Виктория Холт - Daughters of Spain

‘Highness, it is not the first time I have had to remind you of your duty.’

The Queen was meekly silent. It was true. This man had a more rigorous sense of duty than she had. She could not help it if her love for her family often came between her and her duty.

She must range herself on his side. Ferdinand would insist on this marriage taking place. They had indulged their daughter too long. And, if they could insist on this condition, that would be a blow struck for Holy Church, so she must forget her tenderness for her daughter and put herself on the side of righteousness.

Her voice was stern as she addressed her daughter: ‘You should cease to behave like a child. You are a woman and a daughter of the Royal House. You will prepare yourself to accept this marriage, for I shall send a dispatch to Emanuel this day.’

Torquemada’s features were drawn into lines of approval. He did not smile. He never smiled. But this expression was as near to a smile as he could come.

When her mother spoke like that, Isabella knew that it was useless to protest; she lowered her head and said quietly: ‘Please, may I have your leave to retire?’

‘It is granted,’ said the Queen.

* * *

Isabella ran to her apartment. She did not notice little Catalina whom she passed.

‘Isabella, Isabella,’ called Catalina, ‘what is wrong?’

Isabella took no notice but ran on; she had one concern – to reach her bedroom before she began to weep, for it seemed to her in that moment the only relief she could look for was in tears.

She threw herself on to her bed and the storm burst.

Catalina had come to stand by the side of her bed. The child watched in astonishment, but she knew why Isabella cried. She shared in every sob; she knew exactly how her sister felt. This was like a rehearsal of what would one day happen to her.

At length she whispered very softly: ‘Isabella!’

Her sister opened her eyes and saw her standing there.

‘It is Catalina.’

Catalina climbed on to the bed and lay down beside her sister.

‘It has happened then?’ asked the little girl. ‘You are to go?’

‘It is Torquemada. That man … with his schemes and his plots.’

‘He has made this decision then?’

‘Yes. I am to marry Emanuel. There is to be a condition.’

‘Emanuel is a kind man, Isabella. He loves you already. You will not be unhappy. Whereas England is a strange place.’

Isabella was silent suddenly; then she put her arms about Catalina and held her close to her.

‘Oh Catalina, it is something we all have to endure. But it will be years before you go to England.’

‘Years do pass.’

‘And plans change.’

Catalina shuddered, and Isabella went on: ‘It is all changed now, Catalina. I wish I had gone before. Then Emanuel would have loved me. He did, you know, when I was Alonso’s wife.’

‘He will love you now.’

‘No, there will be a shadow over our marriage. You did not know what happened here when the Jews were driven out. You were too young. But I heard the servants talking of it. They took little children away from their parents. They made them leave their homes. Some died … some were murdered. There was great suffering throughout the land. Emanuel will hate to do in his country what was done in ours … and if he does not do it there will be no marriage.’

‘Who said this?’

‘Torquemada. He is a man who always has his way. You see, Catalina, if I go to Portugal it will not be the same any more. There will be a great shadow over my marriage. Perhaps Emanuel will hate me. They cursed us … those Jews, as they lay dying by the roadside. If I go to Portugal they will curse me.’

‘Their curses cannot hurt you, for you will be doing what is good.’

‘Good?’

‘If it is what our mother wants, it will be good.’

‘Catalina, I’m frightened. I think I can hear their curses in my ears already.’

They lay in silence side by side. Isabella was thinking of the roads of Portugal filled with bands of exiles, broken-hearted men and women looking for a home, prepared to find death on the highway, at the hands of murderers or from exposure.

‘This is my marriage with Emanuel,’ she whispered.

Catalina did not hear her; she was thinking of a ship which would sail away to a land of fogs and strangers; and she was a passenger on that ship.

The Archduchess Margaret clung to the ship’s bulwarks. The wind was rising; the storm clouds loured. Was the middle of winter a good time to make a perilous sea journey? She was sure that it was not. Yet, she thought, what would it have availed me had I asked to wait for the spring?

There had already been much delay, and her father was anxious for her marriage; so, it seemed, were the King and Queen who were to be her parents-in-law.

‘It is their will, not mine,’ she murmured.

Some girls of sixteen might have been terrified. There were so many events looming ahead of her which could be terrifying. There was to be a new life in a strange country, a new husband; even closer was a threatening storm at sea.

But the expression on the face of the Archduchess was calm. She had been sufficiently buffeted by life to have learned that it is foolish to suffer in anticipation that which one may or may not have to suffer in fact.

She turned to the trembling attendant at her side and laid a hand on the woman’s arm.

‘The storm may not touch us,’ she said. ‘It may break behind us. That can happen at sea. The strong wind is carrying us fast to Spain.’

The woman shuddered.

‘And if we are to die,’ mused Margaret, ‘well then, that is our fate. There are worse deaths, I believe, than drowning.’

‘Your Grace should not talk so. It is tempting God.’

‘Do you think God would change His plans because of the idle chatter of a girl like myself?’

The woman’s lips were moving in prayer.

I should be praying with her, thought Margaret. This is going to be a bad storm. I can feel it in the air. Perhaps I am not meant to be a wife in reality.

