Katharine, The Virgin Widow - Plaidy Jean - Страница 57

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Francesca rose. She was trembling.

She must go quickly. She must be alone to think. She was terrified that she would commit some indiscretion which would decide the whole of her future life.

“You are afraid now,” he said gently. “Make no mistake. It is not of me, Francesca, that you should be afraid. You would never be afraid of me. You are bold and adventurous. Not for you the palace prison. Come to me, Francesca, and I will make you free.”

“I must go,” she said.

He did not attempt to detain her.

“You will think of what I have said?” he asked.

“I cannot stop thinking of it,” she answered. Then he took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead tenderly. She knew that she was going to feel cheated if she did not see him again. Yet how could she?

Juana at Tordesillas

JUANA IN THE TOWN OF ARCOS KNEW NOTHING OF THE negotiations which had been going on to marry her to the King of England. She had settled in this most unhealthy climate, but she was quite unaware of the cold winds which penetrated the palace. Her little Catalina had become a lively little girl who seemed readily to accept the strangeness of her mother. Juana had also insisted that her son Ferdinand should be brought to live with her, and this wish had been granted. But little Ferdinand, who was nearly six years old, did not take kindly to his mother’s household. He did not like the coffin which was always prominently displayed; nor did he care to look on his dead father and to see his mother fondling the corpse.

Juana went about the palace dressed in rags, and she did not sit at table but ate her food from a plate on the floor like a cat or a dog. She never washed herself, and there were no women-servants in the house except the old washerwoman.

Music could sometimes be heard being played in the Queen’s apartment; otherwise there was almost continuous silence.

Young Ferdinand was very happy when his grandfather came to Arcos and took him away, although his mother screamed and shouted and had to be held by attendants while he rode away with his grandfather. Ferdinand loved his grandfather, who made much of him.

“We are both Ferdinands,” said the elder Ferdinand, and that delighted the boy, who decided that he would be exactly like his grandfather when he grew up.

Juana might have gone on in this state at Arcos but for the fact that revolt broke out in Andalusia, and it immediately occurred to Ferdinand that the rebels might plan to use her as a figurehead. He decided then that he was going to remove her to the isolated castle of Tordesillas, where it would be so much easier to keep her under restraint.

He came to the Palace of Arcos one day and went straight to those apartments where Juana was sitting, staring moodily at the coffin of her husband. Her hair, which had not been dressed for many months, hung about her haggard face; her face and hands were dirty, and her clothes hung in filthy rags about her gaunt figure.

Ferdinand looked at her in horror. There was indeed no need to pretend that she was mad.

Undoubtedly she must be removed to Tordesillas. He knew that there was a plot afoot to displace him and set up young Charles as King. As Charles was now nine, this arrangement would give certain ambitious men the power they needed; but Ferdinand was determined that the Regency should remain in his hands, and he would be uneasy until Juana was his prisoner in some place where he could keep her well guarded.

“My daughter,” he said as he approached her—he could not bring himself to touch her. As well touch a beggar or gipsy; they would probably be more wholesome—“I am anxious on your account.”

She did not look at him.

“Last time I was here,” he went on, “I did not please you. But you must realize that it is necessary for the people to see little Ferdinand; and what I did was for the best.”

Still she did not answer. It was true then that, although she had raged when he had taken her son, a few days later she had completely forgotten the boy. There was no real place in that deranged mind for anyone but the dead man in the coffin.

Ferdinand went on: “This place is most unhealthy. You cannot continue to live here in this…squalor. I must insist that you leave here. The castle of Tordesillas has been made ready to receive you. It is worthy of you. The climate is good. There you will recover your health.”

She came to life suddenly. “I shall not go. I shall stay here. You cannot make me go. I am the Queen.”

He answered quietly: “This place is surrounded by my soldiers. If you do not go of your own free will, I shall be obliged to force you to go. You must prepare to leave at once.”

“So you are making me a prisoner!” she said.

“The soldiers are here to guard you. All that is done is for your good.”

“You are trying to take him away from me,” she screamed.

“Take the coffin with you. There is no reason why you should not continue to mourn in Tordesillas, as you do in Arcos.”

She was silent for a while. Then she said: “I need time to prepare myself.”

“A day,” he said. “You can wash yourself, have your hair dressed, change into suitable clothes in a day.”

“I never travel by day.”

“Then travel by night.”

She sat still, nodding.

And the next night she left Arcos. She had been washed; her wild hair had been set into some order; she wore a gown suited to her rank; and, taking little Catalina in her litter, she set out with her followers; as usual, beside the Queen’s litter, so that it was never out of her sight, went the hearse drawn by four horses.

Through the nights she travelled and, as the third day was beginning to break, the party arrived at the old bridge across the Douro. There Juana paused to look at the castle which was so like a fortress. Immediately opposite this castle was the convent of Santa Clara, and in the cloisters of this convent she allowed the coffin to be placed. Then from the windows of her apartments she could look across to the coffin, and she spent the greater part of her days at her window watching over her dead. Each night she left the castle for the convent, where she embraced the corpse of Philip the Handsome.

So dragged on the long years of mourning, and each day she grew a little more strange, a little more remote from the world; only in one thing was she constant—her love for the handsome philanderer who had played such a large part in making her what she was.

King Henry VIII

KATHARINE HAD NOW LOST ALL HOPE. HER AFFAIRS WERE IN the direst disorder. Fuensalida had quarrelled openly with Henry, and when the ambassador had gone to Court he had been told that the King had no wish to see him.

Fuensalida, haughty, arrogant and tactless, had even tried to force an entry, with the result that he had suffered the extreme indignity of being seized by guards and put outside the Palace precincts.

Never had an ambassador been submitted to such shame, which clearly indicated that Henry had no respect for Ferdinand’s suggestions. Indeed Henry was boasting that he would marry Mary and Charles without the help of Spain.

Katharine was with her maids of honor when the news was brought to her of Puebla’s death. This, she had at last come to realize, was one of the greatest blows which could befall her, for now there was no one to work for her in England but the incompetent Fuensalida.

“This is the last blow,” she said. “I fear now that there is no hope.”

“But what will become of us?” asked Maria de Salinas.

“Doubtless we shall be sent back to Spain,” put in Maria de Rojas hopefully.

Katharine said nothing. She realized that to be sent back to Spain was the last thing she wanted. She would go back, humiliated, the unwanted Infanta, the widow who was yet a virgin. Had ever any Princess of Spain been so unfortunate as she was? There was only one dignified course left to her, and that was marriage with the Prince of Wales.

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