Spain for the Sovereigns - Plaidy Jean. Страница 62

The Infanta, who looked younger than her nineteen years, was tall and stately, rather pale and delicate but very lovely, full of grace and charm – the happy bride.

The bridegroom did not come to Seville, but the news had spread that he was young, ardent and handsome. In his place was Don Fernando de Silveira, who appeared at the side of the Infanta on all public occasions – a proxy for his master.

Yes, this was a time of rejoicing. The marriage was approved by all. It was going to mean peace for ever with their western neighbours, and peace was something for which everybody longed.

So they tried to forget their friends and relations who were held by the Holy Office. They danced and sang in the streets, and cried: ‘Long live Isabella! Long live Ferdinand! Long life to the Infanta!’

To go from one’s home to a new country! How often it had happened. It was the natural fate of an Infanta.

Does everyone suffer as I do? young Isabella asked herself.

But we have been so happy here. Our mother has been so kind, so gentle, so just to us all. Our father has loved us. Ours has been such a happy home. Am I now regretting that this has been so? Am I saying that, had we been a less happy family, I should not be suffering as I am now?

No. Any daughter should rejoice to have such a mother as the Queen.

They were dressing her in her bridal robes, and her women were exclaiming at her beauty.

‘The Prince Alonso will be enchanted,’ they told her.

But will he? she asked herself. Can I believe them?

She had heard certain scandal at the Court concerning her own father. He had sons and daughters whom she did not know. Her mother must have heard this, yet she gave no sign of it. How could I ever be like her? the Infanta Isabella asked herself. And if she does not satisfy my father, how could I hope to satisfy Alonso?

There was so little she knew, so much she had to learn; she felt that she was being buffeted into a world of new sensations, new emotions, and she was unsure whether she would be able to deal with them.

‘It is time, Infanta,’ she was told.

And she left her apartments to be joined by the seventy ladies, all brilliantly clad, and the hundred pages in similar magnificent attire, who were waiting to conduct her to the ceremony.

She placed her hand in that of Don Fernando de Silveira and the solemn words were spoken.

The ceremony was over; she was the wife of the heir of Portugal, the wife of a man whom she had never seen.

Out in the streets they were shouting her name. She smiled and acknowledged their applause in the manner in which she had been taught.

On to the banquets, on to the balls and fetes and tourneys – all given in honour of a frightened girl whose single prayer was that something would happen which would prevent her leaving the heart of the family she loved.

There was respite. All through the summer the festivities continued, and it was not until autumn that she rode out of Castile.

The people lined the roads to see her pass and cheer her.

It was said that Portugal had prepared to welcome her in a royal manner. They were delighted to receive her. She brought with her a larger dowry than that usually accorded to the Infantas of Castile, and it was said that she had such magnificent gowns which alone had cost twenty thousand golden florins.

And so, on she rode over the border, away from her old country into the new.

She was bewildered by the pomp which awaited her.

She saw one man standing by the throne of the King who smiled at her encouragingly. He was young and handsome, and his eyes lingered on her.

She thought: There is my husband. There is Alonso. And she averted her eyes because she was afraid that, out of her inexperience, she might betray her emotion.

She approached King John, and knelt before him, but he raised her up and embraced her. ‘Welcome, my daughter,’ he said. ‘We have long awaited your coming. I rejoice that you are safely with us.’

‘I thank Your Highness,’ she answered.

‘There is one who waits most impatiently to greet you! My son, who is also your husband.’

And there he was, Alonso – not the man she had at first noticed – young and handsome; and because she sensed that he also was a little nervous, she felt happier.

He embraced her before the Court and the people cried: ‘Long live the Prince and the Princess of Portugal!’

And so she came to happiness. Her mother had been right. If one grasped one’s duty firmly, one was rewarded. She knew she was particularly fortunate, because she had been given a young and handsome husband, a kindly gentle husband, who admitted that marriage alarmed him even as it alarmed her.

Now they could comfort each other, they could laugh at their fears. And out of the intensity of their relief in having found each other, was born a great affection.

Isabella wrote home of her happiness.

Her mother wrote of her intense joy to receive such glad news from her daughter.

All was well. The important link had been forged between two old enemies, and at no cost to the happiness of the Queen’s beloved daughter.

Now that she was away from her mother’s supervision, the character of the Princess began to change. She discovered a love of dancing, a love of laughter. This was shared by Alonso.

One day Isabella woke up to the realisation that she had begun to live in a way which she had not thought possible. She had realised that life could be a gay affair, that one need not think all the time of the saving of one’s soul.

‘We are young,’ said Alonso, ‘we have our lives before us. There is plenty of time, twenty years hence, for us to think of the life to come.’

And she laughed with him at what, such a short time ago, would have shocked her deeply.

She grew less pale; her cough worried her less, for she was spending a great deal of time out of doors. Alonso loved to hunt, and he was unhappy unless she accompanied him.

She understood that these months, since she had been the wife of Alonso, were the happiest she had ever known. It was a startling and wonderful discovery.

Her beauty was intensified. Many people watched her unfold. She was like a bud that opened to become a beautiful flower, slightly less fragile than had been expected.

‘You are beautiful,’ she was often told; and she had learned to accept such compliments with grace.

‘No one at Court is more beautiful than you,’ she was assured by Emmanuel, Alonso’s cousin, the young man whom she had noticed when she had first come to the Court.

‘When I arrived,’ she told him, ‘I thought you were Alonso.’

Emmanuel’s face glowed with sudden passion. ‘How I wish that had been so,’ he said.

Afterwards she said to herself that it was folly to expect such happiness to last.

A day arrived which began as other days began.

She awoke in the morning to find Alonso beside her . . . handsome Alonso who woke so suddenly and in such high spirits, who embraced her and made love to her and then said: ‘Come, I want to hunt while the morning is young. We will leave as soon as we are ready. Come, Isabella, it is a beautiful morning.’

So they summoned their huntsmen, mounted their horses and rode away into the forest.

Indeed it was a beautiful morning; the sun shone on them and they exchanged smiles and jokes as they rode along.

They were separated for a while in the hunt, so she did not see it happen.