Reign of Madness (3 page)

“Your Sacred Majesty,” Colón said, “you should hear them speak. My Indios—”

“
Your
Indios?” Mother said.

Colón closed his mouth, then bowed. “Your Sacred Majesty, the deepest of pardons. My haste in marching to you from Seville must have weakened my brain. What I was trying to say was that
your
Indios have the sweetest speech in the world.”

“Oh?” said Mother. “Have one speak.”

Colón motioned for his man to rattle the chains of one of the Indios. He then said something to the creature in a foreign tongue.

The Indio shivered, be it from the cold of the stone hall, bonechilling even in April, or from fear or illness, but he did not speak.

“Your Sacred Majesty, I apologize,” said Colón. “As sweet a people as are your Indios, they must be taught how to behave. They are as unschooled and innocent as newborn babes.”

Mother waved her hand. “Never mind. Tell us, how quickly can they be brought to the understanding of our faith?”

I studied the shivering man as Mother, Colón, and Fray Hernando discussed the conversion of the savages both at hand and across the Ocean Sea. Did no one else notice that the man was miserable?

Colón stopped speaking. Mother watched, puzzled, as he wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his blue velvet gown.

“Your Sacred Majesty,” he said, composing himself, “forgive my tears of joy. I am overcome by how miraculous it is that we should be speaking of these things now, with these riches from my voyage before us, after so many years of opposition by so many of the principal persons of your household”—he paused, avoiding Papa’s cool gaze—“all of whom were against me and treated this undertaking as a folly. I thought I would never see this day.”

Mother leaned forward. “Look what you have done with three ships and your own implacable will. This is what makes the success of your voyage so precious to me. It proves the theory dearest to my heart: that if a person so wills it, he can achieve anything.”

Papa pursed his lips.

Mother settled back. “I should like to greet your sons.”

Colón bowed, unable to conceal his pleasure. “Your Sacred Majesty, we would be deeply honored.”

He turned toward the boys in my brother’s household, who until now had been holding their clanking to a minimum. Metal struck metal as they moved to allow one of Juan’s pages to step forward.

The youth looked to be close to Juan’s age of nearly fifteen; he held the hand of a little boy of perhaps four or five. Both were dressed in my brother’s particolored livery of scarlet and green.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Colón said, “for allowing my sons, Diego and Fernando, to serve your illustrious son the Prince.”

Haltingly, Colón’s sons advanced on Mother’s throne. I had seen the older boy, Diego, before, with Juan’s household, but did not know he was Colón’s son. He was always on the edge of Juan’s crowd, though he was handsome, in a somber way, with a narrow face, smooth black brows, and hair the shining brown of a bay stallion. I could not remember him jousting with the other boys, nor was he one to tease me when I passed, like the others. I had thought that his indifference to me was due to his being the ambitious son of a foreign duke, that he had found my rank in my family too low for his aspirations. I was appalled, therefore, to learn that I had been shunned by the son of a sailor. He must think me as ugly as a sheared ewe.

This Diego stopped before Mother and fell on his knees. Then, just as he leaned in to kiss her hand, his little brother dashed forward and pecked it. Laughter echoed from the low stone arches of the hall.

Mother pronounced, “This younger one has his father’s bold will.”

Diego Colón sank back on his heels, shock, love for his brother, and shame chasing across his face.

At that moment, one of the long-legged rats slipped its leash. Estrella, tempted beyond limit of reason, leaped yipping from my sleeve and chased the creature under Mother’s throne. I screamed as her guard thrust his halberd at my pup. The Indios thrashed against their chains and wailed in terror.

“Juana!” Mother’s glare was more terrible than her cry.

I pulled Estrella from under the gold fringe of her throne.

“No harm done, Isabel,” said Father. “It’s just a rat.”

I stood up, Estrella squirming in my arms. It was then that I noticed the row of hazelnut-sized rubies on the collar of Father’s robe. One of them was missing.

2.

17 April anno Domini 1493

I
n the family legend that Mother loved to recount and that my younger sisters clung to like mystics to the Cross, Papa, determined to win her hand in marriage, had tramped all the way from Zaragoza to Valladolid disguised as a muleteer. He’d had to come on the sly because Mother’s brother King Enrique had forbidden the two cousins to marry. A marriage uniting the bloodlines would have weakened Enrique’s own daughter’s claim to the throne. But when my eighteen-year-old mother saw seventeen-year-old Papa in his rags, so handsome with his dark complexion, hooded eyes, and tranquil demeanor, she had to have him. They were married immediately. An hour after the ceremony, their attendants were on the balcony of their bedroom, holding out the stained sheets of their marital bed for all to see, proof of Mother’s virginity at the consummation of their marriage. My sisters loved that part, even if they did not fully understand it.

As often as this story was retold within the family, it was not surprising that it should surface again that afternoon in the feasting hall of Cardinal Mendoza’s palace. Colón had been in Barcelona three days and there had been a feast in his honor each afternoon—quite generous, Papa had remarked, for someone who had done nothing more for the Spains than return from a voyage with six terrified men and some rats.

