Jean Plaidy - For a Queens Love: The Stories of the Royal Wives of Philip II

Philip said: “Grandmother, we have come, my wife and I, to ask your blessing.”

“Why do you come to me … to me? … Who cares for poor Juana now? … When they wanted me mad, they made me mad … and when they wanted me sane … I was sane. That was my father and my husband … between them they used me … mad … sane … mad … sane … What’s it to be today?”

“Grandmother, this is my bride, Maria Manoela …”

“She’s plump and pretty … and she’s your bride. What is your name, boy? What did you say?”

“I am Philip …”

“Philip. Philip.” She peered about the room. “He will not come out today. It is because you are here. He is hiding behind the curtains. It is a pity. I should have liked you to see him. Philip … Philip the Handsome … the prettiest man in Zeeland … or Flanders … or Spain … wherever we were. I did not tell him that. There were too many to tell him. Child … child … come here, child.”

Maria Manoela hung back, but Philip pushed her gently forward and Juana took her by the wrist. Suddenly Maria Manoela felt her chin grasped by the bony hand.

“Plump and pretty. As he liked them … But dark. He liked them fair. You are looking for him … you sly creature. Yes you are. Take her away. I’ll not have women here. Can you see him? He comes in and laughs at me. They have tried to take him from me. He was in his coffin, but I kept him with me … and when it was night and all had left me I would look into the coffin and he would talk to me … laugh at me … boast about his women. He is so beautiful. I wanted to die when he was with the others … and when he came back I forgave him all … I was mad for him … sane for him … And you … you with your plump, pretty face have come to look for him …” The mad eyes were wild with sudden fury. Philip put an arm about Maria Manoela and drew her away. She caught her breath in a sobbing gasp and hastily she crossed herself.

“Nay, nay,” said Philip in his calm, clear voice. “Maria Manoela is my bride. Your husband is dead, dear Grandmother. It is many years since he died, and now we come to ask your blessing on our union.”

Juana lay back in her chair and the tears began to run down her cheeks. “Is it true, then? Is he dead? Is there no longer life in his beautiful body?”

“Grandmother, it is true. He is dead.”

The mirthless laughter rang out. “Come here. Come closer … both of you. He is dead, they say. That is what they say. But I will tell you a secret. He is here now … here in this room. He is laughing at us … He is kissing the fat Flemish women in the tapestry. One day I set it on fire. That’ll spoil his game, I said. And it did.” She glared at Maria Manoela. “Who is this girl?”

“My wife, Grandmother. Your granddaughter, Maria Manoela. Your daughter’s daughter.”

“My daughter’s daughter. What daughter was that?”

“Your daughter Katharine, Grandmother, she who married into Portugal.”

“Katharine … Katharine … sweet little Katharine …” Juana began to weep again. “They took her from me. I kept her here … in this palace close to me. She was so pretty … but they said I dressed her in dirty rags and I never let her go abroad. I dared not. I was afraid they would take her from me. Sweet little Katharine. I had a window made for her so that she could look from it … and I had children come and play that she might watch them … But I would not let her leave me … Did your mother speak of me, my child?”

“Y-yes, Grandmother,” stammered Maria Manoela. “She spoke of you.”

“Did she tell you how they came and took her from me? … It was my son Charles … my son, the Emperor … who is but a Prince and only rules because I am shut away. While I live I am the Queen … I am the true ruler of Spain.”

Philip said sternly: “Grandmother, you were speaking of your daughter Katharine.”

“My daughter Katharine … my sweet sweet Katharine. Charles my son had men come by night. They cut a hole in the wall of her chamber … at dead of night they came … and they took her away from me … my Katharine … my sweet little daughter.” Her tears ceased abruptly and she began to laugh. “But they brought her back. They had to.” She was sad again. “But I had lost my Katharine … They would not let me keep her to myself … There were tutors for her … She must be brought up like an Infanta, they said, not like the child of a mad woman … Mad … Sane … I was mad then. Thus it has always been. Mad … Sane … And which is it today?”

“Grandmother, I implore you, give us your blessing,” pleaded Philip.

“Come close to me that I may see you. Is he good to you, this husband, eh?”

“He … is good to me.”

