Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (24 page)

‘I was trying to talk to him about growing salad vegetables,’ she said. ‘But he speaks Welsh and English and I have tried Latin and French and we don’t understand each other at all.’

‘I think I am with him. I don’t understand either. What is salad?’

She thought for a moment.
‘Acetaria.’

‘Acetaria?’
he queried.

‘Yes, salad.’

‘What is it, exactly?’

‘It is vegetables that grow in the ground and you eat them without cooking them,’ she explained. ‘I was asking if he could plant some for me.’

‘You eat them raw? Without boiling?’

‘Yes, why not?’

‘Because you will be dreadfully ill, eating uncooked food in this country.’

‘Like fruit, like apples. You eat them raw.’

He was unconvinced. ‘More often cooked, or preserved or dried. And anyway, that is a fruit and not leaves. But what sorts of vegetables do you want?’

‘Lactuca,’
she said.

‘Lactuca?’
he repeated. ‘I have never heard of it.’

She sighed. ‘I know. You none of you seem to know anything of vegetables.
Lactuca
is like…’ She searched her mind for the truly terrible vegetable that she had been forced to eat, boiled into a pulp at one dinner at Greenwich. ‘Samphire,’ she said. ‘The closest thing you have to
lactuca
is probably samphire. But you eat
lactuca
without cooking and it is crisp and sweet.’

‘Vegetables? Crisp?’

‘Yes,’ she said patiently.

‘And you eat this in Spain?’

She nearly laughed at his appalled expression. ‘Yes. You would like it.’

‘And can we grow it here?’

‘I think he is telling me: no. He has never heard of such a thing. He has no seeds. He does not know where we would find such seeds. He does not think it would grow here.’ She looked up at the blue sky with the scudding rain clouds. ‘Perhaps he is right,’ she said, a little weariness in her voice. ‘I am sure that it needs much sunshine.’

Arthur turned to the gardener. ‘Ever heard of a plant called
lactuca?’

‘No, Your Grace,’ the man said, his head bowed. ‘I’m sorry, Your Grace. Perhaps it is a Spanish plant. It sounds very barbaric. Is Her Royal Highness saying they eat grass there? Like sheep?’

Arthur’s lip quivered. ‘No, it is a herb, I think. I will ask her.’

He turned to Catalina and took her hand and tucked it in the crook of his arm. ‘You know sometimes in summer, it is very sunny and very hot here. Truly. You would find the midday sun was too hot. You would have to sit in the shade.’

She looked disbelievingly from the cold mud to the thickening clouds.

‘Not now, I know; but in summer. I have leaned against this wall and found it warm to the touch. You know, we grow strawberries and raspberries and peaches. All the fruit that you grow in Spain.’

‘Oranges?’

‘Well, perhaps not oranges,’ he conceded.

‘Lemons? Olives?’

He bridled. ‘Yes, indeed.’

She looked suspiciously at him. ‘Dates?’

‘In Cornwall,’ he asserted, straight-faced. ‘Of course it is warmer in Cornwall.’

‘Sugar cane? Rice? Pineapples?’

He tried to say yes, but he could not repress the giggles and she crowed with laughter, and fell on him.

When they were steady again he glanced around the inner bailey and said, ‘Come on, nobody will miss us for a while,’ and led her down the steps to the little sally-port and let them out of the hidden door.

A small path led them to the hillside which fell away steeply from the castle down to the river. A few lambs scampered off as they approached, a lad wandering after them. Arthur slid his arm around her waist and she let herself fall into pace with him.

‘We do grow peaches,’ he assured her. ‘Not the other things, of course. But I am sure we can grow your
lactuca,
whatever it is. All we need is a gardener who can bring the seeds and who has already grown the things you want. Why don’t you write to the gardener at the Alhambra and ask him to send you someone?’

‘Could I send for a gardener?’ she asked incredulously.

‘My love, you are going to be Queen of England. You can send for a regiment of gardeners.’

