In the meanwhile, in spite of the flourish of trumpets with which the betrothal had taken place, the French marriage hung fire. Gossip maintained that the Duke of Guienne’s interest in Joanna had been merely the result of pique at Isabel’s refusal; while Louis XI. had used it as a temporary expedient against his enemy, the King of Aragon. At any rate the French Prince was openly courting the heiress, Mary of Burgundy, when death cut short his hopes in May, 1472.
Various bridegrooms were now suggested for the Infanta Joanna; amongst them her own uncle the King of Portugal.
Henry IV. was at this time at Segovia, whose Alcayde, Andres de Cabrera, husband of Isabel’s lady-in-waiting, Beatriz de Bobadilla, had always been one of his faithful adherents. In the Alcazar was stored a considerable sum of money; and the Master of Santiago now advised the King to demand its surrender and also that of the fortress, hoping to get them into his own hands, as he had done with the Alcazar at Madrid. Cabrera, suspecting rightly a plot for his own ruin, stoutly refused; and his enemy, after stirring up in the town a rebellion which the Alcayde promptly quelled, left the city in disgust. Henry, who loved Segovia, remained behind, unable to make up his mind to any decisive action.
The favourite’s departure was the opportunity for which those inclined to Isabel’s interests had long been waiting; and Beatriz de Bobadilla urged her husband to effect a reconciliation between the King and his sister. This plan met with the approval of no less important a person than Pedro Gonsalez de Mendoza, Bishop of Siguenza, whose material position had been lately increased, not only by the Archbishopric of Seville, but also by receiving a long-coveted Cardinal’s hat. At the time of the Aragonese marriage the Mendozas had been amongst Isabel’s most formidable opponents, but their enforced surrender of the Infanta Joanna to the Master of Santiago after the French betrothal, had quite altered their views; and the Cardinal of Spain, as Pedro Gonsalez was usually called, now worked to secure Isabel’s accession, as the best means of ruining his rival.
Another person, who had set himself to negotiate an agreement, was the Papal Legate, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, by birth a Valencian. John of Aragon’s old enemy, Paul II. had died in 1471; and Sixtus IV., his successor, when dispatching Cardinal Borgia to Castile, in 1473, to demand a clerical subsidy, gave him at the same time a bull of dispensation, which legalized Ferdinand and Isabel’s marriage, and also affirmed the legitimacy of their daughter and her rights of inheritance.
Isabel’s prospects had considerably brightened, and a bold action on her part was to put them to the test. One day, Beatriz de Bobadilla, who had secretly kept her informed of the current state of affairs, disguised herself as a countrywoman and, mounted on an ass, rode out to the city of Aranda, where her mistress was living. She begged her to come to Segovia immediately; and, on a day arranged, Isabel and the Archbishop of Toledo appeared in the city before dawn and were received into the Alcazar. Henry was then in his hunting-box in the woods outside, but that evening he returned to the palace and saw his sister. With his usual impressionability he echoed the joy of all around him, and embracing her informed her of his goodwill and the pleasure her coming had given him. The next day they rode through the city together, his hand on her bridle-rein; and some little time afterwards Ferdinand, who had been hastily summoned, was reconciled to his brother-in-law.
Andres de Cabrera, delighted at the success of his hazardous scheme, arranged an elaborate dinner on the Feast of the Epiphany of that year, 1474, in order to celebrate the occasion; but unfortunately Henry, who was in delicate health, fell ill. Secret supporters of the Master of Santiago cleverly suggested that he had been poisoned, and that this had been the main object of the reconciliation. Henry, thoroughly alarmed, in spite of all his sister’s efforts to allay his fears, left Segovia, as soon as he was well enough to bear the journey, joining the Master of Santiago and the Infanta Joanna at Madrid.
All the old trouble and discord seemed destined to begin once more, but in reality the labours of both schemer and dupe were nearly at an end. Early in the autumn the Master of Santiago hastened to Estremadura to gain possession of a certain fortress, and there, on the eve of achieving his purpose, he fell ill and died.
Henry, though almost inconsolable at the news, transferred his affections to his favourite’s son, the Marquis of Villena, confirming him in all his father’s offices and titles and creating him Master of Santiago. It was to be almost the last of the many honours and gifts that he bestowed in the course of his long reign, for on December 11, 1474, a few weeks before his fiftieth birthday, he also died.
The same atmosphere of vacillation, in which he had moved in his life, enveloped his death-bed. When questioned as to the succession, the chronicler, Alonso de Palencia, declares that he equivocated, saying that his secretary knew what he wished; other writers that he confessed to a friar that the Princess Joanna was indeed his daughter, and that he left a will to this effect. Enriquez del Castillo, his chaplain and chronicler, makes no mention of Joanna’s name. Henry’s personal beliefs and wishes had availed little in his own day, and he may have guessed that they would carry no weight after his death. One at any rate was fulfilled, and he was buried, as he had asked, in the Church of Sancta Maria de Guadalupe, at the foot of his mother’s tomb.