Reign of Madness (28 page)

The Habsburg Netherlands

Margaret of York

34.

16 May anno Domini 1504

M
id-May, and the marshes of Flanders burgeoned with life. Small birds flitted in the greening bulrushes; dragonflies darted at one another and at nothing; the very earth seemed to breathe and swell under our horses’ hooves. A pair of ducks burst from the wild growth. I thought of Philippe and his gyrfalcon. Was Delilah again his constant companion, now that he had returned from France, six months before my own arrival? It had been two and a half years since I had last set foot on this sodden land. So many things had happened in that time: my oldest three children were no longer infants; I was now heir apparent to more crowns than I cared to think of; my love for Philippe had withered into a black desiccated thing, like a grape left overlong on the vine.

Beatriz swiped at a dab of muck that had flown up onto her cheek, smearing it onto her wimple. Still she wore the habit of a Poor Clare, although she was no more a nun than I was. “Too much mud in this land.”

She had chosen to continue in my service, though Mother’s secretary, Francisco Ramírez, pressed for her hand in marriage. Beatriz planned to translate a difficult passage of Aristotle over the next few months, then submit her work to the scholars at Salamanca, and so she thought being in my train preferable to a husband’s caresses. I worried that she might be disappointed in the result, yet I was grateful for her company. I did not expect to be welcomed by many upon my return to my husband’s court.

Soon we beheld the towers of Malines rising from the marshland. I wanted to sing aloud at the thought of seeing my children. My infant Isabel was now a toddling child; Charles, according to reports, a slight but willful four-year-old. Dear Leonor was five and a half and, from the nurses’ reports, as bright and lively as a jay. A cloud passed over my heart each time I thought of my little Fernando—he had become sickened with measles the day my fleet sailed, and so had to remain with my mother, who promised to send him with her envoys as soon as he was stronger.

Not soon enough, I had passed within the tall white stone walls of the Dowager Duchess’s palace. Nodding at the bowing ladies and gentlemen, I ran through the halls in my soiled riding dress. I threw open the doors to the nursery. There my three children, clad in identical black velvet gowns, sat in a row before the Viscountess of Furnes.

The shock of seeing my enemy with my darlings was overpowered by my joy. I fought back happy tears as I sank to my knees and opened my arms. “Chickens!”

None of them moved. Charles looked up at the Viscountess.

“We’ve been expecting you,” she said.

I gazed from face to face. Behind each expression of fear or puzzlement or pure lack of interest was a kernel of the child I knew.

“Chickens, it’s your mother.”

“They know,” said the Viscountess.

I had no more affection for the woman than when she had left the Spains with my husband’s party, but to keep peace before my children, I would keep my tone friendly. “I am surprised to find you here.”

“I am their governess.”

I would not exclaim. “I thought the Dowager was in charge of their care.”

“The Dowager is dead.”

I sat back on my heels in shock. No one had told me. The old dame had truly allowed Death to claim her? He must have offered an acceptable price. Yet harsh as she had been, I preferred her to the Viscountess. The Dowager was the devil that I knew.

I glanced at the children. I mustn’t speak of this now—talk of her passing might upset them. I reached out for my oldest child.

“Leonor, you have grown into a beautiful young lady.”

The Viscountess’s silk sleeves swished as she poked Leonor in the back. “Go.”

Leonor took a tentative step forward.

“Go on, give her a kiss.” The Viscountess shook her head at me. “I’ve told her that she must.”

Leonor pecked my cheek, then shrank away from my arms. She ran back and took her place cross-legged on the floor.

“Charles,” said the Viscountess, “go on, angel.”

He inched forward. With a breaking heart I saw that his chin had grown larger. His upper jaw was completely subsumed by his lower. How difficult speaking and eating must be for him.

“Hello, Charles,” I said softly. “I’ve missed you.”

He grunted and lowered his head. I kissed the top of it before he hurried back to the Viscountess as fast as his spindly legs could take him.

“Isabel,” said the Viscountess, “scoot, scoot.”

Her baby belly thrust out, almost three-year-old Isabel stumped forward, kissed my cheek without a shred of feeling, then stumped back to her governess, where she burrowed her head in the Viscountess’s silvered-blue brocade skirts.

