The Dead Queen

Prologue

She wondered if she was alive or dead. It was a strange feeling. She couldn't feel her arms and legs due to the fever. As if her warm body floated, as if it had come off its head. I must be delirious, she thought, trying to console herself. 

But Ines never found much comfort in her own thoughts. It seemed that a shadow always hung over her, something that did not allow her to see the sky. Something that did not allow her to see God.

But how to believe in the Lord, sick and trapped alone on top of that tower? Confined by that damned king inside her own castle, prevented from seeing her mother, brothers, her greatest love? Persecuted by nobles, by the king of Portugal and Castile at the same time, all wishing for her death? God seemed to have abandoned her. Saint Isabel too.

Her pain had increased for days and her mother, Lady Theresa de Albuquerque, owner of the castle, advised her to walk. And Ines walked, walked alone through the tower, but nothing seemed to help. 

Specially looking at those same dark stone walls, those rocks below teh castle, that same lake, that same black rat that insisted on hiding in the same corner. She had overcome the fear of rats. She had overcome so many fears! And now the fever came. Was it the Black Death? Maybe not, as she had no black stains, she thought.

Ines tried to keep herself strong, her pale face, her dirty blond hair plastered to her head, lying on the floor. She was filthy. But until then, she stood firm, as no king would get happy for her defeat. No one would ever be satisfied with her pain. 

But when the fever joined the pain, she came to the door to shout for help to her mother. The two guards didn't even move. Theresa came, desperate, begging them to open the tower door, to let her help her only adopted daughter. They ignored it. From the door, Theresa asked her to take a deep, deep breath, and sang that beautiful song that her husband composed for her.

Ines used to love that song, and she missed her father. Tears were falling. She was trapped, suffering everything she was suffering, because she was his daughter. But thinking about Sanches has given her strength. 

He had been exiled and disinherited by the king just like Ines, but he died singing, composing, working, he died without ever giving up on life. She couldn't give up either, because in fact, she wasn't alone in that damn tower. She remembered that when her back started to hurt. She moaned. 

On the other side of the door, Lady Theresa asked to the guards to allow her to bring a doctor, to let him in. Suddenly, Ines felt a warm liquid spilling from her legs. It was blood. Ines cried and pressed her vagina with both hands, as if she could contain it: she couldn't lose the only link that remained with her greatest love. She couldn't lose her son.