Текст книги "Daughters of Spain "
Автор книги: Jean Plaidy
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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
From the Virgin she went to the Cathedral close by, and there she prayed anew for strength to bear whatever lay before her.
The people watched her and whispered together.
‘The crown of Aragon was promised to the male heirs of Ferdinand.’
‘And this is but a woman.’
‘She is our Ferdinand’s daughter nevertheless, and he has no legitimate sons.’
‘But the crown should go to the next male heir.’
‘Castile and Aragon are as one now that Ferdinand and Isabella rule them.’
There was going to be resistance in Aragon to the female succession. Isabella of Castile had remained Queen in her own right, but it was well known that she had greater power than Ferdinand. In the eyes of the Aragonese, it was their Ferdinand who should have ruled Spain with Isabella merely as his consort.
‘Nay,’ they said, ‘we’ll not have women on the throne of Spain. Aragon will support the male heir.’
‘But wait a moment … the Princess is pregnant, is she not? If she were to have a son …’
‘Ah, that would be a different matter. That would offend none. The Aragonese crown goes to the male descendants of Ferdinand, and his grandson would be the rightful heir.’
‘Then, we must wait until the birth. That’s the simple answer.’
It was the simple answer, and the Cortes confirmed it. They would not give their allegiance to Isabella of Portugal because she was a woman; but if she bore a son, then they would accept that son as the heir to the crown of Aragon and all Spain.
It was a wearying occasion for Isabella.
She had been alarmed by the hostile looks of the members of the Cortes. She had disliked their arrogant manner of implying that unless she produced a son they would have none of her.
She lay on her bed while her women soothed her; and when Emanuel came to her they hurried away and left them together.
‘I feel a great responsibility rests upon me,’ she said. ‘I almost wish I were a humble woman waiting the birth of her child.’
The Queen faced Ferdinand in anger.
‘How dare they!’ she demanded. ‘In every town of Castile our daughter has been received with honours. But in Saragossa, the capital of Aragon, she is submitted to insult.’
Ferdinand could scarcely suppress a wry smile. There had been so many occasions when he had been forced to take second place, when he had been reminded that Aragon was of secondary importance to Castile and that the Queen of Castile was therefore senior to the King of Aragon.
‘They but state their rights,’ he answered.
‘Their rights – to reject our daughter!’
‘We know well that Aragon accepts only the male line as heirs to the crown.’
A faint smile played about his lips. He was reminding her that in Aragon the King was looked upon as the ruler and the Queen as his consort.
Isabella was not concerned with his private feelings. She thought only of the humiliation to her daughter.
‘I picture them,’ she said, ‘quizzing her as though she were some fishwife. How far advanced in pregnancy is she? She will give birth in August. Then we will wait until August and, if she gives birth to a male child, we will accept that child as heir to the throne. I tell you, our daughter Isabella, being our eldest, is our heir.’
‘They will not accept her, because they will not accept a woman.’
‘They have accepted me.’
‘As my wife,’ Ferdinand reminded her.
‘Rather than endure this insolence of the Saragossa Cortes I would subdue them by sending an armed force to deal with them. I would force them to accept our Isabella as the heir of Spain.’
‘You cannot mean that.’
‘But I do,’ insisted Isabella.
Ferdinand left her and returned shortly with a statesman whose integrity he knew Isabella trusted. This was Antonio de Fonesca, a brother of the Bishop who bore the same name; this man Ferdinand had once sent as envoy to Charles VII of France, and the bold conduct of Fonesca had so impressed both the Sovereigns that they often consulted him with confidence and respect.
‘The Queen’s Highness is incensed by the behaviour of the Cortes at Saragossa,’ said Ferdinand. ‘She is thinking of sending soldiers to subdue them over this matter of accepting our daughter as heir to the throne.’
‘Would Your Highness care to hear my opinion?’ asked Fonesca of the Queen.
Isabella told him that she would.
‘Then, Highness, I would say that the Aragonese have only acted as good and loyal subjects. You must excuse them if they move with caution in an affair which they find difficult to justify by precedent in their history.’
Ferdinand was watching his wife closely. He knew that her love of justice would always overcome every other emotion.
She was silent, considering the statesman’s remarks.
Then she said: ‘I see that you are right. There is nothing to be done but hope – and pray – that my grandchild will be a boy.’
Isabella, Queen of Portugal, lay on her bed. Her pains had started and she knew that her time had come.
There was a cold sweat on her brow and she was unconscious of all the people who stood about her bed. She was praying: ‘A son. Let it be a son.’
