PAGE 19
The Spanish-English Lady
by
“Thou now seest, Ricaredo, the impediment which hinders us from deciding this quarrel. If, notwithstanding this interruption, thou shalt have a mind to chastise me, thou wilt seek after me, and I shall have the like mind to chastise thee, and seek likewise after thee; and since two that seek after each other are easily found, let the execution of our desires surcease for the present.”
“Content,” replied Ricaredo. By this time the captain was come in with all the guard, and told the Earl that he must yield himself his prisoner, for in her Majesty’s name he was to apprehend him. The Earl yielded himself unto him, and told the captain that he submitted himself to her Majesty’s command, but with this condition, that he should not carry him to any other place save the Queen’s presence.
The captain remained therewith satisfied, and carrying him in the midst of the guard, brought him to Court before the Queen, who had already been informed by his mother of the great love which her son bare to Isabella, and with tears besought her Majesty that she would pardon the Earl, who being a young man, and deeply in love, was liable to far greater errors. Arnesto was brought before the Queen, who, without entertaining any speech with him, commanded his sword to be taken from him, and afterwards sent him to prison.
All these things tormented the heart of Isabella, as likewise of her parents, who so suddenly saw the sea of their quietness troubled.
The lady of the bedchamber, Arnesto’s mother, advised the Queen that for to remove that mischief betwixt her house and that of Ricaredo, the cause thereof might be taken away (which was Isabella, by sending her into Spain) and so those effects would cease which now were to be feared. She added to these reasons the assertion that Isabella was a Catholic, and so Christian a one that none of her persuasions (which had been many) had been able to bend her in any way from her Catholic intent.
Whereunto the Queen answered, that for the sending of her into Spain she should treat no more on that point, because her fair presence and her many graces and virtues gave her great content, and that doubtless, if not that very day, the next following without all fail she would marry her to Ricaredo, according to the promise she had made him.
With this resolution of the Queen’s, Arnesto’s mother was so disheartened and discomforted that she replied not so much as one word. And approving that for good which she had already forecast in her mind: that there was no other way, no other means in the world, for the mollifying of that rigorous condition of her son, nor for the reducing of Ricaredo to terms of peace, save by taking away Isabella; she determined to put in practice one of the greatest cruelties that could ever enter into the thought of any noble woman, and especially so principal a one as she was. And this her determination was, to make away with Isabella by poison. And because it is commonly the condition of women to be speedy and resolute in what they go about, that very evening she gave Isabella poison in a certain conserve, forcing her in a manner to take it, telling her that it was excellent good against those passions of the heart wherewith she seemed to be troubled.
Having satisfied her importunity, within a little while after that Isabella had taken it, her tongue and her throat began to swell, and her lips to grow black, her voice hoarse, her eyes troubled, and her stomach and bowels tormented with gripings: all manifest signs and tokens that she was poisoned.