Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read Free Page B

rode forwards on his great black charger. Something white bobbed at the ground, tied to the horse’s glossy black tail. There was a gasp as the soldiers in the front rank recognised what he had. It was the Ave Maria that Hernando had left speared to the floor of the mosque. The Moor had tied it to the tail of his horse as a calculated insult, and now rode the great creature forwards and back before the Christian ranks, and smiled when he heard their roar of rage.
    ‘Heretic,’ Queen Isabella whispered. ‘A man damned to hell. God strike him dead and scourge his sin.’
    The queen’s champion, de la Vega, turned his horse and rode towards the little house where the royal guards ringed the courtyard, the tiny olive tree, the doorway. He pulled up his horse beside the olive tree and doffed his helmet, looking up at his queen and the princesses on the roof. His dark hair was curly and sparkling with sweat from the heat, his dark eyes sparkled with anger. ‘Your Grace, do I have your leave to answer his challenge?’
    ‘Yes,’ the queen said, never shrinking for a moment. ‘Go with God, Garallosco de la Vega.’
    ‘That big man will kill him,’ Catalina said, pulling at her mother’s long sleeve. ‘Tell him he must not go. Yarfe is so much bigger. He will murder de la Vega!’
    ‘It will be as God wills,’ Isabella maintained, closing her eyes in prayer.
    ‘Mother! Your Majesty! He is a giant. He will kill our champion.’
    Her mother opened her blue eyes and looked down at her daughterand saw her little face was flushed with distress and her eyes were filling with tears. ‘It will be as God wills it,’ she repeated firmly. ‘You have to have faith that you are doing God’s will. Sometimes you will not understand, sometimes you will doubt, but if you are doing God’s will you cannot be wrong, you cannot go wrong. Remember it, Catalina. Whether we win this challenge or lose it, it makes no difference. We are soldiers of Christ. You are a soldier of Christ. If we live or die, it makes no difference. We will die in faith, that is all that matters. This battle is God’s battle, He will send a victory, if not today, then tomorrow. And whichever man wins today, we do not doubt that God will win, and we will win in the end.’
    ‘But de la Vega…’ Catalina protested, her fat lower lip trembling.
    ‘Perhaps God will take him to His own this afternoon,’ her mother said steadily. ‘We should pray for him.’
    Juana made a face at her little sister, but when their mother kneeled again the two girls clasped hands for comfort. Isabel kneeled beside them, Maria beside her. All of them squinted through their closed eyelids to the plain where the bay charger of de la Vega rode out from the line of the Spaniards, and the black horse of the Moor trotted proudly before the Saracens.
    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