Reign of Madness (26 page)

A clattering of wood sounded against stone. We turned as Katrien entered the courtyard, carrying a wooden cask. She stopped with a final clack of her
klompen
. A fleeting look of surprise crossed her open face when she saw us, then a stronger emotion—fear?—before she put her head down, went to the well, and cranked the bucket.

“Listen to me, rambling on when I should be seeking your comfort,” Diego said. He called to Katrien, “Señorita, please, the Princess needs a woman to accompany her to her rooms.”

Katrien turned the crank slowly, her face still lowered.

“Now, if you please. Our Lady is not well.”

Katrien glanced up. Again, a jolt of strong feeling altered her countenance for the briefest moment. But once she had brought up the bucket and come to my bench, she resumed her usual blank expression.

“I am fine, Katrien, really. I don’t need help.”

She braced herself against me to help me rise.

“You must like it here,” Diego said to her.

Katrien, leaning into me, looked up.

“You are one of the few who did not return to the Netherlands with the Princess’s Flemish train.”

She avoided his inquiring gaze. Her arm around me, we started forward.

Diego bowed. “I hope you are better soon, Señora.”

“I am better already.”

The surge of happiness that I felt from our encounter fortified me as I started down the arcade with Katrien. It lasted even after Beatriz met us and took me from Katrien. The girl would not leave at first; then, biting her lip, she lowered her head and hurried off. But my mind was occupied with recollecting Diego’s words. I thought no more of her.

31.

9 July anno Domini 1503

T
he litter jerked and swayed, the bells on its fringe jingling, as the mules picked their way over the tree roots that laced the rocky trail. The brisk mountain air smelled of cool stone, pine, and the moss that furred the ground: health-giving air, mindclearing air. Surely it would cure me. Four months after giving birth to little Fernando, and still I was subject to the black clouds that floated through my head, blurring my thoughts and vision, robbing me of an appetite, weakening me. In response to an urgent post to the French court about my illness at the time of its inception, my husband insisted that I take a special Flemish preparation at dinner each day, administered by Katrien. He said that it had cured his
grand-mère
of a similar affliction. But I gained no strength from it. My bodice hung from the bones of my shoulders even after Beatriz laced it tight.

I looked down at Fernando, stirring in my arms. I kissed his forehead. It was not his fault that I was ill. I was not suffering from childbed fever, as some of Mother’s doctors suggested. Nor was I pining away for his father—the ludicrous opinion of many, which Mother warned me not to dispute. It looked good for me to be missing him. The heir to the throne should project the image of strength within her marriage as in all other things. For the sake of my own pride, I did not fight her. But whatever it was that actually plagued me, what I needed in order to recover was to be with my children again. Just seeing them would give me strength. I breathed in another draft of air. This journey north to Segovia would bring me that much closer to the port of Laredo. From there, God and Mother willing, I could sail to be with my chickens.

“How are you?”

I looked over at Mother, who had ridden up on her mule. “We are well,” I told her.

She pulled the collar of her robe closer, then braced herself more tightly on her pillion seat. Even in July, it was cool in the Sierra de Guadarrama when the wind swept around the boulders, bending the trees and sending pinecones tumbling. “Why don’t you give Fernando to his nurse, and rest?”

Next to me in the litter, Beatriz made a cradling motion with her arms. I shook my head. “I am fine.”

Mother peered over my shoulder and smiled at my sleeping child. “You always used to travel well as an infant. You slept right through the pandemonium when the elephant given to us by the ambassador from Cyprus broke free from her handlers and trampled off into the fields when we were journeying to Madrid.”

“We had an elephant?”

“Oh, you should have seen your father, leading the beast into Toledo, two weeks before you were born. He had on new silver armor, and a cloak thrown over his shoulder like a Roman general. My ladies said he looked like a Caesar.
I
called him the new Charlemagne. He liked that best.”

“You were not in confinement for my birth?”

“Heavens, no. Only nine days before, I had made a solemn entry into Toledo myself, on the occasion of the Cortes’ confirming your brother as my heir. The procession took hours, and then there was Mass, and then feasting—you know how it goes. I had no time to be locked away in a room.”

I rearranged Fernando’s wrappings. I had been cosseted and coddled before and after giving birth, yet still had not managed to recover. Would a time ever come when I would measure up to her?

“In fact,” Mother said, “the day after you were born, I presided over the beheading of an enemy of the crowns—wicked old Alarcón, the alchemist. He had contrived to poison your father. They say they dropped Alarcón’s head in a basket for garbage, but I did not stay to see that myself. I had granted an audience with the ambassador from England, who was waiting for me, and afterward I discussed the meeting with Fray Hernando, and then I was off to dress for yet another feast.”

“I never knew that someone tried to poison Papa.”

