The Scroll of Seduction (30 page)

“But why did he feel the need to do that?” I asked. “Juana was quite obedient.”

“She was obedient but not docile. And Ferdinand had many enemies among the Castilian nobles. He was afraid that if they had free access to the queen, they might take advantage of the quarrels between father and daughter to convince her to act against him. He was afraid that Juana, furious at having been separated from little Ferdinand, might retaliate. He was afraid she might name Emperor Maximilian regent until Charles was old enough to rule. He felt that if Juana continued to be free, she might put his interests in jeopardy. Knowing that no one would object if he pulled her out of the game, Ferdinand preferred not to run those risks. He felt he could do anything if he used her “madness” as a justification. After all, Philippe had already paved the way.”

“You have to admit, though, that Juana's behavior was somewhat unrestrained: her love for Philippe, her subservience to her father, the ways in which she chose to rebel that left her open to people's scorn.”

Manuel gaped at me, his brow furrowed, as if he couldn't believe what he'd just heard. To see him there, comfortably reclined on the sofa by the fireplace, pressing the tips of his long fingers together, made me think of the day I first met him at the Hotel Palace.

“Love, that strange word.
Juana had no one on her side, and her father was very powerful. It happens to this day. Just look at our own family histories: my mother died alone in a hotel room. You mother died for love too, even if she took your father with her.” Manuel stood up and began pacing in front of the fireplace. “My grandparents were incredibly cruel to my mother because she fell in love with a nobody. In a way, they drove her to what she did, to kill herself. In this world we usually receive the worst blows from the people we love the most. Therefore the crimes of passion, the madness of love. Lovers give each other a bunch of arrows and then hang a bull's-eye on their chests. In theory, both agree not to attack, but if the pact is broken…a bloodbath ensues.”

“How is it that you know so much about all this?” I asked sarcastically.

“I'm a historian,” he said with a wry smile. “Just look at Ferdinand, fifty-three years old, and he marries Germaine de Foix, the niece of the
king of France, who was only seventeen. He tried everything to have a son with her, and in the end, the concoctions Germaine gave him to try to arouse his virility were what killed him. Love, the loss of love. From Troy to the Anglican Church, what other abstract concept has had so much influence on the course of history? And as far as Juana's methods go, back then, no one understood them. She was very modern in that sense; she believed in her own, individual strength. In the end, the very thing that, according to some people, caused her downfall enabled her to survive as long as she did in Tordesillas.”

M
anuel's classes had been dismissed for Christmas vacation. It was snowing in Madrid, which was unusual. Through the kitchen window, the yard was a beautiful, ghostly white. I was coming to the end of
Jane Eyre
and drinking chamomile tea in the library. There was nothing more befitting that silent mansion full of secrets than sitting around reading Brontë. The fictional world that Manuel and his Aunt Águeda inhabited was not without its charms. And in that world, I was Juana. As enamored of and possessed by the queen's ghost as they were.

Browsing through the packed bookshelves in the library, I found several genealogical references to the Denias, some of which were quite amusing. They hailed from Valencia. One of the first Sandovals, Sando Cuervo, had met his death saving King Pelayo's life as the king crossed over a gorge on a beam of wood. Another ancestor had accidentally killed King Enrique I with a tile. The Denia coat of arms showed Don Pelayo's black beam of wood. Later, five stars were added when the family became related to the Rojases by marriage. I also found facsimiles of Charles V and the Marquis of Denia's letters regarding the care of Doña Juana. There were full of polite expressions, but it didn't take much to see the degree of complicity between the Denias and the emperor when it came to the web of falsehoods in which they kept Juana, denying her information about what was going on beyond the four walls of Tordesillas Palace. Using the excuse that the presence of other ladies “disqui
eted” her, Denia surrounded Juana with women in his own family who were part of the conspiracy to keep her isolated. So that she could never escape vigilance, the marquis ordered that there always be one woman inside her rooms, while another kept watch at her door. Juana had absolutely no privacy. Her every move was monitored by the household staff.

What stunned me the most as I read through the correspondence was to corroborate that her own son Charles had no qualms about putting her away, nor about doing everything he could to keep her from receiving news or getting in touch with the outside world. In his letters to Denia, he even approved the use of physical force in “extreme cases,” leaving it to the marquis to judge which of the queen's actions might be worthy of that label.

 

THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS, MANUEL WALKED INTO THE KITCHEN
and up to his Aunt Águeda. He snuck up unexpectedly and took the key hanging from the key chain at her waist–the one that opened the wooden box where she kept all the keys to the rooms on the upper floors. Sitting there drinking coffee, I could see her stiffen at his playful affection when he grabbed her waist as she was laying silverware out on the kitchen table.

“I think I remember where the nativity scene is,” he said. “I'll go bring it down so we can have a little Christmas spirit around here.”

“I'll go with you,” she said, turning toward the door. “You don't know where things are. You haven't been up there in so long.”

