You can do without food or the outdoors for a while, because while you
I felt the first pangs of real fear.
‘Two weeks,’ he said, then turned and addressed Donna Esmeralda. ‘She is to have no contact with her brother for the next two weeks. They are not permitted to eat, to play, to speak with each other-not even permitted to catch a glimpse of each other. Your future rests on this. Do you understand?’
‘I understand, Your Highness,’ Donna Esmeralda replied tautly, her eyes narrowed and her gaze averted. I began to wail.
‘You cannot take Alfonso from me!’
‘It is done.’ In my father’s hard, heartless expression, I detected traces of pleasure.
I flailed about for reasons; the tears that had gathered on the rims of my eyes were now in true danger of cascading onto my cheeks. ‘But…but Alfonso loves me! It will hurt
‘How does it feel, Sancha?’ my father taunted softly. ‘How does it feel to know you are responsible for hurting the one you love the most?’
I looked on the one who had sired me-one who so cruelly relished hurting a child. Had I been a man, and not a young girl, had I borne a blade, anger would have overtaken me and I would have slit his throat where he stood. In that instant, I knew what it was like to feel infinite, irrevocable hatred for one I helplessly loved. I wanted to hurt him as he had me, and take pleasure in it.
When he left, I at last wept; but even as I spilt angry tears, I swore I would never again permit any man, least of all the Duke of Calabria, to make me cry.
I spent the next two weeks in torment. I saw only the servants. Though I was allowed outside to play if I wished, I refused, just as I petulantly refused most of my meals. I slept poorly and dreamed of Ferrante’s spectral gallery.
My mood was so dark, my behaviour so difficult that Donna Esmeralda, who had never lifted a finger against me, slapped me twice in exasperation. I kept ruminating over my sudden impulse to kill my father; it had terrified me. I became convinced that without Alfonso’s gentle influence, I should become a cruel, half-crazed tyrant like the father and grandfather I so resembled.
When the two weeks finally passed, I seized my little brother and embraced him with a ferocity that left us both breathless.
When at last I could speak, I said, ‘Alfonso, we must take a solemn oath never to be apart again. Even when we are married, we must stay in Naples, near each other, for without you, I will go mad.’
‘I swear,’ Alfonso said. ‘But Sancha, your mind is perfectly sound. With or without me, you need never fear madness.’
My lower lip trembled as I answered him. ‘I am too much like Father-cold and cruel. Even Grandfather said it-I am hard, like him.’
For the first time, I saw real anger flare in my brother’s eyes. ‘You are anything but cruel; you are kind and good. And the King is wrong. You aren’t hard, just…stubborn.’
‘I want to be like you,’ I said. ‘You are the only person who makes me happy.’
From that time on, I never once gave our father cause to punish me.
Late Spring 1492
II
Slightly more than three years passed. The year 1492 arrived, and with it a new pope: Rodrigo Borgia, who took the name Alexander VI. Ferrante was eager to establish good relations with him, especially since previous pontiffs had looked unkindly on the House of Aragon.
Alfonso and I grew too old to share the nursery and moved into separate chambers, but we were apart only when sleep and the divergence in our education required it. I studied poetry and dance while Alfonso perfected his swordsmanship; we never discussed our foremost concern-that I was now fifteen, of marriageable age, and would soon move to a different household. I comforted myself with the thought that Alfonso would become fast friends with my future husband and would visit daily.
At last, a morning dawned when I was summoned to the King’s throne room. Donna Esmeralda, could not entirely hide her excitement. She dressed me in a modest black gown of elegant cut and fine silk, with a satin brocade stomacher laced so tightly I gasped for air.
Flanked by her, Madonna Trusia, and Donna Elena, I crossed the palace courtyard. The sun was obscured by heavy fog; it dripped onto us like soft, slow rain, spotting my gown, covering my face and carefully arranged hair with mist.
At last we arrived at Ferrante’s wing. When the doors opened onto the throne room, I saw my grandfather sitting regally on his crimson cushions; beside him stood a stranger-an acceptable-looking man of stocky, muscular build. Next to him was my father.
Time had not bettered Alfonso, Duke of Calabria. If anything, my father was more temperamental-indeed, vicious. Recently, he had called for a whip and flogged a cook for serving his soup cold; he beat the poor woman until she fainted from loss of blood. Only Ferrante was able to stay his hand. He had also dismissed, with much cursing and shouting, an aged servant from the household for failing to properly shine his boots. To quote my grandfather, ‘Wherever my eldest son goes, the sun retreats behind the clouds in fear.’
His face, while still handsome, was a portrait in misery; his lips twitched with barely-repressed indiscriminate anger, his eyes emanated an unhappiness he delighted in sharing. He could no longer bear the sound of childish laughter; Alfonso and I were required to maintain silence in his presence. One day I forgot myself, and let loose a giggle. He reached down and struck me with such force, I stumbled and almost fell. It was not the blow that hurt as much as the realization that he had never lifted a hand against any of his other children-only me.
Once, when Trusia had believed me to be preoccupied, she had confided to Esmeralda that she had gone one night to my father’s chambers only to find it in total darkness. When she had fumbled about for a taper, my father’s voice emerged from the blackness: ‘Leave it so.’ When my mother moved towards the door, he commanded: ‘Sit!’ And so she was compelled to sit before him, on the floor. When she began to speak, in her soft, gentle voice, he shouted: ‘Hold your tongue!’
He wanted only silence and darkness, and the knowledge that she was there.
I bowed gracefully before the King, knowing my every action was being sized up by the common-looking, brown-haired stranger beside the throne. I was a woman now, and had learned to funnel all my childish stubbornness and mischief into a sense of pride. Others might have called it arrogance-but ever since the day my father had wounded me, I had vowed never to let myself show hurt or any sign of weakness. I was perpetually poised, unshakable, strong.
‘Princess Sancha of Aragon,’ Ferrante said formally. ‘This is Count Onorato Caetani, a nobleman of good character. He has asked for your hand, and your father and I have granted it.’
I lowered my face modestly and caught a second glimpse of the Count from beneath my lowered eyelashes. An ordinary man of some thirty summers, and only a count-and I a princess. I had been preparing myself to leave Alfonso for a husband-but not one so undistinguished as this. I was too distraught for a gracious, appropriate reply
