Reign of Madness (13 page)

“Yes, Mevrouw,” said the little girl. “Moeder’s going to go there. Aren’t you, Moeder, as soon as you are well?”

“Marie-Paule.” The mother put out her hand from under her blankets. As she reached for her daughter, an odor radiated forth, a stench that spoke of rotting flesh and decay. I stepped back, as much from shock as from the revolting smell.

The father took his wife’s bony hand. “Yes, yes, Marie-Paule, of course Moeder is going.”

The young mother’s eyes sank into her head when she closed them.

I excused myself and quickly left the hospital, followed by Beatriz, who protested that our work was not done. But I would not have my tears upset this brave family. I drew the hood of my cape over my head and stepped out onto the bustling Mariastraat in the direction of the palace. I had only just passed the yard of the church of Our Lady when I saw a man’s cloaked figure among the linden trees, heading toward the church door. Even in his voluminous hooded robe, I knew who it was, as must everyone in the city when he passed. Who did not recognize the rare white gyrfalcon riding upon his shoulder?

“I wish to—to go to pray,” I told Beatriz. Before she could question me, I crossed the street. My husband had reached the side porch of the church and was opening the door.

A knot twisted in my gut as I hurried through the linden trees of the churchyard. Why was Philippe here? He said he was to play tennis. And why did he disguise himself? Was this how he had escaped detection during his assignations with the women I had seen him pet and fondle—meeting them in a church? A Spaniard would never sink to this wickedness.

“Stay,” I croaked to Beatriz at the door. I could not bear for her to see how I was being shamed. “Or go back to the hospital. I want to pray alone.”

I entered the church and made my way through the chill darkness. I could hear footsteps not far ahead. Why had I let him bring me so low? I had let myself need his touch so badly. But the things he did to me, the things I so desperately craved, he also did to others.

By the multicolored light filtering through the stained-glass windows of the nave, I could see the cloaked figure making his way to the front of the church. I held my hand over my mouth, as sickened as I had been when I realized that it was Papa who had been in Mother’s prayer booth in the palace in Barcelona.

I was creeping down the side aisle when Philippe cried out: “Who dares follow me?”

I stopped. I glanced at the statue of the Blessed Virgin in the side chapel before which I’d halted, as if she might aid me.

Philippe craned forward, the bird mimicking his gesture. “Puss?”

“Do not call me Puss.”

“Puss, what are you doing here?”

I edged forward, not ready to face what I was about to see. “I believe the question is, What are you doing here?”

“Fair enough, though I do not know why you should take such a tone with me. I have come to pay a visit.”

He turned around. I saw now that he was standing before a black marble sarcophagus. From visits on holy days and other occasions when we came here instead of attending Mass in the chapel in the Prinsenhof, I knew whose remains this monument held: Mary of Burgundy. Philippe’s mother.

He ran his hand over the smooth top. “The artisans have nearly finished carving the effigy to place upon this. It’s of the finest quality—I’ve seen it in their workshop. It looks just like her.”

Relief coursed through my body. “You’ve come to see your mother’s tomb.”

“You act surprised.”

“No! No. Of course you came. Our ride this morning in the woods of Wijnendaele must have made you think of her.” I almost laughed. How my mind had run away with me.

He stroked the marble, unaware, it seemed, of my struggle to contain my giddiness. After a moment he said, “It’s amazing what you can remember from when you were not even four.”

“You have a memory of her?”

“I don’t know where we were—here in Bruges? Wherever it was, the canals had frozen over. I remember Mother insisting on going outside to skate with everyone else. Papa was shouting no, but the next thing I knew, she was chopping away on her blades and pulling me on a sled.”

“You were on the ice?” I was gay with the delight of one whose execution has been stayed.

