Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (35 page)

He recoiled as if she had slapped him in the face. ‘Six years?’ he repeated.

‘And Harry is tall for his age and strong. They will not look mismatched,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘No. Not Harry. I did not mean Harry. I was not speaking of Harry!’

The anger in his voice alerted her. ‘What?’

‘No. No. Not Harry. Damn it! Not Harry!’

‘What? Whatever can you mean?’

‘It is obvious! Surely it is obvious!’

Her gaze flashed across his face, reading him rapidly, as only she could. ‘Not Harry?’

‘I thought you were speaking of me.’

‘Of you?’ She quickly reconsidered the conversation. ‘Of you for the Infanta?’ she asked incredulously.

He felt himself flush again. ‘Yes.’

‘Arthur’s widow? Your own daughter-in-law?’

‘Yes! Why not?’

Lady Margaret stared at him in alarm. She did not even have to list the obstacles.

‘He was too young. It was not consummated,’ he said, repeating the words that the Spanish ambassador had learned from Dona Elvira, which had been spread throughout Christendom.

She looked sceptical.

‘She says so herself. Her duenna says so. The Spanish say so. Everybody says so.’

‘And you believe them?’ she asked coldly.

‘He was impotent.’

‘Well…’ It was typical of her that she said nothing while she considered it. She looked at him, noting the colour in his cheeks and the trouble in his face. ‘They are probably lying. We saw them wedded and bedded and there was no suggestion then that it had not been done.’

‘That is their business. If they all tell the same lie and stick to it, then it is the same as the truth.’

‘Only if we accept it.’

‘We do,’ he ruled.

She raised her eyebrows. ‘It is your desire?’

‘It is not a question of desire. I need a wife,’ Henry said coolly, as though it could be anyone. ‘And she is conveniently here, as you say.’

‘She would be suitable by birth,’ his mother conceded, ‘but for her relationship to you. She is your daughter-in-law even if it was not consummated. And she is very young.’

‘She is seventeen,’ he said. ‘A good age for a woman. And a widow. She is ready for a second marriage.’

‘She is either a virgin or she is not,’ Lady Margaret observed waspishly. ‘We had better agree.’

‘She is seventeen,’ he corrected himself. ‘A good age for marriage. She is ready for a full marriage.’

‘The people won’t like it,’ she observed. ‘They will remember her wedding to Arthur, we made such a show of it. They took to her. They took to the two of them. The pomegranate and the rose. She caught their fancy in her lace mantilla.’

‘Well, he is dead,’ he said harshly. ‘And she will have to marry someone.’

‘People will think it odd.’

He shrugged. ‘They will be glad enough if she gives me a son.’

‘Oh yes, if she can do that. But she was barren with Arthur.’

‘As we have agreed, Arthur was impotent. The marriage was not consummated.’

She pursed her lips but said nothing.

‘And it gains us the dowry and removes the cost of the jointure,’ he pointed out.

She nodded. She loved the thought of the fortune that Catalina would bring.

‘And she is here already.’

‘A most constant presence,’ she said sourly.

‘A constant princess,’ he smiled.

‘Do you really think her parents would agree? Their Majesties of Spain?’

‘It solves their dilemma as well as ours. And it maintains the alliance.’ He found he was smiling, and tried to make his face stern, as normal. ‘She herself would think it was her destiny. She believes herself born to be Queen of England.’

‘Well then, she is a fool,’ his mother remarked smartly.

‘She was raised to be queen since she was a child.’

‘But she will be a barren queen. No son of hers will be any good. He could never be king. If she has one at all, he will come after Harry,’ she reminded him. ‘He will even come after Harry’s sons. It’s a far poorer alliance for her than marriage to a Prince of Wales. The Spanish won’t like it.’

‘Oh, Harry is still a child. His sons are a long way ahead. Years.’

‘Even so. It would weigh on her parents. They will prefer Prince Harry for her. That way, she is queen and her son is king after her. Why would they agree to anything less?’

