Looking about him for an ally, Henry’s glance lit naturally on Charles of Viana, whose disputes with his father had reached a stage beyond the chance of any peaceful settlement. Navarre, always a prey to factions as irreconcilable as Montagues and Capulets, had broken into civil war on the advent of Queen Joanna as regent; the powerful family of the Agramonts welcoming her eagerly; while the Beaumonts, their rivals, out of favour at Court and wild with jealousy, called hourly upon Charles to avenge their wrongs and his own. His mother’s will, leaving Navarre to her husband during his lifetime, had, they declared, been made null and void by the King’s subsequent remarriage. Not only was it the duty of a son to resist such unlawful tyranny, but it was folly to refuse with imprisonment or a poison cup lurking in the background.
The latter argument was convincing; but never was rebellion undertaken with a heavier heart. The Prince of Viana was a student and philosopher who, like the Clerk of Oxenford, would have preferred a shelf of Aristotle’s books at his bed’s head to the richest robes, or fiddle, or psaltery. The quiet of a monastery library, with its smell of dust and parchment, thrilled him more than any trumpet-call; and he would gladly have exchanged his birthright for the monk’s garb of peace. Fortune willed otherwise, laying on his shoulders in pitiless mockery the burden of the man of action; and the result was the defeat that is the usual reward of half-heartedness.
His uncle’s Court at Naples proved a temporary asylum for him in his subsequent enforced exile; and also the island of Sicily, where he soon won the affection of the people, and lived in happiness, till Alfonso’s death awoke him rudely from his day-dreams. He was overwhelmed by fear for his own future; though, had he been a different man, he might have wrested away the sceptre of Sicily. In Aragon itself public opinion had been growing steadily in his favour, and not only in Navarre were there murmurs at his absence, but up and down the streets of Barcelona, where the new King was far from popular, and his haughty Castilian wife an object of dislike.
Prudence dictated to King John a policy of reconciliation; and after prolonged negotiations the exile returned; but the cold forgiveness he received from his father and stepmother for the wrongs they had done him was in marked contrast to the joyous welcome of the nation. No outward ceremony of a loving father pardoning a prodigal son could mask the lack of confidence that still denied the Prince his recognition as rightful heir, and drove him to enter into a secret alliance with Henry IV. of Castile.
As a result of these negotiations, a marriage was arranged between Charles and the Infanta Isabel. That the suggested bride was only ten and the bridegroom nearing forty was a discrepancy not even considered; and the messengers, who went to Arévalo to report on the appearance of the Princess, returned to her suitor, as the chroniclers expressed it, “very well content.” Far different were the feelings of the King of Aragon, when he learned of the intended match from his father-in-law, the Admiral of Castile. Isabel had been destined for his favourite son, and, in spite of the conspiracy to which he had lent his aid, this alliance still held outwardly good. It did not need the jealous insinuations of his wife to inflame afresh his hatred of his first-born; and the Prince of Viana soon found himself in prison, accused of no less a crime than plotting against his father’s life.
Unfortunately for King John, popular belief ran in a contrary direction, and his son’s release was soon demanded by all parts of the kingdom. In Barcelona, the citizens rose, tore down the royal standard and took the Governor prisoner. Revolt flamed through the land; but even more alarming was the sudden declaration of war by Henry IV., who, taking advantage of the King of Aragon’s embarrassments, hastily dispatched a force to invade Navarre, where the Beaumonts were already in the field.
It was a bitter moment for King John. Realizing his critical position, he agreed to his son’s release; and Charles of Viana passed in triumph to Barcelona. For once, almost without his intervention, Fortune had smiled on him; but it proved only a gleam before the final storm. Three months after he had been publicly proclaimed as his father’s heir, the news of his sudden illness and death fell on his supporters with paralysing swiftness.
Nothing, on the other hand, could have been more opportune for King John and his Queen; and their joy can be gauged by the haste with which they at once proclaimed the ten-year-old Ferdinand heir to the throne, demanding from the national Cortes of the three kingdoms the oath they had so long denied his elder brother. Yet Queen Joanna’s maternal ambitions were not to be satisfied by this easy assumption of victory. Charles of Viana dead was to prove an even more potent foe than Charles of Viana living.
Gentle and unassuming, yet with a melancholy dignity that accorded well with his misfortunes, he had been accepted as a national hero by the impulsive Catalans; and after death they translated the rather negative qualities of his life into the attributes of a saint. Only the halo of martyrdom was required to fire the general sympathy into religious fervour; and this rumour supplied when it maintained that his tragic end had been due to no ordinary fever, but to poison administered by his stepmother’s orders.
The supposition was not improbable; and the inhabitants of Barcelona did not trouble to verify the very scanty evidence for the actual fact. They preferred to rest their accusations on the tales of those who had seen the Prince’s unhappy spirit, like Hamlet’s father, walking abroad at midnight demanding revenge. Soon his tomb became a shrine for pilgrims, and there the last touch of sanctity was added. He who in life had suffered acutely from ill-health became in death a worker of miracles, a healer whom no absence of papal sanction could rob of popular canonization.