Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (61 page)

In the event, the glorious crusade never happened. The English knights arrived at Cadiz but the crusade never set sail for the Holy Land, never faced a sharp scimitar wielded by a black-hearted infidel. Katherine translated letters between Henry and her father in which her father explained that he had not yet raised his troops, that he was not yet ready to leave, and then, one day, she came to Henry with a letter in her hand and her face shocked out of its usual weariness.

‘Father writes me the most terrible news.’

‘What is happening?’ Henry demanded, bewildered. ‘See, here, I have just received a letter from an English merchant in Italy, I cannot make any sense of it. He writes that the French and the Pope are at war.’ Henry held out his letter to her. ‘How can this be? I don’t understand it at all.’

‘It is true. This is from my father. He says the Pope has declared that the French armies must get out of Italy,’ Katherine explained. “And the Holy Father has put his own papal troops into the field
against the French. King Louis has declared that the Pope shall no longer be Pope.’

‘How dare he?’ Henry demanded, shocked to his core.

‘Father says we must forget the crusade and go at once to the aid of the Pope. He will try to broker an alliance between us and the Holy Roman Emperor. We must form an alliance against France. King Louis cannot be allowed to take Rome. He must not advance into Italy.’

‘He must be mad to think that I would allow it!’ Henry exclaimed. ‘Would I let the French take Rome? Would I allow a French puppet Pope? Has he forgotten what an English army can do? Does he want another Agincourt?’

‘Shall I tell my father we will unite with him against France?’ Katherine asked. ‘I could write at once.’

He caught her hand and kissed it. For once she did not pull away and he drew her a little closer and put his arm around her waist. ‘I’ll come with you while you write and we can sign the letter from us both – your father should know that his Spanish daughter and his English son are absolutely as one in his support. Thank God that our troops are in Cadiz already,’ Henry exclaimed as his good fortune struck him.

Katherine hesitated, a thought forming slowly in her mind. ‘It is…fortuitous.’

‘Lucky,’ Henry said buoyantly. ‘We are blessed by God.’

‘My father will want some benefit for Spain from this.’ Katherine introduced the suspicion carefully as they went to her rooms, Henry shortening his stride to match hers. ‘He never makes a move without planning far ahead.’

‘Of course, but you will guard our interests as you always do,’ he said confidently. ‘I trust you, my love, as I trust him. Is he not my only father now?’

Slowly, as the days grow warmer, and the sun is more like a Spanish sun, I grow warm too and become more like the Spanish girl I once was. I cannot reconcile myself to the death of my son, I think I will never reconcile myself to his loss; but I can see that there is no-one to blame for his death. There was no neglect or negligence, he died like a little bird in a warm nest and I have to see that I will never know why.

I know now that I was foolish to blame myself. I have committed no crime, no sin so bad that God, the merciful God of my childhood prayers, would punish me with such an awful grief as this. There could be no good God who would take away such a sweet baby, such a perfect baby with such blue eyes, as an exercise of His divine will. I know in my heart that such a thing cannot be, such a God cannot be. Even though in the first worst outpourings of my grief I blamed myself and I blamed God, I know now that it was not a punishment for sin. I know that I kept my promise, Arthur’s promise, for the best reasons; and God has me in His keeping.

The awful, icy, dark fact of my baby’s loss seems to recede with the awful cold darkness of that English winter. One morning the fool came and told me some little jest and I laughed aloud. It was as if a door
had opened that had long been locked tight. I realise that I can laugh, that it is possible to be happy, that laughter and hope can come back to me and perhaps I might even make another child and feel that overwhelming tenderness again.

I start to feel that I am alive again, that I am a woman with hope and prospects again, that I am the woman that the girl from Spain became. I can sense myself alive: poised halfway between my future and my past.

It is as if I am checking myself over as a rider does after a bad fall from a horse, patting my arms and legs, my vulnerable body, as if looking for permanent damage. My faith in God returns utterly unshaken, as firm as it has ever been. There seems to be only one great change: my belief in my mother and my father is damaged. For the first time in my life I truly think it possible that they can have been wrong.

