The Queen's Vow: A Novel of Isabella of Castile (35 page)

I wore violet silk, my hair plaited about my head in what I hoped was a fetching style. I tugged insistently at a loose thread on my cuff. I wanted to rush out into the keep, to welcome him with open arms after so long an absence—but a queen did not display her emotion in public. Moreover, as I was the queen, it was his duty to first come to me.

Sweat pooled between my shoulders, trickling down my back under my gown as I strained my eyes toward the far doors. The heat was stifling, cast from too many braziers and oil lamps lit to ward off the afternoon chill. Where was he? What was taking him so long—

I heard voices, the clatter of booted heels. I almost bolted forth as a collection of men burst through the doors. The courtiers bowed in unison. I recognized him at once, even from a distance—that compact muscular figure in his new doublet, striding toward me. As he neared, I stepped to the edge of the dais, my smile breaking free, unrestrained.

“My lord husband,” I whispered, almost in tears at the sight of him so proud and strong before me. He removed his cap. His hair had grown; it now draped past his broad shoulders like a curtain of deep brown silk. A new, close-cut beard framed his square jaw.

He lowered his head.
“Majestad,”
he said in stilted formality, “it is my great honor to reunite with you at long last.”

I faltered. The hand I held out remained untouched between us. “And mine, as well,” I finally said. I stepped from the dais to embrace him. His body was lean, hard, toned from months of warfare against the French. He did not embrace me in return. When I drew back, he regarded me with icy focus.

He looked as if I were the last person he wanted to see.

“
HOW COULD YOU
do it? How could you do this to me?”

We stood together in my private chamber, to which we had retreated as soon as politely possible, following the interminable banquet during which I sat at his side, my apprehension a lump in my throat. He’d barely eaten from the fifty courses I’d ordered served; scarcely touched his goblet. When our little girl was presented to him, he greeted her with a perfunctory kiss and then he sat brooding as the court dined below us, his anger coiled about him like a tail.

Now, he unleashed it—without reserve.

“I am humiliated,” he went on, his voice sharp as a blade. “I had to hear it from you in a letter, in the middle of my father’s court in Zaragoza. I had to hear the news that my wife had had herself declared queen while I was miles away.” He swerved to the table, where Ines had left a platter of dried fruit and a beaker of wine. He poured liberally, his hand visibly shaking.

His anger had caught me so off-guard that for a moment I didn’t know what to say. Then I ventured, “But I thought you understood; I explained it all to you in my letter. The need for haste was due to the suddenness of Enrique’s death. I had to act quickly, lest some grandee take into his head to foment rebellion in la Beltraneja’s name. Carrillo, Mendoza, even your grandfather the admiral—they advised me it was the right thing to do.”

He regarded me from over the rim of his cup. “So, that is your explanation? You blame your advisors for not taking me into account?”

His accusation stung me. “I blame no one,” I retorted. “It was a decision I had to make. The circumstances were unprecedented. I acted in Castile’s best interests.”

“I see,” he said and he set his goblet aside. “Castile is more important than me. I thought we’d agreed to rule together, as equals, so that the ancient divisiveness between our kingdoms would no longer apply. But it seems I was wrong.”

“You—you are important,” I quavered. “But in Castile, the right of the sovereign … it is paramount. I am required to proclaim myself queen first, before …” My explanation faded into uncomfortable silence under the impact of his stare. I realized, with belated regret, that while my intentions had been honorable, I had made a terrible mistake.

“Who am I to you?” he asked quietly.

I started in my chair. “You are my husband, of course.”

“No. Who am I?” he repeated. “Am I to be co-ruler with you or do you, like so many others, believe that I, a prince of Aragón, should hold no rights here? Do you believe I should be content to be your consort, my sole concern to provide Castile with heirs?”

I jerked out of my chair. “How can you ask that of me?” I knew I should measure my tone, for he had not raised his. And his questions, much as they might hurt, were rational, but reason flew from my head. In that instant, the only thing I heard was his doubt of me, his indifference to a dilemma that had nearly torn me apart. “I agonized over what to do,” I cried. “I prayed, for hours on end! I consulted everyone I could, but ultimately I had to—”

“You did not consult me,” he interrupted. “You didn’t even write to ask what I thought. You declared yourself queen and had the sword of justice carried before you. You made it seem as though there was no other monarch here but you.”

I stared at him, outraged. After all these weeks of tumult and uncertainty, of working myself to exhaustion in meetings with my councilors, seeking to shore up Castile while he was fighting the French—surely, he did not expect my sympathy! But then I spied something in his expression, a fleeting vulnerability in his eyes. With a sinking of my heart, I recognized the emotion.

Fear.

Fernando was afraid. He thought I wanted to keep him from having as much power as me, and he’d be left, exposed, to the derision of my
court—the Aragonese who bedded the queen but had no say in how she ruled. His pride of manhood was injured.

Relief flooded me. This, I could deal with.

“I did what I had to,” I said, softening my voice. “I was loath to ask you to abandon Aragón in its hour of need. I had done it once before, when we married, and I knew how much it had cost you. I only sought to protect our kingdom until the time when you could be here to claim it with me.”

I could see he didn’t miss the emphasis I placed on “our kingdom,” though he didn’t acknowledge it. He would not surrender so easily.

“You might have waited,” he muttered, lowering his eyes.

“Yes, I might have. But if I had, Castile might have been lost to us.”

“So you say.” He went quiet for a long moment. Then he said, somewhat begrudgingly, “I suppose this is also my fault.”

I stood without speaking, waiting for him to continue.