‘Really?’

Arthur laughed at the delight dawning on her face. ‘At once. Did you not realise it?’

‘No! But where should he garden? There is no room against the castle wall, and if we are to grow fruit as well as vegetables…’

‘You are Princess of Wales! You can plant your garden wherever you please. You shall have all of Kent if you want it, my darling.’

‘Kent?’

‘We grow apples and hops there, I think we might have a try at
lactuca.’

Catalina laughed with him. ‘I didn’t think. I didn’t dream of sending for a gardener. If only I had brought one in the first place. I have all these useless ladies-in-waiting and I need a gardener.’

‘You could swap him for Dona Elvira.’

She gurgled with laughter.

‘Ah God, we are blessed,’ he said simply. ‘In each other and in our lives. You shall have anything you want, always. I swear it. Do
you want to write to your mother? She can send you a couple of good men and I will get some land turned over at once.’

‘I will write to Juana,’ she decided. ‘In the Netherlands. She is in the north of Christendom like me. She must know what will grow in this weather. I shall write to her and see what she has done.’

‘And we shall eat
lactuca!’
he said, kissing her fingers. ‘All day. We shall eat nothing but
lactuca,
like sheep grazing grass, whatever it is.’

‘Tell me a story.’

‘No, you tell me something.’

‘If you will tell me about the fall of Granada, again.’

‘I will tell you. But you have to explain something to me.’

Arthur stretched out and pulled her so that she was lying across the bed, her head on his shoulder. She could feel the rise and fall of his smooth chest as he breathed and hear the gentle thud of his heartbeat, constant as love.

‘I shall explain everything.’ She could hear the smile in his voice. ‘I am extraordinarily wise today. You should have heard me after dinner tonight dispensing justice.’

‘You are very fair,’ she conceded. ‘I do love it when you give a judgement.’

‘I am a Solomon,’ he said. ‘They will call me Arthur the Good.’

‘Arthur the Wise,’ she suggested.

‘Arthur the Magnificent.’

Catalina giggled. ‘But I want you to explain to me something that I heard about your mother.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘One of the English ladies-in-waiting told me that she had been betrothed to the tyrant Richard. I thought I must have misunderstood her. We were speaking French and I thought I must have had it wrong.’

‘Oh, that story,’ he said with a little turn of the head.

‘Is it not true? I hope I have not offended you?’

‘No, not at all. It’s a tale often told.’

‘It cannot be true?’

‘Who knows? Only my mother and Richard the tyrant can know what took place. And one of them is dead and the other is silent as the grave.’

‘Will you tell me?’ she asked tentatively. ‘Or should we not speak of it at all?’

He shrugged. ‘There are two stories. The well-known one, and its shadow. The story that everyone knows is that my mother fled into sanctuary with her mother and sisters, they were hiding in a church all together. They knew if they left they would be arrested by Richard the Usurper and would disappear into the Tower like her young brothers. No-one knew if the princes were alive or dead, but nobody had seen them, everyone feared they were dead. My mother wrote to my father – well, she was ordered to by her mother – she told him that if he would come to England, a Tudor from the Lancaster line, then she, a York princess, would marry him, and the old feud between the two families would be over forever. She told him to come and save her, and know her love. He received the letter, he raised an army, he came to find the princess, he married her and brought peace to England.’

‘That is what you told me before. It is a very good story.’

Arthur nodded.

‘And the story you don’t tell?’

Despite himself he giggled. ‘It’s rather scandalous. They say that she was not in sanctuary at all. They say that she left the sanctuary and her mother and sisters. She went to court. King Richard’s wife was dead and he was looking for another. She accepted the proposal of King Richard. She would have married her uncle, the tyrant, the man who murdered her brothers.’

Catalina’s hand stole over her mouth to cover her gasp of shock, her eyes were wide. ‘No!’

‘So they say.’

‘The queen, your mother?’