Henry hesitated. There was nothing he could say to fault her logic, except that he did not wish to follow it.

‘Oh. I see. You want her,’ she said flatly when the silence extended so long that she realised there was something he could not let himself say. ‘It is a matter of your desire.’

He took the plunge. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed.

Lady Margaret looked at him with calculation in her gaze. He had been taken from her as little more than a baby for safe-keeping. Since then she had always seen him as a prospect, as a potential heir to the throne, as her passport to grandeur. She had hardly known him as a baby, never loved him as a child. She had planned his future as a man, she had defended his rights as a king, she had mapped his campaign as a threat to the House of York – but she had never known tenderness for him. She could not learn to feel indulgent towards him this late in her life; she was hardly ever indulgent to anyone, not even to herself.

‘That’s very shocking,’ she said coolly. ‘I thought we were talking of a marriage of advantage. She stands as a daughter to you. This desire is a carnal sin.’

‘It is not and she is not,’ he said. ‘There is nothing wrong in honourable love. She is not my daughter. She is his widow. And it was not consummated.’

‘You will need a dispensation, it is a sin.’

‘He never even had her!’ he exclaimed.

‘The whole court put them to bed,’ she pointed out levelly.

‘He was too young. He was impotent. And he was dead, poor lad, within months.’

She nodded. ‘So she says now.’

‘But you do not advise me against it,’ he said.

‘It is a sin,’ she repeated. ‘But if you can get dispensation and her
parents agree to it, then –’ She pulled a sour face. ‘Well, better her than many others, I suppose,’ she said begrudgingly. ‘And she can live at court under my care. I can watch over her and command her more easily than I could an older girl, and we know that she behaves herself well. She is obedient. She will learn her duties under me. And the people love her.’

‘I shall speak to the Spanish ambassador today.’

She thought she had never seen such a bright gladness in his face. ‘I suppose I can teach her.’ She gestured to the books before her. ‘She will have much to learn.’

‘I shall tell the ambassador to propose it to Their Majesties of Spain and I shall talk to her tomorrow.’

‘You will go again so soon?’ she asked curiously.

Henry nodded. He would not tell her that even to wait till tomorrow seemed too long. If he had been free to do so, he would have gone back straight away and asked her to marry him that very night, as if he were a humble squire and she a maid, and not King of England and Princess of Spain; father and daughter-in-law.

Henry saw that Dr de Puebla the Spanish ambassador was invited to Whitehall in time for dinner, given a seat at one of the top tables, and plied with the best wine. Some venison, hanged to perfection and cooked in a brandywine sauce, came to the king’s table, he helped himself to a small portion and sent the dish to the Spanish ambassador. De Puebla, who had not experienced such favours since first negotiating the Infanta’s marriage contract, loaded his plate with a heavy spoon and dipped the best manchet bread into the gravy, glad to eat well at court, wondering quietly behind his avid smile what it might mean.

The king’s mother nodded towards him, and de Puebla rose up
from his seat to bow to her. ‘Most gracious,’ he remarked to himself as he sat down once more. ‘Extremely. Exceptionally.’

He was no fool, he knew that something would be required for all these public favours. But given the horror of the past year – when the hopes of Spain had been buried beneath the nave in Worcester Cathedral – at least these were straws in a good wind. Clearly, King Henry had a use for him again as something other than a whipping boy for the failure of the Spanish sovereigns to pay their debts.

De Puebla had tried to defend Their Majesties of Spain to an increasingly irritable English king. He had tried to explain to them in long, detailed letters that it was fruitless asking for Catalina’s widow’s jointure if they would not pay the remainder of the dowry. He tried to explain to Catalina that he could not make the English king pay a more generous allowance for the upkeep of her household, nor could he persuade the Spanish king to give his daughter financial support. Both kings were utterly stubborn, both quite determined to force the other into a weak position. Neither seemed to care that in the meantime Catalina, only seventeen, was forced to keep house with an extravagant entourage in a foreign land on next to no money. Neither king would take the first step and undertake to be responsible for her keep, fearing that this would commit him to keeping her and her household forever.

