For a Queen's Love: The Stories of the Royal Wives of Philip II (11 page)

“Grandmother, I implore you, give us your blessing,” pleaded Philip.

“Come close to me that I may see you. Is he good to you, this husband, eh?”

“He … is good to me.”

“But you are newly wed. Wait … wait. Wait till he deceives you. Once I thought I was the happiest woman in the world. It was on that first night. He was lusty and golden-haired. He was a Hapsburg. He said: ‘Do not be afraid, my sweet Juana. You will not regret that they have married you to me.’ I did not know then that he would be making love to other women … the next night … the next day … any hour of the day … any hour of the night.”

“Grandmother!” said Philip coldly; but his coldness could not touch her; she was back in a past which was more real to her than this dirty room with its candles and black hangings. Instead of the young bride and groom, she saw another pair—herself and another Philip. She lived in that moment the agonies of jealousy from which she had never allowed herself to escape. She saw that Flemish woman with the big breasts and thighs—the woman to whom he had been faithful for two whole weeks, which was surely a record for him. What had she, that woman? How was she different from others? How had she kept fickle Philip faithful for two whole weeks? Her strength, like Samson’s, was in her beautiful hair. Never was there such hair—not before, not since. It was like gold in the sunshine and it rippled about her feet.

Juana began to laugh suddenly. She saw it so clearly: The woman standing before her, her hands bound behind her back. Juana mouthed the words: “Bring the barber in.” She shrieked with helpless laughter for she was seeing the woman standing blankly horrified while her beautiful hair fell about the floor. Then she had her stripped and put in a cupboard, and she had been helpless with laughter when Philip came in.

She began to shout: “There is your beauty. Do you not long for her? Can you wait, then? Do not take any notice of me. When did you
ever? She is there … waiting for you as she has waited countless times before. Shameless hussy! Naked she has been, often enough for you … but to be thus before the Queen …”

Juana covered her face with her hands and rocked back and forth with her laughter.

“I beg of you …” began the real Philip.

She was recalled to the present. She said: “And when he saw who she was, he turned on me and he struck me across the mouth. I fell back … but then I flew at him. I scratched him and bit him. But I was happy, my children, because I loved him so much that I hated him … and I hated him so much that it was the second best pleasure in the world to fight with him.”

Her wild laughter had brought two men-at-arms to the door of the apartment. They stood motionless. The life of the heir and his wife must not be jeopardized, and Mad Juana, though so old, was strong when the moods of violence were upon her.

“What do you do there?” she called.

The men bowed. One of them said: “We thought we heard your Highness call.”

Philip said quickly: “Stay there. Her Majesty was about to give us her blessing.” He turned to Maria Manoela. “Come. Kneel,” he said firmly.

They knelt, and it seemed that something in the calm manner of young Philip soothed the old woman.

“My blessing on you both,” she said, laying her hands on their heads. “Philip … my blessing on you. May this child be fruitful … and bear many sons as handsome as
my
Philip … and many daughters who have a better life than I have had.”

Maria Manoela was gripping Philip’s hand. He gave her a quick look of reassurance. “Rise now,” he whispered.

Juana was speaking quietly now. “As handsome as my Philip,” she repeated. “He put me away that he might spend more time with his women. If this Philip treats you thus … come to me, child. Come to me. I will teach you how to deal with harlots …”

“We thank you for your blessing, Grandmother,” said Philip. “We will now depart.”

“First you shall hear music,” she cried. She waved a hand to the men at the door. “You … slave … bring in the musicians. Let them play merry tunes for the Prince and the Princess.”

She insisted that the young pair sit on stools beside her while the musicians played. Juana sat dreamily tapping her fingers on the arms of her chair. She would have music which had been played when she was young and first married to her handsome Philip, in the days when she was a highly-strung girl, before she had gone violently mad through her love for the husband who had been chosen for her, through her jealousy of his many mistresses.

