And now the great name of Albuquerque is heard for the last time. Faithful to the cause of Don Enrique as he had been to that of Don Pedro, he met his former master, at his particular request, at the ancient town of Toro, lying in the open expanse of plains between Salamanca and Zamora, in order to endeavour to negotiate better terms for his new master.
Of what passed between Don Pedro and his great minister there is no record, but the sudden death of Albuquerque immediately after the interview is not without suspicion of foul play.
The southern district of Spain, within the bounds of Andalusia, extending from Seville to Cadiz, is still a mystery as in days of yore. Great open alluvial plains, utterly treeless, stretch into boundless perspectives, the home of the wild bull in its pristine ferocity. The Guadalquivir flows onwards in a torpid tide among canals and open trenches down to the sea, a most unpoetic river in all but the name. All is grey, misty, and desolate, a “no man’s land,” to which even the waves of the Mediterranean bring no delight, for the shallow beach sends back the water so far it barely covers the sandy shore.
On these shores the old Continent of Europe seems to die out, to make place for the youthful splendour of Africa opposite, visible in the line of the picturesque Atlas range rising across the straits; old Europe worn out, and melting into the sea before the defiance of its stalwart rival.
Xeres de la Frontiera is the only town on this low marshy coast. The Xeres of that day—not famed for wine and commerce as in our time—was a small fortified place taken from the Moors, enclosed by walls; and precisely because the Xeres of that day was desolate and lonely, it was selected for the place of the queen’s imprisonment.
Blanche—oh! so changed! her young face drawn, her delicate cheeks marked with fine lines, her childlike eyes dim, her slight figure bowed as if by age, her flaxen curls streaked with grey, although she has scarcely reached the years of womanhood—is indeed an object of compassion! All hope gone, knowing that she must die. And so living day by day as the months roll on and she measures the dull routine of sunrise and sunset across those cruel plains, which cut her off from all humanity.
One image haunts her, the gallant young Infante who dared to love her. And from him her thoughts wander to his brother, El Caballero, who was about to send her to Navarre with an escort when he was surprised at Toledo, and is now almost as helpless as herself; in her enfeebled brain the lineaments of the two brothers become mingled, and the gentle Fadique seems to live again in the gracious Enrique, whom all men love.
What matter? She is doomed. Incapable of hate or love; no passion is left within her. Even the craving for liberty is gone. She feels she could not use it, were it hers; and thus she sits, day after day, on the summit of a castellated tower, under a low wall, hand in hand with Claire.
That she has loved or been loved seems so impossible, a feeble smile rises on her lips as she thinks of it. That she has been born to pomp and greatness is equally incredible in her abject condition. To hold a flower in her hand, to scent the perfume of herbs borne by the breeze, to watch the flight of sea-gulls which skim across the plain, to note the accidents of the seasons, golden autumn breaking into grey winter, then passing to the glad garments of the spring, on the shadowy outlines of the mountains of La Mancha, is to her mind as a never-ending wonder that the world should thus go on. It is she alone who is dead, while all nature lives triumphant!
The entrance of the old crone who performs such menial offices as she requires is a boon as something human, yet even she scowls at her with envy because she is a queen.