“I wished to be here sooner,” I said. “Children, I have missed you so.”

Isabel piped, “You’re dirty.”

I gazed down at my skirts. “I am, aren’t I? I’ve come from very far. Did your”—I frowned at the beautifully dressed Viscountess; she hardly seemed like a governess—“did the Viscountess tell you from where I have come?”

Charles lifted his chin to speak. “The Ffpainff,” he said. “It iff a very big plafe. I am to rule it ffomeday.”

My heart sang out. He could speak, and clearly enough. Other children lisped—he would not stand out so very much. “Yes. Yes, you are.”

“Why do you call us chickens?” said Isabel. “We’re not chickens.”

I gazed at Leonor, hoping she would remember the old endearment and explain to her sister, but her frown remained fixed on the floor.

“I tell you what, I shall get clean, then I shall come back to hear all about each one of you.”

They watched, silent, as I got up and left the chamber.

Tears stung my eyes when I stumbled into Beatriz, waiting for me in the hall. She looked at my face, then tucked my hand under her arm. “Everything will be all right. You’ll see.”

I was stepping from my bath into the sheet Beatriz held open for me, while Katrien stood by with a bucket to empty the tub, when a familiar voice sounded at my door. “Knock, knock.”

Philippe stepped into the room, Delilah piercing the white satin shoulder of his doublet with her yellow claws.

“Your Highness,” said Beatriz, “Her Highness is not—”

“—any less beautiful than ever, I see.” He winked at her and then smiled at me. “
Bonjour
, Puss.”

Beatriz flashed me an anxious look. “Please, Your Highness, if you can wait until My Lady is dressed.”

“Nun, are you telling me that I have to wait for my own wife to be dressed?”

“Let him come in, Beatriz. He is right. I am still his property.”

A clang sounded near the tub. Katrien snatched up her bucket even as water spread across the green tiles. She had remained as stoic as ever these past months, though she seemed to be making more of an effort to face me directly when she spoke. Perhaps it was to make up for refusing to tell me what she had been doing in the tower yard with that bundle on the morning of Mother’s illness. I had not pressed her. I had too many other things on my mind.

“Let it be, Katrien,” I said now. “You may go. You, too, Beatriz. Thank you.”

I tucked my sheet more tightly around my chest as I waited for them to clear the room, Philippe watching them, his arms folded. When they were gone, I said, “I wasn’t sure if I was to see you.”

He put his shoulder to the mantel for the bird to step on it, then came over and kissed my hand. “Why wouldn’t you? I’m your husband.”

“You spent so long in France, I wasn’t sure what you were to me.”

“I have had nothing but the fondest regard for you during all of our separation. I did not think you would hold an illness against me.”

I pulled back to see if he was speaking the truth. Time had agreed with Philippe the Good. He looked more at ease with the world than ever, like a man incapable of wounding his wife. “You don’t look ill.”

“Thank you. In fact, I am quite well now. But a weakness in my chest kept me abed there much of the summer and fall. Not that I wished to stay there. I am sick of those snobby French—this court is far more entertaining. I would have been back months earlier if I could have. As it was, I was only just able to see my poor
grand-mère
before she died.”

“Why did no one tell me of her death?”

“You hadn’t heard? I had written to you of it. I wrote to you several times since I returned. My letters must be following you across Europe.”

“Letters seem to have a habit of getting lost between here and Spain.”

He shrugged.

“Her death came as a shock to me. I did not think the Dowager was capable of dying.”

“Why ever not? All the remedies and proscriptions in the world are no match for Time.” He looked me up and down. “Speaking of remedies, have you been taking the one I recommended? I heard that you were quite ill, but I think you look well.”

“I am better than I was.”

“You seem it. I suppose my remedy worked.”

“Maybe. I stopped taking it months ago.”

He made a closemouthed smile. “When?”

“In late August.” Although perhaps I was being silly, soon after Katrien had mentioned poison, I could no longer bear to take the potion. I had abandoned it even after Beatriz insisted on watching Katrien’s uncle taste the concoction. According to Beatriz’s report, he had poured himself a glass, and then my own special cup, and then sampled his own, to no ill effect. Though Beatriz witnessed this three days in a row, it did not improve my taste for the remedy. After I’d stopped it, my health had gradually returned. Perhaps my mind was so full of Diego that I worried no more for my body.

