Joan, in stony immobility, dazed and silent, gave no indication that she understood the tremendous importance of her husband’s death; but courtiers and nobles, Castilians and Teutons alike, did not share her insensibility. Dismay fell upon the rapacious crew, fierce denunciations of poison,[[113]] scrambling for such plunder as could be grasped,[[114]] and dread apprehensions as to what would happen to them all when the King of Aragon should return. Joan had to be forcibly removed from the corpse; and for days remained shut up in a darkened room without speaking, eating, or undressing. When, at length, she learnt that the coffin had been carried to the Cartuja de Miraflores, near Burgos, she insisted upon going thither, and ordered an immense number of new mourning garments fashioned like nun’s weeds. Arriving at the church, she heard mass, and then caused the coffin to be raised from the vault and broken open, the cerecloths removed from the head and feet, which she kissed and fondled until she was persuaded to return to Burgos, on the promise that the coffin should be kept open for her to visit it when she pleased; which she did thenceforward every few days whilst it remained there.
The Flemish chronicler, whom I have quoted several times, gives a curious description of Joan’s jealous amorous obsession for her husband. Philip is represented as being libidinous to the last degree, as well as being the handsomest man of his time; whilst Joan herself is praised for her beauty, grace, and delicacy. ‘The good Queen fell into such jealousy that she could never get free from it, until at last it became a bad habit which reached amorous delirium, and excessive and irrepressible rage, from which for three years she got no repose or ease of mind; as if she was a woman possessed or distraught.... She was so much troubled at the conduct of her husband that she passed her life shut up alone, avoiding the sight of all persons but those who attended upon and gave her food. Her only wish was to go after her husband, whom she loved with such vehemence and frenzy, that she cared not whether her company was agreeable to him or not. When she returned to Spain, she would not rest until all the ladies that had come with them were sent home, or she threatened to make a public scandal. So far did she carry this mania, that it ended by her having no woman near her but a washerwoman, whom, at any hour that seized her caprice, she made to wash the clothes in her presence. In this state, without any women attendants, she kept close to her husband, serving herself like a poor, miserable woman. Even in the country she did not leave him, and went by his side, followed sometimes by ten thousand men, but not one person of her own sex.’[[115]]
The frantic jealousy of her husband during life, together with the knowledge that he was determined to confine her as a lunatic, whilst ruling her kingdom at his will, turned into gloomy misanthropy and rebellion at her fate at his death; and her refusal to sign the formal documents presented to her as Queen in the first days of her widowhood, made evident to the few nobles who kept their heads that some sort of government would have to be improvised, pending the return of Ferdinand from Naples. Juan Manuel, fiercely hated by every one, kept in the background; only hoping to save his life and some of his booty; but the stern old man in his coarse grey frock, to whom money and possessions were nothing, though, next to the Pope, he was the richest churchman in Christendom, Cardinal Jimenez, who perhaps was not taken by surprise by the opportune disappearance of Philip, had everything ready, even before the King died, for the establishment of a provisional government; and on the day of the death a meeting of all the nobles and deputies in Burgos confirmed the arrangements he had made. All parties of nobles were represented upon the governing council; but Jimenez himself was president, and soon became autocrat by right of his ability. Order was temporarily guaranteed, and all the members, in a self-denying ordinance, undertook not to try to obtain possession of the Queen or of her younger son, Ferdinand, who was in Simancas Castle,[[116]] the elder, Charles, being in Flanders. Joan, sunk in lethargy, refused to sign the decrees summoning Cortes; and the latter were irregularly convoked by the government. But when they were assembled, carefully chosen under Jimenez’s influence in favour of Ferdinand, Joan would not receive the members, until, under pressure, she did so only to tell them to go home and not meddle with government any more without her orders. Thus with a provisional government, whose mandate expired with the year 1506, a Queen who refused to rule, and already anarchy and rebellion rife in the South, Castilians could only pray for the prompt return of King Ferdinand, who, but a few short weeks before, had been expelled with every circumstance of insult and ignominy the realm he had ruled so long.
No entreaty could prevail upon Joan to fulfil any of the duties of government. Her father would see to everything, she said, when he returned; all her future work in the world was to pray for the soul of her husband, and guard his dead body. On Sunday, 19th December 1506, after mass at the Cartuja, Joan announced her intention of carrying the body for sepulture in the city of Granada, near the grave of the great Isabel, in accordance with Philip’s last wish.[[117]] The steppes of Castile in the depth of winter are as bleak and inhospitable as any tract in Europe. For scores of miles over tableland and mountain the snow lay deep, and the bitter blast swept murderously. The Queen cared for nothing but the drear burden that she carried upon the richly bedizened hearse; and with a great train of male servitors, bishops, churchmen, and choristers, she started on her pilgrimage on the 20th December.[[118]] The nights were to be passed in wayside inns or monasteries, and at each night’s halt the grisly ceremony was gone through of opening the coffin that the Queen might fondle and kiss the dead lips and feet of what had been her husband. At one point on the way, when after nightfall the cortège entered the courtyard of the stopping place, Joan learnt that, instead of being a monastery for men, it was a convent of nuns. Instantly her mad jealousy of women flared up, and she peremptorily ordered the coffin to be carried out of the precincts. Through the crude winter’s night Joan and her attendants kept their vigil in the open field over the precious dust of Philip the Handsome, until daylight enabled them to go again upon their dreary way. Such experiences as this could not be long continued, for Joan was far advanced in pregnancy; and when she arrived at Torquemada, only some thirty miles from her starting-place, the indications of coming labour warned her that she could go no further; and here, on the 14th January 1507, her youngest child, Katharine, was born.
