Reign of Madness (21 page)

I could hear servants talking in the courtyard as Mother led me down the arcade of the Duke of Villena’s palace. There was a splash of water. I looked over my shoulder and saw Katrien, waiting in a queue of servants with her bucket, the wings of her Flemish headdress bright white in the morning sun. Outside, from the street, a mule brayed.

Mother pulled me under an arched doorway into a bedchamber—hers, I deemed, by the opulence of the portable prayer booth sitting near her altar, above which hung a painting by Rogier van der Weyden. I recognized the painting—the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy owned a copy of it. Did Mother think of it as a good investment, too?

“Sit.”

I sank upon a cross-legged chair with a rustle of skirts. The bells of the cathedral began to ring. Terce was upon us. I breathed a sigh of relief. My interview would be short. Mother would not miss an opportunity to pray.

“I heard you did not ride into town under the Canopy of State,” she said over the clanging.

She had just announced that I had a half sister, whom I had not known existed, and she had shunned me for years in punishment for not corresponding—and she was worried about how I had processed into town?

“Philippe wanted to.”

“Fine. Philippe can ride under canopies all he wants. But you must ride under them with him, Juana. You are my heir—the Cortes must see you as such. They won’t take you seriously if you’re trotting along behind your consort like a servant.”

“It didn’t seem to matter. Philippe and Papa—”

“Your father! What was he thinking? It was he who took your place, not Philippe.”

“Papa didn’t take my place. He is King. He should take precedence.”

“It wasn’t Fernando’s procession.” She pushed at her crown. “He knew better.”

Was that the problem—she was angry at Papa for producing this bastard? Why had she brought the girl to court? She could have hidden her away. I looked pointedly at the breviary lying on the altar, hoping she might keep the hour and start praying. This interview could end only in tears—my own.

“Why would Fernando take your position?” she muttered to herself. “I simply do not understand him.”

If only we could just pray. Or could go back and join the others. There was safety in numbers. Mother did not like to make a scene.

“What do you hear of María?” I asked.

The bells stopped. Mother’s voice welled into the absence of ringing. “She is in confinement. I expect to hear of the birth in the coming weeks.”

I said what I thought she wanted to hear: “May she be delivered of her child safely, and may it be a man child.”

She frowned at me. “Pretty words, coming from a woman child. Do you not find girls as valuable?”

So this was how she was to punish me, by bickering until she wore me down?

“How is Catalina?”

She drew in a breath, as though restraining herself. “She admires her new young husband, though he is very shy. I hear from her often, even if she is in England.”

Now we were coming down to it. Very well. Let us get this over with. “I am sorry that I did not write, Mother.”

“Sorry? Juana, what you did was unconscionable. You cut me to the bone with your neglect. Why? Why would you treat me this way?”

I was too ashamed to admit the truth. “I was busy with my husband.”

“Busy!”

“You’re the one who sent me to him. I was only trying to make the best of it.”

“You didn’t have one minute to put quill to paper?”

“I must work hard, Mother, to keep his eye.”

She studied me for a moment. She started to say something, then thought better of it. The clash of galloping hooves striking cobblestones floated through the window; a courier shouted for a footman to take his horse.

“Do you love him?” she asked.

“Yes.” I was too ashamed to admit otherwise. How would it make me look to not have made a success of a marriage to a man as seemingly affable as Philippe?

“I suppose you are so lost in love that my pleas to hear a word from you have meant nothing.”

Her pleas? I had pleaded, too. I had begged for her forgiveness in my letters, once I started writing. What did it take for her to forgive me?

She blew out a breath. “Yet when the plea went out to claim your inheritance, you somehow found the time to come here.”

“That is my husband’s doing. I don’t care about the crowns.”

“Oh. So if you had had your way, you wouldn’t have come at all.”

I could hear the incredulousness in my laugh. How did she always manage to so effectively use my words against me?

“I am just trying to understand, Juana.”

I sighed. “I do what my husband wills me to do. Isn’t that what I am supposed to do?”

“Was it his will for you to not write me?”

She had punished me far longer than I had withheld my letters. I struck back, out of hurt. “Tell me about my new half sister. How nice to have one after all these years, and fully grown, too.”

“Don’t make a joke of it, Juana.”

I was startled to see dismay on her face. Mother—who had frightened men who rode into battle with knives between their teeth, who had sent Colón and his crew into the yawning maw of the Ocean Sea, who had terrified me since birth with her calm exposition of my frailties—visibly cringed.