He brightened with my encouragement. “Oh, yes. I remember exactly how it felt—my fingers, face, and toes burned with the cold. I was laughing like an idiot. All around us, girls were cutting figure eights. Old couples were chugging along. Boys raced from one dock to the next. And Mother and I were like everyone else, freezing, laughing, and shouting
Hallo
. Then Mother pulled me to a place where an old woman had set up a stove at the edge of the canal. The crone gave me a waffle. I have never since tasted anything so good in my life.”

Filled with contrite tenderness, I slipped my hand into his. Is this what passion did to your mind? Made you see things that were not there? No wonder the doctors of my brother Juan pleaded for him to cool his lust. It breaks down the mind as well as the body.

I smoothed the feathers on Delilah’s back, keeping well out of the way of her beak. As often as I had to handle falcons, I still had not become comfortable with them. “What else do you remember about her?”

He thought a moment. “She wore a pointed headdress and veil like Grand-mère, and when she laughed, her veil would shake. She would draw it over my face, slowly, so that it tickled.” He sighed.

“Your memories are so sweet. Tell me more.”

“I don’t remember much after that. I got passed around a lot after my mother died.”

“Where was your father?”

“You know—I’ve told you before. Maxi was in Innsbruck. The burghers here in Bruges were holding me hostage until he agreed to give back the privileges Grandfather had taken from them. With my mother gone, they thought he should give up his rights to Flanders.”

“But that didn’t last long.”

“No, thank goodness. I remember the sour looks on the faces of the burghers’ wives into whose care I was given. When I was six, Father got me back and gave me to doctor de Busleyden. François was sort of the mother I didn’t have—don’t tell him that. I doubt if he sees himself as a mother figure.”

Harsh doctor de Busleyden, with the jaw as sharp as a plowblade? Hardly not.

“Anyway, I told you why I am here. But why are you here, Puss?”

Candles flickered at the base of the Virgin’s robes in the side chapel. Glowing spots of red and blue lit the floor from the stained-glass window. “You were quite frightening when you asked who dared follow you.”

“Was I? Good! Perhaps I should take that as a motto: ‘Who shall dare?’ I need to frighten people more. Just because I am an agreeable sort doesn’t mean I wish for people to doubt my authority.”

“Monseigneur, people do not doubt the wisdom of Philippe the Good.”

“Don’t they?”

“Never.”

He drew me to him.

We heard a
thunk
from the narthex of the church—the closing of the great wooden door—then loud footsteps. Doctor François de Busleyden, Archbishop of Besançon, strode down the center aisle, followed by Beatriz, blinking with concern.

He genuflected toward the tabernacle, in which the Host was stored, then bowed deeply to Philippe.

“Speak of the Devil,” said Philippe. He peered around the Archbishop. “
Bonjour,
pretty little nun,” he said to Beatriz. She half smiled, then frowned at the floor.

“She’s not a nun,” I said.

Philippe winked.

The Archbishop’s sharp features remained unmoved as he took us in. He cleared his throat. “Your Highness, it is with terrible sorrow that I bring you this news.”

“What, good doctor? What is so important that you would have me know it by bursting before my mother’s tomb in this way?”

The Archbishop jerked his head in a cursory bow. “The news is for Madame la Duchesse.”

“Me?”

He trained his fierce gaze upon me. “Your brother, His Majesty Don Juan, Prince of Asturias, is dead.”

13.

27 October anno Domini 1497

T
he Dowager was drumming her fingers on the arm of her canopied chair of fine green velvet when I entered her study. I kissed her hand and the hand of my husband, whom I was surprised and relieved to find there, then quickly dropped upon the cross-legged stool to which the Dowager had waved me. I had hardly the time to realize that she should have risen to receive me and kissed my hand, as I was the ranking lady, when she spoke.

“We have been chatting.”

Philippe glanced at me, then retreated behind the Dowager’s desk, where he idly pushed around some of her papers.

A frown flashed across the Dowager’s face as she watched Philippe touch her writing things. “How are you faring, dear?” she asked me. Her voice was rich with uncharacteristic concern.

