Reign of Madness (11 page)

“But I do love—”

She spoke over my words. “You, however, do genuinely charm my grandson. I can tell. You would be mad to not enjoy his caresses. And say what your ladies will, a husband’s love is holy. Marriage is one of the seven sacraments, last time I heard. Your ladies are merely envious of your good match.”

A page knocked on the door. He bowed to me, then bowed extra deeply, in true deference, when he saw Madame la Grande. He brought me a letter, then, with a petrified glance at the Dowager, bowed his way out of the room.

She refolded her gown over her arm. “Something from home?”

I frowned at the seal of the crowns of Castile and Aragón. Another letter from Mother. She had sent me six missives since I had left Spain. I had not responded after meeting Philippe, at first because all my hours were consumed by him, then because of the certain knowledge that my new life would displease her. I would have to account for myself soon, and I dreaded it.

“Do not let me stop you.” She picked up the Book of Hours that Mother had sent with me from Spain and began to page through it.

I broke open the red wax seal and unfolded two thick sheets of paper. Tears pricked my eyes when I saw who it was from.

“Good news?” asked the Dowager.

“It is from my sisters, María and Catalina.”

“How sweet. Is not the younger one promised to Henry Tudor’s son Arthur?”

Seeing their dear handwriting was like feeling the warmth of the Spanish sun upon me. I wished to take the letter to a corner and savor it by myself. “Yes. They are to marry when she is a little older.”

“Your little sister will be Queen of England someday. How do you like that, when all you can hope to be is Archduchess?”

“They are just titles,” I murmured, perusing the letter.

“‘Just’? A title is the least we deserve after being offered to our betrothed like wheels of cheese.” She peered at the paper, then up at me, as if I should read it aloud.

“They do not say much.” I wished she would go.

The Dowager turned a page of my Book of Hours. “They took the time to write. I should not mind hearing what they have to say.”

I scanned the first few lines. María wrote first. Was I well? How did I find my new husband? Was he as handsome as was said? Was he attentive? Chivalrous? Amorous?

I sighed. My darling María, still yearning for a gallant knight.

The Dowager sniffed. “Well?”

I quickly moved down the letter. “My sister María speaks of . . . Colón.”

“Colón?” said the Dowager.

“Admiral Colón, Madame.”

“Oh, yes. The Genoan. Your Mother’s golden goose, if only he shall lay. What did she say about him?”

I read silently from the letter, then paraphrased for the Dowager. “He has returned from his second voyage. Mother and Papa received him in Burgos, in the Casa del Cordón.” I paused, picturing myself as a child, racing with María under the carved stone ropes over the palace door, both of us wishing to be the first to enter as we returned from Mass at the cathedral. I had tripped on the threshold, only to be scooped up by Papa, who carried me inside and gave me to my nurse to bandage my bleeding knee.

The Dowager turned a page in the Book of Hours. “Read it aloud.”

Though my heart ached with homesickness, I had no choice but to do as she commanded. “‘He brought a coffer filled with gold nuggets the size of chickpeas. He showed us several others the size of pigeon eggs, but when Papa asked, Colón said he had not yet found towns roofed in gold. He talked instead of God’s Heavenly Hand delivering him from hungry cannibals and warring Indios on many occasions.

“‘Colón says that the Indios are not the good souls he believed them to be. They slaughtered the men he had left behind on his first voyage, the ones who had stayed in the fort he had made from the ruins of his ship
Santa María
, when it had run aground. When the Admiral came back for them a year and a half later, none was there to greet him. His experience has made him a man of God. He now wears the brown robes of the Franciscans. By my troth, he does look like a friar, too.’”

“That should please a few people,” the Dowager murmured. “The Spaniards and their piety. They think they invented God.”

I read on. “ ‘He brought with him some cannibals who had attacked him but whom he was able to subdue. I could hardly bear to look upon them. They crouched like animals and they hid behind great green-feathered masks through which you could see their eyes darting. I feared the beasts would jump up and eat me!