If she produced a healthy son she would begin to forget this legend of a curse which had grown up in her mind. A son could make so much difference to her family and her country.
The little boy would be heir not only to the crown of Spain but to that of Portugal. The countries would be united; the hostile people of Saragossa would be satisfied; and she and Emanuel would be the proudest parents in the world.
Why should it not be so? Could her family go on receiving blow after blow? They had had their share of tragedy. Let this be different.
‘A boy,’ she murmured, ‘a healthy boy to make the sullen people of Saragossa cheer, to unite Spain and Portugal.’ What an important little person this was who was now so impatient to be born!
The pains were coming regularly now. If she did not feel so weak she could have borne them more easily. She lay moaning while the women crowded about her. She drifted from consciousness into unconsciousness and back again.
The pain still persisted; it was more violent now.
She tried not to think of it; she tried to pray, to ask forgiveness of her sins, but her lips continued to form the words: ‘A boy. Let it be a boy.’
There were voices in the bedchamber.
‘A boy! A bonny boy!’
‘Is it indeed so?’
‘No mistake!’
‘Ah, this is a happy day.’
Isabella, lying on her bed, heard the cry of a child. She lay listening to the voices, too exhausted to move.
Someone was standing by her bed. Someone else knelt and was taking her hand and kissing it. Emanuel was standing, and it was her mother who knelt.
‘Emanuel,’ she whispered. ‘Mother …’
‘My dearest …’ began Emanuel.
But her mother cried out in a voice loud with triumph: ‘It is over, my darling. The best possible news for you. You have given birth to a fine baby boy.’
Isabella smiled. ‘Then everyone is happy.’
Emanuel was bending over her, his eyes anxious. ‘Including you?’ he said.
‘But yes.’
His eyes were faintly teasing: No more talk of curses, they were telling her. You see, all your premonitions were wrong. The ordeal is over and you have a beautiful son. ‘Can you hear the bells ringing?’ her mother asked the young Queen.
‘I … I am not sure.’
‘All over Spain the bells shall ring. Everyone will be rejoicing. They shall all know that their Sovereigns have a grandson, a male heir, at last.’
‘Then I am happy.’
‘We will leave her to rest,’ said the Queen.
Emanuel nodded. ‘She is exhausted – no wonder.’
‘But first …’ whispered Isabella.
‘I understand,’ laughed her mother. She stood up and called to the nurse.
She took the baby from her and placed it in its mother’s arms.
Ferdinand said: ‘He shall be called Miguel, after the saint on whose day he was born.’
‘God bless our little Miguel,’ answered the Queen. ‘He’s a lively little fellow, but I wish his mother did not look so exhausted.’
Ferdinand bent over the cradle, exulting in the infant; he found it hard to take his hands from the child who meant so much to him.
‘We must have a triumphant pilgrimage as soon as Isabella is well enough to leave her bed,’ went on Ferdinand. ‘The people will want to see their heir. We should do this without delay.’
Isabella agreed as to the desirability of this, but it should not be, she assured herself, until Miguel’s mother had recovered from her ordeal.
One of the women of the bedchamber was coming quickly towards them.
‘Your Highnesses, Her Highness of Portugal …’
‘Yes?’ said Isabella sharply.
‘She seems to find breathing difficult. Her condition is changing …’
Isabella did not wait for more. With Ferdinand following she hurried to her daughter’s bedside.
Emanuel was already there.
The sight of her daughter’s wan face, her blue-encircled eyes, her fight for her breath, made Isabella’s heart turn over with fear.
‘My darling child,’ she cried, and there was a note of anguish in her voice which was a piteous appeal.
‘Mother …’
‘It is I, my darling. Mother is with you.’
‘I feel so strange.’
‘You are tired, my love. You have given birth to a beautiful boy. No wonder you are exhausted.’
‘I … cannot … breathe,’ she gasped.
‘Where are the physicians?’ demanded Ferdinand.
Emanuel shook his head as though to imply they had admitted their ignorance. There was nothing they could do.
Ferdinand walked to a corner of the room, and the doctors followed him.
‘What is wrong with her?’
‘It is a malaise which sometimes follows childbirth.’
‘Then what is to be done?’
‘Highness, it must take its course.’
‘But this is …’
The doctors did not answer. They dared not tell the King that in their opinion the Queen of Portugal was on her deathbed.
Ferdinand stood wretchedly looking at the group round the bed. He was afraid to join them. It can’t happen, he told himself. Isabella, his wife, could never endure this in addition to all she had suffered. This would be too much.
