For a Queen's Love: The Stories of the Royal Wives of Philip II (8 page)

She struggled up from her pillows as she tried to say her husband’s name. “Charles … Charles …” she wanted to say, “he is but a child yet. Let him play. Let him learn to laugh and be happy. Do not make a king of him yet …”

Someone was putting a cup to her parched lips. “This is what your Highness is asking for …”

She shook her head and held out her hand to the boy. He took it, but as she smiled at him he seemed to fade before her eyes.

“Philip …” she tried to say, “be happy … be
young.”

But he could not tell what she was trying to say to him. He stood stiff, fighting the tears, aware of black-clad men in the chamber whose eyes would be upon him. He must resist the impulse to fling himself upon her, to remind her that she was his mother and that he was only a little boy after all.

But there was too much ceremonial, too many solemn faces, too many important men to remind him that she was no ordinary mother; she was Isabella, Queen and Empress, and he was the most important boy in the world because it was hoped that one day he would rule all of it.

It was Philip
who must lead the procession. His father had decided that this should be so. Charles had shut himself up in the monastery at Toledo, and there, with the monks, he was praying for the soul of Isabella while the cortège journeyed slowly across Spain to Granada that Isabella might be laid to rest beside great Ferdinand and Isabella, who were her own and Charles’s grandparents.

Philip’s eyes were hurt by the glare of the sun, for it was hot May and the way through the foothills of the sierras and across the arid plain was tedious. As they passed through the towns he saw black cloth hanging from windows; everywhere was the black of mourning. There were black-robed monks and the hearse was covered in black cloth; the soldiers wore black feathers in their helmets; and among the black shone the silver crucifixes.

Southward rode the solemn procession; it crossed the Tagus by means of the bridge of Puerta del Sol; it wended its way from the valley of the Guadiana, through the foothills of the Sierra Morena to the
valley of the Guadalquivir. Peasants watched them as they passed; they wept for good Queen Isabella, saying prayers for the salvation of her soul. Philip was interested in the subjects of that kingdom, which would one day be his; he saw farmers, tanned by the sun, bent by long hours of toil in their unfertile land, pausing now to watch the cortège pass; there were girls leaving the clothes they were washing in the streams to kneel by the roadside. Muleteers stopped beating their starving animals to look and mutter a prayer for the departed Queen. There were gypsy girls who refused to be solemn and smiled on him as though they did not know he was the Prince of Spain. He saw beggars who looked wistfully at the jewels in his clothes; he noticed the speculative glances of would-be robbers.

And into Granada at last they came—that city where every stone seemed to have been laid by an Infidel. In the Capilla Real, they set down the coffin of Isabella. There she lay beside the great sarcophagus adorned with alabaster images of Ferdinand and that other Isabella.

It was a solemn moment. None realized this more than Philip. He thought of his great-grandmother Isabella, who had defeated the last Moorish King, the great Boabdil himself, and had forced thousands of Moors to become Christians on pain of death.

He knelt on the tiles; he listened to the chanting voices about him as the last funeral rites were performed. He thought of his father who was praying for his mother’s soul with the monks of Toledo; and he thought of the mother whom he would never see again.

The Emperor had insisted that Philip should undertake the journey to Granada without his company; Philip knew this meant that any childhood that might have been his was lost forever.

Life could not
be all solemnity, and the Emperor did not wish that it should be. Yet he insisted that Philip should spend hours with him each day learning statecraft.

“I am growing old,” said Charles, “but I care not, for soon you will be ready to take over my burdens.”

Those were happy moments for Philip, but he was always disturbed lest he might not give the right answers to his father’s questions. He
looked to the future with apprehension; he was afraid that when his time came he would be unable to make the right decisions.

His father watched him with quizzical eyes. He was intelligent, this Philip, but slow; he was afraid of choosing the wrong course; his decisions would be laboriously made; there was no flash of genius there. Philip would never have brilliant inspirations.

Yet, steadiness was a good quality, the Emperor reminded himself. An unswerving sense of duty was even better.

