Excerpt from The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It was a great joke to play on the Moors. It was the funniest thing in the world to take a Christian prayer into the very heart of their holy place. It was the most wonderful gesture to insult them. The queen was delighted, the king too. The princess and her sisters looked at their champion, Hernando Pèrez del Pulgar, as if he were a hero from the romances, a knight from the time of Arthur at Camelot. Catalina clapped her hands in delight at the story and commanded that he tell it and re-tell it, over and over again. But in the back of her mind, pushed far away from thought, she remembered the chill she had felt when she had thought that he was not coming back.

Next, they waited for the reply from the Moors. It was certain to happen. They knew that their enemy would see the venture as the challenge that it was -- there was bound to be a response. It was not long in coming.

The queen and her children were visiting Zubia, a village near to Granada, so Her Majesty could see the impregnable walls of the fort herself. They had ridden out with a light guard, and the commander was white with horror when he came dashing up to them in the little village square and shouted that the gates of the red fort had opened and the Moors were thundering out, the full army, armed for attack. There was no time to get back to camp. The queen and the three princesses could never outrun Moorish horsemen on Arab stallions. There was nowhere to hide, there was nowhere even to make a stand.

In desperate haste Queen Isabella climbed to the flat roof of the nearest house, pulling the little princess by her hand up the crumbling stairs, her sisters running behind. "I have to see! I have to see!" she exclaimed.

"Madre! You are hurting me!"

"Quiet, child. We have to see what they intend."

"Are they coming for us?" the child whimpered, her little voice muffled by her own plump hand.

"They may be. I have to see."

It was a raiding party, not the full force. They were led by their champion, a giant of a man, dark as mahogany, a glint of a smile beneath his helmet, riding a huge black horse as if he were Night riding to overwhelm them. His horse snarled like a dog at the watching guard, its teeth bared.

"Madre, who is that man?" the Princess of Wales whispered to her mother, staring from the vantage point of the flat roof of the house.

"That is the Moor called Yarfe, and I am afraid he has come for your friend, Hernando."

"His horse looks so frightening, like it wants to bite."

"He has cut off its lips to make it snarl at us. But we are not made fearful by such things. We are not frightened children."

"Should we not run away?" asked the frightened child.

Her mother, watching the Moor parade, did not even hear her daughter's whisper.

"You won't let him hurt Hernando, will you? Madre?"

"Hernando laid the challenge. Yarfe is answering it. We will have to fight," she said levelly. "Yarfe is a knight, a man of honor. He cannot ignore the challenge."

"How can he be a man of honor if he is a heretic? A Moor?"

"They are most honorable men, Catalina, though they are unbelievers. And this Yarfe is a hero to them."

"What will you do? How shall we save ourselves? This man is as big as a giant."

Copyright © 2005 by Philippa Gregory Limited. Reproduced by permission of Simon & Schuster Publishing.