Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (31 page)

I return to the embroidered kneeler before the altar but I do not kneel on it in a position of prayer, I turn it around and sit on it, as if I were at home, a cushion pulled up to a warm brazier, ready to talk, ready to listen. But no one speaks to me now. Not even my God.

“I know it is Your will that I should be queen,” I say thoughtfully, as if He might answer, as if He might suddenly reply in a tone as reasonable as my own. “I know that it is my mother’s wish too. I know that my darling—” I cut short the end of the sentence. Even now, a year on, I cannot take the risk of saying Arthur’s name, even in an empty chapel, even to God. I still fear an outpouring of tears, the slide into hysteria and madness. Behind my control is a passion for Arthur like a deep millpond held behind a sluice gate. I dare not let one drop of it out. There would be a flood of sorrow, a torrent.

“I know that he wished I should be queen. On his deathbed, he asked for a promise. In Your sight, I gave him that promise. In Your name I gave it. I meant it. I am sworn to be queen. But how am I to do it? If it is Your will, as well as his, as I believe, if it is Your will as well as my mother’s, as I believe, then, God: hear this. I have run out of stratagems. It has to be You. You have to show me the way to do it.”

*     *     *

I have been demanding this of God with more and more urgency for a year now, while the endless negotiations about the repayment of the dowry and the payment of the jointure drag on and on. Without one clear word from my mother I have come to think that she is playing the same game as me. Without doubt, I know that my father will have some long tactical play in mind. If only they would tell me what I should do! In their discreet silence I have to guess that they are leaving me here as bait for the king. They are leaving me here until the king sees, as I see, as Arthur saw, that the best resolution of this difficulty would be for me to marry Prince Harry.

The trouble is that as every month goes by, Harry grows in stature and status at the court: he becomes a more attractive prospect. The French king will make a proposal for him, the hundred princelings of Europe with their pretty daughters will make offers, even the Holy Roman Emperor has an unmarried daughter Margaret, who might suit. We have to bring this to a
decision now; this very month of April, as my first year of widowhood ends. Now that I am free from my year of waiting. But the balance of power has changed. King Henry is in no hurry; his heir is young—a boy of only eleven. But I am seventeen years old. It is time I was married. It is time I was Princess of Wales once more.

Their Majesties of Spain are demanding the moon: full restitution of their investment and the return of their daughter, the full widow’s jointure to be paid for an indefinite period. The great cost of this is designed to prompt the King of England to find another way. My parents’ patience with negotiation allows England to keep both me and the money. They show that they expect the return of neither me nor the money. They are hoping that the King of England will see that he need return neither the dowry nor me.

But they underestimate him. King Henry does not need them to hint him to it. He will have seen perfectly well for himself. Since he is not progressing, he must be resisting both demands. And why should he not? He is in possession. He has half the dowry, and he has me.

And he is no fool. The calmness of the new emissary, Don Gutierre Gómez de Fuensalida, and the slowness of the negotiations has alerted this most acute king to the fact that my mother and father are content to leave me in his hands, in England. It does not take a Machiavelli to conclude that my parents hope for another English marriage—just as when Isabel was widowed, they sent her back to Portugal to marry her brother-in-law. These things happen. But only if everyone is in agreement. In England, where the king is new-come to his throne and filled with ambition, it may take more skill than we can deploy to bring it about.

My mother writes to me to say she has a plan but it will take some time to come to fruition. In the meantime she tells me to be patient and never to do anything to offend the king or his mother.

“I am Princess of Wales,” I reply to her. “I was born to be Princess of Wales and Queen of England. You raised me in these titles. Surely, I should not deny my own upbringing? Surely, I can be Princess of Wales and Queen of England, even now?”

“Be patient,” she writes back to me, in a travel-stained note which takes weeks to get to me and which has been opened; anyone can have read it. “I agree that your destiny is to be Queen of England. It is your destiny, God’s will, and my wish. Be patient.”