I remember the Moorish physician’s kindness to me and I have to amend my view of his people. No-one who could see his enemy brought as low as he saw me, and yet could look at her with such deep compassion, can be called a barbarian, a savage. He might be a heretic
–
steeped in error – but surely he must be allowed his own conclusions with his own reasons. And from what I know of the man, I am certain that he will have fine reasons.

I would like to send a good priest to wrestle for his soul, but I cannot say, as my mother would have said, that he is spiritually dead, fit for nothing but death. He held my hands to tell me hard news and I saw the tenderness of Our Lady in his eyes. I cannot dismiss the Moors as heretics and enemies any more. I have to see that they are men and women, fallible as us, hopeful as us, faithful to their creed as we are to ours.

And this in turn leads me to doubt my mother’s wisdom. Once I would have sworn that she knew everything, that her writ must run everywhere. But now I have grown old enough to view her more thoughtfully. I was left in poverty in my widowhood because her
contract was carelessly written. I was abandoned, all alone in a foreign country, because – though she summoned me with apparent urgency
–
in truth it was just for show; she would not take me back to Spain at any price. She hardened her heart against me and cleaved to her plan for me, and let me, her own daughter, go.

And finally, I was forced to find a doctor in secret and consult with him in hiding because she had done her part in driving from Christendom the best physicians, the best scientists, and the cleverest minds in the world. She had named their wisdom as sin and the rest of Europe had followed her lead. She rid Spain of the Jews and their skills and courage, she rid Spain of the Moors and their scholarship and gifts. She, a woman who admired learning, banished those that they call the People of the Book. She who fought for justice had been unjust.

I cannot yet think what this estrangement might mean for me. My mother is dead, I cannot reproach her or argue with her now, except in my imagination. But I know these months have wrought a deep and lasting change in me. I have come to an understanding of my world that is not her understanding of hers. I do not support a crusade against the Moors, nor against anyone. I do not support persecution, nor cruelty to them for the colour of their skin or the belief in their hearts. I know that my mother is not infallible, I no longer believe she and God think as one. Though I still love my mother, I don’t worship her any more. I suppose, at last, I am growing up.

Slowly, the queen emerged from her grief and started to take an interest in the running of the court and country once more. London was buzzing with the news that Scottish privateers had attacked an English merchant ship. Everyone knew the name of the privateer: he was Andrew Barton, who sailed with letters of authority from King James of Scotland. Barton was merciless to English ships, and
the general belief in the London docks was that James had deliberately licensed the pirate to prey on English shipping as if the two countries were already at war.

‘He has to be stopped,’ Katherine said to Henry.

‘He does not dare to challenge me!’ Henry exclaimed. ‘James sends border raiders and pirates against me because he does not dare to face me himself. James is a coward and an oath-breaker.’

‘Yes,’ Katherine agreed. ‘But the main thing about this pirate Barton is that he is not only a danger to our trade, he is a forerunner of worse to come. If we let the Scots rule the seas then we let them command us. This is an island; the seas must belong to us as much as the land or we have no safety.’

‘My ships are ready and we sail at midday. I shall capture him alive,’ Edward Howard, the Admiral of the Fleet, promised Katherine, as he came to bid her farewell. She thought he looked very young, as boyish as Henry; but his flair and courage were unquestioned. He had inherited all his father’s tactical skill but brought it to the newly formed navy. The Howards traditionally held the post of Lord Admiral, but Edward was proving exceptional. ‘If I cannot capture him alive, I shall sink his ship and bring him back dead.’

‘For shame on you! A Christian enemy!’ she said teasingly, holding out her hand for his kiss.

He looked up, serious for once. ‘I promise you, Your Grace, that the Scots are a greater danger to the peace and wealth of this country than the Moors could ever be.’

He saw her wistful smile. ‘You are not the first Englishman to tell me that,’ she said. ‘And I have seen it myself in these last years.’

