“Yes, Ferdinand,” says Isabel, and she closes her missal and leans back in her chair; “that has been my dream. I will never wed with a stranger. Castile and Aragon must be one. No longer the unnatural strife between these two states of the same blood, and God has chosen me as the means.” She raises her blue eyes, and a radiant look spreads over her fair face, on which the open forehead and brows are as finely moulded as on her mother’s. Already she has all the command of a sovereign about her, spite of her youthful looks.
“But, Infanta, what will that villain Don Beltrano incite the king to do when he hears of this interview? They are in arms in the south, and troops throng the frontier. It is plain that they are alarmed at some news they have received. There is nothing in the world which could so much enrage the king as your affiancing with the Infante of Aragon.”
“I cannot help it,” answers Isabel. “No duty to my brother stands in the way. When the confederate lords, at Alfonso’s death, after his dethronement at Avila, offered me the throne, you know, Beatrix, that I refused it. While he lives, he is my king and my brother. Afterwards, the succession is mine, and I shall defend it to the death. Even if the Infante does not please me, if he agrees to my conditions I will marry him all the same. It is not for love I call him.”
“Not please your highness!” said Beatrix, not altogether so high-minded as her mistress, and looking at the matter in a more mundane light as she vividly recalls the image of the man she loves and is soon to marry, one of the stoutest partisans of Isabel. “I can understand hating such a fellow as the Master of Calatrava. I myself gave your Highness a dagger, rather than you should wed him; and would have seen you use it, too, with joy. But, Holy Virgin! Why not Ferdinand? He brings Aragon with him, and is reputed as a handsome prince, prudent and brave; then coming like a knight-errant to rescue his princess at midnight, disguised, a fugitive, in danger of his life.”
Isabel’s blue eyes fixed themselves on Beatrix, with a curious expression.
“The marriages of princes are not for love, amiga. It is possible that the Infante of Aragon may not consent to my conditions.”
“Oh! you will forget all that when you meet,” cries Beatrix, provoked by her coldness, so different to her own feelings. “You will have a greater power over him than protocols or decrees.”
As she spoke, the evening bells rang out sweetly from the towers of San Pablo. Already the grey pigeons had left their perch on the window-sill, and the twilight had darkened the ancient tapestry on the walls, leaving the outline of the two youthful figures defined against the light.
“He cannot be far from Valladolid now,” said Beatrix, listening to the bells, “if he left Dueñas as was agreed.” Isabel turned pale and sighed. There was a languid action of her hands that told of some internal struggle ill repressed, as the long fingers fell helplessly upon her brocaded robe. After all she was but sixteen. She was playing the part of a royal heroine, but she could not altogether silence the workings of her young heart. Spite of the great soul within her, what she was about to do came over her with dread. Not even her high resolve could reconcile her to that risk of marrying a man repugnant to her. Besides, her serious nature was wanting in that romantic element which, with another girl, would invest the unknown prince with every charm, because he was to appear in an auréole of mystery.
The strange phases of her life, which had formed her character to a tone of masculine decision, had not yet developed the softer qualities she possessed. Born in the midst of conspiracy, she had been the toy of each party in turn; now with her mother leading almost a cloistered life, then dragged into the fierce magnificence of an abandoned court. Forcibly affianced to any prince who suited the king’s politics, even refusing food and sleep to escape from these toils. Passionately urged by the archbishop to assume the crown on the death of her brother Alfonso, and firmly resisting a proposal she looked on as treason, she had already passed through the vicissitudes of a long and chequered career ere her own life had begun. Yet her innate purity had not suffered from contact with the vileness of others. The secrets of life were open to her. She knew all that should be hid from the mind of an innocent woman, but this only served to form her character to the most rigid virtue and to make of her the great sovereign she became. Isabel’s noble qualities had been developed under two stormy reigns—the feeble, humiliating government of her father Juan II., and the vicious violence and treachery of her brother Enrique. Since the death of her father she had never known what it was to be free. Secluded after the dethronement she had been summoned to Burgos as a pledge of the good faith of the king; but what she had seen there had so deeply disgusted her, that she entreated the Archbishop of Toledo, who had charge of her, to make her a home apart with her little court at Valladolid.