarm, Beatriz lowered her head. “Hours away, my queen.”

“Shall I call a physician?” asked Queen Isabel.

Placing her palm on Josepha’s chest, Beatriz concentrated on counting the beats of her friend’s heart. She rubbed her face.
Mother of God, help me. Josepha’s heart beats too fast.
She gazed at the four infantas. Even Juana stayed still and quiet. It seemed a door had opened to a part of life none of them wanted to see. Even Isabel, a woman full-grown and old enough to be mother of both Catalina and Maria, kept her eyes fixed upon her lap.

Beatriz turned to Queen Isabel, keeping her voice down. “My queen, you know I speak the truth when I humbly say I am as learned as them.” She smiled grimly. “Remember, the two physicians accompanying us today were both once my students at Salamanca.” She put her hands upon Josepha’s belly. “I can care for her. I do not think her labour has started, but she’s hurt. I cannot easily judge how badly this might be while we remain cramped up here. The sooner we reach Sevilla the better.”

“I can care for her.” The enormity of her words echoed in her ears. She looked at the child Maria wiping away her tears. Comforted, the small girl gazed at her as if she seized onto her words with hope. The child believed in her. Beatriz found herself praying that the child would still believe in her in the coming days.

If you have the moon, ignore the
stars
~ Castilian proverb

B
eatriz cursed the hours it took them to reach Sevilla, more aware than ever of every rattle, every sway, every bump in that teeth-chattering andas. Those terrible, drawn-out hours seemed as slow as a dreadful winter changing into spring. The infanta Maria whispered in her mother’s ear. Nodding in reply, Queen Isabel popped her head out of one of the openings. She uttered a brisk command, and the cavalcade came to a stop.

“Children, not much longer now. Go and stretch your legs for a few minutes.”

The crest of a high hill overlooked the outskirts of Sevilla. The infanta Catalina and her small companion wandered a little distance away, gazing at the winding track leading to the city. The panorama of unyielding, sun-scorched landscape, hills and valleys went on forever. Catalina twirled around as if in dance, her arms outstretched as if claiming freedom. Her older sister hurried over to her. “Stop it, Catalina,” said Isabel. “You’re showing the men you do not know how to behave.”

An agonised scream cut through the andras. Beatriz spun around to Josepha like a spinning-top.

“Mama!” Maria yelled. Her skirts bunched up in her hands, exposing naked legs, the child ran back toward the andras.

Beatriz gazed down on Josepha. Lines fanned out like fine webs around her tightly closed eyes. Other lines deepened from nose to outer lips. She looked grey, older than her years and almost unrecognisable. Opening her eyes, Josepha snatched at Beatriz’s hand in desperation and screamed again. Beatriz’s fear rose, real, solid, and impregnable.

Josepha moaned, more softly this time. She turned to Queen Isabel, voicing a few words of a strained apology before a louder cry strangled her words. Pain darkened her unfocused eyes to almost black. Shifting side-to-side, her agony was plain and horrible to see.

Rubbing Josepha’s belly, Beatriz whispered to the queen, “I fear her travail has begun.” Little Maria clambered inside the andas. Beatriz glanced her way, unable to speak one word of reassurance to the child.

Queen Isabel took something out of her pocket and placed a small, golden rectangular box into Josepha’s limp hand. She closed her hand over it. “Hold this to you, cousin. ‘Tis my fragment from the robe of the Virgin I carry always. I had it with me for all my childbirths. The good Mother of God will keep you safe.”

Josepha didn’t seem to hear, or see. She gave another moan and shifted again. “Pray, forgive my weakness.” Removing her hand from the queen’s, Josepha stared at the tiny gold reliquary with distaste. “The fall hurt my back. ’Tis not my babe, ’tis not that!” Her eyelids fluttered closed. “’Tis not that...”

Beatriz rubbed at her wet eyes.

···

Josepha came to childbed before her time, giving birth to a dead boy the very same night they reached Sevilla. For days Beatriz and the queen’s physicians feared her lost too, a knowledge sweeping Beatriz to the brink of a deep, bottomless void. For Josepha’s little daughter it was more than the brink. For three days Maria haunted the doors outside her mother’s chambers, knowing her mother fought a battle for life. Within, her father refused to budge from his wife’s side. Forgotten by her parents, shut out from their lives, Maria barely registered when, sooner or later, Beatriz led her back to the royal chambers.

On the third day the chamber’s heavy door swung open. Fray Hernando de Talavera, the queen’s elderly Hieronymite confessor, came through its narrow opening. The dark brown scapula covering the priest’s white habit served only to make the harsh angles of his fleshless face more severe and deepened his dark, cavernous eyes. Beatriz strode over to him, Maria closely following.