I smoothed the black wool of my skirt. It had been a week since I’d received the news of my brother’s death. We had promptly left Bruges, traveling at night as is proper when in deep mourning, and had gotten as far as Malines. We planned to continue to Brussels, where I would retire for six weeks. Yet in spite of all the formal expression of sorrow, I had yet to truly grasp Juan’s passing. He was not still laughing with his pages at a supper? He was not crouched in a sea of wagging tails, patting his hounds? He was not leaning over his galloping horse, his blond hair flying? It could not be. A person so full of life could not simply . . . end. I adored Juan, worshipped him, everyone did. He deserved Mother’s obvious preference, as sweet and merry as he was. And if I, separated from the sting of his death by seas and marriage, was yet unable to eat, how was Mother bearing it?

“You know, dear,” the Dowager said, “crying won’t bring him back.”

“No, Madame.”

“All the sobbing in the world couldn’t raise my Charles from that frozen ditch.” She looked pointedly at the portrait of her husband hanging on the purple-taffeta-clad wall. His was a coarse face, caught in a suspicious slight smile. The sullen eyes spoke of obstinacy and impatience. His thick lips were those of a brute. Well I knew how painters idealized their subjects. If this was the glossed-over version of the man, what kind of terror had he been in real life?

“Rogier van der Weyden did it,” she said when she saw me looking. “You’d do well to collect his work. It will show up nicely on your ledgers. I have snapped up two copies of his
Descent from the Cross
—good moneymakers.” She flicked her veil from her cheek. “As I was saying. I cried and cried. There went my chance at having children. There went my chance at enjoying a husband’s love. My title as Duchess went straight to Philippe’s mother, Mary. Charles had been
that close
to winning the lands that he needed to make him the first King of Burgundy, and now I had no more hope of being a queen. It was disappointing, to say the least. I didn’t know if I was to be sent home or not, and to what? It was a sticky time in England. My brother Edward was on the throne, but my brother George, who should have known better, was putting it about that he himself should be wearing the crown. It was a surprise to no one that George had been drowned in a butt of malmsey—well, perhaps the malmsey part was a shock.”

“Aren’t you glad you stayed here,” Philippe said flatly.

The Dowager scowled at Delilah, now stepping from Philippe’s fist, first one claw and then the other, onto the back of the chair at the desk.

“You are the one who should be glad, boy!” she exclaimed, alarming me with her vehemence. “I don’t know what your mother would have done without me. I made her marry your father. She fancied herself sporting in the marital sheets with the handsome French nobody who was wooing her, but I soon disabused her of that. Not when Maximilian was such a good catch. His father, Frederick, may have been Holy Roman Emperor, but all his wars had emptied his coffers. Maximilian was as poor as a church rat when we met him at Trier. But I knew ambition and potential when I saw it. Even though I had to pay his way here—who do you think paid for Maxi’s clothes for the wedding?—I knew he was a good investment. Though I myself was just a widow struggling to hold on to her few properties.”

I gazed at the paintings by Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling, and Jan van Eyck wrung from across the duchy, at the ranks of illuminated books locked behind a wrought-iron grille, at the desk inlaid with precious ivory. Beyond the mullioned windows stretched acres of manicured gardens, orchards, and forests for hunting, all the way to the river.

“I’d venture to say you’ve done well for yourself, Grand-mère, for a poor defenseless widow.”

The Dowager pretended not to hear Philippe. “I was thinking of you and Marguerite even before you were born. If your mother, with my duchy as her dowry, married the Emperor Frederick’s son, surely old Frederick would make Maxi king. And I was right. Nine years later Maxi was King of the Romans—a nice title. Now he’s Emperor. You will inherit his kingship and all his holdings one day. And you can thank me when you get them.”

“The King of the Romans has no true subjects,” said Philippe. “It’s an empty title. Besides, I’d rather have my father alive.”

