Spain for the Sovereigns

Chapter VII THE BIRTH OF MARIA AND THE DEATH OF CARILLO

Christmas had come and Isabella was enjoying a brief respite from her duties, with her family. It was rarely that they could all be together, and this union made the Queen very happy.

She could look back over the years of her reign with a certain pride.

There was peace in the kingdom. Alfonso of Portugal had died in the August of the previous year. He had been making preparations to resign the throne in order to go into residence at the monastery of Varatojo, and was travelling through Cintra when he was attacked by an illness which proved to be fatal. He had caused her a great deal of anxiety and she could only feel relieved that he could cause her no more.

She had punished criminals so harshly that she had considerably reduced their number; and she now proposed to punish heretics until none was left in her country.

She saw her friend Tomás de Torquemada infrequently now; he was obsessed by his work for the Holy Office. Her present confessor was Father Talavera, who was almost as zealous a worker for the Faith as Torquemada himself.

She knew she must not rest on her triumphs. Always she must remember the work that was left to be done. There was yet another great task awaiting her, for the setting up of the Inquisition, and the ridding her country of all heretics, was not all. There, she told herself, like a great abscess on the fair form of Spain, was the kingdom of Granada.

But for this Christmas she would indulge herself. She would be as an ordinary woman in the heart of her family.

She went to the nurseries to see her children.

As they stood before her and curtsied she felt a sadness touch her. She was a stranger to them, and she their mother. She suppressed a desire to take them in her arms and caress them, to weep over them, to tell them how she longed to be a gentle mother to them.

That would be unwise. These children must never forget that, although she was their mother, she was also their Queen.

‘And how are my children this day?’ she asked them.

Isabella, who was eleven years old, naturally spoke for the others. ‘They are all well, Highness; and they hope they see Your Highness in like state.’

A faint smile curved Isabella’s lips. What a formal answer to a mother’s question! But it was the correct answer of course.

Her eyes dwelt on her son – her little three-year-old Juan. How could she help his being her favourite? Ferdinand had wanted a boy, because he had felt it was fitting that there should be a male heir to the throne; and for Ferdinand’s sake she was glad.

And there was little Juana, a charming two-year-old, with a sparkle in her eyes.

‘I am very happy, my dears,’ said Isabella, ‘because now your father and I can spare a little time from our duties to spend with our family.’

‘What duties, Highness?’ asked young Juana.

The Infanta Isabella gave her sister a stern look, but the Queen said: ‘Nay, let her speak.’

She sat down and lifted her youngest daughter onto her knee. ‘You would know what the duties of a king and queen are, my child?’

Juana nodded.

The Infanta Isabella nudged her. ‘You must not nod when the Queen speaks to you. You must answer.’

Juana smiled enchantingly. ‘What must I say?’

‘Oh, Highness,’ said the Infanta Isabella, ‘she is but two, you know.’

‘I know full well,’ said Isabella. ‘And now we are in our close family circle we need not observe too strictly the etiquette which it is necessary to maintain on all other occasions. But of course you must remember that it is only at such times as this that we can relax.’

‘Oh, yes, Highness,’ the young Isabella and Juan replied together.

Then the Queen told her children of the duties of king and queen, how they must travel from place to place; how it was necessary to call a Cortes to govern the country, how it was necessary to set up courts to judge evil doers – those who broke the civic law and the laws of God. The children listened gravely.

‘One day,’ said Isabella, ‘Juan will be a King, and I think it very possible that you, my daughters, may be Queens.’

‘Queens?’ asked young Isabella. ‘But Juan will be King, so how can we be Queens?’

‘Not of Castile and Aragon, of course. But you will marry, and your husbands may be Kings; you will reign with them. You must always remember this and prepare yourselves.’

Isabella stopped suddenly. She had had a vivid reminder of the past. She remembered those days at Arevalo where she and her young brother Alfonso had spent their childhood. She remembered her mother’s hysteria and how the theme of her conversation was always: You could be King – or Queen – of Castile.

But this is different, she hastened to assure herself. These children will ascend thrones without trouble. It is not wild hysteria which makes me bid them prepare.

But she changed the subject abruptly and wished to know how they were progressing with their lessons. She would see their books and hear them read.

