fter the wedding a strange thing happened, which caused
people to shake their heads again and suggest the interference of the
powers of sorcery. For, after this short time, Pedro rode away from
Valladolid and his new queen and went to Montalvao, where Maria de
Padilla was waiting to receive him. Just what had happened, it is
somewhat difficult to discover, and the story is told that the king,
listening to scandalous talk, was made to believe that his royal
messenger and half-brother, Fadrique, had played the role of Sir
Tristram as he brought the lady back, and that she had been a somewhat
willing Isolde. There were others who said that Blanche, knowing the
king's volatile disposition and of his relations with the notorious
Maria, had endeavored upon the eve of her marriage to seek aid from the
arts of magic in her effort to win the love of her husband, and had
obtained from a Jewish sorcerer a belt which she was told would make
Pedro faithful, kind, and true. But the story goes on to say that this
wizard had been bribed by Maria de Padilla; and when the king tried on
the girdle which his wife presented, it forthwith was changed into a
hideous serpent, which filled him with such disgust that he could no
longer bear the sight of her. Don Alfonso of Albuquerque, who had first
introduced Pedro to Maria de Padilla, now tried to take her away from
him, in the hope that he might be prevailed upon to return to his wife,
the unfortunate Blanche. This so angered the king that he resolved upon
Don Alfonso's death, and if it had not been for the timely warning given
by Maria, this gentleman would certainly have been assassinated. This
action on Maria's part, however, was the occasion for a fresh outburst
of anger; and Pedro left, wooed Dona Juana de Castro in stormy fashion,
and induced her to marry him, on the statement that he had made a secret
protest against Blanche and that the pope would soon annul this
marriage. Thomas Hardy has said that the most delicate women get used to
strange moral situations, and there must have been something of this in
Juana's makeup, or she would never have been forced into so shameful a
position; but, however that may be, she was made to rue the day, as the
king left her the next morning for Maria, his Venus Victrix, and never
went to see her again, although he gave her the town of Duefias and
allowed her to be addressed as "queen." The chronicles of the time tell
of the remarkable beauty of Maria