‘It has to be right,’ he said. ‘In Spain your father and mother never rested until they could dislodge the Moors from the mountains. For us in England, our closest enemy is the Scots. It is they who are in our mountains, it is they who have to be suppressed and quelled if we are ever to be at peace. My father has spent his life defending the northern borders, and now I am fighting the same enemy but at sea.’

‘Come home safely,’ she urged.

‘I have to take risks,’ he said carelessly. ‘I am no stay-at-home.’ ‘No-one doubts your bravery, and my fleet needs an admiral,’ she told him. ‘I want the same admiral for many years. I need my champion at the next joust. I need my partner to dance with me. You come home safely, Edward Howard!’

The king was uneasy at his friend Edward Howard setting sail against the Scots, even against a Scots privateer. He had hoped that his father’s alliance with Scotland, enforced by the marriage of the English princess, would have guaranteed peace.

‘James is such a hypocrite to promise peace and marry Margaret on one hand and license these raids on the other! I shall write to Margaret and tell her to warn her husband that we cannot accept raids on our shipping. They should keep to their borders too.’

‘Perhaps he will not listen to her,’ Katherine pointed out.

‘She can’t be blamed for that,’ he said quickly. ‘She should never have been married to him. She was too young, and he was too set in his ways, and he is a man for war. But she will bring peace if she can, she knows it was my father’s wish, she knows that we have to live in peace. We are kin now, we are neighbours.’

But the border lords, the Percys and the Nevilles, reported that the Scots had recently become more daring in their raids on the northern lands. Unquestionably, James was spoiling for war, undoubtedly he meant to take land in Northumberland as his own. Any day now he could march south, take Berwick, and continue on to Newcastle.

‘How dare he?’ Henry demanded. ‘How dare he just march in and take our goods and disturb our people? Does he not know that I could raise an army and take them against him tomorrow?’

‘It would be a hard campaign,’ Katherine remarked, thinking of
the wild land of the border and the long march to get to it. The Scotsmen would have everything to fight for, with the rich southern lands spread before them, and English soldiers never wanted to fight when they were far from their villages.

‘It would be easy,’ Henry contradicted her. ‘Everyone knows that the Scots can’t keep an army in the field. They are nothing more than a raiding party. If I took out a great English army, properly armed and supplied and ordered, I would make an end of them in a day!’

‘Of course you would,’ Katherine smiled. ‘But don’t forget, we have to muster our army to fight against the French. You would far rather win your spurs against the French on a field of chivalry which will go down in history than in some dirty border quarrel.’

Katherine spoke to Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, Edward Howard’s father, at the end of the Privy Council meeting as the men came out of the king’s rooms.

‘My lord? Have you heard from Edward? I miss my young Chevalier.’

The old man beamed at her. ‘We had a report this day. The king will tell you himself. He knew you would be pleased that your favourite has had a victory.’

‘He has?’

‘He has captured the pirate Andrew Barton with two of his ships.’ His pride shone through his pretence of modesty. ‘He has only done his duty,’ he said. ‘He has only done as any Howard boy should do.’

‘He is a hero!’ Katherine said enthusiastically. ‘England needs great sailors as much as we need soldiers. The future for Christendom is in dominating the seas. We need to rule the seas as the Saracens rule the deserts. We have to drive pirates from the seas and make English ships a constant presence. And what else? Is he on his way home?’

‘He will bring his ships into London and the pirate in chains with him. We’ll try him, and hang him on the quayside. But King James won’t like it.’

‘Do you think the Scots king means war?’ Katherine asked him bluntly. ‘Would he go to war over such a cause as this? Is the country in danger?’

‘This is the worst danger to the peace of the kingdom of any in my lifetime,’ the older man said honestly. ‘We have subdued the Welsh and brought peace to our borders in the west, now we will have to put down the Scots. After them we will have to settle the Irish.’

‘They are a separate country, with their own kings and laws,’ Katherine demurred.