Daughters of Spain

Chapter VII THE QUEEN OF PORTUGAL

Ferdinand and Isabella were studying with dismay the letter they had received from Fray Matienzo. This was indeed disquieting news. Not only was Juana conducting herself in Flanders with the utmost impiety, but she had dared, with her husband, to assume the title of heir to Castile.

Isabella said bitterly: ‘I wish I had never allowed her to leave me. She should never have been sent away from me. She is unstable.’

Ferdinand looked gloomy. He was wondering now whether it would not have been better to have sent Maria into Flanders. Maria had little spirit, it was true, but at least she would not have behaved with such abandon as Juana apparently did.

‘There are times,’ went on Isabella, ‘when I say to myself, What blow will fall next? My son …’

Ferdinand laid his arm about her shoulders. ‘My dear,’ he murmured, ‘you must not give way to your sorrow. It is true that our alliances with the Habsburgs are proving to be a mixed blessing. We have Margaret here on our hands … our daughter-in-law, who has failed to give us an heir. And now it seems that Philip is more our enemy than our friend.’

‘You have written to Maximilian protesting against this wicked action of his son and our daughter?’

‘I have.’

‘But,’ went on Isabella quickly, ‘I do not blame Juana. She has been forced to do this. Oh, my poor child, I would to God I had never let her go.’

‘Philip is a wild and ambitious young man. We must not take him too seriously. Have no fear. This is not as important as you think. You are upset because one of your daughters has so far forgotten her duty to us as to act in a manner certain to cause us pain. Juana was always half crazy. We should not take too much notice of what she does. There is only one answer to all this.’

‘And that is?’

‘Send for Isabella and Emanuel. Have them proclaimed as our heirs throughout Spain. Then it will avail Maximilian’s son and our daughter very little what they call themselves. Isabella is our eldest daughter and she is the true heir to Castile. Her sons shall inherit our crowns.’

‘How wise you are, Ferdinand. You are right. It is the only course. In my grief I could only mourn for the conduct of one of my children. It was foolish of me.’

Ferdinand smiled broadly. It was pleasant to have Isabella recognising his superiority.

‘Leave these matters to me, Isabella. You will see that I know how to manage these erring children of ours.’

‘Promise me not to feel too angry towards our Juana.’

‘I’d like to lay my hands on her …’ began Ferdinand.

‘No, Ferdinand, no. Remember how unstable she is.’

Ferdinand looked at her shrewdly. ‘There are times,’ he said slowly, ‘when she reminds me of your mother.’

At last those words had been spoken aloud, and Isabella felt as though she had received a blow. It was folly to be so cowardly. That idea was not new to her. But to hear it spoken aloud gave weight to it, brought her terrors into the daylight. They were no longer fancies, those fears; they had their roots in reality.

Ferdinand looked at her bowed head and, patting her shoulder reassuringly, he left her.

She was glad to be alone.

She whispered under her breath: ‘What will become of her, what will become of my tragic child?’

And she knew at that moment that this was the greatest tragedy of her life; even now, with the poignant sorrow of loss upon her, she knew that the blow struck at her through the death of their beloved son was light compared with what she would suffer through the madness of her daughter.

Ferdinand on his way to his apartments met a messenger who brought him dispatches. He saw that these came from Maximilian, and it gave him pleasure to read them first, before taking them to Isabella.

She is distraught, he told himself. It is better for me to shield her from unpleasantness until she has recovered from these shocks; and as he read Maximilian’s reply he told himself that he was glad he had done so. Maximilian made it quite clear that he was firmly behind his son’s claim to the crown of Castile. He felt that the daughter-in-law of Maximilian had the right to come before the wife of the King of Portugal, even though she happened to be the younger.

This was a monstrous suggestion to make, even for such an arrogant man. Maximilian also suggested that he had a right to the crown of Portugal through his mother, Doña Leoñor of Portugal; and that his claim was greater than that of Emanuel who was merely a nephew of the last King. There were sly hints that the King of France, Ferdinand’s enemy and rival in the Italian project, was ready to stand beside Maximilian in this claim.

Ferdinand’s fury was boundless. Was this what the Habsburg alliance had brought him?

He sat at his table and wrote furiously. Then he called his messengers.

‘Leave at once,’ he said, ‘for Lisbon. Let there be no delay. This is a matter of the utmost importance.’

Queen Isabella of Portugal had become reconciled to life. She was no longer tormented by nightmares. For this new peace which had come to her she was grateful to her husband. None could have been kinder than Emanuel. It was strange that here in Lisbon, where she had been so happy with her first husband Alonso, she was learning to forget him.

From her apartments in the Castelo she could look down on Lisbon, a city which she found entrancing to watch from this distance. She could see the Ashbouna where the Arabs lived, shut up in those walls which had long ago been erected by the Visigoths; she looked down past olive and fig trees to the Alcaçova which she and Emanuel sometimes inhabited. Along the narrow streets, which had been made hundreds of years before, the people congregated; there they bought and sold; gossiped, sang and danced. Sometimes in the evenings the sound of a slave song would be heard, plaintive and infinitely sad with longing for a distant land.

The industrious Moors in the Mouraria turned clay on their wheels; they sat cross-legged making their pottery. Some sat weaving. They were adept at both arts and they grew rich.

It was a city of a hundred sights and beauties. Yet the Queen of Portugal did not care to mingle with her husband’s people. She wished to remain in the castle looking on at them, as she wished to look on life, aloof, an onlooker rather than a participant.