There is no doubt whatever that Joan was throughout carefully watched by the agents of her father and Jimenez; and that, although ostensibly a free agent, any attempt on her part to act independently or enter into a political combination would have promptly checked. Her mental malady was certainly not minimised by her father or his agents; who were as anxious to keep her in confinement now as her husband had been. Nevertheless, when every deduction has been made, it is indisputable that in her morbid condition it might have been disastrous to the country to have allowed her to exercise full political power at this time, even if she had consented to do so; though if Ferdinand had not been, as he was, solely moved by his own interests, the unhappy woman might after his arrival have been associated with him in the government, and have retained, at least, her personal liberty and ostensible sovereignty.
Jimenez, in the meanwhile, kept his hand firmly on the helm of State. The great military orders, of which Ferdinand was perpetual Grand Master, were at his bidding, and enabled him to hold the nobles in check,[[119]] as well as the Flemish party, which claimed for the Emperor Maximilian the regency of Castile as representing the dead King’s son Charles. The great Cardinal, far stronger than any other man in Spain, thus kept Castile from anarchy until the arrival of Ferdinand in July 1508. His methods were, of course, arbitrary and unconstitutional; for the Queen either would not, or was not allowed to, do anything; but, at least, Jimenez governed in this time of supreme crisis, as he did at a crisis even more acute on the death of Ferdinand eight years later: and when Ferdinand eventually came from Naples everything was prepared for him to govern Castile as he listed for the ends of Aragon.
So far Ferdinand had triumphed both at home and abroad. The death of Philip made it necessary for Henry of England to change his attitude and court the friendship of the King of Spain. Katharine of Aragon, the neglected and shamefully treated widowed Princess of Wales, once more found her English father-in-law all smiles and amiability. To please him further she consented to try to bring about a marriage between Henry VII., recently a widower by the death of Queen Elizabeth of York, and poor Joan, languishing by her dead husband’s side at Torquemada. The proposal was a diabolical one; for Joan’s madness and morbid attachment to her husband’s memory had been everywhere proclaimed from the housetops: but Katharine of Aragon made no scruple at urging such a match, in order to improve her own position in England. Ferdinand gently dallied with the foul proposal. It was a good opportunity for gaining some concession as to the payment of Katharine’s long overdue dowry, without which Henry threatened to break off her match with his son and heir. So Ferdinand wrote in March 1507 from Naples, praying that the proposal to marry Joan should be kept very secret until he arrived in Spain, or Joan ‘might do something to prevent it’; but if she ever married again he promised that it should be to no one but to his good brother of England.
Whatever may have been Ferdinand’s real intention, and it would appear very unlikely that he would have permitted so grasping a potentate as Henry Tudor to gain a footing, as regent or otherwise, in Castile, his agent in England was quite enamoured of this plan for getting Joan out of the way in Spain. ‘No king in the world,’ he wrote on the 15th April 1507, ‘would make so good a husband (as Henry VII.) for the Queen of Castile, whether she be sane or insane. She might recover her reason when wedded to such a husband; but even in that case King Ferdinand would, at all events, be sure to retain the Regency of Castile. On the other hand, if the insanity of the Queen should prove incurable, it would perhaps be not inconvenient that she should live in England. The English do not seem to mind her insanity much; especially as it is asserted that her mental malady will not prevent child-bearing.[[120]]
Whilst Katharine in England was, as she says, ‘baiting’ Henry VII. for her own benefit with the tempting morsel of the marriage with Joan, and the King of France was offering the hand of a French prince, the Queen of Castile remained in lethargic isolation at Torquemada, though the plague raged through the summer in the over-crowded village. Joan had been told by some roguish friar that Philip would come to life again there, and she obstinately stayed on in the face of danger; saying when she was urged to go to the neighbouring city of Palencia, where there was more accommodation, that it was not meet that a widow should be seen in public, and the only move she would consent to make was to a small place called Hornillos, a few miles from Torquemada, in April.[[121]] She spoke little, and with the exception of listening to music, of which she was fond, she had no amusement; but it is evident from at least one incident that, however strange her conduct might be, she was not deprived entirely of her reason. Jimenez had obtained from her a decree dismissing all the Councillors appointed by Philip. These favourites of her husband were naturally furious, and demanded audience of the Queen at Hornillos. They were received by her in the church where the corpse of Philip was deposited. ‘Who put you into the Council?’ she asked them. ‘We were appointed by a decree issued and signed by your Highness,’ they replied. An angry exchange of words then took place, and Joan, turning to the Marquis of Villena,[[122]] who was behind her, told him that it was his smartness that brought such affront as this upon her. Then she declared in a resolute tone that it was her wish that every one should return to the office or position he held before she and her husband landed in Spain; so that when King Ferdinand arrived he should find everything as it used to be in his time. This, of course, was a victory for Ferdinand’s party, but it is clear that Joan knew what she was talking about on this occasion.[[123]]
At length, in the early autumn of 1507, came the happy news that King Ferdinand had landed at Valencia; and, accompanied by a large force, was entering Castile; being generally welcomed by nobles and people.[[124]] As soon as Joan learnt that her father had entered her realm, she caused a Te Deum to be sung in the church of Hornillos, and set forth to receive him, carrying always the corpse of her husband, and travelling only by night, as was now her custom. At a small place called Tortoles, about twenty-five miles beyond Valladolid, father and daughter met. The King approached, surrounded and followed by great crowds of nobles and prelates. He was met at the door of the house by Joan, attended by her half-sister and the Marchioness of Denia; and as he doffed his cap she threw back the black hood which she wore as a Flemish widow, and bared the white coif with which her hair was covered. Casting herself upon her knees she sought to kiss her father’s hand; but he also knelt and embraced her tenderly; leading her afterwards by the hand into the house. Every sign of dutiful submission was given by Joan to her father; and after several long private conferences between them, Ferdinand announced that she had delegated to him the government of Castile.