Like so many times in the past, the priest gazed kindly at Maria, but this time a kindness overlaid with pity. Despite his unhidden disapproval of her, Beatriz held Fray Hernando in great regard. Like her, he was a respected professor of the university at Salamanca. He always spoke to children just as he would speak to adults – and always what he believed the truth.

Maria ran to him, clutching at Fray Hernando’s scapula and then Beatriz’s habito before falling to her knees. Her efforts to question them became lost and muffled in tears. Beatriz raised Maria up, keeping her arm wound around her.

“My mama...” she sobbed.

With a helpless gesture, Beatriz turned to the priest. Fray Hernando paid her no mind, his eyes were only for the child. Never before had Beatriz seen him so gentle.

“Come here, child,” he said, taking Maria from Beatriz. Bending down, his aged bones cracked as he gripped Maria’s thin, frail shoulders. “The crisis is coming, child. Perchance in the next hour we’ll know... Pray, child, as we all are. Maria, if death does take your mother...” His grip tightened on her shoulders. “Little one, she goes to God’s care. Go with your teacher, child, and wait for us to send word to you.” The priest shuffled away in the direction of the chapel.

Beatriz clasped Maria’s hand and led her to the library. Maria stopped her. Her eyes were wide, her mouth opening and shutting.

“What is it, child?” Beatriz asked.

“I don’t want Mama with God. I want her here, with me.”

Tired, miserable, Beatriz hugged Maria. “I know. I want that, too, as do all the people who love her. I promise you, we never give up while there’s life. My heart tells me that God will hear our prayers and let paradise wait for your mother a while longer.”

Maria wept. It took all of Beatriz’s control not to weep, too.

···

Early morning of the next day, Maria stood again outside her mother’s door. One hour passed and then another until Beatriz sent a hesitating Dońa Teresa Manrigue to approach her.

“Maria, come with me,” she coaxed, her voice sugar sweet, just like the rose-sugars she kept in her pocket. “Our queen does not want you here, little one. Becoming so upset does not help your mother. You’re upsetting the infanta too. She refuses to do her lessons unless you are with her. Look, your teacher is waiting to take you back to her.”

Dońa Teresa took the child’s arm, but she shook her head and refused to budge, rooting herself to the ground. Maria stared at the door of her mother’s chamber. Dońa Teresa pleaded with her, bribing to give Maria her own bag of rose-sugar if she returned with Beatriz to the library. Tut-tutting and muttering her frustration, Dońa Teresa scurried down the corridor. She came back with a tall and broad manservant. Without a word, he picked the child up as if she weighed nothing at all.

“The infanta commands your presence,” he said. Maria sobbed her helplessness as he carried her back to the royal apartments, with Beatriz close behind. Letting the child down outside the library, he strode away to other concerns.

Maria entered the large library like a sleepwalker. Catalina gave a cry, bounded up from the table and ran to embrace her friend. For the remainder of that day, Maria sat next to Catalina. Catalina held her friend’s hand as if that alone would prevent Maria from being pulled down into the depths of terrible currents of grief and despair. Carefully choosing a book to read to the girls, Beatriz once more attempted the motions of everyday life. It was impossible.

The dark tide drew back the morning of the next day. A few words of hope travelled down to them that the queen’s physicians believed the battle won and Maria’s mother’s life saved at last. Unable to say no to Maria, Beatriz took her to her mother’s chamber. As if the child conjured him out of thin air and unvoiced yearning, her father flung open the door. Almost a stranger to them, he stood against the light, hollowed cheeks, face unshaven, curded from his usual tan to an unhealthy paleness, dark rings under red-rimmed eyes. Maria ran into his outstretched arms.

“Mama, Mama,” the child said through her tears, as if she could speak no other words. He hugged his small daughter tighter to him, before gesturing to Beatriz to approach them. “Come. Come and see her.”

Whiter than the white chemise she wore, Josepha outstretched her arms to her daughter. Maria became an arrow shooting to its target.

“My Maria.” Stroking Maria’s hair, Josepha said her daughter’s name like a caress.

Sobs racking her, Maria nestled her face into her mother’s breast, tightening her grip on her shoulders. Her father gently pulled Maria from her mother. “Careful. She’s still not well.”

Josepha gazed at him, her dark eyes wells of grief and loss, wells with depths that Beatriz could only imagine. “I am better today.” Chalk-white, Josepha’s hand curled in a tight fist upon the bedclothes

Martin squared his chin, his usually generous mouth a hard gash in his wan face. He clasped the limp hand at her side. “Si. Better today.” He shut his eyes, the skin around them wrinkling into fine lines. Tears beaded his thick, long eyelashes and fell down his bristly skin. Maria edged closer to her mother’s side, her frightened eyes going from one parent to the other. Believed blithe by many, these days changed Maria’s father forever.

