Talavera was a learned converso, from a new Christian family, who had been a professor at Salamanca University. The austere, reed-thin friar famously toyed with his food, eating as little as possible and adding just a few drops of wine to his cup of water. He also wore a cilice hairshirt under his friar’s habit and ‘practised what he preached and always preached what he himself practised’ according to a contemporary in the royal court. As prior of the Santa María del Prado monastery near Valladolid he was an eminence within his order and a senior churchman in Castile. Talavera became not just Isabella’s confessor but also one of her most valued officials, placed in charge of large, complex projects like church reform, peace negotiations, raising church money for the crusade against the Moors and the recovery of royal lands and rents given away by King Enrique. Famed as a preacher and winner of converts, he belonged to a school that frowned on forced conversions – a moot point for a converso, since many Jews had converted under pressure of violence at the end of the previous century.4 He preached not just obedience but love and charity. When Isabella’s conscience was troubled, it was Talavera whom she turned to. Indeed, Talavera appeared to have more influence over Isabella – whatever that meant to a woman not famed for changing her mind – than anyone apart from Ferdinand. He held her to the highest standards, demanding that she be exemplary in all things.
When she or Ferdinand slipped in their personal morality, Talavera would be sure to tell them off. Few people, if any, dared confront Isabella in such a forthright manner. She liked that, even if Ferdinand did not. But Talavera also had competition from other priors. In Segovia, Tomás de Torquemada had only to climb the steep hill from his Santa Cruz monastery beside the River Eresma to find the royal family. Isabella lavished money on his monastery, which was soon emblazoned with her sheaf-of-arrows symbols and became known as Santa Cruz la Real (‘the Royal’) as a result. The Dominicans – founded in Spain in the thirteenth century, with Santa Cruz as the first monastery – were famed pursuers of heretics and, like the Franciscans, had long been involved in stirring up hatred against Jews and conversos. Chief among them was Alfonso Hojeda, prior of a Dominican monastery in Seville. When Talavera’s advice or methods seemed too bland, Isabella could always turn to these men, with their unbending dogma, suspicious nature and liking for harsh measures, using fear, punishment and, where necessary, torture. Torquemada was quite explicit about how much of a danger Jews and Muslims posed to Spain. In the memorandum ‘of the things which the monarchs must remedy’ that he felt bold enough to send Isabella and her husband, he urged them to pursue heretics among the conversos and separate Jews and Muslims from Christians.5
Talavera now publicly scolded the coquettish noblewomen of Valladolid after they had excitedly embraced the festive, fashion-conscious spirit of their young queen and ignored the local bishop when he threatened to excommunicate them for wearing ruffs and primitive farthings or bustles that exaggerated their hips. ‘They even make themselves up and dress during Lent just as they do outside it and go like that to funerals, as if they were weddings or christenings,’ he protested. His complaints fitted perfectly within his general view of women as flighty and morally fragile, ‘being, as you are, naturally weak and thin in understanding and in body’.6
The pious prior could be equally damning about men – as individuals, rather than collectively – and even felt free to chastise Isabella’s husband Ferdinand when he thought he was not paying enough attention to his wife. ‘A lot more substance is owed in your love and honouring of your most excellent and worthy wife,’ he said, while also telling him to spend less time on games.7 Isabella’s husband ignored him, and remained an enthusiast for games of all kinds.
Ferdinand’s reputation was mixed. On the one hand he was considered wise and experienced beyond his age, the result of a late childhood spent running from one battle zone to another. But he was also a keen partier and womaniser with several illegitimate children. ‘This king was of medium height, well proportioned, with the features of his face well composed, laughing eyes and straight black hair,’ wrote Pulgar.
He was very restrained in both his drinking and eating and in the way he moved, because neither rage nor pleasure appeared to alter him … He was naturally inclined towards doing justice, but also towards clemency and took pity on those miserable people who he saw were suffering. And his special gift was that whoever spoke to him wanted to love and serve him because he communicated in such a friendly way. He took good counsel, especially that of his wife the queen because he knew she was so very capable … He liked all kinds of games, with balls, boards or at chess, and spent somewhat more time than he should playing them; and although he loved his wife the queen greatly, he also gave himself to other women.
