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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 December 2023
The King of Castile, having realised that he needed more companies of soldiers than were present with him, and with matters developing in ways he did not anticipate, had already commanded the Marquess of Villena, the Archbishop of Toledo and Pero González de Mendoza, whom, for that purpose, he had left behind in Torrijos, near Toledo, to send him up to 1,000 well-equipped lances. These were made ready and dispatched to the king just as he had commanded.
On 10 March the king left Santarém with all the forces which he had mustered there, taking with him his wife Queen Beatriz. He left a knight named Lope Fernández de Padilla in charge of the castle and, in the other fortress, known as the Alcáçova, he left another knight by the name of Fernán Carrillo. They were both provided with sufficient troops to guard everything.
The king went to Alenquer, where Vasco Peres de Camões came out to greet him, handing the town over to him and making all due homage. The same was done by Fernão Gonçalves de Meira in respect of Torres Vedras and by João Gonçalves Teixeira, who had been captain of the crossbowmen in King Fernando's day, in respect of Óbidos; this was against the wishes of the inhabitants of these townships. The king took up lodging in Bombarral, a village in the Óbidos area, and stayed there for some four days, before leaving again for the township of Arruda, where, out of fear, a number of the inhabitants took refuge in a cave, thinking it would provide a means of defence or escape. On finding out about this, the Castilians thrust fire into the cave, and some forty inhabitants were burnt to death.
Grooms of the bedchamber went ahead to prepare the chamber where the king was due to take up lodging and, on entering it, came upon two men hiding there, armed with swords and with daggers in their belts. They seized them and held them prisoner until the King of Castile arrived; when they appeared before him, and he learned about how they had been discovered, he addressed those present as follows:
‘Even though these men assert that they had hidden out of fear, this surely can't be true; rather, they came here on the Master's orders, so that they could kill me while I slept.’
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