History's Great Queens 2-Book Bundle: The Last Queen and The Confessions of Catherine de Medici (38 page)

FROM THE FROZEN FIELDS OUTSIDE BURGOS, I EMBARKED ON MY
voyage to Toledo, Philip’s coffin draped with its cloth of estate loaded onto a sturdy cart.

I took special delight in ordering Joanna to stay in Burgos. Besides my small retinue of pages, Lopez, and my musicians, I had an escort of sentries and Beatriz, Soraya, and Doña Josefa. At long last, I would travel through Spain with my friends, free of restraint.

My heart was so full, my hope so enormous I did not care at first that dreary fog and rain wreathed the land. We traveled along the confluence of the Duero, its yellow waters swollen by the rains. I rode a black-caparisoned mare, my women and other servitors behind me, dressed in mourning. A herald held aloft my sodden royal standard.

We were hardly an impressive congregation but word of my approach went before me, bringing emaciated peasants to the roadside to watch me pass. Some kneeled when they caught sight of me in my black mantle and veil; others genuflected and called out for alms. The misery in their faces reflected the destitution of my native land. The plague had left countless villages deserted and the harvest moldering in the fields. Makeshift crosses littered the vast plains, marking the graves of the dead. Groups of ravens cawed and scavenged, but there were no dogs to be seen and the few cattle I glimpsed looked dead on their feet.

It was as if all of Castile had become a graveyard.

I seethed. This was what Philip and his henchmen had accomplished! This was their legacy: poverty and fear and destruction. Once I reached Toledo, I vowed, I would do everything in my power to restore Spain to its former pride. Love had served me nothing; only this land had remained constant, the place of my birth, which had borne witness to my vale of tears. Like my mother before me, I would wage battle against those who plundered and defiled it. I would put an end to the strife, the feuds, the bribery, and the ruthless quest for personal enrichment.

I would prove myself a worthy successor to Isabel of Castile.

This beacon of hope sustained me. I endured the pitched tents in fields, the bedding on stony ground, the dry foods and boiled river water. I braced myself with these minor travails for the larger ones that waited ahead, for the war I’d already mapped out in my mind; but I was not prepared, had not even paused to consider, that my own body might betray me.

The pangs came upon me suddenly, as we rode across a desolate field just outside the hamlet of Torquemada. I gripped my saddle horn, wincing. It was too soon. I still had a month or so left. The child would have to wait. I was expected in Segovia, my first official stop. There, I would be in the care of my mother’s friend the Marquise de Moya and would find refuge to give birth before continuing to Toledo. By then, I hoped to have word of my father and the admiral.

I felt my water break and gush from under my skirts. Beatriz heard my stifled gasp and cantered to me. Gripped by pain, I had no choice but to let her help me dismount.

Lopez raced ahead to commandeer a suitable lodging. Supported by Soraya and Beatriz, I was brought to the stranger’s house destined to be my final birthing chamber.

SHE TOOK ALMOST TWO DAYS TO ARRIVE—TWO DAYS OF SUCH
bloody, bone-sapping struggle that I feared she would be my death.

Never had a child of mine so tested my endurance; never had one seemed so impossible to disgorge. It was as though after making her decision to emerge early, she had changed her mind and tried to clamber back into my womb. I screamed like a demented woman, railed, and wept. And yet when she finally came in the twilight hour of the third day, she stunned me with her beauty. Covered in mucus and blood, she still glowed like alabaster lit from within.

Doña Josefa cut the cord binding us, cleansed and swaddled her; from my sweat-soaked bed I asked that she be brought to me. Soraya laid her in my aching arms while Beatriz sat and let tears slip down her weary face. My stalwart Beatriz was far more emotional than she ever let on, and I too felt my eyes moisten as I gazed upon the crying babe who, at the lightest touch of my fingertips to her lips, suddenly went silent.

She gazed up at me. I could see already that her hair was light auburn, with threads of gold, and as she tried to suck my finger, I sighed.

“Catalina,” I said, freeing my heavy breast. “I shall call her Catalina.”

THE BIRTH LEFT ME LIMP AS A WET RAG. WHILE CATALINA LUSTILY
suckled at my breast, Doña Josefa and Soraya trudged through that paltry hamlet, gathering whatever fresh foods they could find, tearing live chickens from the coops of astonished peasants too overawed by the fact that their queen had just given birth in their vicinity to protest. Soraya brewed draughts and ladled out soups; Doña Josefa cooked up poultry in a thousand different ways and insisted I eat every morsel. I had lost more blood than was considered safe, yet I wouldn’t hear of anyone sending to Burgos for a physician. I would live, I told them from my bed. I had given birth before.

I tarried too long. I should have gotten back on my horse, even if I had ended up dying of it. For there, in Torquemada, they found me. They’d had second thoughts; I underestimated their tenacity. Cisneros and Villena and their retainers—they crowded into town and demanded I act as a newly delivered woman should and remove myself to “a castle readied to receive me.”

