This complex, ripe peach of a tale fills the reader's mind
with images -- old Granada and the Alhambra Palace, a modern
woman in England being set up by a possessive man. COURT OF
LIONS brings Kate Fordham to work in Spain under an assumed
name, where she finds a wisp of paper with Moorish
lettering hidden in an old wall. The writer lived centuries
earlier, a one-footed boy called Blessings, who is silently
in love with young Prince Abu Abdullah Mohammed, heir to
the throne of Granada.
In Blessings' time, the kingdom of Granada is under Moorish
rule, and the king, or sultan, like other wealthy men,
robs, captures, and arranges marriages. His second wife, a
scheming vixen but a Christian, wants to supplant his
severe first wife and make her own children inherit in
place of the Prince. Blessings has his hands full trying to
gain information for Momo, as everyone calls the prince,
and even has to protect him from poison. But Momo is of
course fated and compelled to marry a suitable young woman.
Friendship may have to take a back seat.
Kate's tale is revealed to us at this point; a computer
data analyst who loves botany, she couldn't believe her
luck in dumping a drunk parasite boyfriend, so classy
antique dealer James Foxley seems like a much better person
to date. Yet she has reservations about James, which don't
make much sense when she tries to tell her twin sister
Jess. James keeps buying her stuff, and doing up her
apartment, and calls her ten times a day. So.... only after
she loses her job through a corporate takeover does the
relationship come really, badly, unstuck. Both sisters
flee, separately.
Swords and spices, sun and corruption. The life of
Blessings is full of tumult, hasty prayers and escapes. Not
only do the Moors war on each other, neighboring Castilian
monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella declare a holy war. The
Palace of Lions is beautiful, decorated and strong, but in
this vivid evocation we see the conflicting loyalties
within the walls.
There are other ways to deal with a strange boyfriend. Kate
chooses to flee. Her striking out anew is courageous,
especially since she takes jobs way below her potential. I
kept wanting her to succeed in life. Many women will
sympathize with her and in COURT OF LIONS some may learn a
good lesson about a man who appears to be too perfect. We
also see the new tensions in southern Spain, North African
workers newly suspect. Jane Johnson from Cornwall has
written an accomplished work after twenty years in the
publishing business, and now lives and writes in Morocco.
At this end of this epic she gives her notes on history.
Along with the portraits of the great and famous, I admire
her creation of Blessings, a badly treated but loyal Tuareg
slave in a land which became Spain.
Kate Fordham, escaping terrible personal trauma, has fled
to the beautiful sunlit city of Granada, the ancient
capital of the Moors in Spain. There she is scraping by
with an unfulfilling job in a busy bar. One day, in the
glorious gardens of the Alhambra—once home to Sultan Abu
Abdullah Mohammed—Kate finds a scrap of paper hidden in
one of the ancient walls. Upon it, in strange symbols,
has been inscribed a message from another era. The
message has lain undiscovered since before the Fall of
Granada in 1492, when the city was surrendered to Queen
Isabella and King Ferdinand.
Born of love, in a time of danger and desperation, the
fragment will be the catalyst that changes Kate's life
forever. An epic saga of romance and redemption, Court of
Lions brings one of the great turning-points in human
history to life, telling the dual stories of a modern
woman and the last Moorish sultan of Granada, as they
both move towards their cataclysmic destinies.
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