“But you are newly wed. Wait … wait. Wait till he deceives you. Once I thought I was the happiest woman in the world. It was on that first night. He was lusty and golden-haired. He was a Hapsburg. He said: ‘Do not be afraid, my sweet Juana. You will not regret that they have married you to me.’ I did not know then that he would be making love to other women … the next night … the next day … any hour of the day … any hour of the night.”

“Grandmother!” said Philip coldly; but his coldness could not touch her; she was back in a past which was more real to her than this dirty room with its candles and black hangings. Instead of the young bride and groom, she saw another pair—herself and another Philip. She lived in that moment the agonies of jealousy from which she had never allowed herself to escape. She saw that Flemish woman with the big breasts and thighs—the woman to whom he had been faithful for two whole weeks, which was surely a record for him. What had she, that woman? How was she different from others? How had she kept fickle Philip faithful for two whole weeks? Her strength, like Samson’s, was in her beautiful hair. Never was there such hair—not before, not since. It was like gold in the sunshine and it rippled about her feet.

Juana began to laugh suddenly. She saw it so clearly: The woman standing before her, her hands bound behind her back. Juana mouthed the words: “Bring the barber in.” She shrieked with helpless laughter for she was seeing the woman standing blankly horrified while her beautiful hair fell about the floor. Then she had her stripped and put in a cupboard, and she had been helpless with laughter when Philip came in.

She began to shout: “There is your beauty. Do you not long for her? Can you wait, then? Do not take any notice of me. When did you ever? She is there … waiting for you as she has waited countless times before. Shameless hussy! Naked she has been, often enough for you … but to be thus before the Queen …”

Juana covered her face with her hands and rocked back and forth with her laughter.

“I beg of you …” began the real Philip.

She was recalled to the present. She said: “And when he saw who she was, he turned on me and he struck me across the mouth. I fell back … but then I flew at him. I scratched him and bit him. But I was happy, my children, because I loved him so much that I hated him … and I hated him so much that it was the second best pleasure in the world to fight with him.”

Her wild laughter had brought two men-at-arms to the door of the apartment. They stood motionless. The life of the heir and his wife must not be jeopardized, and Mad Juana, though so old, was strong when the moods of violence were upon her.

“What do you do there?” she called.

The men bowed. One of them said: “We thought we heard your Highness call.”

Philip said quickly: “Stay there. Her Majesty was about to give us her blessing.” He turned to Maria Manoela. “Come. Kneel,” he said firmly.

They knelt, and it seemed that something in the calm manner of young Philip soothed the old woman.

“My blessing on you both,” she said, laying her hands on their heads. “Philip … my blessing on you. May this child be fruitful … and bear many sons as handsome as my Philip … and many daughters who have a better life than I have had.”

Maria Manoela was gripping Philip’s hand. He gave her a quick look of reassurance. “Rise now,” he whispered.

Juana was speaking quietly now. “As handsome as my Philip,” she repeated. “He put me away that he might spend more time with his women. If this Philip treats you thus … come to me, child. Come to me. I will teach you how to deal with harlots …”

“We thank you for your blessing, Grandmother,” said Philip. “We will now depart.”

“First you shall hear music,” she cried. She waved a hand to the men at the door. “You … slave … bring in the musicians. Let them play merry tunes for the Prince and the Princess.”

She insisted that the young pair sit on stools beside her while the musicians played. Juana sat dreamily tapping her fingers on the arms of her chair. She would have music which had been played when she was young and first married to her handsome Philip, in the days when she was a highly-strung girl, before she had gone violently mad through her love for the husband who had been chosen for her, through her jealousy of his many mistresses.

She called to Maria Manoela to come closer. She called her “Katharine!” She pointed out the dancers in that room in which none danced. Once she tottered to her feet. “I will kill her. Yes … you … No use hiding there in the hangings. I can see you. I will plunge a knife into those thick white thighs. When they are stained with blood, mayhap he will turn shuddering from them … perhaps when you are lying lifeless with your silly eyes staring at death and your red mouth gaping, he will turn shuddering from you and come to his lawful wife …”

The musicians played on. They were accustomed to such scenes.

Philip’s eyes met those of Maria Manoela. Please … please … said hers. Could we not go? I can bear no more.

