Perhaps by now, I would promise myself, she is receiving that letter. She is weeping over it; she would tuck it into her bodice and say: “My darling Cat’s hands have touched this!” And it would never leave her.
So I must be grateful to Felipe.
He loved me and he loved our son. To us alone did he show that part of his nature which was capable of loving. It had once occurred to me that when he loved it would be with a single-minded devotion. How right I had been! He now gave to love that intensity of passion which he had once given to revenge.
He abandoned himself to moments of great happiness and at the very heart of that happiness was myself and our son.
He loved to lie on our bed with me in his arms and talk of our future. I loved to hear him say our boy’s name. He said it differently when we were alone together. I felt an emotion welling up within me because such a cold stern man could love so much.
“Catalina, Catalina, my love,” he would whisper to me.
He was indeed happy and it is gratifying to realize one has brought such joy to another human being.
His first task was to legitimize Roberto. Ships came now and then from Spain to Tenerife bringing men from the Escorial, where Felipe’s master lived in spartan state. Papers came from Madrid and he gleefully showed them to me.
“Roberto is my firstborn,” he said. “It is now as though we had been married when he was born. There will be no barriers to his inheritance.”
“And Carlos?” I asked.
His brow darkened. He had never liked Carlos although he had accepted his presence in our nurseries to please me.
“He shall have nothing of mine, but his mother’s family will make him a rich man.”
That contented me.
Felipe talked often of the time when we would go to Spain. He was anxious to return now. Don Luis was ready to take over his responsibilities. There was no reason why we should not go.
We were blind to imagine that we could have married and none question it. The Queen of England had not dared to marry her lover after her lover’s wife had died mysteriously. Should the Governor of a small island be less immune?
There were whispers.
It was Manuela who first brought them to my knowledge.
“Mistress,” she said, her brow puckered, “they are saying you are a witch.”
“I … a witch. What nonsense is this?”
“They are saying that you have bewitched the Governor. He were never as he is with you, before.”
“Why should he be. I am his wife.”
“He had a wife before, Senora.”
“This is nonsense. You know what the Governor’s first wife was like.”
“She were possessed by devils.”
“She was simpleminded, half-mad.”
“Possessed, they say. And that you commanded the devils to possess her.”
I burst out laughing. “Then I hope you tell them what fools they were. She was possessed before I ever knew of her existence. You are aware of that.”
“But they says she was possessed and you sent the devils to possess her.”
“They are mad themselves.”
“Yes,” she said uneasily. But that was the beginning.
They watched me furtively. When I went into La Laguna I was aware of averted eyes and if I turned sharply I would find people were looking back at me. Once I heard the whispered word “Witch.”
At the Casa Azul the shutters were closed. I heard that Pilar walked through the house lamenting. She stood at the top of the stairs and called to Isabella to come back to her, to tell her what happened on that fateful afternoon.
Felipe pretended to be indifferent to the tension which was building up, but he did not deceive me. He came to our bedroom one evening and his face was set and anxious. He had spent most of the day in La Laguna.
He said: “I would we were in Madrid. Then this nonsense would end.”
“What nonsense is this?” I asked.
“There has been much talk. Someone has been to La Laguna and talked recklessly. There is no alternative. A certain course will be taken.”
“What course?”
“I am speaking of Isabella’s death. There is to be an inquiry.”
Manuela sat mending Carlos’ tunic. Her hands trembled as she did so.
I said: “What ails you, Manuela?”
She lifted her great sorrowful eyes to my face.
“They have taken Edmundo away to be questioned. He was the one to find her. She was lying at the foot of the staircase with her neck broken. He was the one. They will question him.”
“He will satisfy them with his answers,” I said, “and then he will come home.”
“People who are taken for questioning often do not come back.”
“Why should not Edmundo?”
“When they question,” she said, “they will have the answer they want.”
“Edmundo will be all right. He was always so good with Isabella. She was fond of him.”
“She is dead,” said Manuela, “and he is taken for questioning.”
I had learned since Manuela came to us that she and Edmundo had both been in the retinue Isabella had brought with her from Spain. Manuela had been one of her maids and Edmundo had known how to look after her when she was “possessed.” When the raiders had come Manuela had hidden and so saved herself; and she had been with Isabella during the months of pregnancy and the birth of Carlos. She had loved the child and tried to protect him from the alternate devotion and dislike of his mother; and when the boy had been put in charge of that dreadful harridan she had done what she could to help him.
It was understandable that she should be sad because Edmundo had been taken in.
I was astonished at the outcome of the questioning. Edmundo confessed that he had murdered his mistress. He had stolen a cross studded with rubies from her jewel box to give to a girl whom he wished to please. Isabella had caught him in the act of taking the cross and because he feared the consequences he had suffocated her by placing a damp cloth over her mouth. Then he had thrown her down the stairs.
He was hanged in the plaza of La Laguna.
“That is the end of the affair,” said Felipe.
I could not get out of my mind the memory of big Edmundo lifting poor Isabella so gently in his arms as I had seen him do when she was suffering.
“He was so gentle,” I said. “I cannot believe him capable of murder.”
“There are many sides to men and women,” Felipe answered.
“It is hard to believe this of Edmundo,” I said.
“He has confessed and the matter is at an end, my love.”
I was disturbed but glad that I could consider the mystery solved.
Christmas came and went. I thought of home and the mummers, the wassailing and the Christmas bush. I wondered whether John Gregory had reached England yet and whether my mother had my letter.
What a Christmas gift that would be for her!
To Felipe’s disappointment I had not conceived. I was not sure whether I was disappointed or not. I longed for children, and yet I could not forget Isabella; even though Edmundo had confessed to murdering her, she still seemed to stand between me and my husband. Sometimes I felt that my husband was a stranger to me. I never thought for one moment that he had ever loved Isabella. I believed him when he said that there had been one love in his life and that I was that love. That was something he could not hide. His love for me was expressed a hundred times during a single day. It was in the very inflection of his voice. Moreover, I had given him Roberto—a sturdy little fellow now three years of age… But there was something Felipe held back even from me, and perhaps for this reason I willed myself not to conceive. The fact remains that I did not, although I was not unhappy.
It was never cold in Tenerife, for there was very little difference between the winter and summer; the only unpleasant days were those when the south winds blew from Africa and this was not frequent. I liked the damp warm atmosphere and I did not want to leave it for the extremes of temperature which I believed we should experience in Spain. I often thought of the cold winter days at home in the Abbey. Once the Thames had frozen and we had been able to walk across it. I remembered sitting around the great log fire in the hall and how the mummers had slapped their frozen hands into life before beginning their performance. I remembered so much of home; and sometimes I felt a dull pain in my throat, so great was my longing for it.