Then young Isabella read and, while she was doing so, the child began to cough.

‘Do you cough often?’ the Queen asked,

‘Now and then, Mother.’

‘She is always coughing,’ Juan told his mother.

‘Not always,’ Isabella contradicted. ‘At night sometimes, Mother. Then I am given a soothing syrup, and that makes me go to sleep.’

Isabella looked grave. She would consult the Infanta’s governess about the cough.

The two younger children were clearly healthy; she wished that Isabella did not look so fragile.

‘Highness,’ said little Juana, ‘it is my turn to read.’

‘She cannot,’ said the Infanta Isabella.

‘She points to the page and pretends to,’ Juan added.

‘I do read. I do,’ cried Juana. ‘I do, Highness, Highness, I do! I do! I do!’

‘Well, my little one, you must not become so excited; and you must not tell lies, you know. If you say you can read, and you cannot read, that is a lie.’

‘People who tell lies go to Hell and burn for ever,’ announced Juan. ‘They burn here too. There are lots of people who burn here. They tell lies. They don’t believe in God . . . our God . . . so we burn them to death.’

‘So you hear these things?’ the Queen asked.

‘They are always listening to gossip, Highness,’ the Infanta Isabella told her.

‘It does not matter that they burn,’ Juan announced. ‘They are going to burn for ever, so what do a few minutes on earth matter? The priest told me so.’

‘Now, my children,’ said Isabella, ‘you must not talk of these matters, for they are not for children. Juana has told me she can read, and I shall be very disappointed in her if she has told me a lie.’

Juana’s face puckered, and Juan, who was very kind, put his arm about her shoulder.

‘She learns some words, Highness, and knows them by heart. She points to the book and thinks she is reading.’

Juana stamped her foot. ‘I do not think I read. I do read.’

‘Silence, my child!’ commanded Isabella.

‘You forget,’ said the Infanta, to her little sister, ‘that you are in the presence of Her Highness the Queen.’

‘I can read. I can read!’ sobbed the child.

Isabella tried to catch her, but she wrenched herself free; she began to run round the room shouting: ‘I can read. I can. I can . . .’

The elder children watched her in dismay and amazement.

Then little Juana began to laugh, and as she laughed her laughter turned to tears.

The Queen stared at her youngest child, and a terrible fear had come to her.

Ferdinand burst on the domestic scene. Isabella started up at the sight of him, because she saw from his expression that some disaster had come to them.

Juan ran to his father and threw himself into his arms, but although Ferdinand lifted the boy up and kissed his cheek, he was not thinking of his children.

‘Now that the King has come, you must go back to your nursery,’ Isabella told the children.

‘No!’ cried the naughty Juana. ‘No! We wish to stay with Papa.’

‘But you have heard Her Highness’s command,’ said young Isabella horrified.

‘And she will obey them,’ put in Ferdinand, smiling down at his little daughter, who was pulling at his doublet, murmuring: ‘My turn, Papa. It was my turn to be kissed.’

‘This little one,’ said Ferdinand, ‘reminds me of my mother.’

Those words delighted Isabella so much that she forgot to wonder what ill news Ferdinand had to impart to her. Like his mother, she thought – calm, shrewd, practical Joan Henriquez. Not like Isabella’s own mother, the poor sad Queen living in darkness at Arevalo.

‘Come little mother-in-law,’ said Isabella, ‘you must go now to your nursery.’

‘What is a mother-in-law?’ Juana asked.

‘It is the mother of a wife’s husband or a husband’s wife,’ Isabella told her daughter.

Juana stood very still, her bright eyes wide, repeating to herself: ‘Suegra. Suegra . . . the mother of a wife’s husband.’

‘Go along, Suegra, at once, I said,’ the Queen reminded her daughter; and young Isabella took her sister’s hand and forced her to curtsey.

Ferdinand and Isabella stood looking after the children as they retired.

‘You have bad news, Ferdinand,’ she said.

‘The Moors have surprised our fortress of Zahara; it has fallen into their hands.’

‘Zahara! But that is serious.’

Ferdinand nodded. ‘It was my own grandfather who recovered it from the Infidel,’ he said, ‘and now it is theirs once more.’