“Surely you don’t think we keep food-tasters for show. As long as there are kings there will be people trying to poison them. It’s the coward’s way to power. My own brother was poisoned. I shall never forgive those people.”

“Your brother? Alfonso? He was poisoned—by whom?”

She shook her head. “I should have been suspicious when they offered me the crown. At least I knew enough to refuse it then. If I had known they were behind Alfonso’s death, I would have never agreed to take the throne.”

“Whom do you speak of?”

Just then someone called, “Make way for the Lord of the Mosquitoes.” I turned as Diego Colón urged his horse through a group of pages, who were now snickering. Most of them were younger than he. Many of the pages who had first come to court when he did had moved on, assuming their inheritances, taking their places among their peers who sat in the Cortes. I had encountered Diego several times in the past few months, coming from Mass or at dinner, and though we’d had no time alone, we found our gazes often meeting. I hoped that he had some message for Mother, thus giving me a chance to catch his eye. But once he broke free of the group of chuckling pages, he reined in his horse and continued alone, several horse-lengths behind us.

I could feel Mother gazing at me. Our mules’ hooves rang against the rocks embedded in the mud. “Juana,” she said, “now that your husband has been gone for many months, it is not the time to loosen your sleeping arrangements with your women. Have you made plans for your ladies to surround you in Segovia?”

“Yes, Mother.”

Beatriz spoke up from my side. “I have made the necessary arrangements, Your Majesty.”

“Good. She has needed to do something since those Burgundian women packed up and followed Philippe. When the King was gone, I made sure all could see that I had no opportunity to dally with another man.”

I almost laughed. What man would have the temerity to approach the formidable Isabel of Castile? It would be like Estrella stalking a tiger.

“Chastity is the most important virtue in a wife,” she said.

“More than love?” I said drily.

I heard Beatriz inhale.

“It is a form of love,” Mother said.

We rode along, the bells jingling on my litter. “For all men’s talk of their needs,” Mother said, “it is the female who seethes with desire.”

“Mother!”

“I am trying to tell you something important.” She switched the reins to her other hand. “We are rotten with desire,” she said, “and in their hearts, men know and fear this. And so they restrict us, while giving in to their own passion, claiming they cannot control themselves. They think that if they simply say this enough it will make it true, and that we should believe this, too.”

Fernando squirmed in my arms. My mother—a desirous woman. I cannot say the idea gave me ease.

“Because we are strong,” she said, “we curb our impulses. Out of love.”

“And what if we do not love?”

She gave me a long look. “Then we curb ourselves out of selfpreservation.”

She gathered her reins before I could speak. “Keep her warm, Beatriz. These mountains could take the breath away from Saint George’s dragon.” She tapped her horse, then rode on to speak with Cardinal Cisneros, bobbing down the mountain on a donkey, just ahead.

32.

26 August anno Domini 1503

I
was strolling with Beatriz in the gardens at the foot of the Alcázar, in the grassy valley formed by the River Eresma. I had gone there to escape the early-afternoon heat, for while Segovia, nestled at the base of the pine-covered Guadarramas, was cooler than Toledo or Barcelona or Madrid, in late August it was warm enough to make one’s shift stick to one’s flesh.

Little Fernando lay in my arms, his dark hair damp with sweat. He grasped the withered willow leaf Beatriz twirled before him, examined the brown curl as delicately as a goldsmith appraising a jewel, then put it in his mouth.

Beatriz fished it out and dropped it to the grass. “Everything goes straight in.”

I pressed my lips to his curls. He smelled of soured milk and sweet baby skin. “That is how he learns.”

I sighed as Fernando grabbed the end of my headdress. I did not know what my little Isabel had been like at this age. Come November, it would be two years since I had last seen her.

“I have read a new text by John Chrysostom,” Beatriz said, a little too heartily. “A bestiary, with excellent pictures, printed in Augsburg. I will lend it to you. I know you enjoy animals.”

“I need to go back to Flanders, Beatriz.”

“The picture of the unicorn is particularly fine, though I don’t agree with his translation in the passage about the fox.”

“I want you to help me convince Mother.”

“You will travel once your mother thinks you are well enough.”

“I am well enough now.”

She loosened Fernando’s pudgy grip on my veil. “You suffer from dizziness. You have not recovered your former strength.”

I could not argue against this, but I had accepted and adjusted to my condition. I would not let it keep me from my children. “If we don’t sail before the winter storms set in, the trip will be postponed until spring.”

She kissed Fernando’s fingers. “Are you really in such a hurry to be reunited with the Prince?”

It was true—with Philippe gone, I was at peace. I found it almost humorous that after Cardinal Cisneros’s suggestion, and Mother’s confirmation of it, many at court attributed my weakened state to my pining away for my husband. But as relieved as I felt to not be subject to Philippe’s whims, I would gladly endure him if it meant being with my children. Soon they would not know me.

Fernando whimpered. I nuzzled his silken cheek. “Someone is sleepy.”

“I shall take him to the nursery.” Beatriz lifted him from my arms. “You rest. The footman will bring you a horse.”

I did not fight her. With my strange ailment, I could not walk up the steep hill to the palace entrance without help. But it was a fine day, if a warm one, and I was pleased to have a moment of solitude—as much solitude as could be afforded while Mother’s men stood guard on the battlements overhead. I sat on a mossy stone bench under a tree, listening to the groan of the river. I thought about little Charles. Was he learning to speak clearly? When I returned, I would work with him, not punishing him as the Dowager Duchess surely did if he struggled, or giving him suits of armor instead of instruction as did his father.

A croaking and whistling penetrated my reverie. A flock of starlings wheeled against the sky in a now expanding, now contracting, fluttering black mass. I must have been very still, for as one they dropped down and alighted in the very tree under which I sat. I raised my face slowly, in order not to frighten them, even as another flock swooped in, and then another, until their shiny bodies blackened the branches.

The birds’ frenzied screeching built as they called to one another. The din disoriented me, disconnecting me from my bearings. I felt something wild stir within me, a dormant creature that knew their call.

With a deafening rustle, the birds took flight. Someone approached.

“Are you well, Your Highness?” My heart jumped. It was Diego Colón.

“Oh! Yes. Very. Thank you.”

He searched my face, concerned. His expression softened. “Perhaps you are making a study of starlings now.”

I laughed. “Yes. I do seem always to be watching birds, don’t I?”

He smiled. “Worthy subjects. I did not mean to disturb your rest. I saw Beatriz with your child—she said you were here. May I accompany you to the palace?”

“Please.”

When I got up slowly, he slipped one hand under my elbow and put the other on the small of my back to aid me. I could smell the leather of his buckler and the clean cotton of his shirt; I inhaled the rich scent of his skin. I imagined myself turning toward him and pressing against his body, then kissing him, long and hard.

Had I gone mad?

“You smile,” he said.

I shook my head. “Where is Juanito?” I asked lightly. “I have not seen him of late.”

“Did you not know? Your mother gave him a stake and excused him from court. He is learning the shoemaker’s trade.”

“He wants to make shoes? I remember when he could hardly walk in them.”

“Isn’t it true that we are most fascinated by that which seems the most unattainable?”

My senses trained on his hands supporting me, we strolled next to the riverbed as the breeze tumbled willow curls before us. High above, in the crisp blue sky, the flock of starlings swirled and eddied.

We stopped on a humped stone bridge and looked at the water below. Ahead, small brown ducks bobbed on the languid current.

“I have not heard from my father,” he said.

I knew that he had not. No one had. The gossip around court was that the Admiral had been lost at sea.

“I do not know at what point I should step up and demand to be governor.”

Did he even have claim to the governorship? Not only had the Admiral been relieved of that position several years earlier, but it was debated whether the Colón family deserved to retain any of the rights Mother had awarded him, as badly as he had mismanaged his settlements on the lands he had claimed.

Diego saw my frown. “I must think of these things. I am aware that I will be passed by if I remain silent.”

“Have you spoken to anyone about this?”

“Who would that be?”

I realized then that even after all these years at court, Diego was still alone, with no friend or ally. What did it cost him to hold up his head, day after day, year after year, as his father tried and failed to find the Great Khan?

“How can I help you?”

He gave my back a gentle pat. “You are most kind. But I will help myself. I have a plan.”

“To claim his lands?”

“Not only that, but to make them rich.”

He saw my skeptical look. “I’m not speaking of gold. I’m speaking of the fruit of the earth.”

I smiled.

“I am serious. I have thought about it quite a lot. Juanito has told me how his countrymen pluck fruit from the trees and produce from the soil all they need to eat, with a minimum of effort. What if production of these fertile lands was increased by using our Spanish method of farming, and then that bounty could be shipped overseas?”

“But—wouldn’t the grain spoil?”

“What if it was not grain that was shipped, but cane.”

“Cane?”

“Sugarcane. Distilled into hard cones. It does not spoil.” His gray-green eyes lit as he warmed to his subject. “The brothers at the monastery where I grew up tried their hand at it, having heard of it from Portuguese sailors returning from India. Father was intrigued enough by its possibilities to take sugarcane cuttings to his outpost, and his brother Diego mentioned in a letter to me that the cane has done well. Yet neither he nor Father sees the value of growing it on a large scale, as fixated as everyone is on finding gold.”

“You have given this much thought.”

