The Queen's Vow: A Novel of Isabella of Castile (20 page)

Her withdrawal must have reminded Alfonso of our childhood, when he had shared a house with a mother he could not understand. He began to escape outside as often as he could despite the wind and snow, mending the animal pens, keeping the stables clean and warmed with braziers, and brushing and exercising the horses. As soon as the weather improved, he resumed his hunting, sometimes from morning till dusk, returning laden with early spring quail, partridge, and rabbit.

In April, I turned seventeen—a quiet birthday, like so many before. My mother had not left her rooms in months, oblivious to the birdsong heralding the long-awaited thaw. To keep busy, I supervised the cleaning of the entire castle. I set the maids to beating dust from our faded tapestries and carpets, boiling our linens in thyme-sweetened water, and airing our musty clothes. I had every floor scrubbed; even the privies did not escape my attention. I worked right alongside the servants, despite Doña Clara’s admonition that I’d chafe my hands, and collapsed exhausted into my bed every night, too tired to dream.

A courier came in June, bearing word from Carrillo. Though misfortune had dodged Enrique all winter, leaving him to wander Castile on his horse and seek refuge from whoever would open a door to him, with the advent of spring he had resurfaced in Madrid, where he refused to concede defeat. He had sent Queen Juana into semi-captivity in a remote castle when he discovered she was pregnant by a lover and he relayed to Carrillo that he now believed Joanna was not his child. He was willing to name Alfonso heir, but only if Alfonso refuted any right
to call himself king while Enrique lived. To bolster Enrique’s stance, Villena had bribed most of the grandees back to the king’s side and circulated pamphlets among the people declaring that Alfonso had illegally usurped the throne. Carrillo warned it was only a matter of time before everything collapsed; he was on his way to escort Alfonso to Toledo, where they could plan their defense.

Civil war loomed once more but this time, I would not be left behind. When Carrillo arrived with his retainers, I stood with Beatriz in the courtyard, our saddlebags packed and our horses ready. The archbishop scrutinized me from under his heavy brows, astride an enormous destrier that dwarfed my Canela. Carrillo’s stout cheeks were rubicund from the June sun, his forehead dripping sweat under a wide straw hat like those peasants wore to till the fields.

“I suppose this means you’re accompanying us?” he said without fanfare, as though we’d seen each other the previous week.

I nodded. “From now on, wherever my brother goes, so must I.”

He guffawed. “Yes, Arévalo’s no place to hide. I hear Afonso of Portugal is still eager for your hand. He’s even offered Villena a country in Africa if you consent. We can’t have them marrying you off to that conniving fool.”

I didn’t dignify him with a response. I had no doubt he’d have married me off to the conniving fool without compunction if it would secure Alfonso’s throne. In his eyes, I was just another infanta to be used. I turned from him to embrace Doña Clara.

She held me close. “I’ll see to your mother,” she whispered, “I promise.”

Mounting Canela, I followed Alfonso out.

A LAVENDER TWILIGHT
tinted the sky around the walls of Ávila, our first stop on the road to Segovia, when young Cárdenas, one of Carrillo’s favored pages, who hailed from the southern province of Andalucía, appeared on the road. He’d been sent ahead to the city to ensure that our lodgings were ready; he now materialized on his pony like a phantom, his face bone-white as he uttered terrifying words: “Plague has struck Ávila. We must turn away.”

My heart started to hammer. The dreaded pestilence had made an
early appearance this year; it was usually a bane of autumn. Carrillo barked orders at his retainers, ordering us to the nearby township of Cardeñosa, where we’d spend the night before departing at first light.

“We will eat and drink only what we carry,” he said as we dismounted, saddle sore and weary. “Anything else could be contaminated.”

Alfonso grimaced. “Who has ever caught plague from soup? I’m not going to bed on nuts and dried rabbit after riding all day. Find someone who can serve us a proper meal.”

Carrillo sent men ahead to seek out lodgings; the town mayor eagerly offered his own house, and there he served us a late supper of fresh-caught trout, cheese, and fruit. It was the best he could manage on short notice and we were grateful for it. Exhausted, we retired to our quarters, where Beatriz and I stripped to our shifts and fell fast asleep.

Urgent knocking at our door startled us awake. It was Cárdenas. The archbishop wished to see me at once, he said. I threw on my soiled clothes and yanked my hair into a net, following the fair-haired page downstairs. Through the windows of the hall where we’d dined last night, I glimpsed dawn gilding the horizon.

Carrillo waited at Alfonso’s door. I took one look at his face and my knees weakened. He opened the door without a word. Inside, motionless on the bed in his shirt and hose, was my brother. Chacón knelt at his side; at my entrance, he looked up. The anguish in his eyes tore at me.

“I found him like this,” he whispered. “He went to bed as usual, teasing me that I’d be cold in my cloak on the floor. But when I tried to wake him, he didn’t respond. He … he doesn’t seem to hear me.”

I couldn’t take a step forward. I strained my gaze toward Alfonso, seeking out the telltale buboes of plague, my throat so tight I could barely breathe.

“There are no sores,” Chacón said, sensing my fear. “He has no fever. If it’s the pestilence, I’ve never seen it manifest like this.”

I forced myself to move to the bed. Alfonso was so still he resembled a sculpture; I was certain he must be dead. I dug my nails into my palms, bending over him as Beatriz whispered anxiously from behind me, “Is he …?”

