Читать книгу: «The Constant Princess», страница 2

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, and the gorgeous palace which was hidden inside the walls – the Alhambra – were given to Ferdinand and to Isabella.

Dressed in the gorgeous silks of their defeated enemy, turbaned, slippered, glorious as caliphs, the Spanish royal family, glittering with the spoils of Spain, took Granada. That afternoon Catalina, the Princess of Wales, walked with her parents up the winding, steep path through the shade of tall trees, to the most beautiful palace in Europe, slept that night in the brilliantly tiled harem and woke to the sound of rippling water in marble fountains, and thought herself a Moorish princess born to luxury and beauty, as well as a Princess of England.

And this is my life, from this day of victory. I had been born as a child of the camp, following the army from siege to battle, seeing things that perhaps no child should see, facing adult fears every day. I had marched past the bodies of dead soldiers rotting in the spring heat because there was no time to bury them, I had ridden behind mules whipped into staggering bloodstained corpses, pulling my father’s guns through the high passes of the Sierra. I saw my mother slap a man’s face for weeping with exhaustion. I heard children of my own age crying for their parents burned at the stake for heresy; but at this moment, when we dressed ourselves in embroidered silk and walked into the red fort of Granada and through the gates to the white pearl that is the Alhambra Palace, at this moment I became a princess for the first time.

I became a girl raised in the most beautiful palace in Christendom, protected by an impregnable fort, blessed by God among all others, I became a girl of immense, unshakeable confidence in the God that had brought us to victory, and in my destiny as His most favourite child and my mother’s most favourite daughter.

Alhambra proved to me, once and for all, that I was uniquely favoured by God, as my mother had been favoured by God. I was his chosen child, raised in the most beautiful palace in Christendom, and destined for the highest things.

The Spanish family with their officers ahead and the royal guard behind, glorious as Sultans, entered the fort through the enormous square tower known as the Justice Gate. As the shadow of the first arch of the tower fell on Isabella’s upturned face the trumpeters played a great shout of defiance, like Joshua before the walls of Jericho, as if they would frighten away the lingering devils of the infidel. At once there was an echo to the blast of sound, a shuddering sigh, from everyone gathered inside the gateway, pressed back against the golden walls, the women half-veiled in their robes, the men standing tall and proud and silent, watching, to see what the conquerors would do next. Catalina looked above the sea of heads and saw the flowing shapes of Arabic script engraved on the gleaming walls.

‘What does that say?’ she demanded of Madilla, her nursemaid.

Madilla squinted upwards. ‘I don’t know,’ she said crossly. She always denied her Moorish roots. She always tried to pretend that she knew nothing of the Moors or their lives though she had been born and bred a Moor herself and only converted – according to Juana – for convenience.

‘Tell us, or we’ll pinch you,’ Juana offered sweetly.

The young woman scowled at the two sisters. ‘It says: “May God allow the justice of Islam to prevail within.”’

Catalina hesitated for a moment, hearing the proud ring of certainty, a determination to match her own mother’s voice.

‘Well, He hasn’t,’ Juana said smartly. ‘Allah has deserted the Alhambra and Isabella has arrived. And if you Moors knew Isabella like we do, you would know that the greatest power is coming in and the lesser power going out.’

‘God save the queen,’ Madilla replied quickly. ‘I know Queen Isabella well enough.’

As she spoke the great doors before them, black wood studded with black nails, swung open on their black hammered hinges, and with another blast of trumpets the king and queen strode into the inner courtyard.

Like dancers rehearsed till they were step-perfect, the Spanish guard peeled off to right and left inside the town walls, checking that the place was safe, and no despairing soldiers were preparing a last ambush. The great fort of the Alcazaba, built like the prow of a ship, jutting out over the plain of Granada, was to their left, and the men poured into it, running across the parade square, ringing the walls, running up and down the towers. Finally, Isabella the queen looked up to the sky, shaded her eyes with her hand clinking with Moorish gold bracelets, and laughed aloud to see the sacred banner of St James and the silver cross of the crusade flying where the crescent had been.

