Виктория Холт - Daughters of Spain

Emanuel was bending over her, his eyes anxious. ‘Including you?’ he said.

‘But yes.’

His eyes were faintly teasing: No more talk of curses, they were telling her. You see, all your premonitions were wrong. The ordeal is over and you have a beautiful son. ‘Can you hear the bells ringing?’ her mother asked the young Queen.

‘I … I am not sure.’

‘All over Spain the bells shall ring. Everyone will be rejoicing. They shall all know that their Sovereigns have a grandson, a male heir, at last.’

‘Then I am happy.’

‘We will leave her to rest,’ said the Queen.

Emanuel nodded. ‘She is exhausted – no wonder.’

‘But first …’ whispered Isabella.

‘I understand,’ laughed her mother. She stood up and called to the nurse.

She took the baby from her and placed it in its mother’s arms.

* * *

Ferdinand said: ‘He shall be called Miguel, after the saint on whose day he was born.’

‘God bless our little Miguel,’ answered the Queen. ‘He’s a lively little fellow, but I wish his mother did not look so exhausted.’

Ferdinand bent over the cradle, exulting in the infant; he found it hard to take his hands from the child who meant so much to him.

‘We must have a triumphant pilgrimage as soon as Isabella is well enough to leave her bed,’ went on Ferdinand. ‘The people will want to see their heir. We should do this without delay.’

Isabella agreed as to the desirability of this, but it should not be, she assured herself, until Miguel’s mother had recovered from her ordeal.

One of the women of the bedchamber was coming quickly towards them.

‘Your Highnesses, Her Highness of Portugal …’

‘Yes?’ said Isabella sharply.

‘She seems to find breathing difficult. Her condition is changing …’

Isabella did not wait for more. With Ferdinand following she hurried to her daughter’s bedside.

Emanuel was already there.

The sight of her daughter’s wan face, her blue-encircled eyes, her fight for her breath, made Isabella’s heart turn over with fear.

‘My darling child,’ she cried, and there was a note of anguish in her voice which was a piteous appeal.

‘Mother …’

‘It is I, my darling. Mother is with you.’

‘I feel so strange.’

‘You are tired, my love. You have given birth to a beautiful boy. No wonder you are exhausted.’

‘I … cannot … breathe,’ she gasped.

‘Where are the physicians?’ demanded Ferdinand.

Emanuel shook his head as though to imply they had admitted their ignorance. There was nothing they could do.

Ferdinand walked to a corner of the room, and the doctors followed him.

‘What is wrong with her?’

‘It is a malaise which sometimes follows childbirth.’

‘Then what is to be done?’

‘Highness, it must take its course.’

‘But this is …’

The doctors did not answer. They dared not tell the King that in their opinion the Queen of Portugal was on her deathbed.

Ferdinand stood wretchedly looking at the group round the bed. He was afraid to join them. It can’t happen, he told himself. Isabella, his wife, could never endure this in addition to all she had suffered. This would be too much.

Isabella’s eyes seemed to rest on her mother.

‘Do we disturb you here, my darling?’ asked the elder Isabella.

‘No, Mother. You … never disturb me. I am too tired to talk, but … I want you here. You too, Emanuel.’

‘You are going to stay with us for months … you and Emanuel and little Miguel. We are going to show the baby to the people. They will love their little heir. This is a happy day, my daughter.’

‘Yes … a happy day.’

Emanuel was looking appealingly at his mother-in-law as though imploring her to tell him that his wife would recover.

‘Mother,’ said the sick woman, ‘and Emanuel … come near to me.’

They sat on the bed and each held a hand.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘I am happy. I am … going, I think.’

‘No!’ cried Emanuel.

But the younger Isabella saw the anguish in the eyes of the elder and she knew; they both knew.

Neither spoke, but they looked at each other and the great love they bore for one another was in their eyes.

‘I … I gave you the boy,’ whispered Isabella.

‘And you are going to get well,’ insisted Emanuel.

But the two Isabellas did not answer him, because they knew that a lie could give them no comfort.

‘I am so tired,’ murmured the Queen of Portugal. ‘I … will go now. Goodbye.’

The Queen of Spain signed for the priests to come to her daughter’s bedside. She knew that the moment had come for the last rites.

She listened to their words; she saw her daughter’s attempts to repeat the necessary prayers; and she thought: This is not true. I am dreaming. It cannot be true. Not Juan and Isabella. Not both. That would be too cruel.

But she knew it was true.

Isabella was growing weaker with every moment; and only an hour after she had given them little Miguel, she was dead.

The bells were tolling for the death of the Queen of Portugal. Throughout Spain the people were beginning to ask themselves: ‘What blight is this on our royal House?’

The Queen lay sick with grief in her darkened bedchamber. It was the first time any of her people had known her to succumb to misery.

About the Palace people moved in their garments of sackcloth, which had taken the place of white serge for mourning at the time of Juan’s death. What next? they asked themselves. The little Miguel was not the healthy baby they had hoped he might be. He was fretful; perhaps he was crying for his mother who had died that he might come into the world.

Catalina sat with Maria and Margaret; they were sewing shirts for the poor; and, thought Margaret, it was almost as if they hoped that by this good deed they might avert further disaster, as though they might placate that Providence which seemed determined to chastise them.

The rough material hurt Margaret’s hands. She recalled the gaiety of Flanders and she knew that there would never be any happiness for her in Spain.

