‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will come with you.’

She turned her back on the house which had been her father’s, and she was smiling as she walked beside her new protector.

In his residence at Alcalá de Henares, Alfonso Carillo, the Archbishop of Toledo, had left his laboratories and retired to his own apartments.

He said to his servants: ‘I will go to my bed, for I am very tired.’

They were astonished because they had never before seen him so resigned. It was as though all the militancy had gone out of him and that he had no longer any interest in the affairs of the country, nor in the discoveries he might make through the scientific experiments in the pursuit of which he had squandered his vast fortunes.

‘I think it is time,’ he said, ‘for me to make my peace with God, for I am an old man and I do not think there is much time left to me.’

So his servant hurried away to arrange for the last rites, and the old Archbishop lay back on his bed thinking of the past.

‘She is a great Queen, this Isabella of ours,’ he murmured to himself. ‘She has set the fires burning all over Castile. She will rid Castile of heretics and, it may well be, of all infidels, for she is determined to drive the Moors from Granada, and I have a feeling that what our Isabella sets out to achieve she will.

‘And but for me she would never have attained the throne. Yet here I live in disgrace, cut off from the affairs which were once the whole meaning of life to me. I have been foolish. I should have taken no offence at Ferdinand’s treatment of me. I should have shown no rancour towards Mendoza, the sly old fox! They are only waiting for my death to make him Primate of Spain.

‘Yes, I have been foolish. After raising her up, I thought I could dash her down. But I was mistaken. I did not know Isabella. I could not guess the strength of this woman. And who can blame me? Was there ever such gentleness disguising such strength?’

He fell into a doze and, when he awoke, he saw the priests at his bedside. They had come to administer Extreme Unction. The end of his turbulent life was near.

Isabella was with her month-old baby, Maria, when news from Loja was brought to her.

Muley Abul Hassan, the King of Granada, had taken fright at the loss of Alhama, and throughout the city of Granada there had been great mourning. But the Arabs were a warlike people and they remembered defeats of the past which had been turned into victories.

So they rallied and met the Christians at Loja.

Perhaps the Christians had allowed the success of Alhama to go to their heads; perhaps they had underestimated the resourcefulness of their enemies.

At Loja, that July, there was such a rout of the Christian armies that, had reinforcements come more quickly from Granada, Muley Abul Hassan would have wiped out all that was left of Ferdinand’s army.

Isabella received the news without changing her expression, although her heart was filled with anxiety.

She sent for Cardinal Mendoza and, when he was with her, she told him the news.

He bowed his head and there were a few seconds of silence.

Then Isabella spoke. ‘I think this may be sent as a warning to us. We were too confident; we believed that we owed our victories to our own arms and skill, and not to God.

Mendoza gave the Queen a look which she construed as conveying his agreement with her. But in fact Mendoza was marvelling at her ability to see the guiding hand of God in all that befell her.

All over Castile the dread Inquisition was establishing itself. In many towns the atmosphere had changed almost overnight. The people walked the streets, furtive and afraid. The Cardinal guessed that their nights were uneasy. For who could know when there would be that knock at the door, those dreaded words: ‘Open in the name of the Inquisition.’

Yet if he asked her what had happened to her towns she would have answered: ‘They are being cleansed of heretics.’ And she would believe that she was carrying out the wishes of God by setting up the Inquisition in Spain.

She will succeed in all she does, pondered Mendoza. There is a fire and fervency beneath that gende facade which is unbeatable. She does not question the rightness of what she does. She is Isabella of Castile, and therefore rules by Divine will.

‘The Moors are strong,’ said the Cardinal. ‘The task before us would seem insuperable – except by our brave and wise Queen.’

Isabella accepted the compliment. Mendoza was too gallant, too courteous. He lacked the honesty of men such as Talavera and Torquemada; but his company was perhaps more pleasant, and she must forgive him his light-mindedness. He was a wise man in spite of the life he led; and disapproving of that as she did, she was still ready to accept him as her leading minister.

In affairs of state, she told herself, one must not overlook people because of their licentious habits. This man was a statesman, shrewd and wise, and she had need of him.

She said: ‘We shall prosecute the war with success. And now, my friend, I have news from Alcalá de Henares for you. Alfonso Carillo is dead. Poor Alfonso Carillo, he has died deeply in debt, I fear. He could never restrain himself – neither in politics nor in his scientific experiments. It was always so. He did me great harm, yet I am saddened because I remember those days when he was my friend.’

‘Your Highness should not grieve. He was your friend when he felt it expedient to be so.’

‘You are right, Archbishop.’

The Cardinal looked at her, and she smiled at him in her gentle way.

‘Who but you should be Archbishop of Toledo, and Primate of Spain? Who else could be trusted at the head of affairs in the years before us?’

Mendoza knelt and took her hand.

He was an ambitious man and was overcome with admiration and respect for a Queen as bigoted as herself, who could choose a man of his reputation because she knew he was her ablest statesman.

Ferdinand was pacing up and down the Queen’s apartment. The defeat at Loja had greatly upset him. He had believed that victory over the Moors was almost within their grasp; and he could not face setbacks with the calm which was his wife’s.

But Isabella herself – although she did not show this – was uneasy on account of the latest item of news which had now been brought to them.

They had thought La Beltraneja safe in her convent. Had she not taken the veil?

Ferdinand cried: ‘How can one be sure what Louis will do next? He has his eyes on Navarre. Make no mistake about that. Navarre shall belong to us. It is mine . . . through my father.’

Isabella considered the position. The first wife of Ferdinand’s father, Blanche, daughter of Charles III of Navarre, had on her death left Navarre to her son Carlos, who had been murdered to make way for Ferdinand. Navarre had then passed to Blanche, elder sister of Carlos and repudiated wife of Henry IV of Castile. Poor Blanche, like her brother, had met an untimely death; this was at the instigation of her sister Eleanor, who wanted Navarre for her son, Gaston de Foix.

On the death of John of Aragon, who had retained the title of King of Navarre, Eleanor had greedily seized power, but her glory was short-lived, for she died three weeks after her father.

Eleanor had arranged the murder of her sister Blanche, that her son, Gaston de Foix, might inherit Navarre, but Gaston had been killed during a tourney at Lisbon some years before the death of Eleanor, and the next heir was Gaston’s son, Francis Phoebus.

Gaston’s wife had been the Princess Madeleine, sister of Louis XI of France; thus Louis had his eye on Navarre and was determined that it should not go back to the crown of Aragon.