All those dignitaries and prelates who took part in the conference at the archbishop’s are there also, to a man, gathered round the platform, to judge the king.
Beyond, a vast multitude spreads over the plain. The nation has been summoned and it has come, and great disappointment is expressed not to find also figures of the queen and Don Beltrano exposed for judgment, as well as of the king.
Each craft and profession is arrayed in the costume of its order, distinctive at that time. Monks and mendicant friars, Moorish sheikhs from Granada and belted knights stand shoulder to shoulder with ecclesiastics and learned professors, the military orders of Santiago and Calatrava in half-clerical costume, and estudiantes from Salamanca, the cockle-shell on their large hats.
Nor are the picturesque peasants wanting from the northern provinces with cloak and staff. Aragonese with hempen sandals, the heavy-mantled Castilian who dreads the cold, and the men of Leon who till the fields.
At the roll of the drum the troops march forward, the colours are lowered, and a solemn Mass is celebrated by the Archbishop of Toledo before the sham king, while martial bands thrill the souls of men.
Then to the blare of trumpets the young Infante Don Alfonso (only eleven years of age) is borne in—a tall, slender boy of the delicate type of his family, brother of Doña Isabel, who declines to appear.
His appearance is announced with deafening shouts, and countless voices welcome him as king.
The archbishop then advances in the midst of his tonsured chapter, the censers around him filling the air with a fragrance more intense than the wild thyme and lavender of the Huerta, and mounts the steps of the platform, the other nobles standing with drawn swords.
A loud trumpet-call sounds a long and melancholy note, prolonged into infinite echoes to command attention. Every voice is hushed, every eye directed to the platform, where a herald in his parti-coloured dress appears, and standing between two alguazils, proceeds to read the sentence of dethronement.
“Ye Castilians, Grandees, Ricoshombres, Prelates, Hidalgos, Esquires, and Citizens, hear, oh! hear! The King Don Enrique the Fourth, being unworthy of the crown, which he disgraces by many crimes, it now pleases God, by the agency of his confederated nobles, to punish him by a well-merited dethronement for the following reasons: