Isabella looked grave. She would consult the Infanta’s governess about the cough.

The two younger children were clearly healthy; she wished that Isabella did not look so fragile.

‘Highness,’ said little Juana, ‘it is my turn to read.’

‘She cannot,’ said the Infanta Isabella.

‘She points to the page and pretends to,’ Juan added.

‘I do read. I do,’ cried Juana. ‘I do, Highness, Highness, I do! I do! I do!’

‘Well, my little one, you must not become so excited; and you must not tell lies, you know. If you say you can read, and you cannot read, that is a lie.’

‘People who tell lies go to Hell and burn for ever,’ announced Juan. ‘They burn here too. There are lots of people who burn here. They tell lies. They don’t believe in God . . . our God . . . so we burn them to death.’

‘So you hear these things?’ the Queen asked.

‘They are always listening to gossip, Highness,’ the Infanta Isabella told her.

‘It does not matter that they burn,’ Juan announced. ‘They are going to burn for ever, so what do a few minutes on earth matter? The priest told me so.’

‘Now, my children,’ said Isabella, ‘you must not talk of these matters, for they are not for children. Juana has told me she can read, and I shall be very disappointed in her if she has told me a lie.’

Juana’s face puckered, and Juan, who was very kind, put his arm about her shoulder.

‘She learns some words, Highness, and knows them by heart. She points to the book and thinks she is reading.’

Juana stamped her foot. ‘I do not think I read. I do read.’

‘Silence, my child!’ commanded Isabella.

‘You forget,’ said the Infanta, to her little sister, ‘that you are in the presence of Her Highness the Queen.’

‘I can read. I can read!’ sobbed the child.

Isabella tried to catch her, but she wrenched herself free; she began to run round the room shouting: ‘I can read. I can. I can . . .’

The elder children watched her in dismay and amazement.

Then little Juana began to laugh, and as she laughed her laughter turned to tears.

The Queen stared at her youngest child, and a terrible fear had come to her.


* * *

Ferdinand burst on the domestic scene. Isabella started up at the sight of him, because she saw from his expression that some disaster had come to them.

Juan ran to his father and threw himself into his arms, but although Ferdinand lifted the boy up and kissed his cheek, he was not thinking of his children.

‘Now that the King has come, you must go back to your nursery,’ Isabella told the children.

‘No!’ cried the naughty Juana. ‘No! We wish to stay with Papa.’

‘But you have heard Her Highness’s command,’ said young Isabella horrified.

‘And she will obey them,’ put in Ferdinand, smiling down at his little daughter, who was pulling at his doublet, murmuring: ‘My turn, Papa. It was my turn to be kissed.’

‘This little one,’ said Ferdinand, ‘reminds me of my mother.’

Those words delighted Isabella so much that she forgot to wonder what ill news Ferdinand had to impart to her. Like his mother, she thought – calm, shrewd, practical Joan Henriquez. Not like Isabella’s own mother, the poor sad Queen living in darkness at Arevalo.

‘Come little mother-in-law,’ said Isabella, ‘you must go now to your nursery.’

‘What is a mother-in-law?’ Juana asked.

‘It is the mother of a wife’s husband or a husband’s wife,’ Isabella told her daughter.

Juana stood very still, her bright eyes wide, repeating to herself: ‘Suegra. Suegra . . . the mother of a wife’s husband.’

‘Go along, Suegra, at once, I said,’ the Queen reminded her daughter; and young Isabella took her sister’s hand and forced her to curtsey.

Ferdinand and Isabella stood looking after the children as they retired.

‘You have bad news, Ferdinand,’ she said.

‘The Moors have surprised our fortress of Zahara; it has fallen into their hands.’

‘Zahara! But that is serious.’

Ferdinand nodded. ‘It was my own grandfather who recovered it from the Infidel,’ he said, ‘and now it is theirs once more.’

‘It must not remain so,’ Isabella replied.

‘It shall not, my dear. If we had funds at our command I would wage a mighty war against the Infidel; and I would not cease to fight until every Mussulman had been driven from our land.’

‘Or converted to our faith,’ said Isabella.

