The Constant Prince

Preface

It is commonly supposed that the writer of an historical tale idealises the characters therein represented, heightens the romance of the situation, and at any rate brings the fairer tints of the scene into undue prominence. I wish to make it clearly understood that I have not done so in this instance. The high cultivation, the mutual affection, the deep piety, all the peculiar characteristics of the Princes of Avis, are matters of history, and I have only found it impossible to do justice to them. The personal appearance of the three eldest, and the special line taken by all of them with regard to the cession of Ceuta, indeed the whole tragical story, I found ready to hand, the only imaginary incidents being the meeting of Enrique and Fernando at Arzella, and the presence of the two boy princes at the siege of Ceuta.

There is a life of the Constant Prince which was written by the priest to whom I have given the name of Father José, which I regret much not having been able to obtain, though the outline of the story of his imprisonment is, I believe, taken from it.

The details of the Treaty of Tangier are very obscure; but it appears that the Moorish king of Granada considered his African brethren as guilty of a breach of faith in detaining Fernando.

The English characters are of course wholly fictitious.

Lastly, Calderon in his play, “Il Principe Costante,” and Archbishop Trench, in his beautiful poem of the “Steadfast Prince,” represent Fernando as refusing to be ransomed by the cession of Ceuta. This refusal he had neither the power nor the right to make. His real nobleness lay in his willing acceptance of the suffering brought on him by the decision of others.

Chapter One

Foreshadowings

“The child is father of the man.”

In a small marble-paved court belonging to the newly-built palace of King Joao the First of Portugal, on a splendid summer day in the year 1415, five youths were engaged in earnest consultation. The summer air, the luscious scent of the orange-trees beneath which they were seated, might have inclined them to mere lazy enjoyment of their young existence – the busy sounds from the tilt-yard near have summoned them to the sports and exercises for which their graceful, well-grown strength evidently fitted them, or the books, several of which were scattered on the marble steps of the court, have employed their attention. But they were evidently so deeply interested by the subject in hand as to have no thoughts to spare for anything else – a fact the more remarkable as they were not engaged in a dispute, but were discussing something on which they were evidently all agreed, and which they regarded as of the highest importance.

“When our great uncle, Edward the Black Prince, won his spurs,” said the eldest, a tall, dark-haired young man, with a singularly considerate and intelligent countenance, “it was at Crecy by hard fighting. He did something to deserve knighthood. His father let him win the field for himself. ‘Is my son unhorsed,’ he said, ‘or mortally wounded? Nay, then let him win his spurs.’ And see how he won them!”

“And he was only sixteen!” said the second brother, who resembled the first speaker, but had a more fiery and vivacious expression.

“Ay, Pedro, we have waited too long for our chance; it suits not with our honour.”

“Oh,” broke in the fourth boy vehemently, “why cannot the King find some pretext for war? If Castile or Arragon would but insult us! But my father says he cannot engage in an unjust war merely to knight his sons. ’Tis very unlucky.”

“Nay,” said the eldest brother, “I cannot blame him. He must consider the country’s good.”

“Ah!” said Pedro, “there always were wars and deeds of arms in those good old days. But these are dull times; it is not worth while living in the world now. Everything is for policy and justice; no one acts for pure glory and knight-errantry.”

“That is a stupid thing to say,” said the third brother, who had not hitherto spoken, a youth with broad, thoughtful brows and large grey eyes. “We do not know what one half of the world is like; there is quite enough to do in finding out.”

“Enrique is for ever wondering about countries beyond seas,” said Pedro. “Are Duarte and he and I to seek knighthood by sailing away to look for savages – the saints know where?”

“We have not yet killed nearly all the infidels,” said the youngest brother of all, rather dreamily.

“There are no Crusades now, Fernando,” said Duarte; “and to my thinking absent sovereigns make ill-governed kingdoms.”

“And are there no Infidels except in Palestine?” cried the little Fernando, springing to his feet. “I would sooner earn my knighthood by destroying the villains who steal children and imprison noble knights than by fighting with brave gentlemen like ourselves. I would sooner be Godfrey de Bouillon than our uncle Edward. Let us go and take Tangiers or Ceuta at the sword’s point; then can we be knighted with honour, and the blessed Cross – ” Here the child’s excitement fairly overcame him, tears filled his eyes, and he hid his face behind Enrique.

