The Queen's Vow: A Novel of Isabella of Castile by C. W. Gortner

grandees wield more power than the crown, andthe people sow dust and starve. Enrique thinks to buy goodwill with this child but in the end all he’ll reap is discord. The grandees will not be ridiculed by him. They’ll rip him apart like wolves; and when they’re done,
we
will claim everything he deprived us of. He has ignored us, left us here to rot, but on the day Alfonso wears his crown, then will Enrique of Trastámara learn that he disdained us at his own peril.”
    I heard Carrillo’s voice in my head:
The stork is a good mother; she knows how to defend her young
. I wanted to cover my ears. Her eyes seemed to burn a hole in me, smoldering with pent-up rage, with years of poisonous resentment and humiliation. I couldn’t avoid the truth any longer. Because of her thwarted pride, my mother had connived to execute Constable de Luna for treason, plunging my father into a lethal grief. Her ambition had cost her everything—husband, rank, our very safety—but now she believed she had found a way to win it all back, to conspire with Archbishop Carrillo and the discontented grandees against the legitimacy of the new princess and wreak havoc upon my half brother. She did not see how wrong it was to cast such terrible aspersions, to believe the worst of the king and the queen. In her zeal to protect Alfonso’s rights, she would scheme, insult, fight; even, God help her, kill.
    “We must do this,” she said. “
You
must do it, for me.”
    I made myself nod, even as to my horror I felt helpless tears prick my eyes. I refused to let them spill. I blinked them back, hardening my jaw, and as she took in my stance, I saw my mother pause, her brow furrowing, as if she only now realized how far she had gone.
    “You … you should be ashamed of yourself,” I heard myself whisper.
    She flinched. Then she lifted her chin and said flatly, “I will make you a dress in the green velvet, with blue-gray trim. Alfonso shall have a new doublet in blue satin.” She turned deliberately back to the fabrics, as if I had ceased to exist.
    I fled the room, not stopping until I reached my chamber, banging open the door.
    Beatriz turned about, startled, from where she stood packing our clothes into a brass-studded leather chest. “What is it?” she said as I stood gripping the door frame. “What happened?”
    “She is mad,” I said. “She thinks she can use Alfonso against the king, but she will not get away with it. I will not let her. I will protect my brother to my last breath.”

    RETAINERS IN LIVERY loaded our luggage into carts in the courtyard. Our castle dogs barked and loped after Alfonso, sensing, as animals do, that an inalterable change was near. Alfonso had always seen to the dogs’ upkeep: He took them with him when he went out hunting or riding, fed them, and ensured that their shelter was tended. I watched him pause to pet his favorite, a large shaggy hound named Alarcón. From my position by the castle doors, I suddenly noticed how pitifully small a staff we had, compared with the impressive retinue mingling before me, sent by Enrique to escort us to Segovia.
    Archbishop Carrillo had not come. He had dispatched in his stead his nephews: the marquis of Villena and Villena’s brother, Pedro de Girón. While Villena was a premier noble and favorite of the king’s, Girón was master of Calatrava, one of Castile’s four monastic warrior orders, founded centuries ago to fight the Moors. Both had considerable power and wealth, yet there couldn’t have been greater contrast between the two; indeed, the only thing that seemed to link them as brothers was their arrogance.
    Slight of build, Villena had dark hair cut straight across his brow; he was handsome in a slightly sinister way, with an elongated nose and strange eyes of a yellow-green hue, all the more startling because of their coldness. He’d ridden into our courtyard with a sneer, his distaste evident as he surveyed the roaming chickens and dogs, the pigs and