Spain for the Sovereigns

Chapter XIII MARRIAGE OF AN INFANTA

The Queen crept into the bedchamber of her daughter, the Infanta Isabella. As she had expected, the girl was lying on her bed, her eyes wide open, staring into space.

‘My dearest child,’ said the Queen, ‘you must not be unhappy.’

‘But to go far away from you all,’ murmured the Infanta.

‘It is not so very far.’

‘It is too far,’ said the girl.

‘You are nineteen years old, my daughter. That is no longer young.’

Young Isabella shivered. ‘If I could only stay with you!’

The Queen shook her head. She was thinking how happy she would be if it were possible to find a husband for her eldest daughter here at the Court, and if they might enjoy the preparations for marriage together; if after the wedding, she, the mother, might be beside her daughter, advising, helping, sharing.

It was a foolish speculation, and they should be rejoicing. For years Portugal had represented a menace. It would always be so while La Beltraneja lived. And John, the King, had allowed her to live outside her convent! In Portugal there had been times when La Beltraneja had been known as Her Highness the Queen.

This could have been a cause for war. She and Ferdinand might have deemed it wise to make war on Portugal, had they not been so busily engaged elsewhere.

And now John saw the advantages of a match between his son Alonso and the Infanta of Castile. If this marriage took place he would no longer allow La Beltraneja to be called Her Highness the Queen, he would stop speculating as to whether it would be possible to put her back on the throne of Castile, and instead send her back to her convent.

‘Oh, my darling,’ said the Queen, taking her daughter’s limp hand and raising it to her lips, ‘with this marriage you are bringing great good to your country. Does that not comfort you?’

‘Yes, dear mother,’ said the Infanta faintly. ‘It brings me comfort.’

Then Isabella kissed her daughter’s forehead and crept away.

It was April in Seville and there was fiesta in the streets.

The people had gathered to watch the coming and going of great personages. These were the streets which so frequently saw the grim processions of Inquisitors, and condemned men in their yellow sanbenitos, making their way to the Cathedral and the fields of Tablada. Now here was a different sort of entertainment; and the people threw themselves into it with an almost frenzied joy.

Their Infanta Isabella was to be married to the heir of Portugal. There were to be feasts and banquets, bullfights and dancing. This was a glorious occasion which would not end in death.

Tents had been set up along the banks of the Guadalquivir for the tourneys which were to take place. The buildings were decorated with flags and cloth of gold. The people had grown accustomed to seeing groups of horsemen magnificently caparisoned – the members of their royal family and that of Portugal.

They saw their King distinguish himself in the tournaments, and they shouted themselves hoarse in approval of the stalwart Ferdinand, who had recently won such resounding victories over the Moors and was even now preparing for what he hoped would be the final blow.

And there was the Queen, always gracious, always serene; and the people remembered that she had brought law and order to a state where it had been unsafe for travellers to ride out on their journeys. She had also brought this new Inquisition. But this was a time of rejoicing. They were determined to forget all that was unpleasant.

The Infanta, who looked younger than her nineteen years, was tall and stately, rather pale and delicate but very lovely, full of grace and charm – the happy bride.

The bridegroom did not come to Seville, but the news had spread that he was young, ardent and handsome. In his place was Don Fernando de Silveira, who appeared at the side of the Infanta on all public occasions – a proxy for his master.

Yes, this was a time of rejoicing. The marriage was approved by all. It was going to mean peace for ever with their western neighbours, and peace was something for which everybody longed.

So they tried to forget their friends and relations who were held by the Holy Office. They danced and sang in the streets, and cried: ‘Long live Isabella! Long live Ferdinand! Long life to the Infanta!’

To go from one’s home to a new country! How often it had happened. It was the natural fate of an Infanta.

Does everyone suffer as I do? young Isabella asked herself.

But we have been so happy here. Our mother has been so kind, so gentle, so just to us all. Our father has loved us. Ours has been such a happy home. Am I now regretting that this has been so? Am I saying that, had we been a less happy family, I should not be suffering as I am now?

No. Any daughter should rejoice to have such a mother as the Queen.

They were dressing her in her bridal robes, and her women were exclaiming at her beauty.

