_THE WILL OF THE CATHOLIC KINGS_ Young Isabel, sister of the king, sits in her castle tower at Medina, and looks beyond Castile: looks south to the Moorish realm, Granada; looks east and north to the kingdoms of Aragon and Navarre; looks west to Portugal. “Let there be Spain,” says Isabel of Castile. Her own land is riven in chaos. Ferdinand the Saint who won Córdoba and Seville from the Moslem was a strong monarch. But Alfonso the Learnèd was not wise in ruling. There have been two hundred years of banditry, of baronial insolence, of royal wavering. Castile is a quicksand upon which no will can march. Only the penniless submit to taxes. Nobles are outlaws. Rome parcels out appointments in the Church to alien lackeys. Prelates of Spain go their own way with their own crimson armies, or sulk in arrogant safety in their fortress-churches. Tolerance has begotten anarchy. Ideas annul each other in the too free sun. And God, with many faces, turns against Himself. Isabel, looking from the bastioned windows of her tower out upon Castile is a luminous quiet heart in the storm. King Henry, the Impotent, is fertile of disaster. His favorites juggle with the scepter, scribble upon the royal parchment commands of idleness and of ambition. One of his favorites, Beltrán, has begotten on the Queen a daughter: and Joanna’s growth is the growth of fresh dynastic war. Alfonso, the king’s brother, claims the throne and writes his claim on the sparse wheatfields of Castile, making them desert. Portugal pushes: France plots and watches. Each fortune has its army. Each church is a castle. Each mountain is either an ambush or a throne. “Let there be Spain,” says Isabel of Castile. She will be queen: but in her own way. And her way, like her will, is her rapt possession by the spirit of her land. Her brother, Alfonso, has died: his faction demand of her that she assume the Crown and drive out the impotent king. Isabel refuses. She bargains with Henry. While he lives, he is to rule. But his pseudo-daughter shall renounce: his adulterous wife shall return to Portugal: Isabel shall be acknowledged heiress of Castile. Henry gives his word, and breaks it. He is neither friend nor foe. He is a symbol of Spain’s brackish chaos. Isabel holds to her castle. She is almost penniless; but she has for confessor a couched eagle, Cisneros, who is to second her mysterious work. Isabel learns that her brother the king plots to imprison her for the sake of Joanna whom the heir of Portugal has married. Isabel summons Ferdinand, heir to Aragon, to come and wed her. She is thinking of Spain; and her articulate will has convinced the old King Juan of Aragon, Ferdinand’s father, that she is going to win--and that the union is good.