Authors: Lynn Cullen
38.
13 November anno Domini 1504
I
t was butchering season, and the air seeping into my chambers in the Dowager’s palace smelled of smoky fires, singed animal hair, and the cold. Charles sat on my lap in his little fur-trimmed gown and coif while Leonor stood next to him, as I showed them an illuminated book of letters.
“C is for—”
“ ‘Chat,’ ”
Charles said.
“That’s right,” I said, smiling.
“It is also for ‘
canard
’ and ‘
chambre
,’ ” Leonor said smugly. “And ‘
chemise
’ and ‘
cheval’
and ‘
cigogne.
’ And you, too, Charles. ‘Charles’ starts with C.”
I nodded. “Impressive, Leonor.
Cigognes,
even. I just so happen to like storks very much.”
“I like storks,” she said. “But they are very ugly.”
I nodded. “Their faces might seem that way. But sometimes the ugliest things are beautiful inside. And the prettiest things, well, sometimes inside they are the ugliest.”
Her fine wheaten hair tumbled over her shoulder as she cocked her head to consider this.
Charles blurted, “ ‘
Cachot
’ fftartff with ffee.”
I looked at him in surprise. “
Cachot
. What do you know about dungeons?”
Nearby, Beatriz glanced up from her translation work spread on my desk. At her embroidery frame by the door, as far away from me as possible while in the same room, the Viscountess gazed my way, too. She was now my chief lady-in-waiting, to neither of our delights. After I had refused to write the apology, my husband had responded by sending my few Spanish ladies home and giving the Viscountess this highest honor. He had allowed Beatriz to remain in my attendance only after I had refused to eat for a week. Not that he cared about my hunger.
“I suppose your mother will take away my title if I let you starve,” he had said on the seventh day. “And I do dislike bony women.” He had scowled at the tray of uneaten fruit, then at me. “You can have your blessed nun—just eat.”
Charles pointed to the Viscountess. “Ffhe told uff about them. There iff a dungeon in thiff palaffe. There iff a dungeon in every palaffe. Ffhe ffaid if we were bad, ffhe would have uff ffrown into it.”
I turned around to glare at her. “How dare you frighten them!”
The Viscountess shrugged, and drove her needle into her embroidery. “I was only teasing. Children love tales of dungeons and giants and witches.”
“Well, I don’t appreciate it. You will frighten them.”
“I’m not ffcared.” Charles pointed up at me. “I’ll ffrow you in the dungeon.”
I kissed his dimpled finger. “That’s not nice. Don’t you want to be a good king and make people happy?”
“Papa ffayff I don’t have to.”
“Make people happy? Why wouldn’t you want to? It feels so very nice.”
The Viscountess smiled flatly as she tugged at her thread. On this day she wore a plain gown of gray. I had not known that she owned such a simple garment. She had not dressed to her usual standard in the past few weeks, the same period, coincidentally, that Philippe had been gone. He had traveled with his men and a few choice others to his pleasure palace in Hesdin, to see how the improvements he had ordered for its famous reception rooms fared. He was eager to see if the additional trick fountains had been installed, particularly those that sprayed the ladies from underneath. Such fun they were, he thought, since under our skirts we wore nothing. How he loved to sniff the air and smack his puffed lips as we dripped, and then cry, “Who smells fish?” I was glad to have not been asked to join him, though perhaps the Viscountess, now dressed like a sparrow and with her brow in a pucker, had not shared in my relief.
Leonor turned the page. “D is for—”
“‘Dragonff’!” Charles broke in with a triumphant shout. “Big, mean, wicked oneff.”
At that moment Katrien came in with a pile of pressed linens.
I could sense Beatriz stiffening at her desk. She had been wary of Katrien since reading of the dangers of white lead paint. She was convinced that it was lead in my cup that had made me ill, and that Katrien knew about and desired this effect. Her conviction was made stronger by Katrien’s evasiveness when she tried to question her. There was also the fact that after abandoning the potion, I had gotten well. But it was not Katrien who frightened me. If someone meant me ill, it was one who had knowledge of insidious poisons, lead or otherwise, not an ignorant peasant girl—although, Beatriz argued, this did not mean that an ignorant peasant girl would not agree to deliver it. Perhaps Beatriz’s suspicions would have been quelled if she had been able to examine the white cup. Katrien claimed that she didn’t know what had happened to it, that she had not seen it since we had been in Segovia.
Now Katrien curtseyed to me, then, with a clack of her
klompen
, proceeded to pull back the cut-velvet counterpane and strip the sheets from my bed. I returned to the book and my children. We had reached the letter T when Katrien was gathering the sheets, readying to leave.
