The Queen's Vow: A Novel of Isabella of Castile (38 page)

I tightened my grip on my reins, causing Canela to paw the rocky ground.

“Well?” I asked, as Cárdenas came to a halt. I felt my company’s eyes upon us—Don Chacón, Inés, my other secretaries, and the few attendants I’d brought: enough to enhance my aura of regality but not so many that they’d impede my progress.

Cárdenas said haltingly, “He says if you enter through one gate, he’ll go out the other.”

I sat still on my saddle. “He defies me?”

Cárdenas nodded, clearly discomfited to be the bearer of this news. “He told me that just as he raised Your Majesty to your current station, so will he take you down.”

At my side Chacón rumbled, “That poltroon deserves a rope! He’ll get what’s coming to him, so help me God. I’ll drag him to the gibbet myself.”

“No.” I held up a hand, maintaining a semblance of calm that I did not feel.

Chacón said, “
Majestad
, if we don’t put him in his place now, he’ll never cease. He’s at the heart of this entire affair. His arrest will send a warning to the others.”

I looked past them toward the city, to the bastions of the old castle, imagining the stork nests perched among the mortared battlements.

“It’s too late,” I replied. “Even if I order his arrest, the damage is done. Villena and la Beltraneja are at large; the Portuguese advance on my realm. I’ll not waste time chasing down one man when it can be better spent gathering the many we need to fight.”

Chacón frowned. “In that case, where do we go now?”

I turned Canela resolutely into the wind. “To Carrillo’s see of Toledo. If we win the city, his revenues will be cut off. That’ll serve as a warning not even he can ignore.” Under my breath I added, “God Almighty made me queen. Now, let Him defend me with His favor.”

TOLEDO RECEIVED ME
with overwhelming acclaim, offering a large contingent for our forces as well as a significant monetary contribution for arms. I was relieved; as Castile’s oldest ecclesiastic seat and Carrillo’s main source of income, the city’s capitulation represented both a strategic and a symbolic victory.

But my struggle had just begun. Several important cities had yet to be persuaded, including Burgos in the north, whose position as a royal patrimony was strategically vital to our defense. I had to personally visit every undecided city and gain its allegiance, on my knees if need be. Any town with a sizeable population must also be appealed to, for we still needed soldiers—lots of them.

Fernando sent urgent word that the Portuguese had crossed the border into our realm, armed to the teeth. The city of Plasencia in Extremadura had opened its gates to the invaders; there, in the lofty cathedral above the Jerte River, flanked by treacherous Villena and his
accomplice grandees, Afonso V and la Beltraneja were betrothed. Fortunately, they couldn’t actually wed until they received a papal dispensation of consanguinity.

Having learned something myself about the unreliability of said dispensations, I composed an impassioned appeal to the Vatican, stating the case for Joanna’s illegitimacy (which negated any claim she might have on the throne) and requesting that His Holiness refuse to sanctify her union with Portugal. I added a personal note to Cardinal Borgia, who’d helped untangle my own marriage situation, promising him ample recompense and our eternal gratitude if he did his part to persuade the pope.

Using Cárdenas as relay messenger between us, we decided Fernando should start the offensive while I continued to scour the country for extra money and recruits. I would ride to Burgos, then to Ávila, and from there reconnoiter with Fernando in the fortress of Tordesillas, which was fortified and easily defensible.

I DEPARTED BURGOS
under a violent downpour. I had won the city’s allegiance after nearly a month of negotiation with stubborn officials, many of whom feared Fernando and I would usurp their archaic feudal rights. I was impatient, sleep-deprived, and anxious to see my husband. To worsen matters, after years of drought, the heavens had decided to break apart like an overripe fruit and release their pent-up waters on the parched land, inundating rivers and turning the roads into seas of mud.

Too much rain was nearly as disastrous as none; the scant harvest would molder, its tender roots suffocating and rotting in the saturated earth. There’d be another year of no grain, of starvation and uprisings in the towns. More immediately, in this deluge it would take me weeks to reach my destination. Looking straight ahead into the blinding sheet, my hood plastered to my skull and my skirts soaked through to my thighs, indignation rose in me, savage as the weather.

How could God do this? How could He turn from me? When would He realize that I was ready to lay down my very life to serve His cause, which surely must be the future glory of Castile? Hadn’t I suffered enough? Hadn’t this beleaguered land given enough blood, sweat,
and tears? Hadn’t we suffered the sacrifice of our sons, our women, our livelihoods, our very peace? What more did He want of us?

What more could He want from
me
?

I didn’t realize I was actually shouting until I caught the echo of my voice in my ears, followed by a furious clap of thunder. Canela started underneath me, whinnying. I turned to gaze at my company, all of whom looked at me as if I’d gone mad.

“Majestad,”
said Chacón. “You are overtired. Perhaps we should turn back.”

“Turn back? Absolutely not! We’re going forward and not stopping until—”

A savage cramp in my belly cut off my breath. I felt myself double over in my saddle, dropping my reins, my hands plunging instinctively to my abdomen. The pain was like talons, ripping me from the inside. I must have swayed, started to slip sideways, for in some distant but still cognizant part of me not yet hazed over by pain, I heard Chacón yell and leap from his horse, rushing to Canela to grasp the reins. Ines cantered to my side, grabbed hold of me before I slid off my horse. I summoned up enough will to right myself, though I could only clutch at the saddle horn, stunned by the viciousness of the onslaught.