“I signed those damned Capitulations,” he said. “I was so eager to be your husband, to save you from Villena and Enrique, that I signed away my rights—as Carrillo just reminded me only hours ago, when I protested to him on our way here that he should have counseled you according to the law. He told me he had. By Castilian law you hold the superior right. You are the queen; upon your death, may it be many years hence, our eldest child will inherit Castile. I will never be king here in my own right. He suggested I remember it.”

Inwardly, I seethed. Carrillo had gone too far! Did he not realize that a public rupture between Fernando and me at this crucial moment was the last thing we could afford? We were still vulnerable, our hold on Castile unsecured; the grandees would exploit any discord between us to further their own ends. They’d make a disaster of our reign before we’d even had a chance to commence it.

I had to find a way to resolve this rift and put an end to Carrillo’s presumption. He was the one who held no rights here, not Fernando. “We can have the law changed,” I stated, with more conviction than I felt, for in truth I wasn’t sure we actually could.

He lifted his gaze. “What did you say?”

“I said, we can change the law.” I thought fast, cobbling together a solution. “We’ll convene a special inquiry, with counsel to represent us,
like a court of law. We’ll examine every precedent, every statute; we’ll go over every clause in our prenuptial agreement. Wherever disparity can be rectified, we will do it.” I paused. While I had no idea if what I proposed was feasible, I wanted him to know I was willing to go to any ends necessary to ensure that he and I were viewed, and treated, as equals.

He bit his lower lip. “You would do that, for me?”

“That and much more,” I whispered. “You are always first in my heart.”

My knees gave way as he swiftly crushed me against him, his lips on mine. He gathered me in his arms, carried me to the bed. He tore off his doublet, fumbled with his shirt, his hose. I watched him even as I tried to untangle my own jumbled skirts, the countless ribbons and laces…. I went still as I saw his nudity—that scarred, chiseled flesh that I had hungered for more than I had realized, that I had missed and longed to taste the way a parched wanderer longs for water in a desert.

“I hope you are hungry tonight,” Fernando murmured, “like a
loba
at full moon.”

I looked at him in utter surprise. Then I laughed. “Did you just call me a she-wolf?”

“Yes. You see, I like she-wolves,” he replied, grinning with a mixture of boyish insolence and lasciviousness, making me laugh even harder. “I like to stalk them, hunt them, and skin their pelts, especially when they take themselves so seriously.
Grrr!
”

And he threw himself at me, growling and pawing as I felt my entire body go weak with desire and relief. He finished undressing me with expert hands, making my pulse race. As he passed my shift over my head, unraveling my braided coiffure so that my hair coiled loose about me, I let out a small moan—an unwitting but inescapable admission of lust that made his member thicken, harden against me.

“You are hungry,” he breathed and then he was over me, inside me, teasing, shifting, moving, plunging…. I clasped my thighs about him and the world with all its troubles, with its fears and foibles and inevitable disillusions, melted away.

For the first time in months, I rejoiced that I was, indeed, only a woman.

I ORDERED OUR
legal inquiry the very next week, selecting a choice panel of high-ranking grandees, including the admiral. I had my new confessor, the pensive and legally trained Hieronymite monk Fray Hernando de Talavera, appointed as our secretary; Cardinal Mendoza represented my rights, while, in a perverse pique of revenge, I appointed Carrillo to act for Fernando. I was furious at the archbishop for having spurred my husband’s anger, and now I made sure he was aware I expected him to offer Fernando a spirited and logical defense for equality in our monarchial powers. To his credit, Carrillo did exactly as I commanded, gaining even the reluctant grandees’ support of Fernando’s precarious position. Most agreed that our Capitulations—the controversial document which Carrillo had spent months negotiating and which he considered one of his finest achievements—was unprecedented, indeed almost unenforceable, given Fernando’s and my married state.

However, when the issue of our succession arose, it was I who came to my feet.

“My lord,” I said, looking to where Fernando sat enthroned in his red-and-gold mantle of estate, “because of the union that exists between us, this realm shall always remain the inheritance of our issue. But as thus far it has pleased God to bless us with a daughter, Castile’s succession must be invested in her. Aragón’s law prohibits her to succeed to your eventual throne; yet one day, she must marry a prince who could command our patrimony for his own use, turning both Castile and even Aragón, upon our deaths, into vassal states, should God see fit to deny us sons. This would prove a terrible burden upon our consciences and a calamity for our subjects, as I’m sure you will agree.”

His expression darkened; I’d been correct in suspecting he privately struggled with the intransigence of his own kingdom, where our daughter could not be named heir. It drove a wedge not of our making between us. I was willing to concede many points, including having his name precede mine on official documents and ceremonial addresses, granting him leave to act as supreme commander of our armies, and
allowing him the ability to render justice, but on this point I stood firm. Isabel had to succeed in her own right. Castile must never become subject to Aragón’s ancient exclusion of female rulers.

Finally, he nodded. “I agree. Let there be no more discussion of this matter.” He gave me a weary smile and came to where I stood. He kissed my cheek. “You win,” he murmured. “You should have been a lawyer, my moon.”

Holding my hand aloft, he declared, “Let it be done! In honor of our agreements, Her Majesty and I command that a new coat of arms be forged, displaying the castles and lions of Castile with the gold and red bars of Aragón.”

“And beneath it,” I added, “let our arrows and yoke be entwined with the Gordian knot, as a symbol of the perpetuity of our union.”

The grandees broke into applause. Fernando smiled, flushed with pride at their acknowledgment, and proceeded out with his gentlemen to change for the afternoon feast.

With a sigh, I started for the opposite doorway and my waiting ladies. Carrillo intercepted me. Behind us, the clerks began to gather the documents of the inquiry.

“You’ve made a grave mistake,” the archbishop announced. “By allowing him these privileges you negate the precepts set forth in your prenuptial Capitulations and endanger the very sovereignty of Castile.”