‘It must not remain so,’ Isabella replied.

‘It shall not, my dear. If we had funds at our command I would wage a mighty war against the Infidel; and I would not cease to fight until every Mussulman had been driven from our land.’

‘Or converted to our faith,’ said Isabella.

‘I would see the Christian flag flying over every town in Spain,’ went on Ferdinand. And his eyes were brilliant, so that Isabella knew that he was thinking of the riches of Moorish cities; he was thinking of their golden treasures.

‘It shall come to pass,’ she told him.

Ferdinand turned to her then and laid his hands on her shoulders.

‘You are tired, Isabella. You should rest more.’

‘No,’ she told him, ‘I am but in my third month of pregnancy. You know how it is with me. I work up to the end.’

‘Have a care, my wife. Although we have three children, we do not wish to lose any newcomers.’

‘I will take care, Ferdinand. Have no fear of that. You consider the loss of this fortress very damaging to our cause?’

‘I consider it as the beginning of the Holy War.’

‘There have been many beginnings of that war which has been waged over our land periodically for centuries.’

Ferdinand’s grip on her shoulders tightened. ‘This, my Queen, is the beginning of that Holy War which is to end all such wars. This is the beginning of a united Spain.’

It was three months after the loss of Zahara, when Isabella was in the town of Medina. She was now six months pregnant and was finding journeys irksome indeed. Again and again she reminded herself – and her friends did also – of that time when, undertaking similar journeys, she had suffered a miscarriage.

When she passed through villages and saw mothers in the fields and vineyards with their children about them she was a little envious. She loved her children dearly, and one of the greatest sorrows of her life was that she saw so little of them.

But as long as they were in good health and well cared for she must not think too constantly of them; perhaps when she had completed her great tasks she would be able to spend more time with them.

By then, she admitted ruefully, they would probably be married. For the magnitude of the two tasks which lay before her she well understood: to purge her country of all heretics, to set the Christian flag flying over all Spanish territory – these were the meaning of life to her; and she did not forget that they had been attempted before in the past centuries. But no one, as yet, had succeeded in completing them.

‘Yet, with God’s help, I will,’ declared Isabella. ‘And Ferdinand and such men as Torquemada will make my task easier.’

Her confessor, Fray Fernando de Talavera came to her, and she greeted him with pleasure.

Devoted to piety as she was, she had always had a special friendship for her confessors, and when she was on her knees with them, she rarely sought to remind them that she was the Queen.

The influence of Torquemada would always be with her; and Talavera equally enjoyed her esteem.

Talavera was a much milder man than Torquemada – indeed it would have been difficult to find anyone who could match his zeal with that of the Prior of Santa Cruz – yet he was fervent in his piety. Like Torquemada, he did not hesitate to reprimand either Isabella or Ferdinand if he felt it was right to do so; and, although Ferdinand might resent this, Isabella never did if she believed that she deserved that reprimand.

She remembered now the first time Talavera had come to her to hear her confess. She had knelt, and had been astonished that he remained seated.

‘Fray Fernando de Talavera,’ she had said, ‘you do not kneel with me. It is the custom for my confessors to kneel when I kneel.’

But Talavera had answered: ‘This is God’s Tribunal. I am here as His minister. Thus it is fitting that I should remain seated – as I represent God – while Your Highness kneels before me to confess.’

Isabella had been surprised to be so addressed; but considering this matter, she came to agree that, as God’s minister, her confessor should remain seated while she, the Queen, knelt.

From that day she had begun to believe that she had found a singularly honest man in Talavera.

Now she confessed that she longed for a simpler life, so that she might take a larger part in the bringing up of her children, that she envied mothers in humbler stations, that on occasion she asked herself what she had done to be condemned to a life of continual endeavour.

Talavera took her to task. She was God’s chosen instrument. She did wrong to complain or to rail against such a noble vocation.

‘I know it,’ she told him. ‘But there is a continual temptation for a mother who loves her husband and children to long for a more peaceful life with them at her side.’

She prayed with Talavera for strength to do her duty, and for humility that she might accept with grace this life of sacrifice which had been demanded of her.

And when they had prayed, Ferdinand came to them.

He said: ‘I come to you with all speed. There is exciting news. The fortress of Alhama has been captured by Christian troops.’