She looked at little Catalina, her head bent over her work. Catalina suffered more deeply than Maria would ever suffer. The poor child was now thinking of her mother’s grief; she was longing to be with her and comfort her.

‘It will pass,’ said Margaret. ‘People cannot go on grieving for ever.’

‘Do you believe that?’ asked Catalina.

‘I know it; I have proved it.’

‘You mean you no longer mourn Juan and your baby?’

‘I shall mourn them for the rest of my life, but at first I mourned every waking hour. Now there are times when I forget them for a while. It is inevitable. Life is like that. So it will be with your mother. She will smile again.’

‘There are so many disasters,’ murmured Catalina.

Maria lifted her head from her work. ‘You will find that we have many good things happening all together later on. That is how life goes on.’

‘She is right,’ said Margaret.

Catalina turned to her sewing but she did not see the coarse material; she was thinking of herself as a wife and mother. The joys of motherhood might after all be worth all that she had to suffer to achieve it. Perhaps she would have a child – a daughter who would love her as she loved her mother.

They sat sewing in silence, and at length Margaret rose and left them.

In her apartments she found two of her Flemish attendants staring gloomily out of the window.

They started up as Margaret came in, but she noticed that the expressions on their faces did not change.

‘I know,’ said Margaret. ‘You are weary of Spain.’

‘Ugh!’ cried the younger of the women. ‘All these dreary sierras, these dismal plains … and worst of all these dismal people!’

‘Much has happened to make them dismal.’

‘They were born dismal, Your Highness. They seem afraid to laugh or dance as people were meant to. They cling too firmly to their dignity.’

‘If we went home …’ began Margaret.

The two women’s faces were alight with pleasure suddenly. Margaret caught at that pleasure. She told herself then: There will never be happiness for me here. Only if I leave Spain can I begin to forget.

‘If we went home,’ she repeated, ‘that might be the best thing we could do.’

* * *

Ferdinand stood by his wife’s bedside looking down at her.

‘You must rouse yourself, Isabella,’ he said. ‘The people are getting restive.’

Isabella looked at him, her eyes blank with misery.

‘A ridiculous legend is being spread throughout the land. I hear it is said that we are cursed, and that God has turned His face away from us.’

‘I was beginning to ask myself if that were so,’ whispered the Queen.

She raised herself, and Ferdinand was shocked to see the change in her. Isabella had aged by at least ten years. Ferdinand asked himself in that moment whether the next blow his family would have to suffer would be the death of the Queen herself.

‘My son,’ she went on, ‘and now my daughter. Oh, God in Heaven, how can You so forget me?’

‘Hush! You are not yourself. I have never before seen you thus.’

‘You have never before seen me smitten by such sorrow.’

Ferdinand beat his right fist into the palm of his left hand.

‘We must not allow these foolish stories to persist. We are inviting disaster if we do. Isabella, we must not sit and mourn; we must not brood on our losses. I do not trust the new French King. I think I preferred Charles VIII to this Louis XII. He is a wily fellow and he is already making treaties with the Italians – we know well to what purpose. The Pope is sly. I do not trust the Borgia. Alexander VI is more statesman than Pope, and who can guess what tricks he will be up to? Isabella, we are Sovereigns first, parents second.’

‘You speak truth,’ answered Isabella sadly. ‘But I must have a little time in which to bury my dead.’

Ferdinand made an impatient gesture. ‘Maximilian, who might have helped to halt these French ambitions, is now engaged in war against the Swiss, and Louis has secured our neutrality by means of the new treaty of Marcoussis. But I don’t trust Louis. We must be watchful.’

‘You are right, of course.’

‘We must keep a watchful eye on Louis, on Alexander, on Maximilian, as well as on our own son-in-law Philip and our daughter Juana, who seem to have ranged themselves against us. Yes, we must be watchful. But most important is it that all should be well in our own dominions. We cannot have our subjects telling each other that our House is cursed. I have heard it whispered that Miguel is a weakling, that he will not live more than a few months, that it is a miracle that he was not born as was our other grandchild, poor Juan’s child. These rumours must be stopped.’

‘We must stop them with all speed.’

‘Ah then, my Queen, we are in agreement. As soon as you are ready to leave your bed, Miguel must be presented to the Cortes of Saragossa as the heir of Spain. And this ceremony must not be long delayed.’

‘It shall not be long delayed,’ Isabella assured him, and he was delighted to see the old determination in her face. He knew he could trust his Isabella. No matter what joy was hers, or what sorrow, she would never forget that she was the Queen.

* * *

The news of the Queen of Portugal’s death was brought to Tomás de Torquemada in the monastery of Avila.

He lay on his pallet, unable to move, so crippled was he by the gout.

‘Such trials are sent for our own good,’ he murmured to his sub-prior. ‘I trust the Sovereigns did not forget this.’

‘The news is, Excellency, that the Queen is mightily stricken and has had to take to her bed.’

‘I deplore her weakness and it surprises me,’ said Torquemada. ‘Her great sin lies in her vulnerability where her family is concerned. It is high time the youngest was sent to England. And so would she be, but for the Queen’s constant excuses. Learn from her faults, my friend. See how even a good woman can fail in her duty when she allows her emotions regarding her children to come between her and God.’

‘It is so, Excellency. But all have not your strength.’

Torquemada dismissed the man.