History's Great Queens 2-Book Bundle: The Last Queen and The Confessions of Catherine de Medici (14 page)

EIGHT DAYS LATER, AFTER MARGARET’S FAREWELL BANQUET, PHILIP
came to me. I was sitting at my gilded dressing table as Beatriz removed my jewels. When I saw his reflection in the mirror, a silhouette in white, I raised my hand. My women melted from the room.

He hovered in the archway, as though afraid to cross the threshold. I drew a breath.

“You may come in.”

He moved into the room. He looked as handsome as the day we’d first met, the sapphires in his doublet catching the candlelight, vying in vain with the intense blue of his eyes, his shoulder-length hair streaked with white gold from riding under the sun without a cap.

I looked up into his eyes. “Why?” I asked.

He frowned. “What?”

“Why? Why did you do it?”

He lowered his eyes. “I told you, I was angry. Besançon showed me your mother’s letter and it was as if I were with my father again, being told I wasn’t worthy.”

“I see.” I looked down for a moment. I understood, as much I didn’t like it. He had been refused his sovereign independence by his own Estates-General only then to be rejected by my parents. Though he’d never had any right to ask it of them, he had not intended to offend, nor could he admit as I did that his favored lord chancellor, Besançon, had led him astray.

“My infanta,” he said softly, and he looked at me with a sorrow that cut to my core. “I’ve never asked for forgiveness from anyone before. But I am asking it from you now.”

My throat knotted. “I—I want to. But you must promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“Never again. Promise me, you’ll never do it again.”

“I promise,” he said, and I could not control myself any longer. I reached out to him, and he was suddenly in my arms, crushing me to him, as if he’d been starved of sustenance. He peeled off my clothes and swept me to the bed, my hair entwined in his fingers, my arms about him as by the light of the candle on the dressing table he tore off his own clothes. I reveled in the interplay of flame and shadow across the muscular body I knew so well and had missed so much.

Afterward, I traced his lips. He drew me close, coiling our legs and arms. A sudden chill ran through me. I turned to him, searching. His eyes had already closed in sleep.

I WAS OVERJOYED WHEN A FEW MONTHS LATER I REALIZED I HAD
conceived again. Philip moved us back to Lierre and its canals and timber-framed houses; he threw lavish feasts, bought me jewels, gowns, and perfumes. This time, we would be blessed. This time, he declared, I would bear a son.

In early September, he departed for another convening of his Estates-General. This time, he went well armed, having spent weeks beforehand with Besançon drawing up legal arguments and statutes that proved he had reached his maturity. He took the archbishop with him, which was just as well. Though I hadn’t told Philip about our confrontation that awful day, Besançon knew by my frigid stance he’d do best to keep to his proper place. Seeing as I was again with child, he did.

I remained in my comfortable apartments to nurture the babe in my womb, with my little girl, Eleanor, at my side. As with my first pregnancy, I suffered only a few weeks of the wretched nausea that prostrated other women and soon grew bored of sitting around all day. My midwives bled me, gathered around the basin to gauge my humors. They announced every sign indicated I carried a son, and I should indeed engage in some mild exercise to fortify his growth.

So I walked in the galleries, selected fabrics for my birthing chamber, and spent hours with Eleanor, who was a lovely, inquisitive babe. I also wrote to my sister Catalina, who recently celebrated her fourteenth birthday, telling her all my news and begging word of her. She wrote back a lengthy letter that startled me with its maturity, relating that Castile had suffered a terrible winter but that our little nephew the infante was improving and my sister Maria had wed the widowed Manuel of Portugal. Catalina added she was due to set sail for England soon and had begun exchanging personal letters with her betrothed, Prince Arthur. She thought him a noble and sincere prince, who seemed eager to meet her in person.

Remembering my anxieties when I learned I must leave Spain, I sent a reassuring letter in return and enclosed a gold bracelet as a gift.

Be brave,
mi pequeñita, I told her.
You will soon find that marriage is a blessed state.

IN FEBRUARY OF 1500, AS AN EARLY AND UNEXPECTED SNOW
drifted over Brussels, where we’d come to stay after the New Year and where I delayed entering my confinement, dreading the weeks of seclusion waiting for my child to be born, Beatriz awoke me with news of Philip’s return after five months of toil with his Estates-General. I had received several letters from him in the interim, each relating that he was closer than he’d ever been to gaining his autonomy as a prince. Ignoring Doña Ana’s objection that I was far too close to my time to risk leaving my chambers, I rose from bed, clapping my hands. My ladies trudged sleepily into the room.

“My toilette articles,” I said. “Fetch them. And my new gown with the extra panel as well.”

An hour later, they stepped back to allow me a full view of myself in the mirror.

I could not believe it at first. I stared in awe at my rose-tinted cheeks, their angularity rounded by extra weight. My eyes shone bright, my curvaceous figure accentuated by the gown’s cut, the bodice pushing up my full breasts, the overskirt with its extra waist panel draping in a swirling column over my belly to my feet. I gasped, my hands dropping to my stomach as my child suddenly kicked. Beatriz came behind me, clasped my ruby pendant about my throat. “Your Highness has never looked more beautiful,” she said.

I nodded, voiceless.

I rarely paused to mark the passage of time, but somewhere between Eleanor’s birth and this pregnancy, I had shed the last traces of my adolescence. The lanky infanta who worried about her height was gone; in her place stood a disarming woman—the woman I would be for the rest of my life.

“Am I?” I said, turning about. “Am I truly beautiful?”

“You are,” said Beatriz. My women nodded. Doña Ana harrumphed.

“And you think he’ll want to see me, like this? So…big?”

Beatriz laughed. “His Highness is a man, is he not? Every man wants to see his wife big with child.” She held out her hand. “Come. He awaits you in the hall.”

The great hall flared with light from the sconces. Smoke gathered in the painted eaves. Trestle tables strewn with used linen and silverware had been pulled aside, to clear the floor for dancing. Wine casks sat piled against the walls, testament to the anticipated hours of carousing in celebration of the archduke’s arrival.

I halted at the top of the staircase. Music rang out, kettledrums thumping alongside the piping of rebecs. On the floor couples danced. I watched a woman laugh as her companion nuzzled her throat, and heard Doña Ana say, “You cannot mean to go down there in your state. You should have gone into confinement weeks ago. You are a woman with child.”

“And a wife who will see her husband. If you do not approve, you can return to my rooms.”

I did not wait for her response. She knew better, in any event, to try and stop me. Taking up my skirts, I walked down the stairs with perfect poise, focused on the dais, where Philip, Besançon, and several others sat. The archbishop’s platter was piled high with roasted carcasses, his fat ringed fingers dripping sauce as he dug into a baked goose. He shouted between mouthfuls to the others, who were engaged in a rousing discussion. Philip reclined on his throne, legs propped on the table, his red brocade doublet unlaced, exposing his linen chemise. He held a goblet. Though his cheeks were flushed, he appeared sober.

Suddenly, one of his men leapt onto the table, his arms flung wide. He illustrated something to the laughing gentlemen, but when he spun about and caught sight of me coming toward him, he stopped in midaction, like a mime. The men followed his astonished stare. From the minstrel’s gallery above the hall, the musicians ceased playing. The silence turned thick; the courtiers on the floor drew back. They whispered among themselves, marveling at my appearance. Even Besançon, usually oblivious to everything around him when filling his stomach, ceased shoving sauced brains into his mouth, gazing at me in slack-jawed disbelief.

I stopped before the dais, my belly jutting forth like an orb. Philip stood, adjusting his disheveled doublet, raking hands through his tawny hair. As he neared, I glimpsed the telltale flame in his eyes, familiar from our first days of marriage, when he’d been unable to contain himself and would drag me from wherever we happened to be to take me into the nearest chamber. Only this time, his lust intermingled with awe, as if he could not decide whether to prostrate himself before me or take me then and there.

He lifted my hand to his lips. “Wife, did you know purple velvet is reserved for empresses?”

My heart leapt. “Are you…?”

He nodded, his mouth widening in a brilliant smile. “I am. You see before you the acknowledged prince of Flanders and official Habsburg heir. My father gave in finally. The Estates-General agreed I have reached my maturity and can rule my realm free of interference.”

I shifted closer, my belly grazing his groin. “Then I am the happiest future empress in the world,” I breathed. “But more important, I am the happiest mother of your future son.”

His smile deepened, taking up the heat between us, all the more enticing because it had been months since we bedded together. He looked past me to where my ladies stood. “Your duenna will have my head if I let you stay. She already thinks I’m to blame for your brazen ways.”

I shrugged. “Let her think what she likes. I’ve come to dance. And dance, I will.”

“Dance?” He laughed. “If my eyes do not deceive me, you could give birth at any moment.”

I laughed too, a soft, wicked laugh that brought his eyes back to mine. “Be that as it may, I shall dance tonight to celebrate my husband’s return. You may do me the honor if you wish or perhaps I can find someone else to oblige me.”

“You’re mad,” he said, even as he lifted his hand to the gallery. After a discordant tuning of strings, the musicians resumed their playing.

I sighed, “A pavane,” and held out my hand to Philip. We stepped forward, shoulders and heads erect. The courtiers hastened to join us.

The music filled me. I forgot my aching spine, the stitch in my side, the weight of my stomach. Twirling about, I entered the adagio, laughing when he suddenly kissed my breast. The men and women separated to join hands with others, swaggering down the hall’s length. Turning to the left, ignoring the curtsy to the bow, Philip and I found each other again, and those not participating in the dance gathered at the sides of the hall to clap.

The dancing grew more energetic, the women plucking up their skirts to expose shifting ankles. In an exuberant rush, I yanked off my coif and tossed it aside, eliciting delighted applause as my hair tumbled loose. Hands cocked on hips, I stood with the ladies, batting my eyes as Philip and the gentlemen kicked up their legs like zealous stags.

The hall grew stifling with the heat of bodies in motion. No one realized at first that as I stood clapping, the pain inside my womb began to build—slowly, mercilessly, gripping my innards until I gasped aloud. I tried to ignore it, but then another pang came, and another, until I doubled over, my knees buckling underneath me.

Beatriz ran to me. “The child,” I told her breathlessly. “I can feel it!” She signaled the others, who rushed to surround me and lead me from the floor.

“I am tired,” I called out, thinking Philip might follow. “It’s nothing, honest. I just need to rest.” I glanced over my shoulder to see him smiling at me, hemmed in by a wall of dancing courtiers. As I stood propped between my women at the foot of the staircase, I waved back and laughed between my clenched teeth.

“How many pains?” Doña Ana barked. “How close are they?”

“I’m not counting. I think—” I groaned. “Oh, no.”

Pale pink water gushed from under my dress, spattering my satin shoes. Without hesitation, Doña Ana flung her stout arm about my waist. “We must get you to your chamber at once.”