They were, in other words, a couple who understood one another perfectly when it came to government, though Isabella struggled to cope with Ferdinand’s sexual wandering. All that self-confidence in government was underpinned by a layer of insecurity which, in turn, revealed a passion for her husband that went beyond what might have been expected of a politically motivated marriage. ‘She loved after such a fashion, so solicitous and vigilant in jealousy, that if she felt that he looked on any lady of court with a betrayal of desire, she would very discreetly procure ways and means to dismiss that person from her household,’ wrote Lucio Marineo, one of several Italian humanists drawn to her court. This was something she tried to control in public, but others agreed that she ‘watched jealously over him beyond all measure’. In later years, indeed, her daughters would vow not to fall into the same bouts of destructive jealousy that Isabella was clearly unable to control. ‘My lady the queen … was equally jealous,’ one of them would later remark. ‘But time cured her Highness of it, as I hope to God it will for me.’8
Valladolid was a place of special memories. Isabella and Ferdinand installed themselves once more in Juan de Vivero’s palace – the same house where they had celebrated their wedding night. They had come here from Medina del Campo – another of the major towns of Old Castile (the part that lay north of the Guadarrama and Gredos mountain ranges) that they now controlled – as they began a nomadic lifestyle that would continue for decades. Indeed, one of the most striking sights for ordinary Castilians during Isabella’s reign was the royal court in motion. Her account books would soon show large outlays on acémilas, the pack beasts laden with bundles and chests which trudged behind them in long trains over the coming years as they criss-crossed Castile in almost perpetual motion. Isabella’s court moved so often, indeed, that a quarter of its spending went on transport. Travel was uncomfortable and lodgings sometimes basic, with households obliged to give over half their space (and furniture) to the court. The royal family moved on horses and mules, or were carried on litters borne by animals or men. Padded mule saddles held together with golden nails and covered in silk cushions and blankets were ordered up for little Isabella and the other children to come as they, too, wandered through their parents’ lands. Crossing Castile’s mountain ranges and long, broad rivers brought moments of danger as they climbed up slippery mountain passes or waded through fast-flowing water. With so many people travelling with the court, provisions were sometimes hard to find as the towns and villages they passed through were pressed into providing sustenance. Isabella’s gallinero, the man charged with sourcing chickens for the royal table (Isabella had been recommended to eat fruit in the morning and vegetables in the afternoons, but poultry was the most common dish), was deemed ‘worse than a kite for the villages and peasants of the area he visits’.9 Even the most basic logistics could go wrong in a country where the land was not always productive and water could be scarce. A black slave and two yeomen even died of thirst on one trip to visit Isabella’s mother at Arévalo.10
Isabella believed that a monarch should be seen by her people and, even when the court was on a longer stay in a city or castle, was rarely shy of jumping on a horse with a smaller entourage and riding for days to put out political fires as th
ey erupted in different corners of her kingdom. Even pregnancy did not stop her. With their joint monarchy, indeed, they soon found that they could douse two blazes at once, by the simple ruse of splitting up. If this worked it was because their political relationship rested on a single, essential element – trust.
The jousts in Valladolid were held in an atmosphere of feverish excitement. ‘As the king and queen were so young and at the very start of their reign, many wanted to show their grandeur or display their magnificence by spending as much as they could,’ one chronicler explained. The Duke of Alba was allowed to joust only twice after falling, fully armoured, from his horse and knocking himself out while practising. He made up for it by throwing the best party, which ended as the sun rose over the city. Alba also bought, and gave away, so much silk and brocade to the ladies that a short-term scarcity in Castile sent the price rocketing. He drained his personal exchequer, providing mummery and more partying all week long as Valladolid went into a dizzying frenzy of jousting and revelry. Alba had already captured the spirit of the new, changing times, returning the all-important castle of La Mota in Medina del Campo to royal hands.11 It had been one of the many possessions that Enrique had handed over to nobles as he tried to buy their support.
