Carol Townend - The Princess's Secret Longing

‘He’d gone when I got here. The innkeeper says he left about an hour ago.’

‘I take it he took his squire with him?’

‘Aye.’

Inigo and Rodrigo gave their horses the spur and they and their squires flew into the night.

The night of the Princesses’ escape had arrived. Leonor and Alba were leading the way even though they had never been in this part of the grounds. The iron gate that marked the entrance to the disused sally port had been almost impossible to find in the dark, and the gardens were so quiet all Alba could hear was her own breathing, fast and flurried. Despite the warmth of the night, she shivered as she peered into the secret tunnel to the outside.

A few yards in, a torch flickered and hissed. Beyond the torch, a gloomy corridor ran deep into the earth. Alba had heard mutterings about this tunnel. Some said it was a secret passageway into the palace, others that it was an escape route for previous sultans fleeing murderous relatives. This last might well be true, many of her father’s predecessors had had their lives cut short by ambitious brothers. Her nails dug into her palms. Whatever its use, the passage smelt dank and looked terrifying. Shadowed and seemingly without end, it couldn’t have been used for centuries.

This was their route to freedom? Was it safe?

It was certainly narrow. Alba hated confined spaces, normally nothing would persuade her to set foot in a tunnel like this. Unfortunately, life in the palace had become intolerable. The sally port was her only way out. God was good though, and the rusting iron gate on the palace side was open, as her duenna, Inés, had promised.

There would be no turning back.

Alba had no regrets. No, that wasn’t entirely true. She deeply regretted having to leave Hunter, her pet monkey, behind. She’d had to do it though, Hunter was exuberant and far too noisy to come with them. He would have given them away in a heartbeat. Alba had wept when she left him in the care of a maidservant.

Another regret was the songbirds. The Sultan had given each of the Princesses a pair of songbirds in a gilded cage. Earlier that evening, Alba had released hers into the wild. Like her, they must take their chances away from the palace. Leonor, too, had freed her songbirds, Constanza had not. A maidservant would care for Constanza’s birds.

In the flare of the flickering torch, Alba noticed the tremble of Leonor’s veil. Perversely, it gave her heart to see that her brave older sister was unnerved.

‘Where’s Constanza?’ Leonor whispered. ‘We can’t leave without her.’

‘She’s just behind, stop fretting. She’ll follow us, she always does,’ Alba said.

Alba had often wondered if she and her sisters were close because they were triplets or because they had been brought up together. Had the Sultan’s policy of isolating them from the rest of the world, indeed, of isolating them from almost everyone except for a handful of servants and their beloved Spanish duenna strengthened the bond between them? The three Princesses ate together, they laughed together, they cried together. They would escape together too. Once in Spain, they would start anew. Together.

Alba gave Leonor a gentle push. ‘Hurry, for pity’s sake, Father’s guards are everywhere.’

Leonor went into the tunnel. A huge key hung on a hook below the torch, it was as rusty and ancient as the gate. Leonor grabbed it and thrust it at Alba.

‘Take this, I’ll take the torch.’ Leonor started down the corridor.

The key was cold and heavy, Alba gripped it as though her life depended on it. As she followed Leonor, she prayed that the lock in the door at the other end hadn’t rusted solid. They must escape.

Their father the Sultan was becoming more tyrannical by the day. When Alba and her sisters had asked permission to explore Granada on horseback, he had responded by locking the three of them in their tower. Later, the Princesses had been informed their ponies were no longer in the palace stables. They had been sold.

The sale of their beloved ponies had been the final straw, the moment when the Princesses understood that not only was Sultan Tariq a tyrant, but also that there was no hope for him. He was never going to change. Grimly, Alba set her jaw. She had hopes. Dreams. Her father wasn’t going to crush them.

The tunnel twisted this way and that, a dark serpent winding beneath the palace grounds. The air was stale and smelled of earth and rust, and with every step the walls closed in. It was hard to breathe. Alba’s skin prickled with sweat and she had the strangest urge to pant.

Torchlight wavered over the tunnel walls. Alba tried to imagine which part of the palace lay above. The orange grove? The lawn beloved of the palace peacocks? The Court of the Lions?

There were footsteps at her back, Constanza must be close on her heels. Gradually, her breathing eased. The three of us are in this together.

The key bit into Alba’s palm. Her veil was a nuisance, filmy though it was, it was suffocating. Alba didn’t stop to remove it though, the habit of obedience held her, even here in the tunnel.

Alba and her sisters had broken the Sultan’s rules once or twice. But tonight, even though they were, she prayed, escaping the life of restriction their father had planned for them, the veil that symbolised their oppression was peculiarly comforting—a shield as it were. There was no saying what was in store for them outside the sally port, she might want to hide.

Leonor forged on without as much as a backward look, clearly, she had no doubts. Suddenly, she stopped. ‘I can’t see the end,’ she said. ‘Is Constanza behind us?’

‘I think I can hear her. Keep going.’

Alba had strapped a money pouch beneath her clothing; it felt heavy, like a dead thing. Her chest ached for lack of air—she was all too conscious of the weight of earth and rock above them. Her palms were clammy and cold sweat trickled down her spine.

Then the air shifted, it seemed cleaner. Sweeter.

Leonor halted, she was frowning at a door so ancient it looked to have grown into the walls. ‘We’ve reached the end.’

Panting only a little, Alba reached past her, fitted the key into the lock and twisted. The handle was rusty and when Leonor wrenched at the door, the hinges moaned in protest.

‘Here, let me help,’ Alba murmured.

They pushed and shoved, and between them made a narrow crack. As it widened, fresh air wafted in. Leonor squeezed through the gap.

A soft footfall in the tunnel told Alba that Constanza was a few paces behind. Swallowing hard, she gathered her cloak about her and slipped out, breathing properly for the first time since entering the tunnel. Like magic, the tight band about her forehead eased.

They were outside the palace! The danger wasn’t past, but at least she was free of that ghastly corridor, it had felt like a tomb.

Trees made dark silhouettes against a starry sky. The moon, barely visible through her veil, glistened through a tangle of branches. In a hollow below the sally port, she could see the faint glow of a lantern.

How odd, the only person Alba could see was Leonor. Beneath her veil, she frowned. Three Castilian knights should be waiting for them. It was all arranged. Their duenna Inés had sworn that their ransom money had been paid in full. Those men should be free. Where were they? Had they, alienated by their captivity, changed their minds?

Alba wouldn’t be surprised; her father had treated those knights abysmally. They’d spent weeks clearing a rock-choked ravine outside the palace walls, the same ravine that was overlooked by the Princesses’ tower. The Princesses, bored and angered by their confinement and the loss of their beloved ponies, had been quick to notice and recognise them as the self-same men they’d seen first at Salobreña, and again in a convoy of prisoners marching from Salobreña to Granada.