Then I felt it—sticky warmth, seeping out of me. I looked down, watched in a daze as crimson petals unfurled in my lap. As the pain overcame me, I thought in a haze of disbelief that I hadn’t known. I hadn’t even suspected that I might be with child….

Inés cried out. “The queen is bleeding! Quickly, she is hurt!”

Darkness roared over me. God had answered my question.

“
YOUR MAJESTY MUST
rest,” said Doctor Díaz, our court physician. He had ridden posthaste to the town of Cebreros where we’d halted, only a few miles outside Ávila. “It will take a week or so to recover your strength.”

“I … I cannot,” I said, my voice raw. “Fernando … he needs me. In Tordesillas.”

“His Majesty has been notified of the difficulty you’ve encountered. He would not wish you to risk yourself further.” Díaz turned from me as if the matter were concluded, saying to Ines, “I’ll leave you this herb
draft. She must take the recommended dose as scheduled. If the bleeding returns, apply pressure as I showed you. I must go to Ávila to secure more medicine, but I’ll be back by tomorrow eve at the latest.”

“We won’t be here,” I told him.

Ines rose from her stool. She’d held vigil all night as I thrashed, delirious with fever; she was haggard but her voice was firm. Without taking her eyes from me, she said to him, “Yes, we will.
Gracias
, doctor. Go with God.”

He nodded, setting his cap on his head and glancing once again at me with his knowing, kind brown eyes. He was a learned man, Díaz; a converso, as so many of our best physicians were, trained in both Jewish and Moorish medicinal techniques. He had treated my daughter for the occasional cold and other minor ailments. He had also just saved my life, even if he’d employed curing arts which the Church prohibited, the prevailing doctrine being that sickness of the flesh stemmed from sins of the soul that only prayer and repentance could heal.

“You must rest,” he said again and he walked out.

Inés drew her stool close, wrung the warm chamomile-soaked cloth in a basin at her feet and set it on my brow. I closed my eyes. The saffron smell reminded me of my childhood, of the arid summers in Arévalo, where the hardy plant grew wild, like weeds.

At length I summoned enough courage. “Was it …?”

Ines sighed. “It was too early. They could not tell.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I
paced my apartments in Tordesillas, where the windows, high in a turret, overlooked the hamlet that bore the castle’s name, the broad flow of the murky Duero River far below, and beyond, as far as my eye could see, the dusty ocher expanse of the
meseta
. Somewhere on that plain, entrenched outside the city of Zamora, Fernando faced Afonso V and his army.

We’d had the briefest of reunions, after I defied Doctor Díaz’s advice and departed Cebreros exactly two days after my miscarriage. Ines had fluttered about in distress; Chacón lifted paternal protest; Díaz warned of dire complications. None stirred me. All I wanted was to escape that terrible room that echoed with stillborn promise. I needed to ride hard and fast across my land and see my beloved’s face once more.

He had been waiting for me in the keep. As I crossed the flagstones under a storm-rent sky, I had seen the sorrow etched on his face, in the hollows of his eyes. I’d flung myself into his embrace, not caring about the soldiers assembled about us, the officials and courtiers and grandees. With my face buried against his neck, which smelled of sweat and sun, I’d whispered, “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”

He had held me close. “Isabella, my love, my moon—what would I do without you?” He did not care about the child, not if it came at the price of my life; and together we had repaired to the rooms he’d prepared for me, decorated with my tapestries and furnishings, which he had ordered brought all the way from Segovia.

“You shouldn’t have,” I’d chided, even as tears pricked my eyes. “The expense …”

“Bah. What are a few more
maravedies
?” he’d smiled.

Isabel was fine, he assured me that night as we lay tangled in our bed, hearing the rain—that endless rain—driving against the castle
walls. Beatriz and Andrés watched over her in the alcazar, where nothing could harm her. We had not spoken of the force bearing down on us, of the threat nothing could protect us from. We’d caressed and kissed; lost in the scent and feel of each other, we’d made tacit agreement never to mention again the loss we both so keenly felt.

He left me before dawn, arrayed in armor, at the head of the patchwork army we had assembled, composed of vassals and retainers, volunteers from remote villages, carters, pages, townsmen, minor nobles, and prisoners whose sentences had been commuted so they could fight for Castile. As he rode across the drawbridge spanning the gorge, under rippling standards emblazoned with our arrows and yoke, he looked over his shoulder and raised his gauntleted hand.

“Isabella,
mi amor
,” he shouted. “Wait for me!”

And so I had, for weeks, as humid June dragged into sweltering July. I was kept informed of every event by the couriers racing to and from Fernando’s encampment; from them, I learned of Afonso’s craven entrenchment behind Zamora’s unimpeachable walls, his refusal to come out and engage, though Fernando challenged him to single combat. Our men were forced to lay siege, to dig trenches and poison wells, until supplies dwindled and tempers flared and the offensive we’d painstakingly forged out of hope, loans, and force of will began to fall apart.

“Give us victory,” I prayed. “Let us triumph. You took my child; now give me this.”

I still hadn’t learned that bartering with the Almighty only incites His displeasure.

On July 22, as I paced in the castle in Tordesillas, a missive arrived, scrawled in a hand I did not recognize at first. I read it, horrified. I raised my eyes to the exhausted messenger and said in a voice hard as stone, “Go back. Tell him I forbid it. Not a single tower in Castile must fall to them.”