Paradise & More (Torres Family Saga) Read Free

encamped outside Granada and likely will be until it falls. I am to rejoin Fernando's armies shortly to participate in the glorious event.”
           “Will it happen soon?” Her eyes glowed as she envisioned the pageantry of the court, with knights in gleaming armor and ladies in jewels and laces, all marching in a triumphal entry into the last Moorish stronghold in all the Spains.
           “I would expect Granada to fall early in 1492,” he replied with an odd note of grimness in his voice. “Perhaps I will be at court after that,” he added enigmatically.
           “Then I shall see you there,” she said with relish, “for my father has promised that I shall be a maid in the queen's entourage.” She mounted her filly with the unconscious grace of one long accustomed to riding, then smiled winsomely as she tried to smooth her tangled plait of hair. “Only wait, for I shall be a very beautiful lady when next we meet, Don Aaron.”
           He laughed at the scraggily girl's spirit. “Perhaps you shall, at that, Dona Magdalena.” With that he saluted her and turned Andaluz away.
           Magdalena watched him ride toward Seville, then whispered low, “I will be beautiful for you, Aaron Torres...and I will marry you!”

 
     
    Chapter One
     
     
    North of Palos, Fall 1491
     
           On the banks of the sluggish Rio Tinto just outside the sleepy seaport town of Palos, the mighty monastery of La Rabida stood, gray and imposing. Aaron hated the place. At the age of fifteen, he had been sent here as a newly baptized convert to complete his instructions in the Christian religion. The younger son of the House of Torres had been given over as a token of good faith by his family. He was to take holy orders. He smiled sardonically as he rode up to the gate, recalling the truculent boy who had defied and defeated his teachers at every turn, finding few allies during his wretched years under their tutelage.
           But now he returned because of a lone youth he had befriended, Diego Colon, son of a visionary Genoese chartmaker. Diego's mother had died in 1485 and he had been wrenched from everything familiar in Lisbon and deposited by his impoverished father with the Franciscan teachers. Aaron, baptized with the same name as Cristobal Colon's son, became the child's hero and protector. Both boys suffered the taunts of the other students—for the elder was a hated Castilian Jew and the younger, an equally detested Genoese, whose countrymen had grown rich as bankers and moneylenders in impoverished Castile and Aragon.
           Aaron had seen Diego seldom in the past five years, not at all in the past two since he had joined King Fernando's army in the Moorish wars. He patted the letter he carried as he hailed the tonsured youth at the gate and arrogantly gave him the care of his horse. “I seek Cristobal Colon, the Genoese. Are he and his son Diego yet here?”
           “They are to depart on the morrow. Tonight they sup with Fray Juan,” the young friar replied, noting the air of authority in the soldier's carriage. Surely the tall blond hidalgo was a man of some import. He carried himself with an assurance that commanded deference. “See the light that burns—”
           “Yes, I well know the location of Fray Juan's quarters, Benito,” he interrupted with impatience. He paused for a moment, inspecting the gangly young man. “It is Benito de Luna, is it not?”
           The round face crinkled in nervous puzzlement for a moment as Benito searched his memory. “Diego Torres?” he croaked, now genuinely afraid of the hard-looking soldier.
           “Yes, the marrano you and your friend Vargas used to spit upon,” Aaron said almost genially, one hand resting lightly on his sword hilt. He watched the young friar back away in mortal terror. With grim satisfaction he turned and strode across the courtyard toward the guardian of La Rabida's