Isabella’s eyes seemed to rest on her mother.
‘Do we disturb you here, my darling?’ asked the elder Isabella.
‘No, Mother. You … never disturb me. I am too tired to talk, but … I want you here. You too, Emanuel.’
‘You are going to stay with us for months … you and Emanuel and little Miguel. We are going to show the baby to the people. They will love their little heir. This is a happy day, my daughter.’
‘Yes … a happy day.’
Emanuel was looking appealingly at his mother-in-law as though imploring her to tell him that his wife would recover.
‘Mother,’ said the sick woman, ‘and Emanuel … come near to me.’
They sat on the bed and each held a hand.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘I am happy. I am … going, I think.’
‘No!’ cried Emanuel.
But the younger Isabella saw the anguish in the eyes of the elder and she knew; they both knew.
Neither spoke, but they looked at each other and the great love they bore for one another was in their eyes.
‘I … I gave you the boy,’ whispered Isabella.
‘And you are going to get well,’ insisted Emanuel.
But the two Isabellas did not answer him, because they knew that a lie could give them no comfort.
‘I am so tired,’ murmured the Queen of Portugal. ‘I … will go now. Goodbye.’
The Queen of Spain signed for the priests to come to her daughter’s bedside. She knew that the moment had come for the last rites.
She listened to their words; she saw her daughter’s attempts to repeat the necessary prayers; and she thought: This is not true. I am dreaming. It cannot be true. Not Juan and Isabella. Not both. That would be too cruel.
But she knew it was true.
Isabella was growing weaker with every moment; and only an hour after she had given them little Miguel, she was dead.
THE COURT AT GRANADA
The bells were tolling for the death of the Queen of Portugal. Throughout Spain the people were beginning to ask themselves: ‘What blight is this on our royal House?’
The Queen lay sick with grief in her darkened bedchamber. It was the first time any of her people had known her to succumb to misery.
About the Palace people moved in their garments of sackcloth, which had taken the place of white serge for mourning at the time of Juan’s death. What next? they asked themselves. The little Miguel was not the healthy baby they had hoped he might be. He was fretful; perhaps he was crying for his mother who had died that he might come into the world.
Catalina sat with Maria and Margaret; they were sewing shirts for the poor; and, thought Margaret, it was almost as if they hoped that by this good deed they might avert further disaster, as though they might placate that Providence which seemed determined to chastise them.
The rough material hurt Margaret’s hands. She recalled the gaiety of Flanders and she knew that there would never be any happiness for her in Spain.
She looked at little Catalina, her head bent over her work. Catalina suffered more deeply than Maria would ever suffer. The poor child was now thinking of her mother’s grief; she was longing to be with her and comfort her.
‘It will pass,’ said Margaret. ‘People cannot go on grieving for ever.’
‘Do you believe that?’ asked Catalina.
‘I know it; I have proved it.’
‘You mean you no longer mourn Juan and your baby?’
‘I shall mourn them for the rest of my life, but at first I mourned every waking hour. Now there are times when I forget them for a while. It is inevitable. Life is like that. So it will be with your mother. She will smile again.’
‘There are so many disasters,’ murmured Catalina.
Maria lifted her head from her work. ‘You will find that we have many good things happening all together later on. That is how life goes on.’
‘She is right,’ said Margaret.
Catalina turned to her sewing but she did not see the coarse material; she was thinking of herself as a wife and mother. The joys of motherhood might after all be worth all that she had to suffer to achieve it. Perhaps she would have a child – a daughter who would love her as she loved her mother.
They sat sewing in silence, and at length Margaret rose and left them.
In her apartments she found two of her Flemish attendants staring gloomily out of the window.
They started up as Margaret came in, but she noticed that the expressions on their faces did not change.
‘I know,’ said Margaret. ‘You are weary of Spain.’
‘Ugh!’ cried the younger of the women. ‘All these dreary sierras, these dismal plains … and worst of all these dismal people!’
‘Much has happened to make them dismal.’
‘They were born dismal, Your Highness. They seem afraid to laugh or dance as people were meant to. They cling too firmly to their dignity.’
‘If we went home …’ began Margaret.
The two women’s faces were alight with pleasure suddenly. Margaret caught at that pleasure. She told herself then: There will never be happiness for me here. Only if I leave Spain can I begin to forget.
‘If we went home,’ she repeated, ‘that might be the best thing we could do.’
