Poison by Kathryn Harrison

Author:Kathryn Harrison [Harrison, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-79978-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-07-19T04:00:00+00:00

HOUGH DEAD FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY, Juana la Loca has her box in the Teatro Real. Not everyone can see her, of course, but when the queen and Olympe take their seats in the neighboring balcony, María starts, she stumbles back and drops her opera glasses.

“Why, what is the matter!” says Olympe.

“It is nothing,” says María. “Nerves. Only nerves.” She sits down carefully in her chair, but she cannot take her eyes away from Juana.

Juana, the mad queen. Daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. Great-great-great-great-grandmother to María Luisa, and to Carlos, as well. Juana was mad from birth and then further undone, some say, by more education than the female brain can withstand. Ten languages, and mathematics, too. She could converse in Greek and Latin. Long before her own passing, she made herself an expert in every dead thing. Others say the lessons never hurt her, that her husband, called Philip the Fair, made her crazy with his philandering.

When Philip died in the north in the year of our Lord 1506 and had to be transported home, Juana walked behind his coffin for forty nights. She walked with him because she did not trust her handsome husband. At every stop she had the casket opened so that she could kiss him, that she could see he was still inside, faithful in death if not in life. When the mourning party stopped to rest at a convent, she would not suffer his casket’s being carried inside that cloistered, female place, but sat beyond the walls of the nuns’ dormitory with her hand under the coffin lid.

Everyone has heard the tale that Juana once took a pair of scissors to the cheeks of one of Philip’s mistresses. She roamed the castle naked, covered only by her long hair, always holding tight to a pair of golden embroidery scissors. When her ghost comes to her box in the theater, she comes naked, she brings her scissors.

“You must not allow your nerves to get the better of you,” Olympe scolds María. “And, for the love of the saints, do stop fanning before you blow all our hair off.” The comtesse smooths the high curls of her wig.

María Luisa drops her fan in her lap, she wrings her empty hands. “I am sure they are deciding what to do with me,” she says. For Carlos and Marianna have remained at home, they refused to go to the theater with the two women.

In the weeks since the dismissal of the translator, there still had been no action taken against either the queen or her dwarf. “I do not understand it!” María cried to Eduardo that morning. “What can it mean!” The dwarf shook his head, his eyes watering.

“Something will happen to us,” he said at last. “Something will.”

Olympe smiles at the queen now, she takes her hand. “I hope they do decide,” she says. “Then it will be over with. And how wonderful it would be if they decided to turn you out! You could come to Majorca with me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.