HE Grand Master Don Fadique was not with his brother Enrique. In the first moment of his flight from Valladolid he had crossed the frontier into Portugal.
There, among goatherds and shepherds, for awhile he lay concealed, and when reflection came to him in this solitude, his conscience sorely pricked him for his disloyalty to the king. Whatever punishment his brother and sovereign inflicted on him he felt would be his due. It was not that he mistook Don Pedro’s mind in his treatment of the Lady Blanche, nor did his love and pity for her suffer any diminution, but he could not rid himself of the conviction that he had been a traitor. Blanche’s innocence alone had preserved him from a crime.
His upright and loyal nature revolted against the thought, and in his flight, as he struck the rowels into the glossy sides of the sorrel jennet on which he was mounted, causing it to rear and prance, he felt he could not put distance enough between himself and the dear object of his love.
Poor Blanche! Sweet Blanche! Where was she now? How fared it with her? Did she love him still? And then he checked himself for these guilty thoughts, and drawing from his doublet his jewelled rosary, he vainly tried to drown his thoughts in prayer.
Arrived within the strong fortress of Coimbra, on the coast of Portugal, he heard that his brother Enrique was advancing, at the head of an army, on Toledo, while Don Pedro lingered inactive at Seville. This seemed most strange!
There were rumours that he was waiting for the advance of the English to support him against the French king, furious at the imprisonment of Blanche in the castle of Talavera on the Tagus.
At length a royal messenger arrived at Coimbra direct from the king, an honourable messenger, wearing the noda and banda, the bearer of a letter from Don Pedro.
“Come to Seville,” he wrote, “dear brother, and let us live at peace. I am about to hold a tourney and tilt of reeds on the plains of the Guadalquivir, near the city, and I can ill lack the absence of the Grand Master of Santiago among my knights. A friendly greeting to you, and a safe conduct on the road. Your quarters are at the Alcazar at Seville, from whence I write.—Pedro.”
“And I will go!” cried Don Fadique. “It may perhaps give me the occasion to help the queen. Perhaps Pedro has come to a better mind; he changes suddenly. Or it may be that at this time of risings and rebellions, he may desire the support of the knights of Santiago and the presence of their Grand Master.”
Those of his friends and attendants at Coimbra strove vainly to dissuade him from putting faith in the friendship of the king. It was, at best, they represented, a rash resolve, especially to go to Seville and the Alcazar. If he would join him, let them meet in the open camp, not put himself into danger within a palace inhabited by Maria de Padilla.