He pushed a stone from the wall of the bridge. The ducks darted toward it, then, seeing it was nothing, darted away. “Yes. I must. I am aware of what people say about the outposts now, how unprofitable they are, how dangerous, with the wicked sort of fortune-seekers they attract. I am aware that faith in the Colón name is at a low. But with order and good sense, I will turn the outposts around. I will attract good men with families, not the swindlers, thieves, and murderers who sail to the colony now to escape their old crimes and wreak new ones on the Indios. I will bring order and prosperity—everyone will want a piece of my new world.”

“I wish you well in it.”

“I tell you this so you know that I do not just dream. I have given it countless hours of study. It is because I wish to be worthy of—” He took my hand, then looked into my eyes. “You.”

“Me?”

“Is it wrong of me?”

My heart thumped. “It is noble to pay homage to those in the royal family.”

“I am not trying to be noble, My Lady. I am not trying to pay homage. I want to raise myself in your eyes.” He pressed his lips to my hand. “I do it for me.”

“Then you do it for me,” I said, “for I want what is best for you.”

He drew nearer. “You are too good.”

“I am not good at all,” I murmured as he brought his lips, trembling, to mine. Their touch seared me to my core.

With the clatter of hooves on the cobblestones, Diego withdrew abruptly. A mounted footman leading a pillioned horse trotted through the Puerta de Santiago and down the road toward the bridge.

“Your horse comes,” said Diego.

I blinked, as stunned and grieved as a babe removed from the breast.

The footman neared with my mare. Even as we faced forward at a respectable distance from each other, I could still feel Diego’s lips upon mine.

I was helped onto the pillion. I braced my feet against the planchette, then jolted toward the gate in the city wall and, beyond that, the palace entrance. I did not say good-bye to him. I did not need to. My heart was with him still.

The clash of hooves echoed off the yellow stone mansions crowding the streets. Townsfolk cheered; the tiny bells tinkled gaily from the canopy shading Mother and me. I had not ears or eyes for any of it. Only hours before, Diego had kissed me. His words, his lips, his scent filled my head, making all other sensations weak and puny things.

Mother nodded at a group of nuns gathered behind the barred windows of the convent before which we now passed. “You seem distracted. Has your illness worsened?”

“No, Mother. I feel well.”

She frowned, not convinced. “I am glad that I insisted you come. I’ve let you stay at home too much—it is right for you to be out and about if you can bear it. The people need to see more of you. They must get used to thinking of you as their Queen, for when the day comes that I am no longer here.”

Reluctantly, I pulled my thoughts from Diego. “Mother, please. As long as there are the Spains, you will be here.”

“I am mortal, Juana.”

“You are hardly infirm.” Indeed, she was as hale and hardy as a goat. She stalked, most days, up and down the hilly streets, visiting this church or that with bread, cloth, and alms. When she wasn’t walking or praying or plowing through stacks of paper, she was riding with a party of men at hunt. More often than not she brought home game that she herself had speared, ordering, as she flung off her gloves upon returning to the palace, that the meat be distributed to the poor. I had no doubt she could wrestle the Archangel Michael, like Jacob in the Scriptures, and pin him protesting to the ground.

“I wasn’t trying to worry you,” said Mother. “I only wish for you to face your future.”

Oh, I knew my future. I was to be saddled with a cruel boy for a husband while the man who was my true equal would hardly be allowed near me. If I lived long enough to see my children to adulthood, it would be while in a sad and disturbing marriage.

Our litter jolted past the cathedral and into the plaza before it. Mother stole appraising looks at me between nodding to her subjects, who were prostrating themselves in the dirt. I could feel her judging me.

I tipped my head toward the church of San Miguel, just ahead. “Thirty years ago you were proclaimed Queen of Castile on those very steps—”

“Twenty-nine,” said Mother. “In December.”

“Twenty-eight years and eight months ago you were proclaimed Queen on that spot. How did it feel?”

“Horrible.”

I looked at her in surprise.

“Your father was furious with me.”

“Papa? Why?”

“As now, he had gone to Aragón to settle matters in his own kingdom. He thought that I should have waited to receive the crowns with him.”

“Why didn’t you?”

When we drew even with the church porch, a priest ducked through the low opening in the door and bowed to Mother. She returned the reverence before continuing. “That is a good question. With the luxury of hindsight, I can see how it hurt him, how it made him appear to be less of a man to have his wife grab the crowns without him. At the time, though, I saw no other course. Cardinal Mendoza sent word from the bedside of my brother the King the moment he died, and Mendoza’s friends—my friends, I thought—persuaded me to seize the opportunity that instant to be made Queen. I was riding behind the Sword of State before poor Enrique had been wrapped in his winding cloth.” She sighed. “How easily I was talked into it. How easily they used my vanity for their ends.”