Again and again Charles warned Philip of the gentlemen of the court, the grandees and the statesmen. “Trust them not. Never act on the advice of
one
of them. Listen to what all have to say, and weigh their words. They are full of hypocrisy. They will utter fine words because you are a prince and they seek your favors. They are greedy. They look for advancement. Listen to their counsel but … decide for yourself.”

Philip listened eagerly. His desire not to disappoint touched the Emperor. On the whole, thought Charles, I am well pleased with this son of mine.

And when he left Spain once more, although Philip was only sixteen, he appointed him Regent, entrusting him with secrets that he would disclose to no other. He was to be
guided
in all things by the councillors whom Charles had chosen, but he, himself, was to make final decisions.

It was a test and, as it turned out, he came through it with honor.

He was indeed a man and, Charles decided, it was time he had a wife.

He was still
the same sentimental youth who had loved Jeanne of Navarre. Now he loved another, and he prayed that this time he might not be thwarted.

He had her picture; he carried it beneath his doublet in a silver locket. She was a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl with a soft mouth in a face as round as a baby’s. It was the bewildered childishness of her that made him know he would love her.

He had been mistaken in Jeanne of Navarre. She was a fiery girl of great spirit who would never have needed his protection as this baby-faced Maria Manoela would.

Twenty times a day he sought to be alone that he might look at the miniature. He must be young sometimes; he could not always think of matters of state. If he could not be a careless boy, he
could
be a lover, he could be a husband, for that was expected of him.

“Maria Manoela.” He murmured it to her picture. He said it before he went to sleep and when he awoke in the morning. “Do not be afraid, little Maria Manoela. These solemn-faced people can do us no harm. We will laugh at them when we are alone together. We shall be the happiest King and Queen Spain has ever known.”

He would tell her how he might have married Marguerite, daughter of the King of France, how he was allowed to choose between them, how he had looked at Maria Manoela’s pictures and begged that she might be his wife.

There were times when fears would intrude on these pleasant thoughts. The blood-tie between them was strong, for Maria Manoela was not only his first cousin through his father, but through his mother also. Some members of the court had said that the relationship was too close. They whispered Juana’s name—Juana, his mysterious grandmother. They spoke of the two little brothers who had been possessed by devils (for the second had died in the same manner as that one whom Philip had found writhing on the nursery floor). It was a strange thing, some said, that Juana should have been possessed and that these two children should have been also. They asked one another how God would view the proposed marriage between such close relations.

“The Pope will grant a dispensation,” was the answer to that. “The Emperor will see that he dares do no other.”

Philip trembled as he thought of all the marriages that had been arranged for him. How could he be sure that his little Maria Manoela would be allowed to come?

So the pleasant anticipation was tinged with apprehension.

The Primate, Cardinal Tabera of Toledo
, brought the news to Valladolid from the Pope.

How difficult it was for a young lover to be calm, to sit on his state chair surrounded by the grandees and members of the council waiting
while all the ceremonies took place, when he wanted to shout at them: “Well, what news? What says the Pope? Has he dared defy my father? Is she to come or am I to be disappointed again? I will have my Maria Manoela. I will.”

But he sat still, and only the white knuckles just visible against the pale skin of his hands showed his eagerness.

The great men would not be hurried. Philip looked from the Primate to the Duke of Alba, who was one of those against whom his father had warned him. “He is ambitious, sanctimonious, and hypocritical,” Charles had said. “He will try to tempt you by whatever means he has. But remember that he is a grandee. Do not let him have any share in the interior government of your kingdom. Make use of him in foreign affairs and in war. Those are his fields, and in them he is the best man we have.” Now, looking at Alba’s sly, aristocratic face, Philip thought: But this is not a matter of war, and if you try to prevent my marriage with Maria Manoela, Don Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba, I’ll not allow it.

But it seemed that Alba was in favor of the marriage.

