Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters (The Katherine of Aragon Story Book 1) (18 page)

Shaking her head, the child seemed to ponder this. “But the queen is queen...”

“Si, the queen is queen, thank our good God for His great mercy, but the king offers no thanks to God for it. When King Enrique, her brother, died, our queen found herself alone, her husband gone to aid his father in his wars. As soon as she knew of the king’s death, she acted without hesitation, seizing the throne in her own right. King Ferdinand, still yet a prince of Aragon, was with his father when word came to him of the death of the King of Castilla. By the time he joined his wife, she had already had her coronation, a magnificent coronation when all the nobles of Castilla recognised her as queen.”

Josepha spoke. “Our queen rode a white horse given to her by your grandfather; your father’s own favourite war stallion comes from the same bloodlines. Mounted on his horse before her, don Gutierre de Càrdenas held forth an upright naked sword, the ancient symbol of the ruling monarch’s judicial power over all. Si, the power of life and death, set in a young woman’s hands.” She shook her head in wry amusement before cutting the thread from the chemise with her teeth. “Furious, the king arrived back from his father’s wars, ready for another kind of battle. Your grandmother attended Queen Isabel then. She told me he hurled at her the words of homage he owed to her as queen like ringing stones, asking through stiff lips to be alone with her. Once alone, the shouting began.

“Mother said all the court would have heard the king’s anger if there had not been two chambers before the Queen Isabel’s bedchamber. Your grandmother, alone and close by in the next chamber, feared for the queen’s safety. The king was that angry.”

Discomforted, Beatriz crossed her arms, pressing her fingers into her forearms. “The king likes not to be crossed...”

Josepha’s head snapped up. “Nor does the queen, Beatriz.”

Beatriz met her friend’s eyes, feeling as if she had been slapped. “I did everything to keep him at a distance.” Brushing away tears, she lowered her head. “I have no power in this. Everything I do works against me, Josepha.”

“Why are you crying, Teacher?” Maria asked.

Josepha stared at Beatriz. “By the sword – the fields have eyes and woods have ears.” She lifted her chin and looked at her daughter. “Your teacher weeps for a matter that does not concern you, Maria.”

Beatriz swallowed and then spoke quickly. “Maria, do you remember what we discussed before we left court? ‘Man is active, full of movement, creative in politics, business and culture. The male shapes and moulds society and the world. Woman, on the other hand, is passive. She stays at home, as is her nature. She is matter waiting to be formed by the active male principle.’”

 “Aristotle’s Politics!” Maria squealed with delight, looking over to her mother for her approval.

“Si, we spoke about the power of such works, and the great power they have upon our poor female lives.” Beatriz crossed her arms again. “Sometimes, I think I am drawn to Aristotle’s writings because it gives me much cause for dispute and argument.” She laughed a little. “If only to myself. But think, child. What must it have been like for the queen to seize her rights when men have had such thoughts and still have such thoughts? And not only men! Most women, lacking the education to know any better, submit wholeheartedly to them too. When the queen married her cousin, I feel certain he believed he strengthened his own claim to the Castilian crown, not that his wife would see her marriage to the Prince of Aragon strengthening her stronger claim, and decide to act upon it quickly when the opportunity presented itself.”

“But the queen is the rightful ruler...” Maria looked bewildered.

“Si, we see it that way now, only because we know what kind of queen she is, but at the beginning of her reign, nothing yet was proven except the queen’s great determination and ability to draw the right men of power to her. Even as a young woman, many knew she possessed a lion’s heart. She needed that and more to convince her husband she did what was right.”

Josepha rested her sewing on her lap. “The king knows that now, I am sure of it. He respects her more with every passing year even if his passion for her is no more. He is a good king in that regard – able to recognise that he is stronger because of their partnership.”

Maria shook her head, gazing at her mother and then at Beatriz. “But the infanta Juana? I don’t understand why the queen cannot help her.”

