The Mapmaker's Daughter (29 page)

The kind of person who could force a doting husband to sacrifice his closest friend just to please her. Alvaro de Luna, the man who had tried to poison Elizabeth, had been assigned as Juan’s page when the prince was only six years old, and as Juan grew, Luna’s power grew with him. When Juan became king, Luna was appointed mayordomo, his chief of staff. Because Juan did not really want to take on the work of ruling his country, he named Luna Constable of Castile and let him make most of the decisions.

This upstart was not going to tell a royal princess of Portugal and the Queen of Castile what to do! Elizabeth used everything in her power—whining, tantrums, silences, seduction—to get Juan to sign an order of execution. The morning of Luna’s death, lightning struck the palace where Juan was in residence, and in the blue flash, the king saw a vision of his beheaded friend, who told him he would be explaining to God in a year’s time why he had repaid his mayordomo’s faithful service in this fashion. Stricken by remorse and without Luna to restrain him, the king fell into debauchery, recovering from one illness only to come down with another. Luna was right. One year after the execution, Juan was dead.

With her husband gone, Elizabeth’s power vanished. El Impotente was king. That insignificant baby we waited for Queen Eleanor to give birth to when Elizabeth and I were girls in Lisbon, the girl so quickly forgotten after Eleanor lost the regency, had become Enrique’s wife, Queen Juana of Castile.

The sound of my laughter echoes off the bare walls. Insignificant baby girls have a way of surprising people. Isabella, born with little chance for the throne, turned out to be one of those. If El Impotente had managed to have a son, Isabella would not be queen, Ferdinand would not be king, and I would not be in this room.

Perhaps. Who knows? Why bother with these thoughts? Isabella happened. I’ll leave the fantasies of better outcomes to others. The atlas feels so heavy in my lap I don’t open it, and thoughts of that little princess in Arévalo will not go away.

ARÉVALO 1461

In the two years I’ve been at Elizabeth’s court, I’ve come to understand what is going on behind her daughter’s eyes. Something in Isabella seems to be lying in wait, as if she is measuring everything for how she might use it in the future. She’s obedient not because she lacks stubbornness or courage but because, at least for now, listening serves her best.

She can be willful, even cruel. Her little brother is often reduced to tears by her tantrums, which always happen out of range of anyone whose opinion matters. This doesn’t include either me or her maids, who mutter out of earshot about how one would think she and not Juana was the Queen of Castile, with the airs she puts on.

Eliana dislikes her, but Isabella is unconcerned. My daughter goes off every day to be with the Jewish friends she has made in Arévalo, and she cares as little about Isabella as the princess does about her.

And yet, there’s a charming side to Isabella too. In town, she enchants the merchants, claps her hands at the bands of entertainers who pass through, and gives alms to the poor and maimed. Everyone in town loves her, offering her treats and little gifts, feeding her more by their adoration than their ribbons and candied fruit.

She is second in line to the throne, after her younger brother, for there must be no male candidate before Castile will consider a queen. She will find herself further removed from power if El Impotente manages to produce an heir. Often, when we stop to survey the magnificent countryside while out riding, I wonder what she is thinking. Perhaps that it’s better not to get too attached to anything or anyone, because she is likely to be sent elsewhere as a bride.

At such times I pity this little princess, who keeps her thoughts hidden behind her aloof manners and calculating eyes. For all the demands people rush to indulge, she cannot order up a future to her liking, and in many ways I am freer—and luckier—than she is.

***

When I first came to Castile, I found it strange that when people here spoke of the infidel, they meant Muslims, because I’d just come from a place where the infidels were Christians.

People are terrified that the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans a few years back will soon bring Muslim armies here to restore their lost glory in the land they named al-Andalus. Castilians are stockpiling bludgeons and sharpened sticks to defend themselves against Christ-hating invaders coming to batter down their doors. From every pulpit, sermons about the victory of Christendom ring forth. Church coffers bulge, and thousands of men all over Castile stand ready to march south to conquer the last Muslim stronghold in Granada.

