Authors: Lynn Cullen
2 May anno Domini 1543
TORDESILLAS, SPAIN
T
he woman looks up to see her grandson, twitching his jaw—that jaw, and those terribly familiar puffed lips—with concern.
jaw, and those terribly familiar puffed lips—with concern.
“I’m sorry, ” she says. “I get caught up in my thoughts. It is a hazard of spending so much time alone.”
He frowns guiltily.
She truly must be more careful. She is frightening him.
“So you’ve come to get my approval for your marriage?” she says as brightly as she can manage.
“Yes, Abuela.”
She refuses to let her mouth turn down, though,
Hostias,
this sham has gone on too long. Sometimes it is all she can do to bear it. If she had not promised Diego that she would wait, she would have gone mad. Her smile becomes more genuine as she savors the humor of that thought.
She looks around her grandson, at his nobles. “Is there something I’m supposed to sign? Quick, quick, get it out. I don’t want to waste the time I have with Felipe.”
Her grandson’s melon-haired fool scoots out of the way like a kicked dog, as a noble steps forth with a parchment. She goes to her desk and holds out her hand. He gives it to her, then backs away with such a flowery show of deference that she nearly laughs.
Hostias santas,
the man overacts. She is not the Great Khan, you know.
She uncaps her inkhorn, dips her pen, then signs.
The youth glances from her to the parchment in astonishment. “Are you not going to look at it?”
“No.” She sits back. “Does it matter?”
“Yes. I could have put anything in there.”
The woman smiles affectionately. Dear boy, does he not know how many documents she has signed over the years that have been filled with lies and misrepresentation? What bothers her most about them is that the perpetrators always think that they are pulling the wool over her eyes. Do they never suspect that she sees through all of their duplicity, that she lets it go because her life is as she wills it?
“My father says that I should read every document carefully. That a king—or a prince—must not trust anyone. Not even his advisors—perhaps especially his advisors.” He glances at his men, who stare back in innocence.
“That would be just like my Charles.” The woman does not add the rest of her thought: Those who mistrust most should be trusted least. Neither her son nor her father nor her husband could ever believe that what was hers was theirs, just for the asking. They thought they had to take it by force, then guard against her taking it back. It hurt her especially that her Charles would treat her thus. Perhaps it was his deformity that had turned him cold, though she would rage against anyone who dared to trouble him about it.
She holds out the parchment. “I am done.” The noble comes forward once more, bowing and scraping, again drawing a smile from her lips. When she glances at her grandson, she sees that he is scowling at the falsely humble supplicant. A spark glimmers in her heart. Could the boy hate this cruel jest, too?
After a moment, she says, “Felipe?”
“Yes, Abuela.”
“Felipe, would you like my crowns?”
“Your crowns?”
“Of Castile, León, Aragón, Granada, Gibraltar, Sicily—all of that.”
“No, Abuela,” he says sheepishly, “ but thank you.”
She thinks of her mother, once brought upon a mountaintop and offered, as was Christ, a kingdom that was not rightly hers. She had taken it. How she came to regret it. So much heartache it brought her, and so little joy. What was the use of such power when it could not bring her what she truly wished, the man who held her heart? Was this why her mother sent her off to marry a mere duke? To spare her from the knives of power?
She turns her attention to the youth before her. “Felipe, if I made a big-enough stir, I could get the pack of crowns for you. I have much more power than you know.”
The men behind him pale. Once rebels came to free her. The Comuneros shouted that she was the true king, and that they dedicated themselves to restoring her power. She thought about it. Escaping from her rooms did have its appeal. But when she heard that Diego Colón was not behind the rebellion, she let Charles’s men seize her and toss away the key. She would wait. She had said she would.
“Please, Felipe. I want you to have them. It would be my one true act as Queen.”
From a back door, two women enter, their arms full of canes of roses. The younger one, a woman of perhaps thirty, barely flinches, her face impassive within the white linen wings of her Flemish headdress. She is a cool blond beauty, apparently used to taking her mistress’s catastrophes in stride. The slight pouches by her mouth remain slack with dispassion. But the older woman, a dame old enough to be the other’s mother, gasps in surprise. The white wings of her headdress nearly quiver with her dismay.
