Whilst one imposing cavalcade of Aragonese bearing rich presents took the high road into Castile and occupied the attention of the King’s officers, a modest party of five merchants threaded the mountain paths by Soria, after leaving the Aragonese territory at Tarazona on the 7th October. The first day after entering Castile they rode well-nigh sixty miles; and late at night the little cavalcade approached the walled town of Osma, where Pedro Manrique and an armed escort were to meet them. The night was black, and their summons at the gates of the town was misunderstood: a cry went up that this was a body of the king’s men to surprise the place; and from the ramparts a shower of missiles flew upon the strangers below. One murderous stone whizzed within a few inches of the head of a fair-haired lad of handsome visage and manly bearing, who, as a servant, accompanied those who wore the garb of merchants. It was Ferdinand himself who thus narrowly escaped death, and a hurried explanation, a shouted password, the flashing of torches followed, and then the creaking drawbridge fell, the great gates clanged open, and the danger was over.[14] The next day, with larger forces, Ferdinand reached Dueñas, in Leon, near Valladolid; and four days later, now in raiment that befitted a royal bridegroom, for his father had made him king of Sicily, he rode when most men slept to Valladolid. It was nearly midnight when he arrived, and the gates of the city were closed for the night, but a postern in the walls gave access to the house in which Isabel was lodged; and there the Archbishop of Toledo led him by hand into the presence of his bride, to whom he was solemnly betrothed by the Archbishop’s chaplain. It was all done so secretly that no inkling of it reached the slumbering town; and within two hours the youth was in the saddle again and reached Dueñas long before dawn.[15]
On the 18th October 1469, four days later, all was ready for the public marriage, and Ferdinand entered the city this time in state, with Castilian and Aragonese men-at-arms and knights around him. Isabel was staying at the best house in Valladolid, that of her partisan, Juan Vivero, and the great hall was richly decked for the occasion of this, one of the fateful marriages of history, though none could have known that it was such at the time. The celebrant was the warlike Archbishop who had been so powerful a factor in bringing it about; and the next day, after mass, the married pair dined in public amidst the rejoicing of the faithful people of Valladolid. There was little pomp and circumstance in the wedding, for the times were critical, the realm disturbed, and money scarce; but imagination is stirred by the recollection of the great consequences that ensued upon it, and those who saw the event, even with their necessarily limited vision of its effects, must have realised that any splendour lavished upon it could not have enhanced its importance.