Isabella of Castile

by Giles Tremlett

  Isabella learned that kings were allowed, even expected, to play the courtly love game. So were queens. At jousts the young knights were meant to flatter Queen Juana by wearing her colours, sending her gifts and proclaiming their devotion and utmost willingness to die in combat for her – or for one of her ladies-in-waiting. Courtly love was safe terrain, too, for the sexually inhibited Enrique. Kings could take their lovers to bed, but this was by no means necessary. Doña Guiomar was the best-known – but not the only – of Enrique’s formal lovers. She certainly kept Enrique interested, and their dalliance allowed him to project himself as a man of sexual vigour, though no offspring were engendered. The spiteful Palencia thought that Enrique deliberately tormented the queen with his lovers, hoping to push her into the arms of someone else who might leave her pregnant with a child he could claim was his own. ‘He judged that the jealousy [provoked by] these false [sexual] relations was the most powerful tool for breaking down the queen’s resistance,’ Palencia claimed. It is more likely that the insecure king was putting on a show, in much the same way as he insisted on having three ‘formal’ wedding nights, in separate years, with Juana. Either way, there was nothing shocking about it. The relationship was deemed by gentler commentators to be of ‘good honour and profit’.7

  Yet the lines around courtly love were blurred and could cause problems. Such was the case with the upstart and cavalier doña Guiomar. Her crime, in Juana’s eyes, was the lack of respect she showed to her, the queen. The young bucks who had previously worn the queen’s colours at jousts and other tournaments had begun to wear Guiomar’s colours instead. Presents and other tokens of courtly love went to Guiomar, not Juana. ‘Those seeking royal favour made doña Guiomar their target, rather than her [the queen],’ said Palencia. Supporters of one woman or another squabbled continually, and the whole thing threatened to get out of hand. Enrique’s right-hand man Pacheco favoured Juana while his other close adviser, the archbishop of Seville, sided with Guiomar. It was all part of the irrevocable breakdown of morality, Palencia tutted as he later wrote – for Isabella’s judgemental eyes – the blackest possible version of her half-brother’s life. ‘It was insufferable for her to see his favourite receiving all the good fortune and the praise of the courtesan, thereby wounding her dignity,’ he said. Enrique was furious with his wife for her attack on Guiomar. His response was to deposit his haughty mistress in luxurious accommodation two leagues away while showering her with gifts and income. ‘The king went often to see her,’ reported del Castillo.8

  Becoming the king’s formal mistress was a good career move for an ambitious court lady like Guiomar, who went on to marry the powerful Duke of Treviño and have ten children with him (while he also acquired a further half-dozen illegitimate offspring from his own mistresses).9 Enrique’s other known ‘lover’, Catalina de Sandoval, would become an abbess – a position of power and wealth – despite her wild reputation for ‘freely seeking out men’. In this case, Palencia claimed, Enrique placed her in charge of a notorious convent just outside Toledo’s city walls, where the nuns were famed for their ‘dissolute and frenetic life’. Palencia’s malicious imagination added scabrous detail to his black propaganda. Not only did Enrique send armed men to evict the reformist abbess then in residence, he claimed, but the king also ordered the beheading of one of Catalina’s other lovers – a handsome young man called Alfonso de Córdoba – out of impotent spite.10

  While kings could bed their lovers, queens were permitted to play the love game only if they reserved their bodies for their husbands. Even Palencia admitted that, for the time being, Juana remained a good, modest and faithful queen consort. ‘No one was ever such a good friend of gentility and virtue as you are,’ wrote the poet Gómez Manrique.11

  The queen’s wing in the palace in Segovia was independent and separated from the king’s side by the animal house that was home to Enrique’s roaring lions.12 Isabella saw little of Enrique, as the queen’s side had its own doorway through a large granite arch on to a small square. A row of shops selling fish, meat and bread sat opposite one side of the palace and nearby streets would have bustled with commerce. Thick walls kept out the summer heat and fires must have roared in the winter as bitter, freezing winds whipped into the city. In architectural terms, Isabella had swapped the mudéjar towers of Arévalo’s churches for the solid, Romanesque forms of Segovia. Enrique’s court was nomadic, but Juana’s pregnancies also meant there were periods when the king was afraid to move her, and Isabella’s first two years with the queen saw them spend long periods in Segovia or Madrid.13

