Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (31 page)

But I cannot. I am alone in this. I do feel so fearfully alone.

‘They are going to name Prince Harry as the new Prince of Wales,’ Dona Elvira said quietly to the princess as she was brushing her hair in the last week of June. ‘He is to be Prince Harry, Prince of Wales.’

She expected the girl to break down at this last severing of her links with the past but Catalina did nothing but look around the room. ‘Leave us,’ she said shortly to the maids who were laying out her nightgown and turning down the bed.

They went out quietly and closed the door behind them. Catalina tossed back her hair and met Dona Elvira’s eyes in the mirror. She handed her the hairbrush again and nodded for her to continue.

‘I want you to write to my parents and tell them that my marriage with Prince Arthur was not consummated,’ she said, smoothly. ‘I am a virgin as I was when I left Spain.’

Dona Elvira was stunned, the hairbrush suspended in mid-air, her mouth open. ‘You were bedded in the sight of the whole court,’ she said.

‘He was impotent,’ Catalina said, her face as hard as a diamond.

‘You were together once a week.’

‘With no effect,’ she said, unwavering. ‘It was a great sadness to him, and to me.’

‘Infanta, you never said anything. Why did you not tell me?’

Catalina’s eyes were veiled. ‘What should I say? We were newly wed. He was very young. I thought it would come right in time.’

Dona Elvira did not even pretend to believe her. ‘Princess, there is no need for you to say this. Just because you have been a wife need not damage your future. Being a widow is no obstacle to a
good marriage. They will find someone for you. They will find a good match for you, you do not have to pretend…’

‘I don’t want “someone”,’ Catalina said fiercely. ‘You should know that as well as me. I was born to be Princess of Wales and Queen of England. It was Arthur’s greatest wish that I should be Queen of England.’ She pulled herself back from thinking of him, or saying more. She bit her lip; she should not have tried to say his name. She forced down the tears and took a breath. ‘I am a virgin untouched, now, as I was in Spain. You shall tell them that.’

‘But we need say nothing, we can go back to Spain, anyway,’ the older woman pointed out.

‘They will marry me to some lord, perhaps an archduke,’ Catalina said. ‘I don’t want to be sent away again. Do you want to run my household in some little Spanish castle? Or Austria? Or worse? You will have to come with me, remember. Do you want to end up in the Netherlands, or Germany?’

Dona Elvira’s eyes darted away, she was thinking furiously. ‘No-one would believe us if we say you are a virgin.’

‘They would. You have to tell them. No-one would dare to ask me. You can tell them. It has to be you to tell them. They will believe you because you are close to me, as close as a mother.’

‘I have said nothing so far.’

‘And that was right. But you will speak now. Dona Elvira, if you don’t seem to know, or if you say one thing and I say another, then everyone will know that you are not in my confidence, that you have not cared for me as you should. They will think you are negligent of my interests, that you have lost my favour. I should think that my mother would recall you in disgrace if she thought that I was a virgin and you did not even know. You would never serve in a royal court again if they thought you had neglected me.’

‘Everyone saw that he was in love with you.’

‘No they didn’t. Everyone saw that we were together, as a prince and princess. Everyone saw that he came to my bedroom only as he
had been ordered. No more. No-one can say what went on behind the bedroom door. No-one but me. And I say that he was impotent. Who are you to deny that? Do you dare to call me a liar?’

The older woman bowed her head to gain time. ‘If you say so,’ she said carefully. ‘Whatever you say, Infanta.’

‘Princess.’

‘Princess,’ the woman repeated.

‘And I do say it. It is my way ahead. Actually, it is your way ahead too. We can say this one, simple thing and stay in England; or we can return to Spain in mourning and become next to nobody.’

‘Of course, I can tell them what you wish. If you wish to say your husband was impotent and you are still a maid then I can say that. But how will this make you queen?’

‘Since the marriage was not consummated, there can be no objection to me marrying Prince Arthur’s brother Harry,’ Catalina said in a hard, determined voice.

Dona Elvira gasped with shock at this next stage.

Catalina pressed on. ‘When this new emissary comes from Spain you may inform him that it is God’s will and my desire that I be Princess of Wales again, as I always have been. He shall speak to the king. He shall negotiate, not my widow’s jointure, but my next wedding.’

Dona Elvira gaped. ‘You cannot make your own marriage!’

‘I can,’ Catalina said fiercely. ‘I will, and you will help me.’

‘You cannot think that they will let you marry Prince Harry?’

‘Why should they not? The marriage with his brother was not consummated. I am a virgin. The dowry to the king is half-paid. He can keep the half he already has and we can give him the rest of it. He need not pay my jointure. The contract has been signed and sealed, they need only change the names, and here I am in England already. It is the best solution for everyone. Without it I become nothing; you certainly are nobody. Your ambition, your husband’s ambition, will all come to nothing. But if we can win this then you
will be the mistress of a royal household, and I will be as I should be: Princess of Wales and Queen of England.’

