* * *

Alfonso of Portugal had arrived in his own country. Like most of his ventures, his arrival was ill-timed. As he set foot on the shores of his native land two items of news were brought to him, both of them disturbing.

His son John had been crowned King of Portugal five days before; and Pope Sixtus IV had been induced by Isabella and Ferdinand, and the conduct of Alfonso himself, to withdraw the dispensation which he had previously given to make the marriage between Alfonso and Joanna possible.

‘What an unhappy man I am,’ mourned Alfonso. ‘You see, my friends, the hand of God is turned against me. I promised myself that I would return to my country, that I would marry the Princess Joanna, that I would rule more wisely than I have in the past. You see, I am not to marry nor to rule. What is left to me? Oh, why did I allow myself to be dissuaded from living the monastic life! What is left to me . . . but that!’

He travelled to Lisbon, and he felt that, as he passed through the towns, people watched him furtively. They did not know how to receive him. He was a king and yet not a king. He had brought poverty to Portugal with his wild enterprises; he had brought more than poverty – humiliation.

His son John received him with affection.

‘You are the King of Portugal now,’ said Alfonso, kissing his hand. ‘You take precedence of your father. I was wrong to have come back to Court. I think I shall soon be leaving it.”

John answered: ‘Father, if it were possible to retrace our steps, would you have kept the crown for yourself?’

Alfonso looked sadly at his son. ‘There is no place at Court for a king who has abdicated. He only makes trouble for his successor.’

‘Then what will you do, Father?’

‘I think the monastery is the only answer.’

‘You would not long be happy in a monastery. The novelty would soon disappear, and you have been used to such an active life. How could you endure it?’

‘I should learn to live a new life.’

‘Father, you regret abandoning the crown to me, do you not?’

‘My son, I wish you all success.’

‘There comes a day when a son should take the crown from his father, and that is when his father is in his tomb.’

‘What do you mean, John?’

‘I mean, Father, that as you gave your crown to me, I now abdicate and give it back to you. My time to wear it has not yet come. I trust it will not come for many years.’

Alfonso smiled at John with tears in his eyes.

John felt relieved. He had been alarmed when his father had bestowed the crown upon him. He considered what often happened when there were two kings with only one crown between them. His father had abdicated, but there would almost certainly arise a faction which desired to put him back on the throne, whether he wished it or not.

John was happier waiting to inherit the crown on his father’s death than wearing it while he was still alive.

So Alfonso forgot his humiliating adventure in France and accepted the crown at the hands of John.

As for the people of Portugal, they had grown accustomed to the eccentricities of their King, and after a while they ceased to talk of the two abdications.


* * *

Alfonso sent for the Princess Joanna.

She was growing into a charming young woman, and it distressed him that Sixtus had withdrawn the dispensation.

‘My dear,’ he said, taking her hand and making her sit beside him, ‘how very unsettled life is for you.’

‘I am learning to be happy here, Highness,’ Joanna told him.

‘I am glad. But I cannot be happy while our marriage is delayed.’

‘Highness, we accept what is.’

‘Nay, my dear, we will not accept it. We will marry. I am determined on that.’

Joanna drew back in alarm. ‘We could not,’ she said, ‘without the dispensation.’

‘The dispensation!’ cried Alfonso. ‘Sixtus declares that he withdrew it because we did not give him the true facts. We know how much truth there is in that! He withdrew it because Isabella and Ferdinand insisted that he should; and they are supreme in Castile . . . at the moment.’

‘Yes,’ said Joanna, ‘the people accept Isabella as their Queen. They want no other.’

‘They are successful at the moment,’ said Alfonso. ‘But remember I say at the moment. This does not mean that they will always be so.’

‘We have tried,’ said Joanna, ‘and we have failed.’

‘My dear, your future husband never accepts failure. I have a plan.’

‘Not . . . not to go into Castile again?’ stammered Joanna.

‘We have failed once. But he wins who is successful in the last battle. That is the important one, my dear.’

‘You could not thrust the people of Portugal into war again.’

