The Last Queen (48 page)

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 my in my black mantel 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 born 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 broiled 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 so 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 on 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 that 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 because 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 father, 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 to 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 car‟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.

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 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

“My 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 mumured, “Your Highness need not fear anyone. 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 ears, I whispered, “I don‟t know if I can 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.

Madrecita,

I have learned of all that has befallen you through the admiral, and your pain