The Last Queen (17 page)

dropping to my stomach as my child suddenly kicked. Beatriz came behind me.

clasped my ruby pendant about my throat. “Your Highness has never looked more

beautiful,” she said.

I nodded, voiceless.

I rarely paused to mark the passage of time, but somewhere between Eleanor‟s

birth and this pregnancy, I had shed the last races of my adolescence. The lanky

infanta who worried about her height was gone; in her place stood a stood a

disarming woman― the woman I would be for the rest of my life.

“Am I?” I said, turning about. “Am I truly beautiful?”

“You are,” said Beatriz. My women nodded. Doña Ana harrumphed.

“And you think he‟ll want to see me, like this? So― big?”

Beatriz laughed. “His Highness is a man, is he not? Every man wants to see his

wife big with child.” She held out her hand. “Come. He awaits you in the hall.”

The great hall flared with light from the sconces. Smoke gathered in the painted

eaves. Trestle tables strewn with used linen and silverware had been pulled aside, to

clear the floor for dancing. Wine casks sat piled against the walls, testament to the

anticipated hours of coursing in celebration of the archduke‟s arrival.

I halted at the top of the staircase. Music rang out, kettledrums thumping

alongside the piping of rebecs. On the floor couples danced. I watched a woman

laugh as he companion nuzzled her throat and heard Doña Ana say, “You cannot

mean to go down there in your state. You should have gone into confinement weeks

ago. You are a woman with child.”

“And a wife who will see her husband. If you do not approve, you can return to

my rooms.”

I did not wait for her response. She knew better, in any event, to try and stop me.

Taking up my skirts, I walked down the stairs with perfect poise, focused on the dais,

where Philip, Besançon, and several others sat. The archbishop‟s platter was piled

high with roasted carcasses, his fat ringed fingers dripping sauce as he dug into a

baked goose. He shouted between mouthfuls to the others, who were engaged in a

rousing discussion. Philip reclined on his throne, legs propped on the table, his red

brocade doublet unlaced, exposing his linen chemise. He held a goblet. Though his

cheeks were flushed, he appeared sober.

Suddenly, one of his men leapt onto the table, his arms flung wide. He illustrated

something to the laughing gentlemen, but when he spun about and caught sight of me

coming toward him, he stopped in mid-action, like a mime. From the minstrel‟s

gallery above the hall, the musicians ceased playing. The silence turned thick; the

courtiers on the floor drew back. They whispered among themselves, marveling at my

appearance. Even Besançon, usually oblivious to everything around him when filling

his stomach, ceased shoving sauced brains into his mouth, gazing at me in slack-jawed

disbelief.

I stopped before the dais, my belly jutting forth like an orb. Phillip stood,

adjusting his disheveled doublet, raking hands through his tawny hair. as he neared, I

glimpsed the telltale flame in his eyes, familiar from our first days of marriage, when

he‟d been unable to contain himself and would drag me from wherever we happened

to be to take into the nearest chamber. Only this time, his lust intermingled with awe,

as if he could not decide whether to prostrate himself before me or to take me then

and there.

He lifted my hand to his lips. “Wife, did you know purple velvet is reserved for

empresses?”

My heart leapt. “Are you―”

He nodded, his mouth widening in a brilliant smile. “I am. You see before you the

acknowledged prince of Flanders and official Habsburg heir. My father gave in finally.

The Estates-General agreed I have reached my maturity and can rule my realm free of

interference.”

I shifted closer, my belly grazing his groin. “Then I am the happiest future

empress in the world,” I breathed. “But more important, I am the happiest mother of

your future son.”

His smile deepened, taking up the heat between us, all the more enticing because

it had been months since we bedded together. He looked past me where my ladies

stood. “Your duenna will have my head if I let you stay. She already thinks I‟m to

blame for your brazen ways.”

I shrugged. “Let her think what she likes. I‟ve come to dance. And dance, I will.”

“Dance?” He laughed. “If my eyes do not deceive me, you could give birth at any

moment.”