“‘Mother called for the page Juanito to speak to them in their language, to see if they intended to behave. At first they seemed to have some trouble understanding each other, then suddenly all of them shouted at him. When Mother asked Juanito if there was a problem, he said no. All they wanted was to know where they were, and when they were going back home.’”

“Seems reasonable,” said the Dowager. “Who is this Juanito?”

“An Indio. The only one who remains from Colón’s first voyage. My brother Juan has made him a page in his court.”

“My Marguerite will be exposed to a cannibal?”

“He is not a cannibal.”

“Oh?” The Dowager raised hairless brows and sniffed. “How do you know?”

I saw gentle Juanito, squatting next to the mastiff pups as he petted Estrella. I heard him at the reception in Medina del Campo, speaking Castilian, proud to have mastered the language. I saw him earnestly dancing the saltarello, as Diego Colón and I looked on.

“I know that he is good.”

“Commendable, seeing goodness in a cannibal. Commendable, or mad.”

But I was not listening. I was thinking of Diego. I had not seen him for more than two years. Soon after the evening in Medina del Campo, Mother had sent him to Salamanca, to study at the university.

The Dowager looked at me pointedly, then waved her hand. “Read on.”

A knocking sounded at my chamber door.

“Come in,” called the Dowager, though it was not her place to do so.

Eight of my Spanish ladies filed into my chamber with Beatriz. After curtseys to the Dowager and me, the highest-ranking of them, doña Blanca, petite and pretty as a rosebud, spoke up. “Señora la Duquesa Doña Juana,” she said, her sweet voice somber. “Your ladies wish to beg your leave to return to Spain with the fleet that sails with our Prince’s bride.”

Beatriz spoke up quickly. “Not all of us. I shall stay, as well as doña Manuela, doña María, and doña Ángela.”

I frowned in confusion as I faced the row of ladies, all dressed in rich cloth of Spanish black. The eight were the younger, unmarried women of my train. They were to stay for six months before returning home, unless Philippe found them husbands—it was expected that he do so.

“You do not wish to stay?” I asked them.

Their bowed heads were their response.

The Dowager held my Book of Hours to her chin, as still and alert as a fox.

I strove to smooth the alarm from my voice. “Is it homesickness? I am homesick, too. But I trust time will make it better, for all of us.”

Beatriz drew in her lips and shook her head.

“I shall make sure Philippe finds you good husbands,” I said, my panic rising. “I promise.”

“Your Highness.” Doña Blanca glanced at the others. “It is not husbands that we seek. Not Burgundian husbands.”

“But they are rich!” I exclaimed. “And handsome. And gay.”

The ladies gave doña Blanca significant gazes.

“Doña Juana,” said doña Blanca in her silvery voice, “many of us cannot understand their ways. What we call gluttony and lasciviousness they call gaiety. They honor drinking well more than living well. We can hardly abide this court’s perilous moral atmosphere.”

“You judge too quickly! We have been celebrating my marriage and the marriage of your Prince Don Juan to Marguerite, as we all should. But I am sure that soon they will settle—”

The Dowager put down my Book of Hours with a thud. “Go! All of you! The Archduchess would be better served by those who value the great favor she has bestowed upon them. Go back to your chapels in the Spains and pray for husbands—see how quickly that brings them to you.”

Doña Blanca’s pretty mouth fell open. The ladies seemed to have stopped breathing.

“Go now,” said the Dowager. “Shoo! We do not need you here. You. Doña Whoever. Show them out.”

“Doña Juana,” doña Blanca said woodenly, “I am truly sorry. If I may have your permission to leave . . .”

I put out my hand. One by one, they kissed it, then left.

I stared at my hand, still foolishly outstretched, as though the ladies would come back if I left it there long enough.

“You can do better than those sad-eyed madonnas,” said the Dowager. “They think to try to outpray the Virgin Mary.” She tapped the cover of my Book of Hours. “We shall have to order you a new one of these. The art here is so much finer than in the Spains.”

11.

