Free For a Queen's Love: The Stories of the Royal Wives of Philip II by Jean Plaidy Page B

decided to grant your Highness his formal dispensation for the marriage between your Highness and your first cousin, Maria Manoela …”
    Philip heard no more.
    He longed to open his doublet, to bring out the locket and gaze atthe bewildered face of his Maria Manoela, whom he was going to make the happiest Queen of Spain.
    All through September Philip waited impatiently. Disguised, he would ride out with his friend Ruy and his cousin Maximilian. It was the duty of a ruler, he believed, to go unknown among his subjects. How could he properly see them through the traditional haze of ceremony that surrounded a ruler?
    He watched the gathering of the grapes and the making of the wine; once he had to fly for his life from robbers whom he encountered on a mountain path when he had ridden too far from home, too heavily disguised. Such adventures did not excite him as they did Ruy or Max. He preferred the successes he scored with his councillors, for he was once more Regent, since his father was again away from Spain. He knew that his father delighted to leave him in charge of the kingdom and that he sought to press more and more responsibility upon him. Every day came long dispatches from the Emperor: he was entrusting Philip with every secret, insisting that Philip should know every move that was made. And the reason? As Philip approached maturity, so Charles stepped nearer and nearer to the life of seclusion that he craved.
    Philip was proud of his father’s trust, but how he longed—and particularly at this time—for a carefree life!
    “When will she come?” he demanded impatiently of Ruy; and impatience was something Ruy had never seen him display before. “Do you think that even now they will make some excuse to keep her from me?”
    “Can you love her when you have not seen her?” wondered Ruy.
    “Is it not my duty to love her?”
    “So it is duty, the need to marry young and provide heirs for the kingdom, that makes you yearn for her presence? So that is the reason for your Highness’s eagerness?”
    Philip half-turned to his friend. But not even to Ruy could he explain his true feelings.
    Toward the end of October news came that the Infanta MariaManoela had left her native land in great pomp and with such lavish display that the eyes of all who beheld it were dazzled.
    Philip scarcely slept during the nights of waiting. He longed to act without thought of ceremony and tradition! He wished he could have ridden out to meet her like some hero of old. He pictured himself inches taller than he was, dark and handsome as Ruy, covered in glory as was the Duke of Alba, as romantic as the Cid himself.
    If he could have ridden thus he would not have made himself known to her at first; he would have impressed her with his chivalry, his virtues…. He would have been an unknown knight to rescue her from robbers, tilting in her honor, making her love him for himself … Philip … not the Prince of Spain.
    Was this the essence of his dream? Was it merely to make Philip loved for his own sake? What a selfish, egotistical dream that was! And yet it was what he longed for. The love of Leonor was the only love that he could feel was completely disinterested. His father loved him for the duties he would take over; his mother had loved him because he was the son whom it was her duty to give to the royal house. Alba, Granvelle, Tabera, Medina Sidonia—all those men who had sworn to serve him with their lives—did not care for
him;
they gave their allegiance to the heir of Spain. Which of these people would love him constantly whatever he became? Only Leonor. And she made him impatient because she continued to treat him as a baby.
    There was no one who could give him the love he needed—except Maria Manoela.
    He longed for her; he wanted to tell her of all the trials that beset him, to make known to her the Philip whom none other—not even Ruy or Leonor—could know. That was why he longed for Maria Manoela.
    He dreamed of her; he