The girl lay ill for days, tormented with something more than fever. The priest refused to enter her room. The stench of evil was more pungent than that of her stale sweat and soiled bedding. Her parents begged and paid the last of their money for him to rid her of whatever foulness had entered her soul. Fearful but emboldened by the weight of the purse at his belt, the priest knelt at the door and offered prayers of redemption. After five days her torment eased. By the seventh day, she was calm and the priest found his courage and knelt at the child’s bedside. She slept free of fever. It was a miracle that showed the power of prayer and the grace of the Almighty. The priest’s work was done. The parents embraced their smiling child, bathed and fed her and retired for the night, humbled by the power of good over evil.

Before the cock crowed the fourteen-year-old Velasquita Alcón stepped lightly up the scuffed wooden steps to her parents’ bedchamber and cut their throats. Villagers found the priest slaughtered like a sacrificial lamb on his own altar.

*

Over the years the child seduced by the devil journeyed to village and town. Like attracted like and she found those who knew the world of shadows, who cast spells, who turned men blind with a curse and who merged into darkness to witness events that had not yet occurred. At every step of the way along the dusty roads her pilgrimage gathered pace, drawn to those who with poison and necromancy hid their skills from the prying eyes of the Church. She killed or betrayed many of those who guided her so that her own secret was kept safe. When she reached the court of Don Pedro of Castile and León, she was a gift to a King who relied on astrology and the predictions of a favoured heretic priest. Don Pedro was tall and muscular, blue-eyed with fair hair, and occasionally spoke with a sibilant lisp. He was a dangerous man, prone to fits of violence followed by an eerily calm lucidity. A King who bathed in his own greed and licentiousness.