She called to Maria Manoela to come closer. She called her “Katharine!” She pointed out the dancers in that room in which none danced. Once she tottered to her feet. “I will kill her. Yes … you … No use hiding there in the hangings. I can see you. I will plunge a knife into those thick white thighs. When they are stained with blood, mayhap he will turn shuddering from them … perhaps when you are lying lifeless with your silly eyes staring at death and your red mouth gaping, he will turn shuddering from you and come to his lawful wife …”

The musicians played on. They were accustomed to such scenes.

Philip’s eyes met those of Maria Manoela. Please … please … said hers. Could we not go? I can bear no more.

Then Philip remembered that he was the Regent of Spain in the absence of his father, and, standing up, he imperiously waved to the musicians to stop. They obeyed at once.

“We must leave you now, Grandmother,” he said.

“Nay,” she cried. “Nay …”

But all his cold haughtiness was with him now. “I fear so. Our thanks for the entertainment and your blessing. We will come again before long. Come, Maria Manoela.”

The girl rose hastily and stood beside him. He was aware, amid all the strangeness, that she stood as close to him as she could. Philip took Maria Manoela’s hand in his.

Juana said piteously: “Have I said too much, then? … Have I said wild things? … Have I talked of love and lust, then? It reminded me …
A young bride and her groom. I was a young bride once with a groom … the handsomest in the world …”

“We shall meet again soon,” said Philip firmly, and he walked purposefully toward the door.

Juana called after them: “So you would leave me, eh? You would go to your women. ’Twill not always be thus. You have lost your limp, Philip. You have grown young and I am old … old. Life is cruel to women …”

They heard her shrieking laughter as they went through the corridors.

The sentries and the guards bowed low before them; and in the courtyard the young pair mounted their mules, and their attendants gathered about them as they rode back to Valladolid.

Philip never forgot the night that followed. Maria Manoela had a nightmare and awoke in terror, crying out that Mad Juana was hiding behind the tapestry and that she was about to set fire to it.

Philip comforted her.

“Nothing can harm you while I am here,” he said. She clung to him, forgetting her fear of him in her fear of the shadows.

She put her plump arms about his neck and said: “Do not let me see her again. She frightens me so.”

Philip found joy in comforting her, speaking to her with more tenderness than he had ever before been able to show.

“Nothing shall ever frighten you again, my little one. Philip is here … here to protect you.”

And that night their child was conceived.

The news was
received with great rejoicing throughout Spain. In all the churches there were prayers that the child might be a boy.

Leonor cosseted the mother-to-be, making her lie down for hours during the day, which Maria Manoela was quite happy to do.

The young husband was alternately proud and fearful, though he allowed none to guess how proud, how fearful. He thought of Maria Manoela continually, longing for her to be safely delivered as he had never longed for anything else.

State matters weighed heavily upon him. Charles was anxiously urging him to raise money for fresh campaigns. “If our subjects are not liberal with us,” he wrote, “I know not how we shall fare.”

When the
Cortes
met there was a good deal of grumbling. Spaniards were beginning to understand that out of their very might grew misfortune. Better to be a small country, it was said, having plenty for its needs, than a far-flung Empire with its constant demands. There was even some murmuring against the Emperor himself, who was after all half foreign. Philip did not know how they would have emerged from their difficulties but for the handsome dowry which had come with Maria Manoela from Portugal.

He was doubly grateful to her; she was his country’s salvation and his own; and it seemed to him then, in a flash of unusual intuition, that his personal fortunes would always be linked with those of his country. Maria Manoela, while her dowry brought the answer to his country’s needs, with her person satisfied all that he had wanted since he was a boy. One day he would be able to explain this to her. She would cease to be such a child when she became a mother.

He allowed himself to dream of their future with their children around them and the love he desired growing stronger and stronger as the years passed. He would mold her to his way of thought; he would make of her the perfect wife whom a man of his temperament needed so much. To her alone would he show himself; she should know the real Philip who was quite different from the man whom his father and those about him had created for the benefit of Spain and the Empire.

