Then the English soldiers came. And on that day of all days!

Adrados was not a place of great importance. It grew, the priest said, sheep and thorns, and the priest told the villagers that made the village a holy place because Christ's life began with the shepherds' visit and ended with a crown of thorns. Yet the villagers did not need the priest to tell them that Adrados was sacred because only one thing brought visitors to Adrados, and that was on the Feast on December 8th.

Years before, no one knew how many, not even the priest, but in those far-off days when the Christians fought the Muslims in Spain, the Holy Mother had come to Adrados. Everyone knew the story. Christian Knights were falling back through the valley, hard pressed, and their leader had stopped to pray beside a granite boulder that was poised on the edge of the pass which fell off to the west, towards Portugal, and then it had happened. She had appeared! She stood on the granite boulder, Her face pale as ice, Her eyes like mountain pools, and She told the Knight that the pursuing Muslims would soon stop to pray themselves, to face east towards their heathen home, and that if he turned his tired troop about, if they drew their battered swords, then they would bring glory to the cross.

Two thousand Muslim heads dropped that day. More! No one knew how many and each year the figure grew with the story's telling. Carved Muslim heads decorated the archway of the Convent that was built around the place where She had appeared. In the Convent chapel, at the top of the altar steps, was a small patch of polished granite; the place of the Holy Footfall.

And each year on December 8th, the Day of the Miracle, women came to Adrados. It was a woman's day, not a man's, and the men would go to the village inn once they had carried the statue of the Virgin, its jewels swaying beneath the gilded canopy, round the village bounds and back to the Convent.