He had looked after her, this little grocer, looked after her and the children she had had. And now this was the end. She could hear the suppressed sobbing of children in the crowd, little ones who sensed tragedy without understanding it.
Then she could bear no more. She stumbled back to her bed, but the effort of leaving it and the agony of remorse had been too much for her. She had shortened her life – but only by a few weeks.
Her lover came into the apartment, and there was anguish in his eyes. Ah, she thought, it is because he does not see me as I am; to him I am still the young girl who sat on the balcony of the house of Diego de Susan, then far out of the reach of a humble grocer.
‘I am dying,’ she told him.
He helped her back to bed and sat beside her. He did not deny the truth of what she said, for he realised it would be futile to do so.
‘Do something for me,’ she said. ‘When I die, put my skull over the door of this house, that all may know it is the skull of one whose passions led her to an evil life, and that she wishes a part of her to be left there as a warning to all. The skull of a woman who was a bawd and betrayer of those who loved her best.’
The grocer shook his head. ‘You must not fret,’ he said. ‘I will take care of you till the end.’
‘This is the end,’ she said. ‘Promise me. Swear it on your Faith.’
So he promised.
And, before the Jews had all left Spain, the skull of the woman who had once been judged the most beautiful in Seville was set up over the door of the grocer’s house.
The reconquest secure, Isabella and Ferdinand appointed Talavera Archbishop of Granada, and the Count of Tendilla its Governor, and set off on a progress through the country, with their children, to receive the grateful thanks of the people.
They rode with all the splendour of royalty, and always beside them was Juan, the Prince of the Asturias. Isabella felt that all her subjects must agree that one of her greatest gifts to them was this bright and beautiful boy, the heir to a united Spain.
Ferdinand had said: ‘Castile is with us to a man, so is Aragon; but there has always been trouble in Catalonia since . . . the death of my half-brother. Now is the time to show the Catalans that we include them in our kingdom, that they mean as much to us as the Castilians and the Aragonese.’
Isabella agreed that this was so and that now, in the full flush of their triumph, was the time to make the Catalans forget for ever the mysterious death of Carlos, Prince of Viana, who had been removed to make way for Ferdinand to take the throne of Aragon.
So into Catalonia rode the procession.
Ferdinand had been presiding at the hall of justice in Barcelona, and was leaving the building to rejoin Isabella at the Palace.
He was pleased, for never had he been so popular in Catalonia as he was at this time. Congratulations were coming to him from all over the world. He and Isabella were accepted as the hero and heroine of this great victory for Christianity. He was to be henceforth known as Ferdinand the Catholic, and Isabella as Isabella the Catholic. Even Catalonia, which had for so long set itself against Ferdinand, now cheered him wherever he went.
But no doubt there were some who did not share the general opinion. Ferdinand came face to face with one as he left the hall of justice, and suddenly he found himself looking into the face of a fanatic, while a knife gleamed before his startled eyes.
‘Die . . . murderer!’ cried a voice.
Ferdinand fell forward, and there was a shout of triumph from the man who held up the bloodstained knife.
Isabella was with her children when she received the news. Her daughter, Isabella, covered her face with her hands; the Prince was as one struck dumb; and the little girls ran to their mother and clung to her in terror.
‘Highness, the King is being brought here to you. It was a madman outside the hall of justice.’
Isabella felt her heart leap in fear.
‘Not now,’ she prayed. ‘Not this. We have come through so much together. There is so much for us yet . . .’
Then she recovered her serenity.
She put the frightened children from her and said: ‘I will go to the King at once.’
She was at his bedside, for she was determined that no one should nurse him but herself.
She prayed constantly, but she did not neglect to nurse him during those days while his life was in danger.
The would-be assassin had been captured, and had suffered the most cruel torture; but he could not be made to confess that he had had accomplices.
There was one fact which emerged from the torture chamber; the man was a lunatic, for he declared that he was the true heir to the throne of Aragon and that he expected to gain this on Ferdinand’s death.
There came the day when Isabella knew that Ferdinand was out of danger and that this was not the end of their life together, as she had feared it might be. Outside the Palace the people were waiting for news. Never had Ferdinand been so popular in Catalonia as he was at this time. The people saw him as the hero of the reconquest, and they saw also a new life for themselves and their country through the greatness of their rulers.
Isabella was of Castile, and they had at first been suspicious of her; they believed that it was her careful nursing, her constant prayer, which had saved the life of Ferdinand.
The news was conveyed to them: ‘The King will live.’ And Isabella appeared on the balcony before the sickroom while the people shouted themselves hoarse with delight.
‘Isabella and Ferdinand! Ferdinand and Isabella!’ No longer for Castile, for Aragon, for Catalonia. But ‘Isabella and Ferdinand for Spain!’
She returned to Ferdinand’s bed. He was smiling at her, for he had heard the shouts outside the Palace.
‘It would seem,’ he said, ‘that they love us both with an equal fervour.’
‘They know,’ said Isabella, ‘that we are as one.’
‘It is true,’ said Ferdinand. ‘We are as one.’ And as he took her hand, he thought of the humiliation he had suffered when he had been forced to take second place in Castile; he thought of the women he had loved, so many of them, so much more accomplished in the arts of love than Isabella could ever be. But even as he considered them and all the differences of the past – and all those which no doubt were to come in the future – he knew that the most important person in his life was Isabella, and that in generations to come, when his name was mentioned, that of Isabella would be for ever linked with it.
She understood his thoughts and she was in complete harmony with them.
She said: ‘They are demanding the most painful death for your would-be assassin. It is to be in public that they all may see, that all may gloat over the agonies of one who might have caused the death of their beloved King.’
Ferdinand nodded.
She went on: ‘I have given orders that he shall be strangled first. Secret orders. They will see his body taken out. They will not know that he is past pain, for he has been greatly tortured. But now I would let him die in peace.’
Ferdinand restrained an oath. She had given orders in Catalonia . . . his province!
Again she read his thoughts, and for a moment that old hostility hovered between them.
Then she said: ‘Can you hear what they are shouting? It is “Ferdinand and Isabella. Isabella and Ferdinand . . . for Spain!”’