Isabella stood very still, her eyes closed, while she thanked God for this victory.

Ferdinand looked at her with some impatience. Her piety at times irritated him. Isabella never forgot it; as for himself he had long decided that his religion was meant to serve him, not he his religion.

‘The place,’ said Ferdinand, his eyes agleam, ‘is a treasure house. Ponce de Leon, the Marquis of Cadiz, attacked the fortress, and it succumbed after a struggle. He and his men stormed the town. The carnage was great; bodies are piled high in the streets, and the booty is such as has rarely been seen.’

Isabella said: ‘And Alhama is but five or six leagues from Granada.’

‘There is wailing throughout the Arab kingdom,’ Ferdinand told her gleefully. ‘I shall prepare to leave at once and go to the assistance of brave Ponce de Leon, who has entered Alhama and is now being besieged by the Moors.’

‘This is a great victory,’ said Isabella. She was thinking of wild Ponce de Leon, who was an illegitimate son of the Count of Arcos, but who, on account of his many attributes, had been legitimised and given the title of Marquis of Cadiz. He was one of the boldest and bravest soldiers in Castile.

‘Alhama must never be allowed to fall again into Moorish hands,’ said Ferdinand. ‘We have it and we will hold it. It shall be the springboard for our great campaign.’

He left Isabella with Talavera and, when they were alone, Isabella said: ‘Let us give thanks for this great victory.’ And confessor and Queen knelt side by side.

When they arose, the Queen said: ‘My dear friend, when an opportunity arises I shall reward you for your services to me.’

‘I ask for no reward but to remain in Your Highness’s service,’ was the answer.

‘But I am determined to reward you,’ said the Queen, ‘for the great good you have done me. I shall bestow upon you the bishopric of Salamanca when it falls vacant.’

‘Nay, Highness, I should not accept it.’

Isabella showed faint surprise. ‘So you would disobey my orders?’

Talavera knelt and, taking her hand, put his lips to it. ‘Highness,’ he said, ‘I would not accept any bishopric except one.’

‘And that one?’

‘Granada,’ he said.

Isabella replied firmly: ‘It shall be yours . . . before long, my friend.’

Her voice rang with determination. There would be no holding back now. The war against the Moors must begin in earnest.

It was April, and Isabella had journeyed from Medina to Cordova, where Ferdinand was stationed. She was now large with her child and she knew that she could do little more travelling before it was born.

Yet she wished to be with Ferdinand at this time.

But when she arrived, Ferdinand had already left, as the siege of Alhama had now been raised and Ponce de Leon freed.

Ferdinand had gone into Alhama with members of the Church and there had taken place a ceremony of purification. The mosques were turned into Christian churches, and bells, altar-cloths and such articles which were so much a part of the Christian Church were pouring into the town.

There was great rejoicing throughout Castile; there was great wailing throughout Granada.

‘What treatment must we expect at the hands of these Christians?’ the Moors asked themselves; for when they had ridden to the defence of Alhama they had found the bodies of the conquered Moors of that town, lying outside the walls, where they had been thrown by the conquerors; and those bodies lay rotting and naked, half devoured by vultures and hungry dogs.

‘Is there to be no decent burial for an honourable enemy?’ demanded the Moors.

The Christian answer was: ‘But these are Infidels. What should honourable burial mean to them?’

Furious with rage and humiliation, the Moors had again gone savagely to the attack, but by this time more Christian troops had appeared, and their efforts were futile.

Thus the victory of Alhama was complete, and Moors as well as Christians believed that this might well be a turning point in the centuries-long war.

To the church of Santa Maria de la Encarnacion Isabella sent an altar-cloth which she herself had embroidered; and she announced her regret that she could not go barefoot in person to give thanks for this victory. She dared not risk danger to her child, even in such a cause.

June had come and Isabella lay in childbed.

Beatriz de Bobadilla had come to be with her at this time. ‘For,’ said Beatriz, ‘I trust no other to care for you.’

Isabella could always smile at her forthright friend, and only to Beatriz could she speak of her innermost thoughts.

‘I long to be up and active again,’ she told Beatriz; ‘there is so much of importance to be done.’