“There is much in the child’s words,” said Duarte. “Weep not, Fernando, if I go to fight the infidel, thou shalt be my page. Come, Pedro and Enrique, walk this way with me.” And the three elders strolled away together, leaving their juniors to speculate on their subject of conversation.

These five brothers, afterwards perhaps among the most brilliant, and certainly among the most virtuous, princes who ever adorned a royal house, were the sons of Joao the First of Portugal, the founder of the house of Avis, so called from the order of knighthood of which he was grand-master. He succeeded to the throne of Portugal rather by election than by inheritance, and after a period of disturbance and trouble; but his great qualities raised the little kingdom to quite a new place among nations, and in Philippa of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt by his first wife, he met with a Queen fully worthy of him. The interest which John of Gaunt’s second marriage gave him in the affairs of Castile made an alliance in the Peninsula desirable to him; but Philippa was free from the distracting claims to the Castilian succession of her young half-sister Catherine, and involved her husband in no quarrels. It may well be a source of pride to the English reader to remember that her sons were of Plantagenet blood, for they inherited all the virtues and few of the faults of that noble and generous race.

Perhaps the profound peace which made it so difficult to these young princes to signalise their knighthood by any deed of arms worthy of their name may seem more to King Joao’s credit in modern eyes than in those of his sons; but it was not strange that young men, all with talents and aims far above the average in any age, rank, or country, should wish to make a reality of that which was perhaps on the verge of becoming a splendid form, and burning with the truest spirit of chivalry, should, as many have done since, sigh for times when it was easier to express it. They were all as highly educated as was possible to the times in which they lived, and Edward, or Duarte, as he was called by the Portuguese form of his English name, was a considerable scholar; but war was still the calling of a prince and a gentleman, and they felt hardly used in being debarred from it. King Joao, however, was of so enlightened or so degenerate a spirit that he refused to plunge his kingdom into war solely for the purpose of knighting his sons. Hence the foregoing discussion.

The three elder brothers walked up and down under the shade of the orange-trees – tall and stately youths, with serious faces, and minds set on the subject in hand. Duarte walked in the middle, and seemed to be weighing the arguments addressed to him by Enrique; his more rounded outlines, and a certain tender gentleness of expression in his dark eyes, gave him the air of being younger than Pedro, whose colouring was darker and his face sterner and more impetuous. He was sometimes arrogant and hasty; but no one ever heard a sharp word from the just and gentle Duarte, whose mental power and high scholarship seemed but to add to his unselfish consideration. The tallest of the three was Enrique, in whose great size and strength and fair skin the English mother loved to trace the characteristics of the Plantagenets. He talked with intense eagerness, and his great dark eyes were full of ardour, but of the dreaminess accompanying ardour for an unseen object. The two younger boys had meanwhile remained sitting on the steps, ostensibly learning their lessons from a very crabbed-looking Latin manuscript spread out between them. Joao was a fine dark-eyed boy of fourteen, with an exceedingly acute and intelligent countenance. Fernando was two years younger, and though tall for his age, was slender and fragile. He had the flaxen hair and brilliant fairness of his mother’s race, but the large blue eyes had the same dreamy intensity that marked Enrique’s, with a sweetness all their own. These two were kindred spirits beyond the bond that united all the five, and never failed them through the long lives spent in toil and self-denial.

Enrique having parted from the two elder ones came up to the steps, and Fernando looked up at him eagerly, while Joao jumped up, announcing that he knew his lesson, and should go and play.

“But I do not know mine,” said Fernando, disconsolately.

Enrique sat down on the step, and drawing the child up to his side, began to translate the Latin for him into French, in which language the Portuguese court, in imitation of the English one, usually conversed. Fernando was so delicate that the strict and severe system under which they were all educated was sometimes relaxed in his favour. He was, however, an apt pupil, and presently Enrique closed the book.

“There, now you can go and play.”

“No,” said Fernando, pressing up to his brother. “Tell me, have you been talking about the knighthood?”

