After Juan Ferrandez de Henestrosa left Toledo, Queen Blanche held converse with many great ladies of that city, who dwelt there and came every day to visit her. And she told them how she went in fear of her life, and that she had heard that the king was minded to come to Toledo, and have her seized and put to death; and therefore she begged and prayed for some protection. And all this business of Queen Blanche, she being very young, for she was not then more than eighteen, was managed by a lady who was her governess, holding this office by the appointment of Queen Doña Maria, the king’s mother, who had bestowed it on her. The ladies of Toledo, when they heard these things every day from Queen Blanche and her governess, Doña Leonora de Saldaña, were filled with pity for the queen, and they spoke to their husbands and kinsmen, saying that they would be the meanest men on earth if such a queen as this, their lady and the wife of their lord the king, should die such a death in the city where they were; but since they had power, let them prevent it. For the queen thought and feared that Juan Ferrandez de Henestrosa would return with the king’s order to seize and imprison her in the Alcazar, where she was certain she would be put to death. And she thought that this was not the true will of the king, but that he had been persuaded to it by certain of his counsellors, kinsmen of Doña Maria de Padilla, and that the time would come when the king her lord and husband would hold that they who had saved her from such a death had done him good service, and would understand that they had not done wrongfully, but in his interest. The knights of Toledo, by the many representations made to them, with tears for the imprisonment and death of so noble a lady as Queen Blanche, who was a creature without blame and of so high lineage, and because the highest and best in the kingdom were ill contented with the kinsmen of Doña Maria de Padilla, were for the most part moved to defend the queen to the utmost of their power, and to hazard their lives and possessions for her. And when the knights and squires and true men of the city heard that Juan Ferrandez de Henestrosa was coming to Toledo, although he was with the king, and that he was about to seize the queen and imprison her, as they were given to understand, they took Queen Blanche from the church of Sancta Maria where she abode, and placed her in the Alcazar of the said city, on Thursday at the hour of tierce, on the eve of the feast of St. Mary in August, of that year. And with her all her ladies and damsels, and many other ladies of the city. And they gave the towers of the Alcazar and of the city into the keeping of the knights and loyal citizens of that city, for their defence; for all came to this work right willingly. And on the day that this was done they seized all their kinsmen who would not take part in it.[h] PEDRO’S FALSE MARRIAGE