The Queen's Vow: A Novel of Isabella of Castile (45 page)

I snorted. “I’d rather offer a barrage of cannon fire.”

She chuckled. “No doubt, but gunpowder is expensive and Afonso is a coward. He’ll hide in his fortress and make you do all the work. But if you offer a treaty and insist on negotiating with your own mother’s sister, Princess Beatrice, then you—”

“—could request that la Beltraneja’s custody be strictly enforced,” I cut in and smiled. “Beatriz, you should have been a diplomat. It’s perfect: Afonso will not dare refuse me, especially if I sweeten the offer with the promise that once my Isabel comes of age, we’ll consider a marriage alliance with the son of his heir the crown prince, whom he has not wed to la Beltraneja because of the age difference. I can trump him at his own game and still give him what he wants: pride of place, and a healthy dowry through Isabel to boot.”

Beatriz nodded, picking up my stack of linens. “Get to work then,” she said. “Anything’s better than watching you mope and drag your feet for the next eight months.”

I laughed, turning to my desk to ink my quill with renewed purpose.

King Afonso returned word that he would meet me at our border to discuss my proposal. It was time we put an end to this quarrel, once and for all, he wrote. Yet after I’d undertaken the two-day journey by litter to the windswept castle of Alcántara, leaving my children in Beatriz’s care, I was informed that the king had fallen ill. I was left stewing for two weeks before I received word that he was dispatching Joanna herself, along with my stated preference for a representative, my maternal aunt Beatrice of Portugal.

I embraced the tall, elegantly dressed blood relative I’d never met till now. Her blue-green eyes and oval face were achingly reminiscent of my mother’s. I sensed at once that Beatrice was an ally, and indeed, as soon as our pleasantries were dispensed with, she stated that she wanted lasting peace between our nations.

“We are neighbors. It hardly benefits us to be at each other’s throats,” she said, with a lift of her fair brow, “seeing as we share a border and family ties.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” I replied. “And is the king also in agreement that the child’s care should be transferred to you?”

“He is.” Beatrice paused. “I fear the child’s opinion is another matter,” she added, and she rose from her upholstered chair to open the doors. Joanna appeared. She came before me, stiff as a pole in her rich dark velvet.

I forced out a smile. “My child, how lovely to see you again; you’re a woman grown.”

And she was—most alarmingly, in fact. I had forgotten she wasn’t the little girl I’d escorted about the gardens of the alcazar, not a plump underage pawn to be molded by my will. At sixteen, Joanna might have been beautiful, had she not a prematurely embittered cast to her features. As I covertly searched her for any resemblance to my late brother, I found only her mother, Queen Juana, in her features. She was slim as yew, with the same seductive black eyes, lustrous hair, and sullen lips. I tried to overlook her pointed refusal to curtsey or show me any other sign of deference, but the sight of her coiled thorns about my heart. She was a sworn foe, fully capable of making herself some other troublesome prince’s wife, if not Afonso’s queen; the last thing I needed was a rival shadowing my every move, a figurehead behind which malcontents, such as those in Extremadura, could rally.

“Do you remember me?” I asked her, and I could tell by the flash in her eyes that she did, though it suited her to feign otherwise. She did not reply.

“Answer Her Majesty,” snapped Beatrice, sharply nudging the girl.

Joanna’s eyes narrowed. “I see no queen here,” she intoned, in a high nasal voice meant to carry. “Unless you would prefer that I answer my own self?”

Beatrice gave her a withering look before turning to me. “The child has cultivated airs at court that ill suit her. She’s spent too much time absorbing others’ suppositions.”

“Evidently,” I said. I did not remove my stare from Joanna, but to my disconcertion, she did not avert her gaze, returning my regard with such calculated effrontery I found myself clenching my fists under my sleeves.

“So, you believe you bear more right to the crown than me?” I asked bluntly.

Her slight flinch revealed she wasn’t as contemptuous as she’d have me think. She did not answer at once; her mouth was pinched, as if she gnawed at the inside of her lip.

Then she blurted, “I believe I am King Enrique’s sole heir. I believe you, Princess Isabella, have usurped my throne and let it be bantered about that I am a bastard. But in my veins runs blood as pure as yours, for I too am of the royal houses of Portugal and Castile.”

“Is that so?” I did not shift a muscle. Inside me, cold certainty took hold. She must be disposed of. I could no longer afford to disdain the threat she posed.

I said to my aunt, “In this case, I believe we have much to discuss. Clearly my original plan was too lenient.” It was an unmistakable threat and Joanna reacted just as I hoped.

“I will not be denied!” she erupted. “You cannot fool me with your arrangements and petty lies. I am the rightful queen of Castile! I will never renounce my claim to you.
Never!
”

Spittle sprayed from her lips, her entire body taut. I watched Beatrice’s expression shift from discomfited embarrassment to resolution.

“The child obviously needs a calming tonic,” she remarked, and she rose and came to me, linking her arm in mine to draw us toward the gallery. We left Joanna standing there, rigid, aware that all her scheming, all the indignities she believed she had endured, were about to be ignored.

Though I didn’t look back, I felt her eyes boring into my back.

A MONTH LATER
, I bid my aunt a fond farewell. The winds buffeted me where I stood on the drawbridge, sending my cloak swirling as I watched the Portuguese retinue lumber off. It had been an exhausting four weeks of negotiation, during which I’d gamely fought off my daily malaise. Beatrice had proved a canny spokeswoman for Portugal, certainly far abler than the blustering Afonso in her eloquent support of her nation’s cause.