3 April anno Domini 1497

H
eated water streamed over my head. I opened my mouth to let it pool on my tongue as steaming rivulets flowed down my sodden shift and into the tub in which I sat. I savored the warmth radiating into my scalp and skin and bones—and then Katrien’s bucket was empty. Immediately, chill air breathed upon my wet hair and flesh, turning comfort into pain, even with flames crackling in the fireplace, the windows shuttered, the walls covered with tapestries, and the floors blanketed with woven straw mats. Although there were buds on the trees and other signs of spring outside, inside the Prinsenhof in Ghent, the black stone walls had absorbed two seasons of cold. A bucket of warm water was no match.

I sank lower into the cooling water, displacing the linens with which Katrien had so carefully lined the bottom of the copper tub. “Another bucket, Katrien, quickly.”

“Yes, Mevrouw.”

I paddled the water with my hands. Why had I not thought sooner of dismissing my Burgundian ladies and the remaining Spanish attendants for the day, and keeping only the stoic company of Katrien, the Flemish washerwoman? I was sad to have included Beatriz in the pack, but to show her favor overmuch would make it hard for her with the other ladies. Katrien was young, close to my age in years, yet she was as stout and strong as a pack horse, and though her hair might be white-blond under the curious winged linen bonnet that the local women wore, she was not especially beautiful with her round blue eyes and stub nose. But she was calm and efficient, and in her practical presence, I could relax in a way I never could when in the company of the Viscountess of Furnes, with her smug attention, or madame de Hallewin, with her quietly disapproving looks, or even Beatriz, who worried about me so much that it made me doubt myself. Katrien’s blandness was a perfect antidote to the tension around me. And best of all, though I told myself this mattered little, she was too plain to attract Philippe.

She was waddling from the fireplace with a sloshing bucket when Philippe strode in with Delilah on his arm, followed by Hendrik and his old tutor, doctor François de Busleyden, now the Archbishop of Besançon.

“What ho! Good men, this is a sight meant only for a husband,” Philippe said. Hendrik had already wheeled around and was disappearing out the door.

“We will wait for you in the antechamber,” said the Archbishop, who then bowed and left as well.

“Go on, go on.” Philippe waved at Katrien, stopped in her tracks with her bucket. “Do what you were doing. We do not want my wife to freeze.”

She plodded forward. I winced as she poured the water over me, the pleasure of its warmth now gone with Philippe watching. I did not wish for him to see me this way, wet as a cat in the rain, my shift clinging to me and my hair hanging in sopping ropes.

He watched the water run down my breasts. “I do wonder if you should bathe so much, Puss. It is a Moorish custom, isn’t it, to splash around in baths every week?”

I glanced at Katrien. She stepped back with her empty bucket, her eyes properly downcast.

Philippe put Delilah on the back of a chair, letting her transfer first one clawed foot and then the other onto the top rail of the headrest. “Didn’t your mother’s brother King Enrique favor Moorish ways? I hear he wore a turban and carried a scimitar.” He came over and stirred my water with his finger. “And he took all those baths—no wonder your mother relieved him of his crowns.”

I leaned forward with a swoosh. “My mother did not ‘relieve him of his crowns’! She was his rightful heir, and when he died, she inherited them—though there were those who unjustly tried to keep them from her.”

He flicked some drops at me. “I wondered when I would see that famous Spanish temper.”

I covered myself with my arms. Though I might speak out against my mother, it wounded me to hear others do so. “When Enrique changed his mind and wanted his wife’s bastard child to be his heir, Mother was forced to fight for the crown. La Beltraneja hadn’t a drop of royal blood in her. That’s where she got her name—she was the child of a courtier, Beltrán de la Cueva.”

“I was just playing, Puss.” He rubbed my arm. “You shiver. All jesting aside, do you think bathing is good for you, especially if you are with child?”

I looked at my knees, my teeth rattling with cold. We had been wed for nearly half a year and still my womb had not quickened. I was seventeen and healthy—or so I had thought. When would he grow impatient with me?

“Katrien,” I said, “I should like to be dried now.”

She hurried over with a linen sheet, her wooden clogs thumping against the rush mats.

“I have news from Marguerite,” Philippe said as I rose, dripping. I could smell Katrien’s scent of hay and cheese as she wrapped me in the sheet.