‘You are a woman, not a soldier,’ grumbled Beatriz.

‘A queen must often be both.’

‘Kings are fortunate,’ said Beatriz. ‘They may give themselves to the governing of their kingdom. A queen must bear children while she performs the same tasks as a king.’

‘But I have Ferdinand to help me,’ Isabella reminded her. ‘He is always there . . . ready to take over my duties when I am indisposed.’

‘When this one is born you will have four,’ said Beatriz. ‘Perhaps that is enough to ensure the succession.’

‘I would I had another boy. I feel there should be more boys. Ferdinand wishes for boys.’

‘The conceit of the male!’ snorted Beatriz. ‘Our present Queen shows us that women make as good rulers as men – nay, better.’

‘Yet I think the people feel happier under a king.’

‘Clearly they do not, since they will not have the Salic law here.’

‘Never mind, Beatriz. The next ruler of Castile and Aragon – and perhaps all Spain – will be my Juan.’

‘That,’ answered Beatriz, ‘is years away.’

‘Beatrix . . .’ Isabella spoke quietly. ‘Have you noticed anything . . . unusual about my little Juana?’

‘She’s a lively little baggage. That’s what I have noticed.’

‘Nothing more, Beatriz?’

Beatriz looked puzzled. ‘What should I have noticed, Highness?’

‘A certain wildness . . . a tendency to be hysterical.’

‘A spirited little girl with a brother who is a year older, and a sister who is several years older! She would need to be spirited, I think. I should say she is exhibiting normal tendencies.’

‘Beatriz . . . are you telling me the truth?’

Beatriz threw herself onto her knees beside her mistress. ‘Pregnant women are notorious for their fancies,’ she said. ‘I am learning that queens are no exception.’

‘You are my comforter, Beatriz.’

Beatriz kissed her hand. ‘Always at your service . . . ready to die there,’ she answered brusquely.

‘Let us not talk of death, but of birth. I do not think it will be long now. Pray for a boy, please, Beatriz. That would delight Ferdinand. We have two girls and but one boy. Families such as ours grow nervous. Our children must be more than children; and they do not belong entirely to us but to the state. So . . . pray for a boy.’

‘I will,’ said Beatriz fervently.

A few days later, Isabella’s fourth child was born. It was a girl: Maria.

In a convent in the town of Seville a young woman was on her knees in her cell. She listened to the tolling bells and thought: I shall go mad if I stay here.

There was no way of forgetting in this quiet place. Every time she heard the bells, she thought of a grim procession passing through the streets; she could hear the voice of the preacher in the Cathedral; she could see, among the yellow-clad figures, the face of one whom she had loved and betrayed, she could smell the hideous odour which she had smelt for the first time in the meadows of Tablada.

Assuredly, she told herself a thousand times, I shall go mad if I stay here.

But where should she go? There was nowhere. The house which had been her father’s had been confiscated. All that he had possessed had passed into the hands of the Inquisition; they had taken his goods when they had taken his life; and they had taken his daughter’s peace of mind.

If she had her child . . . But what could a nun in a convent do with a child? She had lost her child. She had lost her father; she was losing her freedom.

How can I forget? she asked herself. Perhaps there was a way. She thought of fine glittering garments to replace the coarse serge of the nun’s habit. She thought of a soft bed shared with a lover, to take the place of a hard pallet in a cell.

Perhaps in a life of gaiety she could forget her un-happiness.

I must escape, she told herself, for I shall go mad if I stay here.

She was passing out of her novitiate. Soon she must take the veil, and that would be the end of her hopes. Her days would be passed in silent solitude. A nun’s life for la hermosa hembra, a life of solitude for one who had been the most beautiful woman in Seville?

She ran her hand through her short curls. They would grow again in all their beauty. But she must act quickly, before it was too late.

It was dusk as she slipped out of the convent.

On an errand of mercy, it was believed. They did not know her secret thoughts.

And when she was outside those grey walls she made her way to her father’s house.

It was a foolish thing to do. There was no one belonging to him there.

She stood looking at the house and, as she looked, a man passed by. He stared at her. Her hood had fallen back, showing her short, glistening curls; and her face was no less beautiful than it had been in the days when she had sat on her father’s balcony and fanned herself.

