The Queen's Vow: A Novel of Isabella of Castile

by C. W. Gortner

With its one hundred and twelve fortified towers, the city crouched at the foot of the crenellated sierra like a magnificent lion. I hid my distress at the thought of the devastation we must wreak, reviewing our ranks and supplies, dining with our commanders and ensuring that Fernando’s armor and sword were properly oiled so he’d suffer no mishap in battle. While our new cannon and catapults would inflict most of the damage, breaching the walls and destroying the battlements from which the Moors might pour hot oil, boiling pitch, or shoot poisoned arrows, hand-to-hand combat was inevitable, and I always worried, watching from my distant vantage spot with Isabel and praying for my husband’s safety.

  For days we pounded Málaga’s walls. The dust of pulverized stone and mortar wafted on the air in suffocating gusts, so that we had to tie cloths about our noses and mouths. The dust settled on everything, in everything; our clothes chests, our beds, our utensils; even our food and drink tasted of grit. We had known it would not be easy, I reassured my daughter as we sat in our pavilion listening to the ceaseless clangor of the bells I had ordered to be rung day and night. The sound mingled with the keening of our wounded and the shrieks of despair coming from Málaga’s trapped inhabitants. Yet even I had begun to wonder at the Moors’ preternatural tenacity; with the port blockaded by our ships, and no way to relieve the city, starvation and disease must have started to take an insidious toll.

  Finally, three months after the siege began, word came that the Moors wished to parley with us. By now it was evident no reinforcements would be forthcoming from Granada. The denizens sent a holy man of theirs, who claimed reverence for my status as queen, and I agreed to meet with him in my audience tent while Fernando rested after another long day of overseeing the siege. I had dressed carefully, in my purple robe of estate, gold-lined caul, and sapphire diadem, but at the last minute, just as we were about to enter the tent, Beatriz snatched the diadem from my brow and pushed her way ahead of me.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I hissed. She did not reply and I watched, aghast, as she sauntered into the richly appointed chamber and assumed my throne, leaving me open-mouthed and furious. Had she lost her mind? Had the heat and all this dust stirred some madness in her?

  The red-haired marquis of Cádiz strode in moments later, accompanying a cloaked, turbaned man. This man lifted glowering eyes at the sight of Beatriz on my cushions; before any of us could react, he lunged forward with a howling cry, pushing Cádiz aside and reaching into his cloak. I froze when I saw the curved dagger raised in his hand.

  Beatriz let out a piercing scream. The guards posted outside rushed in, almost throwing me to the ground. Tackling the Moor—who bellowed words none of us could understand—they gripped him by his wrists until he released the dagger. As it fell to the carpeted floor, I moved to take it.

  “No!” cried Beatriz. “Don’t touch it!” With the edge of her skirt, she gingerly retrieved the dagger by its hilt. She showed it to me. My skin crawled as I stared at the engraved blade, on which glinted a faint green film.

  “See?” she whispered. “Poison; he meant to stab you with a poisoned dagger.”

  “Dios mío.” I looked at her in disbelief. “You saved my life. How did you know?”

  She shrugged. “I had a feeling.” She gave me a tremulous smile. “Forgive me for snatching your crown like that. But if he’d succeeded, better he had killed me than you.”

  “He will die,” snarled Cádiz. “Drawn and quartered on the vega before the entire city, so his foul masters can watch!”

  I turned to the assassin, held fast by our guards. He met my regard without discernible fear, though he must have known what awaited him. I doubted he spoke our language and was startled when he uttered words in a passionless voice that sent ice through my veins.

  “This time, your crucified god has protected you. But from this day forth, know that every hour you breathe, Christian queen, is an hour you borrow against death.”

  I lifted my chin. “Take him away,” I whispered.

  Awoken by the commotion, Fernando staggered into the tent moments later, grasping me and pressing me to him. “My luna, my love, when I think of what could have happened …” He tightened his arms around me. “Filthy Moorish dogs, they do not know the meaning of honor, to send an assassin under the guise of negotiation. I will kill him myself, with my bare hands. I will rip out his foul heart. And then I will pull that miserable city down about their heads, so help me God.”

