‘And who is this incomparable woman? Did he say?’

‘He did not. It is said that his honour forbade him to. The King was pleased. He said that Beltran de la Cueva’s gallantry had so impressed him that he would build a monastery which should be dedicated to St Jerome to celebrate the occasion.’

‘What a strange thing to do! To dedicate a monastery to St Jerome because a courtier flaunts the charms of his mistress?’

‘Your Highness should have seen this knight. He was as one dedicated. And the King was so impressed by his devotion to the unknown lady.’

‘And have you any notion who this unknown lady is?’

The women looked at each other.

‘Well?’ prompted Joanna.

‘Highness, all know that this knight is devoted only to one who could not return his love, being so highly placed. There could only be one lady at Court to answer that description.’

‘You mean... the Queen of Castile?’

‘Yourself, Highness. It is thought that the King was so pleased by this man’s devotion to yourself that he made this gesture.’

‘I am grateful,’ said Joanna lightly, ‘both to Beltran de la Cueva and to the King.’

Joanna felt that in some measure her dignity had been restored, and she was conscious of infinite gratitude towards Beltran de la Cueva.


* * *

Joanna had retired; she did not sleep. She knew that very soon the man who was clearly asking to become her lover would be standing below her window.

It would be so easy. She need only give one little sign.

Was it dangerous? It would be impossible to keep such an affair entirely secret. It seemed that there were few actions of Kings and Queens which could be safe from the light of publicity. Yet he had made that magnificent gesture for her.

Moreover she had a notion that the King would not object to her taking a lover. Henry wanted to go his own promiscuous way, and she believed that what had irritated him in his first wife was her virtue. To a man such as Henry the virtue of one whom he was deceiving could be an irritation. What if the rumours were true and Henry was sterile? Would she be blamed as Blanche had been? Henry would be more likely to keep her as his wife if she remained charming and tolerant in spite of his scandalous way of life.

There was another point; she had always been aware of her own sexual needs. The second Queen of Henry of Castile was quite different from the first.

She felt reckless as she went slowly but deliberately towards the window.

The night was dark and warm, soft with the scent of flowers. He was standing there as she had known he would be, and the sight of him excited her. None could say she would demean herself by taking such a lover. He was surely not only the handsomest but the bravest man at Court.

She lifted a hand and beckoned.

She could almost feel the waves of exultation which flowed from him.


* * *

Beltran de la Cueva was well pleased with himself, but he was too clever not to understand that this new path on which he was embarking was full of dangers.

The Queen had attracted him strongly since the time he had first seen her, and it had been one of his ambitions to make her his mistress; but he knew that his advancement would have to come from the King. He was pondering now how he could continue in the King’s good graces while at the same time he enjoyed his intimacy with the Queen.

It was an odd state of affairs, since he was hoping to enjoy the King’s favour while he was the lover of the Queen. But Henry was a meek husband; he was a man who, while devoting himself to the lusts of the flesh, liked to see those about him acting in like manner. He was not one to cherish the virtuous; they irritated him, because he was a man with a conscience which he was trying to ignore, and the virtuous stirred that conscience.

The future was hopeful, thought Beltran de la Cueva. He really did not see why he should not profit doubly from this new relationship with the Queen.

It was impossible to keep it secret.

The Queen had invited him to her bedchamber, and it was inevitable that one of her women would discover that these nightly visits were taking place; and one woman would pass on the secret to another, and sooner or later it would become Court gossip.

He hid his anxiety from the Queen.

He told her in the quiet of her bedchamber: ‘If the King should discover what has taken place between us, I do not think my life would be worth very much.’

Joanna held him to her in a gesture of mock terror. It gave an added charm to their love to pretend it was dangerous.

‘Then you must not come here again,’ she whispered.

‘Do you think the fear of sudden death would keep me away?’

‘I know you are brave, my love, so brave that you do not consider the danger to yourself. But I think of it constantly. I forbid you to come here again.’

‘It is the only command you could give me which I would not obey.’