‘Forgive me,’ said the man. His voice and manner told her he was of the nobility. ‘You are in distress?’

‘I have escaped from a convent,’ she told him. ‘I have nowhere to go.’

‘But why did you escape? Do you mean you have simply walked out and decided not to go back again?’

‘I escaped because the life of a nun is not the life for me.’

Then he looked at her face, at the slumbrous dark eyes, at the sensual lips.

He said: ‘You are very beautiful.’

‘It is long since I was told so,’ she answered.

‘If you come with me I will give you shelter,’ he told her. ‘Then you can tell me your story and make your plans. Will you come?’

She hesitated for a moment. His eyes, though courteous, were bold. She knew she was taking a step along a certain path. She must make up her mind now whether she would continue on that road to which he was beckoning her.

Her hesitation was brief.

It was for this that she had left her convent. This man pleased her; and he was offering to be her protector.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will come with you.’

She turned her back on the house which had been her father’s, and she was smiling as she walked beside her new protector.

In his residence at Alcalá de Henares, Alfonso Carillo, the Archbishop of Toledo, had left his laboratories and retired to his own apartments.

He said to his servants: ‘I will go to my bed, for I am very tired.’

They were astonished because they had never before seen him so resigned. It was as though all the militancy had gone out of him and that he had no longer any interest in the affairs of the country, nor in the discoveries he might make through the scientific experiments in the pursuit of which he had squandered his vast fortunes.

‘I think it is time,’ he said, ‘for me to make my peace with God, for I am an old man and I do not think there is much time left to me.’

So his servant hurried away to arrange for the last rites, and the old Archbishop lay back on his bed thinking of the past.

‘She is a great Queen, this Isabella of ours,’ he murmured to himself. ‘She has set the fires burning all over Castile. She will rid Castile of heretics and, it may well be, of all infidels, for she is determined to drive the Moors from Granada, and I have a feeling that what our Isabella sets out to achieve she will.

‘And but for me she would never have attained the throne. Yet here I live in disgrace, cut off from the affairs which were once the whole meaning of life to me. I have been foolish. I should have taken no offence at Ferdinand’s treatment of me. I should have shown no rancour towards Mendoza, the sly old fox! They are only waiting for my death to make him Primate of Spain.

‘Yes, I have been foolish. After raising her up, I thought I could dash her down. But I was mistaken. I did not know Isabella. I could not guess the strength of this woman. And who can blame me? Was there ever such gentleness disguising such strength?’

He fell into a doze and, when he awoke, he saw the priests at his bedside. They had come to administer Extreme Unction. The end of his turbulent life was near.

Isabella was with her month-old baby, Maria, when news from Loja was brought to her.

Muley Abul Hassan, the King of Granada, had taken fright at the loss of Alhama, and throughout the city of Granada there had been great mourning. But the Arabs were a warlike people and they remembered defeats of the past which had been turned into victories.

So they rallied and met the Christians at Loja.

Perhaps the Christians had allowed the success of Alhama to go to their heads; perhaps they had underestimated the resourcefulness of their enemies.

At Loja, that July, there was such a rout of the Christian armies that, had reinforcements come more quickly from Granada, Muley Abul Hassan would have wiped out all that was left of Ferdinand’s army.

Isabella received the news without changing her expression, although her heart was filled with anxiety.

She sent for Cardinal Mendoza and, when he was with her, she told him the news.

He bowed his head and there were a few seconds of silence.

Then Isabella spoke. ‘I think this may be sent as a warning to us. We were too confident; we believed that we owed our victories to our own arms and skill, and not to God.

Mendoza gave the Queen a look which she construed as conveying his agreement with her. But in fact Mendoza was marvelling at her ability to see the guiding hand of God in all that befell her.

All over Castile the dread Inquisition was establishing itself. In many towns the atmosphere had changed almost overnight. The people walked the streets, furtive and afraid. The Cardinal guessed that their nights were uneasy. For who could know when there would be that knock at the door, those dreaded words: ‘Open in the name of the Inquisition.’

Yet if he asked her what had happened to her towns she would have answered: ‘They are being cleansed of heretics.’ And she would believe that she was carrying out the wishes of God by setting up the Inquisition in Spain.