  “No, please.” I drew back from him, mustering a weak smile as I waved everyone else out. Once we were alone, I said quietly, “We’ve lost nearly two thousand already and there are countless others dying in my infirmaries. Our supplies are nearly finished. We cannot endure much longer. Fernando, I fear we must seek accord, even if it means withdrawing from Málaga. There will be other years, other opportunities—”

  “No.” His voice was flat. “There will be no withdrawal. No one threatens my wife.”

  He marched out, crying for Cádiz. As I followed him, I heard him tell the marquis, “Send a herald to the walls of the city. I want it proclaimed that if Málaga does not surrender unconditionally within three days, we will raze the city to the ground and put every person inside to the sword.”

  “Fernando,” I said. He turned to me, his eyes black and unyielding in his ashen countenance. I bit back my protest; I knew I had to cede to his judgment.

  Within three days, the frantic citizens of Málaga had mobbed their leaders and sent us their offer of surrender. Fernando tore it up before their messenger’s terrified eyes. “I said, no conditions. None.”

  “But Your Majesty,” implored the kneeling man, “there are Christians and Jews in the city, as well. My lord El Zagal says he will kill them if you do not come to terms.”

  “If he touches one hair on a Christian head, he’ll regret it,” my husband said. “You will all regret it.” He leaned close to the man, so close I almost didn’t hear his next words: “I’ll execute you one by one, in front of your families; I’ll make your wives watch before they too are killed. I won’t leave a single Moor alive, not a man or woman or child. Tell that to your lord.”

  The messenger gasped, swiveling to me in mute appeal. At my side, Isabel choked back a sob. The siege was taking its toll on her; she had lost weight, grown so pallid that veins could be traced under her skin. Her marriage date approached; we could not send her to Portugal in this sorry state. We could not allow this untenable situation to continue.

  I lifted my voice. “We promise to spare you, if you do as my husband the king asks. Surrender within the week or I cannot be held responsible for what befalls you.”

  The messenger scampered back to the smoldering city. Before, Málaga’s denizens had heckled us from the ramparts. But since we’d catapulted the mangled headless corpse of their would-be assassin over the walls, they’d gone silent. No one was visible now as the messenger slipped back under the massive outer portcullis.

  Two days later, Málaga capitulated.

  I couldn’t say the claiming of Málaga as a Christian possession of Castile was worthy of celebration. Our casualties numbered nearly three thousand. Within the city itself the surviving populace had hardly fared much better. Forced to eat their dogs and cats, and then their horses, after having endured months of ceaseless bombardment, they regarded us from the rubble of their homes in tormented submission, aware they’d been abandoned to their fate.

  Cádiz and the other nobles argued for mass executions. They insisted that the people of Málaga must pay for the crime of attempting to murder me; moreover, El Zagal had escaped before the surrender, no doubt abetted by these same people, which further enraged the grandees. But I refused to allow such savagery in my name. I persuaded Fernando that everyone should be sold into slavery, although those who could pay ransom must be freed. It was the best I could do under the circumstances; Fernando had gone rigid at my request, and it took me several hours of reasoning before he finally gave his consent.

  Still, many woul
d suffer on our galleys; many would die. It was the terrible price of the crusade and I took no pleasure in it, even as the silver cross sent by the late Pope Sixtus was hoisted with pulleys over Málaga’s mosque, which was now consecrated as the Cathedral of Santa María de la Encarnación.

  In the midst of this, I received a letter from my treasurer, Rabbi Señeor, who had made the arrangements for the loans that financed our crusade; a committee of Castilian Jews wished to ransom their brethren in Málaga. After careful consideration, I accepted their payment of twenty thousand doblas, and four hundred gaunt Jewish men and women were released to melt into Castile.

  It was a small mercy, practically meaningless; but one I insisted upon, all the same.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Though we were within striking distance of Granada, the final tantalizing jewel in the broken Moorish diadem, where Boabdil skulked behind the Alhambra’s vermilion walls, our men were exhausted. We decided to retreat to Castile for the winter.

