Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (48 page)

‘I’m tired,’ the old woman said. ‘And you twist and twist things about. I’m going to my room.’

Catalina swept her a deep, respectful curtsey, Harry ducked his head with scant politeness. When Catalina came up the old woman had gone.

‘How can she say such things?’ Harry demanded. ‘How can you bear to listen to her when she says such things? She makes me want to roar like a baited bear! She understands nothing, and she insults you! And you just stand and listen!’

Catalina laughed, took his cross face in her hands and kissed him on the lips. ‘Oh, Harry, who cares what she thinks as long as she can do nothing? Nobody cares what she says now.’

‘I am going to war with France whatever she thinks,’ he promised.

‘Of course you are, as soon as the time is right.’

I hide my triumph over her, but I know the taste of it, and it is sweet. I think to myself that one day the other tormentors of my widowhood, the princesses, Harry’s sisters, will know my power too. But I can wait.

Lady Margaret may be old but she cannot even gather the senior people of court about her. They have known her forever, the bonds of kinship, wardship, rivalry and feud run through them all like veins through dirty marble. She was never well-liked: not as a woman, not as the mother of a king. She was from one of the great families of the country but when she leapt up so high after Bosworth she flaunted her importance. She has a great reputation for learning and for holiness but she is not beloved. She always insisted on her position as the king’s mother and a gulf has grown between her and the other people of the court.

Drifting away from her, they are becoming friends of mine: Lady Margaret Pole of course, the Duke of Buckingham and his sisters, Elizabeth and Anne, Thomas Howard, his sons, Sir Thomas and Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, dearest William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Talbot, Sir Henry Vernon that I knew from Wales. They all know that although Harry neglects the business of the realm, I do not.

I consult them for their advice, I share with them the hopes that Arthur and I had. Together with the men of the Privy Council I am bringing the kingdom into one powerful, peaceful country. We are starting to consider how to make the law run from one coast to another, through the wastes, the mountains and forests alike. We are starting to work on the defences of the coast. We are making a survey of the ships that could be commanded into a fighting navy, we are creating muster rolls for an army. I have taken the reins of the kingdom into my hands and found that I know how it is done.

Statecraft is my family business. I sat at my mother’s feet in the throne room of the Alhambra Palace. I listened to my father in the beautiful golden Hall of the Ambassadors. I learned the art and the craft of kingship as I had learned about beauty, music, and the art of building, all in the same place, all in the same lessons. I learned a taste for rich tiling, for bright sunlight falling on a delicate tracery of stucco, and for power, all at the same time. Becoming a Queen Regnant is like coming home. I am happy as Queen of England. I am where I was born and raised to be.

The king’s grandmother lay in her ornate bed, rich curtains drawn close so that she was lulled by shadows. At the foot of the bed an uncomplaining lady-in-waiting held up the monstrance for her to see the body of Christ in its white purity through the diamond-cut piece of glass. The dying woman fixed her eyes on it, occasionally
looking to the ivory crucifix on the wall beside the bed, ignoring the soft murmur of prayers around her.

Catalina kneeled at the foot of the bed, her head bowed, a coral rosary in her hands, praying silently. My Lady Margaret, confident of a hard-won place in heaven, was sliding away from her place on earth.

Outside, in her presence chamber, Harry waited for them to tell him that his grandmother was dead. The last link to his subordinate, junior childhood would be broken with her death. The years in which he had been the second son – trying a little harder for attention, smiling a little brighter, working at being clever – would all be gone. From now on, everyone he would meet would know him only as the most senior member of his family, the greatest of his line. There would be no articulate, critical old Tudor lady to watch over this gullible prince, to cut him down with one quiet word in the very moment of his springing up. When she was dead he could be a man, on his own terms. There would be no-one left who knew him as a boy. Although he was waiting, outwardly pious, for news of her death, inside he was longing to hear that she was gone, that he was at last truly independent, at last a man and a king. He had no idea that he still desperately needed her counsel.

‘He must not go to war,’ the king’s grandmother said hoarsely from the bed.

The lady-in-waiting gave a little gasp at the sudden clarity of her mistress’s speech. Catalina rose to her feet. ‘What did you say, my lady?’

‘He must not go to war,’ she repeated. ‘Our way is to keep out of the endless wars of Europe, to keep behind the seas, to keep safe and far away from all those princeling squabbles. Our way is keep the kingdom at peace.’