The Dowager scratched at the velvet of her chair arm with her fingernail. “Generous sentiment for a son whose father prefers to putter around his castle in Tyrol than see his own boy. When was the last time he visited you?”

“He’ll come when he has grandchildren,” said Philippe.

I looked away. For all of its being plumbed, my womb still showed no signs of quickening. As much as he loved me now, at what point would Philippe consider me a poor bargain, as bad a value as a picture by an unknown painter in the Dowager’s collection? What would become of me then?

“You should have seen this duchy when I first arrived. Richest land in the world. France, even England—no one could touch its wealth.” The Dowager stroked her veil dreamily. “The feasts and tournaments we would have! People are still talking about my wedding celebration. There was plenty of treasure about, in addition to that ridiculous Golden Tree. Took fifty-two dwarves to carry it in—where in the world did they find so many? I swear Charles used to breed them—or perhaps his father did. Old Duke Philippe had his hands into everything. Now look at the duchy. Half your towns are out of your control, and all you care about is hunting.”

“I’m not the fool you think I am, Grand-mère. Control means war. And you’ve seen what war earns a man—his head split in two and a permanent view of a ditch. You know what they say about your husband?”

“
Your
grandfather, I’ll remind you, so watch it.”

“That he never had one minute to enjoy any of the things he worked so fiendishly to own. He had sixty-five ambling palfreys that he had fed, curried, and exercised, yet he never took them out on a single jaunt. He had a whole menagerie of beasts in Brussels—he kept a lion in the castle courtyard—and never saw a one of them. Heaven forbid that he get down to his castle at Hesdin, with its trick fountains that sprayed the ladies from below, and mechanical contrivances that floured unsuspecting visitors from above. Such merriment was certainly not worth his valuable time. His father had a little workshop in which he played with making clogs, repairing glasses, soldering broken knives, that kind of thing. Your husband—
my
grandfather—laughed at him for tinkering with his toys, and destroyed the whole kit when he died.”

“You are getting carried away here. What is your point?”

“My point is that it was all fight, fight, fight, and then he was dead. Did you ever even see the man?”

She tossed back her veil. “I saw him enough.”

“Well, I myself would rather enjoy my life. I am proud that I gave back the town burghers their rights and privileges and that they, in turn, love me.”

“You think they love you, because they call you ‘Philippe, Believer in Counsel’? ‘Believing in counsel’ equals letting them do whatever they suggest. They can get you to do anything they want.”

“That’s not true! They love me because I will actually listen to them.”

“Love. Love! What is this need for love? No Caesar has ever come to power because he was loved. Feared, maybe. Yes, fear has put more than a few people on the throne. You ought to talk to Juana’s mother about it. Could you please get that bird off my chair?”

I was taken aback. Mother terrified me, because I feared her opinion of me. But she had won her subjects over with her care for them and her strength. She was so loved by the people that the title Queen was not good enough—they called her their King. Fear had not put Isabel of Castile on the throne . . . had it?

Philippe offered his wrist to Delilah, who stepped onto it with the grace of a princess. “You had better tell Juana what you were thinking. She is probably wondering what all this is about.”

The Dowager sniffed, then grimaced at me. “I am sorry about your brother’s death. I know how it feels—I lost one of my brothers and my father when I was but a girl of fourteen. You need to rest. And most likely to be bled. Copiously. My surgeons can do the trick. I’ve got the best one in all of Flanders. You’d do well to take his advice on diet and exercise. At any rate, I would like you to tarry here in your time of sorrow—past the prescribed period of mourning, I would recommend. You need to get well, to get strong . . . to get pregnant.” She noted my downturned eyes before continuing. “I shall give you my chambers, permanently, and will move to the little set of rooms by the river.”

“Grand-mère!” Philipped exclaimed. “I did not know that you wished to give us your rooms. Please, we cannot take them.”