Then Philip remembered that he was the Regent of Spain in the absence of his father, and, standing up, he imperiously waved to the musicians to stop. They obeyed at once.

“We must leave you now, Grandmother,” he said.

“Nay,” she cried. “Nay …”

But all his cold haughtiness was with him now. “I fear so. Our thanks for the entertainment and your blessing. We will come again before long. Come, Maria Manoela.”

The girl rose hastily and stood beside him. He was aware, amid all the strangeness, that she stood as close to him as she could. Philip took Maria Manoela’s hand in his.

Juana said piteously: “Have I said too much, then? … Have I said wild things? … Have I talked of love and lust, then? It reminded me … A young bride and her groom. I was a young bride once with a groom … the handsomest in the world …”

“We shall meet again soon,” said Philip firmly, and he walked purposefully toward the door.

Juana called after them: “So you would leave me, eh? You would go to your women. ’Twill not always be thus. You have lost your limp, Philip. You have grown young and I am old … old. Life is cruel to women …”

They heard her shrieking laughter as they went through the corridors.

The sentries and the guards bowed low before them; and in the courtyard the young pair mounted their mules, and their attendants gathered about them as they rode back to Valladolid.

Philip never forgot the night that followed. Maria Manoela had a nightmare and awoke in terror, crying out that Mad Juana was hiding behind the tapestry and that she was about to set fire to it.

Philip comforted her.

“Nothing can harm you while I am here,” he said. She clung to him, forgetting her fear of him in her fear of the shadows.

She put her plump arms about his neck and said: “Do not let me see her again. She frightens me so.”

Philip found joy in comforting her, speaking to her with more tenderness than he had ever before been able to show.

“Nothing shall ever frighten you again, my little one. Philip is here … here to protect you.”

And that night their child was conceived.

The news was received with great rejoicing throughout Spain. In all the churches there were prayers that the child might be a boy.

Leonor cosseted the mother-to-be, making her lie down for hours during the day, which Maria Manoela was quite happy to do.

The young husband was alternately proud and fearful, though he allowed none to guess how proud, how fearful. He thought of Maria Manoela continually, longing for her to be safely delivered as he had never longed for anything else.

State matters weighed heavily upon him. Charles was anxiously urging him to raise money for fresh campaigns. “If our subjects are not liberal with us,” he wrote, “I know not how we shall fare.”

When the Cortes met there was a good deal of grumbling. Spaniards were beginning to understand that out of their very might grew misfortune. Better to be a small country, it was said, having plenty for its needs, than a far-flung Empire with its constant demands. There was even some murmuring against the Emperor himself, who was after all half foreign. Philip did not know how they would have emerged from their difficulties but for the handsome dowry which had come with Maria Manoela from Portugal.

He was doubly grateful to her; she was his country’s salvation and his own; and it seemed to him then, in a flash of unusual intuition, that his personal fortunes would always be linked with those of his country. Maria Manoela, while her dowry brought the answer to his country’s needs, with her person satisfied all that he had wanted since he was a boy. One day he would be able to explain this to her. She would cease to be such a child when she became a mother.

He allowed himself to dream of their future with their children around them and the love he desired growing stronger and stronger as the years passed. He would mold her to his way of thought; he would make of her the perfect wife whom a man of his temperament needed so much. To her alone would he show himself; she should know the real Philip who was quite different from the man whom his father and those about him had created for the benefit of Spain and the Empire.

He spent as much time with her as he could spare from his duties. He fancied, though, that she was still a little fearful of him.

Sometimes he would see a bewildered look in her eyes when she contemplated the future.

“The women of our family have difficult labor,” she said on one occasion.

He wanted to tell her of his thoughts of her, of how she would not suffer more than he did. Instead he said: “You shall have the best doctors in the world.”

She shrank a little, fancying there was a reproach in those words. She should be thinking of nothing at this moment but the fact that she was to bear the heir of Spain.

“Your mother was very brave when you were born,” she said slowly. “Leonor told me. She did not once cry out. I … I am afraid I may not be as … brave as your mother was.”

“You will be brave,” he said; and although he meant it to be a compliment, it sounded like a command.

“What if it is a girl? Will you … hate me then?”

“I … I would never hate you.”

“But … it is so necessary that the child should be a boy.”