Everyone knew that the Portuguese were readying an army, but a devil-may-care attitude gripped the young court. ‘The king of Portugal and his supporters were held in little esteem, with the king and queen deriding the things he might do to them,’ reported a local chronicler. ‘They passed those days full of high spirits and careless of fear.’ Other Spaniards were more worried, seeing omens that a ferocious war was about to start. A group of Portuguese bulls had escaped from their herdsman, waded across the River Guadiana and attacked some Spanish bulls, according to one story. These had lowered their horns and charged in response, with the heavy beasts clashing on the Spanish side of the river before the Portuguese bulls trotted back and began calmly grazing again. Word also spread of an aerial battle between flocks of magpies and thrushes in Andalusia, considered another harbinger of violence. A stern Palencia accused Isabella and her husband of partying when they should have been readying for war. ‘Ferdinand and Isabella wasted a lot of time in Valladolid, which would have caused them great harm had the enemy not also dallied for days,’ he said.12
The people of Valladolid scratched their heads, and tried to recall if they had encountered anything like it. This was a wealthy city, home to a thriving silver trade and surrounded by fertile land, but they had not seen such a show of grandeur for more than half a century. ‘And as there were many foreigners in Valladolid, the names of the monarchs rang out across the whole world. It seemed as if they were not like any previous monarchs of Castile but, rather, that Caesar had returned to earth in all his magnificence and grandeur,’ wrote the local chronicler. The obligation to impress was augmented by the presence of ambassadors from France, England, Brittany and Burgundy – all eager to measure up the new queen and her husband.13
Jousters competed for glory both in the tiltyard and in the magnificence of their clothes, horses and servants’ uniforms. Horses were dressed in blankets woven from gold thread and trimmed in marten’s fur.14 The warrior-like thrill of the tiltyard – where torches had to be brought after contestants insisted on carrying on after dark – was accompanied by its necessary counterpart of courtly love, with jousters dedicating their efforts to their favourite ladies. They also competed to produce the wittiest or cleverest mottoes and slogans to impress them. Ferdinand knew how to play the knight’s role and, on one later occasion, publicly devoted his jousting to Isabella in the following terms. ‘Any prison or pain / that I suffer is just / because I suffer for love / of the greatest and best / in the world and the most beautiful.’ But this time, with the losses in Aragon and the expected Portuguese invasion troubling him, he was deliberately sombre. He was a fine horseman and keen jouster, but the motto he chose showed that he and Isabella were aware that this was an interlude before greater trials. ‘Like a forge I suffer in silence because of the times in which I find myself,’15 it read. Portugal lay just eighty miles away.
The Portuguese king, reputedly flush with gold from his adventures in Africa after conquering Tangiers and sending explorers and navigators to open up trade routes further south, was gathering an army that made the 2,000 men Castile had planned, but failed, to send to Aragon look feeble. At least 10,000 footsoldiers and 5,000 cavalry were on their way. His ambassador Ruy de Sousa travelled to Valladolid and delivered a demand that Isabella and Ferdinand leave the country. He received a curt ‘no’ as an answer, along with a reminder that those nobles who now backed La Beltraneja were the same ones who had first claimed she was illegitimate. The archbishop of Toledo remained of crucial importance. If he could be brought back to their side, then the balance of power would shift dramatically. Isabella and Ferdinand now began moving separately. Isabella set out from Segovia, riding south over the rugged mountain passes that separated Old and New Castile, to see the archbishop in his main palace in Alcalá de Henares.16 By now, however, it was clear that his anger was chiefly directed at her. ‘It was agreed that the queen, who is the one he is unhappiest with, should go to him,’ Ferdinand told his father.17 But the archbishop threatened to leave Alcalá if Isabella appeared. ‘He sent to disabuse her of the idea and to say that he would not see her,’ Zurita recorded. ‘And that his aim was for them to leave him alone in his retirement.’18 Instead Isabella, who was pregnant, spurred her horse on to the city of Toledo, the largest in New Castile, whose support she wanted to guarantee in a region dominated by two hostile lords – López Pacheco and the archbishop. ‘She was well received,’ noted Pulgar.19 ‘She was there several days organising the things needed for the defence of that city, of the cities in Andalusia and Extremadura and all that region.’
