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.