“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.”

“And so you shall, my precious one.”

“You treat me now as though I am a child. Thus it was when I was small and you knew a child’s tragedy was pending.”

“You must not think the worst, dear one.”

“Leonor … do not try to hide the truth from me. I am no longer a child, you know.”

“Do you love her so much?” He was silent and she went on: “You did not show it.”

Then he began to laugh mirthlessly as Leonor had never heard him laugh before, and it seemed to her that his laughter was more heartrending than sad words.

The tears ran down her cheeks and, because she could not control them, she ran, with a complete absence of ceremony, from the room.

“Send the doctors!” cried Philip. “I must see the doctors.”

They came and stood before him, their heads bowed, their hands clasped together.

“Something is not … as it should be,” he said.

“Your Highness, the Princess is resting. She needs rest after a difficult labor. The little Prince, Don Carlos, thrives, your Highness …”

“It is of the Princess that I wish to speak. Tell me the truth.” Philip was astonished by the calmness of his voice; he had thought it must betray the agony within him.

They kept their respectful attitudes.

“The Princess suffers from natural exhaustion, your Highness.”

Philip sighed. He was obsessed by agonizing thoughts. They are telling me what they know I wish to hear. My father said all men would do that. They seek to please me, not to give me the truth. The truth! What is the truth?

He was afraid that he would break down before these men, and he was enough himself to remember that he must not do that.

He dismissed them.

He sat by her bed. No one else was in the room, for he had sent them all away. Two days had passed, yet she lay there still and strange—remote, like another person.

He knelt by the bed and took her hand.

“Maria Manoela,” he begged. “Look at me. Do you not know me?”

Her eyes were turned toward him—those dark eyes of wonderful beauty—but he knew that she did not see him.

“Dearest,” he whispered, “you must get well. I cannot lose you now. That must not happen. Maria … Maria Manoela, I love you. Did you not know it? It was so difficult to speak of. In the apartments of our grandmother you turned to me … you turned to me when you were so much afraid. That made me happy. In the night … when the nightmares came … you turned to me. You put your dear arms about me and clung to me … to me … to Philip—not the Prince to whom they pay so much homage … but to Philip, your husband who loves you. I have planned so much for us … so much happiness. You and I together in a secret world of our own. Outside I seem cold and strict. I guard my feelings. It is necessary, my love, for that is the man they have made of me. I have to be a great ruler, as my father is, but I want to be happy too. I want to be happy with you. I will make you love me, Maria … Maria Manoela. I shall be tender to you … true to you. You must live, my dearest. You must live for me.”

He stopped speaking and looked at her tired, blank face. He saw the irony of this. Now he had said all that was in his heart … now … when she could not hear him. She lay limp, with the fever consuming her; and she did not know who this young man was who spoke to her so earnestly, whose eyes pleaded so desperately.

But at last she spoke, and he bent over her to catch her words.

“I … am … so thirsty. Please … please … bring me lemons.”

He called to the attendants.

“Lemons! At once! The Princess is asking for them.”

Leonor came running in to him. She threw herself into his arms.

“The saints be praised. She has asked for lemons. Our prayers are being answered. This is a sign.” Then she tore herself away from him; she began giving instructions. She held the cup of juice to the lips of Maria Manoela, and she was praying all the time while the tears ran down her cheeks.

Philip waited. He had told her of his feelings for her. Soon he would speak those words again, and this time she would hear.

The court was mourning her. Poor little Maria Manoela—so young to die. She was just seventeen. She was just beginning life. It was tragic, and the Prince had lost his calmness and control.

He would see no one. He shut himself into his apartment. He lay on his bed and stared up at the canopy saying nothing, just alone with his misery.