The moment I heard those terrifying words, I hauled myself out of bed and issued orders for departure. Only my loyal few obeyed; as I angrily waved Cisneros’s protests aside and mounted my horse, I saw Villena watching from the shadows by the house, staring at me with his unsettling eyes. Did he suspect the limits to which they pushed me? Did he understand that no mortal being could endure this unremitting persecution?

I think he did.

The storm struck that night as we traversed the wide plateau. The rain fell in blinding sheets, churning the ground to mud. Finally, unable to go any farther, I ordered a halt and dismounted. I stood uncertain, my cloak slapping in the wind. Confusion and doubt waged a fierce battle inside me; my head pounded with unspoken fears. Where should I go? Where was there a refuge for me? I would never reach Segovia in this state, much less Toledo. I needed somewhere I could burrow in and hide: like a hunted animal I craved darkness and peace without high walls, without fortresses and waiting lords who sought to imprison me.

Shivering, I whirled about. I searched the night. Then I felt
him.
Watching me, reveling in my desperation. He had not left me. He was here. Waiting. Anticipating the hour of his revenge.

He was not dead.

I let out a strangled gasp, turned, and ran past the astonished pages, stumbling over the muddied hem of my skirts as I reached the cart holding the coffin. I paused, panting. I heard his laughter in my head. He taunted me. He knew what I had done. He knew I had got the best of him, that I was a murderess. Now he would drag me down into hell with him. I must not let him. I must not let him get me. I must destroy him again. Destroy him before he destroyed me.

Grabbing hold of the coffin’s rungs, I began pulling it from the cart.
“Ayúdame,”
I cried at the pages and sentries who stood as if paralyzed, gaping. “Help me!”

My ladies rushed to me, Beatriz at their head. “
Princesa,
please. Do not—”

I threw out my hand, sent one of them sprawling. Now the fury erupted, pouring from my mouth like poison. How dare they disobey me? How dare they! I was their queen! They must do what I commanded. They must never, ever, question me!

“I said help me,” I roared. “Now, do you hear me?
NOW
!
”

The sentries leapt forward to the cart’s levers, sending the coffin careening onto the field. Mud sprayed as it hit the ground, splashing my skirts. I stood staring at it, afraid, half-expecting the lid to fling open and the cadaver to rear up with a leering smile.

I heard him whisper—
Mi infanta
—and I said in a shivering voice, “Open it.”

The sentries backed away. Lopez and the pages crept to the coffin, hoisting open the heavy lid. They gagged, dropped it, and reeled back, arms pressed to their mouths.

For a moment, I could not move. From where I stood, I glimpsed cerements, submerged in lime. He did not sit up. He did not turn his dead-blue eyes to me, open his mouth, and accuse me of burying him alive.

I took a step forward. He lay on a dark satin lining, shrouded head to toe. Even the hands crossed over his chest were wrapped in crusty cloth. As I sought to recognize something that would confirm this…this thing was Philip, the odor reached me, suffocating in its intensity. I resisted the urge to cough, feeling the wind snatch my coif from my head as I inhaled the stench. Whatever the embalmers had used had failed.

He rotted before my very eyes.

“The cerements on his face,” I whispered. “Take them off.”

I felt all of them staring at me in horror. I looked at Lopez. He took a step back. Soraya came forth, past me. She leaned over the body and began to unravel the cerements.

The seconds passed like years. My breath lodged in my throat. Traces of flesh became visible—an ear, a nose, part of a twisted, blackened mouth. I lifted a hand. She paused.

“No…no more,” I whispered, and she withdrew.

It was Philip. Or what they’d left of him. The surgeons who’d removed his brain and heart had butchered him. The eyes had fallen into his misshapen skull. He had no teeth. All that remained of the virile beauty I had once reveled in was his nose, still prepossessing in a face withered as an ancient’s. He looked as if he’d been dead a thousand years.

There was nothing to fear. Nothing left to hate.

My rage evaporated. “Close it,” I said. I returned to my horse. Doña Josefa regarded me, my baby girl cradled in her arms. Beatriz stood apart, her shawl clutched to her muddied face.

“We must go on,” I said.

THREE DAYS LATER
on that long empty road, where only the barren plain stretched about us like a painting done in ocher and black, I looked up from under my veil and saw someone riding fast toward us on a lathered black stallion.

It was the admiral.

THIRTY-ONE

“
M
y father is here?” I looked at him in disbelief, the letter untouched in my lap.

He nodded, his weathered face subdued. He’d accompanied me to Hornillos, another small town where we commandeered a house. As overwhelmed by relief as I was to see him, his exhaustion was so plain I would have insisted he take to his bed had his news not been so important.

