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Hark, you shadows that in darkness dwell,
Learn to contemn light.
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world’s despite.
– John Dowland
I.
Burgos, September 1506
The king was not dead. It was true that Philip’s breath had stopped; that a wintry pallor was spreading over his hands, lips, cheeks; that if Juana placed her head upon his chest, she could not feel his heart thudding against its cage. But she was his wife, and she knew her husband well. Queen Juana of Castile knew – she knew, and God, if he existed, knew it too – that Philip, despite the thousand little cruelties he had committed, would never be so callous as to leave her without saying goodbye.
King Philip must have known how much she loved him. He must have known that to her, all the world was a wilderness – black, jagged, and harsh, like a blighted field where only cold winds blew – without him by her side. He must have known. Couldn’t he see it in the way she followed him, over land and over sea, no matter how heavy with child she was? Couldn’t he see it in the way she carried all his children, how she sweated and screamed in childbed each time, bearing heirs for him the way a good woman should? Couldn’t he see it in the way she pushed away each crying baby the midwives showed to her, just to make room for him to lean down and kiss her hot, tired face? (But perhaps he really couldn’t see it – he never once came to visit her after her confinement, only sent her perfunctory letters of congratulation. In a scribe’s handwriting.)
Yes, perhaps that was it. Maybe he never saw her love, and so didn’t know how cruel this final cruelty of his had been. But how couldn’t he see it? Juana’s love radiated out from her heart like Mary’s seven daggers, like Cleopatra’s asp, like fiery tendrils of light that day and night threatened to engulf her, body and soul, to burn down her bedchamber with her in it, burn down the whole castle, burn forever and ever until all Christendom, from Granada to Flanders, was nothing but ash.
Juana’s love was beastly, terrible, forever on fire. She had once been proud of it. But it was now dawning on her, as she raised her head slowly from the king’s motionless chest, that it had gone unnoticed all those years. That the flame that had burned so painfully in her heart, and left her with so many scars, had never even left a scratch on Philip. He’d never known how much she loved him, had never stopped to think what his death would do to her.
Traitor. Scoundrel.
For the first time, the queen looked at the king lying on the bier, clad in fine raiments of red silk and cloth-of-gold, and saw that he was truly dead.
Suddenly gripped by a white-hot fury, a scorching panic – like a chained animal in a royal bestiary – Juana tore off her headdress of black silk. She clawed at her hair, sending the pins that held it in place cascading to the flagstones. Breathing heavily, her face framed now by a wild mane of auburn hair, she sunk to her knees beside the bier. The fury had passed. Nothingness took its place. Numbly she took Philip’s hand in hers. It was very cold. The feeling revolted her – it was like touching dead meat – but she didn’t let go.
As she knelt on the hard floor, shrouded in a veil of broken shadows and candlelight, she felt her child kicking inside her.
* * *
II.
Madrid, February 1689
Rain blurred the windows of the chapel. The colored glass seemed to swim, breaking up and coming together again like waves. Thunder rolled across the sky somewhere, vague as the broken cannons of an army that had long since disbanded. The king knelt beside the queen’s coffin. He was trying to pray.
A week had passed since Queen Marie Louise died. In the space of that week, King Carlos the Second had fasted thrice, slept only two nights, and once taken the leather scourge out of its carved wooden box – only to put it back, disgusted at himself. Penances and mortifications were useless now: his grief, he felt, was already too extravagant, as gaudy as the stained glass windows looming coldly above him, and scourging himself would bring no relief. It wouldn’t be sincere. It would only offend Heaven more. Who did he think he was, trying to drown himself in his own tears? How dare he let himself shatter like this? Did he think his loss was greater even than that of the Virgin, who lost not a mortal spouse but a holy son?
And yet – Carlos knew he would never shake this grief, this selfish refusal to accept the queen’s death. He would wear it like an invisible garment, like a pelt of black fur thicker and heavier than the cloak draped over his shoulders. He would loll on his throne, resplendent in it. Like a petticoat it would trail after him into the confessional, the parade ground, the theater, the bedchamber.
A shiver ran through him. His own heartbeat seemed to echo through the chapel, the noise growing louder and louder as it bounced off the stone walls and floor, expanding to fill the empty space, swallowing up the rain and thunder outside, pounding on the lid of the coffin. The sound made Carlos feel sick. Violently trembling, he put a hand to his chest, trying to muffle the sound, feeling the insistent rhythm of the organ that kept him alive. He stood up shakily and crossed himself.
It’s a strange thing to share a space with a corpse. To know that there is another pair of eyes in the room to match yours, another tangle of nerves and sinews. Another heart locked away in another chest. Feeling that his hands were no longer shaking, the king reached out and touched the pall of black velvet that had been laid over the coffin. The fabric was embroidered with a gold cross, with pearls stitched into it; the decorations paled in the stormy gray half-light that suffused the chapel.
What use did Marie Louise have for such things of beauty now? Carlos wanted to tear off the pall and open the coffin. Perhaps even reach in and touch her. The royal embalmer had preserved her perfectly, like a carved monument or an iron candelabrum. How would it feel to touch her now, to brush his hand across her cheek? Would she feel like a sculpture of marble or an effigy of wax? Would the paint on her face come off, exposing blue-white bloodlessness underneath? Would the customary stitches on her eyes and mouth unravel at a touch, her black eyelashes fluttering, and then – ?
Carlos drew his hand back as if burned. No. He didn’t even want to picture it. The thought would drive him mad.
It was getting dark. He turned away from the coffin and looked for a candle to light.