‘The Prince Alonso will be enchanted,’ they told her.

But will he? she asked herself. Can I believe them?

She had heard certain scandal at the Court concerning her own father. He had sons and daughters whom she did not know. Her mother must have heard this, yet she gave no sign of it. How could I ever be like her? the Infanta Isabella asked herself. And if she does not satisfy my father, how could I hope to satisfy Alonso?

There was so little she knew, so much she had to learn; she felt that she was being buffeted into a world of new sensations, new emotions, and she was unsure whether she would be able to deal with them.

‘It is time, Infanta,’ she was told.

And she left her apartments to be joined by the seventy ladies, all brilliantly clad, and the hundred pages in similar magnificent attire, who were waiting to conduct her to the ceremony.

She placed her hand in that of Don Fernando de Silveira and the solemn words were spoken.

The ceremony was over; she was the wife of the heir of Portugal, the wife of a man whom she had never seen.

Out in the streets they were shouting her name. She smiled and acknowledged their applause in the manner in which she had been taught.

On to the banquets, on to the balls and fetes and tourneys – all given in honour of a frightened girl whose single prayer was that something would happen which would prevent her leaving the heart of the family she loved.

There was respite. All through the summer the festivities continued, and it was not until autumn that she rode out of Castile.

The people lined the roads to see her pass and cheer her.

It was said that Portugal had prepared to welcome her in a royal manner. They were delighted to receive her. She brought with her a larger dowry than that usually accorded to the Infantas of Castile, and it was said that she had such magnificent gowns which alone had cost twenty thousand golden florins.

And so, on she rode over the border, away from her old country into the new.

She was bewildered by the pomp which awaited her.

She saw one man standing by the throne of the King who smiled at her encouragingly. He was young and handsome, and his eyes lingered on her.

She thought: There is my husband. There is Alonso. And she averted her eyes because she was afraid that, out of her inexperience, she might betray her emotion.

She approached King John, and knelt before him, but he raised her up and embraced her. ‘Welcome, my daughter,’ he said. ‘We have long awaited your coming. I rejoice that you are safely with us.’

‘I thank Your Highness,’ she answered.

‘There is one who waits most impatiently to greet you! My son, who is also your husband.’

And there he was, Alonso – not the man she had at first noticed – young and handsome; and because she sensed that he also was a little nervous, she felt happier.

He embraced her before the Court and the people cried: ‘Long live the Prince and the Princess of Portugal!’

And so she came to happiness. Her mother had been right. If one grasped one’s duty firmly, one was rewarded. She knew she was particularly fortunate, because she had been given a young and handsome husband, a kindly gentle husband, who admitted that marriage alarmed him even as it alarmed her.

Now they could comfort each other, they could laugh at their fears. And out of the intensity of their relief in having found each other, was born a great affection.

Isabella wrote home of her happiness.

Her mother wrote of her intense joy to receive such glad news from her daughter.

All was well. The important link had been forged between two old enemies, and at no cost to the happiness of the Queen’s beloved daughter.

Now that she was away from her mother’s supervision, the character of the Princess began to change. She discovered a love of dancing, a love of laughter. This was shared by Alonso.

One day Isabella woke up to the realisation that she had begun to live in a way which she had not thought possible. She had realised that life could be a gay affair, that one need not think all the time of the saving of one’s soul.

‘We are young,’ said Alonso, ‘we have our lives before us. There is plenty of time, twenty years hence, for us to think of the life to come.’

And she laughed with him at what, such a short time ago, would have shocked her deeply.

She grew less pale; her cough worried her less, for she was spending a great deal of time out of doors. Alonso loved to hunt, and he was unhappy unless she accompanied him.

She understood that these months, since she had been the wife of Alonso, were the happiest she had ever known. It was a startling and wonderful discovery.

Her beauty was intensified. Many people watched her unfold. She was like a bud that opened to become a beautiful flower, slightly less fragile than had been expected.

‘You are beautiful,’ she was often told; and she had learned to accept such compliments with grace.

‘No one at Court is more beautiful than you,’ she was assured by Emmanuel, Alonso’s cousin, the young man whom she had noticed when she had first come to the Court.

