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all the king wished was to tell us that the queen had given birth.”
    “I suppose so. But don’t forget, Alfonso was his heir first and many claim Enrique is impotent. Perhaps that child is not his.”
    “Beatriz!” I exclaimed, louder than I intended. My mother glanced over her shoulder at us. I smiled. “She’s eating all the bread,” I said quickly, and my mother gave Beatriz a reproving look. As soon as she turned away, I hissed, “How can you say such a thing? Or better yet, where did you hear such a thing that you can say it at all?”
    She shrugged. “Retainers talk. So do servants. They go to the market; they gossip with merchants. Honestly, it isn’t as if it were a secret.Everyone in Castile talks of nothing else. They say the queen got herself with child to avoid having the same thing happen to her that happened to Enrique’s first wife. Or have you forgotten he had his first marriage to Blanca of Navarre annulled because after fifteen years, she failed to give him a child? She claimed they never consummated their vows, but he said a bewitchment prevented him from acting the man with her. Regardless, she was sent away and a pretty new queen from Portugal was found to take her place—a pretty new queen who happens to be your mother’s niece and knows that her aunt’s two children could one day do to her what Enrique did to your mother.”
    I glared at her. “That’s absurd. I never heed idle gossip and you should follow my example. Honestly, Beatriz, what has come over you?” I turned my face away, toward the approaching walls of Ávila.
    An impressive wall with eighty-eight fortified towers, built centuries before to defend Ávila from marauding Moors, encircled the entire city in a serpentine embrace. Sitting atop a stony escarpment devoid of trees and punctuated by huge boulders, Ávila overlooked the province that bore its name with implacable reserve, the rugged towers of its alcazar and cathedral seeming to pierce the sapphire-blue sky.
    Beatriz visibly reacted to the sight, despite her assertions of having seen it all before; she straightened in her saddle and I saw color flush her cheeks. I hoped the thrill of being in the city would dissuade her from voicing gossip and speculation that could cause us nothing but harm if we were overheard.
    We rode under an arched gateway and made our way toward the northeastern edge of the city and the convent, through hundreds of people going about their business, merchants haggling and carts clattering over cobblestone. But I barely paid attention, pondering what Beatriz had said. It seemed I couldn’t escape the shadow I’d hoped to leave behind in Arévalo.
    The abbess greeted us in the convent courtyard, having been alerted in advance to our visit. While Don Bobadilla and the retainers saw to the horses, we were led into the common hall, where a meal had been prepared. Beatriz ate as if she were famished, even though we were in fact served lentil soup with bits of pork; afterward, she went out with Doña Elvira to persuade her father to take them into town. I stayedbehind, joining my mother in the chapel for a time. Then, while she retired to discourse with the abbess, a longtime friend of hers who oversaw the convent by royal decree, I went out to wander the gardens.
    Lemon and orange trees surrounded me; several nuns worked the soil in silent comradeship, briefly smiling at me as I paced the winding path, inhaling the scent of rosemary, thyme, chamomile, and other fragrant herbs. I lost all sense of time, content to bask in the sun that bathed the well-tended grounds, whose rich earth supplied the nuns with almost everything they needed, so that they never had to set foot outside their blessed walls. It felt as though the past few weeks had been erased. Here in Santa Ana, it seemed impossible that anything bad could occur, that the outside world with its trials and intrigues could ever intrude upon this place of peace.
    As I neared a wall abutting