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might find himself an underbidder – which would leave Catherine, still in Spain indeed, but also on the shelf.
        The motives of Catherine's mother, Queen Isabella, in helping to delay her daughter's departure were more honourable. The deaths, first of her heir and only son, Don Juan, in 1496 and then in 1500 of her grandson by her daughter Isabella, Dom Miguel (who was her next heir), plunged her into a physical and emotional decline. Her energies, once inexhaustible, waned, and her religiosity deepened and became more morbid. She spent longer and longer at her devotions, and under her robes of state – once so rich and gaudy – she wore the coarse habit of a Franciscan nun. This drove a wedge between her and her husband and, after the departure of her third daughter, Maria, to marry Manoel of Portugal, all that was left to her was Catherine, her youngest and dearest child. The bond between mother and daughter, always close, got stronger. So when the Catholic Kings protested that they would send Catherine as soon as 'the state of health of the Queen [Isabella] would permit it', they are for once to be taken at their word. 2
        But finally circumstances, stronger even than Ferdinand's deceit or Isabella's depression, took control. Already, in March 1500, a rumour had reached England via Genoese merchants. Her parents, it was said, had other 'very great and pressing occupations': the Moors of the Alpujarras had rebelled. The Alpujarras, a region of wild and craggy mountains and rich valleys to the south-east of Granada, had been given as a little fiefdom to Boabdil, the last Moorish king of Granada. Now its people rose in a savage and at first successful Revolt. The Christian general sent against them was killed and his troops massacred. Ferdinand and Isabella had to fight one more campaign together, which was to be their last, to preserve the Reconquest. Isabella raised troops and Ferdinand led them into action himself.
        In April the English were formally told of the Revolt and its consequences for Catherine's departure: the Spanish royal family had been at Burgos, in the north of Spain, to speed Catherine on her way. But the news of the Revolt forced them to turn south and to abandon plans for the Princess's journey. 3
        The Revolt exposed the hollowness of the settlement with the Moors; it also casts a searching light on the nature of Catherine's own religious beliefs.

9 . Dogma

    A t first sight, the terms agreed for the surrender of Granada back in 1492, while Catherine as a child was staying with her parents in the stone-built camp-cum-city of Santa Fé from which the siege was directed, were fair, even generous. The Moorish inhabitants were granted freedom of worship, language and dress. They were to retain their property, including most mosques, and, after a three years' exemption from imposts, they were to be taxed as they had been under their own rulers. 1
    All this amounted effectively to a guarantee of autonomy. It is certain that Ferdinand and Isabella never intended to keep the bargain. For their goal was not simply to restore the territorial integrity of Spain; they were determined also to unify it ethnically and religiously: to make it purely Spanish and purely Catholic.
        The obstacles were overwhelming. Seven hundred years of Moorish occupation and five hundred years of creeping Reconquest had left Spain the most culturally rich and diverse of European societies. There were four main groups: the Catholic Spaniards; the Islamic Moors; the large Jewish minority, which had flourished under the tolerant rule of the Caliphs; and lastly, and most controversially, there were the New Christians or Conversos . These were former Moors or Jews who had converted, more or less sincerely and more or less completely, to the now dominant Christian religion. To fuse so diverse a mass into a unity required a formidable force. Ferdinand and Isabella acquired it in the Spanish