The Viscountess pulled at a stitch. “Girl, a little moment, please.”
Katrien halted. She regarded the other woman, her expression as impassive as ever, except for her eyes, which tightened with sheer hatred.
The Viscountess did not see her disdain, or did not care. “I am thirsty. Get me a cup of water.”
“Yes, Katrien,” said Beatriz, “see if you can’t find her a nice white cup.”
I kissed the top of Charles’s head, tired of the current of ill feelings swirling around me.
Philippe strode into the room. He bowled into Katrien, knocking her off her shoes and sending the wadded linens from her arms. He did not glance at her as she scrambled to gather them.
“Do you know what your mother has done?” he demanded of me.
“Children, say hello to your father.” I gently pushed them toward him, though they were understandably reluctant. Their usually fastidious father’s riding clothes were muddy, and his hair hung in dark, greasy strings. He slashed the air with his riding crop brought straight from the road, lowering it just long enough to receive their kisses.
Leonor had scarcely been able to peck his cheek when he bellowed, “You must set her straight this minute!”
My brave little girl pulled back, blinking to compose herself.
I kept my voice calm for the sake of the children. “I don’t know what I am to set her straight about.”
“That you, and only you, are to be her direct heir.”
“Please, Philippe, can you stop waving that thing? It’s terrifying the children.”
He glared at them. Charles clung to my skirts as Beatriz rose from the desk.
“Sit down, nun, this has nothing to do with you.”
“How do you know this?” I asked, rubbing Charles’s back. “Did you receive a letter from Mother? She has not replied to me.”
He glanced away with pursed lips. “Her ambassador gave me the news,” he said after a pause. “Damn it, this word is not the greeting I expected when I returned from my journey.”
“I’m sorry, Philippe, but it wasn’t my doing.”
“What really infuriates me is how she distrusts me. She wrote a codicil to her will that both you and I must be there to claim the crowns, or your father gets them.”
“She writes this in her will? Why does she feel the need to write one now?”
He looked at me. “The old dame’s not well.”
“Not well?” I stopped comforting Charles. “What do you mean?”
“There’s a growth in her stomach. They say she’s not long for this world. I doubt it—the old she-tiger won’t be put down so easily.”
“Why did no one tell me this?” But who would tell me? All those who were sympathetic to me had been dismissed for months.
He whipped the air again. “Why’d she have to make it difficult for us? You don’t want to go—you want to stay with your children. Why drag you to the miserable Spains?”
I took my hand from Charles’s back to cover my mouth. “My mother is dying,” I said wonderingly, as if saying the words would give me more understanding.
Beatriz came over to me. “Señora.”
“Write to her quickly,” said Philippe, “before she goes. Convince her that you want me to take the crowns in your name. You want to stay with the children, yes? Tell her that. Tell her you won’t go there—but you must be fast. Nun!” he barked.
Beatriz flinched.
“You’re handy with the pen. Make yourself useful and dash off a letter now. Raymond!”
A page appeared at the door.
“Get a courier ready. I’ll have a letter to send.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Nun!” He poked her with his crop. “You’re not writing!”
She would not leave my side.
“Why is everyone just standing there? You’re as dumb as cows.”
“Oh, Papa,” Leonor cried, her voice breaking.
Philippe gazed down at her, then up at me. “You make me look bad in front of my children. That’s just what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“Where are her letters, Philippe?” I asked. “I never get them.”
He pressed together his lips. “What does it matter? Her letters upset you.”
“Have there been letters?”
He narrowed his eyes as though suspecting he had been tricked. “Damn it, why am I pretending? I’ve been doing you a favor. You were always unhappy after receiving them. When Grand-mère suggested that I keep them, I jumped at the idea. I was only trying to help you.”
“So you have been keeping them,” I said in disbelief.
“Yours to her, too.” He shrugged. “Cat’s out of the bag, so what? I acted in your best interest.”
All those years before I returned to the Spains, and even now, I thought that she spurned me. And she had thought likewise of me.
“Nun!” Philippe cried. “Why aren’t you writing?”
I sank back. Mother wrote to me. She wished to have me know her. She had tried to talk to me in the Spains, but I had been too afraid to encourage her. I had been too afraid to let her be a human, with all a human’s frailities, because I needed her to be perfect. And now all my chances to make amends, all our chances to come to know each other, were dwindling like sand through an hourglass. “You had no right,” I whispered.
Philippe snorted. “I have every right to do whatever I want. And you have none—not here, at least. You would think that would scare you into behaving better, but you don’t seem to get it in your head.”
I could write to her quickly, let her know that I didn’t care whether she was perfect or not. That I admired and esteemed her no matter what, that I always had and always would. “I demand her letters.”