I turned away from Philippe. “I would like to get dressed now. I’m going to call Beatriz.”

“No. Let me help you.” He reached for the shift lying on my bed. “Is this what you need?”

He came over and stood behind me. “Lift your arms.”

I raised them. Gently, he tugged on my sheet until the fold at my breasts came undone. The linen slid down my body.

He touched my nipple. “I missed you.” I closed my eyes as he laid his rough cheek against my neck. “I heard that you missed me, too. My envoys brought tales that your longing for me made you so weak that you could hardly rise from your bed.” He rested against me, his breath warm on my ear. “Is that true?”

It would be better for me if it were.

“Yes.”

“Sweet, sweet Puss,” he murmured.

I stared blindly at Delilah, preening the feathers of her shoulder, as his lips grazed down the sensitive skin of my neck.

I let him do what he had to. I was his wife.

35.

17 May anno Domini 1504

I
sat outside under a spreading oak, sewing, as the children played chase with their father. Nearby, Beatriz bent over her book of Aristotle, her lips moving as she deciphered the words. We were being serenaded by canaries, melodious captives whose cages hung from wrought-iron arches upon which blooming roses climbed. Both the birds and the flowers were gifts my mother had sent to the Dowager Duchess when I was first married. These living things could adapt to new places; why could I not find happiness here if I truly tried? Perhaps Philippe had grown more caring since we’d parted. And it was not as if he were the only one to have transgressed.

Even now, as I pulled the thread through the cloth of Philippe’s shirt, I could feel Diego’s lips upon mine. I drew a shuddering breath. It was just a kiss, but with it I had given my heart. Even when I surrendered my entire body to my husband, I had no such love for him. Was not my loving another man more truly than I loved Philippe as great a betrayal as coupling with him?

For the sake of my soul and my sanity, I had to turn again to Philippe. I had to find something in him I could love again. But how, when I could not put Diego out of my mind? I had struggled to do so from the moment we parted under Mother’s ill gaze, during the weeks of my preparation to leave for the north and the time spent traveling from Segovia to the coast. Tormented by my longing, I had gone so far as to climb the ramparts of the castle of La Mota in Medina del Campo one evening in November, in a desparate attempt to clear my mind. I had been standing between two stone merlons of the battlements, listening to the eerie trill of a nightjar and the wind rattling the bare trees, when, to my utter shock, Mother climbed the stone stairs to join me.

I would have been no more startled than if the stars had begun to speak. She had insisted upon accompanying me to the coast, but usually spent her evenings alone, praying. “Mother, what are you doing here?”

She had thrown back her hood and gazed at the moon. It was nearly full, and bright, illuminating the clouds that scudded by in its white light. “You make the guards nervous standing out here like this,” she said.

I looked down at the huddle of soldiers in the tower yard, stamping their feet against boredom, pikes to their shoulders. I could smell the oily smoke of the torches flaming from the walls. “I told them I am well.”

“They were worried enough to summon me.”

“I am sorry to trouble you. I suppose my explanation that I wished to listen to the woods did not sit well with them.”

“Not when listening to the woods is all they ever do. It is probably a torture to them—they probably cannot imagine why you would choose to do it.”

I sighed. “I love the forest.”

She chuckled. “When I was a young child, I wished to be a woodcutter. All that time in the forest. It sounded wonderful.”

“A woodcutter?” I laughed in spite of my bleak mood. “Mother, you were born to be Queen.”

“Not really. Much of my childhood I had no notion of it. Papa was young and I had two healthy brothers ahead of me. I was as far from the crowns as—”

“Me.”

“Yes.” She regarded me. Clouds passed over the moon, obscuring her face. “I wonder now why I tried so hard to be Queen.”

“Tried? You had no choice. You were next in line. La Beltraneja did not count.”

Mother exhaled loudly. “You should really call her Juana of Castile, you know. She was no more illegitimate than you are.”

“But—your brother was incapable of fathering a child.”

“The louder the propaganda, the weaker the claim. How familiar you are, a generation later, with the lies that were spread then as truth.”

“But you said so yourself.”

“Did I? When have you ever heard me talk of my brother and his daughter?”

