History's Great Queens 2-Book Bundle: The Last Queen and The Confessions of Catherine de Medici (43 page)

TORDESILLAS,

1554

I
t has taken me a thousand midnights to reach this hour.

My hand aches now from writing, my heart from remembering. Yet I have done my duty as a queen. I have not looked away from the truth; I have not embellished or lied away the past in order to make my present less bitter. Rather, I have trod once more that long, unexpected path that brought me to this place, reliving every mistake, every tear, and every delight; I have looked upon and touched, wept over and hated, all the faces of those I loved.

Strangers surround me now. No one is left to me—no one save him, whose body has turned to dust in the battered old coffin, which rests in this castle’s chapel. Sometimes they take me there to visit. I sit at his side and reach out my gnarled hand to caress the scarred wood bier. I am not ashamed to talk to him. I have long since forgiven him, and myself. It all seems so meaningless now. We are all we have left, and we can do each other no further harm.

Like him, I will soon go to a place where thrones mean nothing.

But not yet. There is still one more place I must go. I need only close my eyes to see it: the horizon dressed in violet and chased silver clouds, the wind’s keening fading into a jasmine-scented breeze. At my feet, spring gardens of mosaic and lace. White quartz paths twine past fountains, and ripe pomegranate saturates the air. I can feel droplets of water on my skin and speckles of mimosa, and the chanting of slaves in the keep entices me to dance. It is so close I can touch it, a vermilion sprawl on the hill, where gilded gates open to welcome me.

And in the sky above, the bats have returned.

AFTERWORD

F
ollowing her imprisonment in Tordesillas in 1509, Juana’s father, Fernando of Aragón, ruled Spain until his death in 1516. His final years were plagued by paranoia and the ceaseless intrigues of the
grandes.
He never sired a son on Germaine de Foix, though he resorted to many folk remedies believed to increase virility, including drinking distilled bull’s testicles. He became an unwelcome wanderer in the land he once ruled in triumph with Isabel; he never expressed remorse for the enormity of the wrong he had committed against his daughter.

Upon his death, Spain passed in its entirety to seventeen-year-old Charles of Habsburg, who’d been groomed since childhood by his aunt the archduchess Margaret to inherit his paternal grandfather’s empire. Known as Charles V of Spain and I of Germany, he entrusted the governance of Spain to his regent, Cardinal Cisneros, who oversaw the nation with an iron hand until his death at the venerable age of eighty-one. Charles then traveled to Spain, where negotiations with the Castilian Cortes proved difficult until he agreed to learn Castilian, appoint no foreigners, and respect the rights of his mother, Queen Juana. The Cortes paid homage to him in Valladolid in 1518. In 1519, he was crowned before the Cortes of Aragón.

Regardless of his promises, Charles favored his Flemish and Austrian courtiers over their Castilian counterparts, and the heavy taxations he imposed on the Spanish people to finance his wars abroad eventually drove the people to rebellion. The most tragic of their attempts to throw off the Habsburg yoke was the Comuneros Revolt of 1520. The Comuneros initially sought to restore their captive queen to her throne; alas, their poor organization and training, coupled with Charles V’s immense manpower, put a swift end to them. More than three hundred Spaniards were executed for treason. Some, nevertheless, reached Tordesillas, and for a brief spell a bewildered Juana was released. She had no idea her father had died or that her son now held her throne. By the time she managed to absorb the monumental changes that had occurred since she’d been locked away, it was too late.

She never left the precincts of Tordesillas again.

Following his subjugation of the Comuneros, Charles came to Spain and visited his mother. What Juana said privately to her son after more than twenty years of separation remains unrecorded, but he must have known her refusal to surrender her rights as queen had given him Spain. Nevertheless, by Castilian law he would not be fully recognized as king until her death, and he did not release her.

Prematurely aged by his obligations, Charles V abdicated in 1555. He retired to a monastery in Avila, Spain, where he spent his final years in seclusion, obsessed with clocks. He died in 1558. He bequeathed Spain, the Netherlands, Naples, and Spain’s New World territories to his son, Philip II. Raised in Spain, Philip became the country’s first official king: he ruled over a united realm and elevated it to preeminence and power. His influence would last into the seventeenth century; under him Spain entered the apex of her Golden Age, mirroring the thriving of the arts under Elizabeth I in England. Philip’s era was one of undoubted savage religious persecution, of slavery and the destruction of Native populations throughout the Americas; it also gave birth to Cervantes’s
Don Quixote,
the first essentially modern novel, the paintings of El Greco and Velazquez, and the dramatic writings of Lope de Vega.

Charles’s Habsburg domains went to his brother, Juana’s younger son, the infante Fernando, who inherited the title of Holy Roman Emperor. He became a strong ruler in his own right, signing a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire and supporting the Counter-Reformation. He died in 1564 and was buried in Vienna.

Beatriz de Talavera wed, bore children, and died in Spain. The admiral succumbed to a stomach ailment shortly after Juana’s imprisonment. The handmaiden Soraya’s fate is unknown.

Juana’s eldest daughter, Eleanor, wed the king of Naples; after his death she became the unhappy second wife of François I of France. Isabella wed the king of Denmark, with whom she was apparently content. Juana’s third daughter, Mary, married the king of Hungary.

Juana’s youngest sister, Catalina, became queen of England and the first of Henry VIII’s six wives. Her namesake, Juana’s youngest daughter, remained with her mother in Tordesillas for sixteen years. In 1525, at her brother Charles’s command, Catalina was stolen away while Juana slept and sent to marry King Juan III of Portugal. After giving birth to nine children, she died in 1578, twenty-two years after the death of her mother, whom she never saw again.

The loss of Catalina, Juana’s sole remaining consolation, plunged the imprisoned queen into utter despair. According to the accounts of her current custodian, which I read firsthand, it was at this moment that she began to show the erratic, clinical signs of the manic depression that many scholars believe tainted the Trastámara blood.

In 1555, after forty-six years of captivity, Juana of Castile died at the age of seventy-six. Francesco de Borja, founder of the Jesuit Order, attended her in her final days. By this time, she had passed into myth, the unstable queen who went mad with grief, impotent symbol of Spain’s suffering—Juana la Loca.

She was entombed with her husband, Philip the Fair. Today, the lovers who became mortal enemies rest in the cathedral in Granada, opposite the sepulchre of Isabel and Fernando.

JUANA OF CASTILE’S LIFE
has been the subject of two award-winning films and several highly praised biographies in Spanish, in addition to an opera and a play. Yet she has been ignored in the larger scheme of history, known as the tragic, enigmatic figure whose incarceration caused scarcely a ripple. Nevertheless, she was the rightful queen of Castile and her refusal to abdicate did give rise to an empire under Charles V and his son, Philip II.

Legends are notoriously hard to research. Though a wealth of documentation exists about the period, much of the extant information concerning Juana comes from dispatches and eyewitness accounts, all written by men. Many of those who recorded her early years, praising her erudition and beauty, later denounced her as a deranged victim, while tales of her jealous behavior in Flanders and Spain veer from the lurid to the patently absurd.

Of course, such accounts reflect—as does much of written history—the prism of their era. The sixteenth century scarcely recognized spousal abuse or misogyny, much less mental illness. As for Juana herself, she has left almost nothing in her own hand. Thus, while I strived to stay true to the established facts, this novel remains a fictional interpretation of her life, and I confess to taking minor liberties with time and place in order to facilitate a difficult endeavor at best.

Among these liberties is an encapsulation of time toward the end of the book, to facilitate the story. I also have Fernando marry Germaine de Foix three years later than he did in actuality, again to facilitate the story and not further confuse an already complicated situation. I believe his motivations for marriage were as I describe them. I also have imagined much of the relationship between Juana and the admiral; while he is recorded as one of her most stalwart supporters, there is no account of them seeing each other after Fernando returned to Spain. It is comforting to think, however, that she did see him and knew him for a friend. Last, I have no verification that Juana might have had a hand in Philip’s demise, though rumor was rampant he had indeed been poisoned. Of course, whenever a person of royal status died suddenly under such circumstances, poison was invariably suspected.

For those who might wonder, I assure you the wilder episodes of Juana’s life, including her giving birth to Charles V in a privy closet, her rebellion at La Mota and attack on Philip’s mistress, her frantic attempt to escape on horseback while pregnant, and the opening of the coffin, are corroborated by several contemporary sources.

Was Juana sane? Could she have ruled her country? Historians who’ve tackled her as a subject have struggled with these questions for centuries; they were certainly at the forefront of my mind. This novel consumed nearly six years of writing and research and, much like Juana, adopted different incarnations on its way to its present form.

In the end, I can only hope I’ve done justice to her passion, courage, and uniquely Spanish character. She was, if nothing else, an extraordinary figure for her time.

For those interested in further exploring Juana and her times, I offer the following brief bibliography of books, not all of which are available in English:

Alvarez Fernandez, Manuel.
Juana la Loca
(Palencia: Editorial La Olemeda, S.L., 1994).

———.
Isabel la Católica
(Madrid: Editorial Espasa, 2003).

Crow, John A.
Spain: The Root and the Flower
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963).

Dennis, Amarie.
Seek the Darkness
(Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, S., 1969).

Hume, Martin A. S.
Queens of Old Spain
(London: Grant Richards, Ltd., 1906).

———.
The Spanish People
(New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1914).

Liss, Peggy.
Isabel the Queen
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

Luke, Mary M.
Catherine of Aragon
(New York: Coward McCann, 1967).

Miller, Townsend.
The Castles and the Crown
(New York: Coward McCann, 1963).

Prawdin, Michael.
The Mad Queen of Spain
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1939).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

N
othing is written in solitude, though it may often seem so to the writer.

I first wish to extend my heartfelt thanks to my partner, who’s stood by me for sixteen years with humor, patience, and understanding. I might not have found the strength to keep trying if he hadn’t been there to encourage me with his eternal optimism.

My incomparable agent, Jennifer Weltz, at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, came into my life just when I needed her the most; with wit and sagacity she gave me shelter and restored my faith. My editor, Susanna Porter, first made a dream come true with her belief that my words were worthy of attention; then she and her assistant editor, Jillian Quint, improved those words with their insightful suggestions, keen eyes, and trust in my ability to revise. My copy editor, Jude Grant, scoured the pages with rare insight. Rachel Kind, senior manager of foreign rights at Ballantine, expressed her passion from the get-go and took on the book with style. The entire creative team at Ballantine conjured the book to life with their diverse talents. In the United Kingdom, my editor, Suzie Doore, of Hodder & Stoughton, made another dream come true when she enthusiastically took me under her wing, and Lucia Luengo of Ediciones B. brought Juana home. To all of them, and to the many others I cannot mention here who work every day to see books to the marketplace and who keep alive the flame of reading, thank you so much.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to the Historical Novel Society, true champion of the genre, and in particular to editors Sarah Johnson, Claire Morris, and Ilysa Magnus, for giving me my first break. Also to Billy Whitcomb, who designed the beautiful map; my friends Linda and Paula, who never doubted this day would come; and my writing group, led by the indefatigable Jean Taggart, who has provided caffeine, encouragement, and criticism for over ten years. Vicki Weiland has read more drafts of my work than I care to count and enhanced each one. My brother Eric, his wife, Jackie, and my niece Isabel cheer me along. Sandra Worth and I share a magical table; Wendy Dunn is a blessing from afar; and Holly Payne a staunch ally. In Judith Merkle Riley, I found a kindred spirit. She is a lady in every sense of the word, with a heart that is as magnificent as her pen.

Last but never least, I wish to thank all my readers. You are the reason I write.