The management of the affair was intrusted to Don Gutierre de Cardenas and Don Alonzo de Palencia, the latter a gentleman attached to the Archbishop. They counted upon the Bishop of Osma, Don Pedro Montoya, to furnish one hundred and fifty lances, and Don Louis de la Cerda, the Count of Medinaceli, five hundred, which, with three or four hundred more to be procured from other sources, they deemed a sufficient escort to insure the safety of Don Fernando. But when Cardenas and Palencia reached Osma on their way to Zaragoza, they learnt to their consternation that the Bishop and the Conde de Medinaceli, with the usual levity of the Castilian nobles of that day, had deserted the party of Doña Isabel, and joined that of the master. The whole frontier was held by the powerful bands of Mendoza, who occupied with their retainers and connections all the castles along the line from Almazan to Guadalajara. Cardenas and Palencia became convinced that it was now impossible for Don Fernando to enter Castile openly, and that, unless they could succeed by some ingenious stratagem, the whole object, for which they had labored so long and so earnestly, would be utterly and perhaps forever defeated. They determined to make a bold push to overmatch the machinations of their enemies.
Concealing their immediate purpose, which they could easily do, by Cardenas passing for the servant of Don Alonzo, who frequently had occasion to go to and fro on business of the Archbishop's, they hastened forward to Zaragoza, and proposed to Don Fernando to repair to Valladolid in disguise and without attendance. Cardenas communicated to the prince the loving messages of Doña Isabel, with her maidenly complaints that he had not yet visited her in Castile, and her prayers that he would not abandon her in the perilous predicament wherein she was placed for his sake. Don Fernando instantly resolved to hasten to Valladolid at all hazards, on the wings of love and hope; having first sent forward Don Mosen Pero Vaca, a confidential servant of his father, the King of Aragon, on a simulated embassy to Don Henrique, so as to blind the eyes of the Mendozas, of Don Luis de la Cerda, and of the rest of their faction along the road to Valladolid.
Don Fernando, then, accompanied only by a few domestics, in whom he could repose implicit confidence, put himself under the guidance of Cardenas, and boldly passed the line which separates Aragon from Castile. Being obliged to stop to refresh themselves and their mules, they halted at a hamlet between Gomara and Osma, where they passed for mere traders, the prince busying himself to take care of the mules and horses, and to serve at the table, so as to divert all suspicion from his own person. After a multitude of difficulties and hair-breadth escapes, he safely arrived in the dead of night at Osma, where he found Don Pedro Manrique, Conde de Trevino, and three hundred lances secretly got together and prepared to escort him for the residue of his journey; the Manriques, the Rojas under the Conde de Castro, and other friends of Doña Isabel, being on the alert and in command of the road from Osma to Valladolid. Don Fernando was welcomed by the Conde de Trevino and his followers at Osma with cries of joy and flourish of trumpets, and conducted through the streets by the light of flaming torches, which blazed out upon the astonished sight of the inhabitants and the soldiers of the garrison, waking from their slumbers to witness the triumphant entry of Don Fernando. Cardenas pushed on with fresh horses to Valladolid, to give tidings of the approach of the party, who followed with all possible speed.
Meanwhile, the Archbishop and the Admiral had been secretly gathering in their friends, and introducing them by small parties into Valladolid, as we have already seen. When Don Gutierre arrived in the evening at the house of Vivero, he found them anxiously awaiting the coming of Don Fernando. Chacon was sent back to meet him, and conduct him into the house by the postern door from the garden, so as to avoid the risk of his being seen and recognized in the streets of the city. His followers halted at a village a few miles from Valladolid, while he rode in almost alone, to plight his faith as a prince and a knight to the fair Isabella. This interview took place the fourteenth day of October, 1469. Don Fernando returned to Dueañs the same night, and remained there until the eighteenth day of the month, when all the conditions of the intended marriage having been fully settled, he publicly entered Valladolid, in company with several lords of the houses of Manrique and Rojas, and was received without the gates by the Archbishop, the Admiral, and a brilliant cortege of the principal cavaliers of the city. Concealment was no longer necessary, and in the evening the espousals of the prince and princess were published and ratified before a great concourse of spectators, assembled in the house of Don Juan de Vivero. And there, on the following morning, the marriage ceremony was performed, and the nuptial benediction pronounced with feasts and rejoicings, it is true, but without the magnificence of display, the tournaments, the public dances, and the bull-fights, which the custom of the times and place required in honor of royal espousals.
It was, in fact, a STOLEN MATCH, to which the weak tyranny of the king, and the factious violence of the nobles, who possessed his good-will, drove the future lords of Spain, Italy, and the Indies. And distrust, as with ample cause we may, the virtue that is reared in the moral contagion of palaces, never yet did prince or subject take to his arms a more pure and lovely wife—loyal, affectionate, tender, and true, endowed with every queen-becoming grace mingled and tempered with the blander charms of humble life—than yielded up her maiden hand and heart on that occasion to her lover king.
If the gentle reader would appreciate the moral of our tale, let him summon up before his mind's eye the picture of Isabella of Castile, married by stealth in the hall of a private dwelling, and hardly with the solemnities of a common Spanish bridal; and then compare the scene with that of the same Isabel, in the overpowering glories and stupendous triumphs of her after life, as exhibited in the graphic, picturesque, and impressive pages of Washington Irving. It were idle for us to attempt a task accomplished to our hands by his magic pen. Why advance to break spears with him, when the challenger would thus but show his own weakness, without calling into display the strength of the challenged? Instead of this, we shall have recourse to that mine from which he has dug so many gems, borrowing a single trait to fill up our canvas from the naïve pages of the curate of Los Palacios:—
"The right noble and ever blessed queen, Doña Isabel, with the king Don Fernando her husband, reigned over the realms and lordships of Castile nine and twenty years and ten months; in the which time was the greatest exaltation, triumph, honor, and prosperity that ever chanced in Spain. Consider that, being the stainless daughter of such noble lineage and royal stock and ancestry, she entertained in her person so many other and excellent havings, the which our Lord adorned her withal, wherein she outshone and overtopped all the queens, whether of Christendom or of any differing law which did go before her, not only, I say, in Spain, but in all the world, of those whereof by their virtue and their graces, and by their wisdom and their power, the memory doth live and flourish. Who could worthily recount the grandeur, the magnificence of her court; the prelates, learned men, and venerable counsellors, who always accompanied her; the reverend fathers, the precentors, and the musical accordances in honor of divine worship; the solemnity of the masses and honors continually chanted in her palace; the knightly and martial nobles of Spain, dukes, masters, marquisses, and ricos hombres; the gallants and dames, the jousts and tournaments, the multitude of poets and troubadours and minstrels of every degree; the men of arms and war, ever in battle against the Moors, with all their artillery and engines of infinite variety; and the gold and silver and gems and pagan men brought from the Indies newly discovered, where the setting sun goes down behind the ocean sea! Spain was, in the time of these victorious kings, Don Fernando and Doña Isabel, more triumphant, sublimated, and potent, and more feared and honored, than ever before or since; and so of this right noble queen, the fame shall be cherished forever in the realms and lordships of Castile."