“How long must I be patient?” I ask God, on my knees to Him in His
chapel on the anniversary of Arthur’s death. “If it is Your will, why do You not do it at once? If it is not Your will, why did You not destroy me with Arthur? If You are listening to me now—why do I feel so terribly alone?”

*     *     *

Late in the evening a rare visitor was announced in the quiet presence chamber of Durham House. “Lady Margaret Pole,” said the guard at the door. Catalina dropped her Bible and turned her pale face to see her friend hesitating shyly in the doorway.

“Lady Margaret!”

“Dowager Princess!” She curtseyed low and Catalina went swiftly across the room to her, raised her up, and fell into her arms.

“Don’t cry,” Lady Margaret said quietly into her ear. “Don’t cry or I swear I shall weep.”

“I won’t, I won’t, I promise I won’t.” Catalina turned to her ladies. “Leave us,” she said.

They went reluctantly. A visitor was a novelty in the quiet house, and besides, there were no fires burning in any of the other chambers. Lady Margaret looked around the shabby room.

“What is this?”

Catalina shrugged and tried to smile. “I am a poor manager, I am afraid. And Doña Elvira is no help. And in truth, I have only the money the king gives me and that is not much.”

“I was afraid of this,” the older woman said. Catalina drew her to the fire and sat her down on her own chair.

“I thought you were still at Ludlow?”

“We were. We have been. Since neither the king nor the prince comes to Wales all the business has fallen on my husband. You would think me a princess again to see my little court there.”

Catalina again tried to smile. “Are you grand?”

“Very. And mostly Welsh-speaking. Mostly singing.”

“I can imagine.”

“We came for the queen’s funeral, God bless her, and then I wanted to stay for a little longer and my husband said that I might come and see you. I have been thinking of you all day today.”

“I have been in the chapel,” Catalina said inconsequently. “It doesn’t seem like a year.”

“It doesn’t, does it?” Lady Margaret agreed, though privately she thought that the girl had aged far more than one year. Grief had refined
her girlish prettiness, she had the clear decided looks of a woman who had seen her hopes destroyed. “Are you well?”

Catalina made a little face. “I am well enough. And you? And the children?”

Lady Margaret smiled. “Praise God, yes. But do you know what plans the king has for you? Are you to . . .” She hesitated. “Are you to go back to Spain? Or stay here?”

Catalina drew a little closer. “They are talking, about the dowry, about my return. But nothing gets done. Nothing is decided. The king is holding me and holding my dowry, and my parents are letting him do it.”

Lady Margaret looked concerned. “I had heard that they might consider betrothing you to Prince Harry,” she said. “I did not know.”

“It is the obvious choice. But it does not seem obvious to the king,” Catalina said wryly. “What do you think? Is he a man to miss an obvious solution, d’you think?”

“No,” said Lady Margaret, whose life had been jeopardized by the king’s awareness of the obvious fact of her family’s claim on his throne.

“Then I must assume that he has thought of this choice and is waiting to see if it is the best he can make,” Catalina said. She gave a little sigh. “God knows, it is weary work, waiting.”

“Now your mourning is over, no doubt he will make arrangements,” her friend said hopefully.

“No doubt,” Catalina replied.

*     *     *

After weeks spent alone, mourning for his wife, the king returned to the court at Whitehall Palace, and Catalina was invited to dine with the royal family and seated with the Princess Mary and the ladies of the court. The young Harry, Prince of Wales, was placed securely between his father and grandmother. Not for this Prince of Wales the cold journey to Ludlow Castle and the rigorous training of a prince-in-waiting. Lady Margaret had ruled that this prince, their only surviving heir, should be brought up under her own eye, in ease and comfort. He was not to be sent away, he was to be watched all the time. He was not even allowed to take part in dangerous sports, jousting or fighting, though he was quite wild to take part, and a boy who loved activity and excitement. His grandmother had ruled that he was too precious to risk.

He smiled at Catalina and she shot him a look that she hoped was discreetly warm. But there was no opportunity to exchange so much as
one word. She was firmly anchored farther down the table and she could hardly see him thanks to My Lady the King’s Mother, who plied him with the best of all foods from her own plate and interposed her broad shoulder between him and the ladies.