“Don’t stop,” the woman tells them. “Come in. Please.” She turns to her grandson as the two women take their armfuls to the window, where a pitcher awaits on the sill. The youth stares at them in astonishment.
“What is it?” asks his grandmother.
He lowers his voice. “The younger of your servants looks much like the portrait of my betrothed. They—they could be sisters.”
“I see the resemblance. Yes, one might say they could be related.”
The older woman casts a glance over her shoulder, her eyes round with alarm. The boy’s grandmother sighs. Poor Katrien, she thinks, rubbing the crucifix on her rosary. Will she ever stop worrying about being found out? Even after I fetched her child from the nunnery in Segovia—the same one where Mother had so lovingly doted on Papa’s bastards—and helped her raise the girl, she still disbelieves my goodwill. But how could I punish her for doing what so many people wished to do? Philippe’s use of her, and then his abandonment, pushed her to madness. She did not wittingly poison me, but she knew, oh yes, she very much knew, what a deadly draft she had given him.
“Last chance, Felipe,” the woman says. “I do wish you to have my crowns.”
“No, Abuela. They are Papa’s.” He steps up to her desk and pats her hand. “But thank you for your trust in me.”
“Then take this.”
She lays back the humped lid of a coffer on the desk. Carefully, as if she were lifting a chick from a nest, she takes something from its velvet depths. It is a pearl the size of a pigeon’s egg.
“Give this to your bride. Let it help you to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“Whatever you need to.”
“I can’t,” he says. “Obviously, it is special to you.”
She beckons him near. “Hold out your hand.”
Reluctantly, he holds it forth.
She closes her hand around the pearl, then puts her fist on his hand. “Listen to me, Felipe. If you love this bride, you must cherish her. Forget your hunts, your sports, your pursuit of lands—everything—and savor her. You will think you will have plenty of chances to do so, but you won’t. I promise you, you won’t. Life is odd that way.” She opens her fingers and, turning her hand, lets the pearl fall to his palm. “Very well?”
Seeing he is beaten, he smiles. “Very well.”
As he surveys it, a noble takes a brand from the banked coals in the brazier and lights a taper of wax. The woman watches as hot red drops pool on a ribbon affixed to the document she has signed. She presses her seal into the liquid center.
When the wax has cooled, she gives the document to her grandson. “Go, Felipe. Be a good husband and be a good king.”
He kisses her hand and, with tears in his eyes, leaves, his gentlemen following after.
When they are gone, the woman slumps back into her seat. It is so hard to see the young ones come and go. Her son Charles was brought to her only when near Felipe’s age, and her other children, later, or more heartbreakingly, never. Why she was denied even her children, she does not know. It was the cruelest trial of all.
She feels something on her arm. When she looks up, the older of the two women is patting her.
She smiles. “Thank you, Katrien.”
The woman places the pitcher of roses on the desk. “No.” The white wings of her headdress waver when she shakes her head. “I thank you, Mevrouw. You are too good to me. I do not deserve—”
“Shhh. Shhh. I have told you—people do mad things for love. Just as they say.”
The woman’s smile fades into a look of concentration as she pulls on the lining of the coffer, revealing a hidden compartment. From within a nest of red velvet, she carefully plucks a ruby the size of a hazelnut. She holds it to her throat. She remembers the feel of her papa’s skin when she slipped her hand through his fingers. She remembers the smell of her mother’s hair, her stern smile, her laughter. She remembers the feel of the cold air as she and Philippe flew their sheets from the balcony; the chuckling sound of Leonor’s first laugh.
She remembers Diego, his face aglow with youthful certainty as he talked of his plans for their future.
She opens her eyes and leans forward, then smells deeply of the roses. Such a brief bloom, so unforgettably sweet. It is a comfort to her as she waits.