I laughed too, a soft wicked laugh that brought his eyes back to mine. “Be that as

it may, I shall dance tonight to celebrate my husband‟s return. You may do me the

honor if you wish or perhaps I can find someone else to oblige me.”

“You‟re mad, he said, even has he lifted his hand to the gallery. After a discordant

tuning of strings, the musicians resumed their playing.

I sighed, “A pavane,” and held out my hand to Philip. We stepped forward,

shoulders and heads erect. The courtiers hastened to join us.

The music filled me. I forgot my shaking spine, the stitch in my side, the weight of

my stomach. Twirling about, I entered the adagio, laughing when he suddenly kissed

my breast. The men and women separated to join hands with the others, swaggering

down the hall‟s length. Turning to the left, ignoring the curtsy to the bow, Philip and I found each other again, and those not participating in the dance gathered at the sides

of the hall to clap.

The dancing grew more energetic, the women plucking up their skins to expose

shifting ankles. In an exuberant rush, I yanked off my coif and tossed it aside, eliciting delighted applause as my hair tumbled loose. Hands cocked on hips, I stood with the

ladies, batting my eyes as Philip and the gentlemen kicked up their legs like zealous

stags.

The hall grew stifling with the heat of bodies in motion. No one realized as first as

I stood clapping, the pain inside my womb began to build― slowly, mercilessly,

gripping my innards until I gasped aloud. I tried to ignore it, but then another pang

came, and another, until I doubled over, my knees buckling underneath me.

Beatriz ran to me. “The child,” I told her breathlessly. “I can feel it!” She signaled

the others, who rushed to surround me and lead me from the floor.

“I am tired,” I called out, thinking Philip might follow. “It‟s nothing, honest. I just

need to rest.” I glanced over my shoulder to see him smiling at me, hemmed in by a

wall of dancing courtiers. As I stood propped between my women at the foot of the

staircase, I waved back and laughed between my clenched teeth.

“How many pains?” Doña Ana barked. “How close are they?

“I‟m not counting. I think―” I groaned. “Oh, no.”

Pale pink water gushed from under my dress, splattering my satin shoes. Without

hesitation, Doña Ana flung her stout arm about my waist. “We must get you to your

chamber at once.”

Slung between my duenna and Beatriz, I staggered up the stair. But he time I

reached the landing and began hastening down the corridor, I was fighting with all my

will to contain the babe struggling to free itself from my womb. My water slowed to a

trickle; there was a momentary lull in the pangs. I quickened my step into the gallery

connected with my apartments.

Only a little more to go.

I felt the first warm blood seep down my thigh. A cry escaped me― “Dear God,

it‟s started!” ―and I faltered, the gallery seeming to stretch to infinity. I could go no farther. Flinging open the nearest door, I rushed into a privy and kicked aside the

straw rushes. I started to crouch.

“No, not here!” cried Doña Ana.

“It‟s either here or out there,” I snapped.

Without ado, Beatriz shoved her tight sleeves to her elbows, and helped me to the

floor, propping my legs on the privy stool. The little room stank of urine and feces,

but fortunately the worst of the night‟s offenders had not yet made their drunken way

here. My duenna stood aghast. Then I let out a high-pitched moan and she got down

on her hands and knees to thrust her head under my skirts. “Like a pig in filth,

I heard her mutter. “What will Her Majesty say when she hears of this?” Her fingers

probed. “Someone fetch the cloths and my herb chest. Now!”

Footsteps fled.

I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all until a pain unlike any I had experienced

suffocated my mirth. Doña Ana emerged from under my skirts, her hood askew. “I

can see the child‟s head. Push,
mi nina.
Push as if your life depended on it.”

“Push?” I shrieked. “I can‟t! It‟ll break me in two!”

“It will break you if you don‟t,” she said, with steel in her voice. “Do it.
Ahora!”

I braced myself, clutching the edge of the stool with one hand, the other digging

into Beatriz as she knelt beside me. Hauling breath through my teeth, I pushed with

all my strength.

Doña Ana thrust again under my gown, which was now hiked past my waist.

