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Jean Plaidy

Castile for Isabella

CHAPTER I

FLIGHT TO AREVALO

The Alcazar was set high on a cliff from which could be seen the far-off peaks of the Guadarrama Sierras and the plain, watered by the Manzanares River. It was an impressive pile of stone which had grown up round what had once been a mighty fortress erected by the Moorish conquerors of Spain. Now it was one of the Palaces of the Kings of Castile.

At a window of this Palace, a four-year-old child stood looking towards the snow-topped peaks of the distant mountains, but the grandeur of the scenery was lost to her, for she was thinking of events inside the granite walls.

She was afraid, but this was not apparent. Her blue eyes were serene; although she was so young, she had already learned to hide her emotions, and fear above all must be kept hidden.

Something extraordinary was happening in the Palace, and it was something quite alarming. Isabella shivered.

There had been much coming and going in the royal apartments. She had seen the messengers hurrying through the patios, stopping to whisper with others in the great rooms and shake their heads as though they were prophesying dire disaster, or wearing that excited look which, she knew, meant that they were probably the bearers of bad news.

She dared not ask what was happening. Such a question might bring a reproof, which would be an affront to her dignity. She must constantly remember her dignity. Her mother had said so.

‘Always remember this,’ Queen Isabella had told her daughter more than once.

‘If your stepbrother Henry should die without heirs, your little brother Alfonso would be King of Castile; and if Alfonso should die without heirs, you, Isabella, would be Queen of Castile. The throne would be yours by right, and woe betide any who tried to take it from you. ’ Little Isabella remembered how her mother clenched her fists and shook them, how her whole body shook, and how she herself wanted to cry out, ‘Please, Highness, do not speak of these things,’ and yet dared not. She was afraid of every subject which excited her mother, because there was something terrifying in her mother’s excitement. ‘Think of that, my child,’ she would proceed. ‘Indeed, you must never forget it. And when you are tempted to behave in any manner but the best, ask yourself: Is this worthy of one who could become Queen of Castile?’

Isabella always said on such occasions: ‘Yes, Highness, I will. I will. ’ She would have promised anything to stop her mother shaking her fists, anything to drive the wild look out of her mother’s eyes.

And for this reason she always did remember, for when she was tempted to lose her temper, or even to express herself too freely, she would have a vision of her mother, veering towards one of those terrifying moods of hysteria, and that was all that was needed to restrain her.

Her thick chestnut hair was never allowed to be disordered; her blue eyes were always serene; and she was learning to walk as though there was already a crown on her head. The attendants in the royal nursery said: ‘The Infanta Isabella is a good child, but she would be more natural if she would learn to be a little human. ’