Such conversations were stimulating to them both. He enjoyed seeing himself as the invincible lover; her self-esteem was reinstated. To be so loved by one who was reckoned to be the most attractive man at Court could make her quite indifferent to the love affair between her husband and maid of honour.

Moreover she had heard that Henry was now dividing his attentions between Alegre and another woman of the Court; and this was gratifying.

Henry must have heard of her own attachment to Beltran, and he showed not the slightest rancour; in fact he seemed a little pleased. Joanna was delighted with this turn of events. It showed that she had been right when she had decided that, if she allowed Henry to take his mistresses without a reproach from her, he would raise no objection if she occasionally amused herself with a lover.

A very satisfactory state of affairs, thought the Queen of Castile.

Beltran de la Cueva was also relieved. Henry had become more friendly than ever with him. A fascinating situation, he reassured himself, when he might expect advancement through the Queen and the King.


* * *

Meanwhile the little girl was growing up in the Palace at Arevalo.

When she looked back she thought pityingly of that Isabella who had lacked her Ferdinand, for Ferdinand had become as real to her as her brother, her mother or anyone within the Palace. Occasionally she heard scraps of news concerning him. He was very handsome; he was the delight of the Court of Aragon; the quarrel between his father and Ferdinand’s half-brother was all on account of Ferdinand. It was a continual regret to the royal House of Aragon that Ferdinand had not been born before Carlos.

Often when she was in a dilemma she would say to herself: ‘What would Ferdinand do?’

She talked about him so much to Alfonso that her young brother said: ‘One would think he was really here with us. No one would believe that you had never seen Ferdinand.’

Those words had their effect on Isabella. It was almost a shock to have it brought home to her that she had never seen Ferdinand. She believed too that she had departed from her usual decorum by talking of him so much. She must remedy that.

But if she did not talk to him, that did not stop her thinking of him. She could not imagine life without Ferdinand.

Because of him she determined to be a perfect wife, a perfect Queen, for she believed that one day Ferdinand would be King of Aragon in spite of his brother Carlos. She mastered the art of the needle and was determined not only to become an expert in fine needlework but to be a useful seamstress as well.

‘When I am married to Ferdinand,’ she once told Alfonso, ‘I shall make all his shirts. I shall not allow him to wear one that is made by another hand.’

She was interested in affairs of state.

She was no longer a child, and perhaps, when she was fifteen or sixteen, she would be married. Ferdinand was a year younger, which could cause some delay, for she would be the one to wait for him to reach a marriageable age.

‘Never mind,’ she consoled herself, ‘I shall have a little longer to perfect myself.’

Now and then she heard news of her half-brother’s Court. Henry was a very bad King, she feared, and her mother had been right, no doubt, to insist that herself and her brother should go away and live like hermits. This was the best way to prepare herself for marriage with Ferdinand.

As she had even as a very small child, she listened and rarely interrupted when she heard the conversation of grownup people; she tried to hide her interest, which was the surest way of making them forget she was present. One day she heard a great deal of whispering. ‘What a scandal!’

‘Who ever heard of such behaviour by an Archbishop!’ ‘And the Archbishop of St James at that!’ Eventually she discovered what this misdemeanour of an Archbishop had been. It appeared that he had been so struck by the charms of a young bride that he had attempted abduction and rape as she left the church after her marriage. The comments on this scandal were so illuminating. ‘What can one expect? It is merely a reflection of the manners of the Court. How can the King censure the Archbishop when he behaves equally scandalously? You have heard, of course, that his chief mistress is the Queen’s own maid of honour. They say she keeps an establishment which is as splendid as that of the Queen, and that people such as the Archbishop of Seville seek her favour.’

‘It is not as though she is the King’s only mistress. The latest scandal is that one of his ladies wished to become an abbess, if you please! And what does our loving King do? He dismisses the pious and high-born abbess of a convent in Toledo and sets up his paramour in her place. It is small wonder that there are scandals outside the Court when they so blatantly exist inside it.’