What a tossing of feathers and flash of arms around! True lovers’ knots on shields and shoulders, helmets shaded with waving plumes, lances bound with gaily-embroidered scarves, the inlaid handles of swords and falchions sparkling with gems, and corselets and breastplates bound in with glittering girdles.
Enrique comes in war but he wears the dress of peace, as one at ease, certain of success. Let Pedro flaunt the morions, casques, shields, bucklers, and weapons of conflict, Enrique has already assumed the débonnaire air of a well-established monarch sure of his subjects’ love. (That he is a bastard with no legal right to the throne is forgotten in the general triumph.)
Graceful and polished in his manners as becomes El Rey Caballero, the personal charm he exercises over all who approach him is unbounded, especially when compared to the morose cynicism of Don Pedro, who mocks ere he destroys.
Sir Hugh Calverley and many English knights and esquires of the free companies which have overrun France in the late wars are with him during the present inactivity of the Black Prince at Bordeaux, and his old friend and loyal supporter, the Asturian noble, Don Jaime Alvarez, rules his counsels as heretofore. Pope Urban V., incensed at the blasphemies and profligacy of Don Pedro, subsidises and blesses him. Even the rough warrior Du Guesclin yields to the fascination of his address, an influence destined soon to lead him to the commission of a crime by which his good name is for ever tarnished.
No female element fills in the frame of this chivalrous court. He has a wife, her name casually occurs, but there all information ends. At all events, no woman takes a prominent part in his career, as with his brother Don Pedro.
Meanwhile the king, warned by his ministers that he is no longer safe in Seville, rides out of the gates guarded by a small troop of men-at-arms, commanded by the faithful Emanuel, and accompanied by his chancellor, Fernando de Castro, Don Martino Lopez de Cordova, Grand Master of Alcantara, Don Diego Gomez, Don Mem Rodrigues, a warlike captain who has taken the place of Don Juan de Mañara in his confidence, and some others.
You may count his adherents on your fingers they are so few. Even that pampered villain Garcia de Padilla has forsaken him since his sister’s death, and gone over to the winning side, and along with him are Orosco, Mendoza, and La Vega.
The three daughters of Maria de Padilla accompany him, young girls whose names leave no record on the page of history—Costanza married John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, son of Edward III., and thus established a claim, often asserted but never seriously entertained, to the throne of Castile; and Isabel, the younger, espoused his brother Edmund of Cambridge.
But, dearer than child or friend, Don Pedro carries with him his treasure and the famous ruby (Balax) of the Moors hid in his bosom.
The outlook is not cheerful. Spite of his constant boast of close alliance with the English, the Black Prince at Bordeaux as yet has made no sign. It is true that his daughter Costanza is at this time affianced to her cousin, the Infante of Portugal, and Don Pedro rides straight over the Sierra Morena to the frontier, certain of the protection of his uncle the king.