She waved him off. “I insist. Heaven knows, this palace is too much for a poor widow like me. I would like to give it all, from mortar to mullions, to you both. It is my gift, just for the giving.”

“Madame,” I said, “that is too generous.” These chambers were some of the most sumptuous in the world. Surely there would be a price to be paid to have them, and sooner or later the tally would come due.

“Do not worry about me. I shall be fine over there. My needs are humble.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Enjoy.”

“Madame, I”—I glanced at Philippe—“we don’t know how to thank you.”

“No thanks are necessary.”

Philippe went to the window and looked out over the grounds. “I have always loved this palace.”

“I am glad to see that I’ve cheered you.”

I felt not cheered but trapped, the snare made all the tighter by my husband’s glad acceptance of the bait. “You are most kind, Madame.”

“Yes. Well. It is a sad time. But perhaps something good can come of your loss.”

Good? When Juan died, the Spains had been robbed of their fairest flower, a tragedy beyond reckoning for my family.

“We can cry,” said the Dowager, “or we can live. Which would you rather do?”

Philippe blew on the top of Delilah’s head, ruffling her short white feathers. “Get on with it, Grand-mère. Please.”

The Dowager gave him a stern look before continuing. “Very well. To put it simply, Philippe must now declare himself Prince of Asturias. It is his right and duty to do so.”

“Prince of Asturias?” I cried. “I beg your pardon, Madame, but only Mother and the Cortes of Castile can grant that title. It is the title for whoever is next in line for the throne.”

“And who is that? Marguerite’s child—if she has a son. If she is pregnant. A lot of ifs, when there is a vital young man right here.”

“Women are allowed to reign in Castile. My sister Isabel is next in line if Marguerite should not have a child. And this isn’t something that needs to be settled now. There is time to establish who will inherit the crowns. My parents are robust and healthy.”

The Dowager raised her hairless brows, suggesting otherwise.

“Puss,” said Philippe, “you don’t have to give me the title.”

The Dowager shook her head. “Why shouldn’t she? What harm would come of it? As Juana says herself, this is not a burning issue. Just a show of respect toward her husband.” She peered at me, her gray eyes bright as wet stones. “You do want Philippe to have the honor, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course I do, but—”

“Do you hesitate because you want the title for yourself? As you said, women can rule in the Spains.”

“I shall never rule.”

“You won’t with an attitude like that. Any ambitious relative with a claim will pass you right by. But just because you are not up to the challenge of ruling does not mean you should keep Philippe from it.”

“I do not wish to keep Philippe—”

“Perhaps you would like it better if you both took the title, like your parents. ‘The Catholic Kings’—isn’t that nice? ‘The Princes of Asturias.’ I like it.”

“But—”

“I should think you would want to share all the rights and privileges that should come your way with Philippe.”

“I do, but—”

“Then it is settled. You do have the power to make such a claim, don’t you?”

To say no was to admit I was a powerless girl.

The Dowager spread her hands. “It is just a name.”

I closed my eyes. I could see my wrathful mother, exclaiming to her ministers about my arrogant, spiteful, ignorant stupidity.
Persons did not name themselves Prince. It is bestowed on them by the Cortes. Where did she get this notion? Had she not been paying attention at court?

I pictured Papa. He would not speak out against his foolhardy daughter. But it was not because he championed me. No, it was because he feared to speak up. Oh, Papa, an anvil never breaks, but it does not move, either. It may take blows and blows and blows, yet it will never accomplish anything.

“Truly,” said Philippe, “you don’t have to, Puss. I am happy enough as is.”

The Dowager laughed. “Honestly, Philippe. Do you think of what you say? In the history of mankind, has there ever been a single soul who was happy enough ‘as is’?”

I had the power to do this for Philippe. I had the power to do something besides watch and listen. I was not an anvil. I didn’t know what I was, but it was not an anvil.

I opened my eyes. “Very well, Madame. I will do it.”