  Congratulations on our recent successes had poured in from abroad; even France, our perennial foe, saw fit to send us a set of figurines of the saints to place in our newly consecrated churches. Fernando snorted when he saw them: “Only gilt, of course, not gold. The French are nothing if not cheap, even when it comes to God’s work.”

  Still, I was intrigued by our new prominence, especially by the offers of marriage arriving for my children. In addition to the Habsburg alliances I was already negotiating, the new English monarch, Henry VII—who’d established his Tudor dynasty after killing the last Plantagenet king—expressed an ardent desire to have one of my daughters for his newborn son, Arthur. Such alliances would expand our power and encircle France in a web of familial relationships that could prove that rapacious nation’s undoing. All the offers required attention and the appointment of ambassadors in each of the courts abroad, as well as gracious deliberation. With our treasury, as ever, near empty, I arranged for another set of loans from the Jewish moneylenders of Valencia, offering up several more of my jewels as surety; they would hold them in symbolic safekeeping and in return provide me with the funds I required to hold dazzling receptions at court for the visiting envoys, in order to impress upon them the splendor of our realm.

  I also dedicated myself to the continuing education of my children, as well as my own instruction, which had lagged far behind my initial hopes. When I received word through Cárdenas of a gifted female scholar known as La Latina, I was intrigued. Born Beatriz Galindo to a minor noble family, she had been chosen from among her sisters for the cloister, but at an early age she showed such talent for reading and for Latin that she was sent instead to study at the University of Salerno in Italy, one of the only universities in Europe that accepted women. After earning degrees in Latin and philosophy, she returned to Castile to gain a professorship in the University of Salamanca—a direct result of my edict that women be allowed all the benefits of higher education. She had so exalted herself by her proficiency in languages, as well as her erudite discourse on rhetoric and medicine, that she had become a prodigy among her peers.

  I decided to summon her to court.

  When she came before me in my study, a small woman clad in a plain brown wool gown, her linen headdress concealing her hair and emphasizing her gentle blue eyes and rosy cheeks, I could not help but stare in disbelief.

  “You … you’re so young,” I said, as she rose from her reverential curtsey.

  “Majestad, I am twenty.” Her voice was soft but authoritative, as if she’d never had the need to raise it in order to be heard. “I was entrusted to the convent at the age of nine, where I might have stayed, had my love for learning not caught the attention of my superiors. I studied in Salerno, but since your edict I returned to teach and learn under the guidance of my patron, Don Antonio de Nebrija.”

  I must have shown my bewilderment, for she added, “Don de Nebrija is famous in scholarly circles, both here and abroad. He’s currently preparing a compilation of Spanish grammar which he hopes to dedicate to Your Majesty.”

  “A book on Spanish grammar?” I said thoughtlessly, as I glanced at the bulging leather satchel she’d set on the floor by my desk. “What would be the need? I know our language.”

  “Majestad, the ancient Romans used language to build their empire. They made Latin so widespread that to this day we continue to use it. Could we not do the same with our language? It would surely benefit our country if more of our people could read and write in their own tongue. Much as I revere it, Latin is not nearly as accessible.”

  I went still. Without so much as a tremor in her voice, she had just reminded me of my ignorance. I was not offended, however; I could tell she meant no insult. She’d also noticed my wandering gaze, for she motioned to her satchel and said, “Do you want to see?”

  I nodded. As she hoisted the satchel onto the desk and unlatched it, I had to resist the urge to clap my hands in glee. I felt like a child at Epiphany. Beatriz Galindo had brought a bag of books with her from Salamanca!

  “This is De Finibus”—she handed me a slim leather-encased volume—“an important treatise about ethics by the Roman philosopher Cicero. And this,” she added, selecting another beautifully tooled calfskin book, “is Carmen Paschale, a fifth-century epic by the poet Sedulius, based on the Gospels.” She paused. “Many deem him a shameless imitator of Virgil, but I find his interpretation of the Bible rather original. I thought we might start with him, seeing as Your Majesty is such an upholder of our faith.”