Ferdinand stood by his wife’s bedside looking down at her.
‘You must rouse yourself, Isabella,’ he said. ‘The people are getting restive.’
Isabella looked at him, her eyes blank with misery.
‘A ridiculous legend is being spread throughout the land. I hear it is said that we are cursed, and that God has turned His face away from us.’
‘I was beginning to ask myself if that were so,’ whispered the Queen.
She raised herself, and Ferdinand was shocked to see the change in her. Isabella had aged by at least ten years. Ferdinand asked himself in that moment whether the next blow his family would have to suffer would be the death of the Queen herself.
‘My son,’ she went on, ‘and now my daughter. Oh, God in Heaven, how can You so forget me?’
‘Hush! You are not yourself. I have never before seen you thus.’
‘You have never before seen me smitten by such sorrow.’
Ferdinand beat his right fist into the palm of his left hand.
‘We must not allow these foolish stories to persist. We are inviting disaster if we do. Isabella, we must not sit and mourn; we must not brood on our losses. I do not trust the new French King. I think I preferred Charles VIII to this Louis XII. He is a wily fellow and he is already making treaties with the Italians – we know well to what purpose. The Pope is sly. I do not trust the Borgia. Alexander VI is more statesman than Pope, and who can guess what tricks he will be up to? Isabella, we are Sovereigns first, parents second.’
‘You speak truth,’ answered Isabella sadly. ‘But I must have a little time in which to bury my dead.’
Ferdinand made an impatient gesture. ‘Maximilian, who might have helped to halt these French ambitions, is now engaged in war against the Swiss, and Louis has secured our neutrality by means of the new treaty of Marcoussis. But I don’t trust Louis. We must be watchful.’
‘You are right, of course.’
‘We must keep a watchful eye on Louis, on Alexander, on Maximilian, as well as on our own son-in-law Philip and our daughter Juana, who seem to have ranged themselves against us. Yes, we must be watchful. But most important is it that all should be well in our own dominions. We cannot have our subjects telling each other that our House is cursed. I have heard it whispered that Miguel is a weakling, that he will not live more than a few months, that it is a miracle that he was not born as was our other grandchild, poor Juan’s child. These rumours must be stopped.’
‘We must stop them with all speed.’
‘Ah then, my Queen, we are in agreement. As soon as you are ready to leave your bed, Miguel must be presented to the Cortes of Saragossa as the heir of Spain. And this ceremony must not be long delayed.’
‘It shall not be long delayed,’ Isabella assured him, and he was delighted to see the old determination in her face. He knew he could trust his Isabella. No matter what joy was hers, or what sorrow, she would never forget that she was the Queen.
The news of the Queen of Portugal’s death was brought to Tomás de Torquemada in the monastery of Avila.
He lay on his pallet, unable to move, so crippled was he by the gout.
‘Such trials are sent for our own good,’ he murmured to his sub-prior. ‘I trust the Sovereigns did not forget this.’
‘The news is, Excellency, that the Queen is mightily stricken and has had to take to her bed.’
‘I deplore her weakness and it surprises me,’ said Torquemada. ‘Her great sin lies in her vulnerability where her family is concerned. It is high time the youngest was sent to England. And so would she be, but for the Queen’s constant excuses. Learn from her faults, my friend. See how even a good woman can fail in her duty when she allows her emotions regarding her children to come between her and God.’
‘It is so, Excellency. But all have not your strength.’
Torquemada dismissed the man.
It was true. Few men on Earth possessed the strength of will to discipline themselves as he had done. But he had great hopes of Ximenes de Cisneros. There was one who, it would seem, might be worthy to tread in his, Torquemada’s, footsteps.
‘If I were but a younger man,’ sighed Torquemada. ‘If I might throw off this accursed sickness, this feebleness of my body! My mind is as clear as it ever was. Then I would still rule Spain.’
But when the body failed a man, however great he was, his end was near. Even Torquemada could not subdue his flesh so completely that he could ignore it.
He lay back complacently. It was possible that his death would probably be the next one which would be talked of in the towns and villages of Spain. There was death in the air.
But people were constantly dying. He himself had fed thousands of them to the flames. He had done right, he assured himself. It was only in his helplessness that he was afraid.
‘Not,’ he said aloud, ‘of the pain I might suffer, not of death – for what fear should I have of facing my Maker? – but of the loss to the world which my passing must mean.
‘Oh, Holy Mother of God,’ he prayed, ‘give this man Ximenes the power to take my place. Give Ximenes strength to guide the Sovereigns as I have done. Then I shall die happy.’
