Reign of Madness (17 page)

18.

24 August anno Domini 1500

C
ast ahead to August, more than a year and a half later.

Insects sprang from the swaying grasses as our horses trotted through the marshes, their hooves sucking in the rotting muck. The sun beat down on my headdress, making me drowsy, filling my nose with the smell of hot hair, cloth, and skin, and the oily scent of horse.

“Is your falcon ready, Puss?” Philippe asked.

We were coming fast upon a pond. When we stopped, I was to take the hood from the sleek little falcon Philippe had given me. Unlike Delilah, she could not be trusted not to fly away the moment her jesses were loosened. She would go after what she deigned to be prey the moment she saw it, and hence I had to be sure that what she wanted to catch and what I wanted her to catch were the same. There was an art to handling a falcon; I suppose one might take pleasure being in partnership with one’s bird. I, however, did not feel it, not when the object of our partnership was the death of an innocent.

I spat out a gnat that had flown into my mouth. I had more pressing matters to attend to than playing with birds. Was my new baby, Charles, still crying? He’d been inconsolable when I’d left him in the nursery. Six months old, and his life was a torture of swollen gums, gaseous bowels, and a red weeping bottom. I had ordered his nurse to take him outside to expose his raw buttocks to the sun, but she feigned to know no French or Spanish, only German, and I could not be sure what she would do. Philippe had insisted that she be his nurse—he owed her father a favor—so all I could do was hover nearby to make sure that she followed my wishes. It was I who had given him a root of licorice on which to rub his gums. The German girl would have let him cry.

Poor child. From his birth, he was not the strong, sunny child his sister had been, and at nearly two, Leonor was stronger and sunnier than ever. But Leonor had not his misshapen lower jaw, which pushed forward from beneath the upper one, hampering his ability to suckle. Even as fireworks were being shot from the bell tower of Saint Nicholas announcing the arrival of the Archduke’s long-awaited boy child, I was in despair, watching my infant mewl at the base of his nurse’s breast. As the citizens of Ghent celebrated on the streets, a succession of wet nurses was tried, to no avail. A nanny goat was introduced; my poor babe tongued at her leathery udder. But even if he had been able to latch on, how could I allow it? Charles might take on the beast’s pugnacious character through her milk. At last a cow’s horn was filed down and a hole put in its tip, through which the milk of a nurse of virtuous character was trickled. While out on the squares townsfolk were gulping the free wine that my husband delighted in drinking with them, my poor Charles was swallowing his first drop of milk. Only when his strained little gulps became regular was I able to fall into a sleep from which not even the loudest reveling in the crooked lanes of the Patershol could stir me.

Now a crane flapped out from the reeds. Philippe raised his arm. Our hunting party reined our horses, then undid the jesses around our falcons’ legs. Delilah was off before I had removed the hood from my bird.

Philippe slapped Hendrik’s back. “Look at her! I never get tired of this.”

Indeed, he didn’t. He could hunt with his falcon every day, even as miraculous things happened in the nursery. Leonor strung together sentences: “I not want chicken. I want sausage.” Charles reached for the licorice root, put it to his own mouth, then, smiling, put it to mine. He sat without support, and chortled when Leonor clapped her hands to amuse him.

“Ah, she’s got it!” Philippe cried. “She beat your tired old bird.”

“That she did.” Hendrik smiled at me.

“Not again,” I said. I believe Hendrik had trained his bird to let Delilah always win.

Delilah brought in a crane and waited, lifting her feet in impatience, for the falconer to cut out the heart.

“Give her the legs, too,” said Philippe. “She earned them.”

He hooked me to himself and hugged me as we stood watching her eat. “You’re quiet. Sad because your bird didn’t win?”

I shook my head. Philippe relished the same interests and activities as when I had met him in Lier, while my life had changed so very much. No longer was I just Juana. I was mother to two children whose welfare depended on me. Their needs came before mine, and not only did I enjoy meeting them, but I took pride in learning what those needs might be, unaided by the wisdom and help of others, save Katrien, who had a natural talent with children, and Beatriz, who stood by my side though she was awkward with young ones. My mother had ceased writing to me directly; now she wrote only through the Spanish ambassador, which grieved me. I had so many questions for her. But she excelled me at punishment, as she excelled me in everything. Evidently she had not forgiven me for delaying my correspondence.

“Rudi,” Philippe said, instructing the falconer, “give Delilah the back of the crane as well.”

“There will be nothing left, Mijnheer.”

“So be it. Let these other people’s birds do something for once. Hendrik, your bird hasn’t caught a bird since Easter. I would suspect that you mean for it not to make the catch, but I cannot see how. How does one stop a beast from acting upon its natural urges?”

