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

Dressed in the gorgeous silks of their defeated enemy, turbaned, slippered, glorious as caliphs, the Spanish royal family, glittering with the spoils of Spain, took Granada. That afternoon Catalina, the Princess of Wales, walked with her parents up the winding, steep path through the shade of tall trees, to the most beautiful palace in Europe, slept that night in the brilliantly tiled harem and woke to the sound of rippling water in marble fountains, and thought herself a Moorish princess born to luxury and beauty, as well as a Princess of England.
 

And this is my life, from this day of victory. I had been born as a child of the camp, following the army from siege to battle, seeing things that perhaps no child should see, facing adult fears every day. I had marched past the bodies of dead soldiers rotting in the spring heat because there was no time to bury them, I had ridden behind mules whipped into staggering bloodstained corpses, pulling my father's guns through the high passes of the Sierra. I saw my mother slap a man's face for weeping with exhaustion. I heard children of my own age crying for their parents burned at the stake for heresy; but at this moment, when we dressed ourselves in embroidered silk and walked into the red fort of Granada and through the gates to the white pearl that is the Alhambra Palace, at this moment I became a princess for the first time.

I became a girl raised in the most beautiful palace in Christendom, protected by an impregnable fort, blessed by God among all others. I became a girl of immense, unshakable confidence in the God that had brought us to victory, and in my destiny as His most favorite child and my mother's most favorite daughter.

Alhambra proved to me, once and for all, that I was uniquely favored by God, as my mother had been favored by God. I was his chosen child, raised in the most beautiful palace in Christendom, and destined for the highest things.
 

The Spanish family with their officers ahead and the royal guard behind, glorious as sultans, entered the fort through the enormous square tower known as the Justice Gate. As the shadow of the first arch of the tower fell on Isabella's upturned face, the trumpeters played a great shout of defiance, like Joshua before the walls of Jericho, as if they would frighten away the lingering devils of the infidel. At once there was an echo to the blast of sound, a shuddering sigh, from everyone gathered inside the gateway, pressed back against the golden walls, the women half veiled in their robes, the men standing tall and proud and silent, watching, to see what the conquerors would do next. Catalina looked above the sea of heads and saw the flowing shapes of Arabic script engraved on the gleaming walls.

"What does that say?" she demanded of Madilla, her nursemaid.

Madilla squinted upwards. "I don't know," she said crossly. She always denied her Moorish roots. She always tried to pretend that she knew nothing of the Moors or their lives though she had been born and bred a Moor herself and only converted -- according to Juana -- for convenience.

"Tell us, or we'll pinch you," Juana offered sweetly.

The young woman scowled at the two sisters. "It says: 'May God allow the justice of Islam to prevail within.' "

Catalina hesitated for a moment, hearing the proud ring of certainty, a determination to match her own mother's voice.

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