He was a very different man now from the lover of Maria Manoela. Too much had happened to him; it had changed him. He was hardened; he was sensual as he had never believed he could be. Alone with his mistress, he had ceased to be cold; he had plunged into deep seas of passion. Was this the real man? Was the cold solemnity a mask that he put on to guard himself from the world?
It was typical of this new Philip that his last night in Valladolid should be spent with Catherine and not with Isabel … with the woman whom he thought of as a mistress rather than the one he thought of as a wife. That would sadden Isabel. But he, Philip, was the one who must suffer most. Isabel must understand that. Could she not see that he must enjoy to the full the delights of carnal love before he walked into the marriage chamber of Mary Tudor?
Catherine was soothing as well as passionate; Isabel would have spent the night in weeping. Catherine understood, as the more conventional Isabel could not; she knew why he must plunge into these frenzies of passion; Catherine offered balm and sympathy, and she helped to banish thoughts of Mary Tudor from his mind.
In the streets that night the festivities had been robbed of their maddest gaiety. The people remembered that they were to lose their beloved Philip; moreover, news had come of the death of the Prince of Portugal, young Juana’s husband, so that the royal house must be plunged into mourning.
Philip himself was not sorry that the Prince had died at this moment; it meant that Juana would be coming home to Spain to take up the Regency during his absence; it would mean making a detour in the journey to Corunna, because he must show the proper courtesy to his sister by meeting her at the borders of Spain and Portugal.
So, the following morning the cavalcade set out from Valladolid. All the nobles who accompanied Philip had received instructions from the Emperor, with the result that they and their followers were dressed in the gaudiest of costumes. Philip’s guards—Spanish and Teuton—were magnificent in their uniforms; and, thought Philip, the livery of his servants, being red and yellow, would please the English.
Philip himself was soberly dressed; he was still in Spain, he had reminded himself, and although he intended to carry out to the best of his ability what was expected of him, there was no need to become an Englishman in appearance just yet.
Beside Philip rode Carlos. This was an added trial to Philip. He was unsure how the boy would behave; already the people’s cheers for the young Prince seemed forced. No doubt they had heard rumors of his behavior.
Yet Carlos seemed a little brighter than usual as they rode out of Valladolid. There were two reasons for Carlos’s pleasure; one was that his father was leaving Spain and it was possible that the English might hang him as they had tried to hang the boy who had impersonated him; the other was that his beloved Aunt Juana was coming home. It was nearly two years since she had gone away, and she had a little baby of her own now—Don Sebastian—but Carlos was sure that she would have retained her affection for her Little One.
Carlos looked quite attractive in his dazzling garments cunningly cut to hide his deformities. Seated on his mule with its rich trappings, it could not be seen that he was lame.
He was enjoying the journey and the rests at the various towns where great festivities had been prepared to welcome them. One of his greatest pleasures was to watch the bulls and the matadors. When the blood began to flow and the horns of a bull cruelly gored a victim he would cheer wildly. Then he wanted to stand on his seat and shout: “More! More! Bring out more bulls!” But he was aware of his father’s stern eyes upon him.
And at length, at the borders of Spain and Portugal, the two processions met. There was Juana looking rather unlike herself in her widow’s clothes, tearful, weeping for her husband, kneeling solemnly before her brother. Yet when she took Carlos’s hand and smiled at him, his heart beat faster with pleasure, and tears of joy filled his eyes.
“Juana! Juana!” He did not care for etiquette; he could not hold back the words. “You have come home to your Little One.”
“Remember,” said Philip. “There must be no pampering. Carlos gives me great anxiety. He must be curbed, and above all kept at his lessons. I have arranged a separate household for him under his guardian, Luis de Vives. But much will rest with you. I hope to see an improvement in Carlos when I return.”
“Your Highness shall.”
Philip, looking at his sister, saw that she was weeping softly. Had she loved her husband so much? Was she the best person to look after Carlos? She lacked his own calmness and the common sense of his sister Maria, who was now in Austria with her husband, Maximilian. It was too late now to alter arrangements. Besides, it would be a breach of etiquette to leave any other than Juana in charge of the boy.
He reminded himself that he would beget more children; and that thought led him to another; he was getting nearer and nearer to the marriage bed of Mary Tudor.
“Yes, Father.” The boy’s eyes were alight with excitement. Each day brought nearer the farewell between himself and his father; then he would return to Valladolid and Juana. In the meantime, here was another treat; he was going to see his great-grandmother of whom he had heard so much. There were many rumors about her, and Carlos had bullied one of the younger boys into telling all he knew. He had kept the boy in his apartment, and even tickled his throat with a knife while the boy, with bulging eyes and twitching lips, had told all he knew.
“She is mad … mad,” he had said. “‘Mad Juana’ they call her. She lives in the Alcazar at Tordesillas, and she has jailors who are called her servants. She speaks against Holy Church and once she was tortured by the Holy Office.”
Carlos’s eyes had glistened. Tortured! Carlos must know more. He must have details of torture by the pulley, when men or women were drawn up by means of ropes, and left hanging by their hands with weights attached to their feet, until every joint was dislocated; he must know of the burning of the soles of the feet, of the red-hot pincers, of all the wondrous arts of the Holy Inquisition.
And the fanatical monks had dared to torture his great-grandmother, who was a Queen!
“They would have burned her at the stake,” his informant had said, “but for the fact that she was a Queen.”
And now he was going with his father to see this mad great-grandmother. It seemed that life was smiling for
