The Queen's Vow: A Novel of Isabella of Castile (55 page)

“When it comes to our kingdom,” I said, “I have this in me, and much more.”

I sent my letter off in secret to Granada. We did not wait for an answer long; within a few weeks, I received word from my envoys that Boabdil had readily accepted my terms, just as I knew he would. Once I had his response in writing, I sat down to compose a letter to El Zagal, who I knew had spies in Granada and was watching everything I did from his citadel, powerless to affect or alter my course.

My offer to him was concise: Unless he wanted to suffer another crushing defeat as he had in Málaga, he must surrender. I warned him that if he did not, this time I would give no quarter. I would order my army not only to raze but also to salt the very earth on which Baeza sat and to kill everyone in it. But if he accepted my terms, I would be merciful. I would spare his life and grant him refuge in a specially appointed domain in Las Alpujarras, where he could live with his people in peace, retaining all his customs without interference. I added that he must realize by now that, in the end, we would prevail; even if it took a lifetime, we would never give up. Moreover, I took pleasure in pointing out that his nephew Boabdil would not come to his aid, and to prove it I enclosed a signed copy of our new treaty with that traitor, which stipulated that once El Zagal was defeated, Boabdil promised to relinquish his realm in its entirety to us, in exchange for his own safety.

It took a month, during which I had our weapons assembled right below his walls and cut down the last of the magnificent forest. Finally, El Zagal returned his reply.

He was weary of the fight. He appreciated my offer but he preferred to leave Spain for North Africa. As for his nephew Boabdil, he wrote:

Let Granada fall
.

WE FIRST SAW
Granada in the spring of 1491, after our wholesale devastation of the surrounding
vega
. Once again I ordered the orchards,
wheat fields, and olive groves to fall beneath our scythes and torches, so there could be no possibility of relief for the entrapped citizens.

Despite the blackened fields, never had any city looked as beautiful as that sprawling metropolis we’d coveted for so long—a fantasy framed by the snow-tipped sierra, the honeyed towers of the Alhambra encircled by garlands of cypress and pine. Streets cascaded in twisting mazes, crowded with thousands of refugees, Jews and Moors and false conversos, all of whom had fled the devastation of our crusade.

Boabdil, at the last moment, had reneged on our treaty; reality had come crashing down on him when he heard of Baeza’s fall. Clearly, he had not expected his uncle El Zagal to surrender and he hastily manned his own walls with cannon, vowing to defend Granada till his dying breath. I was outraged by his blatant disregard of the terms we’d set, but after Baeza, with the fragments of the once-supreme Moorish emirate at our feet, Fernando and I decided this final victory must be bloodless. The time had come for the pomegranate to yield its fruit without any coercion from us, and so we set up our silk tents and pavilions as if we were on holiday, bringing our children with us to witness the historic occasion.

Tragedy had struck our family; only nine months after their marriage, Isabel’s young Portuguese prince had died tragically from a fall from his horse, and she had returned home a widow. I had ridden all the way to the border to escort her home, and had been sadly shocked by the change in her. Thin as a twig in her black widow’s weeds, her beautiful hair shorn to stubble, she went about either weeping or declaring her desire to enter a convent. To my consternation, she claimed that God must want her for Himself, to make her suffer so. I tried to tell her that while I believed God instilled in some of us a vocation to serve Him alone, hers seemed more a response to overwhelming sorrow, but nothing I said moved her. She refused all consolation, so much so that I had to appoint physicians and a special household to ensure that she ate and slept, and to restrict the time she spent on her knees in the chapel.

Alone in my rooms with my women, I vented my dismay. “I sent a golden infanta to Portugal and she’s come back a phantom! What on earth has happened to her? That a daughter of mine should want to lead
a religious life is admirable, but she has a role to fulfill in this world, and it cannot be in a nunnery.”

Inés sighed sadly. “The poor child must have loved her prince very much.”

Beatriz met my eyes, and in her silent look, I read my innermost fears. My eldest daughter was behaving like my mother, indulging a melancholic penchant for drama that chilled me to my very bones.

The realization bolstered my resolve: I ordered everyone to refuse to entertain any talk of convents, even if it made Isabel feel comforted. Everyone complied, but Juana, in characteristic fashion, goaded Isabel mercilessly. At eleven years of age, my second daughter was unwilling to concede any weakness in herself, much less in others.

“You look like a crow,” Juana remarked as we sat in my pavilion after dinner one evening, the warm wind flowing through the tent’s open flaps. Outside a thousand campfires glittered on Granada’s
vega
like fallen stars as our men settled in for the night. “Always in black and moping about; it’s unseemly. After all, you were married less than a year. You can’t possibly have loved him
that
much.”

Isabel stiffened on her stool, the altar cloth we embroidered between us tightening in her fingers. “And who are you to judge? What do you know of love or loss, spoiled selfish child that you are?”

“I might be spoiled,” retorted Juana, “but at least I know I’d never love anyone so much that I’d forget myself.”

As Isabel gasped, I said sharply, “Enough. I’ll hear no more recriminations from either of you. If you must argue, do so elsewhere than in my presence. Honestly”—I shot a reproving look at them—“what has come over you?”

Isabel averted her eyes; Juana stuck out her tongue. I set my embroidery aside. I did not believe in corporal punishment but Juana was too impudent for her own good. I had a mind to—

I paused. “Is that smoke I smell …?” I started to say, as Juana leapt to her feet, tossing her hopelessly tangled yarns to the floor and rushing to the pavilion entrance. She gasped. “Mama, look! The camp is on fire!”

