Daughters of Spain

Chapter XVII ISABELLA’S END

Isabella lay ill at Medina de Campo. She was suffering from the tertian fever, it was said, and there were signs of dropsy in her legs.

It was June when news was brought to her of that disgraceful episode at the Brussels Court.

‘Oh, my daughter,’ she murmured, ‘what will become of you?’

What could she do? she asked herself. What could she do for any of her daughters? Catalina was in England; she was afraid for Catalina. It was true that she had been formally betrothed to Henry, now Prince of Wales and heir of Henry VII, but she was anxious concerning the bull of dispensation which she had heard had come from Rome and which alone could make legal a marriage between Catalina and Prince Henry. She had not seen the dispensation. Could she trust the wily King of England? Might it not be that he wished to get his greedy hands on Catalina’s dowry, and not care whether the marriage to her late husband’s brother was legal or not?

‘I must see the bull,’ she told herself. ‘I must see it before I die.’

Maria as Queen of Portugal would be happy enough. Emanuel could be trusted. Maria the calm one, unexciting and unexcitable, had never given her parents any anxiety. Her future seemed more secure than that of any other of Isabella’s daughters.

But Isabella could cease to fret about Catalina when she contemplated Juana. What terrible tragedy did the future hold in store for Juana?

But, sick as she was, she was still the Queen. She must not forget her duties. There were always visitors from abroad to be received; the rights of her own people to protect. Ferdinand was unable to be with her. The French had attempted an invasion of Spain itself, but this Ferdinand had quickly frustrated.

Now that she was ill, Ferdinand himself was ill and unable to come to her; her anxiety for him increased her melancholy.

What will happen when I and Ferdinand have gone? Charles is a baby, Juana is mad. Philip will rule Spain. That must not be. Ferdinand must not die.

She prayed for her husband, prayed that he might be given strength to recover, to live until that time when Charles was grown into a strong man; and she prayed that her grandson might not have inherited his mother’s taint. Then she remembered Ximenes, her Archbishop; and a great joy came to her. He must stand beside Ferdinand; together they would rule Spain.

She thanked God for the Archbishop.

News came that Ferdinand had recovered from his sickness and, as soon as he was well enough to travel, he would be with her. With a lightened heart she made her will.

She wished to lie, she said, in Granada, in the Franciscan monastery of Santa Isabella in the Alhambra, with no memorial, only a plain inscription.

But I must lie beside Ferdinand, she thought, and it may be that he will wish to lie in a different place. So often during their lives she had felt herself forced to disagree with him. In death she would do as he wished.

She wrote somewhat unsteadily: ‘Should the King, my lord, prefer a sepulchre in another place, then my will is that my body be transported thither and laid at his side.’

She went on to write that the crown was to be settled on Juana, as Queen Proprietor, and the Archduke Philip, her husband; but she appointed Ferdinand, her husband, sole regent of Castile until the majority of her grandson Charles, for she must make arrangements respecting the government in the absence or incapacity of her daughter Juana.

Then she wept a little thinking of Ferdinand. She could remember clearly how he had looked when he had first come to her. In those days she had thought him perfect, the materialization of an ideal. Had she not determined to be the wife of Ferdinand many years before she had seen him? Young, handsome, virile – how many women had been fortunate enough to have such a husband?

‘If we had been humble people,’ she murmured, ‘if we had always been together, life would have been different for us. The children he begot on other women would have been my children. What a fine, big family I should have then!’

She wrote: ‘I beseech the King, my lord, that he will accept all my jewels or such as he shall select so that, seeing them, he may be reminded of the singular love I always bore him while living, and that I am now waiting for him in a better world; by which remembrance he may be encouraged to live the more justly and holily in this.’

She made the two principal executors of this will the King and Ximenes.

And when it was in order she prepared herself for death, for she knew there was very little time left to her on Earth.

On that dark November day in the year 1504, a deep sadness settled on the land. Throughout Spain it was known that the Queen was dying.

Isabella lay back on her bed; she was ready now to go. She had made her peace with God; she had lived her life. She could do no more for her beloved daughters, but in these last minutes she prayed for them.

She was conscious of Ferdinand, and she did not see him as the man he had become, but the young husband. She thought of the early days of their marriage when the country was divided and bands of robbers roamed the mountains and the plains. She could catch at that happiness now, that glorious feeling of certainty.

In those days she had said: ‘We will make a great Spain, Ferdinand, you and I together.’

And had they? To them was the honour of the re-conquest. To them was the glory of an all-Christian Spain. They had rid the country of Jews and Moors. In every town the fires of the Inquisition were blazing. A great New World across the sea was theirs.

‘And yet … and yet …’ she murmured.

She was clinging to life, because there were so many tasks yet to be completed.

‘Catalina …’ her lips formed the name of her youngest daughter. ‘Catalina, what will become of you in England?’

And then: ‘Juana … oh, my poor mad Juana, what lies ahead for you?’

These things she would never know; and now she was slipping away.

‘Ximenes,’ she whispered; ‘you must stand with Ferdinand. You must forget your dislike of each other and stand together.’

Then she seemed to hear Ferdinand’s voice close, filled with contempt: ‘Your Archbishop!’

But she was too tired, too weak; and these problems were no longer for her to solve. She was fifty-four and she had reigned for thirty years. It had been a good, long life.

Those about her bed were weeping, and she said: ‘Do not weep for me, nor waste your time in prayers for my recovery. I am going. Pray then for the salvation of my soul.’

They gave her Extreme Unction then; and shortly before noon on that November day Isabella, the Queen, slipped quietly away.