I nodded. “Yes, he’s breathing.” I touched his hand; his flesh was chilled, as though he had slept outside. I looked at Chacón in bewilderment. “If it’s not plague, then what can it be? What is wrong with him?”

“Show her.” Carrillo’s voice was inflectionless. I watched Chacón pry open my brother’s mouth, exposing a blackened tongue. I could not contain my gasp. And as I turned to meet Carrillo’s relentless stare, I already knew what he would say.

“This is Enrique’s doing. Your brother has been poisoned.”

BEATRIZ, CHACÓN, AND
I took turns sitting vigil at his bedside. Helpless, we watched as a local physician, summoned by Carrillo, bled Alfonso. The blood ran sluggish; the physician sniffed it several times before muttering that he found no evidence of poison. My brother’s tongue was swollen but no longer black; this sole sign of improvement was belied by his increasing stiffness, as if his life were leaving him in slow, inexorable stages.

After a full day and night, I was swaying with exhaustion on my stool and Beatriz finally insisted I go to the hall to eat something with Chacón, whom I’d sent out earlier. But I did not get farther than the passageway before I heard her cry out.

She stood trembling by the bed. As I came to her side, I saw Alfonso staring at us, his eyes vivid blue in the marble pallor of his face. His mouth hung open; from deep within his throat came a choked gurgle. Black fluid burst from his mouth and his nose; his body jerked in a spasm, his face contorting.

Then he went still.

“Blessed Virgin, no,” whispered Beatriz. “No, please. It cannot be.”

I felt a strange calm, almost as if I had gone numb. I knew my brother was gone but I took his wrist anyway, as I’d seen the physician do, to check his pulse. Then I quietly cleaned his face of the vile fluid and folded his hands across his chest.

“I love you, Alfonso,” I whispered as I kissed him for the last time. My hand quivered only slightly as I closed his eyes.

“You must tell the others,” I said to Beatriz. “His body must be prepared.”

She retreated. I went to my knees to pray for his immortal soul, for
he had not received Extreme Unction before death. I didn’t weep, though I had expected the grief to plunge me into an abyss. He had not yet reached the end of his fifteenth year—a beautiful prince imbued with endless promise, cut down in the very prime of his life.

I had lost my beloved brother. My mother had lost her only son.

Castile had lost its hope.

Yet as I knelt by his deathbed, hearing the clamor echoing in the hall—the cries of his servants and Carrillo’s ranting disbelief—all I could think was that I had become Castile’s new heir.

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

P
rincesa
, you must answer me. They are here again. They are waiting.”

The abbess’s voice reached me as if from across a vast divide. I slowly turned from where I knelt before the altar in Santa Ana’s chapel; I’d gone there every day since my brother’s funeral, searching for a peace that eluded me.

I saw in her firm stance that this time, she would not take no for an answer. I’d decided to seek refuge in the Convent of Santa Ana in Ávila, despite Beatriz’s terror of the plague and Carrillo’s demand that I fulfill my duty. I saw my brother’s corpse conveyed to the Franciscan monastery in Arévalo, veiled his body as the monks chanted the Vespers for the Dead. After he was entombed in a temporary niche and I paid for a funerary monument to be built, I proceeded to the castle to break the news to my blank-eyed mother. She turned away, walking back into her chamber without a word. I knew her grief would come later, plummeting her into an inconsolable abyss, and I left orders with Beatriz that my mother was not to be left alone, not even when she slept, lest she do some harm to herself.

As for me, I did not care that Ávila was quarantined, so desperately did I need to escape. As it turned out, the sick were in the poorer sections of the city and the sisters welcomed me with open arms, aware as only nuns can be that in those days of tumult and grief what I most needed was a place of solitude, where I could reflect.

Immured behind bolted gates, I donned the white of mourning, refusing all privileges to live as the nuns did, beholden to the daily toll of bells. The numbness I’d felt at my brother’s passing soon gave way to visceral grief. I kept remembering him as he’d been when we were growing up in Arévalo, fascinated by the natural world around him; as a
youth enraptured by the hunt, who had a gift for soothing horses and dogs; and, finally, as the rebellious lost prince he would now forever be.

Eventually, acceptance sank in. The realization came that I must find a way to live, and this was my hardest challenge. Yet as the raw pain faded, I lay awake every night pondering what to do, fighting back near-paralyzing fear at the thought of Carrillo seeking to wield his power through me or of Enrique amassing an army to take me down while Villena and the other grandees plotted to destroy me.

I had read enough of our history to know that if female succession was not forbidden in Castile as it was in Aragón, no one actually believed a woman capable of ruling. The few who had succeeded had encountered relentless opposition, sacrificing everything to retain their tenuous power. In the end, none had lived a happy life; all had paid a price for the right to call themselves queen.

Was this what God required of me?

The question burned in my mind. If I forsook my right as Enrique’s heir, agreeing instead to uphold the oath sworn to Joanna as princess, I would condemn Castile to chaos, to the rapacity of those like Villena. They would set Joanna on the throne after Enrique’s death and marry her off to some prince they could manipulate, ransacking the realm as if it were their private larder until there was nothing left. But if I chose to fight then I would brand Joanna with the stigma of illegitimacy for the rest of her life. I’d face the same forces that had turned my brothers into enemies, that had already cost Castile so much.

Neither choice would give me happiness. Yet after a month of prayer and private turmoil, after repeatedly denying entrance to the lords who came to the convent doors every week to request audience with me, I finally came to one inescapable truth.