Author’s Note
Reign of Madness
is a work of fiction, based on history. The challenge in writing this story was to make sense of the lives of actual people who lived in the past, on the basis of the records we have of them. My primary goal was to understand how Juana “the Mad,” Queen of Castile and León, heir to the most powerful and extensive kingdom in the Western world at the time, came to live under house arrest for more than fifty years, a confinement that began during her marriage to Philippe “the Handsome,” Archduke of Austria. How did her husband, a noble of lower standing than she, manage to take over her lands? This pattern would be repeated by her father, Fernando of Aragón, ruler of a kingdom smaller than the one Juana inherited, and later by her older son, who became Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Not only did they usurp her power; they also allowed her to be grievously mistreated. In her final place of incarceration, the palace at Tordesillas, where she languished from 1509 to 1555, she was continuously lied to by her jailers about the whereabouts and status of her family, and about current events. They kept up the elaborate ruse that she was still Queen, having her sign documents, many of them false, even as they enforced her isolation. Her only companions were her youngest daughter, until she was sixteen, and a lowly servant or two, one of whom was the laundress Catalina Redondo, on whom the character Katrien is based. Juana was treated as dangerously insane, and had to endure exorcisms and frequent solitary confinement. Yet when a group of citizens loyal to Juana, the Comuneros, stormed the palace in 1520 to free her, she would not take the reins of power from her son. I had to wonder: Could it be that Juana
chose
to remain imprisoned?
Then, into my research marched the older son of Cristóbal Colón (Christopher Columbus), Diego. It is known that Diego spent many years as a page in the court of Isabel of Castile and then served in her husband’s court after she died. Before that, he was a page to Juan of Castile, son of Isabel and brother of Juana. Diego was about the same age as Juana, and there were plenty of opportunities for their paths to cross. Add the known fact that Diego spent his life fighting to defend his father’s honor and titles—even after he himself became Governor of the Indies in 1509 and built the palatial Alcázar de Colón in Santo Domingo (now the oldest remaining viceregal residence in the Americas)—and a possible explanation for why Juana allowed herself to be imprisoned began to take shape. Besides wanting her son to have her titles, could it be that she wished to lower her standing, to be acceptable to someone of lesser rank?
The relationship between Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragón, that famous pair who bankrolled Colón’s voyages of discovery, was my inspiration for this theory. During their reign, much was made about the equality of their power. Even today, a brief visit to Spain affords a view of five-hundred-year-old propaganda touting their glorious union. Isabel’s
yugo
(yoke—Isabel was spelled with a Y then) and Fernando’s
fechas
(arrows) are carved, painted, or plastered on buildings in many cities and towns. My favorite example is at the monastery of San Juan de los Reyes in Toledo, which is essentially a Gothic billboard advertising the fabulous marriage of Isabel and Fernando. Almost all the walls and ceilings there are emblazoned with their motto and symbols. I particularly like the chains draped over the façade of the church, supposedly the bonds worn by Spaniards incarcerated in Moorish prisons. The chains have been there since the late 1400s, hung as a potent reminder that Isabel and Fernando freed imprisoned Spanish men, women, and children when they conquered the Moors and united the Spains. Isabel and Fernando were
the
power couple of the world, and were even named the Catholic Kings by Pope Alexander VI.
I couldn’t help wondering how a proud man like Fernando of Aragón would react to having his wife considered his equal or, worse, to the reality that she was the main decision-maker in the realm. Early on, the couple had marital troubles when Isabel allowed herself to be crowned Queen while Fernando was away. They did not speak to each other for weeks. Fernando strayed. Even after they patched things up, his eye continued to wander. While Isabel made a point of cloistering herself with her ladies in his absence, he was out producing bastards—six that he recognized. They were billed as the happiest power couple in the world, yet there is evidence that their inequality didn’t sit well with either of them. Almost all of the incidents in the book alluding to their discord have been taken from contemporary accounts.
But history can be slippery. Much general historical knowledge, even the history taught in schoolbooks, may be more legend than fact. For example, many people in the United States can tell you that Christopher Columbus discovered America on October 12, 1492. And that he was extraordinarily brave, daring to think the world was round at a time when everyone else thought it was flat. No wonder he was soon celebrated around the globe for his great discovery.