Questions regarding the age of the girl, her parentage, what this meant about Papa, played upon my lips. I had Mother against the wall, and yet, I did not want to pin her.

Someone knocked at the door. When she did not move, I went to open it.

Papa stood in the morning light.

“Juana, where is your mother?”

She stepped forward, her face composed except for a tightness around her lips.

“Isabel, I just received word. I am so sorry, my princess. Catalina’s Arthur has died.”

She stared at him. “Arthur? He is but fifteen.”

“He is dead. God rest his soul.”

“What is our dear Catalina to do? Who will it be next? Have I not paid enough?”

Papa gathered her into his arms, but she pulled away. Drawing a shuddering breath, she went to her altar and sank slowly to her knees. She was still praying when I slipped out, long after Terce had ended.

25.

8 May anno Domini 1502

K
atrien stood in the doorway with a ewer of water.

“I am sorry, Mevrouw. I did not know you were here.”

“Come in.”

Outside, a blackbird whistled from a rooftop. A cart rumbled past, its wooden wheels thudding against the cobblestones. Estrella lifted her head. She was grizzled about her muzzle and eyes, and walked more slowly than when I had left her, but she had climbed onto my lap and hidden her head under my arm when brought to me on the night of my arrival in Toledo. Now she lowered her muzzle to her paws and closed her eyes, content in the sunshine beaming in through the arched window at which I stood.

“I have some water for you to wash with. Would you like some orange peel in it?”

“Orange peel, no. Why do you ask?”

“I notice the ladies of the court here scent themselves with it and honey.”

A discomfiting memory of the smell and its association with my discovery of Papa’s weakness flashed through my mind. Aixa was no longer at court. I supposed that Mother had sent her away, as she did all of Papa’s lovers eventually. I wondered to which remote place the mother of my “new” half sister had been banished.

“What else do you notice?”

She set the ewer on my table. Already taciturn enough on her native soil, she had become even more closemouthed since we had arrived in the Spains. She should have felt her ease here, as somber as were these lands of my birth. But then again, my homeland was not the solemn place I remembered. It had changed remarkably since I’d left. Even after we had donned our black
ropas de luto
to mourn Catalina’s Arthur, the festivities continued. Papa had arranged for a tournament on this day, in which the gentlemen of the court would reenact the conquest of Granada. The Spaniards would be in brilliant armor, and the Moors would ride with short stirrups
a la jineta,
making them appear to stand astride their horses. Philippe had clapped when Papa announced it; Mother had made a slight pained smile.

“Are the other ladies still at the tournament?” I asked Katrien.

“Yes, Mevrouw.”

I had claimed I had a headache, and needed a rest. Truth is, I needed to be by myself. I had much to think about.

“The wife of the Constable of Castile is there also?”

She frowned.

“Doña Juana of Aragón,” I said. “Young? Pretty? Old husband?”

“She is there.”

The night before, at the feast held to welcome Philippe and me, Mother had asked this new Juana to sit at the table with our family. Was this to honor the girl or to dig at Papa?

“Who’s her mother?” Philippe had whispered into my ear, nodding at this Juana.

“I don’t know.”

He shrugged. “Bastards happen. My great-grandfather Philippe the Good had eighteen of them—that we know of.”

I glanced at him. Let him not try to emulate his hero in this.

“I’ll ask François to find out the girl’s dam.”

Now I asked Katrien, “What do the servants say about this other Doña Juana?”

Katrien shook her head, setting aquiver the wings of her white linen headdress.

Only Mother would inspire servants to keep their mouths closed about such juicy gossip. Out of respect for the woman who gave generously to the poor and spun wool just as they did, they would not speak of Papa’s betrayal. They would pretend with her that she was not wounded.

“Do they say anything about my husband?”

Katrien kept her back to me. “What would they say?”

I laughed. “That he acts like a child.”

She turned to face me. “Mijnheer is a gentleman!” she said vehemently.

I drew back in surprise. “So loyal! That is sweet, Katrien, but you are my friend, not his. You need not hold back in saying what you truly see.”

She looked away.

“Katrien, you know that I trust you. Now you must trust me. Your words would never get past me. Nor shall I ever judge.”

She wiped her hands on her apron. “If I may go, please, Mevrouw.”