  As the due date drew nearer in February 1462, the king sent a litter to carry Juana as gently as possible to his Alcazar palace in the then small and relatively unimportant city of Madrid. Isabella probably travelled the sixty-odd miles of bumpy road too, for she followed the queen’s court almost wherever it went.14

  The birth was difficult. Unlike in other European courts where royal women retired to their rooms accompanied by an entirely female entourage, in Castile men attended. In fact, Juana went through labour with a crowd of men around her, including the king, his favourite Pacheco and various other senior members of the royal household.15 Enrique, Count of Alva de Liste, wrapped his arms around her for support as she squatted to give birth.16 After a long struggle, the baby was finally born. It was a cause of both joy and disappointment. Instead of a boy who would be an uncontested heir, Juana produced a girl. In Castile this was less of a problem than elsewhere, where women were banned from ruling. The girl could inherit the throne if necessary, though her husband could be expected to rule in her name. Nevertheless, after seven years of barren marriage, the birth was also a triumph. Enrique had proved that he could sire children. If one had been engendered, more could surely come. The court celebrated with jousts, bull-runs and the tourney-style game of cañas, inherited from the Moors, where groups of riders on swift ponies would hurl long cane poles at one another.17 Eight days later the baby girl was christened Juana, like her mother. It was a suitably grand affair. The mighty archbishop of Toledo, a feudal churchman and political heavyweight from the powerful Carrillo family, baptised the girl. Isabella was there too, the ten-year-old girl becoming godmother to her baby niece.18 ‘The whole kingdom rejoiced,’ reported del Castillo.19

  Three months later Enrique ordered that the parliament, the Cortes, made up of representatives, or procuradores, from seventeen important cities, assemble in Madrid together with most of the great lords, bishops and gentlemen to swear acceptance of Juana as heiress. ‘I order that you swear here to my daughter Princess doña Juana, my first-born child, that you are faithful and loyal to her as is the custom with the first-born children of kings, so that when God is done with me there is someone to inherit and reign over these kingdoms,’ Enrique told them.20 Isabella and Alfonso were the first to swear. Isabella walked up to their baby cousin as she lay in the arms of the archbishop of Toledo, said the oath and kissed the tiny hands of her future rival. Some nobles, including Pacheco, claimed they had sworn against their free will. Secret documents were signed, declaring as much, but without explaining why. Isabella later claimed that she knew exactly why they had objected to swearing the oath, blaming Queen Juana. ‘It was something she [the queen] had demanded because she knew the truth about her pregnancy and was taking precautions,’ she said, referring to the baby’s allegedly dubious paternity.21

  It is impossible to either prove or disprove the theory that saw the baby Juana later given the nickname of ‘La Beltraneja’, after her putative father Beltrán de la Cueva, Enrique’s mayordomo, or royal steward.22 Isabella would later amplify and broadcast the theory, but two telling pieces of evidence suggest that the baby girl really was Enrique’s daughter. The most persuasive is that Juana was pregnant again within a year. In this case it was a boy, but the queen miscarried at six months. A curious letter sent to Enrique by an official in Juana’s household, keeping him up to date on goings-on there while he was away, sees the doctors themselves
swearing that another pregnancy could be engendered soon. The Jewish doctor Samaya had been sent to look after Juana as she was nursed back to health after the miscarriage in Aranda de Duero, accompanied by Isabella and the rest of her court. This was a densely packed, walled town 100 miles north of Madrid, where the houses stood atop a labyrinth of cool cellars that stored what was already, and still is, one of the most precious products from the ribera, or banks, of the west-flowing River Duero – the rich red wine made from local vines grown on limestone soils. Samaya had done his work well. ‘He has cured her so well that her ladyship is now very healthy,’ the letter writer, called Guinguelle, said. ‘Maestre Samaya says that he would bet his own neck that, if your highness came today, the queen would get pregnant again.’23 Perhaps, with his thin golden tube for artificial insemination, Samaya had found a way to help them past the king’s physical problems or the psychological traumas that might have come with them. Either way, the fact that little Juana was born in matrimony and never repudiated as his biological daughter was enough to ensure her legal position as his heiress.24