“We landed in Valencia a month ago,” he explained. “I came as soon as I could to tell Your Highness but you had left Burgos. I had to ride back and forth until I found you.”

I nodded, the letter like a stone on my thighs. I could not lift a hand to break open the seal, as if my fingers had stuck together.

I saw the admiral’s gaze shift to the coffin sitting on the floor nearby like another table, its cloth of estate tattered, soiled. As a frown creased his brow, I wondered what he would think when he heard of that wild scene outside Torquemada, when I lost all control of myself and even struck Beatriz in my haste to get to my husband’s corpse. He had been to Burgos, had been apprised of my decision to bring Philip’s body with me to Toledo. What other lurid tales had been poured into his ears?

“I used his body,” I said quietly. “He was my shield. I…I thought they’d not touch me if I conveyed his remains to Toledo.”

Even as I spoke, I realized how bizarre my words sounded, how lacking in reason they must seem to a man like him, a grande who had never experienced the plight of a woman in fear for her life, the rigors of childbirth, the vulnerability of widowhood. How could he understand? How could anyone understand?

Without warning, tears filled my eyes. I bowed my head. God help me, I would not weep before this proud lord, who’d ridden all the way to Italy to bring my father to me.

He remained still, watching me. Then he did something he would otherwise never have done in all his years of service to royalty: he reached down and embraced me. I melted against him, felt his hand caress my hair.

He murmured, “Your Highness need not fear anymore. His Majesty will protect you. This struggle of yours is too much for any soul. You must trust in His Majesty now.”

Hearing the faint beat of his heart under his stiff black doublet, his breastbone sharp against my ear, I whispered, “I don’t know if I can ever trust anyone again.”

In response, he retrieved the letter that had slipped unnoticed from my lap. He pressed it into my hand. “Read it. Your Highness will see that His Majesty has every intention of seeing you to your proper estate. He would never have left Spain if he’d known what your husband intended.”

I held the letter for a moment before I finally cracked the seal and unfolded the parchment.

I lifted my eyes to the admiral. I felt a fragile joy I was almost too afraid to acknowledge. “He wants us to meet in Tortoles.”

He smiled. “And Your Highness’s answer is?”

“Yes. My answer is yes!” I threw my arms about his neck. “I will meet with my father and together we will claim my throne.”

I LEFT HORNILLOS THE NEXT EVENING, HAVING SENT THE ADMIRAL
ahead to Tortoles to find me the best accomodations available. Upon my arrival, I was taken to a two-story house on the edge of the town.

Beatriz, Soraya, Doña Josefa, and I went to work, opening my battered coffers that contained my plate and linens, and airing my embroidered pillows from Flanders and wool tapestries. We spread rushes mixed with lavender and thyme on the floors and sat together at night repairing my gowns. I decided on one with an ebony satin bodice inset with onyx beads for my meeting with my father but had Soraya replace the draping sleeves with fitted, crimson damask ones. And my coif needed a new veil, with some pearls to adorn it. My father always liked to see me in finery.

On the morning of his arrival, my ladies awoke me before dawn. They bathed me and dressed my hair. After they laced me into my gown, they set the coif on my head, adjusted the fall of veiling, and stepped back.

I turned to them, plucking at my skirts. “Well?”

“Your Highness looks beautiful,” said Beatriz, though she made the mistake of glancing away. I strode to my dressing table, picked up my silver hand mirror. In the cracked, tarnished glass, my face swam like a reflection in murky water—so pale and gaunt, I could not contain my gasp.

“Dios mio,”
I said. “I look as if I’ve been to hell itself.”

“You have. There’s no use pretending otherwise.”

She never minced her words; with a faint smile, I set the mirror back on the dresser. “Is Catalina dressed yet? Papá will want to see her.”

“Doña Josefa attends to her.” Beatriz took me by the arm. “Come, let’s go to the courtyard. That way, we’ll be the first to see His Majesty when he approaches.”

BY MIDMORNING
the sun was vehement.

We took shelter in the shade of the portico, where dust clung to our gowns and perspiration stuck our petticoats to our thighs. When we finally heard muffled shouts in the distance, I sent Soraya to the gates. She peered out. “I can see them!” she cried over her shoulder to me. “Many lords ride to the house.”

I moistened my parched lips. Many lords. Probably everyone who had plotted against me. In my anticipation of this moment, I hadn’t paused to consider that my father might arrive with an escort. But then Cisneros must have hastened to greet him, Villena, Benavente, and the constable as well, all eager as ever to curry favor where favor could be found.

I braced myself. No matter how much it cost me, I would not let them see how much I dreaded their presence. Let them find only cold indifference; let them wonder if once I was safe on my throne they would find much to answer for.