I thought, stunned. Had I heard her, or had it been just others?

“Listen to me. There were those who wanted me to have the crown. When Enrique died, they took me up on a mountain, so to speak, as the Devil took Christ, and offered me the world if I wanted it.”

I was afraid to ask what she meant.

“Look, Juana, I’m no Christ. I said yes.” She laughed ruefully. “I actually let myself believe what they told me, that I and not my niece Juana had the right to be Queen. I thought I was being generous by giving her the choice of taking the veil in a convent, or marrying your brother Juan when he grew up, though he was just newborn and she would have been a dried-up spinster by the time he was of age.”

“I don’t believe you. Why would you say this? Why would you take the crowns from their rightful owner?”

“Oh, Juana. You are not so naive as that.”

The nightjar’s trill waxed louder; it must have flown closer. There were plenty who would do whatever it took to seize the power of the throne. Luna had done it with my grandfather. Someone had poisoned Mother’s brother Alfonso. To keep their line safe, the Dowager Duchess’s brother Edward had killed his own brother George, and her other brother, Richard, had murdered his nephews. As long as there was a crown, people would kill to keep it. Or put their half brother’s daughters in convents.

“Who were these others who helped you to the throne?” I asked, not wanting to know.

“Who would you think—those who then gained from it: Cardinal Mendoza and his followers. The Admiral of Castile.” She drew in a breath. “The Archbishop of Granada.”

“Fray Hernando? The most holy man in Spain? What cares he about earthly power?”

Mother grimaced. “He doesn’t. He cares for me.”

“What are you saying?”

We stared at each other. At last Mother bowed her head in the silvery moonlight. “I am not the hero you think I am.”

A soldier called up: “Is all well, Your Majesty?”

Mother lifted her voice. “I am comforting the Princess. She is lost in love for her husband and needs my aid.”

“Why do you say that?” I whispered. “You know that it is not true.”

She shook her head slowly. “It would be better for you if you were.”

A shriek from Leonor now jolted me from my thoughts. I looked up to see Philippe lunge at the children as they dodged around the climbing roses.

“Don’t let him catch you, chickens!” I called, trying to sound cheerful. I thrust the needle into the cloth of Philippe’s shirt. I had noticed it on the floor after he had taken me the previous afternoon, the shoulder torn by Delilah’s talons. Mending it signaled my hope for reconciliation.

Philippe caught Isabel. He rubbed his face against her belly until she was breathless with laughter.

He put her down. Panting, she asked, “Why does she call us chickens?”

Philippe snatched her up again. “How about I call you ‘gyrfalcon’?”

She pounded him with her balled fist. “I’m a girl!”

He grabbed her fist and kissed it. “I’m a boy.”

She giggled. “You’re funny.”

“She thinks her father’s funny,” Philippe announced to me. He turned to her. “Will you think I’m funny when I’m King? Or am I funny only as a prince?”

Her soft brow buckled.

I pulled on the needle and thread. “She doesn’t understand you, Philippe.”

“Charles understands. We’re going to be Kings someday, aren’t we, Charles?”

“Yeff, Papa.”

A tender look raced across Philippe’s face, quickly replaced by a grin. He smacked his fist against his hand. “We’re going to crush anyone who gets in our way, right, son?”

Charles pounded his own bony hand. “Cruff ’em.”

Philippe laughed. “I wish your great-grandmother could see you. She rather liked crushing things.”

I thought of my own mother. She was not as tough a creature as I had once believed. Perhaps I had been wrong to not question her about her failures. Perhaps she had only been waiting for me to do so. But it was I who was afraid to let her be less than a goddess.

Philippe motioned to a man standing nearby to bring him wine. “I’m having a feast tonight, welcoming you home.” I watched him drain his goblet. “Nun, dress her up.” Beatriz looked up as he came over and kissed my cheek. “My people need to start thinking of you as Queen.”

“But I’m not their Queen.”

“My father is making arrangements to change our titles here once I am King of your lands—oh, excuse me, Consort King. Anyway, here I will be full King, not some meek companion to Her Majesty. Finally, Burgundy will get its crown. Grand-mère would be so pleased.”

“That may not be for a long, long while.”

“You have not heard the reports of your mother’s illness?”

I put down my sewing. “No.”

