Take one arrow by itself, and it is nothing—you can break it in your hands. But if you take many of them together, it is beyond your strength to break them.”

The darkness gathered in the room. The princes prayed in silence, as the Queen commended herself to God. The priests, the physicians, and the ladies in waiting moved quietly about their tasks. Above the tense quiet that surrounded the deathbed, the wind began to sound; low at first, and hot off the summer plains of Portugal. Soon the noise of it disturbed even the princes at their devotions. Queen Philippa also heard the great wind that began to drum against the walls of her room.

“What is that wind?”

“It is a wind from the north.”

The Queen was silent. Then “A wind from the north,” she said, “a good wind for your voyage. How strange that I, who looked forward to the day of your departure, thinking I would see you knighted—how strange that I shall never see this.” “You will see us leave,” Edward protested. “You will recover, and you will see us leave.”

“I shall not see you from this world. But still, my death must not prevent your departure. You will sail by the feast of St. James.”

The princes looked at one another. The feast of St. James was only a week away. The Queen lifted her head. Her face was transfigured with joy.

“Praise be to you, Holy Virgin,” she said, “since it has pleased you to come from Heaven to visit me.”

The wind began to boom around the turrets and crenelated stones of the palace. The carpets rose and flickered over the stone floors. In the long corridors the tapestries billowed like sails.


2

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Genius is elusive. We know little about the ancestry of many of the world’s great men. But in the case of Prince Henry of Portugal, distinction of breeding, intellect, and a healthy stock on both sides of his family might lead one to expect exceptional qualities.

His father, King John, was the illegitimate son of King Pedro I (last of the Burgundian dynasty in Portugal) by Teresa Lourengo, a lady of the court. As well as being illegitimate, John was also King Pedro’s youngest son, so that his accession to the throne never seemed likely. As was expected, John’s eldest half-brother, Ferdinand, succeeded Pedro I on his death. Ferdinand married his mistress, Leonora Telles de Meneses, who has been recorded in history as “an infamous and adulterous Queen.” She was also a woman of great subtlety and cunning, who suspected and feared all the rival claimants to the throne. Having arranged for Ferdinand’s other legitimate brothers to be banished from the court (whence they took refuge in Castile), she was left with only John, grand master of the House of Aviz, as the sole potential claimant to the throne. He was the one whom she mistrusted more than any other. But Dom John had learned a foxlike astuteness and capacity for survival. He did nothing that could enable Leonora to procure his banishment or his death.

When King Ferdinand died, Queen Leonora was left in the position of regent. Her only daughter, Beatrice, who was married to the King of Castile, was on the point of being proclaimed queen of Portugal. The accession of Beatrice would have brought the Portuguese under the sway of the kingdom of Castile, with which they had long been at daggers drawn.