“Oh, Auntie, don't worry. If I can't find it, I'll call you, but I don't want you to come with me. I want you to let Lucía and I go up there alone.” He spoke with authority, as if to a child. I couldn't see either of their expressions, just Manuel's back, but I gathered this wasn't the first time they'd had this discussion.

“All right, all right, but don't touch anything. Leave everything the way it is.”

She went back to her silverware, her back bent over the table. I saw a look of sulking distrust come over the face framed by the blond, impeccably coiffed hairdo. She looked like a cat forced to remain in place,
claws at the ready. Manuel had me go upstairs ahead of him. The third floor smelled of wax and cleanliness. From there one could get a view of the floor below the staircase, the circular foyer inlaid with the precious stones arranged in a circle, like a solar system full of multicolored planets. Manuel stopped in the hallway by two heavy, modern doors with several locks on them. He opened the one on the left, unlocking it with several keys, one of which I remember was very long.

Since the room was very dark, I couldn't make out anything until Manuel turned on the wrought iron lamps hanging from the ceiling and opened the curtains. I found myself in a sort of overcrowded but impeccably clean museum, with tall, glass-encased bookshelves lining the walls and an assortment of Castilian-style furniture arranged in groups by type: armchairs with bronze appliqués, platforms, footstools, tray tables, bureaus, braziers, objects whose names I learned that afternoon as Manuel pointed them out. Judging by the doors on the hallway, the large rectangular salon at some point must have been several contiguous rooms. Behind the glass doors of the shelves lined against the wall there were antique books, crucifixes, ciboria, large vessels such as the ones used in religious ceremonies, small daggers, glasses, combs, board games, rings, brooches, silver candlesticks, mirrors, objects that sparkled even in the dim light from the lamps above. In one corner stood a tall wooden container, filled with tapestries and rugs, all neatly rolled up and labeled with little white tags. Besides them, the only discordant element in the tidy organization of the room was a series of old boxes and trunks stacked one on top of the other.

“Doña Juana's riches were lost along the way. Some of them were lost on the ships that sank on her first voyage to Flanders and her two voyages back to Spain. The Flemish carted off some of her things when Philippe died. Then her children, Charles, Catalina, and Leonor, plundered the bulk of her jewels even when she was still alive. What we have here is just a minuscule sample of what remained in my family. I haven't been able to determine exactly everything they kept, but look, for example, this is the solid gold crucifix that Juana gave her son Ferdinand”–he pointed–“and there are eight missals with priceless miniatures, tapestries, altarpieces. Did you know that back then they calculated what
altarpieces were worth not by the painter's skill but by how much gold they contained?”

Manuel went up to a long, low piece of furniture with vertical dividers and pulled out paintings depicting religious scenes: the Nativity, the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi. He said they'd been painted by Flemish masters: Van der Weyden, Memling. Priceless.

I wandered back and forth, incredulous, drinking up everything with my eyes, fascinated. To be amid the objects that at one time had been a part of Juana's daily life was like seeing the scattered pieces of a loved one's existence after her painful, tragic death. I imagined her hands handling these utensils, the pressure of her fingers around a glass or a crucifix, the sweat of her palms. It was as if memories became condensed, giving me a feel for visions I had only partially imagined, making them present, palpable.

I'd say that lingering among Juana's belongings, I felt my identification with her reach a level that even to me bordered on hallucination. I felt as if I was her returned to life, revisiting her lost past. My body got chilled and I shivered, apprehensive, looking at Manuel, wondering whether he carried with him his family's cruel streak.

He had no idea of my frame of mind. He was rummaging around in drawers, looking for the nativity scene, I guess. Suddenly he pulled out a photo album.

“Look what we have here!! Family pictures. Let's take them down to the library. Let me show them to you.” He handed me the leather-bound album and kept fumbling around, moving things back and forth.

I think I grabbed onto the picture album in the hopes that looking at more modern family members would allow me to break the inexplicable, powerful spell that had me confused between reality and imagination. I sat on a leather armchair that was flanked by different kinds of tables and opened the album. It was filled with Denia family pictures. I recognized them by their coloring. Thin, well-dressed men and women, the women wearing coquettish feathered hats, from the early twentieth century, or perhaps the end of the nineteenth. It was hard to know for sure. I wondered if there would be a picture of Manuel's mother. I flicked through the pages and came to a series of pictures of the house. There
was one of the third floor, of the very same room we were in. Águeda had said it was her father's study. I guessed he must be the man with the eye patch sitting behind the desk, wearing a suit and bow tie. The study with its tall wood panneling looked very classy. My mind, with no particular intent, began to supersimpose the previous layout of the room to the current one, trying to place where this or that would have been. I noticed the absence of two windows that, in the photograph, could be seen behind Manuel's grandfather. It was puzzling. Those windows were nonexistent in the present-day room, there wasn't even a trace, as is usually the case when windows are sealed over. Surely you'd be able to see some sign of them on the wall, I thought. Instead, the room seemed smaller, as if it had been shrunk by a feat of magic.