‘I would see the Christian flag flying over every town in Spain,’ went on Ferdinand. And his eyes were brilliant, so that Isabella knew that he was thinking of the riches of Moorish cities; he was thinking of their golden treasures.

‘It shall come to pass,’ she told him.

Ferdinand turned to her then and laid his hands on her shoulders.

‘You are tired, Isabella. You should rest more.’

‘No,’ she told him, ‘I am but in my third month of pregnancy. You know how it is with me. I work up to the end.’

‘Have a care, my wife. Although we have three children, we do not wish to lose any newcomers.’

‘I will take care, Ferdinand. Have no fear of that. You consider the loss of this fortress very damaging to our cause?’

‘I consider it as the beginning of the Holy War.’

‘There have been many beginnings of that war which has been waged over our land periodically for centuries.’

Ferdinand’s grip on her shoulders tightened. ‘This, my Queen, is the beginning of that Holy War which is to end all such wars. This is the beginning of a united Spain.’


* * *

It was three months after the loss of Zahara, when Isabella was in the town of Medina. She was now six months pregnant and was finding journeys irksome indeed. Again and again she reminded herself – and her friends did also – of that time when, undertaking similar journeys, she had suffered a miscarriage.

When she passed through villages and saw mothers in the fields and vineyards with their children about them she was a little envious. She loved her children dearly, and one of the greatest sorrows of her life was that she saw so little of them.

But as long as they were in good health and well cared for she must not think too constantly of them; perhaps when she had completed her great tasks she would be able to spend more time with them.

By then, she admitted ruefully, they would probably be married. For the magnitude of the two tasks which lay before her she well understood: to purge her country of all heretics, to set the Christian flag flying over all Spanish territory – these were the meaning of life to her; and she did not forget that they had been attempted before in the past centuries. But no one, as yet, had succeeded in completing them.

‘Yet, with God’s help, I will,’ declared Isabella. ‘And Ferdinand and such men as Torquemada will make my task easier.’

Her confessor, Fray Fernando de Talavera came to her, and she greeted him with pleasure.

Devoted to piety as she was, she had always had a special friendship for her confessors, and when she was on her knees with them, she rarely sought to remind them that she was the Queen.

The influence of Torquemada would always be with her; and Talavera equally enjoyed her esteem.

Talavera was a much milder man than Torquemada – indeed it would have been difficult to find anyone who could match his zeal with that of the Prior of Santa Cruz – yet he was fervent in his piety. Like Torquemada, he did not hesitate to reprimand either Isabella or Ferdinand if he felt it was right to do so; and, although Ferdinand might resent this, Isabella never did if she believed that she deserved that reprimand.

She remembered now the first time Talavera had come to her to hear her confess. She had knelt, and had been astonished that he remained seated.

‘Fray Fernando de Talavera,’ she had said, ‘you do not kneel with me. It is the custom for my confessors to kneel when I kneel.’

But Talavera had answered: ‘This is God’s Tribunal. I am here as His minister. Thus it is fitting that I should remain seated – as I represent God – while Your Highness kneels before me to confess.’

Isabella had been surprised to be so addressed; but considering this matter, she came to agree that, as God’s minister, her confessor should remain seated while she, the Queen, knelt.

From that day she had begun to believe that she had found a singularly honest man in Talavera.

Now she confessed that she longed for a simpler life, so that she might take a larger part in the bringing up of her children, that she envied mothers in humbler stations, that on occasion she asked herself what she had done to be condemned to a life of continual endeavour.

Talavera took her to task. She was God’s chosen instrument. She did wrong to complain or to rail against such a noble vocation.

‘I know it,’ she told him. ‘But there is a continual temptation for a mother who loves her husband and children to long for a more peaceful life with them at her side.’

She prayed with Talavera for strength to do her duty, and for humility that she might accept with grace this life of sacrifice which had been demanded of her.

And when they had prayed, Ferdinand came to them.

He said: ‘I come to you with all speed. There is exciting news. The fortress of Alhama has been captured by Christian troops.’

Isabella stood very still, her eyes closed, while she thanked God for this victory.

Ferdinand looked at her with some impatience. Her piety at times irritated him. Isabella never forgot it; as for himself he had long decided that his religion was meant to serve him, not he his religion.