I looked at my husband. How, indeed? But with my worries about the children, I had less time to ponder his activities. I had not been able to determine whether Philippe was monster or man-child or something in between. He came to my bed regularly. I found it best for my peace of mind not to ask him what he did with the rest of his day. Once, when he stayed out on a hunting trip a week later than he’d told me he would, I asked Katrien what she thought.

“Katrien, tell me the truth. I shall not be angry with you. Is my husband unfaithful?”

She sat back on her heels with her knife. She had been scraping the tiles where a candle had dripped during the night. “What do you call unfaithful, Mevrouw?”

I laughed uncomfortably. “The same thing that you would call unfaithful.”

“In that case, no.”

She turned away with the stolid finality so common to Flemings when they are finished with a subject, then leaned into her scraping. It had been an unsatisfactory answer, but it was all that I would get from her.

This night in August, after dinner, I was not thinking about Philippe’s possible infidelities. Indeed, he had come to my chamber and had his pleasure upon me. I was thinking about Leonor. Did her knees turn in too much when she walked? I was trying to decide which physician to ask—doctor Meuris, who might be too harsh, binding her legs with laths, or doctor Gobien, fascinated with incantations and given to casting spells, who might be too mild—when a knock came at our door.

The page stationed outside opened it to the Dowager, holding a candelabrum. She had come in such haste she still wore the white bindings she tied under her chin at night. She looked like a body prepared for the grave.

“I bring you glad tidings.”

“Good God,” said Philippe. “What hour is it, Grand-mère?”

I shrank back under the sheets. What kind of tidings would so gladden the heart of the Dowager that she would let them disrupt her sleep? After she had partaken of her “special spices of the table” to aid with her digestion, and had her face rubbed with unguents and been trussed, nothing could rouse her once she had retired to bed. Especially not the good fortunes of others.

“What kind of glad tidings?” I asked.

“Glad for you, Juana, unless you are determined to get sentimental over someone you’ve never met.”

Philippe signaled to his page to bring him a cup of water. “Out with it, Grand-mère. I’m tired, and I am to hunt in the morning.”

The Dowager raised the candelabrum to my face as if to relish my reaction.

“I have word from my man in Madrid. The child of your departed sister Isabel, the Crown Prince Miguel, is dead.”

19.

7 November anno Domini 1501

S
ome fifteen months had passed since the Dowager rousted us with her “glad tidings.” Much can happen in fifteen months. A ship can sail to the Indies and back. Babes can be conceived and born. Courts can be uprooted and all the possessions and people who care for them packed piecemeal onto ox carts. Love can flicker and wane.

“So tell me,” said Philippe, “what is she like?”

My gaze flew up from where it had been pinned to my horse’s neck, bobbing in time with its clopping. I glanced at the oak forest through which we were passing, at the soldiers riding just ahead, the flags of the standard-bearers snapping. Philippe was watching me with an amused frown.

“I am sorry,” I said. “What?”

“You were sleeping in the saddle.”

“I wasn’t.” I was thinking about Charles, pushing the little cart I’d had made for him. Not yet twenty-one months old, and he was running behind his cart like a three-year-old. I could still hear him chuckling along with the squeak of the wooden wheels. What would he be like when I next saw him? Even if we raced through France, forged into the Spains, snapped up our titles as Mother’s heirs, and then bustled back home, it would take a minimum of four months to make the journey. The day we had left her, my newest baby, Isabel, only three and a half months old, had just learned to roll from her back to her belly. She would not know me when I returned.

“Then what were you doing?”

“Thinking.”

“About what?”

“My chickens.”

A bored note crept into his voice. “You must stop worrying about them, Puss. Grand-mère has them full in hand.”

It was the back of the Dowager’s hand that worried me. She was liberal with the use of it, and she scolded me for protesting when she employed it against the children.

“They are to be kings and queens when they grow up,” she had said, several days before we left. I had scooped up sobbing Leonor, the recipient of a slap. The child’s transgression had been to touch her father’s tree of serpents’ tongues when she was allowed to visit us at dinner. “Do you want them to be spoiled?” the Dowager said. “I made the mistake of sparing the rod against Philippe.”

Philippe had rubbed Leonor’s cheek. “Don’t cry, sweet.” He leaned forward, grasped the tree, then pulled it back to her. “Be careful. The serpents’ tongues are sharp.”

With a provocative look at the Dowager, Leonor put her finger to a pointed leaf.

“That’s not a toy, Philippe,” the Dowager said. “What are you teaching her?”

“It’s ridiculous that we keep these—they are relics from the past. This is a new day, Grand-mère. No one wishes to poison me. A man need not worry about his safety when he’s not at war with half the world.”

“Meanwhile,” she had muttered, “your ‘friends’ are nibbling at your lands.”

Did his friends nibble at his coffers as well? He had not yet paid my servants or Spanish ladies. To cover their expenses, I’d had to pawn the jewels he’d given me. Yet on the occasions when I had confronted him about their payment, he’d gladly promised to do so, quickly stanching further argument. My husband, it seems, truly was a master at saying yes. It was so much easier than taking real action.