He laughed. “You demand?
You
demand? Have you not been listening? My God, you are her daughter.”
I swallowed against the lump searing my throat, then held up my chin. “You compliment me, Monseigneur.”
“Always undermining me, aren’t you, Puss?”
He threw his crop. The children cried out when it struck my shoulder.
The Viscountess flew over to entreat him as he marched for the door. He flung her away, even as Katrien covered her face.
39.
6 January anno Domini 1505
C
harles reached into his shoes, so carefully filled with barley and hay and put by his bed the night before. He pulled out a little silver donkey the size of a mouse, and a little silver cart with leather leads. Instantly he jumped up and brought it to me. “Put it together!”
The sleeves of my night robe dragging, I reached over Isabel, sucking her thumb in my lap, to take it. “Look, Charles, the Three Kings took all of your hay for their camels. You must have been a good boy for them to bring you such a nice present.” I worked the leads over the donkey’s neck. “Leonor, are you not going to look in your shoes?”
She sat back on her heels, poised even with her hair crumpled from sleep and a stripe imprinted on her cheek from her bedclothes. How Mother would enjoy her, such a dignified little soul. How odd to think that they had not met. I hoped there would be time. “We did not have Three Kings’ Day last year,” she said.
“Ah, well, maybe we can make up for it this year.”
“When I was a child,” said Beatriz, “Día de los Reyes was my favorite day. I waited all year for the sixth of January. Once I got a book on the saints. I felt very rich and very good—no one got books. Too expensive.”
“Those Kings knew you well,” I said. “You would treasure a book. Go on, Leonor, look and see if the Kings brought you anything.” Had Philippe and the Viscountess been so very busy with their lives that they could not remember this tradition, so important to the children?
Pursing her lips, Leonor reached into her shoe, then brought out a gold necklace with a pearl the size of an orange seed suspended from it.
“Pearls are special stones,” I said. “They help you to remember someone.”
“Who?”
“That is up to you.”
“Grand-mère Margaret,” she said with characteristic finality.
I drew in a breath. Of course she missed her great-grandmother. The Dowager had raised her during the time I was in Spain. “I’m certain she would like that.”
I slid Isabel off my lap and led her to her shoes to see what was within. She was examining the miniature gilt dog she’d found, when I saw movement behind the lumpy glass of the window. I heard a nightingale sing. I frowned. There were no nightingales in winter.
Just then the Viscountess entered with a troop of Burgundian ladies. “There you are. We had gone to your chambers but could not find you.”
“It’s Three Kings’ Day.”
She looked blankly at the children. Outside, the nightingale burst into song. “What is that?” She crossed to the window and opened it. Cold air rushed in and the bird flew away.
Now Philippe entered, with Delilah on his wrist. He was in his night robe and his hair hung straight, as yet uncurled. “By Saint John, it’s cold. Why did you open that window?”
“There was an irksome bird,” said the Viscountess.
“Then by God, let me send Delilah after it.”
“No!” I cried.
Philippe gazed at me, then made a little shooing motion at the Viscountess.
“But we’ve come to dress Madame.”
“Go. Get. All of you.” When she and the ladies had gone, he said, “You, too, nun.”
She looked at me.
“What is this, Philippe?”
I nodded for Beatriz to leave. The bird returned. I saw its rippled image through the glass, hopping on the windowsill. I glanced away, hoping Philippe wouldn’t see it, but he was sprawled on the floor with the children, admiring the gifts he had nothing to do with.
He encouraged Charles to pet Delilah, then looked up. “I thought I should be the one to tell you.”
My stomach filled with dread. I did not want to hear.
“Your mother is dead.”
On the other side of the wavy glass, the bird pecked at the sill. We would never get to talk. She would never truly know me, nor I truly know her.
It was too late.
“Happy Three Kings’ Day.” Philippe reached into his robe and drew out a packet of letters. He held them out to me.
“Mama, what are those?” asked Leonor.
I shook my head, unable to speak for the swelling in my throat.
“Mama has to get dressed,” said Philippe.
“I’ll be back,” I whispered to the children.
Alone in my chamber, I stood by the light of the window, staring at my name written in my mother’s hand.
“Knock, knock.” Philippe entered. He came as far as my desk, stopping to toy with the writing things upon it. “Look, Puss, I know this is bad for you. Is there anything I can do?”
I shook my head.
He came over and put his arms around me.
Whether weakened by his act of kindness, or by the yawning chasm that had opened in my heart, I leaned against him.
He pressed his forehead against mine. “Is it too late to say I’m sorry?”
I kept my forehead to his. Gently, he began to sway with me.
It was all he knew to offer.