“She has left the castle” (at these words Isabel grows deadly pale), “and she refuses to return unless she can leave at once to join the archduke in Flanders.”
“Who attends her?” asks Isabel, speaking quickly.
“No one. She escaped alone. But her suite has been sent from the castle.”
“Now Heaven protect us!” cries the queen, greatly agitated. “Martyr, call to me here the Archbishop of Granada.”
“My dearest mistress,” says Beatrix, kneeling beside her and tenderly encircling her with her arms, “these fancies of the Infanta will pass. She is madly in love with the archduke when she is with him.”
“Alas! It is not returned,” interrupts the queen. “He only cares for the succession, not for her.”
The arras was now raised, and the dignified figure of Talavera, Archbishop of Granada, stood before the queen.
For years he had been her confessor, and to her death remained her devoted friend. Raising herself on her couch with difficulty, Isabel kissed the jewel which he wore in his episcopal ring, then sank back exhausted on the embroidered pillows at her back.
“I pray you, my Lord Archbishop,” she says in a low voice, “by the love you bear me and the king, to bring home to the castle the Infanta Juana, who has escaped. Tell her from me—to whom she will not listen in person—that it is her health that alone prevents her from joining her husband. As soon as she has recovered from her confinement she shall start, should the archduke still refuse to join her in Spain.”
Talavera stood before the queen, his eyes cast on the ground. He knew that she was sending him on a fruitless errand to Juana, who, short of main force, would obey no one. He knew how near her extravagance bordered on madness, and that this knowledge was breaking the queen’s heart, but the weakness in which he found her forbade his reminding her of it.