Queen Isabella.
Over Granada, high against the bright sky, rose and floated the banners.
Cannon, the big lombards, roared. Mars' music crashed out, then the
trumpets ceased their crying and instead spread a mighty chanting. _Te
Deum Laudamus!_

At last the massed brightness out in the plain quivered and parted. The
pageantry broke, wide curving and returning with some freedom but
with order too, into Santa Fe. I saw the Queen and the King with their
children, and the Grand Cardinal, and prelates and prelates, and the
Marquis of Cadiz, and many a grandee and famous knight. Don Enrique de
Cerda and his troop came by.

Diego Lopez and I returned to the town. I saw again the man who would
find India by a way unpassed, as far as one knew, since the world began!
He was entering a house with a friar beside him. Something came into my
mind of the convent of La Rabida.

CHAPTER V

SOME days went by. The King and the Queen with the court and a great
train of prelates and grandees and knights rode in state through
Granada. Don Enrique, returning, told me of it in his room at night, of
the Christian service in the mosque and the throning in the Alhambra.

"Now," he said, "after great affairs, our affairs! I have had speech
with the Marchioness of Moya."

"That is the Queen's friend?"

"Yes. Dona Beatrix de Boabdilla. We stood together by a fountain,
and when she said, 'What can I do for you?' I answered, 'There is
something.' Then while all went in pageantry before us, I told her of
the hermitage in the oak wood and of the unhappy small tower, and of you
and me and those others, and what was done that day. Don Jayme, I told
it like a minstrel who believes what he sings! And then I spoke of
to-day. She is no puny soul, nor is she in priest's grip. She acts from
her own vision, not from that of another. The Queen is no weak soul
either! She also has vision, but too often she lets the churchmen take
her vision from her. But Dona Beatrix is stronger there. Well, she
promises help if we can show her how to help."

I said, "I have been thinking. It seems to me that it was wrong to come
here and put my weight upon you."

"No!" he answered. "Did we not swear then, when we were young men? And
we needed no oaths neither. Let such thoughts be.--I am going to the
palace to-morrow, and you with me. The King and the Queen ride with
a great train into Granada. But Dona Beatrix will excuse herself from
going. The palace will be al