‘When I arrived,’ she told him, ‘I thought you were Alonso.’

Emmanuel’s face glowed with sudden passion. ‘How I wish that had been so,’ he said.

Afterwards she said to herself that it was folly to expect such happiness to last.

A day arrived which began as other days began.

She awoke in the morning to find Alonso beside her . . . handsome Alonso who woke so suddenly and in such high spirits, who embraced her and made love to her and then said: ‘Come, I want to hunt while the morning is young. We will leave as soon as we are ready. Come, Isabella, it is a beautiful morning.’

So they summoned their huntsmen, mounted their horses and rode away into the forest.

Indeed it was a beautiful morning; the sun shone on them and they exchanged smiles and jokes as they rode along.

They were separated for a while in the hunt, so she did not see it happen.

She had been aware of a sudden stillness in the woods – a brief stillness, yet it seemed to her to last a long time, for it brought to her, like the scent of an animal on the wind, the consciousness of evil.

The silence was broken by shouting voices, by cries of alarm.

When she arrived on the scene of the accident the huntsmen had improvised a stretcher, and on it lay her beautiful, her beloved Alonso.

He was dead when they reached the Palace. She could not believe it. It was too sudden, too tragic. She had entered her new life, had learned to understand it and to find it contained more happiness than she had believed possible, only to lose it.

The Palace was plunged into mourning. The King’s only son, the heir to the throne, was dead. But none mourned more sincerely, none was more broken-hearted than Alonso’s young widow.

Now the young Emmanuel was treated with greater respect than had ever before come his way, for who would have believed that one so healthy and vital as Alonso would not live to take the crown.

But he had died in the space of a few hours, and now the more intellectual Emmanuel was heir to the throne.

Isabella was unaware of what was going on in the Palace. Everything else was obscured by this one overwhelming fact: she had lost Alonso.

The King sent for her, for her grief alarmed him. He had been warned that if she continued to shut herself away and mourn, she herself would soon join her husband.

What would Isabella and Ferdinand have to say to that? The Princess was a precious commodity. It was important that she be kept alive.

‘My dear,’ he said to her, ‘you must not shut yourself away. This terrible thing has happened, and you cannot change it by continually grieving.’

‘He was my husband, and I loved him,’ said Isabella.

‘I know. We loved him also. He was our son and our heir. We knew him longer than you did, so you see our grief is not small either. Come, I must command you to take more care of your health. Promise me you will do this.’

‘I promise,’ said Isabella.

She walked in the Palace gardens and asked that she might be alone. She looked with blank eyes at terraces and statues. There she had walked with Alonso. There they had sat and planned how they would spend the days.

There was nothing but memories.

Emmanuel joined her and walked beside her.

‘I would rather be alone,’ she said.

‘Forgive me. Allow me to talk with you for a minute or two. Oh, Isabella, how it grieves me to see you so unhappy.’

‘Sometimes I blame myself,’ she said. ‘I was too happy. I thought only of my happiness; and perhaps we are not meant to be happy.’

‘You suffered ill fortune, Isabella. We are meant to be happy. When, you have recovered from this shock, I would implore you to give me a chance to make you happy.’

‘I do not understand you.’

‘I am heir to my uncle’s throne. Therefore your parents would consider me as worthy a match as Alonso.’

She stood very still in horror.

‘I could never think of marrying anyone else,’ she said. ‘Alonso is the only husband I shall ever want.’

‘You say that because you are young and your grief is so close.’

‘I say it because I know it to be true.’

‘Do not dismiss me so lightly, Isabella. Think of what I have said.’

She was always conscious of him. He was so often at her side.

No, no, she cried with all her heart. This cannot be.

And she fretted and continued to mourn, so that the King of Portugal’s alarm increased.

He wrote to the Sovereigns of Castile, to tell them how their daughter’s grief alarmed him.

‘Send our daughter home to us,’ said Isabella. ‘I myself will nurse her back to health.’

So a few months after she had left her country Isabella returned to Castile.

And when she felt herself enfolded in her mother’s embrace she cried out that she was happy to come home. She had lost her beloved husband, but her beloved mother was left to her – and only through the Queen and a life devoted to piety could she want to live.