‘They will not let us!’ Dona Elvira gasped, appalled at her charge’s ambition.

‘They will let us,’ Catalina said fiercely. ‘We have to fight for it. We have to be what we should be; nothing less.’

King Henry and his queen, driven by the loss of their son, were expecting another child, and Catalina, hoping for their favour, was sewing an exquisite layette of baby clothes before a small fire in the smallest room of Durham Palace in the early days of February 1503. Her ladies, hemming seams according to their abilities, were seated at a distance; Dona Elvira could speak privately.

‘This should be your baby’s layette,’ the duenna said resentfully under her breath. ‘A widow for a year, and no progress made. What is going to become of you?’

Catalina looked up from her delicate black-thread work. ‘Peace, Dona Elvira,’ she said quietly. ‘It will be as God and my parents and the king decide.’

‘Seventeen, now,’ Dona Elvira said, stubbornly pursuing her theme, her head down. ‘How long are we to stay in this Godforsaken country, neither a bride nor a wife? Neither at court nor elsewhere? With bills mounting up and the jointure still not paid?’

‘Dona Elvira, if you knew how much your words grieve me, I don’t think you would say them,’ Catalina said clearly. ‘Just because you mutter them into your sewing like a cursing Egyptian doesn’t
mean I don’t hear them. If I knew what was to happen, I would tell you myself at once. You will not learn any more by whispering your fears.’

The woman looked up and met Catalina’s clear gaze.

‘I think of you,’ she said bluntly. ‘Even if no-one else does. Even if that fool ambassador and that idiot the emissary does not. If the king does not order your marriage to the prince then what is to become of you? If he will not let you go, if your parents do not insist on your return, then what is going to happen? Is he just going to keep you forever? Are you a princess or a prisoner? It is nearly a year. Are you a hostage for the alliance with Spain? How long can you wait? You are seventeen, how long can you wait?’

‘I am waiting,’ Catalina said calmly. ‘Patiently. Until it is resolved.’

The duenna said nothing more, Catalina did not have the energy to argue. She knew that during this year of mourning for Arthur, she had been steadily pushed more and more to the margins of court life. Her claim to be a virgin had not produced a new betrothal as she had thought it would; it had made her yet more irrelevant. She was only summoned to court on the great occasions, and then she was dependent on the kindness of Queen Elizabeth.

The king’s mother, Lady Margaret, had no interest in the impoverished Spanish princess. She had not proved readily fertile, she now said she had never even been bedded, she was widowed and brought no more money into the royal treasury. She was of no use to the house of Tudor except as a bargaining counter in the continuing struggle with Spain. She might as well stay at her house in the Strand, as be summoned to court. Besides, My Lady the King’s Mother did not like the way that the new Prince of Wales looked at his widowed sister-in-law.

Whenever Prince Harry met her, he fixed his eyes on her with puppy-like devotion. My Lady the King’s Mother had privately decided that she would keep them apart. She thought that the girl smiled on the young prince too warmly, she thought she encouraged
his boyish adoration to serve her own foreign vanity. My Lady the King’s Mother was resentful of anyone’s influence on the only surviving son and heir. Also, she mistrusted Catalina. Why would the young widow encourage a brother-in-law who was nearly six years her junior? What did she hope to gain from his friendship? Surely she knew that he was kept as close as a child: bedded in his father’s rooms, chaperoned night and day, constantly supervised? What did the Spanish widow hope to achieve by sending him books, teaching him Spanish, laughing at his accent and watching him ride at the quintain, as if he were in training as her knight errant?

Nothing would come of it. Nothing could come of it. But My Lady the King’s Mother would allow no-one to be intimate with Harry but herself, and she ruled that Catalina’s visits to court were to be rare and brief.

The king himself was kind enough to Catalina when he saw her, but she felt him eye her as if she were some sort of treasure that he had purloined. She always felt with him as if she were some sort of trophy – not a young woman of seventeen years old, wholly dependent on his honour, his daughter by marriage.

If she could have brought herself to speak of Arthur to her mother-in-law or to the king then perhaps they would have sought her out to share their grief. But she could not use his name to curry favour with them. Even a year since his death, she could not think of him without a tightness in her chest which was so great that she thought it could stop her breathing for very grief. She still could not say his name out loud. She certainly could not play on her grief to help her at court.

‘But what will happen?’ Dona Elvira continued.

Catalina turned her head away. ‘I don’t know,’ she said shortly.

‘Perhaps if the queen has another son with this baby, the king will send us back to Spain,’ the duenna pursued.

Catalina nodded. ‘Perhaps.’

The duenna knew her well enough to recognise Catalina’s silent
determination. ‘Your trouble is, that you still don’t want to go,’ she whispered. ‘The king may keep you as a hostage against the dowry money, your parents may let you stay; but if you insisted you could get home. You still think you can make them marry you to Harry; but if that was going to happen you would be betrothed by now. You have to give up. We have been here a year now and you make no progress. You will trap us all here while you are defeated.’