A wind picked up, sending down leaves in a shower of russet. They crunched under the hooves of the horses. “I am sorry, Monseigneur,” I said. “I didn’t hear what you asked me.”

The curled ends of Philippe’s hair brushed his shoulders when he shrugged. His Flemish barber—riding ahead with the baggage train that stretched for more than a league through the French forest—was one of the one hundred fifty indispensable servants who traveled with us, my humble Katrien being one of the few assigned to me. “It was nothing. I had just asked what your mother was like.”

He must have been nervous, to ask this question repeatedly. And rightly so. She was cold. Unforgiving. Hard. The same woman who had conquered the Moors evidently did not tolerate her little daughter’s resistance. She had never written back to me, though I had sent several letters begging her forgiveness. In truth, I was terrified to see her again myself.

“Surely your man François has filled you in on my mother’s character,” I said. And not favorably, either. Only now, after being at Philippe’s court for five years, did I realize how deeply the Archbishop of Besançon hated the Spanish alliance—and me. How he must have fought against my marriage to his protégé. It was Philippe’s father, and the Dowager Duchess, who had promoted it, hoping for an advantage by being tied to the Spanish crowns. Who ever thought their gamble would pay off, and that I, so far back in the line of succession, would be my parents’ heir? All I had to do was make this journey to the Spains, and the Cortes would confirm me as heir to the throne, and Philippe as my consort. And for a man who once claimed not to care about holding the title of Prince of Asturias, my husband most truly relished this outcome. Like a child sleepless with anticipation on the eve of his name day, he gleefully awaited his conferment, even though it was only for consort and not ruling king.

“I don’t know why you and François cannot get along,” said Philippe. “Anyhow, I make my own judgments.”

Did he? Did he, now? Philippe let the Archbishop choose his policy, his ministers, his clothes. It had been Besançon’s idea to betroth our little Charles to the daughter of the King of France while both were still in their cradles—a plan that unleashed scores of angry letters from Mother to her ambassador. And now, on our way to the Spains, we were going to meet the French King, against Mother’s express wishes. All the world knew that Louis XII was her mortal enemy, with his penchant for dipping across the Pyrenees with war parties, and for entering into treaties with the English against Spain, even going so far as to claim Papa’s lands in Naples. Now my own husband wished to parlay with him and I would get the blame. As if I had a soupçon of control over Philippe’s thoughts and deeds.

“So tell me what your mother is like.”

I drew in a breath. “She is tall.”

“Tall like a giant? Or like one of the sturdy dames raised on cheese and iron in Father’s German realms? His own grandmother, Cymberga of Masovia, could crack walnuts between her fingers and pound nails into wood with her fist.”

“My mother cracks more than walnuts. When her men were about to give up the siege of Baza, she thundered the thirty-three leagues from Jaén with us children in tow. As the Moors watched, astonished, from the ramparts of their fortress, she rode before her troops. ‘Never give up!’ she told them. ‘Never give in!’ Her men cheered for her, shouting, ‘Long live our King Isabel! Long live Isabel our King.’ ”

“Had all that battle knocked the poor souls blind? Calling her a king. At least
I
know tits when I see them.”

I could still hear the cheers of the men on the field before Baza. I had been ten, and upset. Did they not think how their shouts would make my papa feel?

“Well,” said Philippe, “I am not afraid of her.”

And he was a fool. Mother had won the crowns meant for her brother’s daughter, had conquered the fearless Moors, had uprooted the Jews when they would not convert, and sent them from the land. What would she do with Philippe, Believer in Counsel?

We rode on to the beat of drums and our horses’ hooves. The wind sent down bronze leaves like darts.

“So, Hendrik,” Philippe said, “are you ready to see the pretty ladies of Paris? I hear the mussels are very sweet there.”

“I am not looking forward to meeting the French King,” Hendrik replied.

“Nor I,” I said.

“Why? You can’t be afraid of him, Puss. You are his equal, a king’s daughter—unless you are ashamed to be the wife of an archduke.”

“Of course I’m not.”

“It does not bother you that you’re the only one of your sisters to marry a duke, not a king?”

“I have no care for that. Who has been putting this notion in your head?”

He looked away.

“Philippe, the reason that I have no love for the French King is that, among other things, he jilted your own sister.”

“Marguerite was a child. She wouldn’t even remember now.”

“There is where you are wrong, my friend,” said Hendrik. “A woman always remembers a slight, even if she was just a girl at the time.”

Philippe made a mock salute. “O Great Sage! You know so much about women.”

“I don’t,” said Hendrik. “But I know horses. They are much the same.”

Philippe laughed. “Women and horses are nothing the same. Are they, Puss?”

I blinked at him, wondering how a man who professed to love women so much could understand so little about them.