“Militarily,” he said to the council, “it is ideal. The peninsula of Spain and Portugal must stand as one country, and every tie which binds our two states together is for the benefit of both.”

Philip could smile realizing that Alba saw everything from the military angle.

That other councillor, Granvelle, whom Charles had brought to Spain from Holland, and who was now one of his chief advisers, supported Alba. “Spain and Portugal should stand together,” he said. “Nothing could be better for Spain.”

Then Cardinal Tabera rose. He bowed to Philip and spoke the words which the Prince had been waiting to hear.

“The Holy Father has decided to grant your Highness his formal dispensation for the marriage between your Highness and your first cousin, Maria Manoela …”

Philip heard no more.

He longed to open his doublet, to bring out the locket and gaze at
the bewildered face of his Maria Manoela, whom he was going to make the happiest Queen of Spain.

All through September
Philip waited impatiently. Disguised, he would ride out with his friend Ruy and his cousin Maximilian. It was the duty of a ruler, he believed, to go unknown among his subjects. How could he properly see them through the traditional haze of ceremony that surrounded a ruler?

He watched the gathering of the grapes and the making of the wine; once he had to fly for his life from robbers whom he encountered on a mountain path when he had ridden too far from home, too heavily disguised. Such adventures did not excite him as they did Ruy or Max. He preferred the successes he scored with his councillors, for he was once more Regent, since his father was again away from Spain. He knew that his father delighted to leave him in charge of the kingdom and that he sought to press more and more responsibility upon him. Every day came long dispatches from the Emperor: he was entrusting Philip with every secret, insisting that Philip should know every move that was made. And the reason? As Philip approached maturity, so Charles stepped nearer and nearer to the life of seclusion that he craved.

Philip was proud of his father’s trust, but how he longed—and particularly at this time—for a carefree life!

“When will she come?” he demanded impatiently of Ruy; and impatience was something Ruy had never seen him display before. “Do you think that even now they will make some excuse to keep her from me?”

“Can you love her when you have not seen her?” wondered Ruy.

“Is it not my duty to love her?”

“So it is duty, the need to marry young and provide heirs for the kingdom, that makes you yearn for her presence? So that is the reason for your Highness’s eagerness?”

Philip half-turned to his friend. But not even to Ruy could he explain his true feelings.

Toward the end of October news came that the Infanta Maria
Manoela had left her native land in great pomp and with such lavish display that the eyes of all who beheld it were dazzled.

Philip scarcely slept during the nights of waiting. He longed to act without thought of ceremony and tradition! He wished he could have ridden out to meet her like some hero of old. He pictured himself inches taller than he was, dark and handsome as Ruy, covered in glory as was the Duke of Alba, as romantic as the Cid himself.

If he could have ridden thus he would not have made himself known to her at first; he would have impressed her with his chivalry, his virtues…. He would have been an unknown knight to rescue her from robbers, tilting in her honor, making her love him for himself … Philip … not the Prince of Spain.

Was this the essence of his dream? Was it merely to make Philip loved for his own sake? What a selfish, egotistical dream that was! And yet it was what he longed for. The love of Leonor was the only love that he could feel was completely disinterested. His father loved him for the duties he would take over; his mother had loved him because he was the son whom it was her duty to give to the royal house. Alba, Granvelle, Tabera, Medina Sidonia—all those men who had sworn to serve him with their lives—did not care for
him;
they gave their allegiance to the heir of Spain. Which of these people would love him constantly whatever he became? Only Leonor. And she made him impatient because she continued to treat him as a baby.

There was no one who could give him the love he needed—except Maria Manoela.

He longed for her; he wanted to tell her of all the trials that beset him, to make known to her the Philip whom none other—not even Ruy or Leonor—could know. That was why he longed for Maria Manoela.

He dreamed of her; he would wake with her name on his lips. And now that she was on her way to him, soon the dream would become a reality. No longer would he have to whisper “Maria Manoela” to the air; she would be beside him; he would put his arms about her, and his love would be tender because of her baby mouth and her bewildered eyes.