Truth: Colón hoped to find a passage to the Indies. He was even equipped with a letter of greeting from Isabel and Fernando addressed to the Great Khan, should Colón find him. When Colón sighted land (in fact, one of his sailors did; Colón took the credit and reaped the subsequent reward in gold coin from Isabel and Fernando), he felt sure it was one of the outer islands of the Indies—perhaps part of the famed Cipango (Japan)—hence his name “Indios” for the natives he encountered. He made a total of four voyages from Spain and back, but even after probing the coasts of what are now South and Central America on his third and fourth journeys, he never realized that he had struck upon new continents. To have admitted that he’d come across something other than the Indies would have been to admit failure. So he did not call the areas that he’d bumbled onto the “New World.”
Truth: It was generally known by cartographers in Columbus’s day that the world was not flat. What was not known was how far the “Ocean Sea” stretched from the edge of Europe. Sailors were afraid of sailing beyond the capacity of their food supplies, a reasonable fear, but not afraid of dropping off the edge of the world.
Truth: Colón’s “discoveries” were not immediately heralded as great feats. He brought back relatively little gold from his voyages. He found no spices or precious woods—among the main trade items from the real Indies—and Spanish crops like wheat went to ruin in the semitropical climate. After his second voyage, disappointed colonists returned to Spain calling Colón the “Lord of the Mosquitoes.” The joke was made only richer by his visibly high self-esteem. When he returned from his third voyage under arrest and in chains for his harsh treatment of the colonists, he received little sympathy in Spain, although Isabel ordered him released upon hearing of his imprisonment. As the historical record shows, and as I hope to convey in
Reign of Madness
, the Queen saw something in Colón that most of his contemporaries did not.
Colón did find some pearls. I like to think that one of them was the Great Pearl in the story, which came to be known as La Peregrina (the Wanderer or Pilgrim). It was brought from the Americas during Juana’s lifetime, and was part of the crown jewels of Spain for centuries. We have a visual record of it in a 1554 portrait of Mary Tudor, the second wife of Prince Felipe (Philip II), Juana’s grandson. It was owned by Elizabeth Taylor, a gift from her husband, Richard Burton—a power couple from another time and sphere.
Aside from some pearls and a bit of gold, Colón’s voyages did not prove to be the moneymakers he had hoped. To make up for the paucity of profits, he pushed to capitalize on “human gold.” It was Isabel who put her foot down about trafficking in slaves. She thought of the indigenous people as her subjects, and repeatedly stated that she wished for them to be treated humanely. Though her wish to convert them to Catholicism might seem bigoted today, she acted with the best intentions. Her sincere religious faith gave her peace and strength, and she felt it was her duty, punishable with her own damnation if she failed, to bring all others to her beliefs.
It was this same well-meant but ultimately disastrous desire that would inflict so much pain on her Islamic and Jewish subjects. Under her rule, Jews who would not convert to Christianity were ordered to leave Spain in 1492. Some historians think Isabel felt that her threat to expel the Jews from Spain would be enough to make them convert to Catholicism; she never believed they would actually go. But leave Spain they did, by the hundreds of thousands. During this same period, she allowed the Spanish Inquisition to operate as a means to root out those converts who were not true to their new faith: these backsliders practicing Judaism or Islam would supposedly weaken the faith of the “good” converts. She never imagined how much the inquisitors would come to enjoy their power, jealously guarding it against those like Fray Hernando de Talavera, Archbishop of Granada, who opposed this new mandate from Rome. He argued that converts must be encouraged and nurtured in their new faith, not tortured if they had doubts. Nor did Isabel foresee how ordinary people would come to use the threat of the Inquisition to bring down their enemies. She could not fathom that something initiated with such pious intentions might spiral into the corruption and misery that would dim Spain in the eyes of the world for centuries. Even Fray Hernando would himself fall to the Inquisition, in 1505, the year after Isabel died. He and his extended family were hounded by people who did not agree with his “soft” attitude toward converts and who resented his opposition to the movement. He died after two years of harassment. Isabel was not there to protect him.