“Yes,” said Enrique; “we are resolved that if we have to wait for ever, we will not make a pretence of that which should be so great a thing. Not the year of tournaments shall tempt us.”

“When I am knighted,” said Fernando, “I will go and fight the Moors in Africa, and destroy the castles where they make good Christians to toil as slaves. Would it not be joy to open the prisons and set them free?”

“Ay,” said Enrique, looking straight out of his wide-opened eyes as if he saw far away. “Then, too, should we see what lies behind – behind Tangiers and Ceuta, beyond the sands. There might we spread the Cross.”

“And there maybe are the two-headed giants and the dragons like the one Saint George of England killed; and magic castles, and fiery pits, the very entrance of hell. You used to say so.”

“Ah, maybe,” said Enrique, smiling. “Anyway there is the wide earth, the world that we do not know.”

“Then you do not think all the countries are discovered yet?” looking up in his face.

“Nay, surely not,” said Enrique, with gathering eagerness. “There,” pointing to the sparkling bay before them, “does that go on for ever, and for ever. Well is the Atlantic called the Sea of Darkness, blue and bright as it may be! But the lost path to the Indies, where is it? Where is that island the Englishman saw in mid-ocean? Where, where?” Enrique paused, his face one unanswered question. “Some day I will know.”

“But in the meantime,” said Fernando, “the enemies of the Blessed Saviour are here close by, killing and destroying good Christians?”

“Well,” said Enrique, coming out of the clouds, “we will deal first with them, sooner maybe than you think for! But there are more ways than one of subduing the world for Christ. You can win your knighthood in Barbary by and by, while I look for the fiery dragons beyond.”

He pulled a roughly-drawn map towards him, and began to study it.

“Ah, but not all alone,” said Fernando, vehemently; “the fiery dragons might kill you, and I could not fight the infidels by myself.”

“Not yet,” said Enrique, soothingly, “you have to grow strong first.”

He stretched himself out, leaning on his elbow, and knitting his brows in absorbed study of the map before him. Fernando sat leaning against him in silence. His brothers were all tender and good to him; but Enrique was the best-loved of them all, and the idea that these eagerly-desired adventures involved a parting had never been realised by him before. Presently he raised himself, and sat a little apart, looking before him with a face that, with all its fair tinting and delicate outline, set into lines of remarkable force and firmness.

“Enrique,” he said, presently.

“Well?”

“I will go without you to fight the infidel if there is no other way. For we are soldiers of the Cross, and our Blessed Lord is our Captain, and He would be with me. But oh! dear Enrique, I will pray every day that He will send you too.”

“Now, then, mother will be angry,” said Enrique, as the excitable boy broke into a passion of tears.

“Did she not say you should not talk of infidels, or Christians either, if it made you cry? I feel sure our uncle Edward did not cry at the thought of the French.”

“I am not afraid; it is not that I am afraid,” sobbed Fernando, indignantly.

“No, no! I know. See, Fernando, I promise I will go with you when you win your spurs. Hush, now, it is almost supper-time. Shall I take you to mother first?”

“No,” said Fernando, recovering himself. “I will not cry.”

“Come then,” said Enrique, pulling his long limbs up from their lounging attitude, and holding out his hand. “Come and see the English mastiffs, and some day, maybe, I will tell you a secret.”

Chapter Two

The Deed of Arms

“I know, Sir King,

All that belongs to knighthood, and I love.”

The supper was over, and King Joao was seeking for some relaxation from the cares of state in the society of his wife and children. He and his fair English Queen would then sit in their private room, and the five sons would give an account of their studies, exercises, and amusements during the day, or sometimes practise speaking English with their mother, or receive from her good advice or tender encouragement. The King and Queen sat on chairs, the princes stood respectfully near them, when, after a silence, Duarte suddenly advanced and spoke.

“Sire, I and my brothers have a proposal to make to your grace.”

“Say on. I am ready to hear you, though I do not promise to find wisdom in the proposals of your rash youth,” said Dom Joao, while the fair-haired mother smiled encouragement.