All of a sudden, the entourage was before the gate, an impressive collection of men whose cloaks draped over their mounts’ hindquarters, the bright scarlet and gold and blue of their insignias glistening with unnatural brilliance against the bone-white sky. Villena and Benavente were among them; so was the constable. I had seen him skulking in the ranks of Philip’s army at Burgos, then in Burgos when Philip died. It seemed he had indeed been spying for my father.

Then I saw my father. He rode at their head on a stallion caparisoned in green velvet. My knees turned to water. I flashed on an icy-cold day on a charred field outside Granada, what seemed an eternity ago, when I’d waited on tiptoes for him in all my innocence. Then, he had ridden with his head bare and with my brother like an angel at his side. Now, his features were shadowed by his black cap, the lone jewel pinned to its brim winking in the light. He turned to speak to a man behind him.

Then he dismounted, his boots hitting the dust with an audible thump. The others followed suit. As each lord leapt from his horse, my heart beat faster and faster, until it seemed it would burst from my chest.

He turned to us. My ladies sank into curtsies. I stood immobile, staring as though he were a mirage that might vanish at any moment. He straightened his shoulders and began walking across the courtyard.

Slowly, with a composure that belied my trepidation, I moved to him.

He stopped. He removed his cap. The sunlight glinted on his balding head, his pate tanned copper by the Neapolitan sun. He’d grown a beard, its chestnut sheen liberally sprinkled with gray; he looked shorter and stouter, yet his stance was the same, achingly familiar, his legs bowed and his gloved hands on hips, his leonine head tilted.

I clutched my skirts above my ankles and broke into a run, my coif flying off unheeded.

Brightness glistened in his eyes as I came before him. His face was deeply scored.

“Madrecita,”
he said.
“Mi madrecita, al fin…”
He pulled me to him. “I am home,” he said, as his arms closed about me. “I have come home to you.”

Before I closed my eyes, I saw the admiral among the lords. He inclined his head gently.

WE SAT IN THE
SALA
, the remains of our supper on the table. The lords had departed to their separate lodgings at my father’s request; after serving us, my ladies retired from sight.

Strangely, through supper we spoke only of safe things. I asked him about my son, whom he had left in safekeeping in Aragón, and of his trip (“Naples is a hellhole,” he laughed, “but a rich hellhole, at that”). Our five years of separation were heavy between us, and we were both reluctant to break the illusion that we simply enjoyed a long-overdue reunion, until the time came when we could avoid it no longer.

Rising from his chair, he took up his goblet of wine and paced to the doors leading to the patio. With the fall of night, clusters of flowering jasmine had released their fragrance, and it wafted through the open doors. He closed his eyes. “Jasmine. It always reminds me of Isabel.”

I sat silent. Hearing my mother’s name on his lips made me hurt.

He turned back to me, shaking his head. “Forgive me. I did not mean to cause you any discomfort. I spoke without thinking.”

“I know, Papá.” I met his gaze. “You can speak of her, if you like.”

“No,” he said, with a wry laugh. “Best to speak of you, yes?” He returned to the table, set down his goblet. “I do not wish to burden you further. I want you to feel safe and I understand that won’t happen overnight, not after everything you’ve suffered.”

I gave him a smile. “I will not break, Papá. And I have questions only you can answer.”

He regarded me with bemusement. “Questions?” He reached again for his goblet, drained its contents, and immediately refilled it from the decanter. He had consumed more than I recalled him drinking. Times past, he’d all but abstained save for formal occasions.

“Very well.” He straightened his shoulders. “Ask your questions.”

I took a breath. “Why did you leave Spain without trying to see me?” To my relief, I did not sound resentful. Not until this moment had I fully realized how bewildering his actions were to me, how much I had needed him during my struggle to survive my husband and win my throne.

He frowned. “I thought you knew. Philip forced me. He threatened to invade Aragón. I do not have the power I held with your mother. Even as regent, I still needed the
grandes’
support. And they sided completely with your husband.”

“And Cisneros, did he act as your spy?”

“Yes. He kept me informed of everything that transpired, up until that Cortes session where you defied Philip. Then, for some reason he has not explained, he ceased to write.”

“There’s no surprise there. He tried to finish what Philip started. I think he wanted to rule Castile, perhaps through one of my sons.”

“No doubt. The old vulture has certainly added a few new plumes to his roost since I saw him last, though he did come to me as soon as I arrived to explain he only sought to protect the realm. In fact, most of the nobles have begged my forgiveness.”

I bristled. “It’s
my
forgiveness they should seek.”

He nodded, giving me a pensive look. “They assume I will seek to reclaim my regency. I’ve not said anything. Castile has a queen to rule it now. I have no aspirations for myself.”

I absorbed these words in silence. I did not want to probe further, but knew I would never rest unless I heard the answers from him, and him alone. “I have one more thing to ask, Papá.”

“Yes?”

“Did you…?” My voice caught. “Did you have Besançon…?”