She will succeed in all she does, pondered Mendoza. There is a fire and fervency beneath that gende facade which is unbeatable. She does not question the rightness of what she does. She is Isabella of Castile, and therefore rules by Divine will.

‘The Moors are strong,’ said the Cardinal. ‘The task before us would seem insuperable – except by our brave and wise Queen.’

Isabella accepted the compliment. Mendoza was too gallant, too courteous. He lacked the honesty of men such as Talavera and Torquemada; but his company was perhaps more pleasant, and she must forgive him his light-mindedness. He was a wise man in spite of the life he led; and disapproving of that as she did, she was still ready to accept him as her leading minister.

In affairs of state, she told herself, one must not overlook people because of their licentious habits. This man was a statesman, shrewd and wise, and she had need of him.

She said: ‘We shall prosecute the war with success. And now, my friend, I have news from Alcalá de Henares for you. Alfonso Carillo is dead. Poor Alfonso Carillo, he has died deeply in debt, I fear. He could never restrain himself – neither in politics nor in his scientific experiments. It was always so. He did me great harm, yet I am saddened because I remember those days when he was my friend.’

‘Your Highness should not grieve. He was your friend when he felt it expedient to be so.’

‘You are right, Archbishop.’

The Cardinal looked at her, and she smiled at him in her gentle way.

‘Who but you should be Archbishop of Toledo, and Primate of Spain? Who else could be trusted at the head of affairs in the years before us?’

Mendoza knelt and took her hand.

He was an ambitious man and was overcome with admiration and respect for a Queen as bigoted as herself, who could choose a man of his reputation because she knew he was her ablest statesman.

Ferdinand was pacing up and down the Queen’s apartment. The defeat at Loja had greatly upset him. He had believed that victory over the Moors was almost within their grasp; and he could not face setbacks with the calm which was his wife’s.

But Isabella herself – although she did not show this – was uneasy on account of the latest item of news which had now been brought to them.

They had thought La Beltraneja safe in her convent. Had she not taken the veil?

Ferdinand cried: ‘How can one be sure what Louis will do next? He has his eyes on Navarre. Make no mistake about that. Navarre shall belong to us. It is mine . . . through my father.’

Isabella considered the position. The first wife of Ferdinand’s father, Blanche, daughter of Charles III of Navarre, had on her death left Navarre to her son Carlos, who had been murdered to make way for Ferdinand. Navarre had then passed to Blanche, elder sister of Carlos and repudiated wife of Henry IV of Castile. Poor Blanche, like her brother, had met an untimely death; this was at the instigation of her sister Eleanor, who wanted Navarre for her son, Gaston de Foix.

On the death of John of Aragon, who had retained the title of King of Navarre, Eleanor had greedily seized power, but her glory was short-lived, for she died three weeks after her father.

Eleanor had arranged the murder of her sister Blanche, that her son, Gaston de Foix, might inherit Navarre, but Gaston had been killed during a tourney at Lisbon some years before the death of Eleanor, and the next heir was Gaston’s son, Francis Phoebus.

Gaston’s wife had been the Princess Madeleine, sister of Louis XI of France; thus Louis had his eye on Navarre and was determined that it should not go back to the crown of Aragon.

Ferdinand now told Isabella the cause of his alarm.

‘Who can guess what Louis plans next? He now suggests a marriage between Francis Phoebus, King of Navarre, and La Beltraneja!’

‘That is quite impossible,’ cried Isabella. ‘La Beltraneja has taken the veil and will spend the rest of her days in the convent of Santa Clara at Coimbra.’

‘Do you think the vows of La Beltraneja will stop Louis’s making this marriage if he wishes it?’

‘You may be right,’ said Isabella. ‘Doubtless he wishes to put Navarre under French rule and then, if La Beltraneja were the wife of his nephew, Francis Phoebus, he would support her claims to my crown.’

‘Exactly!’ agreed Ferdinand. ‘We plan to make war on the Moors. Louis knows this. Doubtless he has heard of what happened at Loja. The crafty old man is choosing the right moment to strike at us.’

‘We must stop him, Ferdinand. Nothing should now stand in the way of our campaigns in this Holy War.’

‘Nothing shall,’ said Ferdinand.