“Almost there. Push one more time. Yes, that‟s it. Let nature do its work.”

Soraya returned with the swaddling clothes and herb chest. I screamed, feeling an

enormous obstacle prying me open. The pain was searing, all-encompassing; just as I

thought I could take no more of it, something slipped loose and a vast, wet relief

swept through me.

“The child,” gasped Doña Ana. “Quick! Give me the scissors!”

Soraya jerked forward. A lumpy mass gushed from between my legs. In swift

succession, I watched Doña Ana grab hold of a small bloody body, nip with the

scissors. and swat with her free hand. As a wail ruptured the silence, I collapsed

against Beatriz. I wanted to ask if the child was healthy, if it was a boy, but my mouth

was tinder-dry. Doña Ana took a vial from her coffer and rubbed the wiling infant in

marigold ointment, then started swaddling it in linen cloths.

A urgent clamor approached the privy. “My child,” I whispered. “Give it to me.”

I forced myself to sit up. Doña Ana set the babe in my arms. She hadn‟t finished

the dressing, but the babe ceased crying when it felt me and as I glanced at it, a thrill surged inside me.

I looked up to see Philip peering in, his eyes wide at the sight of the sweat-soaked

women and me, spread-eagled in my finery.

I reached up, extending the child to him. “Behold, your son.”

And as he gazed through his tears at our boy in his arms, I laughed aloud, in

triumph.

__________________________________

1500 ― 1504

ARCHDUCHESS

BEHOLD HOW WONDERFUL AND JOYOUS IT IS WHEN KINGS AND PRINCES LIVE IN

HARMONY.

―ANONYMOUS

__________________________________

turned twenty-one in 1500, a age when most women of my rank had begun to

settle into the rest of their lives. I had given birth to a healthy daughter and a son

I and had endured some of the trials every marriage undergoes. I could not look

forward to a time of maturity and satisfaction, content in the rearing of my children

and my role as a patroness of my adopted realm.

I had the examples of countless predecessors to advise me: charity and the

benefice of abbeys and convents, of the poor and the fallen, were the purview of

privileged women like me. My education had prepared me since childhood for these

tasks. My sisters and I had been taught that our power must be confined by our

gender, that we would not rule, but rather care for our husbands and their subjects in

a manner that was neither obtrusive or compromising. We would plant gardens, not

monuments; we would leave echoes, not legends.

No one ever expected us to become anything other than what we were.

_________________

GHENT WAS A MARVELOUS CITY, ONE OF MY FAVORITES IN FLANDERS. With its

steepled houses and their multicolored eaves, its stone bridges arching over the canal,

bustling mercantile areas and majestic Gothic spires, it epitomized the enthusiastic

Flemish spirit. The climate was rarely harsh (indeed, I never ceased to marvel at

Flanders‟s temperate seasons, especially compared with the tempestuousness of

Castile) and our palace nestled like a filigree ornament amid informal gardens where

spring scattered the hedges with wildflowers and tulips clustered about fountains.‟

Seated on a chair under a canopy, I watched my sister-in-law Margaret, pace the

gravel paths with my baby, Charles, in her arms, Eleanor teetering behind with

Madame de Halewin. My two-year-old daughter was growing into a sturdy child, her

Aragónese blood evident in her olive-tinted complexion and the green-amber eyes

that were so like mine. In contrast, my Charles was pure Habsburg, his preternaturally

solemn gaze enhanced by skin so white he could not be taken outdoors without his

oversize bonnet.

Margaret called to me: “
Chérie!
This boy is an angel, so patient and quiet.”

I smiled in response, fingering the gold filigree brooch Philip had given me in

honor of Charles‟ birth, a exquisite depiction of the castles and shields of Castile line in rubies. I was pleased to have Margaret home, if only for a short while. She had

arrived from Savoy declaring she might perish of boredom in her new husband‟s

court, where she literally had nothing to do all day than accumulate a new and

ostentatious wardrobe. Today she wore a pink gown slung with so many baubles she