Catalina’s sandy eyelashes swept down to veil her eyes. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I don’t think that.’

There was a sharp rap at the door. ‘Urgent message for the Dowager Princess of Wales!’ the voice called out.

Catalina dropped her sewing and rose to her feet. Her ladies sprang up too. It was so unusual for anything to happen in the quiet court of Durham House that they were thrown into a flutter.

‘Well, let him in!’ Catalina exclaimed.

Maria de Salinas flung open the door and one of the royal grooms of the chamber came in and kneeled before the princess. ‘Grave news,’ he said shortly. ‘A son, a prince, has been born of the queen and has died. Her Grace the Queen has died too. God pray for His Grace in his kingly grief.’

‘What?’ demanded Dona Elvira, trying to take in the astounding rush of events.

‘God save her soul,’ Catalina replied correctly. ‘God save the King.’

‘Heavenly Father, take Your daughter Elizabeth into Your keeping. You must love her, she was a woman of great gentleness and grace.’

I sit back on my heels and abandon the prayer. I think the queen’s life, ended so tragically, was one of sorrow. If Arthur’s version of the scandal were true, then she had been prepared to marry King Richard, however despicable a tyrant. She had wanted to marry him and be his queen. Her mother and My Lady the King’s Mother and the victory of
Bosworth had forced her to take King Henry. She had been born to be Queen of England, and she had married the man who could give her the throne.

I thought that if I had been able to tell her of my promise then she would have known the pain that seeps through me like ice every time I think of Arthur, and know that I promised him I would marry Harry. I thought that she might have understood if you are born to be Queen of England you have to be Queen of England, whoever is king. Whoever your husband will have to be.

Without her quiet presence at court I feel that I am more at risk, further from my goal. She was kind to me, she was a loving woman. I was waiting out my year of mourning and trusting that she would help me into marriage with Harry, because he would be a refuge for me, and because I would be a good wife to him. I was trusting that she knew one could marry a man for whom one feels nothing but indifference and still be a good wife.

But now the court will be ruled by My Lady the King’s Mother and she is a formidable woman, no friend to anyone but her own cause, no affection for anyone but her son Henry, and his son, Prince Harry.

She will help no-one but she will serve the interests of her own family first. She will consider me as only one candidate among many for his hand in marriage. God forgive her, she might even look to a French bride for him and then I will have failed not only Arthur but my own mother and father too, who need me to maintain the alliance between England and Spain and the enmity between England and France.

This year has been hard for me, I had expected a year of mourning and then a new betrothal; I have been growing more and more anxious since no-one seems to be planning such a thing. And now I am afraid that it will get worse. What if King Henry decides to surrender the second part of the dowry and sends me home? What if they betroth Harry, that foolish boy, to someone else? What if they just forget me? Hold me as a hostage to the good behaviour of Spain but neglect me?
Leave me at Durham House, a shadow princess over a shadow court, while the real world goes on elsewhere?

I hate this time of year in England, the way the winter lingers on and on in cold mists and grey skies. In the Alhambra the water in the canals will be released from frost and starting to flow again, icy cold, rushing deep with melt-water from the snows of the sierra. The earth will be starting to warm in the gardens, the men will be planting flowers and young saplings, the sun will be warm in the mornings and the thick hangings will be taken down from the windows so the warm breezes can blow through the palace again.

The birds of summer will come back to the high hills and the olive trees will shimmer their leaves of green and grey. Everywhere the farmers will be turning over the red soil, and there will be the scent of life and growth.

I long to be home; but I will not leave my post. I am not a soldier who forgets his duty, I am a sentry who wakes all night. I will not fail my love. I said ‘I promise’, and I do not forget it. I will be constant to him. The garden that is immortal life, al-Yanna, will wait for me, the rose will wait for me in al-Yanna, Arthur will wait for me there. I will be Queen of England as I was born to be, as I promised him I would be. The rose will bloom in England as well as in heaven.

There was a great state funeral for Queen Elizabeth, and Catalina was in mourning black again. Through the dark lace of her mantilla she watched the orders of precedence, the arrangements for the service, she saw how everything was commanded by the great book of the king’s mother. Even her own place was laid down, behind the princesses, but before all the other ladies of the court.

Lady Margaret, the king’s mother, had written down all the procedures to be followed at the Tudor court, from birth chambers to lying in state, so that her son and the generations which she prayed
would come after him would be prepared for every occasion, so that each occasion would match another, and so that every occasion, however distant in the future, would be commanded by her.

Now her first great funeral, for her unloved daughter-in-law, went off with the order and grace of a well-planned masque at court, and as the great manager of everything she stepped up visibly, unquestionably, to her place as the greatest lady at court.