Pandemonium broke out. As the duennas and other ladies raced to the back of the pavilion to gather sleeping Catalina and María from
their beds, I hurried with my older daughters outside. To my horror, I beheld flames leaping like nimble devils from tent to tent, incinerating the velvets and silks and brocades, consuming everything within their path in minutes. All around us courtiers and soldiers were shouting; horses whinnied in terror and tore loose from their tethers, galloping about in panic as the dogs bayed. I didn’t know where to turn; the smoke was already so thick I could barely draw in a breath. Suddenly, the marquis of Cádiz materialized out of nowhere, smut on his face and his clothes. “
Majestad
, come quickly!”

“Where are my husband and son?” I cried as he led us around the burning encampment, toward a nearby hill that offered protection.

“They are safe,” he said. “The fire started in my tent, where they slept, but they got out in time. The king’s hounds started barking the moment they saw the flames.”

“Gracias a Dios.”
I clutched Catalina to me. In the eerie interplay of fire and darkness, I caught sight of Juana’s face. She was pale and wide-eyed; her mouth ajar in an expression I could only describe as exultant, as if the catastrophe had been staged for her amusement. I was appalled. Did she have no fear, no sense of the destruction and loss happening around us?

As if she read my thoughts, Isabel said quietly, “She doesn’t care. She thinks it’s a game. She has no respect for anything.”

I hushed her. With Catalina in my arms and María held by Beatriz, we reached the hill’s summit, which offered a terrible view of the conflagration. Fernando came running out of the darkness, his loyal hounds at his heels. I glimpsed our son, Juan, nearby, still in his nightshirt, his sword in its jeweled scabbard gripped in his hand. He’d recently been knighted in honor of his thirteenth year and refused to be separated from his weapon, even while in bed. At the sight of him, his white-gold hair tangled, his face blackened by soot but otherwise unharmed, tears of relief sprang to my eyes.

Juana plunged into Fernando’s embrace. Encircling her with his arm, he drew the rest of us close and we turned to watch our great cloth city, proof of our vanity and the whimsical folly of fate, burn entirely to the ground.

.  .  .

LATER, JUANA INSISTED
the Moors had shot a flame-tipped arrow into the camp to start the conflagration, though a remorseful Cádiz had assured us that someone or something, perhaps one of the dogs, had upset an oil lamp, setting his tent on fire. Whatever the cause, we’d lost most of our belongings, including our wardrobe, and the court ladies had to lend us gowns and other items of apparel while I sent to Sevilla for new things.

From Granada’s ramparts, the denizens jeered. They clearly believed the fire would be our undoing, but we remained undaunted. Our possessions may have turned to cinders, but our will was intact. I ordered a new city built on the camp’s charred remains, this time made of stone. We would name it Santa Fe, in honor of our hallowed faith, which had saved us from a fiery death and guided us to safety.

The sight of our masons at work silenced the taunts from Granada. More than a city, Santa Fe was a statement of our resolve. Here, we might live for years if need be, the only place in Andalucía unsullied by the Moors. Boabdil’s reaction was to fire his cannon and send out raiders to harass our troops. But as winter swept in and the city began to go hungry, riots began. With his people growing increasingly desperate and angry, Boabdil realized he had no option but to honor the terms we offered—full amnesty for his people, who would be allowed to maintain their customs, language, and dress. Anyone who wished to leave would be free to do so; we would even provide the means. And any who wished to convert would be welcomed into our Church, their past sins washed away by Holy Baptism. In addition, as our vassal, Boabdil would be granted the same domain in the Alpujarras that his uncle El Zagal had rejected. But under no circumstances could he ever return to Granada. On that point I was immutable.

By January 1492, his envoys had submitted his surrender.

WE ENTERED THE
fallen city, last bastion of the Moor, as snow drifted down about our cortege like fine ash. The people stood in eerie silence, gathered at the sides of the road to watch us pass, the heraldic standards of our nobility fluttering in the frigid morning air. Many of our courtiers had donned traditional embroidered tunics in Moorish style, as a sign of our respect for the magnificent civilization which had left its
indelible mark on our land, but an occasional bereaved lament from an unseen woman gazing at our advance from behind a latticed window conveyed the people’s awareness that the world as they had known it was gone.

We accepted Boabdil’s surrender in person at the city gates, where he threw himself on his knees before us. Fernando dismounted to embrace him as a fellow sovereign; now that we were triumphant, my husband knew how to be magnanimous.

With quivering hands and tears in his eyes, Boabdil offered up the keys to the city. “These are the last relics of our empire,” he said, his voice quavering. “To you go our trophies, our realm, and our person; such is the will of Allah.”

Behind him, seated on a beautiful Arabian horse, a heavyset woman swathed in black veils lifted vicious kohl-lined eyes to me. I had my daughters around me, each clad in a new scarlet brocade and veiled in the Moorish tradition, though Juana had already lifted her veil to see more clearly, entranced by the events around us. As I returned the woman’s stare, I didn’t need to be told that she was the sultana, Boabdil’s mother, who’d fought for her son’s freedom. In her defiant regard, I found a pride that had nothing left to feed on save itself; and I knew, without doubt, that it had been she who’d sent the assassin to my tent, the dagger poisoned by her own hand.

As she rode away with her son, she cast a final look at me over her shoulder. There was no despair, no contrition; only furious regret that I had succeeded where she had failed.

We ascended the road to the Alhambra. As we neared the infamous palace, built on legend and blood, I found myself leaning forward in my saddle, longing to kick in my heels and gallop straight to the massive vermilion gates. But I was a queen now, not a brash young infanta like Juana. I’d grown stout in my middle age, as had my beloved Canela, my favored horse whom I’d retired from service years ago due to his advanced age, but today I rode proudly, his thin form covered in a billowing gold-threaded caparison. While he no longer possessed the muscular fleetness of his youth, he had been with me from the beginning and he held his gray-flecked head high, a spry lift to his step, as if he understood the importance of this occasion.