‘Herself,’ he said. ‘Actually, they say worse. That she and Richard were betrothed as his wife lay dying. That is why there is always such enmity between her and my grandmother. My grandmother does not trust her; but she will never say why.’

‘How could she?’ she demanded.

‘How could she not?’ he returned. ‘If you look at it from her point of view, she was a princess of York, her father was dead, her mother was the enemy of the king trapped in sanctuary, as much in prison as if she was in the Tower. If she wanted to live, she would have to find some way into the favour of the king. If she wanted to be acknowledged as a princess at all, she would have to have his recognition. If she wanted to be Queen of England she would have to marry him.’

‘But surely, she could have…’ she began and then she fell silent.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘You see? She was a princess, she had very little choice. If she wanted to live she would have to obey the king. If she wanted to be queen she would have to marry him.’

‘She could have raised an army on her own account.’

‘Not in England,’ he reminded her. ‘She would have to marry the King of England to be its queen. It was her only way.’

Catalina was silent for a moment. ‘Thank God that for me to be queen I had to marry you, that my destiny brought me so easily here.’

He smiled. ‘Thank God we are happy with our destiny. For we would have married, and you would have been Queen of England, whether you had liked me or not. Wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There is never a choice for a princess.’

He nodded.

‘But your grandmother, My Lady the King’s Mother, must have planned your mother’s wedding to your father. Why does she not forgive her? She was part of the plan.’

‘Those two powerful women, my father’s mother and my mother’s mother, brokered the deal between them like a pair of washerwomen selling stolen linen.’

She gave a little squeak of shock.

Arthur chuckled, he found that he dearly loved surprising her. ‘Dreadful, isn’t it?’ he replied calmly. ‘My mother’s mother was probably the most hated woman in England at one time.’

‘And where is she now?’

He shrugged. ‘She was at court for a while, but My Lady the King’s Mother disliked her so much she got rid of her. She was famously beautiful, you know, and a schemer. My grandmother accused her of plotting against my father and he chose to believe her.’

‘She is never dead? They never executed her!’

‘No. He put her into a convent and she never comes to court.’

She was aghast. ‘Your grandmother had the queen’s own mother confined in a convent?’

He nodded, his face grave. ‘Truly. You be warned by this, beloved. My grandmother welcomes no-one to court that might distract from her own power. Make sure you never cross her.’

Catalina shook her head. ‘I never would. I am absolutely terrified of her.’

‘So am I!’ he laughed. ‘But I know her, and I warn you. She will stop at nothing to maintain the power of her son, and of her family. Nothing will distract her from this. She loves no-one but him. Not me, not her husbands, no-one but him.’

‘Not you?’

He shook his head. ‘She does not even love him, as you would understand it. He is the boy that she decided was born to be king. She sent him away when he was little more than a baby for his safety. She saw him survive his boyhood. Then she ordered him into the face of terrible danger to claim the throne. She could only love a king.’

She nodded. ‘He is her pretender.’

‘Exactly. She claimed the throne for him. She made him king. He is king.’

He saw her grave face. ‘Now, enough of this. You have to sing me your song.’

‘Which one?’

‘Is there another one about the fall of Granada?’

‘Dozens, I should think.’

‘Sing me one,’ he commanded. He piled a couple of extra cushions behind his head, and she knelt up before him, tossed back her mane of red hair and began to sing in a low sweet voice:

‘There was crying in Granada when the sun was going down Some calling on the Trinity, some calling on Mahoun, Here passed away the Koran and therein the Cross was borne, And here was heard the Christian bell and there the Moorish horn.

Te Deum Laudamus!
Was up the Alcala sung: Down from the Alhambra minarets were all the crescents flung, The arms thereon of Aragon, they with Castile display One king comes in in triumph, one weeping goes away.’

He was silent for long minutes. She stretched out again beside him on her back, looking, without seeing, the embroidered tester of the bed over their heads.