“This room used to be bigger when your grandfather was alive, wasn't it?”

“I don't think so. Why do you ask?”

“Because of this picture. It seems there were two more windows in this room.”

“It seems we found the nativity scene,” he exclaimed. I got up, photo album in hand, and walked over to him.

He was taking the little figurines out of their protective straw packing and showing me the sixteenth-century Castilian-style, polychrome religious images. I put the photo album down on a table and sat down to admire them one by one. They were gorgeous. Fine, angelic faces, sweet, pious expressions in their glass eyes, rich satin and velvet gowns embroidered with gold thread. There was the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, baby Jesus, the mule, the ox, and the manger. Afterward, I helped him repack everything back in the box, since he said it would be easier to carry it downstairs.

Finally we turned out the light, Manuel locked the door, and we took the box down with us, along with the photo album.

For Christmas Eve dinner, his Aunt Águeda announced that she'd prepare roast leg of lamb, trout mousse, and the traditional Christmas almond
turrón
for dessert. She and Manuel would go shopping so that we could also have some champagne along with caviar, Serrano ham, Manchego cheese, and I don't know what else before dinner. I'd stay
home to set the table, complete with tablecloth, candles, and the silverware that Águeda had polished. Excited at the prospect, I said good-bye and planned to get down to work. I don't remember exactly what I was doing when I heard the alarm system that locked the house at night start up. It was a sound that always scared the daylights out of me, the sound of all those antiques being sealed, lock, stock, and barrel, in an airtight vault. I jumped, as I always did, and then realized that they had left, and I was locked up with their treasures. I ran to the kitchen door and tried to open it. It wouldn't budge. Nor would any of the windows or other doors I tried. Breaking into a sweat, I told myself to calm down and not lose my cool, that Manuel and his aunt wouldn't be gone long. Getting hysterical wouldn't do me any good. But I couldn't calm down. I was panting, and I knew I'd hyperventilate if I took in more oxygen than my lungs could process, but I couldn't stop. I remembered there was a girl who fainted a lot at school, and Mother Luisa used to put a paper bag over her mouth. So I got a paper bag and started breathing into it. I couldn't understand why they had thought it was necessary to leave me shut up under lock and key inside that big old house. What if something happened to them and they couldn't come back? What if a short circuit started a fire while they were gone? The electric wiring in that house was ancient and dysfunctional. In the kitchen, you couldn't use the toaster if someone was running hot water. The circuits were always getting overloaded. Even my hair dryer was a problem. When I used it at night, it made the lights flicker. “Old houses have their ticks, child,” the aunt would say, undisturbed.

I looked out the window. The winter garden was laid bare, lifeless, full of withered, dry leaves. On the ground, the shadow of the naked trunk of the chestnut tree with its branches spread out looked like a deformed monster lurching toward the house. It was a sunny day, at least, and that consoled me somewhat. Suddenly, my willing confinement was forcefully imposed on me. They'll be right back, they'll be right back, I kept thinking. Better to convince myself nothing dramatic was about to take place. The Denias were going to return in a few hours. There wasn't going to be a fire. I had to calm down. I went to the kitchen and drank a glass of wine. It did me good, warmed me up. My cheeks were burning.
Slightly more composed, I was suddenly possessed by the ridiculous fear that I might bump into Philippe the Handsome's ghost wandering about the house. You can't be such a fool! I told myself repeatedly. Philippe is in Granada! And I recalled my trip to the mausoleum and the glib tour guide who explained the sculptor Domenico Fancelli's intention in making the head of Philippe's effigy–in contrast to Juana's–barely make an indent on the marble pillow where both their heads lay. “As you can see, he was an airhead!” he had exclaimed when someone commented on it. I decided to go into the library, but when I was halfway there, my feet took me to Manuel's room instead. I started humming to block out the silence. I didn't want to think about Juana, or about the fact that I had just been locked up by her jailers' descendants. The house in
Jane Eyre,
Thornfield, with the crazy lady in the attic, was also creeping into my fears. What if I suddenly heard someone cackle? What if there was another girl like me locked up in the room that I suspected lay at the top of the stairs? I thought how easy it was to go crazy, how narrow the margin between sanity and insanity. I felt my eyes widen, bulging out of their sockets, barely blinking, my mouth parched, dry. I don't know what I was expecting to find in Manuel's room. His bed was made. Books were piled on his nightstand. One was a medical book, with a scrap of paper marking the place where his reading had stopped. Then there was Homer, and Dante's
Purgatory.
I opened his dresser drawers. Socks, underwear, sweaters his Aunt Águeda had knitted. Lots of them. Way too many. Instinctively, I smelled them. Clean smelling. His shirts were hanging in the armoire. I went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. Cologne, shaving cream. I went back to the bed and sat down. I was trying to find something, anything, to fix my attention on. I picked up the medical book and opened to the page that was marked. It was a gynecological section. There was a part underlined in pencil, with a little asterisk beside a word in bold.
Pseudocyesis.
I read: