The Scroll of Seduction (29 page)

I
awaited the outcome of Juana's story as if time went by only for her inside that house. I ran to the bathroom to check my underwear constantly. The slightest dampness made me jump up, and I'd rush to look between my legs, like someone expecting to see ice melt in red hot flames. A few days before Christmas the gray weather and dry cold of a Madrid winter made me gravitate toward the library with a book in my hands. I watched the Denias going about their daily routines. In the afternoons, Águeda phoned her friends in the Captives' Club, as Manuel had dubbed them. But the phone hardly ever rang. Occasionally there were calls for Manuel. Students, he said, or his friend Genaro. After so many years of spending my vacations in student residences or in hotel rooms with my grandparents, the quiet family life was an unexpected gift. Laying on the sofa with my feet up, a blanket warming my legs, reading
Jane Eyre,
I was happy. Only at times when the book resting on my belly weighed on me, I would startle myself. Someone else was living beneath, I'd tell myself. I imagined the life of that concealed creature, swimming around like a fish in a dark aquarium. I'd run my hands over my skirt, measuring the space left between my clothes and my waist, with a fascination that sometimes turned to horror and incredulity.

“Manuel, isn't there some way of finding out for sure if I'm pregnant or not?” I asked that afternoon.

“I have no doubt whatsoever,” he said, glancing up from his book.

“But I do, and I'd like some proof.”

He stared at me. It was a question of taking a urine sample to the lab and giving a fake name.

“I've been trying not to leave any incriminating evidence, in case the nuns or your grandparents decide to go to the police, or hire a detective.”

“Oh, I hadn't thought of that,” I said, reassured that his excuse seemed rational. “Let's wait till after Christmas.”

I started pacing around the library. He stared at me from the sofa.

“Juana must have been just like you. You know, I've often wondered if when we die, our conscience returns to its source enriched by new experiences, and then goes and fills other vessels, other bodies. That would explain the theory of the collective unconscious, the idea that when we're born we already possess the knowledge of those who lived before us.”

 

I THOUGHT OF THE MONTHS THAT MANUEL HAD SPENT TURNING MY
body into a shell from which to listen to a sea that had existed before him or me.

I looked at him and wondered if my little girl would have his blue eyes.

That night he came to my room with the antique dress over his arm. It would be better for me to get changed there and come down wearing the dress, he said. That way I wouldn't get cold. I asked what his aunt would think. She might be surprised, he said, but she would end up considering it was more than appropiate that another Juana wandered around that house.

“She'll think you're Juana's ghost.” He smiled. “But she won't mind walking into that ghost.”

I got changed, pulled my hair up into a bun, and then went downstairs to find Manuel.

At the bottom of the stairs I crossed paths with the aunt, who was just coming out of the kitchen. I tried to explain to her that my disguise had been her nephew's idea, but rather than surprised she seemed fascinated. Lifting a finger to her lips to silence me, she left me bewildered
when she curtsied and walked ahead to open the door of the library for me. I smiled and, keeping in character, I walked by her as if I were a queen.

Manuel was waiting for me beside the fire.

“Let's continue,” he said.

He was dressed in black. Dark clothing made him look taller and thinner, accentuating his angular features. I thought he seemed somber, almost sad, which was unusual for him; he always seemed so in control of his emotions.

 

GIVING BIRTH TO CATALINA WHEN I HAD SO BONDED WITH DEATH
was a supreme effort that consumed all of my energy and left me physically and mentally weak at the worst possible time. The first year of my widowhood was inaugurated by the cries of my daughter, born on January 14, 1507; it was a year marked by long sleepless nights. I was afraid to sleep. In my dreams, Philippe appeared before me and begged me to come to him, for he was so lonely and so cold. His appeals were so vehement that I felt the icy cold of his leaden coffin in my bones, and my teeth chattered. In seven months, I spent thousands of maravedis from my meager savings to have wax candles burning around him at all times. I paid for services to be held every evening and maintained the salaries of the Flemish cantors, thinking that their melodies would sweeten my husband's sorrow at having died so far from his beloved Brussels. I was sure that Philippe had still not managed to cross the threshold of his new existence. I harbored the notion that he would only die for good when he was put to rest next to my mother, because she would forcefully pull him inside the marble of her catafalque in Granada. To explain this to anyone was a useless endeavor. Yes, I admit it: Philippe's death seduced me with a passion as acute as the one he had inspired in me during his life. My certainty that inexplicably he continued to exist flanking my life had led me to try to shield other women from his charms. I had refused to spend the night in convents fearing he would wander among the cells at night, cosseted in his incorporeality, stroking the impure fantasies of the nuns, slipping beneath the vapor of their foul-smelling habits. Other times I had imagined he could take over soldiers' bodies and take
solace in the barred sexuality hiding in the nuns' nocturnal cells. I refused to accept a simple end for my Philippe, perhaps because well disguised beneath my bereavement there was the joyous feeling that I was at last free from his cruel machinations and his ambition, and I was afraid he might discover that darkest secret of my heart and avenge himself.

Daily I was beseiged by nobles and priests who tried to confound my reasoning so that I would betray one group or another. Cisneros moved his army to Torquemada, claiming that it was to protect me. To free myself of his pernicious meddling and his spies, I recommenced my progress to Granada, but not before I confirmed the orders I had issued to revoke the favors Philippe had granted. I also held a hearing with council members to insist they continue to govern in the same manner as when my mother was alive.

Any sign of my reason or authority was enough to fill the prelates and nobles with apprehension. On the one hand, they lamented my alleged madness, and on the other, nothing upset them more than the evidence of my good senses and the possibility that I might decide to claim my royal rights. Gradually it was becoming more and more clear that I was up against many odds. That I would reign didn't enter into anybody's plans. For them, the question at hand was who would rule in my name and who might I nominate to do so. Alone, with no armies, no money, my position was precarious. I realized that my only way out was to form an alliance with my father and establish a form of government similar to the one he had shared with my mother. I knew that he had left Naples and was on his way to Spain. I didn't want to appear to be the one calling him to my side, so I used evasive tactics to avoid signing a letter that Mosen Luis Ferrer–his emissary–insisted I send to request his presence. I could not, however, refuse his petition that I order rogations throughout the country for my father's s safe journey home. In the end, I could not avoid appearing to have encouraged his return.

Our encounter took place in Tórtoles on August 29. I traveled there from Hornillos, a tiny village where I spent four months after leaving Torquemada, and where my retinue caused considerable damage for which I had to compensate the inhabitants. Even their church was de
stroyed by the fire caused by the candles that burned beside Philippe's coffin. His very body was nearly incinerated by the carelessness of those charged with watching over him.

Located in the province of Burgos, Tórtoles was–by virtue of its size–more suited to receive the king of Aragon. He was not the kind who could settle anywhere, like I did.

More than four years had gone by since I had last seen my father. I confess that when we met, I was stunned not so much by the filial affection that overpowered me but by the blow of seeing how readily the nobles who had pledged their loyalty to me rushed to join his entourage. In the end, I was forced to appear before him surrounded by only those few ladies who were still in my service. What could I do but admit my disadvantage? I would have liked to appear distant and inscrutable, so that he would realize that although I was his daughter, I was now a queen and thus his equal. Fool that I was! I had forgotten his uncanny ability to ease my suffering with nothing but a glance. I approached him and raised my black widow's veil. The moment I met his eyes, his attempt to bend his knee and kiss my hand seemed incongruous to me. I dropped down to embrace him, overwhelmed with a feeling of love and relief. Right then and there, as he held me in his arms, I settled my contradictions. I closed my eyes as a line from the Pater Noster crossed my mind: “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” Let my father's will be done. At last, I would rest.