The faggots in the quemaderos all over the country were well alight. In the dungeons of the Inquisition men, women and children awaited trial through ordeal. In the gloomy chambers of the damned the torturers were busy.
‘I trust, O Lord,’ murmured Torquemada, ‘that I have done my work well and shall find favour in Your sight. I trust You have noted the number of souls I have brought to You, the numbers I have saved, as well as those I have sent from this world to hell by means of the fiery death. Remember, O Lord, the zeal of Your servant, Tomás de Torquemada. Remember his love of the Faith.’
When he thought over his past life he had no qualms about death. He was certain that he would be received into Heaven with great glory.
His sub-prior came to him, as he lay there, with news from Rome.
He read the dispatch, and his anger burned so fiercely that it set his swollen limbs throbbing.
He and Alexander were two men who were born to be enemies. The Borgia had schemed to become Pope not through love of the Faith but because it was the highest office in the Church. His greatest desire was to shower honours on his sons and daughter, whom, as a man of the Church, he had no right to have begotten. This Borgia, it seemed, could be a merry man, a flouter of conventions. There were evil rumours about his incestuous relationship with his own daughter, Lucrezia, and it was well known that he exercised nepotism and that his sons, Cesare and Giovanni, swaggered through the towns of Italy boasting of their relationship to the Holy Father.
What could a man such as Torquemada – whose life had been spent in subduing the flesh – have in common with such as Roderigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI? Very little.
Alexander knew this and, because he was a mischievous man, he had continually obstructed Torquemada in his endeavours.
Torquemada remembered early conflicts.
As far back as four years ago he had received a letter from the Pope; he could remember the words clearly now.
Alexander cherished him in ‘the very bowels of affection for his great labours in raising the glory of the Faith’. But Alexander was concerned because from the Vatican he considered the many tasks which Torquemada had taken upon himself, and he remembered the great age of Torquemada and he was not going to allow him to put too great a strain upon himself. Therefore he, Alexander, out of love for Torquemada, was going to appoint four assistants to be at his side in this mighty work of establishing and maintaining the Inquisition throughout Spain.
There could not have been a greater blow to his power. The new Inquisitors, appointed by the Pope, shared the power of Torquemada and the title Inquisitor General lost its significance.
There was no doubt that Alexander in the Vatican was the enemy of Torquemada in the monastery of Avila. It may have been that the Pope considered the Inquisitor General wielded too much power; but Torquemada suspected that the enmity between them grew from their differences – the desire of a man of great carnal appetites, which he made no effort to subdue, to denigrate one who had lived his life in the utmost abstention from all worldly pursuits.
And now, when Torquemada was near to death, Alexander had yet another snub to offer.
The Pope had held an auto de fe in the square before St Peter’s, and at this had appeared many of those Jews who had been expelled from Spain. If the Pope had wished to do the smallest honour to Torquemada he would have sent those Jews to the flames or inflicted some other severe punishment.
But Alexander was laughing down his nose at the monk of Avila. Sometimes Torquemada wondered whether he was laughing at the Church itself which he used so shamefully to his advantage.
Alexander had ordered that a service should be read in the square, and the one hundred and eighty Judaizers, and fugitives from Torquemada’s wrath were dismissed. No penalties. No wearing of the sanbenito. No imprisonment. No confiscation of property.
Alexander dismissed them all to go about their business like good citizens of Rome.
Torquemada clenched his fists tightly together as he thought of it. It was a direct insult, not only to himself but to the Spanish Inquisition; and he believed that the Pope was fully aware of this and it was his main reason for acting as he had.
‘And here I lie,’ he mused, ‘in this my seventy-eighth year of life, my body crippled, unable to protest.’
His heart began to beat violently, shaking his spare frame. The walls of the cell seemed to close in upon him.
‘My life’s work is done,’ he whispered and sent for his sub-prior.
‘I feel my end is near,’ he told the man. ‘Nay, do not look concerned. I have had a long life and in it I think I have served God well. I would not have you bury me with pomp. Put me to rest in the common burial ground among the friars of my monastery. There I would lie happiest.’
The sub-prior said quickly: ‘You are old in years, Excellency, but your spirit is strong. There are years ahead of you.’
‘Leave me,’ Torquemada commanded; ‘I would make my peace with God.’
He waved the man away, but he did not believe it was necessary to make his peace with God. He believed that there would be a place in Heaven for him as there had been on Earth.
He lay quietly on his pallet while the strength slowly ebbed from him.