With Toledo firmly in the hands of her followers, she set out back towards Valladolid on 28 May and rode so hard that, three days later, she lost her baby and had to stop in Avila to recover. By now she had signed a new document that gave her husband sweeping powers. The deal so carefully worked out at Cervera and then reiterated in Segovia had been brushed aside by circumstance. ‘You must know’, she wrote in an open letter,
that for the good governance, custody and defence of these kingdoms and lands of mine, it may be best for the king my lord and myself to separate with each one going in their own direction to different parts of these kingdoms. So I am giving the said king, my lord, power so that wherever he goes in those kingdoms and lands, he can, on his own and without me being there, order, do, instruct and provide whatever he considers best to be of service to himself and to me and to the custody and defence of those kingdoms and lands.
He was now allowed to administer towns, cities and forts, hand out grants and mercedes – mostly gifts of income from royal taxes – and appoint officials. ‘With the present [letter] I assign to him all powers, however great or small, that I have and which belong to me as heiress and legitimate successor – which I am – to these kingdoms and lands.’20 With the Portuguese army massing on the border,21 few were inclined to protest. A unique dual monarchy was being installed, which rested not just on trust and intimacy but also on mutual respect for their abilities.
Isabella’s husband could occasionally suffer – or, at least, look as though he was suffering – from that staple of both courtly and real romance, the pangs of unrequited love. After Isabella had left, he reprimanded her for not writing to him frequently enough: ‘So many messengers have come without letters, and it cannot be for lack of paper or for not knowing how to write, but out of lack of love and haughtiness. You are in Toledo and we are travelling here through villages, though one day we will return to our first love. But if your ladyship does not wish to be responsible for homicide, you must write and let me know how you are.’22
Portugal’s King Afonso crossed and recrossed the border with his army in a leisurely fashion, reaching Plasencia by 29 May when he was personally present a
t a second espousal ceremony with Juana la Beltraneja. Palencia claimed that his arrival angered many of the townsfolk, who blamed Leonor Pimentel – the bold and self-assured wife of the city’s master, Álvaro de Stúñiga – for being placed on La Beltraneja’s side of the civil war. He also claimed that hatred of La Beltraneja’s mother – the dowager Queen Juana, who was also King Afonso’s sister – ran rife. If women were ‘the perdition of Spain’, he sighed, now ‘her daughter was the spark that lit a vast blaze’.23
There was no attempt to complete or consummate the marriage between uncle and niece but both now used the titles that were proclaimed to the world on a stage raised in Plasencia. They were the king and queen of Castile, León and Portugal. The country’s cities, towns and fortresses soon received a second set of letters, this time signed by Juana. They reminded the recipients that Enrique had declared her to be his true daughter. ‘During his lifetime he always wrote and swore, both in public and in private to all those prelates and grandees who asked about it and to many other trustworthy people that he knew me to be his true daughter,’ she wrote. In both canon and civil law, she said, there could be no doubt. That much was true. More dubiously, she also claimed that Enrique had repeated this to his confessor, the Jeronymite prior Juan de Mazuelo, on his death-bed, naming her as heiress. Her accusations that Isabella and Ferdinand had poisoned Enrique can be similarly ignored.24 Cities, towns and fortresses were once more ordered to pay homage to a new queen – only this time she was called Juana. The usurper Isabella should be dealt with harshly, she insisted. ‘You must all rise and join, serving, helping and ensuring that this abominable, detestable action be punished.’
Isabella of Castile Page 13