  Concern about the paternity issue made its way to Rome, where a report from Pope Pius II to his secretary Gobellino within eighteen months of the birth laid out all the possibilities then being discussed in hushed tones at the court and which Isabella, now aged twelve, must also have heard. ‘It was said that the queen … was impregnated without losing her virginity. Some said that the semen poured into the entrance [of her vagina] had penetrated into the most hidden places inside her. Others believed a man other than Enrique was responsible and that he so ardently desired an heir that he treated the girl as his own because it was that woman who had given birth.’25 The rumours that had reached Rome now gave the troublesome Grandees an excuse for rebellion.26 A bogus heiress was being foisted on Castile, they could argue. It was their duty to act.

  4

  Two Kings, Two Brothers

  Avila, 5 June 1465

  The rebellion was staged on a summer’s day outside the crenellated and turreted walls of Avila – an imposing mass of grey granite, studded with eighty-seven bulging towers that ran for two miles around the hilltop city. A wooden stage had been erected and a crowd gathered to see the show. An effigy of the king, dressed in mourning, was placed on a mock throne. Around it stood a gang of Grandees, with Pacheco, the belligerent archbishop of Toledo, Alfonso Carrillo, and the Manriques, another powerful noble clan, leading them.1 ‘He had a crown on his head, the sword of justice in front of him, and a rod in his hands,’ the chronicler Enríquez del Castillo, who remained loyal to Enrique, reported. The archbishop stepped up to the dummy and tore off the crown, loudly insisting that it no longer deserved royal treatment. Then Pacheco2 snatched away its sceptre while others grabbed the sword. Enrique had forfeited his right to reign or administer justice, they told the crowd. Then they kicked over the king’s chair and booted him off the stage. Some onlookers burst into tears. But nobleman Diego López de Zúñiga and others continued to hurl insults at the broken toy, shouting ‘¡A tierra, puto!’3 (‘Down on the ground, faggot!’).

  With Enrique’s dummy lying in the dust, they brought their new king on to the stage. He was Isabella’s brother Alfonso, a boy who was just eleven years old.4 Too young to rule himself, he would obviously need them, the Grandees, to do the job for him. They hoisted the boy on to their shoulders amid shouts of ‘Castile for King Alfonso!’ The country now had two kings. Civil war had been proclaimed.

  Isabella was not on the walls of Avila to see her beloved little brother declared king in June, 1465. She was still with Enrique and Juana’s court, but her status now changed. The battle between Enrique IV and Alfonso had two major secondary actors – their respective heirs, the infant Juana and Isabella – and control of them was part of the new game.

  In the run-up to this piece of theatre, the nobles had discussed various ways to excuse their lust for power. Among the more absurd suggestions was that Enrique be charged with heresy for secretly trying to convert them to Islam. Wiser heads said the pope, who would have to decide, was unlikely to fall for that. Others claimed that Enrique should be accused of breaking with the supposed tradition that Castile’s kings were historically elected by the nobility and public acclaim.5

  Isabella was now an important piece on the complex chessboard of Castilian politics. She had turned twelve in 1463 and so was already of marrying age.6 Whoever married her would become one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. As Castile separated into two factions, Enrique sought the support of Portugal, while the seditious nobles looked to Aragon and its king, Juan the Great. The best way to seal an alliance was with a marriage, especially if the bride-to-be was of Castilian royal blood. In April 1464 Isabella had found herself being transported to a town on the Portuguese border to meet Queen Juana’s thirty-one-year-old brother, King Afonso V of Portugal. Isabella appears to have spoken to him in Portuguese, learned both at her mother’s house and among Queen Juana’s ladies. ‘Her beauty so captivated him that he immediately wanted to make her his wife,’ reported a fawning Palencia.7