Nevertheless, I prevailed. I steadfastly refused any concessions to
lost territories or monies, citing the fact that Portugal had invaded us, not the other way around. While I agreed to the original proposal in which my daughter Isabel would be sent as a bride for the son of Portugal’s crown prince, and ceded crucial exploration rights on the open sea, on one point I was immutable: Joanna must renounce all claim to my throne. If she liked, she could wait a requisite number of years under guardianship in a convent until my son came of age, at which time a union between them would be considered. Or she could take holy vows now. To preempt further conspiracies in her name I stipulated that under no circumstances was she to continue to make unfounded assertions about her paternity.

I allowed her six months to reach a decision. As the litter drew away I saw its curtains flick back and I was treated to a last glimpse of her face. The hatred in her eyes pierced me where I stood; but in her bitter pallor, I already read defeat.

She would die before she submitted to my terms. Like her mother before her, she had too much conceit and not enough sense. She’d delay as much as she could, staving off the inevitable, but in the end she’d have no other choice. Immured in a convent, she would live out the rest of her days as an unwilling bride of Christ, forgotten by the world.

Still, as she vanished forever from my life, I shuddered to contemplate the havoc she might have wreaked, had she been able to prove what she so fervently believed.

FOLLOWING THE SIGNING
of our treaty with Portugal, Fernando and I repaired to Toledo. There, on November 6th, I delivered my third child.

This time, my labor was brief, a mere few hours of discomfort. As the midwife set my newborn child in my arms, I thought without doubt she was my most beautiful—a perfect infant in every way, down to the fuzz of reddish curls on her still-soft crown, her milky skin, and her languid amber-tinted eyes. She did not fuss; rather, she was content to lie cradled beside me, as if her abrupt entrance into the world had left her unaffected. Though I should have been disappointed that she wasn’t
the boy we had hoped for, a fierce protectiveness overcame me as I held her, coupled with sudden sorrow.

Like my Isabel, she would grow up, and one day leave for a distant court as a bride. I’d schooled myself not to let my emotions get the better of me when it came to my daughters; unlike Juan, who would stay and inherit our kingdoms, I knew from the start that an infanta’s duty lay elsewhere.

Still, there was something so compelling about this child, as if the bond severed with the belly cord had not actually separated us. I kept her with me until Fernando tiptoed into my chamber to stand at the foot of the bed, regarding me with a quizzical air.

“Rumor is you’ll not surrender her to the wet nurse. The ladies are scandalized. They think you’ll nurse her yourself.”

“She’s not hungry yet.” I peeled back the edge of fleece swathing her face. “Look: she’s fast asleep. She’s been like this since they gave her to me. She’s so at ease, it’s almost unnatural. Have you ever seen a newborn so quiet?”

He came around the bed to gaze at her. “Her hair is red, like my mother’s.”

“Then we must call her Juana,” I said, “in honor of your mother.” I craned over to kiss her warm forehead, upon which life had yet to inscribe any lessons.

“Infanta Juana,” echoed Fernando and he smiled. “Yes, it suits her.”

“
YOUR MAJESTIES, WE
must put the edict into effect.”

We sat in the council chamber of Toledo’s alcazar; outside, a chill evening rain plunged winter’s veil over the streets. It was late. We had just finished another long day of negotiations with our Cortes, comprising thirty-four procurators from Castile’s seventeen major cities. Fernando and I had directed our joint efforts toward the strengthening of our authority, setting into motion an ambitious, years-long agenda for revision of our legal codes and taxation.

Now, bleary-eyed and fatigued, we faced Cardinal Mendoza and the ecclesiastic committee we’d authorized two years earlier to investigate
the allegations of converso heresy in Castile. Beside me, Fernando sat sunk in his chair, his ringed hand at his chin as he regarded with shadowed eyes the stack of papers heaped on the table before us—an assiduous collection of scandalous indictments of priests who had counseled students against the Virgin and the cult of saints; furtive testimonies of neighbors who’d seen friends eat unleavened bread and place coins in the mouths of their dead, like the Jews; reports of converso parents who’d washed away with spit the oil of Holy Baptism from their babes’ brows; even unsubstantiated, horrific rumors of the torture of Christian boys during Holy Week, in mockery of our Savior’s passion. They all pointed to the same, inescapable conclusion.

“You’re certain?” said Fernando, his voice hoarse from the day’s sessions. “You believe without any doubt that these false conversos subvert our Church and even gain profit by it?”

“Yes,
Majestad
.” Mendoza motioned to Fray Torquemada. I tensed in my chair as the ascetic Dominican friar stood, his black robe clinging to his jutting shoulders. He’d become even more emaciated since I’d last seen him, so much so that at first I thought he was mortally ill—a skeletal figure of sinew and bone, without any color in his gaunt face. It seemed impossible he could move at all, malnourished as he was; yet his pale eyes smoldered with undeniable fervor. Here, at long last, was the moment he had awaited.

I concealed my dread as he began to speak.

“It is all true,” he said, in his low, passionless voice. “And there is more—much more than even we can imagine. In addition to their secret Judaizing, these filthy Marranos ally with the Jews, extorting loans from good Christians at exorbitant interest and controlling the monies available. Not one Jew breaks the earth or becomes a carpenter or laborer; all seek comfortable posts with the ultimate goal of gleaning profit at others’ expense. Their wealth exceeds the Crown’s. Like the infidel, they dine on gold while many starve.”