Dogs of God

by James Reston Jr

  In the midst of this tornado of countervailing winds stood an impressive seventeen-year-old infanta. Isabella had blossomed into a tall, chestnut-haired, blue-eyed beauty, with a clear complexion and a steady gaze. From her pious upbringing in the company of stern, devout monks, from the absence of a father and the presence of a mother gone mad, from the grief of a murdered brother and imprecations of scheming nobles, she had developed a quiet strength and inner serenity. To the plea of Archbishop Carrillo, she said neither yes nor no, but withdrew to a wooded place called Cebreros to ponder the question.

  When she emerged from her retreat, Isabella demurred. So long as her half brother was still king, she would honor him and seek a reconciliation. More civil strife must be avoided. The authority of the king and the integrity of succession must be respected. She would wait for her throne, rightfully acquired. It was her first significant act of statesmanship, and it showed the promise of the future.

  By mid-September, the pressure and the humiliation became too great for Enrique. He still held enough power to repulse the efforts to dethrone him, but not enough power to execute his plan for succession. Genuinely fond of Isabella, he was moved and relieved by her decision not to replace her late brother as a pretender to the throne. Emissaries sped back and forth between the camps to fashion the outlines of an agreement. When the terms were finalized, and the royal signatures affixed, the king called for his half sister to meet him in a council of peace.

  A site for the conference south of the town was chosen. Isabella rode to it on a humble mule, with her venerable Archbishop Carrillo walking painfully by her side, in a gesture of obedience and fealty. An entourage of sprightlier nobles accompanied them in a colorful procession. Not to be outdone, Enrique arrived with his nobles from Palencia, Benavente, and Miranda de Ebro, among them the suave and treacherous Juan Pacheco, marquis of Villena. He alternately had performed the roles of favorite and traitor to the king. The murderer of Alfonso was now acting as peacemaker between the parties. The king’s retinue also came with its own rival curia. It included the archbishop of Seville, who for a pretty price of valuable lands and precious jewels had become the guardian of the king’s infant daughter. At his instructions the baby was being carted around the countryside in a basket while the cauldron of succession boiled. Also along was the bishop of León, who came as the Vatican’s legate, armed with papal authority to bless any agreement.

  The royals finally gathered in a salubrious field outside a place called Toros de Guisando. Near the ancient stone carvings of bulls, said to have been fashioned in the time of Hercules, the ceremonials were magnificent. While the archbishop of Toledo, scowling in disapproval, held the reins of her mule, Isabella removed her wide-brimmed hat, kissed the hand of the king, and embraced him warmly. Then their treaty was ratified as the entire assemblage swore allegiance to King Enrique as “their king and natural lord.” The pontifical legate “dissolved and untied” whatever oaths of allegiance they might have signed before to any other. Isabella, in turn, was to be Princess of the Asturias and Enrique’s rightful heir. In addition, she was given the Castilian towns of Ávila, Medina del Campo, Úbeda, Huete, Escalona, Alcaraz, and Molina as her own. To her as well, the gathering three times swore their allegiance.

  The claim of the child, La Beltraneja, was negated. In the months earlier, her lusty mother had paved the way. For Juana had become pregnant with the child of yet another court gigolo, and despite the efforts of her maids to construct a painful bodice to mask her condition, her dalliance had been discovered. “The queen, Juana of Portugal, has not used her person cleanly, as comports with her duty as servant to the king,” it was now declared. As the papal legate nodded approvingly, the king “was not and is not legitimately married to her.” Juana had already fled to the castle of the father of her first child, Beltrán de la Cueva. He had turned her away, laughing heartily to his drinking buddies that “he had never cared much, anyway, for her skinny legs.”

  Solemnly, the papal legate declared that the previous oath of allegiance to Juana of Portugal that Enrique had forced upon his nobles was now null and void.

  In return, the king received one major concession. He was to have a say in whom Isabella would marry. The concession was conditional. She in turn insisted that he had no right to force a husband upon her against her will.

