‘My mother is sinking fast,’ said Isabella. ‘Call the priests. They should be with her.’

‘Yes, Highness.’

Isabella went back to the bed and waited.

The Dowager Queen Isabella was lying back on her pillows, her eyes closed, her lips moving; and her daughter, trying to pray for her mother’s soul, could only find the words intruding into her prayers: ‘Oh God, You have made Juana so like her. I pray You, take care of my daughter.’

Catalina was eagerly awaiting the return of her mother from Arevalo, but it was long before she could be alone with her.

Since the little girl had learned that she was to go to England she could not spend enough time in her mother’s company. Isabella understood this and made a point of summoning Catalina to her presence whenever this was possible.

Now she dismissed everyone and kept Catalina with her; the joy on the face of the child was rewarding enough; it moved Isabella deeply.

Isabella made Catalina bring her stool and sit at her feet. This, Catalina was happy to do; she sat leaning her head against her mother’s skirts, and Isabella let her fingers caress her youngest daughter’s thick chestnut hair.

‘Did it seem long that I was away then?’ she asked.

‘So long, Mother. First you went away with Juana, and then as soon as you had returned you must leave for Arevalo.’

‘We have had little time together for so long. We must make up for it. I rejoiced to be with my mother for a little while before she died.’

‘You are unhappy, Mother.’

‘Are you surprised that I should be unhappy now that I have no mother? You who, I believe, love your own mother, can understand that, can you not?’

‘Oh yes. But your mother was not as my mother.’

Isabella smiled. ‘Oh, Catalina, she has caused me such anxieties.’

‘I know it, Mother. I hope never to cause you one little anxiety.’

‘If you did it would be solely because I loved you so well. You would never do aught, I know, to distress me.’

Catalina caught her mother’s hand and kissed it fiercely. Such emotion frightened Isabella.

I must strengthen her, this tender little child, she thought.

‘Catalina,’ she said, ‘you are old enough to know that my mother was kept a prisoner, more or less, at Arevalo because … because her mind was not … normal. She was unsure of what was really happening. She did not know whether I was a woman or a little girl like you. She did not know that I was the Queen but thought that my little brother was alive and that he was the heir to Castile.’

‘Did she … frighten you?’

‘When I was young I was frightened. I was frightened of her wildness. I loved her, you see, and I could not bear that she should suffer so.’

Catalina nodded. She enjoyed these confidences; she knew that something had happened to make her relationship with her mother even more poignantly precious. This had taken place when she had discovered she was destined to go to England; and she believed that the Queen did not want her to go as an ignorant child. She wanted her to understand something of the world so that she would be able to make her own decisions, so that she would be able to control her emotions – in fact, so that she would be a grown-up person able to take care of herself.

‘Juana is like her,’ said Catalina.

The Queen caught her breath. She said quickly: ‘Juana is too high spirited. Now that she is to have a husband she will be more controlled.’

‘But my grandmother had a husband; she had children; and she was not controlled.’

The Queen was silent for a few seconds, then she said: ‘Let us pray together for Juana.’

She took Catalina’s hand and they went into that small anteroom where Isabella had set up an altar; and there they knelt and prayed not only for the safe journey of Juana but for her safe and sane passage through life.

Afterwards they went back to the apartment and Catalina sat once more on her stool at the Queen’s feet.

‘Catalina,’ said Isabella, ‘I hope you will be friends with the Archduchess Margaret when she comes. We must remember that she will be a stranger among us.’

‘I wonder whether she is frightened,’ Catalina whispered, trying not to think of herself setting out on a perilous journey across the sea to England.

‘She is sixteen years old, and she comes to a strange country to marry a young man whom she has never seen. She does not know that in our Juan she will have the kindest, dearest husband anyone could have. She has yet to learn how fortunate she is. But while she is discovering this I want you and your sisters to be very kind to her.’

‘I shall, Mother.’

‘I know you will.’

‘I would do anything you asked of me … gladly I would do it if you commanded me.’

‘I know it, my precious daughter. And when the time comes for you to leave me you will do so with good courage in your heart. You will know, will you not, that wherever I am and wherever you are, I shall never forget you as long as I live.’

Catalina’s lips were trembling as she answered: ‘I will never forget it. I will always do my duty as you would have me do it. I shall not whimper.’

‘I shall be proud of you. Now take your lute, my dearest, and play to me awhile; for very soon we shall be interrupted. But never mind, I shall steal away from state duties and be with you whenever it is possible. Play to me now, my dearest.’

So Catalina brought her lute and played; but even the gayest tunes sounded plaintive because Catalina could not dismiss from her mind the thought that time passed quickly and the day must surely come when she must set out for England.

Those were sad weeks for the Queen. She was in deep mourning for her mother, and there had been such tempests at sea that she feared for the safety of the armada which was escorting Juana to Flanders.

News came that the fleet had had to put into an English port because some of the ships had suffered damage during the tempest. Isabella wondered how Don Fadrique Enriquez was managing to keep the wild Juana under control. It would not be easy and the sooner she was married to Philip the better.

But travelling by sea was a hazardous affair and it might well be that Juana would never reach her destination.

A storm at sea might rob Ferdinand of his dearest dream. If Juana were lost on her way to Flanders, and Margaret on her way to Spain, that would be the end of the proposed Habsburg alliance. Isabella could only think of the dangers to her children, and her prayers were constant.

She tried to concentrate on other matters, but it was not easy to shut out the thought of Juana in peril; and since the recent death of her mother she had had bad dreams in which the sick woman of Arevalo often changed into the unstable Juana.

She was fortunate, she told herself, in her Archbishop of Toledo. Others might rail against him, criticise him because he had taken all the colour and glitter from his office, because he was as stern and unrelenting in his condemnation of others as he was of himself. But for him Isabella had that same admiration which she had had – and still had – for Tomás de Torquemada.

Tomás had firmly established the Holy Inquisition in the land, and Ximenes would do his utmost to maintain it. They were two of a kind and men whom Isabella – as sternly devout as they were themselves – wished to have about her.

She knew that Ximenes was introducing reforms in the Order to which he belonged. It had always seemed deplorable to him that many monks, who appeared in the Franciscan robes, did not follow the rules which had been set down for them by their Founder. They loved good living; they feasted and drank good wine; they loved women, and it was said that many of them were the fathers of illegitimate children. This was something to rouse fury in a man such as Ximenes and, like Torquemada, he was not one to shrug aside the weaknesses of others.