Old Court Life in Spain; vol. 2

“Shall an express be sent to his Highness?” asks the marquesa, endeavouring to master her grief.

“No, no!” cries Isabel, in a full voice, rousing to a momentary excitement. “The king is commanding the army in France. Let me not trouble him. He knows that I am ill. He might,” – she stops – a deep sigh escapes her, a look of inexpressible longing comes into her eyes, fixed on vacancy, as if, by the spell of her great love, she would draw him to her. Even to Beatrix she would not own the anguish she feels at his prolonged absence.

“Before I die,” she continues, “I must see the succession settled, and the king named Regent. All the documents are prepared. I should have liked to tell him so face to face. I will not command his presence, but I would that he had come to me as he was wont.”

Something in the pathetic insistence with which she spoke of him told an ill-assured mind. She dared not look at the marquesa, for she felt she would read her thoughts.

Had Ferdinand changed? There was agony in the thought, but it was there. That strange prescience, which so often accompanies the passing of life into death, had come to her with a revelation more bitter than the grave.

Worn with a life of constant hardship (in peace or war she was ever by his side) and broken by the loss of her children, although of the same age, she had become old while he was still comely enough to wed another wife. She knew it. Martial, erect, the fire of youth still gleaming in his eye, and his masterful spirit still unsubdued.

That others had pleased his fickle fancy she knew to her cost, and had suffered from pangs of silent jealousy. But that he would be absent from her dying bed did not seem possible.

So united had they been, the thought that he might survive her had never troubled her. Now it was a phantom she could not banish – Ferdinand alone!

Would another sit beside him in her place?

“We wait sorrowfully in the palace all day long,” writes the faithful chronicler of her life, Peter Martyr, “tremblingly waiting the hour when she will quit the earth. Let us pray that we may be permitted to follow hereafter where she will go. She so far transcends all human excellence that there is scarcely anything mortal about her. She can hardly be said to die, but to pass into a nobler existence. She leaves the world filled with her renown, and she goes to enjoy life eternal with God in heaven. I write this,” he says, “between hope and fear, while the breath is still fluttering within her.”

But the faithful pen of the secretary does not record the presence of Ferdinand at her side.

She was mercifully spared the knowledge of his inconstancy.

Already, during his campaigns, he had seen the young princess of eighteen, Germaine de Foix, cousin of the King of France, whom he married in such indecent haste, a volatile beauty, brought up at the dissipated Court of Louis XII. For her sake (had she borne him children) he would have severed the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, a greater insult, if possible, to the memory of the queen than his marriage.

Indirectly, this marriage was the cause of his death. It is the busy pen of Peter Martyr which records it.

In order to invigorate his constitution, he placed himself in the hands of quacks. A violent fever ensued, and (in 1515) he died at Granada.

The body of Isabel had already been brought there from the Castle de la Mota and interred within the Capilla Real.

Side by side they lie, the royal spouses united at least in death; the truant Ferdinand yearning for the presence of his first love, and at his own request laid beside her.

There they rest on two alabaster tombs, a marvel of exquisite workmanship, erected to their memory by their grandson, Charles V.

A frigid smile yet lingers on the queen’s marble lips as she turns her head lovingly towards Ferdinand, who, as in life, looks straight out, determined and warlike as he ever was. Both wear their crowns.

Beside them, on another monument, is their daughter Juana la loca (mad), her fickle Burgundian at her side. Their countenances are averted, their position as uneasy as was their life. Troubled lines wander over Juana’s form, and the comely head of Philip sinks on a marble pillow in selfish rest.

The four coffins lie in a narrow cell beneath; “a small place,” said their grandson, Charles V., “for so much greatness.”

A lofty Gothic portal separates the Capilla Real from the cathedral by a reja, or iron gates, elaborately worked.

No gilded canopy obscures the figures from the light, so royal is their simplicity, and when the radiance of the eastern sun lights up the vaulted ceiling, knitted into broad bands into bosses, leaves, and borders, and pictures, golden retablos and sculptured saints stand out on the subdued splendour of the walls, the effect is as a scene of actual history, enacted in what was once the great mosque of the Moors, conquered by the arms of these dead sovereigns (Los Reyes Catolicos) and converted into this Christian sepulchre, as a triumph to last as long as the world stands.

THE END

notes

1

The Balax of the Red King was given by Don Pedro after the battle of Navarrete. This is the same “fair ruby, great as a racket ball,” which Queen Elizabeth showed to Melville, the ambassador of Mary Queen of Scots, and which he asked her to bestow on his mistress, which she refused, and it is the identical gem which adorned the centre of the royal crown of Queen Victoria.

2

“To the memory of the greatest sinner who ever lived, Don Juan de Mañara.”