I nodded, hurt. I had thought that even if we weren’t exactly confidantes—Katrien would never be one to confide in me, or perhaps in anyone—that we had some kind of understanding. How lonely I felt with Beatriz gone. She could not return from her visit with her family soon enough.

Later, Philippe strode into my chamber, awakening me from a nap. He wore the crested helmet of one of Mother’s soldiers, though the rest of his attire was in the French style: a laced silk doublet laid open across his chest, a fine chemise underneath, and purple hose. He opened his visor with a screech of metal. “Do I look like a Spaniard, Puss?”

I sat up. “The very image.”

He took off his helmet, then the padded cap underneath, and shook out his hair, which was several inches longer than the average Spaniard’s. I had learned over the years that his barber curled the ends of it every morning, thus giving it the smooth curve that brushed the cords of his neck. Today the helmet had mussed the barber’s work.

“I left it on to show you—the rest of the armor was inferior to mine at home. Where were you today? You should have come out. I think I slew about a hundred Moors.”

“You didn’t really hurt anybody, did you?”

“No,” he said, then added, “I don’t think so. Why didn’t you come? It made me look bad to not have you there. I had to have your mother as my lady.”

I smiled inwardly at the image of my bon vivant of a husband offering himself to my stern and forbidding mother. “I shall come to the next event.”

“François found out about the girl.”

I missed a breath. “The girl?”

“Your father’s bastard. It seems that her mother is one Juana Nicolau.”

My heart sank. “A lady of Mother’s.”

“François had to do a lot of digging. No one would talk. How much do you think your mother had to pay people to keep their mouths shut?”

“Nothing,” I murmured.

He laughed. “And I’m a fool. François pointed out that my friend Pedro is your half sister’s nephew by marriage. Bernardino Fernández de Velasco is Pedro’s uncle. Small world.”

What had it taken Mother to welcome this girl to court and grant her a high position? How it must have wounded her pride before her people to have this outward evidence of Papa’s straying. Isabel the King could not hold her husband. What a chink it must have knocked in her glorious legend of marital fidelity and love.

Philippe chuckled to himself. “You should have seen this one ridiculous Moor at the tourney. I kept striking him with my blunted sword, and he kept jumping up to bow at me. Curiouslooking creature, skin the color of quince jam. When his turban fell off, his hair stood out from his head like a parasol. It was stiff as a horse’s cropped mane.”

I looked up.

“Another fellow with him told him to stay down, but this fellow seemed determined to speak to me. He almost ruined the effect of the entertainment. Dead Moors are not supposed to rise and chatter.”

There came a soft knock on the door.

“Enter,” I called.

Katrien stepped in, bearing a vase of flowers. She froze when she saw Philippe.

“Come in, come in,” Philippe said amicably. “Do what you were going to do.”

She hesitated, then took the vase to my table.

Philippe crossed his arms and leaned against the table, making her alter her course. “What are those flowers?”

“Roses, Your Grace. The Queen sent them.”

“Round Eyes,” he said. “Is that what they call you at home, Ronde Ogen?”

“May I be excused, Your Grace?”

He saw me looking at him, then her. “Come here, Puss.”

I did not come.

“Very well.” He walked over and put his arms around me from behind. “I’ll come to you.” Where his sleeves were rolled up, I could see the ropes of veins in his forearms.

“I missed you,” he murmured in my ear. “Did I tell you that?”

I nodded at Katrien, who hurried out.

“Woman.” Philippe’s breath warmed my ear. I could smell the spicy scent of his flesh. “Did you miss me?”

I broke free of him.

His brow twitched before he recovered his smile. “Is that how you’re going to play it? You’re going to be a skittish colt?”

“Not now, Philippe.”

The playfulness melted from his face. “Then when, Juana? When?”

“Just . . . not now. Please.”

“You make a lot of noise about my taking other women, yet you will not have me. Something is wrong with your mind.”

“Please, Monseigneur. Give me a moment.”

“A moment! You need a moment? Am I so unappealing that you must work up your desire for me?”

“No, it’s just that—”

He grabbed my arm and pulled me against him. “I may be only your consort at this court, but by God, in my bed I am your master.”

“Please, Philippe. Don’t.”

“You think you’re too good for me now,” he whispered harshly.

“That’s not true!”

“Shut up.” He shoved me against the bed. I was not ready for him even by the time he was finished.

He banged the door behind him when he left. I lay on the bed, seeping like an open wound.