Виктория Холт: Spain for the Sovereigns

Ferdinand smiled complacently. ‘I shall set off without delay for Saragossa, Father,’ he said.

John looked wistful. ‘So shortly come, so soon to go,’ he murmured.’ Yet you are right,’ he added. ‘There is little time to lose.’

‘Tomorrow morning, at dawn, I shall leave,’ Ferdinand told him. ‘Your cause – as always – is my own.’

On his way through Catalonia to Saragossa there was one call which Ferdinand could not deny himself the pleasure of making.

It must be as far as possible a secret call. There was one little person whom he longed to see and who meant a great deal to him, but he was determined to go to great lengths to conceal his existence from Isabella. He was beginning to realise that it was going to be somewhat difficult to live up to the ideal which his wife had made of him.

He and his followers had rested at an inn and, declaring that he would retire early, he with two of his most trusted attendants went to the room which had been assigned to him.

As soon as they were alone, he said: ‘Go to the stables. Have the horses made ready and I will join you when all is quiet.’

‘Yes, Highness.’

Ferdinand was impatient when they had left him. How long his party took to settle down! He had to resist an impulse to go to them and demand that they retire to their beds immediately and fall into deep sleep.

That would be folly, of course, since the great need was for secrecy. He was not by nature impulsive. He knew what he wanted and was determined to get it; but experience had taught him that it was often necessary to wait a long time for success in one’s endeavours. Ferdinand had learned to wait.

So now he did so, impatient yet restrained, until at last his servant was at the door.

‘All is quiet, Highness. The horses are ready.’

‘That is well. Let us be off.’

It was pleasant riding through the night. He had wondered whether to send a messenger ahead of him to warn her. But no. It should be a surprise. And if he found her with a lover, he did not greatly care. It was not she – beautiful as she was – who called him, it was not merely for her sake that he was ready to make this secret journey, news of which might be brought to the ears of Isabella.

‘Oh, Isabella, my wife, my Queen,’ he murmured to himself, ‘you will have to learn something of the world one day. You will have to know that men, such as I am, who spend long periods away from the conjugal bed, cannot be denied a mistress now and then.’

And from love affairs such as that which he had enjoyed with the Viscountess of Eboli there were often results.

Ferdinand smiled. He was confident of his powers to obtain what he would from all women – even his sedate, and rather alarmingly prim, Isabella.

He was remembering the occasion when he and the Viscountess had become lovers. It was during one of those spells when he was away from Castile, in Catalonia on his father’s business. It was Isabella who had insisted that he leave her. ‘It is your duty to go to your father’s aid,’ she had said.

Duty! he thought. It was a word frequently recurrent in Isabella’s vocabulary.

She would never fail to do her duty. She had been brought up to regard it as of paramount importance. She would risk her life for the sake of duty; she did not know, she must not guess that, when she had allowed her husband to depart into Catalonia, she had risked his fidelity to their marriage bed.

It had happened. And now here he was at the Eboli mansion; the house was stirring and the cry went forth: ‘He is come! The Master is within the gates.’

When he had given his horse to the waiting groom, he said: ‘Softly, I pray you all. This is an unofficial visit. I am passing on my way to Aragon and I but pause to pay a friendly call.’

The servants understood. They knew of the relationship between their mistress and Don Ferdinand. They did not speak of it outside the household. They knew that it was the wish of Don Ferdinand that this should be kept secret, and that it could be dangerous to offend him.

He had stepped into the house.

‘Your mistress?’ he asked of two women who had immediately dropped deep curtsies.

‘She had retired for the night, Highness. But already she has heard of your coming.’

Ferdinand looked up and saw his mistress at the head of the staircase. Her long dark hair fell in disorder about her shoulders; she was wearing a velvet robe of a rich ruby colour draped round her naked body.

She was beautiful; and she was faithful. He saw the joy in her face and his senses leaped with delight as he bounded up the stairs and they embraced.

‘So . . . you have come at last . . .’

‘You know that I would have been here before this, could I have arranged it.’

She laughed, and keeping her arms about his neck, she said: ‘You have changed. You have grown older.’

‘A fate,’ he reminded her, ‘which befalls us all.’

‘But you have done it so becomingly,’ she told him.

They realised that they were being watched, and she took his arm and led him into her bedchamber.

There was a question which he wanted to ask above all others. Shrewdly he did not ask it . . . not yet. Much as she doted on the child, she must not suspect that it was for his sake that he had come and not for hers.

In her bedchamber he parted the velvet gown and kissed her body. She stood as though her ecstasy transfixed her.

He inevitably compared her with Isabella. Any woman, he told himself, would seem like a courtesan compared with Isabella. Virtue emanated from his wife. It surprised him that a halo was not visible about her head. Everything she did was done as a dedicated act. Even the sexual act – and there was no doubt that she loved him passionately – appeared, even in its most ecstatic moments, to be performed for the purpose of begetting heirs for the crown.

Ferdinand made excuses to himself for his infidelity. No man could subsist on a diet of unadulterated Isabella. There must be others.

Yet now, as he made love to his mistress, his thoughts were wandering. He would ask the all-important question at precisely the right moment. He prided himself on his calmness. It had been the admiration of his father and mother. But they had admired everything about him – good and bad qualities. And there had been times when he had been unable to curb his impetuosity. They would become fewer as he grew older. He was fully aware of that.

Now, satiated, his mistress lay beside him. There was a well-satisfied smile on her lips as he laced his fingers in hers.

‘You are superb!’ whispered Ferdinand. And then, as though it were an afterthought: ‘And . . . how is the boy?’

‘He is well, Ferdinand.’

‘Tell me, does he ever speak of me?’

‘Every day he says to me: “Mother, do you think that this day my father will come?”’

‘And what do you say to that?’

‘I tell him that his father is the most important man in Aragon, in Catalonia, in Castile, and it is only because he is such an important man that he has not time to visit us.’

‘And his reply?’

‘He says that one day he will be an important man like his father.’

Ferdinand laughed with pleasure. ‘He is sleeping now?’ he said wistfully.

‘Worn out by the day’s exertions. He is a General now, Ferdinand. He has his armies. You should hear him shouting orders.’

‘I would I could do so,’ said Ferdinand. ‘I wonder . . .’

‘You wish to see him. You cannot wait. I know it. Perhaps if we were very quiet we should not wake him. He is in the next room. I keep him near me. I am always afraid that something may happen to him if I let him stray too far from me.’