The wealthiest of them will be in full battle dress on mounted steeds, but the poorest will be armed with little more than the pope’s word that even if they drown in a creek or die of gangrene from an infected toenail before they get there, the mere act of setting out to destroy the infidel gives them a free pass into heaven. For the nobles, what could be better than returning home covered with honors, laden with booty and perhaps a new title or two, with minstrels telling of their heroic exploits to rapt audiences? Everyone wants a good war, it seems.

Except El Impotente. From what I’ve seen of Enrique, he doesn’t care about anything except a big dinner and a fine pack of hounds. The king prefers to march south, threaten Granada, demand tribute from the caliph, and come home with most of the war chest unspent. He rewards some nobles with land, treasure, and title to ensure that the disgruntled remainder, who have nothing but debt to show for following him, don’t have the numbers to form a hostile alliance against him.

The king travels around Castile most of the year, and he is now in Arévalo for a visit with Elizabeth. I’ve never seen a ruler so unregal. From the way the man smells, I think he must sleep with his dogs. While Enrique swaggers through the halls of the castle or sleeps off his wine, his men make a shambles of the taverns. Bar wenches are brutalized, and the churches are filled with people praying to be delivered from a pestilence that must, at least at the moment, seem worse than the Moors.

We rarely leave our quarters for fear of running into the king’s retinue. Usually, after Eliana finishes her lessons, she runs off to spend the day with her Jewish friends. One of them has a handsome older brother, so I imagine they whisper and plot as Elizabeth, Beatriz, and I did, doing very little of the sewing for their wedding trousseaus that is supposed to keep them occupied. Eliana hasn’t gone out since Enrique arrived, though, and stuck here in the palace with little to do, she is again the morose company I had when we first came here.

Elizabeth has been beside herself with anxiety. At the age of three, her daughter was betrothed to Ferdinand, son of the King of Aragon. Enrique broke this engagement when Isabella was nine, preferring that she marry Carlos of Navarre, another son of the same king. When Carlos died by poison on his way to formalize the arrangement, Isabella became unbetrothed. Enrique is here to take up the issue with Elizabeth again, although in the end he will make whatever arrangements he wants, with or without her approval.

As Elizabeth’s privada, I sit in on their conversations, though it is clear Enrique would prefer to browbeat his stepmother alone. His huge feet and hands are visible outside the coarse and foul-smelling cloak he favors, which hangs over a corpulent body clothed in a tunic spotted with grease from his last meal. His auburn eyebrows are bushy and almost as curly as his beard, which points forward at a peculiar angle. He has a crooked, smashed-looking nose as a result of a childhood fall, and this, combined with his beard, makes his profile as concave as a quarter moon.

Colorless eyes look out coldly at Elizabeth from under reddened, crusty lids. “I must say I am rather disappointed in you,” he says. “I thought you would favor a marriage between your daughter and the King of Portugal. Afonso is your cousin, and my God, woman, you still insist on speaking Portuguese here.”

Enrique reached down to scratch his dingy stockings, and my eyes follow his movement. I inherited keen vision from the mapmakers in my family, and I see the tiny black specks. Fleas, I think to myself. The King of Castile has fleas.

“I love Portugal,” Elizabeth says, “but the king is twenty-nine, and my daughter is eleven. She is too young to marry, and I am hoping for someone closer to her own age when the time comes.”

Enrique laughs. “Afonso and Isabella are far closer in age than you and my father.”

I can see Elizabeth struggling. She’s been in tears most of the time since she learned the purpose of Enrique’s visit, and she was so horrified by the prospect of meeting with him today that she vomited in her dressing room before he arrived.

“Yes,” she replies, “I realize that such marriages can succeed, but as you see, when one person is much older than the other, the time to be together may be sadly short.”

Enrique pulls himself up in his chair. “Who are any of us to say how long God wills us to be here?” I have the urge to pick up the knitting in my lap and stab him with the needles for invoking the Holy One in such an unctuous and self-serving way.

“And really,” Enrique goes on, “isn’t marrying for happiness a bit quaint?”

I open my mouth to reply, but I lack the status to be critical of him or even to speak at all. Elizabeth sees me, though, and says she wants to hear what I think.

Enrique leans back and drapes his elbows casually on the arms of his chair. His eyes hint of menace as he takes me in.