Beatriz leaned closer to the child. “Believe me, I speak only truth when I say she does all she can. But the queen’s marriage ran afoul of rocks when she sailed ahead and seized her throne without her husband, without waiting for him, and not wanting to wait for him. She gained a kingdom, but almost at the cost of her marriage. It took months before he calmed down and saw reason. By then, she promised him he would always have the final say when it came to their family.”

Josepha started sewing again – this time, beginning an edging of red arrows around the queen’s chemise. She spoke without looking up. “Our good queen keeps her promises to those she loves, even when it causes her pain.”

···

Later that day, Beatriz was alone with her friend. “You must stop the king,” Josepha said.

“Don’t you think if I knew a way, I would?”

“Amiga, if it was me, I’d leave court. While you stay there, you are far too close to the fire for your own safety.”

Eyeing her friend, Beatriz sat on a stool near the bed. She rested an elbow on its edge and cradled the side of her face. A miasma of morning light stripped Josepha of all colour.

“Why should I go? I’ve done no wrong. In any case, both the queen and Francisco would want to know why. They would not understand me leaving when they know how much I love teaching Maria and the infanta.” Beatriz shook her head. “And how can I tell Queen Isabel the reason? I never want her to know – it would kill me. ’Tis bad enough that he always threatens to tell the queen the truth about me.” She laughed bitterly. “A truth he forced on me.”

“He lusts for you more because he knows you have no lust for him. It crazes him, causing him to burn for you even more.”

Beatriz rubbed her wet eyes. “You think I don’t know this? When he raped me the first time, his threats and strength backed me against a wall, and I mean a wall, until I could do no other but submit. He has made me into his whore, Josepha, except it is I who pays. I the one to live with shame.”

“End it, amiga.”

Beatriz clasped Josepha’s proffered hand. “’Tis not as simple as that. I wish it was.”

“We are women, si? You’re intelligent. Don’t tell me at your age you do not know how to make a man stop lusting for you.”

Beatriz shrugged, defeated. “I am a woman, si... I curse that almost every day of my life. But what of his threats? How can I ignore them? What if he follows through with them?”

“Threats? What threats?”

“Si, his threats to remove me from teaching the infantas, prevent me from teaching at the university. These positions are everything to me, Josepha. God forgive me for my weakness, but take away those two things, and you might as well take my life too. He took my body, my virginity, and I prayed he’d leave me alone. It wasn’t enough. Whenever he wants to pull the string, he reminds me he has the power to strip everything from me, and this puppet must dance. I thank God I am not his only woman. Most of the time he finds another mouse to play with, and he leaves me alone. Thank God too I have never conceived his child.”

Josepha sniffed. “My amiga, have you thought to speak to the queen’s confessor? ’Tis possible he might help you.”

“Si, I’ve thought of this.”

“Then why not go to him?”

“A simple answer: Hernando de Talavera does not like me. I asked him why and he told me bluntly I am a weak woman, greedy for knowledge, one of the greediest he has had the misfortune to ever meet in his long life. He disapproves of me so much, I hesitate to give him true cause.”

Josepha tightened her grip. “Si, like so many men cut from that cloth, he never forgets we are hijas of Eve, but I am surprised you have taken upon yourself his disapproval of all women. Do not let yourself be hurt by this. You should know the queen is the only female he allows himself to like and respect. Still, Beatriz, the father is a good priest, and I believe he would help you, if he can.” Josepha spluttered out a strange laugh. “The good father has a tender heart when it comes to sinners. The more we sin, the more he loves.”

Beatriz tried to smile. “I will think more of it, amiga. My father knew Talavera well when they taught together at Salamacha. They were good friends. He remembers me from when I was but an infant, in my mother’s arms – more memory of her than I am blessed to remember. My father told me Talavera gave him much comfort when she succumbed to the plague.”

“Surely that gives you even more cause to go to him for help?”

Round and round, Beatriz traced with her index finger a spiral on the bedcover. Unchecked, her tears fell, spattering their pattern as if following the finger’s wake.