  My hands were itching to open the books but I felt sudden shame as I met her contemplative regard. “These books are in Latin. I … I fear I do not understand Latin very well. I’ve been studying as much as my time permits, but I’ve made little progress.” I gave a short, embarrassed laugh. “As you just said, I find it’s not very accessible.”

  She reached over to pat my hand, as if we were the best of friends. “You soon will,” she said, “if you grant me the great honor of instructing you. I am very familiar with Latin, as my nickname attests.” She smiled, revealing perfect dimples in her round cheeks. “And perhaps in time, we shall see more splendid, and modern, works written in Spanish too, and Your Majesty hailed as the patroness of our very own renaissance in the arts.”

  She could not have spoken words dearer to my heart. I longed to be known as such; I wanted to bequeath a legacy that went beyond warfare. Though I strived for spiritual and physical unity in all of Spain, I believed a truly great country, one that would endure for centuries, must be built on the foundation of a literate and well-rounded society.

  Breathless now with excitement, I opened the book as she drew up a chair beside me. When Fernando came in hours later, he glanced in pointed interest at Beatriz Galindo as she sank into a puddle of skirts at his entrance.

  When I explained who she was, adding that she’d also agreed to oversee our daughters’ instruction, he smiled. “So, at long last you found your lady tutor,” he said.

  His indulgent chuckle as he waved Beatriz to her feet and then proceeded to light extra candles—“You’ll go blind in this light”—before leaving us to our studies showed he was pleased. A well-educated wife, he had learned, could only benefit our realm.

  THE NEXT TWO years passed swiftly. Cádiz, Medina Sidonia, and our other Andalucían nobles held the frontier, withstanding the numerous attacks by El Zagal’s Moorish raiders. Though he had escaped from Málaga, leaving the city to its fate, El Zagal was fueled by his desire to avenge the loss of the city which he had once ruled over with impunity. And his actions only enflamed Fernando’s resolve to put the rebel Moor’s head on a spike.

  Thus, after assembling a new force of munitions and men, we returned south to focus on our next target: El Zagal’s fortified city of Baeza.

  Protected by mountainous ravines and valleys of huertas, or orchard land, Baeza’s denizens were among the most entrenched of the Moors; their hatred for us after years of relentless crusade had been brought to fever pitch by the fall
of Málaga. Cádiz told us that El Zagal had gotten wind of our plans and dispatched ten thousand of his best warriors to the city in anticipation of our approach. The people had stockpiled over a year’s worth of supplies, strengthened their battlements, and stripped the surrounding land of all crops, leaving only denuded orchards and thickets of dense trees, brambles, and bracken to thwart our passage. Moreover, the city itself sat on a steep hillside encircled by forested ravines. To lay siege to it, Cádiz warned, was certain to be difficult and prolonged.

  We had heard such dire predictions before and we had succeeded, but still I found myself torn in two as I anxiously bid farewell to Fernando when he left at the head of our army of forty-three thousand, which he would lead into the Guadalquivir vale that fed Baeza’s huerta. For while I was left behind at court, at the mercy again of couriers to bring word between us, I faced an even more difficult task: I had to turn my attention to preparing our beloved Isabel for her departure to Portugal.

  I had delayed for as long as I could, citing the war, our perennial paucity of funds, Isabel’s youth and her need to stay close to her family. But she was entering her twentieth year and the Portuguese king’s patience had reached its limit. My aunt Beatrice wrote to say that we’d best seal our agreement before another monarch offered up a bride for his son, Prince Afonso.

  “Portugal is just across our border,” I told my daughter, as we packed her belongings. “We can visit every year, or more, if we like.”

  “Yes, Mama,” she said, her delicate bare fingers—for she could not don jewelry until she had her wedding band on first—meticulously folding the multitude of embroidered linens and lace-hemmed chemises, thick mantles and hooded cloaks, and sumptuous gowns trimmed with my favored ermine that I had ordered made for her. I’d lavished a fortune I didn’t have on Isabel’s trousseau, borrowing against outstanding loans to furnish her with everything she might need for every possible climate and season, as though she were not going just across our border but rather across the ocean to a land I didn’t know or trust.