On one occasion the King and Queen had been entertaining the ambassadors of the Duke of Brittany at their country-house at Pardo. Returning to Madrid after three days’ hunting, they found on nearing the city that Beltran de La Cueva, gorgeously arrayed, was waiting lance in hand to challenge all who came by that road. This was a form of entertainment highly popular with the chivalry of the time; and the tiers of scaffolding erected for spectators were soon crowded.
Every knight, as he rode up, was summoned to tilt six rounds with the Mayordomo or to leave his left glove in token of his cowardice. If he succeeded in shivering three lances, he might go to a wooden archway, resplendent with letters of gold, and from there take the initial of the lady of his choice. This famous “Passage of Arms” lasted from morning till sunset; and thus to the satisfaction of the Court did Beltran de La Cueva maintain the cause of an unknown beauty, to whom rumour gave no less a name than that of royalty itself.
If the King had his suspicions, they did not hinder his pleasure in the spectacle; and he proceeded to celebrate the event by establishing a monastery on the site, to be called “San Jeronimo del Paso,” or “Saint Jerome of the Passage of Arms.” Such an origin for a religious foundation was to say the least of it bizarre; yet it compares favourably with Henry’s cynical appointment of a discarded mistress as abbess of a convent in Toledo, on the excuse that the said convent was in need of reform.
Little good could be expected from a Court whose rulers set such an example of licence and selfish pleasure; but, fortunately for Castile, her hopes for the future lay not in the idle throng that surrounded Henry IV. and Joanna, but in the old walled town of Arévalo. Here, since the death of John II., had lived his widow, Isabel of Portugal, and her two children, in an atmosphere rendered doubly retired by her own permanent ill-health.
“Her illness,” according to the chronicler, “was so grievous and constant that she could in no way recover”; and with conventional propriety he attributes the cause to grief at the loss of her husband. This may have been, though John II. was hardly the type of man to inspire une grande passion. It is more likely that her mind was already the prey of the burden of melancholy that became the curse of her descendants; and that the malady was aggravated by the uncertainty of her new position.
According to one of the royal chaplains Henry treated his half-brother and sister “with much love and honour and no less the Queen their mother.” This account, however, conflicts with Pulgar’s description of Isabel as “brought up in great necessity.” It is more than probable that the fortunes of the family at Arévalo varied with the policy or whim of the Marquis of Villena; and thus, in her most impressionable years, the little Princess learned her first lessons in the hard school of experience. Such a theory would explain the extraordinary discretion and foresight she displayed at an age when most girls are still dreaming of unrealities. If the contrast is not wholly to her advantage, and precocity is seldom charming, we must remember that only sheltered fruit can keep its bloom. What Isabel lost of childish softness, she gained in self-reliance and a shrewd estimate of the difference between true and false.
Though far enough removed from the succession to escape the flattery that had ruined her elder brother, she was early a pawn on the political chess-board, and by the age of six had made her début in the matrimonial market. Henry IV. and King John of Navarre were at that time eager to show their mutual love and confidence; and a double alliance was suggested that would make this patent to all the world. For Isabel was destined John’s favourite son, the five-year-old Ferdinand, while the latter’s sister Leonora was chosen as bride for the little Alfonso, Henry’s half-brother.
Amid all the turns of Fortune’s wheel that were to bring in search of Isabel’s hand now one suitor, now another, this first alliance alone was to reach consummation; yet few, versed in the changing politics of the day, could have believed it likely. The kings had sworn eternal friendship; but in little more than twelve months an event happened that made of their treaties and complimentary letters a heap of waste paper.
In 1458, Alfonso V. died at Naples leaving his newly acquired Italian kingdom to his illegitimate son Ferrante, and the rest of his dominions, including the island of Sicily, to his brother John. The latter was now in a far stronger position than ever before; he need not depend on Henry’s friendship; indeed his inheritance from past rulers was rather a policy of feud and aggression against the neighbouring kingdom, while the influence of his father-in-law, the Admiral of Castile, drew him in the same direction.
This Admiral, Don Fadrique Enriquez, was himself a descendant of the royal House of Trastamara; and his haughty and choleric nature found the dreary level of loyalty little to its taste. His sense of importance, vastly increased by his daughter’s brilliant marriage, revelled in plots of all sorts; and soon conspiracy was afoot, and he and the majority of Castilian nobles were secretly leagued with John of Aragon against their own sovereign. Even the Marquis of Villena consented to flirt with their proposals, in the hope of reaping some benefit; while his uncle, the Archbishop of Toledo, and his brother, Don Pedro Giron, Master of Calatrava, were amongst the leading members of the league.