Philippe pulled a letter from his doublet. Keeping the sheet around me, Katrien loosened the ties of my wet shift as Philippe scanned the contents of his sister’s missive. “She said she arrived in Spain in March.”

“Four months at sea.” I moved my arms so that Katrien could tug off my chemise. “Did her ship run afoul?”

“So much so that she thought she would die. She even wrote an epitaph for herself, and stitched it to her waistband for when her remains were found.” He lifted his letter and read.

“‘Here lies Margaret, gentle damsel. Although she had two husbands, she died unwed.’

“Funny girl,” he said. “Only she would find humor in being betrothed twice and never married—let alone in dying.”

Katrien settled a hooded robe of marten upon me. I snuggled into the glossy fur. “How does she find my brother?”

“She said he was a gentleman, and lively, and intelligent, though of slighter stature than she expected.”

“I suppose he is not as tall as she is. Poor Juan—as much as he loves to hunt and take his exercise, he has a small frame and a delicate constitution.”

“Well, it seems that did not dim his ardor. He would have had them wed on the spot, just as you and I were, had your parents allowed it. Though they did get a dispensation to let them marry during Lent, your parents insisted on all the pomp and ceremony, with churchmen from the four corners of their kingdom to bless them.”

“As is proper. They will be King and Queen of the Spains someday.”

He took me in his arms. “I am glad we did not have to worry about that.”

“Are you? Would you rather have wed me quickly than be King?”

He knocked back my hood as he nuzzled my neck. “I should want both,” he murmured, “though at this moment, I could not give a damn if I were pauper or Pope.”

I sent Katrien from the chamber with a look.

Philippe brushed his lips along my jaw. “What else did your sister say about my brother?” I whispered.

“He was quite impressed with the carriages she brought. Apparently, there are none in Spain.”

“None,” I said, unconscious of my words as he touched his tongue to my ear. “None in Spain.”

He opened my robe. “Oh, I think something is going to be ‘in Spain’ soon,
n’est-ce pas?
”

Afterward, we lay on my bed, catching our breath. My gaze went to Delilah, sitting on the back of my dressing chair. Today she wore no hood. She turned to me as if aware that I was looking at her.

“Philippe?”

He ran his arm over his face. “Hm?”

“Delilah wears no hood today. How do you get her to be so still?”

“Much hard work, Puss.”

“For you, or her? Her, I daresay. She seems exhausted. She moves her head though she remains asleep.”

He lifted his head to look. “She’s not sleeping.” He put down his head.

“But her eyes are closed.”

“In a fashion. They are sewn shut.”

I raised myself. Peering from the bed, I could just make out the white thread binding her upper lids to her lower ones.

“You blinded her?”

“Don’t sound so horrified. It’s only temporary. We’ll take the threads out later.”

“But—it seems so cruel.”

“It’s for her own good. I had to starve her when I first got her—her spirit had to be broken for her to be of use to me. But now she gets the choicest bits from her catches, as you have seen on our hunts. I treat her like a queen.”

I shivered.

“Soon she’ll learn not to trust her own eyes, but to rely solely on me for direction. I won’t even need to use the hood when we’re outside. She won’t fly away—you’ll see.”

“It doesn’t hurt her?”

“No. Shhh. Go to sleep.” He laid his arm over my breasts, then closed his eyes.

I thought he had drifted into slumber, so I started when he said, “Where were your other ladies this afternoon?”

I looked over at him. His eyes were still shut.

“I preferred privacy,” I said. “In case you should come,” I added.

“It is not proper for an archduchess to keep only the company of a Flemish peasant girl, Puss. Appearances, you know. What would the King of France say if he knew my wife’s chief attendant was her washerwoman? Lord, if word got out, Grand-mère would be shrill. Anything that might lessen her in the eyes of the Tudor King Henry is anathema to her. She thinks he wears the crown that is her family’s, you know. According to her, he stole it on the Bosworth battlefield. The Yorks haven’t been on the throne for twelve years, and she still can’t get over it.”

“But—”

“Just keep your ladies about you. That is not asking for much, is it?” He opened one eye, then patted my breast companionably. “Now, go to sleep.”