In due course many of her and her husband’s most industrious subjects would be driven from their country. Isabella could not forget the condition which had brought her into Portugal. The thought came back to torment her: One day they will curse me, those men and women.

But the time was not yet, and something had happened to bring her resignation.

Isabella was pregnant.

She prayed for a son. If she could give Emanuel and Portugal a son she felt she would in some small way have compensated them for the unhappiness their King’s marriage was going to bring to numbers of his subjects.

When she had heard the news of her brother’s death it had not been merely sorrow which had so stricken her that she had been kept to her bed for some days. That fear, which had been haunting her for so long, seemed to take a material shape, to become a tangible thing, something which would whisper in her ear: There is a curse on your House.

She had told Emanuel this and he had shaken his head. She was subject to strange fancies, he told her. Why, even though Juan was dead, Margaret was to have a child, and if that child were a son there would be an heir for Spain as surely as if Juan had lived.

She had begun to believe him.

And then came further news from Spain.

She had seen the messengers riding to the Castelo and she knew from their livery that they came from her parents. She put her hand to her heart which had begun to flutter uncomfortably.

Where was Emanuel? She would like him to be with her when she read what her parents had to say.

She called to one of her women, ‘Go and see if the King is in his apartments. If he is, please tell him that I should be pleased if he would come to me here, or if he prefers it I will go to his apartment.’

There was only a short time to wait before Emanuel came hurrying to her.

She smiled and held out her hand. He was continually giving her proof of how she could rely on him.

When they were alone, she said: ‘Emanuel, I have seen messengers riding up to the Castelo, and I know they come from my parents. I was afraid, so I asked you to come to me. Whenever I see my parents’ seal I tremble and ask myself: What bad news now?’

‘You must not, Isabella.’ He kissed her cheek gently. She was looking a little better since her pregnancy and that delighted him; he had been alarmed by the thinness of her body when he remembered the young girl who had first come into Portugal to marry his cousin. Then she had not been strikingly healthy, but when he had seen her after the long absence he had noticed at once that she seemed more ethereal, her skin more transparent, her eyes larger because the fullness had disappeared from her cheeks. She was no less beautiful, but that look of not entirely belonging to this world faintly alarmed him.

It had been a great joy to discover that their marriage was to be fruitful. He was sure she had improved in health; and the effect on her spirits had been good.

‘It seemed so strange to me that Juan should die. We had never thought of Juan’s dying.’

‘You are too fanciful, Isabella. Juan died because he caught a fever.’

‘Why should a young and healthy man catch a fever on his honeymoon?’

‘Men are not immune from fever merely because they are on their honeymoons, my dearest. It may well be that he was weakened by all the ceremonies. It is unwise to think of his death as an omen.’ Emanuel laughed. ‘Why, there was a time when you thought our union was to be ill-fated. Admit it. You thought, We want children, we need children, but we shall never have them. And you see, you are going to be proved wrong.’

‘If it is a boy I carry,’ cried Isabella with shining eyes, ‘I shall say I have been foolish and I shall not talk of omens again.’

She looked over her shoulder almost furtively, as though she were speaking not to Emanuel, but to some unseen presence, as though she were pleading: Show me I was foolish to fear, by giving me a healthy son.

Emanuel smiled tenderly at her and at that moment the messengers arrived.

The letters were delivered to Isabella, who called attendants to take the messengers to where they could be refreshed after their journey.

When she was once more alone with Emanuel she held out the letters to him. Her face was white, her hands trembling.

‘I pray you, Emanuel, read them for me.’

‘They are meant for your eyes, my dear.’

‘I know, but my hands shake so, and my eyes will not take in the words.’

As Emanuel broke the seal and read the letters, Isabella, watching him intently, saw his face whiten.

She said quickly: ‘What is it, Emanuel? You must tell me quickly.’

‘The child was stillborn,’ he said.

Isabella gave a gasp and sank down on to a stool. The room appeared to swim round her, and she seemed to hear those malicious voices – the voices of a thousand tormented and persecuted people – whispering to her.

‘But Margaret is well,’ went on Emanuel.

There was silence and Isabella lifted her face to her husband’s. ‘There is something else?’ she asked. ‘I pray you keep nothing back.’

‘Yes,’ he said slowly, ‘there is something else. Juana and Philip have proclaimed themselves heirs to Castile.’

‘Juana! But that is impossible. She is younger than I.’

‘That is what your parents say.’

‘How could Juana do such a thing?’

‘Because she has a very ambitious husband.’

‘But this is terrible. This will break my mother’s heart. This is like quarrelling within the family itself.’

‘You need have no fear,’ soothed Emanuel. ‘Your parents will know how best to deal with such pretensions. They want us to prepare to leave Lisbon at once for Spain. They are going to have you publicly proclaimed heir of Castile.’

A weariness assailed Isabella. She put her hand to her aching head. In that moment she thought: I want none of these quarrels. I want to be left in peace to have my child.

Then she felt the child within her, and her mood changed. A Queen must not think of her own personal desires.

It occurred to her that the child in her womb might well be heir to the whole of Spain and all those dependencies of Spain, those lands of the New World.

There was no time in her busy life for lassitude. She had to fight for the rights of this child, even against her own sister.

Her voice was firm as she said: ‘When could we be ready to leave for Spain?’