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.