e with the beautiful, but not
overscrupulous, Juana of Portugal. Beltran de Cueva, a brilliant
nobleman, was the favorite and influential person at the court at this
time, and his gradual rise to favor had been due in no small measure to
the protection of the new queen, who was Beltran's all but acknowledged
mistress and took no pains to conceal the matter at any time. In fact,
at a great tournament held near Madrid in 1461, soon after Juana's
arrival at the court, Beltran posed as her preferred champion, and held
the lists against all comers in defence of his mistress's preeminent and
matchless beauty. The king was far from displeased at this liaison
between Beltran and the queen, and he was so delighted at the knight's
unvarying success in this tournament, that the story goes that he
founded a monastery upon the spot and named it, in honor of Saint Jerome
and Beltran, San Geronimo del Paso, or of the "passage of arms"! The
king was little moved by all this, for the simple reason that he was
paying a most ardent court at the same time to one of the queen's ladies
in waiting. This Lady Guiomar, his mistress, was beautiful, but bold and
vicious, as her relations with such a king demonstrate, but for a time
at least she was riding upon the crest of the wave. Proud in her
questionable honor, and daring to be jealous of the real queen, she made
King Henry pay dearly for her favors, and she was soon installed in a
palace of her own and living in a splendor and magnificence which
rivalled that of the queen herself. The Archbishop of Seville, strange
to relate, openly espoused her cause. Her insolent and domineering ways
were a fit counterpart to those of the queen, and the unfortunate people
were soon making open complaint. Beltran, the king in fact, was the open
and accepted favorite of the queen, and Henry, the king in name only,
was devoting himself to a vain and shallow court beauty who wished to be
a veritable queen and longed for the overthrow of her rival! Such was
the sad spectacle presented to the world by Castile at this time, but
the crisis was soon to come which would clarify the air and lead to a
more satisfactory condition in the state. Matters were hastened to their
climax when the queen gave birth, in 1462, to a daughter who was called
after her mother, Juana; but so evident was the paternity of this
pitiful little princess, that she was at once christened La Beltraneja
in common parlance; and by that sobriquet