“What color do you think Diego Colón’s eyes are?” asked my sister María. Little finger out like the dainty lady that she fervently wished to be, even at age ten, she nibbled her meat from the point of her knife. “Greenish-gray or grayish-green?”

Lute music mingled with the hum of conversation as I spooned my own portion from the lamb stew. Over at our parents’ table, Diego Colón sat next to his father, a look of undisguised happiness lighting his face while he alternated between bolting his food and gazing up at his father.

“Is there a difference?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said breathlessly.

On the other side of María, Catalina sat up from petting one of the dogs under the table. “What are you saying?” she said with her child’s lisp. Seven years old and entering the gangling middle years of girlhood, she had recently lost both of her front teeth.

“You think everyone is handsome, María,” I said, “even dusty muleteers carting stinking loads of sheepskins to the Medina del Campo fair.”

“I notice one muleteer who
was
handsome,” she said hotly, “and you will not let me forget it.”

“Papa came to Mother dressed as a muleteer,” lisped Catalina. “Even in his rags, Mother thought he was the most handsome man in the world, and married him on the spot.” She smiled in gummy bliss.

I could not bear to hear the story again. “How do you like Colón’s rats?” I said. “They’re in that dish, you know. ‘Very good to eat.’ ”

María pulled the spoon from her mouth and spat onto the floor. “They are not.”

Catalina emptied her own mouthful with maximum drama.

I looked up with a grin only to find Mother staring at me from the high table, her face slack with disappointment. I turned away. I would not show emotion. Strike me all you want, I was an anvil like Papa. It was I who had stayed by him when that monster had stabbed him in the neck as we were leaving the palace. While my sisters had clung to one another in a wailing heap, and my brother had stormed the plaza with his sword drawn in a futile show of revenge, I had followed Papa to where his men, shouting and weeping, had lain him on the floor of the Saló del Tinell. He was bleeding onto his own cape, carefully folded under his head.

He had opened his eyes when I stepped near. “Isabel.”

“No, Papa—it’s Juana.”

“Isabel, help me.”

Mother was at a monastery outside the city, consulting with Fray Hernando. “It’s Juana, Papa. It’s me.”

“Isabel,” he whispered. But it was my arm he grasped when they lifted the bloody chain from his neck.

How dear Papa looked to me now, resting his chin on his hand as Mother, Fray Hernando, and Cardinal Mendoza questioned Colón. Listening, as always. The fur Papa wore covered most of the purple scar across his neck. He was not wearing the robe with the ruby missing from the collar—a relief to me, though I could not have told you why.

Laughter erupted from the table of Juan’s household. Some of the boys were feeding the Indios great quantities of salted anchovies, then giving them unwatered wine to quench their resulting thirst. Juan had told me earlier that Colón steadily plied them with wine to keep them tame. It was a miracle that they could still sit.

Suddenly the lute music broke off; trumpets blared. At the head table, Mother rose, her cloth-of-gold train rustling as it unfurled. Fray Hernando often took her to task for wearing such rich raiment, accusing her of wishing to draw the eyes of men to her person. How they argued about it, he with the heat of a jealous lover, she cold and angry, then contrite and tearful. You would think they were fighting about more than clothes.

Now Fray Hernando gazed up at her fondly; that old lizard Mendoza was smiling and nodding. She folded her hands over her belly and looked benevolently over the crowd.

“Cardinal Mendoza, if I may say a few words. . . .”

The aged cardinal lowered his head, his chameleon’s wrinkled jowls sagging. One of the tassels of his broad-brimmed hat dipped into his wine.

“Thank you, Your Holiness. Dear Cardinal Mendoza and my friends, I wish to announce the titles that I will be bestowing upon our good friend Cristóbal Colón”—she looked down at Papa—“unless you would like to take the honors, My Lord?”

Papa shook his head.

“Then I shall speak for both of us.”

Mother bade Colón to stand. I watched Papa throw back a swallowful of wine as Colón rose to his feet, nearly knocking over the servant assigned to tasting his food for poison. Mother must have thought Colón valuable to have asked Cardinal Mendoza to provide him with a taster. I glanced around to see who else had tasters: Mother, Papa, Juan, my sister Isabel. There was one for our table of royal daughters. We had our worth, too, as goods to be offered in exchange for political favor, though I tried very hard not to think of when our bill of sale would come due.

“In gratitude for the service you have rendered the crowns of Aragón and Castile, henceforth you will be known as Don Cristóbal, Admiral of the Ocean Sea.”

The grandees and high ladies clapped politely at their tables, quizzical expressions on their faces. Admirals were not made. The title of Admiral was something you inherited. Yet Mother had just made one of this bag of wind.

“With this title,” she said, “comes a stipend of ten thousand
maravedís
, annually, for your life and for the lives of your heirs.”

There was a slight but discernible pause in the clapping. At the high table, the smiles of the grandees were frozen on their faces. When was the last time Mother had granted them a stipend? Indeed, for them it was always pleas for more money to finance her wars.

