Robyn Hogan

Pedro smiled into the shining dark eyes meeting his even before he knew who she was. The weariness he had carried up the winding road to the Lisbon castle dropped from him as easily as his stained riding cloak.

‘May I present my cousin, Dona Ines de Castro,’ Constanza was murmuring, her fat little fingers tapping his cuff. Pedro gave his wife but the slightest glance of acknowledgement before sketching an elegant bow towards the newcomer. ‘She arrived last week,’ Constanza continued, ‘I trust you approve.’

Another time he might have answered her with little more than a grunt before proceeding to his quarters but Ines and the coy quirk of her lips as she watched him straighten, held his attention. ‘You are most welcome.’ He stretched out his hand and she glided forward, placing her fingertips on his, her burnished nails catching the candlelight.

There and then Pedro, 14th century heir to the throne of Portugal, fell in love with the woman he was to call his ‘heron necked beauty’. The marvellously beautiful sepulchre he commissioned for her still stands today, in the old cathedral at Alcobaca, as a tribute to their love.

Pedro and Constanza of Castile had been married by proxy in 1340. She had previously been betrothed to Alfonso XI of Castile but, when he reached marriageable age, he rejected her, so they stitched her up with Pedro of the House of Burgundy, the Portuguese Afonsin Dynasty. It was to be four years before Constanza climbed into the marriage bed; plague years had kept her at home. Pedro, too, had been round the marriage mill having first wedded Blanca of Castile in 1328. That union had been dissolved; she was of ‘unsound mind’ — or so it was said.

That Constanza was pregnant mattered not a wit to Pedro and Ines: they took to each other like ducks to water. The ensuing scandal, even in those permissive days, was too much for the Court; Ines was sent packing. Perhaps it was not so much the scandal of passionate love but rather a political domination that frightened the king. (After all, Alfonso IV, had long abandoned his legitimate wife for Leonor de Guzman and the ten children she bore him.) There were rumours that Castile had plans to move on Portugal and Ines de Castro was considered rather close to the house of Castile.

But, a few months later, Constanza died giving birth to Fernando and Ines was back in Portugal almost by return mail. She and Pedro set up house together in the capital, Coimbra, overlooking the slowly moving Mondego River. There she became the toast and torment of king and courtiers alike. Pedro doted on her every word as she played the game of favourites and foes and bore him three sons. Her influence over him increased with each passing year but, also, the faction of nobles arraigned against her grew stronger. Eventually Afonso IV was forced to show his strength, to act against her, allow for her ‘removal’.

She was walking in her garden, a walled courtyard high above the river valley, when the assassins struck. Whether she was alone I do not know; nor whether she knew her murderers though it is likely, if she was the political plotter they claimed her to be, she had had disagreements with them from time to time. Did those nobles make overtures towards her before they knifed her or did they creep up and stab her in the back as she strolled? Whatever, Ines met her cruel and bloody death in 1355.

Pedro was distraught yet seemed to accept his father’s actions though, when he ascended the throne two years later, he acted quite decisively to avenge Ines’ death. Two of her assassins were hunted down and killed like wild dogs. In his first ‘address to the nation’ as it were, Pedro claimed he and Ines had been married at Braganza a year before her death. If so, this meant that their sons were legitimate, could inherit the throne, but Pope Innocent IV would not come to the party; would not recognise the marriage nor the sons.

Ines had been interred hastily in Santa-Clara-a-Vehla across the Mondego River from the royal castle. But now, 1357, Pedro commissioned an exotic tomb for her and had her body translated to Alcobaca. (No matter that he had quite quickly consoled himself with a mistress, Teresa Lourenco, who bore Joao I, the first ruler of the House of Avis, to him in 1358.)

Our day was closing in by the time we reached Alcobaca only to find the cathedral and its grounds were undergoing extensive renovations. We were forced to hurry in a wide circle over rough, dusty paths between high wire fences before locating an entrance. And just sufficient time to visit Ines’ tomb.

Although a little damaged the beauty of its execution is breathtaking. In rich, white marble, creamy and lustrous with age, it is supported on the backs of half a dozen animal grotesques. Deep carved figures, contained within architectural details, tell the story of the life of Jesus. Pedro, apparently, felt Ines had been as persecuted as the Saviour, even to being whipped. Six glorious angels, wings furled, grace the lid, nursing, supporting, an effigy of Ines, holding her ready to rise on Judgement Day. True love shines with the swaying rhythm in the sculpture.

Her tomb stands before a main altar (whether the main I don’t know as time was against us) on one side of the aisle, facing Pedro’s tomb on the other. His is executed in somewhat the same style but not with the skill of the artisans caring for Ines. Still declaring his great love, he had decreed that the monuments face each other, feet to feet, so that, come the resurrection, they would rise to meet each other face to face and enjoy eternity together.

Besides this evidence of Pedro I’s besotted love for his heron necked beauty there is the wonder that the tombs have been left in place down the centuries. That Pedro earned the epithet ‘Justicier’ for his administration of justice and, although the petty skirmishes between the various noble families continued, maritime trade flourished. Perhaps, then, general gratitude allowed the love tokens to remain in situ.

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