With the understanding that I remained queen and that I would have the last word, I granted him the regency and administration of the kingdom. I stayed a short time in the village of Santa María del Campo, and then I decided to reside at the Villa de Arcos, three leagues from Burgos. My father would have liked me to move there, but I had no desire to return to the city where Philippe had died.

The Episcopal Palace in Villa de Arcos, where I set up my residence, was a simple yet beautiful stone building that shared its cloister with the parish church, which meant that I could see the church's nave and watch over Philippe's coffin without leaving the premises. There were three other large residences in the area, enough to house the small entourage that would be attending Catalina, Ferdinand, and I.

Little Ferdinand had come back to me after the death of his father. He arrived in Simancas accompanied by the kind Pedro Núñez de Guzmán, who had been charged with his upbringing. I was moved by how faithfully he had kept the memory of me, despite all the time that had passed. My little four-year-old man not only identified me as his mother, he clung to me, so hungry for my cuddles and kisses, that he made me feel needed and loved. When I suckled Catalina, he wanted me to nurse him as well, which I would have done willingly if the sorrows and fatigue of the last months had not taken its toll on the amount of milk that flowed from my breasts. Those days, nothing made me happier than hearing Ferdinand's carefully vocalized words, so unusual for a child his age. He spoke with astonishing fluency, and he loved when I recited the epic song of “El Cid” for him. At night, snuggled up in bed with Catalina and Ferdinand, no nightmares visited my dreams. I, who had never much played or spent time with my children, found in Ferdinand's innocence, in his spontaneous and generous love as well as in Catalina's tiny warm body, a safe harbor to love and be loved, a saving grace. I promised myself I would become a true mother for them and that I would never again let them be apart from me.

Eighteen months I spent in Villa de Arcos, shepherding my sorrows until slowly they allowed me to rein them in. I sensed I was emerging step by step from a rocky valley blanketed in fog, at whose end I would find the crossroads where Philippe and I would go our separate ways: he toward death and I back to life.

Although I didn't take it seriously, I was flattered to hear the rumor that King Henry VII of En gland–the same one who had gone down to Portsmouth incognito to catch a glimpse of me all those years ago–had asked for my hand in marriage. I began to laugh aloud with my ladies again. I was slowly recovering the spirit that once inhabited my skin: strong, daring, and avid for music, dance, and beauty.

But after the winter of 1508, as the promise of warm days announced itself with the arrival of summer and I began to long for leisure and lengthy walks in the Castilian countryside, my calm was shattered into a million splinters. My father decided to travel to Córdoba to punish the Andalusian nobles who still refused to submit to his authority, and to
take little Ferdinand with him. He feared that, in his absence, the nobles could take the throne away from Charles–who was still in Flanders–and name Ferdinand, who all of them considered more Spanish than his brother. Rather than protect Charles's rights, my father was just worried that this maneuver would strip him from the regency of Castile, something the nobility had already tried to do shortly after Philippe's death.

I didn't want to be separated from my son. I dreaded the idea of him growing up to be a pawn of others' power struggles. But everything I did–begging first, screaming after that, trying to impose my queen's authority, and even locking myself with him in my room like any mother determined to protect her child–was futile. Forcefully they snatched him from my arms, oblivious to the boy's cries and to my own.

My father's cavalcade left Arcos, and I closed myself up in my rooms desolate, bitter, and enraged. I refused to eat or bathe. Again I expressed my resistance using my weapon of last resort: my body.

 

“LOOK, LUCÍA. HERE'S WHAT THE BISHOP OF MÁLAGA WROTE TO
Ferdinand the Catholic:

“I can imagine what she must have felt. I can feel her fury like a bitter taste in my mouth,” I whispered. “Poor Juana.”

“When Ferdinand returned from Andalusia, he commanded that Juana be moved from Villa de Arcos to Tordesillas whether by ‘patience, entreaties, or threats.' He personally supervised the operation, which included moving Philippe's body and little Catalina along with Juana. In this day and age, we would call that a coup d'état.”