The Admiral was too important a person to be slighted, and Philip was forced to listen to some plain warnings from him. He must not venture to go to Valladolid without the Queen, or ill would come of it: the people were jealous already, and if Joan was shut up their fears would be confirmed. So Joan was borne by her husband’s side to Valladolid in state, though her face was set in stony sorrow beneath the black cowl that shrouded it. Near there one other interview took place between the two kings with much feigned affection, but no result as regards Joan. On the 10th July 1506, Joan and her husband rode through the city of Valladolid with all the pomp of Burgundy and Spain. Two banners were to be carried before the royal pair, but Joan knew she alone was Queen of Castile, and insisted that one should be destroyed before she would start. She was mounted upon a white jennet, housed in black velvet to match her own sable robes, and a black hood almost covered her face.[110] Shows, feasts and addresses were arranged for their reception, but they rode straight through the crowded, flower-decked streets without staying to witness them; and this joyous entry, we are told by an eyewitness, meant to be so gay, was blighted by an all-pervading gloom, as of some great calamity to come.
On the following day the Cortes took the oath of allegiance to Joan as Queen, and to Philip only as consort, and she personally insisted upon seeing the powers of the deputies. The ceremonies over, Philip came to business. Great efforts were made to persuade the Cortes to consent to Joan’s confinement and Philip’s personal rule; and Jimenez did his best to get the custody of her.[111] But the stout Admiral Enriquez stood in the way, and insisted that this iniquity should not be, so that Philip was obliged to put up with the position of administrator for his wife, since he could not be King in her stead. Flemings, Germans and Castilians, in the meanwhile, vied with each other in rapacity. Philip was free enough with the money of others, but even he had to go out hunting by stealth to escape importunity when he had given away all he had to give and more. But of all the greedy crew there was none so rapacious as Juan Manuel, little of body but great of mind, who, like the Marquis of Villena forty years before, grabbed with both hands insatiate. Fortresses, towns, pensions, assignments of national revenue, nothing came amiss to Manuel, and at last his covetous eyes were cast upon the fortress-palace of Segovia, still in the keeping of that stout Andrés Cabrera and his wife, Beatriz de Bobadilla, Marchioness of Moya, the lifelong friend of the great Isabel. Philip gave an order that the Alcazar of Segovia was to be surrendered to Manuel. Surrender the Alcazar! after fifty years of keeping! No, forsooth, said big-hearted Dona Beatriz; only to Queen Joan will we give the fortress that her great mother entrusted to our keeping.