De Puebla smiled up at the king, seated on his throne under the canopy of state. He genuinely liked King Henry, he admired the courage with which he had seized and held the throne, he liked the man’s direct good sense. And more than that, de Puebla liked living in England, he was accustomed to his good house in London, to the importance conferred on him by representing the newest and most powerful ruling house in Europe. He liked the fact that his Jewish background and recent conversion were utterly ignored in England, since everyone at this court had come from nowhere and changed their name or their affiliation at least once. England suited de Puebla, and he would do his best to remain. If it meant serving the King of
England better than the King of Spain, he thought it was a small compromise to make.

Henry rose from the throne and gave the signal that the servers could clear the plates. They swept the board and cleared the trestle tables, and Henry strolled among the diners, pausing for a word here and there, still very much the commander among his men. All the favourites at the Tudor court were the gamblers who had put their swords behind their words and marched into England with Henry. They knew their value to him, and he knew his to them. It was still a victors’ camp rather than a softened civilian court.

At length Henry completed his circuit and came to de Puebla’s table. ‘Ambassador,’ he greeted him.

De Puebla bowed low. ‘I thank you for your gift of the dish of venison,’ he said. ‘It was delicious.’

The king nodded. ‘I would have a word with you.’

‘Of course.’

‘Privately.’

The two men strolled to a quieter corner of the hall while the musicians in the gallery struck a note and began to play.

‘I have a proposal to resolve the issue of the Dowager Princess,’ Henry said as drily as possible.

‘Indeed?’

‘You may find my suggestion unusual, but I think it has much to recommend it.’

‘At last,’ de Puebla thought to himself. ‘He is going to propose Harry. I thought he was going to let her sink a lot lower before he did that. I thought he would bring her down so that he could charge us double for a second try at Wales. But, so be it. God is merciful.’

‘Ah yes?’ de Puebla said aloud.

‘I suggest that we forget the issue of the dowry,’ Henry started. ‘Her goods will be absorbed into my household. I shall pay her an appropriate allowance, as I did for the late Queen Elizabeth – God bless her. I shall marry the Infanta myself.’

De Puebla was almost too shocked to speak. ‘You?’

‘I. Is there any reason why not?’

The ambassador gulped, drew a breath, managed to say, ‘No, no, at least…I suppose there could be an objection on the grounds of affinity.’

‘I shall apply for a dispensation. I take it that you are certain that the marriage was not consummated?’

‘Certain,’ de Puebla gasped.

‘You assured me of that on her word?’

‘The duenna said…’

‘Then it is nothing,’ the king ruled. ‘They were little more than promised to one another. Hardly man and wife.’

‘I will have to put this to Their Majesties of Spain,’ de Puebla said, desperately trying to assemble some order to his whirling thoughts, striving to keep his deep shock from his face. ‘Does the Privy Council agree?’ he asked, playing for time. ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury?’

‘It is a matter between ourselves at the moment,’ Henry said grandly. ‘It is early days for me as a widower. I want to be able to reassure Their Majesties that their daughter will be cared for. It has been a difficult year for her.’

‘If she could have gone home…’

‘Now there will be no need for her to go home. Her home is England. This is her country,’ Henry said flatly. ‘She shall be queen here, as she was brought up to be.’

De Puebla could hardly speak for shock at the suggestion that this old man, who had just buried his wife, should marry his dead son’s bride. ‘Of course. So, shall I tell Their Majesties that you are quite determined on this course? There is no other arrangement that we should consider?’ De Puebla racked his brains as to how he could bring in the name of Prince Harry, who was surely Catalina’s most appropriate future husband. Finally, he plunged in. ‘Your son, for instance?’