Whether Isabel and Hernando de Talavera enjoyed a deeper relationship than their official one of queen and confessor is a matter of my own conjecture. What is apparent to me is that the two were matched in intellectual power, in their beliefs and outlook on the world, and in charisma. How could she have not fallen in love with him? As a rule of thumb in this novel, the more unbelievable an episode seems, the more likely it was drawn straight from historical records. I constructed the story around actual events, taking most of my liberties when exploring relationships between characters.
Which brings us back to Juana. Just as children in the United States have been taught that the brave sailor Christopher Columbus discovered America, Spanish schoolchildren have heard that the mad queen Juana la Loca was locked in a tower in the little town of Tordesillas because she was too insane to rule. She loved her handsome husband, Philippe, so much that when he died, she went off the deep end. She traveled around Spain at night, opening his casket to gaze lovingly upon his remains until finally, for her own sake, her father locked her up and ruled Spain for her; when he died, her son Charles took over. Even worse, she had a tempestuous relationship with her saintly mother, shortening that good queen’s life. But like the legends surrounding Columbus, most of the legend of Juana the Mad is false.
Truth: Juana may have loved Philippe, but if so, he certainly must have tried her patience with his callous treatment of her. It is true, as recounted here, that he didn’t pay Juana’s ladies-in-waiting or her household expenses, as was agreed to in their marriage contract. He withheld gifts to her until she produced a son. He was generous again when they embarked on their trips to Spain, but only for the sake of appearances. He spent much time apart from her, pursuing his love of sport, feasting, and the company of other women. As soon as Juana became heir to the Spanish crowns, he started to make deals with her father to undercut her power. He claimed that she had gone mad from an excess of love and jealousy, and therefore was unable to rule.
Court visitors backed this up by writing about instances of her madness, but their reports would have been shaped by the tales Philippe fed them. It was his word against hers, and he, not the isolated Juana, had the ear of the courtiers. All Philippe had to do to take the power that was rightfully Juana’s was to make the story of her madness stick, and it has, for half a millennium.
Yet records indicate that Juana was one of the most intelligent of Isabel and Fernando’s five children. She studied under the famed Latinist Beatriz Galindo, whom I tried to portray much like the real-life scholar, although I altered the date of her marriage to fit the story. (You may be happy to know that Beatriz became a professor at the University of Salamanca, where she taught rhetoric, philosophy, and medicine. She founded the Hospital of the Holy Cross in Madrid, still there today, and had five children with Francisco Ramírez. She is commemorated by a district in the capital named after her, La Latina, as well as by statues in that city and Salamanca. And yes, it is said that she dressed in the habit of a nun.) Juana was a gifted musician, and so poised and well-spoken that Henry VII of England, who had met her when her ship sank off the coast of Portsmouth, sought her hand in marriage after Philippe died; “old Henry” judged her a sensible woman. Hostile sources claim that Juana was a poor mother who did not care to see her children after leaving the Low Countries, but I doubt this, not when she kept her youngest daughter, Catalina, with her until her son Charles had the girl forcibly taken away as a teenager. It was Philippe and then Juana’s father who would not allow her children to be brought to her; court records are full of her pleas to see them. I wonder whether Juana allowed Charles to have her power because he was a sickly child, with a defect that threatened his health, and she was trying to protect him. Although he had the world’s best portraitist, Titian, to tidy him up in one picture by reducing his misshapen jaw and placing him on a magnificent stallion, the fact remains that Charles suffered from a deformity that caused him difficulty in eating and speaking all his life. But who dared mock a man who, with his titles in Spain and Austria, would become Holy Roman Emperor? This, I believe, is one of the reasons Juana did not throw her weight behind the Comuneros who wished to free her and restore her to the throne in 1520. She did not want to undermine her son. Charles showed little mercy to the rebels. He hunted them down and had them hung. A statue of Juan Bravo, one of their leaders, still stands in Segovia and is decorated with wreaths every April. To this day, not everyone in Spain believes the history found in old schoolbooks.