He spent as much time with her as he could spare from his duties. He fancied, though, that she was still a little fearful of him.

Sometimes he would see a bewildered look in her eyes when she contemplated the future.

“The women of our family have difficult labor,” she said on one occasion.

He wanted to tell her of his thoughts of her, of how she would not suffer more than he did. Instead he said: “You shall have the best doctors in the world.”

She shrank a little, fancying there was a reproach in those words. She should be thinking of nothing at this moment but the fact that she was to bear the heir of Spain.

“Your mother was very brave when you were born,” she said slowly. “Leonor told me. She did not once cry out. I … I am afraid I may not be as … brave as your mother was.”

“You will be brave,” he said; and although he meant it to be a compliment, it sounded like a command.

“What if it is a girl? Will you … hate me then?”

“I … I would never hate you.”

“But … it is so necessary that the child should be a boy.”

He let his hand rest on her for a moment. “You must not fret.”

“No. That is bad for the child, Leonor says.”

“And … for you too. If it is a girl … then we must not be sad. For, Maria Manoela, we have the rest of our lives before us.”

She said: “We are not very old, are we. But I hear the King of England cut off his wife’s head because she had a girl instead of a boy.”

“He cut off her head because he wanted another wife,” said Philip.

“And you …?”

Now was the moment for uttering all those tender words which he had meant to say to her so many times. And all he could say was: “I … I should never want another, Maria Manoela.”

She was satisfied; but he was not. He had spoken without the warmth he wished to convey. He had spoken as though to be satisfied with his wife was one of his duties as the Prince of Spain.

She had turned to her sweetmeats. He watched her pleasure in them.

Perhaps she was thinking she was fortunate indeed. They might have married her to a husband who would have cut off her head if she did not have a boy. Instead, she had this strange, aloof young man, who was kind to her because it was the duty of a husband to be kind.

The baby was
born in July.

Bells were set ringing throughout Spain and a messenger was sent to the Emperor with the news. Maria Manoela had given birth to a boy.

Leonor held the baby in her arms. She showed Philip a red, wrinkled
face, a small head covered with black down. “A boy!” she cried. “A son for Spain!”

“But … the Princess?” said Philip.

“Tired, Highness. Exhausted. She is in need of rest.”

“Leonor … all is well?”

Leonor smiled tenderly. She loved him the more because he forgot that as the Prince of Spain his first thoughts should be of the boy, and gave them to his wife.

“Let her rest a while, dear Highness. That is best for her.”

“Leonor!” He caught her hand and gripped it so tightly that she winced with the pain. “I ask you … all is well?”

“All is well indeed. How do you think a woman feels when she has had a baby? She wants to rest … rest …”

He dropped her hand.

“I will look at her now,” he said. “Do not fear that I shall disturb her. But I must see for myself that all is well.”

So he went to her bedside. There she lay, her dark hair spread about the pillows, her dark lashes seeming darker because of the unusual pallor of her skin; she did not look like little Maria Manoela. She had grown up since he had last seen her. She had become a mother. Gently he touched her damp cheek with his lips and, muttering a prayer, hurried from the room.

Leonor came to
him as he paced the apartment.

“Has she not awakened yet?” he asked.

“It was an exhausting labor, Highness.”

“But … so long. Others are not like this.”

“A first child is always more difficult.”

“Leonor, what is it? Tell me.”

“Nothing … nothing. Your Highness distresses himself without cause.”

“Oh, Leonor, I wish I could think so.”

“Philip … little Highness … this is not like you.”

“You too, Leonor? You too do not know what I am like.”

“Philip, dear one, I understand.”

“Then … tell me.”

“What can I tell? It is a first child … It is always difficult.”

“You have said that before, Leonor. All is well, you say. Yet your eyes say something different.”

“Nay, little one. It is the anxiety which makes you think so.”

“Is it, then? She is so young, Leonor … and we have been together such a short time. I had plans … for I thought we should have our whole lives together.”