  The way was paved for a very serious misunderstanding.

  3

  He and No Other!

  SARAGOSSA AND VALLADOLID

  As the princess and the king rode off together, past the ancient bulls of Hercules and into the afternoon calm of Toros de Guisando, the question of whom Isabella would marry hung weightily in the air. In Enrique’s mind, geopolitical considerations came first. He felt confident that he had secured the right to choose a husband for his half sister and now heir. The king’s immediate problem was to repair the damage with Portugal that the fiasco over La Beltraneja had caused, but his tilt to the west was not new. For more than four years Enrique had had his eye on Alfonso, King of Portugal, as husband for Isabella.

  Apart from the embarrassments of the past months, the Portuguese king was an interesting prospect. A widower, thirty-six years old and with an estimable reputation as a warrior, and not incidentally, Isabella’s cousin, he was known as O Africano for his capture of the Alcazar-Seguer in Africa and his siege of Tangiers. He already had a son, and so from Isabella’s standpoint and no doubt to her relief, the pressure on her fertility would not be overbearing. And she would become the Queen of Portugal. From Enrique’s viewpoint, this had the advantage of putting her at safe remove from the Castilian rebels who still sought to use her against him.

  At first, Isabella was not averse. Her mother’s roots had given her a natural and sentimental bent toward Portugal. When as a girl she had first met Alfonso, he was more than twice her age and seemed very grand indeed as the conqueror of distant, exotic lands. But when she became of marriageable age, the aging Alfonso did not look so grand, and she raised objections. Complications and tensions had developed between the Portuguese and Castilian courts—Isabella would later write that the meeting of the two royal representatives had been a “complete disaster”—and the match had been put off.

  Enrique was furious and threatened to imprison the infanta in the Alcazar of Madrid for her part in undercutting his plan. It was a threat only, for Enrique appreciated the dire consequences of breaking with her completely. But his fury did succeed in extracting a promise from Isabella, soon broken, not to engage in any marriage negotiations on her own while Enrique went south to Andalusia.

  By 1468, other interesting marital possibilities had arisen. At first, Don Carlos, the eldest son of Juan II of Aragon, the Prince of Viana, and the heir to the Kingdom of Navarre, seemed like the front-runner. But mysteriously and suspiciously, before this possibility could go anywhere, the vigorous Carlos died. The focus shifted to Pedro Giron, master of Calatrava, a member of the powerful Pacheco family whom Enrique sought to win over by marriage. But Isabella rejected this match out of hand.

  Other foreign prospects captured Enrique’s attention. The King of France, Louis XI, had designs on Catalonia, the rich province just south of the Pyrenees which was rebelling against Aragonese rule. A match between Castile and France would cement French control over Catalonia and surround Aragon, to the mutual benefit of both Castile and France. Louis XI proposed to unite Isabella with his brother and heir apparent, Charles, duke of Berry and Guienne. Overtures also came from England, powerful and wealthy still after the draining misadventures of the Crusades. The duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III, was casting about for a suitable mate. He was only a year younger than Isabella.

  Enrique IV forged breezily ahead. Preliminary arrangements for an English match were made and then broken in favor of the French. Given Richard III’s subsequent reputation for wickedness and brutality, dramatized later by William Shakespeare, as well as his exile and probable assassination, perhaps it was just as well for Isabella. T
he French prospect turned out to be even less appetizing. With more than geopolitics on her teenage mind, she had dispatched a friar to France on a pretext to scout the duke of Berry. His report was depressing. The effeminate duke had foppish French manners, bandy little legs, and could scarcely mount a horse without help.

  But there was another option. He was Ferdinand of Aragon, the late Carlos’s younger brother and Isabella’s second cousin, who like the future Richard III of England was a year her junior. Her chaplain’s secret report bristled with sex appeal. Unlike the wimpy Charles of Berry, this caballero had no difficulty in mounting a horse, for he had been raised in a military camp. At the age of seventeen he already had considerable battlefield experience, having commanded his father’s forces in a victorious battle against the Catalans.