“With the help of God, Don Cristóbal shall find other islands, from which”—Mother turned to him—“you will receive one-tenth of any and all revenues gained from these lands. A goodly amount, especially once contact is made with the Great Khan and trade has begun. Furthermore, you have the right to propose officials and name your lieutenants in these lands. These rights, Don Cristóbal, along with the right to bear a coat of arms displaying the royal symbols of Aragón and Castile, are yours for life and for the lives of your children and their children.”

She paused. The applause, when it came, was lukewarm.

“Don Cristóbal,” Mother said, “the King and I would like you to sail again as soon as you are able. When persons representing other crowns hear what you have done, they will be tempted to try your route to the Indies themselves. We would like to outfit you with seventeen ships—”

A buzz of exclamation went up. Colón had been granted only three ships for his first voyage. Out of whose pockets would the money for these extra ships come?

“—and as many men as it takes to provide labor on your new settlements. In accordance with our wish for you to bring these new people to the Catholic Church, twelve priests will accompany the settlers. It is our desire to treat the said Indios very well”—she broke off to frown at the page who was lifting a cup to the lips of a swooning Indio—“and
lovingly,
and to abstain from doing them any injury. We wish for much conversation and intimacy to be established between us.”

Save for servants removing dishes and for the aged Marquise of Chinchilla, doggedly gumming a bit of gristle at my table, Cardinal Mendoza’s feasting hall had gone still. Even Colón himself, the great self-promoting windbag, was stifled for a moment.

“Your Sacred Majesty,” he said at last, “I am overwhelmed. You will not regret your generosity. I shall do my very best for you, for the crowns of Aragón and Castile, the Indios, and for the families I bring with me to your new lands.”

Mother’s brow clouded. “Families? I did not say families. You shall implement colonies of laborers. No women shall be sent on this expedition. As I have been lectured by Fray Hernando on many occasions, no good comes from the intermingling of men and women.”

“Us,” María hissed in my ear. “We came of intermingling.”

Just then I noticed the smell of honey and orange peel, the same sweet scent I had caught in Mother’s chapel. When I turned around to seek its source, I heard a jangle and a loud thud. I turned again. An Indio had slipped to the floor.

Later that night, Beatriz, poor prison-keeper that she was, hardly looked up from the volume of Aristotle she was reading when I slipped out to go to Mother’s chambers. I thought my papa would be there, as he was most nights when he was not abroad. I wished to return his ruby to him. For reasons I could not explain, I was anxious to be rid of it, but Papa had been out hunting each time I had looked to give it to him. For the same inexplicable reasons, I was uncomfortable with giving it to one of his men or handing it to him in front of Mother. I would pass it to him in secret as he took his last glass of wine before retiring, while Mother said her prayers, as was their custom. Somehow I felt that he would appreciate this.

It was with warm anticipation of his approval that I came upon Mother’s ladies, gathered outside her door. They straightened guiltily as if they had been listening at the keyhole, then bobbed in hurried curtseys. I smelled the sweet tang of orange peel and honey.

“What is that perfume?” I asked.

One of the ladies moved into my way. “If you are looking for your mother, she is in there having her confession heard by Fray Hernando.”

The lady was new to the court since the year before, when we won Granada. She would have been pretty if she could ever trouble herself to put some expression in her face.

Beatriz had told me the woman’s strange story. She said that this lady, Aixa, was the daughter of the vanquished Moorish king, Boabdil. Mother had taken her into court as a gesture of goodwill when Granada had fallen. When I pointed out that the lady hardly looked Moorish, with her blond hair and light olive skin, Beatriz explained that this was because Aixa’s grandmother was the daughter of a Castilian noble who had been taken in battle by Boabdil’s father. The old king had made the Castilian girl one of his wives, and soon she became his favorite.

But, Beatriz said, there is good reason for a man to keep only one wife. The wives, each wanting her own son to be king, fought, pitting son against son, and sons against the father. War erupted throughout the Moorish kingdom. When everyone was fighting, Spanish soldiers swept in and stole Granada for God and Isabel of Castile, and that was how the daughter of the Moorish king became a servant—or a lady-in-waiting, as Mother preferred to call her.

I thought of Beatriz’s tale now as Aixa blocked my way into my mother’s chamber. She was a sullen thing. Why would Mother keep her as an attendant?

I stepped forward, sniffing like a hare. “Is it you who wears the scent of orange?”

Aixa raised her elbows. “You cannot go in there.”

“Where is my father?”

Not waiting for an answer, I dodged around her and put my shoulder to the door.

Muffled crying came from the other side, followed by the rich calm tones of Fray Hernando’s voice.

I pulled back.

Aixa’s handsome face was as blank as a stone. “Perhaps you should come back later.”

I stumbled toward the nursery, past pikemen standing guard in the halls, past a gray cat stalking its prey. I was hurrying along the stone arches of the arcade, the edges of Papa’s ruby cutting into my knotted fist, when it occurred to me.

Since when did Mother make confessions at night?