She lay there on the bed, listening to the drumming of her heart, unable to unshackle her mind from the dream's last images. Held between two guards, a gangling young man, his terror plain to see, looking left and right, as if seeking any way of escape.
Hearing in her dream his cries for mercy, Catherine saw the guards force him down, making him lay his head on a block of wood darkened from past beheadings to reddish black. The axe coming down, again, again and again. Not an easy death. The outpouring of blood now a deluge. The executioner bending down - the severed neck dripping blood on his boots- to lift the head by its dark hair. The young face looking out. The fluttering eyelids, and the moving lips, mouth wide open as if still crying out aloud for mercy that came not near.
Wide awake, Catalina clenched her teeth, swallowing a sob.
Why do I dream this young man's death again? Tis so real, yet his way of dying, the place where he dies- tis like nothing I have ever seen before.
She glanced towards Dona Elvira, fast asleep and snoring softly in a chair pulled close to the bed. For Catalina, the dream had chased away any hope of sleeping more this night.
* * *
Hazy, honeyed fingers of weakening sunlight intruded into Catalina's private chamber. Within light beams, countless motes glittered and danced a dance almost as if tiny stars in a cosmos spun out of control.
Catalina blinked, returning her gaze to the Hour Book upon her lap. A final farewell gift from her parents, richly illustrated by episodes of the Madonna's life, the book laid open at Catalina's favourite page, on which jewel-like colours illuminated the scene of the Annunciation.
"Magnificat anima mea Dominum: Et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo," she mumured, then paused, thinking about all of Mary's reply to Gabriel when he announced she was God's chosen one. And while she continued to ponder Catalina lightly traced the shape of the archangel Gabriel, standing over the kneeling girl, with his huge, sun-kissed white wings folded behind him.
Her mother, Queen Isabel, had shown Catalina this page of the Hour Book, remarking the young Madonna bore a marked resemblance to Catalina. The living girl, gazing down at one artistically rendered, saw the resemblance too, both girls very tiny in statue, with round, pretty faces and thick auburn hair flowing down their backs in wavy coils.
