‘Heretic,’ Queen Isabella whispered. ‘A man damned to hell. God strike him dead and scourge his sin.’
The queen’s champion, de la Vega, turned his horse and rode towards the little house where the royal guards ringed the courtyard, the tiny olive tree, the doorway. He pulled up his horse beside the olive tree and doffed his helmet, looking up at his queen and the princesses on the roof. His dark hair was curly and sparkling with sweat from the heat, his dark eyes sparkled with anger. ‘Your Grace, do I have your leave to answer his challenge?’
‘Yes,’ the queen said, never shrinking for a moment. ‘Go with God, Garallosco de la Vega.’
‘That big man will kill him,’ Catalina said, pulling at her mother’s long sleeve. ‘Tell him he must not go. Yarfe is so much bigger. He will murder de la Vega!’
‘It will be as God wills,’ Isabella maintained, closing her eyes in prayer.
‘Mother! Your Majesty! He is a giant. He will kill our champion.’
Her mother opened her blue eyes and looked down at her daughter and saw her little face was flushed with distress and her eyes were filling with tears. ‘It will be as God wills it,’ she repeated firmly. ‘You have to have faith that you are doing God’s will. Sometimes you will not understand, sometimes you will doubt, but if you are doing God’s will you cannot be wrong, you cannot go wrong. Remember it, Catalina. Whether we win this challenge or lose it, it makes no difference. We are soldiers of Christ. You are a soldier of Christ. If we live or die, it makes no difference. We will die in faith, that is all that matters. This battle is God’s battle, He will send a victory, if not today, then tomorrow. And whichever man wins today, we do not doubt that God will win, and we will win in the end.’
‘But de la Vega …’ Catalina protested, her fat lower lip trembling.
‘Perhaps God will take him to His own this afternoon,’ her mother said steadily. ‘We should pray for him.’
Juana made a face at her little sister, but when their mother kneeled again the two girls clasped hands for comfort. Isabel kneeled beside them, Maria beside her. All of them squinted through their closed eyelids to the plain where the bay charger of de la Vega rode out from the line of the Spaniards, and the black horse of the Moor trotted proudly before the Saracens.
The queen kept her eyes closed until she had finished her prayer, she did not even hear the roar as the two men took up their places, lowered their visors, and clasped their lances.
Catalina leapt to her feet, leaning over the low parapet so that she could see the Spanish champion. His horse thundered towards the other, racing legs a blur, the black horse came as fast from the opposite direction. The clash when the two lances smacked into solid armour could be heard on the roof of the little house, as both men were flung from their saddles by the force of the impact, the lances smashed, their breastplates buckled. It was nothing like the ritualised jousts of the court. It was a savage impact designed to break a neck or stop a heart.
‘He is down! He is dead!’ Catalina cried out.
‘He is stunned,’ her mother corrected her. ‘See, he is getting up.’
The Spanish knight staggered to his feet, unsteady as a drunkard from the heavy blow to his chest. The bigger man was up already, helmet and heavy breastplate cast aside, coming for him with a huge sickle sword at the ready, the light flashing off the razor-sharp edge. De la Vega drew his own great weapon. There was a tremendous crash as the swords smacked together and then the two men locked blades and struggled, each trying to force the other down. They circled clumsily, staggering under the weight of their armour and from their concussion; but there could be no doubt that the Moor was the stronger man. The watchers could see that de la Vega was yielding under the pressure. He tried to spring back and get free; but the weight of the Moor was bearing down on him and he stumbled and fell. At once the black knight was on top of him, forcing him downwards. De la Vega’s hand closed uselessly on his long sword, he could not bring it up. The Moor raised his sword to his victim’s throat, ready to give the death blow, his face a black mask of concentration, his teeth gritted. Suddenly he gave a loud cry and fell back. De la Vega rolled up, scrabbled to his feet, crawling on his hands and knees like a rising dog.
The Moor was down, plucking at his breast, his great sword dropped to one side. In de la Vega’s left hand was a short stabbing dagger stained with blood, a hidden weapon used in a desperate riposte. With a superhuman effort the Moor got to his feet, turned his back on the Christian and staggered towards his own ranks. ‘I am lost,’ he said to the men who ran forwards to catch him. ‘We have lost.’
At a hidden signal the great gates of the red fort opened and the soldiers started to pour out. Juana leapt to her feet. ‘Madre, we must run!’ she screamed. ‘They are coming! They are coming in their thousands!’
Isabella did not rise from her knees, even when her daughter dashed across the roof and ran down the stairs. ‘Juana, come back,’ she ordered in a voice like a whip crack. ‘Girls, you will pray.’
She rose and went to the parapet. First she looked to the marshalling of her army, saw that the officers were setting the men into formation ready for a charge as the Moorish army, terrifying in their forward rush, came pouring on. Then she glanced down to see Juana, in a frenzy of fear, peeping around the garden wall, unsure whether to run for her horse or back to her mother.
Isabella, who loved her daughter, said not another word. She returned to the other girls and kneeled with them. ‘Let us pray,’ she said and closed her eyes.
‘She didn’t even look!’ Juana repeated incredulously that night when they were in their room, washing their hands and changing their dirty clothes, Juana’s tear-streaked face finally clean. ‘There we are, in the middle of a battle, and she closes her eyes!’
‘She knew that she would do more good appealing for the intercession of God than running around crying,’ Isabel said pointedly. ‘And it gave the army better heart than anything else to see her, on her knees, in full sight of everyone.’
‘What if she had been hit by an arrow or a spear?’
‘She was not. We were not. And we won the battle. And you, Juana, behaved like a half-mad peasant. I was ashamed of you. I don’t know what gets into you. Are you mad or just wicked?’
‘Oh, who cares what you think, you stupid widow?’
6th January 1492
Day by day the heart went out of the Moors. The Queen’s Skirmish turned out to be their last battle. Their champion was dead, their city encircled, they were starving in the land that their fathers had made fertile. Worse, the promised support from Africa had failed them, the Turks had sworn friendship but the janissaries did not come, their king had lost his nerve, his son was a hostage with the Christians, and before them were the Princes of Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand, with all the power of Christendom behind them, with a holy war declared and a Christian crusade gathering pace with the scent of success. Within a few days of the meeting of the champions, Boabdil, the King of Granada, had agreed terms of peace, and a few days after, in the ceremony planned with all the grace that was typical of the Moors of Spain, he came down on foot to the iron gates of the city with the keys to the Alhambra Palace on a silken pillow and handed them over to the King and Queen of Spain in a complete surrender.
Granada, the red fort that stood above the city to guard it,