“My lord father, the King, is a liar.”

 For weeks, I’ve been working hard coordinating an online writers’ festival, a global writers’ festival, free and available to all schools registered at Think.com. It’s the second time in my life I’ve done something like this; in 2003, only five Australian authors took part, now there’s a strong group of 30 – writers from England, America, Australia and New Zealand. Very busy times indeed, causing the sad neglect of my WIP. But that’s how the writing cookie crumbles; I'm just one of many writers needing a primary source of income to help support their families.  I consider myself fortunate to gain this employment, especially as it's enjoyable work involving other writers.

But this week I plan to return to Catalina, giving her childhood my whole attention again. I have all these sections begging me to finish them off; one of my characters, Beatriz Galindo, La Latina, royal tutor extraordinaire, looked very under the weather in one of these scenes, set in the middle of winter. I don’t think the cold is getting to her, but something’s up. I’m wondering if it’s a problem involving her husband. He was a soldier. Did this medieval man enjoy having a wife long committed to the queen as an advisor as well as poet and professor of a Castilian university? Many men today would have “issues” about possessing such a wife, a clearly intelligent and influential woman. She hasn’t told me yet what the trouble is yet, but I’m sure I’ll get it out of her sooner or later.

 Just before I drifted off to sleep last night, Catalina of my imagination spoke loud and clear, leaving me wide eyed and fully awake again. “My lord father, the King, is a liar,” she said. Catalina’s words spun me around to her as if a hand yanked me straight back to Castilla.  I saw her there, looking not at me, not even at dońa Maria de Salinas, the person giving voice to Catalina’s story. My princess stood in shadow, and I knew why:  I needed to step back into creating the story before the sun began to beat its heat down on me, or maybe I'd start shivering along with my characters from the cold of another winter day, when snow drifted down and dusted the uneven ground white.  

Catalina’s statement didn’t shock me, although I felt a sense of surprise that she even gave voice to the words. She trusts Maria with her life; not only is Maria kin to her, they have been confidants from early childhood. But Catalina understood the meaning of honouring her parents. Thoughts swirled like tumbling autumn leaves in my head. What drove her to speak of such a thing? 

Ferdinand, Catalina’s father, was one of the rulers Niccoló Machiavelli used in “The Prince” as a benchmark for other rulers to follow. A wily fox and able politician, he made use of whatever he could, including members of his own family, to achieve his own ends. Machiavelli wrote:

 ...always using religion as a plea, so as to undertake greater schemes, he devoted himself with pious cruelty to driving out and clearing his kingdom of the Moors; nor could there be a more admirable example, nor one more rare.

  We know from history that Ferdinard lied; but what could have happened to make his daughter upset enough to express a thought showing cracks in her belief that father was infallible?    That whatever her father did was right? I rub my chin. Could she have discovered the fact of his unfaithfulness? She grew up aware of her father’s bastards, but perhaps it took time to dawn on her that some of them were born after her parent’s marriage. There is a time in childhood when many of us remain very blind to our parents’ failings and then, without warning, they fall off the pedestal, with a resounding bang. Hmmm…perhaps the child Catalina’s utterance is the resounding bang, when she realises that her parents’ lives are more complicated that what she first thought.

Chewing a thumbnail, I ponder whether building up to a scene like this might add weight to scenes in the next book, when Catalina too realises the unfaithfulness of her own husband.  But are her words underpinning something of far greater significance to her? Using religion as a plea… pious cruelty… “My lord father, the King, is a liar.” All right, Catalina. Please tell me now what’s upsetting you.  I’ve written long enough now to know that when your characters speak, writers better stop and listen.

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12/08/07