Well... As always I like to try different pairings and I wanted to write something about this one in particular. Thanks to Nicole alias Lady Cromwell who gave me the words:)
Love, devotion, compromise, death, memory
Love.
The confident smile on her lips if he looked at her, the suddenly bright look when he talked to her. And how much he talked! He talked, talked in a mixture of English, Latin and Spanish… Familiar accent, smell of home… And Catherine lost the thread of the conversation and she got lost in a thousand thoughts which almost by chance she entered little by little.
"Are you listening to me, Your Majesty?" he asked taking gently her head.
A gesture that now appeared normal also to her… Too normal. She looked down finding herself vulnerable. And yet it was that vulnerability to make her stronger.
What could that be it if not love?
Devotion.
It could be this, truth be told, if she asked that question to him instead of to her mirror. Because when he talked, he talked just to his ears and among the crowd he didn't look for anything except her eyes. Making her smile had become the only purpose of his work in England, taking her by hand a considerable incentive… His loyalty was no more to Charles, he was making only what could be useful to her.
But while he was fighting by her side in that battle to an ineluctable defeat, he was planning with the feeling that was eating him, looking for something else.
Compromise.
It was actually the only way out, they both knew that. A compromise with Henry, a compromise with the Pope, a compromise with his conscience… A new title, a new abode, and then who knew… But could Catherine really compromise herself and her beliefs this way? No, she couldn't and Inigo wouldn't have let her anyway.
Fighting in vain together for a while, because there was another way out after all.
Death.
All those tears, all that bravery, all that pain would have taken her there, in her grave and then to Heaven, if there was one. Inigo started to doubt it now, he started to doubt a lot of things actually, but what he was sure about was that there wouldn't have been anything but death at the end of that battle and happiness for him would have always been a vain illusion on that earth for him. So he left, not for fear of feeling pain, but for fear of feeling hers, not for fear of dying, but for fear of watching her death.
"You have been a good ambassador" she simply said, as if suddenly there wasn't anything left for them.
Yes, good… But in the end he disappointed her. And so he left, with the little portrait of her between his hands.
But, after having her for so long flesh and bones in front of his eyes, what would have that be useful for?
Memory.
Years later, when the prophecy of destruction fulfilled, she was gone and he had gone on with his life, if that could have been called life. He had become priest as she suggested him to do, a marriage anyway would have been unthinkable to not offend the memory of that never lived love. But what memory?
New years, new tasks, new thoughts.
"Have you taken everything, Senor Mendoza?"
Inigo turned to his loyal servant and nodded absent-mindedly, while he was getting ready for the imminent travel to Portugal.
"And this one?" the man asked again, pointing at a golden object buried apparently forgotten with other jewels.
The ex ambassador approached slowly and took in his hands that memory, opened it and the image of the Queen appeared again in front of his eyes.
Who lives, suffers, basks in memories and then forgets.
But inevitably, he comes back to remember again.