  Those plotting rebellion accused Enrique of holding Isabella and her brother against their will. They even made a clumsy attempt at kidnapping them from Madrid’s Alcázar fortress, which was easily foiled, as was a second attempt a few months later. ‘We are sure that certain people, with wicked intent, have taken control of the illustrious prince Alfonso and, at the same time, of the illustrious princess Isabella. And not only that, we are also sure that these people have agreed to and planned to kill the said prince and marry off the princess,’ the disgruntled group of Grandees wrote in the May 1464 manifesto which fired the first shot of rebellion. ‘And this will be done without the agreement of the Grandees of this kingdom as is the custom when such matches are made, all with the aim of allowing succession [of the crown] in this kingdom to pass to someone who has no right to it.’ They demanded that the young prince and princess, whom they now termed ‘the rightful heirs’ to the crown, should be taken away from Queen Juana and handed over to them.8

  As royal authority disintegrated, superstitious Castilians began to see bad omens. A tornado swept through southern Seville, a city divided between violent political factions, knocking down buildings and killing people. Frightened sevillanos stared up into the sky to see what looked like rows of soldiers lined up to fight one another. Many saw their own future painted there, in the tumultuous skies above Castile’s most populous city. Ordinary people knew that while the spirit of rebellion was confined to the noble class, it was they who would suffer if the latter unleashed the chaos of war. Rampant inflation, epidemics and bad harvests made things worse. They were right to worry. Civil war sputtered into life on September 1464, with Enrique retreating behind Segovia’s thick walls.9

  Pacheco’s gang extended its list of complaints, which already included the restoration of the custom that royal wedding nights be public events, with notaries and witnesses. Now they took aim at the conversos, accusing Enrique of surrounding himself with heretics. They added colour to their gripes by claiming that his Moorish guard was given both to raping women and to indulging in homosexual acts. He raised unwarranted taxes, failed to consult with his nobles, allowed coinage to be debased and failed to administer proper justice, they added. Above all, they complained that he was now the captive of his mayordomo, Beltrán de la Cueva. For the first time, they dared to claim openly that the king was a cuckold and his daughter the result of adultery. ‘Both your royal highness and he [Beltrán] know that she is not your daughter and cannot be your lawful successor,’ they said. This first public allegation of Juana’s illegitimacy was to be key to the future of Castile, and to that of Isabella.10

  Enrique dilly-dallied. The aged bishop of Cuenca, Lope de Barrientos, had raised a large army and urged him to fight. ‘Otherwise you will go down in history as the most useless king there has ever been in Spain,’ he said. Instead, at least initially, he chose to give way, reneging on Juana’s right to inherit
the throne and declaring Alfonso his heir. The boy was handed to Pacheco. Isabella, who was told she would be given her own household, must have briefly clung to a promise that she could also return to her mother in Arévalo. But Enrique then went back on his word, demanding that Alfonso be returned to him and preparing for war. Isabella had to remain in Segovia, her hopes of joining her mother dashed. Instead she was watched over by Queen Juana while her brother was raised on the Grandees’ shoulders in Avila and proclaimed king.11

  Pacheco soon sought to make personal gain out of the chaos. His messengers now told Enrique that the best way to buy his family’s loyalty back and quash the rebellion was to marry Isabella to his brother and fellow rebel, Pedro Girón – a powerful magnate in Andalusia and head of the Calatrava military order. He was prepared to pay a handsome price, offering to bring 3,000 lancers and lend Enrique 70,000 doblas (as Castile’s higher-value gold coins were called), and promising that he and his brother would switch their allegiance and ‘bring the prince, his brother, and place him [back] in his power’. Enrique agreed, urging Girón to ‘come as fast as possible’. The move was at once brilliant and fraught with danger. It put Pacheco’s scheming, ruthless family within arm’s reach of the crown. Girón set out for Segovia armed with money and a large escort of men designed to impress those who saw it with his power and magnificence.12 Isabella, now realising that she had become a simple item for barter, was to be his prize.

  Isabella had raised no complaint against the proposed Portugal match, probably because marrying a monarch did not seem beneath her dignity. Now she reacted with horror, sinking to her knees and begging God to free her from the Girón match. Her prayers worked. As Girón rode towards her, he fell ill and ten days later he died. Enrique was crestfallen, but Isabella, who had just turned fifteen, was delighted. Her Portuguese match was now also forgotten as chaos ruled on both sides of a conflict that neither side was strong enough to win. The experience seems to have marked her, and she began to draw her own conclusions about allowing others to decide her fate.13