Catalina thought that it was as Arthur had said, that the boy was spoiled by this attention. His grandmother leaned back for a moment to speak to one of the ushers and Catalina saw Harry’s gaze flick towards her. She gave him a smile and then cast down her eyes. When she glanced up, he was still looking at her and then he blushed red to be caught. “A child.” She shot a sideways little smile even as she silently criticized him. “A child of eleven. All boasting and boyishness. And why should this plump, spoiled boy be spared when Arthur . . .” At once she stopped the thought. To compare Arthur with his brother was to wish the little boy dead, and she would not do that. To think of Arthur in public was to risk breaking down and she would never do that.

“A woman could rule a boy like that,” she thought. “A woman could be a very great queen if she married such a boy. For the first ten years he would know nothing, and by then perhaps he might be in such a habit of obedience that he would let his wife continue to rule. Or he might be, as Arthur told me, a lazy boy. A young man wasted. He might be so lazy that he could be diverted by games and hunting and sports and amusements, so that the business of the kingdom could be done by his wife.”

Catalina never forgot that Arthur had told her that the boy fancied himself in love with her. “If they give him everything that he wants, perhaps he might be the one who chooses his bride,” she thought. “They are in the habit of indulging him. Perhaps he could beg to marry me and they would feel obliged to say yes.”

She saw him blush even redder; even his ears turned pink. She held his gaze for a long moment, she took in a little breath and parted her lips as if to whisper a word to him. She saw his blue eyes focus on her mouth and darken with desire, and then, calculating the effect, she looked down. “Stupid boy,” she thought.

The king rose from the table and all the men and women on the crowded benches of the hall rose, too, and bowed their heads.

“Give you thanks for coming to greet me,” King Henry said. “Comrades in war and friends in peace. But now forgive me, as I wish to be alone.”

He nodded to Harry, he offered his mother his hand, and the royal family went through the little doorway at the back of the great hall to their privy chamber.

“You should have stayed longer,” the king’s mother remarked as they settled into chairs by the fire and the groom of the ewery brought them wine. “It looks bad, to leave so promptly. I had told the master of horse you would stay, and there would be singing.”

“I was weary,” Henry said shortly. He looked over to where Catalina and the Princess Mary were sitting together. The younger girl was red-eyed, the loss of her mother had hit her hard. Catalina was—as usual—cool as a stream. He thought she had a great power of self-containment. Even this loss of her only real friend at court, her last friend in England, did not seem to distress her.

“She can go back to Durham House tomorrow,” his mother remarked, following the direction of his gaze. “It does no good for her to come to court. She has not earned her place here with an heir, and she has not paid for her place here with her dowry.”

“She is constant,” he said. “She is constant in her attendance on you, and on me.”

“Constant like the plague,” his mother returned.

“You are hard on her.”

“It is a hard world,” she said simply. “I am nothing but just. Why don’t we send her home?”

“Do you not admire her at all?”

She was surprised by the question. “What is there to admire in her?”

“Her courage, her dignity. She has beauty, of course, but she also has charm. She is educated, she is graceful. I think, in other circumstances, she could have been merry. And she has borne herself, under this disappointment, like a queen.”

“She is of no use to us,” she said. “She was our Princess of Wales, but our boy is dead. She is of no use to us now, however charming she may seem to be.”

Catalina looked up and saw them watching her. She gave a small controlled smile and inclined her head. Henry rose, went to a window bay on his own, and crooked his finger for her. She did not jump to come to him, as any of the women of court would have jumped. She looked at him, she raised an eyebrow as if she were considering whether or not to obey, and then she gracefully rose to her feet and strolled towards him.

“Good God, she is desirable,” he thought. “No more than seventeen. Utterly in my power, and yet still she walks across the room as if she were Queen of England crowned.”

“You will miss the queen, I daresay,” he said abruptly in French as she came up to him.

“I shall,” she replied clearly. “I grieve for you in the loss of your wife. I am sure my mother and father would want me to give you their commiserations.”