  “He has so singular a grace,” Isabella’s spy reported, “that everyone who talks to him wants to serve him.”

  Of medium build, well proportioned and muscular, Ferdinand was an excellent rider and avid sportsman. If his sparse education limited his knowledge and wisdom, it advanced his cunning and taught him to be a good listener. Nor did his limited schooling crimp his eloquence, for he was an inveterate talker. His eyes sparkled with curiosity, his lips were sensuous, his chin prominent and determined. Already he showed promise as an outstanding leader of men.

  Ferdinand and Isabella had one other thing in common: their Jewish heritage. He derived his through his mother, Juana Enriquez.

  Yet, Ferdinand had another quality that might be hard to control. He loved women—indeed, so much so that as his negotiations with Isabella proceeded and before their agreements were consummated, Ferdinand would father two children by different women.

  With a stubbornness that would become a mixed blessing later, Isabella knew she had found her man. Ferdinand’s star rose further when his father sweetened his prospects by making him king of the Aragonese colony of Sicily. To her adviser, the archbishop of Toledo, Isabella remarked that “it must be he and no other.” The archbishop agreed. That they were second cousins and therefore subject to the ban on unions within the third tier of consanguinity was a problem, but not an insurmountable one. A papal dispensation would fix that. Yet they needed to be careful. It was certain that Enrique would object to this match.

  Through the fall of 1468, as clandestine contacts between the camps intensified, Isabella reached out to nobles and prelates across the realm, speaking privately with those who had reservations and writing a collective letter to those who were on her side. In the collective response, the amenable nobles acknowledged that the proposed marriage would probably give the king indigestion, but that the proposed match was a good and “convenient” idea. As a virtual orphan who stood to inherit everything from her late father, and whose mother was ill and indisposed, Isabella was within her right to choose as she saw fit. Because her brother, the king, had married foolishly, it was imperative that she marry wisely. Of her choices, Ferdinand, the King of Sicily and heir to the Kingdom of Aragon, was clearly the best and most virile of the lot.

  Before matters could go any further, however, the intermediaries of the two sides, operating still in high secrecy, had to agree on the fundamentals of power. Of the two kingdoms, Castile and Aragon, Castile was the larger, stronger, and richer; Aragon’s treasury had been exhausted by the persistent troubles with the Catalonian rebels and warfare with France. And so if Ferdinand was to be favored with Isabella’s hand, he must forego the customary authority of a feudal king. Only through her would he derive his power. She and Castile must remain the dominant partner.

  At the tiny Aragonese town of Cervera west of Barcelona, a medieval version of a prenuptial marriage contract known as the “Capitulations of Cervera” was drawn up. This historic document ran counter to feudal tradition where the male always took the reins of power. In the Capitulations of Cervera it was Ferdinand who did the capitulating. He swore to defer to Isabella in matters of state, to obey Enrique, the king, while Enrique lived, and to respect Castilian law. He must live in Castile and appoint only Castilians to high office. And he must accept the holy obligation of all Spanish Catholic kings to attack, and conquer if possible, the infidel Moorish state of Al Andalus. To demonstrate his earnestness, Ferdinand agreed to seal the pact with 40,000 gold florins.

  Predictably, it would not be many weeks before word of Isabella’s engagement reached Enrique in the south. Just as predictably, he exploded in fury. His half sister had broken her pledge to him at Toros de Guisando. Her treachery undercut their solemn agreement that she would marry no one without his consent. She responded with equal passion. It was he, not she, who had scuttled their pact by pressing the case of the old king of Portugal, that Africano, on her, or that of the effete, bandy-legged prince in faraway France. She resented the presence of his agents and minders in her court, for they were browbeating her. One of them had promised a Portuguese invasion if she did not agree to marry the Portuguese king. If this was not enough to undercut any romantic feelings in her, these bullies made her feel like a prisoner. She did not mention that her own mother, Isabel of Portugal, had emerged from the darkness of her depression to try to dissuade Isabella from this match.