Then she turned to see the domestic servants of the palace slowly approaching, their heads bowed. They were led by the Grand Vizier, his height emphasised by his flowing robes, his piercing black eyes meeting hers, scanning King Ferdinand at her side, and the royal family behind them: the prince and the four princesses. The king and the prince were dressed as richly as sultans, wearing rich, embroidered tunics over their trousers, the queen and the princesses were wearing the traditional kamiz tunics made from the finest silks, over white linen trousers, with veils falling from their heads held back by filets of gold.

‘Your Royal Highnesses, it is my honour and duty to welcome you to the Alhambra Palace,’ the Grand Vizier said, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world to hand over the most beautiful palace in Christendom to armed invaders.

The queen and her husband exchanged one brief glance. ‘You can take us in,’ she said.

The Grand Vizier bowed and led the way. The queen glanced back at her children. ‘Come along, girls,’ she said and went ahead of them, through the gardens surrounding the palace, down some steps and into the discreet doorway.

‘This is the main entrance?’ She hesitated before the small door set in the unmarked wall.

The man bowed. ‘Your Highness, it is.’

Isabella said nothing but Catalina saw her raise her eyebrows as if she did not think much of it, and then they all went inside.

But the little doorway is like a keyhole to a treasure chest of boxes, the one opening out from another. The man leads us through them like a slave opening doors to a treasury. Their very names are a poem: the Golden Chamber, the Courtyard of the Myrtles, the Hall of the Ambassadors, the Courtyard of the Lions, or the Hall of the Two Sisters. It will take us weeks to find our way from one exquisitely tiled room to another. It will take us months to stop marvelling at the pleasure of the sound of water running down the marble gulleys in the rooms, flowing to a white marble fountain that always spills over with the cleanest, freshest water of the mountains. And I will never tire of looking through the white stucco tracery to the view of the plain beyond, the mountains, the blue sky and golden hills. Every window is like a frame for a picture, they are designed to make you stop, look and marvel. Every window frame is like white-work embroidery – the stucco is so fine, so delicate, it is like sugar-work by confectioners, not like anything real.

We move into the harem as the easiest and most convenient rooms for my three sisters and me, and the harem servants light the braziers in the cool evenings, and scatter the scented herbs as if we were the sultanas who lived secluded behind the screens for so long. We have always worn Moorish dress at home and sometimes at great state occasions so still there is the whisper of silks and the slap of slippers on marble floors, as if nothing has changed. Now, we study where the slave girls read, we walk in the gardens that were planted to delight the favourites of the sultan. We eat their fruits, we love the taste of their sherbets, we tie their flowers into garlands for our own heads, and we run down their allées where the heavy scent of roses and honeysuckle is sweet in the cool of the morning.

We bathe in the hammam, standing stock still while the servants lather us all over with a rich soap that smells of flowers. Then they pour golden ewer after golden ewer of hot water over us, splashing from head to toe, to wash us clean. We are soothed with rose oil, wrapped in fine sheets and lie, half-drunk with sensual pleasure, on the warm marble table that dominates the entire room, under the golden ceiling where the star-shaped openings admit dazzling rays of sunlight into the shadowy peace of the place. One girl manicures our toes while another works on our hands, shaping the nails and painting delicate patterns of henna. We let the old woman pluck our eyebrows, paint our eyelashes. We are served as if we are sultanas, with all the riches of Spain and all the luxury of the East, and we surrender utterly to the delight of the palace. It captivates us, we swoon into submission; the so-called victors.

Even Isabel, grieving for the loss of her husband, starts to smile again. Even Juana, who is usually so moody and so sulky, is at peace. And I become the pet of the court, the favourite of the gardeners who let me pick my own peaches from the trees, the darling of the harem where I am taught to play and dance and sing, and the favourite of the kitchen where they let me watch them preparing the sweet pastries and dishes of honey and almonds of Arabia.

