Виктория Холт - Daughters of Spain

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?’

Tomás de Torquemada lay on his pallet breathing heavily. His gout was a torture and he was finding it increasingly difficult to move about.

‘So many things to do,’ he murmured. ‘So little time in which to do them.’ Then because his words might have seemed like a reproach to the Almighty, he murmured: ‘But Thy will be done.’

He thought often. of Ximenes, Archbishop of Toledo, who, he told himself, might one day wear the mantle of Torquemada. There was a man who he believed would one day overcome carnality to such an extent that he would, before his end, do as great a work as that which had been done by himself.

Torquemada could look back on the last thirty years with complacence. He could marvel now that it was not until he was fifty-eight years of age that he had emerged from the narrow life of the cloister and had begun to write his name in bold letters in the history of his country. His great achievements were the introduction of the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews.

He exulted when he remembered this. Alas, that his body was failing him. Alas, that he had his enemies. He wished that he had seen more of this man Ximenes. He believed that such a man could be trusted to guide the Sovereigns in the way they should go, that in his hands could safely be placed the destiny of Spain.

‘I could have moulded him,’ he murmured. ‘I could have taught him much. Alas, so little time.’

He was weary because he had just taken his leave of the chief Inquisitors whom he had summoned to Avila that he might give them the new instructions, in the form of sixteen articles, which he had compiled for the use of the Inquisition. He was continually thinking of reforms, of strengthening the organization, making it more difficult for sinners to elude the alguazils.

He believed some eight thousand sinners against the Church had been burned at the stake since that glorious year of 1483, when he had established his Inquisition, until this day when he now lay on his painful pallet wondering how much longer was left to him.

‘Eight thousand fires,’ he mused. ‘But there were many more brought to judgement. Somewhere in the region of one hundred thousand people were found guilty and suffered the minor penalties. A good record.’

He was astonished that a man such as himself should have enemies within the Church, and that perhaps the greatest of these should be the Pope himself.

How different it had been when the easy-going Innocent VIII had worn the Papal crown! Torquemada did not trust the Borgia Pope. There were hideous rumours in circulation regarding the life led by Roderigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI. He had his mistresses, it was said, and had a family of children of whom he was very proud and on whom he showered the highest honours.