  “I am alone and deprived of my just and proper liberty and the exercise of free will that marital decisions, after the grace of God, require,” she wrote indignantly to Enrique. “I consulted with the grandees, prelates and caballeros about the matter. They responded that marrying the king of Portugal in no manner redounded to the benefit of your kingdoms… but all praised and approved the marriage with the Prince of Aragon, King of Sicily.”

  Meanwhile, the word of the engagement raced through the streets. Children began to chant a jingle about the “flowers of Aragon” sprouting in Castile, as they waved tiny flags of Aragon. Romance was in the air. The fantasy of a handsome young king and beautiful queen uniting Spain in a true confederation sent quivers of excitement through the streets. Among the aristocracy, however, old divisions reemerged; sides were chosen up, and once again, civil war loomed.

  The court of the princess moved west to the safety of Valladolid, a town whose Moorish name belied the fact that it had been recovered from the infidels in the tenth century and become the traditional residence of past Castilian monarchs. From there, Isabel’s chief adviser, the archbishop of Toledo, dispatched several envoys to Saragossa with orders to return with the strapping bridegroom as soon as possible, before Enrique could get back to Old Castile.

  Meanwhile, far to the east, Ferdinand had been scrambling to raise his earnest money. This was no easy task, for his father, the present King of Aragon, was engaged in a fierce war in Catalonia—indeed, he lost the town of Gerona, north of Barcelona, to the French just as Ferdinand came asking for his marriage gold. Forty thousand florins was not inconsequential, and a number of the nobles of the Aragonese court opposed the match. Eventually, though, Ferdinand’s father focused and relented. He sent his son to Valencia, where Ferdinand enjoyed heroic status from past military accomplishments and which was now the chief port of the kingdom since Barcelona was in the grip of rebellion. There, the prince finally raised his surety in kind. Able to raise only half the money in gold, he accepted the gift of a gorgeous ruby and pearl necklace from the town councilors. He would argue that the regal necklace was worth the remaining 20,000 florins.

  When Isabella’s envoys arrived to collect him, they settled upon a plan to make the dangerous journey west to his wedding in disguise, dressed as wealthy merchants and their servants. They would have to pass through Aragonese villages controlled by thieves and Castilian villages controlled by Enrique. They did not underestimate the king’s capacity for mischief. Everyone understood that assassination was not beneath the unpredictable king.

  Ferdinand gamely took the role of a lowly servant. Humbly, he served meals to the Castilian envoys and groomed their mules. Along the way the prince’s food was roasted and boiled and tasted by others. When the party finally reached the frontier of Aragon and Ca
stile, it was met in the tiny village of Burgo de Osma by an armed squadron of two hundred soldiers, sent by the archbishop of Toledo. The Prince of Aragon and King of Sicily could at last reclaim his royal dignity. Traveling at night, they moved through the hostile territory along the upper valley of the Duero River without incident. Eight days later, on October 9, he arrived safely in Duenas, only a few miles from Valladolid.

  With Ferdinand safe in Duenas, Isabella sat down and wrote an elegant, conciliatory, and touching letter to Enrique. “Very high and very distinguished Prince King my Lord,” she began. Once again she announced her intention to marry, “a very reasonable thing to do at my age.” In making her choice, she had consulted the princes of his kingdom, who had approved. From this union of prince and princess would emerge a more powerful union of Castile and Aragon. She noted that Enrique had attempted to “impede the entrance of the prince and king” into her presence, but she wished to inform the king that her espoused was nearby and had no intention to “create scandals and other bad things in your kingdoms nor to disturb your nobles, as your highness has suggested.” Rather, Ferdinand was of good intentions, and he offered his services to the king.

  “May the Holy Trinity protect your highness and make you prosper in these good times.”