‘Friar Torquemada is now working with the Inquisition. The Queen’s confessor is now Friar Hernando de Talavera, a Hieronymite. Pious, ascetic - a good man. The second of the Queen’s chief prelates is Cardinal de Mendoza, the archbishop of Seville. These persons will be involved in assessing your proposal for the court. I myself am on the staff of Friar Torquemada.’

‘You work for the Inquisition, then,’ Grace said.

‘Yes. But I have good relations with both Friar de Talavera and the archbishop, as well as Friar Torquemada, and so he passed on your request to me as a suitable first point of contact.’

This politicking among holy men baffled James, and dismayed him obscurely.

Grace bowed. ‘I’m sure we will be able to do business together, brother.’

‘That’s what I’m here to find out,’ Ferron said slickly, quite coldly. ‘For it is business we are talking about, isn’t it? You are here to sell arms to the monarchs. These weapons, the Engines of God as you refer to them.’

‘There is more to it than that—’

‘We have arms. We have cannon, we have arquebuses.’

‘But nothing like the weapons I can offer you,’ Grace said urgently. ‘The engines are founded on the words of a prophecy, retrieved by my ancestor Joan of the Outremer from a cache beneath the mosque of this very city. The designs have been developed in secret for two hundred years by Franciscans, followers of the sage Roger Bacon - perhaps you have heard of him. Brother James here has studied the developments closely and can tell you all you wish to know.’

Ferron’s glance flickered over James. ‘I already know the most salient fact. That these weapons of yours are decidedly expensive.’

‘Decidedly better than anything you have. And decidedly what you need for the coming war. I do not mean the conflict with the Moors of Granada. I mean the war to end wars that will follow.’ She paused, her face intense, beautiful. ‘Brother, I know of this, deep in my bones. My family is of the Outremer, the Holy Land - we lived in Jerusalem itself. We were expelled by the Saracens in the same decade as Seville fell to the Christian armies. This was over two hundred years ago, and we still bear the scars in our souls. They are scars of the long war with the Muslims which has been waged since the death of Muhammad himself. And it is a war Christendom is losing.’

Ferron sat back, startled.

She had seized control of the exchange, James saw. They were the same age, roughly, Grace and Ferron. Both strong, both determined, both combative. They would be formidable enemies, still more formidable if they became allies.

James knew, though, that any cold-eyed observer of history would draw the same conclusion as Grace. Ever since the loss of Jerusalem in Joan’s day, Christendom had been on the retreat.