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The pen scratched its way across the page, then paused.

The sound replaced by the burbling of water and the tweets and calls of songbirds.

The pen's nib clicked against the edge of the ink well, then resumed its scratching.

Word after word after word.

Even here in the shade of a lovely portico looking out onto a magnificent garden and a collection

of cooling fountains, extermerdura in late August of 1558 was hot.

Paper is shuffled and rustled in the slight breeze, which offered welcome relief from the summer

heat.

The aged man sitting at the table, busily scratching away with the pen, was thankful for

the wind.

He had turned 58 earlier in the year, but looked older than he was.

Decades of riding, fighting, campaigning, and hunting, stress and strain, hard decisions

and mistakes had all taken their toll.

His hair and close cropped beard were streaked through with white.

His teeth, blackened and rotting, paint him constantly, so did a leg injury acquired

on a hunt some 20 years before that had never healed correctly.

He limped just a bit everywhere he went.

And he could walk at all.

The king of Castile, Aragon and Naples, count of Flanders, Duke of Burgundy and Holy Roman

Emperor had never enjoyed the proper downtime for injuries like that to heal.

...