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Catalina had told the others she was going on a walk, which, strictly speaking, was true. She just didn’t tell them where, or why.
She had, however, a destination in mind. Near their house was a rambling, wooded park, and a little ways in was a clearing with which she was quite familiar. When, years ago, she’d first read of Mary’s persecutions, she’d fled the house and found herself in that spot. When she’d realized she was quite alone, she’d allowed herself to scream—and then, as the image of a serious, auburn-haired teenager, with haunted eyes just starting to go hard and glinty, swam into her mind, to double over and wail. Since then, she’d come here every so often, and sometimes the girl who lived in her mind spoke back.
Tonight, though, she had a different ghost she needed to confront.
Now, once again, she reached the clearing. She paced, rubbing the stitch in her side, catching her breath, making triply sure that there was no one within earshot. Finally she planted her feet squarely underneath her, breathed deeply, and spoke into the darkness:
“All right, Mother. It’s time we settled some things.”
Shockingly, Isabel of Castile did not materialize out of thin air, and Catalina felt intensely silly. However, she stayed put, conjuring an image of short, stocky woman with hooded eyes and a weak chin, whose cloak of authority was as manifestly visible as the coif that contained her long auburn hair. She fixed the image in her mind and continued.
“How lovely to meet again, Mother. It’s been too long. Five centuries too long, in fact. As I recall, actually, the last time I ever saw you I was fifteen, and then I sailed away to marry a prince who would die a few months later. And did you help me once I was a teenage widow? Not that I should have expected better, I suppose, seeing how it went with Juana. It’s quite a thing, isn’t it, to have been married to Henry VIII and to realize that out of all my siblings I only had the second-worst marriage.”
“Catalina, my darling,” she could imagine her mother saying, “surely you know that this was how things were done.”
“You chose your own husband against the wishes of your counselors—” Catalina began, but the ghost raised her hand, cutting her off. “You were an infanta of the most powerful house in Europe, and the alliance your hand bought was priceless. And I am truly sorry about Arthur, but surely you should be having words with your father about what happened after that. You can hardly blame me for having died.”
“You’re right about my father,” Catalina conceded. “But, Mother, here’s the thing. Everyone knew he was a power-hungry ass. You, though? You’ve somehow retained your saintly image. You’re remembered as a forward-thinking warrior queen. Nearly four centuries after you died, the Church recognized you as a Servant of God. Never mind that you let Juana’s tutors torture her for asking the wrong questions, because, as we know, a God of love is so deeply pleased by the suffering of children.”
She paused, swallowing hard as she remembered seeing her sister’s fiery and agile mind begin to splinter even then.
“But that isn’t even what I’ve come to talk about. Oh no. What you did to Juana was bad enough, but it pales by comparison to what you let loose on the Americas, or what you did to Spain’s Jews and Muslims, or the Inquisition. “
“Catalina,” she heard her mother’s voice echo, “you aren’t being fair. Don’t you remember how horrified I was by the way Admiral Colón treated the natives he brought back? I even had the rascal arrested. I did my best to ensure the natives would be treated well after I was gone. I tried to prevent their enslavement!”
“By sending more colonizers!” Catalina hissed. “It never once occurred to you that you could have just left. them. alone! You could have sent that sadistic crackpot packing back to Genoa in ignominy in the first place!”
“Catalina.” The ghost in her mind was responding more quickly, now. “You really think that if we’d just stopped the other European powers wouldn’t have moved in anyway?”
“That justifies nothing.”
“We brought them to the Church, Catalina. Surely that counts for something!”
“We used the Church as an excuse to destroy entire cultures and justify mass murder, rape, and enslavement! And by the way, you haven’t even tried to answer for the Inquisition and the expulsions!”
“I acted in the interest of the Crown and the Church. There was no higher calling. I was a protector of Spain’s Jews for years—a people, I might add, your adopted country expelled centuries before I finally, regretfully acted. I tried toleration, but the people’s practices were becoming insincere and corrupted. There was no other choice.”
“There was always a choice, Mother! There was always a choice not to torture and dispossess and kill!”
Isabel’s ghost seemed to sigh heavily. “Carino—”
“Don’t you dare ‘carino’ me!”
“—I served God and the Church and the Crown as best as I knew how, Catalina. I will not apologize for that service.”
“Saint Oscar Romero was a true servant of God, Mother. Dorothy Day was, too, and so was Daniel Berrigan. You have no idea who those people are, I know, but I do, now. I know they all stood for the poor. They stood against slavery and empire. You stood for those things. The diseases alone your explorers brought generated untold suffering and poverty.
“Let me tell you something else, Mother,” Catalina continued, too angry to stop. “I am not married or betrothed this time around. In fact, I am having casual lesbian sex with my friend when the need arises, and loving every minute of it! And despite the fact that all that flies in the face of official Church teaching, I feel perfectly confident that I am living a life that is closer to what God wants from me than you ever did! I am living a life of prayer and honesty and fidelity to the family that I have made together with the rest of the queens, and I am doing my best to atone for what we all did in our last lives. I have not ordered conquests or slaughters in my name, and in that I am already far better than you!