Yet she did not move, but stood holding her face up to the sky – not with defiance but with resignation.

How can any of us know, she asked herself, when our last hour will come?

She turned her comely face to the woman. ‘Go to my cabin,’ she said. ‘I will join you there.’

‘Your Grace should come with me now. This is no place for you.’

‘Not yet,’ said Margaret. ‘I will come when the rain starts.’

‘Your Grace …’

‘That was an order,’ said Margaret with a quiet firmness, and a few seconds later she was smiling to see with what alacrity the woman left her side.

How terrified people were of death, mused Margaret. Was it because they remembered their sins? Perhaps it was safer to die when one was young. At sixteen a girl, who had been watched over as she had been, could not have committed a great many sins.

She held up her face to the rising anger of the wind.

How far are we from the coast of Spain? she wondered. Can we reach it? I have a feeling within me that I am destined to die a virgin.

It was unusual that a young girl could feel so calm when she was leaving her home for a strange country. But then her father’s dominions had not been home to her for so long. She scarcely knew Maximilian, for he was a man of many engagements. His children were to him as counters in a great game to be used in winning him possessions in the world. He was fortunate to have a son and a daughter both strong and healthy, both comely enough; in the case of Philip extremely so. But it was not the appearance of men that was so important. Nevertheless Maximilian had nothing of which to complain in his children. He had a worthy son and a daughter with whom to bargain in the markets of the world.

Margaret smiled. The men were the fortunate ones. They did not have to leave their homes. Arrogant Philip had merely to wait for his bride to be delivered to him. It was the women who must suffer.

And for that, thought Margaret, I should be grateful, since I suffer scarcely at all. Does it matter to me whether I am in France, in Flanders or in Spain? None has seemed to be home to me. I am too young to have had so many homes, and as I quickly learned that my hold on any of them lacked permanence, I learned also not to attach myself too tenderly to any one of them.

She faintly remembered her arrival in France. She had been barely three years old at the time and had been taken from her home in Flanders to be brought up at the French Court because, through her mother, Mary of Burgundy, she had inherited Burgundy; and the French King, Louis XI, had sought to bring Burgundy back to France by betrothing her to his son, the Dauphin Charles.

So to Amboise she had come. She often thought of the great château which had been her home for so many years. Even now, with the storm imminent, she could imagine that she was not on this deck but within those thick walls. She recalled the great buttresses, the cylindrical towers and the rounded roofs, which looked as if they could defy the wind and rain to the end of time.

Within those walls she had been prepared to meet her betrothed – a rather terrifying experience for a little girl of three and a half whose bridegroom was a boy of twelve.

That ceremony of betrothal was an occasion which would never be obliterated from Margaret’s memory. Clearly she could recall meeting her bridegroom at a little farm near the town of Amboise, which was afterwards called La Métairie de la Reyne, whither she had been carried in a litter. It was a strange ceremony, doubtless considered fitting for children of such tender years. She remembered being asked if she would take Monsieur le Dauphin in marriage, and how the Grand Sénéchal, who stood close to her, prodded her and told her she must say that she would.

Then she had been put into the arms of young Charles and told to kiss him. She was to be a wife to the future King of France, and the people of Amboise showed their pleasure by hanging scarlet cloth from their windows and putting up banners which were stretched across the streets.

After that she had been taken back to the château, and her sister-in-law, Anne, the Duchess of Bourbon who was the eldest daughter of the reigning King and past her twentieth birthday, had been her guardian.

Margaret had quickly adjusted herself and had pleased her tutors by her love of learning. She will make a good Queen of France, they often said; she is the best possible wife for the Dauphin.

Charles had very soon become King, and that meant that she, Margaret, was an even more important person than before.

Yet she had never been Charles’s wife in reality, for eight years after her arrival in France, while she was still a child, Charles decided that he preferred Anne, Duchess of Brittany, to be his wife.

So, to the wrath of Margaret’s father, Charles sent her back to Flanders, ignoring the vows he had taken in the Métairie de la Reyne on that day eight years before.

Maximilian was infuriated by the insult, but Margaret had felt philosophical.

She thought of Charles now. He was far from the handsome husband a girl might long for. He was short and, because his head was enormous, his lack of inches was accentuated. His expression was blank and his aquiline nose so enormous that it overpowered the rest of his features. He seemed to find it difficult to keep his mouth closed, for his lips were thick and coarse and he breathed heavily and took a long time to consider what he was going to say; whereas Margaret herself was quick-witted and fluent.

He was kind enough; but he had little interest in books and ideas, which made him seem dull to her; she could not share his interest in sport and jousting.

So, she thought, perhaps it was not such a tragedy that he shipped me back to Flanders.

And now she was being shipped to Spain. ‘If I ever reach there,’ she murmured.

Two of the ship’s high-ranking officers had approached her, and so deep was she in her thoughts that she had not noticed them.

‘Your Grace,’ said one, bowing low, ‘it is unsafe for you to remain on deck. The storm is about to break and we must ask you to seek the shelter of your cabin.’

Margaret inclined her head. They were anxious about her, she knew. She was the most important cargo they had ever carried. She represented all the advantages that union with a daughter of Maximilian could bring to Spain.