He glanced away. “Oh, they are probably nothing. Her ambassador is given to exaggeration. The man would call a hiccup a death rattle. Do not give it a moment’s thought, not on a pretty day like this.”

I saw Isabel stumble and fall toward a trailing rose. She jerked her hand from the thorny cane and, with outrage gathering on her face, studied the thumb-prick welling with blood. Leonor scooped her up as she howled.

I took Isabel from her sister. When her sobs had subsided, I said to Philippe, “I would like to dismiss the Viscountess of Furnes as governess. Now that I have returned, I shall fill that role.”

He signaled again to the servant for more wine. “You’re a funny thing, more concerned about the title of governess than Queen.” He took a drink. “But that is why you amuse me.”

He gave the man his cup. “Look pretty tonight,” he told me. And then, hunching like a monster, he chased after Charles, who ran, his little cries of delight distorted into growls by his deformity.

That night, music mixed with the clink of knives and spoons and the hum of conversation as we dined. In the torchlight, made brilliant by mirrors hung from every wall, the sharp petals of Philippe’s tree of serpent tongues glistened as if wet. Drawn to the sheer malevolence of a pointed tip, I gingerly put my finger to it and slowly applied pressure.

“Watch out,” said Hendrik, sitting next to me, “you’ll cut yourself.”

I drew back and smiled. “Dear Hendrik, thank you for your concern. But there are other things at this court more likely to wound me than serpents’ tongues.”

His broad face was etched with sympathy. “We are your friends, Your Highness.”

“Some of you may be.”

I glanced at the Viscountess of Furnes, leaning over her plate to flirt across the table with the Margrave of Baden-Baden. Like a fish being angled, the fresh-faced young man bent toward her as she spoke, then, as she sat back, bent farther forward as if tethered to her by an invisible line. She smiled privately, fingering a jewel suspended from a ribbon and hidden in her bodice. Whatever the gem was, it was large enough to make a lump under her neckline.

The past year and a half had only served to ripen the Viscountess, silkening her cheeks and intensifying her pale blue gaze. Her golden hair, upon which she wore her hood far back to reveal her sleek temples, gleamed in the torchlight. She shone like a goddess and she knew it.

Philippe turned away from the Margrave’s wife, a plump young thing whose lips looked as though they had been inflated like a sheep’s bladder. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing, Monseigneur,” I replied.

“Where’s my surprise, Hendrik?” Philippe took a swallow of wine. “Hendrik said he had a surprise for me tonight.”

“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” said Hendrik, “you misunderstood. The surprise is for the Princess.”

“For me?” I asked.

“For her?” Philippe stuck out his lip in a pretend pout.

“The feast is in her honor, is it not?”

“Well, it had better not be a silly painting,” Philippe grumbled. “I remember that ugly piece you tried to jolly us with in Brussels a few years back.” He nudged Hendrik’s arm. “If you are aroused by the sight of a man doing it with a strawberry, fine. I prefer women.”

“I liked that painting,” I told Hendrik. “I like to imagine what the artist might have meant by it.”

Philippe knocked back his wine. “He was drunk.”

“Have you decided what that might be, Madame?” Hendrik asked.

“I think he meant it to illustrate how the natural world would appear if Adam and Eve had not fallen in Eden.”

“Correction.” Philippe stabbed a piece of fish with his knife. “Eve is the one who fell. Adam was forced to follow her.”

I could no longer ignore him. “So you think that women are the weaker sex?”

“Of course they are.” He grinned. “We like them that way.”

Hendrik cleared his throat. “I think it might be time for the surprise.” He whispered something to his man, who went to the musicians’ balcony.

Trumpets blared. Diners stopped their conversations and the great wooden doors swung open. Into the chamber danced Flemish men dressed in red loincloths and clamshells, great green-feathered masks upon their faces. Some carried parrots on their shoulders. Others paraded with monkeys on silver chains or, in the case of little greenish monkeys the size of squirrels, balanced atop their heads.

I laughed when a costumed gentleman led in a herd of long-legged ratlike creatures with crimson ribbons.
“Hutias!”
I exclaimed. “Admiral Colón brought them to court when I was a girl. My dog chased after them.” I marveled how I could say the name Colón as if it meant nothing to me.