“I think everyone hopes to find happiness with a spouse, and parents are right to prefer that their children enter marriages with at least a reasonable chance of that.”

Enrique stares coldly, and prickles of anxiety crawl down my back.

“I don’t wish to speak cruelly of your own difficulties,” Elizabeth says to him, “but perhaps the feelings of a parent for a child are something you don’t understand.”

A smile slowly curls his lips. “My, my,” he says, “how delicately put.” The smile vanishes. “And how reasoned. How sane.” I see Elizabeth’s face grow paler. Her vacillating moods are famous, and Enrique has been spreading rumors that the Queen Widow of Castile is mad.

He leans back in his chair. “And besides, I have news I want you to be the first to know.”

He smirks, forcing her to wait before he speaks. “My wife is with child.”

“With child?” Elizabeth’s eyes widen. I manage to keep my jaw from dropping, but barely. After all these years, is El Impotente suddenly able to perform?

“And of course, if it’s a boy…” He pauses to make sure Elizabeth is listening. “Your son won’t be heir to the throne anymore.”

Elizabeth must be stunned to the core, but she composes herself. Her voice is eerily calm. “And if it’s a girl,” she says, “why don’t you promise her to the King of Portugal instead of my daughter? After all, you don’t think age is important in a marriage.”

I want to applaud. She has summoned this self-possessed person from somewhere inside her, and I only wish she could do it more often.

“I would, if it were best for Castile,” he says, ignoring the acid in her tone.

Best for Castile? That stinking carcass of a man cares only about himself. When he shifts his weight to let out a loud, noxious fart, I can’t help but think that is his answer to, and his true opinion of, his stepmother and his country.

***

With Enrique’s men wreaking havoc in the town, Eliana and I leave with some reluctance to go, as we always do, for Shabbat dinner at the home of Jewish friends. I love these afternoons with my daughter. Now, just turned fourteen, she has forgotten her anger with me at leaving Granada and has become a pretty and poised young woman. After we eat, she and her friends usually go off to share secrets out of earshot, but they always return for the songs and dancing.

Eliana is more skilled than I on the castanets, and she has a beautiful voice. Hearing her sing the same melodies my mother did sometimes leaves me in tears. My grandmother is dead now too, and I imagine they are looking down, watching my daughter with the same pride I feel.

By now, the news has spread that Queen Juana is pregnant, and no one wants to talk about anything else. Sadia, our host, seems to know every rumor. “There’s something wrong with his prick,” she tells me when her husband isn’t listening. “It’s corked up at the top, I heard. That’s why he can’t put his seed in a woman.”

“That can’t be right,” I tell her. “If Blanche of Navarre was a virgin when their marriage was annulled, he never got it inside her. It would have to be more than corked up at the top.”

Sadia shakes her head. “It’s probably what they say, then—that he likes men.”

Unbidden memories of Diogo make me shudder. “I think he prefers dogs,” I say. “He already smells like one.”

Sadia laughs so hard she almost chokes. When she recovers, she puts her hands on her hips in mock indignation. “Amalia, you are wicked—and on Shabbat too!” She looks around and moves closer. “Tell me more!”

“I don’t know anything. I stay away from him.”

“Well, you hear what the servants are saying, don’t you?”

“Not really.”

Sadia always learns more in the square than I do in the palace.

“Queen Juana is a wild one,” she whispers. “She’s been having an affair with someone named Beltrán de la Cueva, and he’s the real father of the child.”

“Does Enrique know?”

“He must if he’s never stuck it in her, don’t you think?”

The importance of this hits me like a falling stone wall. Normally Beltrán would pay with his life for cuckolding a king, and Enrique’s unfaithful wife would find herself banished to some distant castle or nunnery, but oddly, they have done the king a service. Enrique wants an heir so badly he apparently doesn’t care if the blood of the royal house of Trastámara, the line chosen by God to rule, is replaced by some minor nobleman’s. Will no Trastámara blood flow in the next ruler’s veins? How will Castile pay for this disrespect of God’s will?

It is getting late, and since the palace is not far, I decide I am sufficient escort for my daughter. We are in one of the narrow streets leading into the main square when two of Enrique’s guards block our progress.