“What is it, Beatriz?” asked Josepha.

Beatriz raised her hand and wiped her face. “I’m not sure if knowing him from childhood would help me here. I remember too well the many harsh words he and my father had over my education. He believed my father was very wrong and misguided in his desire to teach me as he did.”

“The good father would not have been alone in this. Very few women are brought up to be prodigies of Latin.”

Bitter, Beatriz gazed at her friend. “Even you expressed strong disapproval of this.”

Josepha heaved a sigh, shaking her head slowly. “’Tis not that I disapprove... I have told you this before too. I believe women walk a hard enough road without walking a road where there are pits at every step. As my mother often said to me, since we cannot get what we like, let us then like what we can get. Tell me truthfully, Beatriz. Do you think you’d have this awful hole dug for you, as you do now, if your father had not set your feet on this journey to become a scholar and professor of the university?”

Beatriz pondered Josepha. “Si, I am in an awful hole, as you say. But, Josepha, I know there are more terrible and darker holes. I will always be grateful to my father for giving me the key to escape ignorance, even if it only came from his great need to console himself after losing my mother.”

Josepha placed her hand over Beatriz’s. She gave her a wry smile. “Escape ignorance? You know many ignorant women, si?”

“Josepha, you mistake my meaning.” Beatriz stared at the coverlet of Josepha’s bed. “All of us must walk our own roads, but ’tis wrong to prevent women from walking so many roads just because we’re women. Even Plato said, ‘Nothing can be more absurd than the practice of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.’ I so agree. Our world cuts off its nose to spite its own face by insisting the only purpose for women is to bear children and perpetuate the human race, as also said Plato. Surely ’tis far too hard a view to forever blame women for Eve’s sin.”

Josepha frowned. “But, Eve’s sin brought death to the world and condemned women to suffer.”

“Perchance you can see it that way. But our Lord Jesus welcomed women as his followers. Whenever I feel defeated, I keep that in mind and remind myself that the good lord knew women possess minds as well as hearts and encouraged them to use them. If our saviour believes this, then it must be right. That’s why I believe learning for the young to be so important. For not only do most of us then discover the road we are meant to walk, but good learning also hands a child a light to guide them all their lives. Just because a child is female, does it mean she should walk in the dark?”

“Si, I understand, Beatriz. But perchance my feet are more on the ground than yours. I am not at all certain that learning, as you give my Maria and the queen’s hijas, will make their lives any easier.”

Beatriz laughed. “Easier? My good Josepha, have I ever said learning makes living any easier? But to be taught to think is to be taught to truly live.”

Josepha lifted her dark eyes. “And I believe he who knows how to live, knows enough. ’Twas not until I was a grown woman that I began to have the learning you speak of. ’Twas not because I doubted the fullness of my life, but because the queen asked me to learn alongside her.”

“Do you regret it, amiga?” Beatriz asked.

As if weighing her answer, Josepha slowly shook her head. “No... I appreciate having now the words to describe so much that once eluded me like a mirage eludes us in the desert. But still, my amiga, I remember the prayer of the good Saint Francis, ‘Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.’”

Beatriz laughed. “Perchance you, Josepha, are the wisest of us two. I cannot tell what must be changed and what must be accepted as unchangeable. I just charge ahead into the dark, carrying my little bit of knowledge before fear gains an upper hand, pulling me back. But despite the winds of life often pushing me the wrong way, I am farther along the road than I was when I first started my journey.”

Rubbing her forehead, Josepha sighed. “And we are no further along than when we began this conversation, to no good purpose, amiga. You must find a way out of this cesspool before the dam breaks and carries you away with it. I fear so much for you.”

Beatriz reached for her friend’s restless hand. “Don’t. I tell you truly, talking of bulls is not the same as being in the bullring. Life has taught me well how to survive my dance with my particular bull. Even if I must humiliate myself to do so, I will extricate myself from the mire before the flood comes.”