“…and here’s the worst part of it all,” she added, tears falling freely now. “It’s that in spite of everything, I loved you. I still do. I still miss you. By the grace of God, somehow, I came back and got a second chance to make some things right—and yet there are two holes in my heart that will never go away. I will always, always, ache for my daughter, whom I loved like no one else. I will always ache for all the people she killed, and for the fact that she will always be remembered as a bloodthirsty failure. And I will always, always ache for my mother, whom I loved and feared, and who continues to be remembered as a potential saint in spite of all the people she killed.” She blew her nose. “Good night, Mother. You and I, we’re not done. We never will be. But I can at least do something to help repair some small bit of what you wrought.”
She couldn’t decide whether the figure she’d sculpted in her mind looked wounded, or defiant. She wasn’t sure which would have hurt her more. Both were excruciating to contemplate.
As she walked back the way she came, she thought she could hear the ghost protest, “Catalina—” but she resolutely banished the voice and the image, choking back a sob as she did so.
________
When she came back into the house, she was startled to find Cathy sitting up in the living room.
“Mija? Why are you down here?”
Cathy shrugged. “I recognized the way you stalked out. You looked—haunted. I thought you might need some tea and a friend when you got back, and it’s not as if I don’t have the sleeping habits of a bat anyhow. The kettle’s hot, can I get you something?”
“You’re a treasure, Cathy. Chamomile would be lovely. Possibly with a shot of scotch.”
Once they were settled with their mugs, Cathy ventured, “Mary?”
Catalina shook her head. “No, for once. Isabel.”
“She’s new. But not unexpected, given the grappling with past wrongs you and Kitty have been working on.”
“No.” Catalina stared into her mug. “And unrepentant. She kept telling me I wasn’t being fair, and couldn’t I see that she was acting for the sake of the Church? And she stayed so bloody calm, too. I mean, I was accusing her of torture and genocide, and she didn’t even raise her voice?”
“From what I’ve read, that sounds apt.” Cathy clucked her tongue. “It seems as though she was very, very certain of her own righteousness, and that perhaps she had the unfortunate tendency to confuse her convictions with God’s.” She reached out to Catalina, who was sniffling, and rubbed her upper back firmly. “Tissue?” she offered, reaching into the pocket of her hoodie.
“Thanks.” Catalina blew her nose again. “You know, half the time I fight with Mary’s ghost, she’s believably sorry. When that happens, it makes everything a bit more bearable. But I don’t believe Mother ever will be, and I simply don’t know if I can take that. I was so reluctant about this in the first place because I knew I’d have to call her up, and once I did she’d never go away. Well, now she’s here, and unrepentant, and it makes me so angry…at everything she did, obviously, but personally and most pettily, because Juana didn’t get to come back—and she has at least as much of a score to settle as I do. And I…miss her, Cathy. I miss her so much.”
Cathy pulled Catalina close. “I wish she’d come back. I think I’d have liked her, and it would have been nice to have another Queen here who’s as screwed up in the head as me and Anne and Kitty are. She sounds like she was quite the firecracker.”
“She really was. She loved to argue, just like you. Or at least she did before they tortured it out of her.”
"Oh, Catty.” Cathy held her for a long moment, then paused. “Did I ever tell you that Thomas’s ghost sometimes comes around for me?”
“I don’t think so. I’m sorry, mija, that can’t be pleasant.”
“It isn’t. It makes me sick. Most of all because I really did love him. No matter how much I want to, I can’t pretend that I was tricked. I mean, I was in denial, surely, about what he was capable of—how else do you think I convinced myself that those ‘games’ he played with Elizabeth were just games? Enough to even participate twice?” She had begun to claw at her scalp as she spoke, and Catalina softly took hold of her hands, rubbing them between her own.
“Mija. You’ve made your atonement.”
“It won’t ever be complete.”
“So long as you remember that, and I know you will, you’ll be fine.”
Cathy sighed. “Anyway. Sometimes he’s all charm and compliments and bravado, and I have moments where I remember what it was like to be besotted by him. Then other times he tells me he never really loved me, and that for someone who fancied herself so brilliant, I really was so very, very stupid for ever having thought he did.” She deepened her voice—“Oh, my darling, you really thought he’d make you Regent for Edward? Well, after that I suppose I can’t blame you for running back to me. It worked so nicely for my purposes, after all.”
“Cathy! That’s horrid.”
“Yes. It is.”
“So…”
“So it’s horrid. And that’s how it is. We…live with it. We’re back. Nearly everyone we knew then is gone, and there are so many scores we have left to settle with them. Too many unanswerable questions, so the ghosts in our heads are to be expected.” She shrugged.
"That’s awfully reassuring. I was hoping you had some secret banishing trick you were going to give me.”
“No. I fear I’m just as vulnerable as you. What I can promise is that if you need me when they come around I’ll do my best to be here with a cup of tea and a shoulder. Or, if you need it, we’ll get Jane to hang up a dartboard, or I’m sure Anna will let you use her punching bag. And I’ve no doubt that if I need you to give Thomas’s ghost what-for, you will.”
“You can count on it, Mija.” She looked around. “Do you suppose Anne would miss you too badly if I asked you to stay with me tonight? Jane’s already in bed, and in any case I don’t really want that right now. I’d appreciate just…having a friend there.”
Cathy smiled warmly at her godmother. “Oh, we figured. I told her not to wait up.”