Josepha’s hand tightened on her husband’s. “I am here, and I will bear you more children.”

Her husband opened anguished, tortured eyes. Raising his chin, he tightened his mouth, and shook his head. “This is not the first time I’ve sat by you, wondering if you’d die. No more. I’ve spoken to the queen this morning. When you are better, you will go home to our other children and no longer stay here at court.”

Maria let out a cry. Her mother’s arm wound around her daughter, pulling her closer. “Hush, I go nowhere.”

Martin grasped his wife’s shoulder. “Josepha, what of our other three? Don’t they also need their mother?”

Turning her head, Josepha wiped her wet face with the puffed sleeve of her chemise, staring at the white pillow next to her. “My mother cares well for them, you know that. ’Tis far better that they stay safe at home.” Her distressed eyes veered back to her husband. She took a deep breath. “I wish Maria had remained there too. I have told you, she who goes with wolves learns to howl.”

Beatriz stared at Josepha. Did she mean the royal family? She knew Josepha loved the queen, her cousin. Catalina? Catalina a wolf? Never. The king, though... he was a wolf like none other.

Martin shrugged, and then spoke out loud the very thoughts pounding in Beatriz’s mind. “Those prowling too near our wily king may turn wolf.” He smiled at his wife. “’Tis your good sense that has always guided me best about him. But the queen, your cousin, keeps our daughter safe with her children. There’s no danger for our child.”

Josepha acted as if she didn’t hear him. “I tell you again, husband, I like it not she and the infanta remain so close. We but lose another child.”

He stroked a falling tear from her cheek, rubbing it between index finger and thumb as if he caught something precious. His grim face softened. “My love, were you not also close to your cousin, the queen, from childhood? You, Latina and Beatriz de Bobadilla are trusted as none other.” Martin reclaimed his wife’s hand. Shaking it gently, he brought her eyes back to him. “Beloved, we cannot change the fact the little infanta befriended our Maria so the child asked her mother for her as a companion. Our family serves the royal family with their lives. But our noble queen is your good amiga too. She has listened to me and agrees you must go home.”

“Martin, I –”

“No more arguments, sweetheart. This is the third child lost to us while journeying with the court, and every time the physicians battle for your life. They tell me you will die if something like this happens again. Josepha, enough is enough!”

Josepha’s far-too-wan face pinched more around eyes and mouth. “You want me gone from you? Our youngest child left alone at court?”

Martin nuzzled into her neck, his cries tearing out of him.

Beatriz led Maria away to the nearby embrasure. How she feared for the child. The last few days had seen the threads of Maria’s childhood snap, one by one. Soon, it may be too late to prevent the snapping of the final threads.

Josepha wrapped her arms around her husband. “Beloved, don’t. I cannot bear it.”

Martin gazed at her with bloodshot eyes. “And I cannot bear to lose you. I beg you, please listen and go home. Please, Josepha.”

In answer, Josepha moaned softly, as if fighting a different type of pain to what she experienced in the andas. She shifted her head one way and then the other on the pillow, before wiping her face and kissing Martin.

“I’ll bear you more children. Going from court won’t change that, or the fact that childbirth is always a woman’s war.”

Their black hair intermingling on the pillow, Martin rested his head next to hers. He brought her hand to his mouth, kissing its inner palm. “You speak of war, beloved. Hear me... given the opportunity, leaders worth their salt map out their battle engagements. In my own soldiering, what aids me to victory is the study of war and my own experience. For my own safety and that of my men, I remember well the lessons taught to me by both history and life.”

He kissed her cheek. “I learned this here. Three times you’ve journeyed far with the queen while with child, only for you and the unborn babe to suffer for it. Three sons have been lost to us, in almost as many years. When you stayed at home, you did not lose our babes. Thanks to the care of your good mother, you bore our children safely there, and every child lives and thrives.

“Coming to attend the queen has worn you out, and put your life in unnecessary danger. Not once, or twice but three times now have I seen the priest make ready with the last sacrament. You hold my heart, Josepha. Take you from me, and I am little more than dead too. Beloved, I beg you, please go.”

Josepha held his face between her hands. “I want to stay at court.” She took a deep breath. “What if you need me? I would never forgive myself if you’re hurt soldiering with the king, and I discover it too late... far from you at home...”

Martin drew her closer to him. He kissed her, first a rain of kisses along her brow and then her cheeks, before taking his mouth to hers. Still holding Maria’s hand, Beatriz blushed, stepped away and stared at her feet for a moment. Martin traced down from Josepha’s temple to the corner of her kissed red mouth. Her lips opened to the gleam of white teeth.