The dreamlike expression was creeping over Alfonso’s face.

‘We must fight,’ he said, ‘we must fight for the right.’


* * *

Ferdinand had returned from Aragon, and Isabella had prepared a banquet to welcome him.

She had wished it to be an elaborate feast. Not that Ferdinand was given to excessive eating or drinking any more than she was; not that he would care to see so much money spent, any more than she would; but he would appreciate the fact that his return was of such importance to herself and Castile.

Isabella carefully watched the expenditure of the treasury, but she was the first to admit that there were occasions when it was wise to spend; and this was one of them.

Ferdinand looked well, but she noticed a change in him. He was experiencing mingling anxiety and excitement. She felt she understood. His father’s health must be giving him that cause for anxiety, while it gave him equal cause for excitement.

Ferdinand was fond of his father; he would never cease to be grateful to him; but at the same time King John’s death would make Ferdinand King of Aragon; and, once that title was bestowed upon him, he would feel that he could stand in equality beside Isabella.

Isabella knew that all Ferdinand’s emotions must be mingled with his love of possessions, so that even the death of a beloved parent could not be entirely deplored if it brought him a crown.

When she had received him and they were at last alone she said to him: ‘And your father, Ferdinand? How fares your father?’

‘He is pleased with what we have done here in Castile; but he is ailing, I fear. He forgets that he is nearly eighty-three. And I think we forget it too.’

‘He has caused you to worry, Ferdinand.’

‘I cannot help feeling that his end is near.’

‘Yet it is largely due to him that this treaty of St Jean de Luz, between ourselves and the French, has been made.’

‘His mind will be active till the end, Isabella. But I fear I may never see him again.’

‘Come, Ferdinand, I will call our daughter. She will turn your thoughts from this melancholy subject.’

But even as Isabella called for her daughter she knew that the subject was not an entirely melancholy one; and the thought disturbed her.


* * *

It was early in the following year when the news came from Aragon.

The fierce winds of January, sweeping across the plain from the Guadarramas, penetrated the Palace, and in spite of huge fires it was difficult to keep it warm.

As soon as the messenger entered his presence, Ferdinand knew the nature of the news he had brought. It was evident, in the man’s attitude as he presented the message, that he was not merely in the presence of the heir to the throne but in that of the monarch himself.

The colour deepened in Ferdinand’s bronzed cheeks.

‘You bring news of the King of Aragon?’

‘Long live Don Ferdinand, King of Aragon!’ was the answer.

‘It is so?’ said Ferdinand, and he drew himself up to his full height while he tried to think of his sorrow and all that the loss of one of the best friends he could ever have would mean to him. He turned away as though to hide his emotion. But the emotion was not entirely grief, and he did not want the man to see how much it meant to him to have inherited the throne of Aragon.

He turned back and put his hand over his eyes. ‘I pray you leave me now,’ he said quietly.

He waved his hand, and those who had been with him retired also.

He sat down at a table and buried his face in his hands. He was trying to think of his father, who had schemed for him – murdered for him – and all those occasions when John of Aragon had given him advice and help. He remembered his father at his mother’s bedside when she had been afraid because she believed that the ghost of Carlos, Ferdinand’s murdered stepbrother, had been there at the bedside. Carlos had died, it was generally believed, at the hands of his father and stepmother, so that their son Ferdinand might find no one to stand in his way to the throne.

This man was dead now. Never again could Ferdinand turn to him for guidance. The father who had loved him, surely as few were loved, was now no more. Every action of his had been for the advancement of Ferdinand; not only was Ferdinand his idolised son but the son of the woman whom he had loved beyond all else in the world.

Even in dying he gave Ferdinand a crown.

Isabella had heard the news and came in haste to the apartment.

He glanced up as she approached. She looked grave; and he thought then that there could not be a woman in the world who disguised her feelings as successfully as Isabella.

She knelt at his feet; she took his hand and kissed it. She was offering him solace for the loss of his father and at the same time homage to the King of Aragon.