“Sire, it has pleased you to regard without displeasure our wish not to receive the sacred order of knighthood without some deed of arms that should render us worthy of it; and I, and at least my brother Pedro, have waited till the usual age is past, in the hope that some fortunate quarrel would give your highness the power to grant our request.”

“My son,” said King Joao, “I cannot risk the interests of my subjects for your desire of fame. A knight has other duties – to guard the oppressed, to defend the weak, is indeed the calling of princes; but not always at the point of the sword.”

Duarte bowed submissively; but, after a pause, he continued —

“Yet there is one enemy with whom we cannot be said to be either at war or at peace, since there cannot be honourable peace with the enemies of Christ. Yet Christian nations suffer nests of pirates to dwell undisturbed opposite our very coasts. Our soldiers, our ships, and innocent children are not safe from the Moors of Africa. When they swoop down on our shores, it is death or – apostasy for Christian men, and for our maidens slavery and imprisonment. The very key of their fastnesses is Ceuta. Could we but take that fortress at the point of the sword, it would be a deed worthy of Christian princes, of use to your grace’s subjects, and honourable in the eyes of Europe.”

Dom Joao looked at his son as if somewhat surprised, to hear so reasonable and well-considered a proposal. His authority was absolute over his five young sons, and though he could not but be satisfied with their progress and development, he had not expected from any of them an independent opinion.

“Since when have you thought of this expedition?” he said.

“It was suggested to me, sire, by some words of Fernando’s,” said Duarte; and Fernando, who had listened with breathless interest, sprang forward, and with more freedom than Duarte had ventured to use, exclaimed —

“Oh, dear father, it is the greatest desire of us all!”

“It would be fitter for you and Joao to pursue your studies at home,” said the King. “Nevertheless, I will consider of this proposal.”

The five lads did not shout, as perhaps nature would have inclined them to do, they bowed, and stood silent till their father withdrew, when there was a sudden relaxation of their attitude of respectful attention, and they surrounded their mother, pressing up to her, kissing her hand, and demanding if they had not at last found the right thing to do.

Philippa was a tall, fair woman, with a beautiful Plantagenet face, and an expression at once simple and noble, a fit mother of heroes.

“My fair sons,” she said, “it is a noble purpose, an object worthy of Christian swords. It is good that you should win your knighthood by fighting for Holy Church, rather than for your own vain-glory. If your father thinks this attempt wise, it will be well, if not – ”

“If not,” said Dom Duarte, “I will not consent to the year of tournaments my father proposed for us. It is a mockery, a pretence – I hate false seeming.”

“You do well, my son,” said the English mother; “yet the tournaments might show you fit for real warfare.”

“That might be very well for the younger ones,” said Pedro.

“I am taller than you,” said Enrique, indignantly.

“You said I should be your page, and I will not stay at home,” said Fernando.

“Hush, my boys; do not dispute,” said the Queen. “Remember, the true glory is in doing our duty. If every prince and gentleman went out to war, who would punish evil-doers and succour the distressed at home! Your father, who is the wisest man alive, knows that; and Edward must remember it when his time comes. For you younger ones it will be different. The blessed saints guide you to seek the right, and to be worthy of your forefathers.”

To whatever degree of cultivation and even of virtue the Mohammedan kingdoms had attained among themselves, and whatever injury to learning may have been caused afterwards to mediaeval Christendom by their violent expulsion from the Peninsula, the Moors of Africa were and must have been simply an embodiment of evil. The organised system of piracy which they maintained rendered life and property totally unsafe all along the Mediterranean. A regular system of ransom was in vogue, and where the friends of an unfortunate captive were unable to satisfy their demands, neither rank, nor age, nor calling, was any protection; and noble knights and aged priests were chained to the oars of their galleys, or toiled among the sands of Africa, while their fate remained a mystery to their friends at home – whether death, prolonged suffering, or far worse, apostasy had been their portion. Martyr or renegade, it was an awful choice, to be placed once for all before many an honest, ignorant squire or knight; but “captive among the Moors” was written in many a pedigree of Southern Europe, in some few even of distant countries. More still returned, impoverished by their ransom, to tell of their frightful sufferings; while, most terrible thought of all, girls and children disappeared now and again – to what fate? Every Christian sovereign and gentleman felt the ransom to be a disgraceful black-mail demanded of them, which yet they knew not how to refuse! There is nothing in the modern world that is quite analogous to the situation.