He thought continually of his past life, and as the days went on his condition grew weaker.
It was known throughout the monastery that Torquemada was dying.
On the 16th of September, one month after the death of the Queen of Portugal, Torquemada opened his eyes and was not sure where he lay.
He dreamed he was ascending into Heaven to the sound of music – music which was composed of the cries of heretics as the flames licked their limbs, the murmurs of a band of exiles who trudged wearily, from the land which had been their home for centuries, to what grim horrors they could not know but only fear.
‘All this in Thy name …’ murmured Torquemada and, because he was too weak to control his feelings, a smile of assurance and satisfaction touched his lips.
The sub-prior came to him a little later, and he knew that it was time for the last rites to be administered.
Isabella roused herself from her bed of sickness and grief. She had her duty to perform.
The little Prince Miguel must be shown to the citizens and accepted by the Cortes as heir to the throne. So the processions began.
The people of Saragossa, who had declined to accept his mother, assembled to greet little Miguel as their future King.
Ferdinand and Isabella swore that they would be his faithful guardians, and that before he was allowed to assume any rights as Sovereign he should be made to swear to respect those liberties to which the proud people of Aragon were determined to cling.
‘Long live the lawful heir and successor to the crown of Aragon!’ cried the Saragossa Cortes.
This ceremony was repeated not only throughout Aragon and Castile but in Portugal, for this frail child would, if he came to the throne, unite those countries.
Isabella took her leave of the sorrowing Emanuel.
‘Leave the child with me,’ she said. ‘You know how deeply affected I have been by the loss of my daughter. I have brought up many children. Give me this little one who will be our heir, that he may help to assuage my grief.’
Emanuel was stricken with pity for his stoical mother-in-law. He knew that she was thinking it could not be long before her remaining daughters were taken from her. Moreover, his Spanish inheritance would be of greater importance to little Miguel than that which would come from his father.
‘Take the child,’ he said. ‘Bring him up as you will. I trust he will never give you cause for anxiety.’
Isabella held the child against her and, as she did so, she felt a stirring of that pleasure which only her own beloved family could give her.
It was true that the Lord took away, but He also gave.
She said: ‘I will take him to my city of Granada. There he shall have the greatest care that it is possible for any child to have. Thank you, Emanuel.’
So Emanuel left the child with her, and Ferdinand was delighted that they would be in a position to supervise his upbringing.
Isabella gently kissed the baby’s face, and Ferdinand came to stand beside her.
If I could only be as he is, thought Isabella, and feel as he does that the death of our daughter Isabella was not such a great tragedy, since their child lives.
‘Emanuel will need a new wife,’ Ferdinand mused.
‘It will be a long time yet. He dearly loved our Isabella.’
‘Kings have little time for mourning,’ answered Ferdinand. ‘He said nothing of this matter to you?’
‘Taking a new wife! Indeed he did not. I am sure the thought has not occurred to him.’
‘Nevertheless it has occurred to me,’ retorted Ferdinand. ‘A King in need of a wife. Have you forgotten that we have a daughter as yet not spoken for?’
Isabella gave him a startled look.
‘Why should not our Maria be Queen of Portugal?’ demanded Ferdinand. ‘Thus we should regain that which we have lost by the death of Isabella.’
‘Farewell,’ said Margaret. ‘It grieves me to leave you, but I know that I must go’
Catalina embraced her sister-in-law. ‘How I wish that you would stay with us.’
‘For how long?’ asked Margaret. ‘My father will be making plans for a new marriage for me. It is better that I go.’
‘You have not been very happy here,’ said Maria quietly.
‘It was not the fault of the King and Queen, nor of any of you. You have done everything possible to make me happy. Farewell, my sisters. I shall think of you often.’
Catalina shivered. ‘How life changes!’ she said. ‘How can we know where any of us will be this time next year … or even this time next month?’
Catalina was terrified every time envoys came from England. She knew that her mother was putting off the day when her youngest daughter would leave her home; but it could not be long delayed. Catalina was too fatalistic to believe that was possible.
‘Farewell, farewell,’ said Margaret.
And that day she was on her way to the coast, to board the ship which would take her back to Flanders.
Isabella’s great delight was her little grandson. He was too young as yet to accompany her on all her journeys throughout the country so, after his acceptance by the Cortes of Castile and Aragon, he was left with his nurses in the Alhambra at Granada. Isabella often discussed his future with Ferdinand, and it was her desire that as soon as he was old enough he should always be with them.