‘No,’ Catalina said steadily. ‘Our way is to take the crusade into the heart of Christendom and beyond. Our way is to make England
a leader in establishing the church throughout Europe, throughout the Holy Land, to Africa, to the Turks, to the Saracens, to the edge of the world.’

‘The Scots…’

‘I shall defeat the Scots,’ Catalina said firmly. ‘I am well aware of the danger.’

‘I did not let him marry you for you to lead us to war.’ The dark eyes flared with fading resentment.

‘You did not let him marry me at all. You opposed it from the first moment,’ Catalina said bluntly. ‘And I married him precisely so that he should mount a great crusade.’ She ignored the little whimper from the lady-in-waiting, who believed that a dying woman should not be contradicted.

‘You will promise me that you will not let him go to war,’ the old lady breathed. ‘My dying promise, my deathbed promise. I lay it on you from my deathbed, as a sacred duty.’

‘No.’ Catalina shook her head. ‘Not me. Not another. I made one deathbed promise and it has cost me dearly. I will not make another. Least of all to you. You have lived your life and made your world as you wished. Now it is my turn. I shall see my son as King of England and perhaps King of Spain. I shall see my husband lead a glorious crusade against the Moors and the Turks. I shall see my country, England, take its place in the world, where it should be. I shall see England at the heart of Europe, a leader of Europe. And I shall be the one that defends it and keeps it safe. I shall be the one that is Queen of England, as you never were.’

‘No…’ the old woman breathed.

‘Yes,’ Catalina swore, without compromise. ‘I am Queen of England now and I will be till my death.’

The old woman raised herself up, struggled for breath. ‘You pray for me.’ She laid the order on the younger woman almost as if it were a curse. ‘I have done my duty to England, to the Tudor line. You see that my name is remembered as if I were a queen.’

Catalina hesitated. If this woman had not served herself, her son and her country, the Tudors would not be on the throne. ‘I will pray for you,’ she conceded grudgingly. ‘And as long as there is a chantry in England, as long as the Holy Roman Catholic Church is in England, your name will be remembered.’

‘Forever,’ the old woman said, happy in her belief that some things could never change.

‘Forever,’ Catalina agreed.

Then, less than an hour later, she was dead; and I became queen, ruling queen, undeniably in command, without a rival, even before my coronation. No-one knows what to do in the court, there is no-one who can give a coherent order. Harry has never ordered a royal funeral, how should he know where to begin, how to judge the extent of the honour that should be given to his grandmother? How many mourners? How long the time of mourning? Where should she be buried? How should the whole ceremonial be done?

I summon my oldest friend in England, the Duke of Buckingham, who greeted me on my arrival all those years ago and is now Lord High Steward, and I ask for Lady Margaret Pole to come to me. My ladies bring me the great volume of ceremonial, The Royal Book, written by the king’s dead grandmother herself, and I set about organising my first public English event.

I am lucky; tucked inside the cover of the book I find three pages of handwritten instructions. The vain old lady had laid out the order of the procession that she wanted for her funeral. Lady Margaret and I gasp at the numbers of bishops she would like to serve, the pallbearers, the mutes, the mourners, the decorations on the streets, the duration of the mourning. I show them to the Duke of Buckingham, her one-time ward, who says nothing but in discreet silence just smiles and shakes his head. Hiding my unworthy sense of triumph I take a
quill, dip it in black ink, cut almost everything by a half, and then start to give orders.

It was a quiet ceremony of smooth dignity, and everyone knew that it had been commanded and ordered by the Spanish bride. Those who had not known before realised now that the girl who had been waiting for seven years to come to the throne of England had not wasted her time. She knew the temperament of the English people, she knew how to put on a show for them. She knew the tenor of the court: what they regarded as stylish, what they saw as mean. And she knew, as a princess born, how to rule. In those days before her coronation, Catalina established herself as the undeniable queen, and those who had ignored her in her years of poverty now discovered in themselves tremendous affection and respect for the princess.

She accepted their admiration, just as she had accepted their neglect: with calm politeness. She knew that by ordering the funeral of the king’s grandmother she established herself as the first woman of the new court, and the arbiter of all decisions of court life. She had, in one brilliant performance, established herself as the foremost leader of England. And she was certain that after this triumph no-one would ever be able to supplant her.