My father meets with foreign emissaries in the Hall of the Ambassadors, he takes them to the bath house for talks, like any leisurely sultan. My mother sits cross-legged on the throne of the Nasrids who have ruled here for generations, her bare feet in soft leather slippers, the drapery of her kamiz falling around her. She listens to the emissaries of the Pope himself, in a chamber that is walled with coloured tiles and dancing with pagan light. It feels like home to her, she was raised in the Alcazar in Seville, another Moorish palace. We walk in their gardens, we bathe in their hammam, we step into their scented leather slippers and we live a life that is more refined and more luxurious than they could dream of in Paris or London or Rome. We live graciously. We live, as we have always aspired to do, like Moors. Our fellow Christians herd goats in the mountains, pray at roadside cairns to the Madonna, are terrified by superstition and lousy with disease, live dirty and die young. We learn from Moslem scholars, we are attended by their doctors, study the stars in the sky which they have named, count with their numbers which start at the magical zero, eat of their sweetest fruits and delight in the waters which run through their aqueducts. Their architecture pleases us, at every turn of every corner we know that we are living inside beauty. Their power now keeps us safe; the Alcazabar is, indeed, invulnerable to attack once more. We learn their poetry, we laugh at their games, we delight in their gardens, in their fruits, we bathe in the waters they have made flow. We are the victors but they have taught us how to rule. Sometimes I think that we are the barbarians, like those who came after the Romans or the Greeks, who could invade the palaces and capture the aqueducts, and then sit like monkeys on a throne, playing with beauty but not understanding it.

We do not change our faith, at least. Every palace servant has to give lip service to the beliefs of the One True Church. The horns of the mosque are silenced, there is to be no call to prayer in my mother’s hearing. And anyone who disagrees can either leave for Africa at once, convert at once, or face the fires of the Inquisition. We do not soften under the spoils of war, we never forget that we are victors and that we won our victory by force of arms and by the will of God. We made a solemn promise to poor King Boabdil, that his people, the Moslems, should be as safe under our rule as the Christians were safe under his. We promise the convivencia – a way of living together – and they believe that we will make a Spain where anyone, Moor or Christian or Jew, can live quietly and with self-respect since all of us are ‘People of the Book’. Their mistake is that they meant that truce, and they trusted that truce, and we – as it turns out – do not.

We betray our word in three months, expelling the Jews and threatening the Moslems. Everyone must convert to the True Faith and then, if there is any shadow of doubt, or any suspicion against them, their faith will be tested by the Holy Inquisition. It is the only way to make one nation: through one faith. It is the only way to make one people out of the great varied diversity which had been al Andalus. My mother builds a chapel in the council chamber and where it had once said ‘Enter and ask. Do not be afraid to seek justice for here you will find it,’ in the beautiful shapes of Arabic, she prays to a sterner, more intolerant God than Allah; and no-one comes for justice any more.

But nothing can change the nature of the palace. Not even the stamp of our soldiers’ feet on the marble floors can shake the centuries-old sense of peace. I make Madilla teach me what the flowing inscriptions mean in every room, and my favourite is not the promises of justice, but the words written in the Courtyard of the Two Sisters which says: ‘Have you ever seen such a beautiful garden?’ and then answers itself: ‘We have never seen a garden with greater abundance of fruit, nor sweeter, nor more perfumed.’

It is not truly a palace, not even as those we had known at Cordoba or Toledo. It is not a castle, nor a fort. It was built first and foremost as a garden with rooms of exquisite luxury so that one could live outside. It is a series of courtyards designed for flowers and people alike. It is a dream of beauty: walls, tiles, pillars melting into flowers, climbers, fruit and herbs. The Moors believe that a garden is a paradise on earth, and they have spent fortunes over the centuries to make this ‘al-Yanna’: the word that means garden, secret place, and paradise.

I know that I love it. Even as a little child I know that this is an exceptional place; that I will never find anywhere more lovely. And even as a child I know that I cannot stay here. It is God’s will and my mother’s will that I must leave al-Yanna, my secret place, my garden, my paradise. It is to be my destiny that I should find the most beautiful place in all the world when I am just six years old, and then leave it when I am fifteen; as homesick as Boabdil, as if happiness and peace for me will only ever be short-lived.