In this way the king was
distracted by a multitude of counsellors, when, fortunately, a letter
from the queen put an end to his perplexities. Proceed we in the next
chapter to relate what was the purport of that letter.

* Abarca, Anales de Aragon.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

EXPEDITION AGAINST THE CASTLES OF CAMBIL AND ALBAHAR.

"Happy are those princes," exclaims the worthy padre Fray Antonio
Agapida, "who have women and priests to advise them, for in these
dwelleth the spirit of counsel." While Ferdinand and his captains were
confounding each other in their deliberations at the Fountain of the
King, a quiet but deep little council of war was held in the state
apartment of the old castle of Vaena between Queen Isabella, the
venerable Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, grand cardinal of Spain, and Don
Garcia Osoria, the belligerent bishop of Jaen. This last worthy prelate,
who had exchanged his mitre for a helm, no sooner beheld the defeat of
the enterprise against Moclin than he turned the reins of his sleek,
stall-fed steed and hastened back to Vaena, full of a project for the
employment of the army, the advancement of the faith, and the benefit of
his own diocese. He knew that the actions of the king were influenced
by the opinions of the queen, and that the queen always inclined
a listening ear to the counsels of saintly men: he laid his plans,
therefore, with the customary wisdom of his cloth, to turn the ideas
of the queen into the proper channel; and this was the purport of the
worthy bishop's suggestions:

The bishopric of Jaen had for a long time been harassed by two Moorish
castles, the scourge and terror of all that part of the country. They
were situated on the frontiers of the kingdom of Granada, about four
leagues from Jaen, in a deep, narrow, and rugged valley surrounded by
lofty mountains. Through this valley runs the Rio Frio (or Cold River)
in a deep channel worn between high, precipitous banks. On each side of
the stream rise two vast rocks, nearly perpendicular, within a stone's
throw of each other, blocking up the gorge of the valley. On the summits
of these rocks stood the two formidable castles, Cambil and Albahar,
fortified with battlements and towers of great height and thickness.
They were connected together by a bridge thrown from rock to rock across
the river. The road which passed through the valley traversed this
bridge, and was completely commanded by these castles. They stood like
two g