The Moors were the enemies of life and property, like the brigands of our own time, only infinitely more powerful, and as such were feared and hated. They were also, of course, as now, unbelievers, outside the pale of the Church; their conversion was a subject of prayer; they were, or might have been, the objects of missionary labour. But the Moors of the Middle Ages were something more than this. They were not only ignorant of Christ; they were the hereditary enemies of Christendom: not merely of Spain, of Portugal, or of France, nor exactly of the Church Catholic, as we should understand it, but of that sort of visible, territorial embodiment of it for which, in old romance, the Seven Champions fought and which Arthur and his Knights laboured to spread, and the defence of which made honour as well as religion a spur to every Crusader. Therefore it was not only as national and personal enemies, or as blinded heathens, that the knights of Europe regarded the Turks and Moors, but as the powerful foes of Christ’s kingdom on earth, embodied in Christian nations; so that national honour and religious fervour worked together, and glory alike for earth and for Heaven was won in attacking the Crescent with the Cross. It was not only very sad for a Christian man to see the unbeliever triumph, it was very disgraceful also.

Alas! if all the evil in the world could have been so embodied! – if Christendom had had no foes in its own household! – the fight between good and evil would indeed have been simplified, though not dispensed with. It was very clear to an old Christian champion that it was his duty to fight with evil; to do so with a pure heart and unwavering spirit was just as hard then as now. Our heroes lived in the dawn of a new day: when other duties were rising into view, other talents coming to be consecrated, but when the old visible symbolical struggle was still in full force. For faith, for knowledge, for good government, for the honour of Christendom, for the old and the new, they all fought and toiled – and one died.

Chapter Three

The Three Swords

“Oh, mother! mother! can this be true?”

Many months passed before the crude suggestion of the young Infantes was worked by the King and his ministers into a practicable form; and it is not necessary here to enter into all the considerations of policy and prudence that were involved. In spite of many feints and pretences hardly worthy of so liberal a prince as Dom Joao, the Moorish sovereign became aware of his intentions, and sent offers of splendid presents to the Queen for her young daughter, if she would intercede with her husband and preserve peace.

“My daughter,” said Queen Philippa, “has jewels enough of her own. I know not your customs; but with us, wives do not interfere with their husbands’ business.”

So, after much discussion to and fro, the fleets were prepared, the army gathered together, and the King determined to take the command of the expedition. Still, the foremost places were to be given to his three sons, who would thus have every opportunity of earning worthily their long-deferred knighthood.

Joao and Fernando were too young for any such hopes, and, to their great disappointment, were forbidden to take any part in the expedition at all, but were to remain at home with their mother. Joao consoled himself with planning future feats of marvellous bravery; but Fernando, who had relied on Duarte’s promise, was pronounced naughty and rebellious, and received double tasks, because he would not submit patiently to his father’s decision. His conscience was very tender, and he learnt the hard lessons diligently, and repented of his fault, while he pondered over the tales of boy-martyrs and child-crusaders, which, though held up to his admiration, it seemed so impossible, and even so wrong, to imitate. It was much harder simply to do as he was told; but Fernando did his best, and practised patience.

The time was drawing near for the expedition to start, when one morning the little boy was sitting by himself in a room in the palace of Lisbon which was devoted to the studies of the young princes. Fernando sat on a bench by the great oak table, employed in what a boy would now call “doing his sums” – that is to say, he was working out, in the cumbrous method of the time, a somewhat abstruse mathematical problem. There was no ornament to the bare wall, but a great crucifix over the high fireplace; the window was high up in the wall, offering no temptation to wandering eyes; and the only spot of colour in the room was the crimson dress and long fair hair of the little prince as he bent over his task. Fernando shared in some degree the strong mathematical turn of his elder brothers, and did not find his work uninteresting, though it strained his boyish powers to the utmost. His brothers were engaged in preparations for war, and his mother and sister Isabel were at a place called Saccavem with the chief part of the court. The little boys had been left behind with their tutors.