The Constant Princess

by Philippa Gregory

  I know that a sensible woman looks the other way and tries to bear her hurt and humiliation when her husband chooses to take another woman to his bed. What she must not do, what she absolutely must never do, is behave like my sister Juana, who shames herself and all of us by giving way to screaming fits, hysterical tears, and threats of revenge.

  “It does no good,” my mother once told me when one of the ambassadors relayed to us some awful scene at Philip’s court in the Netherlands: Juana threatening to cut off the woman’s hair, attacking her with a pair of scissors, and then swearing she would stab herself.

  “It only makes it worse to complain. If a husband goes astray you will have to take him back into your life and into your bed, whatever he has done; there is no escape from marriage. If you are queen and he is king you have to deal together. If he forgets his duty to you, that is no reason to forget yours to him. However painful, you are always his queen and he is always your husband.”

  “Whatever he does?” I asked her. “However he behaves? He is free though you are bound?”

  She shrugged. “Whatever he does cannot break the marriage bond. You are married in the sight of God: he is always your husband, you are always queen. Those whom God has joined together, no man can put asunder. Whatever pain your husband brings you, he is still your husband. He may be a bad husband; but he is still your husband.”

  “What if he wants another?” I asked, sharp in my young girl’s curiosity.

  “If he wants another he can have her or she can refuse him, that is between them. That is for her and her conscience,” my mother had said steadily. “What must not change is you. Whatever he says, whatever she wants: you are still his wife and his queen.”

  Catalina summoned this bleak counsel and faced her young husband. “I am always glad to meet a friend of yours, my lord,” she said levelly, hoping that her voice did not quaver at all. “But, as you know, I have only a small household. Your father was very clear that I am not allowed any more companions than I have at present. As you know, he does not pay me any allowance. I have no money to pay another lady for her service. In short, I cannot add any lady, even a special friend of yours, to my court.”

  Arthur flinched at the reminder of his father’s mean haggling over her train. “Oh no, you mistake me. It is not a friend who wants a place. She would not be one of your ladies-in-waiting,” he said hastily. “It is Lady Margaret Pole, who is waiting to meet you. She has come home here at last.”

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us. This is worse than if it was his mistress. I knew I would have to face her one day. This is her home, but she was away when we got here and I thought she had deliberately snubbed me by being away and staying away. I thought she was avoiding me out of hatred, as I would avoid her from shame. Lady Margaret Pole is sister to that poor boy, the Duke of Warwick, beheaded to make the succession safe for me, and for my line. I have been dreading the moment when I would have to meet her. I have been praying to the saints that she would stay away, hating me, blaming me, but keeping her distance.

  Arthur saw her quick gesture of rejection, but he had known of no way to prepare her for this. “Please,” he said hurriedly. “She has been away caring for her children or she would have been here with her husband to welcome you to the castle when we first arrived. I told you she would return. She wants to greet you now. We all have to live together here. Sir Richard is a trusted friend of my father, the lord of my council, and the warden of this castle. We will all have to live together.”

  Catalina put out a shaking hand to him and at once he came closer, ignoring the fascinated attention of her ladies.

  “I cannot meet her,” she whispered. “Truly, I can’t. I know that her brother was put to death for my sake. I know my parents insisted on it, before they would send me to England. I know he was innocent, innocent as a flower, kept in the Tower by your father so that men should not gather round him and claim the throne in his name. He could have lived there in safety all his life but for my parents’ demanding his death. She must hate me.”

  “She doesn’t hate you,” he said truthfully. “Believe me, Catalina, I would not expose you to anyone’s unkindness. She does not hate you, she doesn’t hate me, she doesn’t even hate my father who ordered the execution. She knows that these things happen. She is a princess, she knows as well as you do that it is not choice but policy that governs us. It was not your choice, nor mine. She knows that your father and mother had to be sure that there were no rival princes to claim the throne, that my father would clear my way, whatever it cost him. She is resigned.”

  “Resigned?” she gasped incredulously. “How can a woman be resigned to the murder of her brother, the heir of the family? How can she greet me with friendship when he died for my convenience? When we lost my brother our world ended, our hopes died with him. Our future was buried with him. My mother, who is a living saint, still cannot bear it. She has not been happy since the day of his death. It is unbearable to her. If he had been executed for some stranger I swear she would have taken a life in return. How could Lady Margaret lose her brother and bear it? How can she bear me?”

  “She has resignation,” he said simply. “She is a most spiritual woman and if she looked for reward, she has one in that she is married to Sir Richard Pole, a man most trusted by my father, and she lives here in the highest regard and she is my friend and I hope will be yours.”

  He took her hand and felt it tremble. “Come, Catalina. This isn’t like you. Be brave, my love. She won’t blame you.”

  “She must blame me,” she said in an anguished whisper. “My parents insisted that there should be no doubt over your inheritance. I know they did. Your own father promised that there would be no rival princes. They knew what he meant to do. They did not tell him to leave an innocent man with his life. They let him do it. They wanted him to do it. Edward Plantagenet’s blood is on my head. Our marriage is under the curse of his death.”

  Arthur recoiled; he had never before seen her so distressed. “My God, Catalina, you cannot call us accursed.”

  She nodded miserably.

  “You have never spoken of this.”

  “I could not bear to say it.”

  “But you have thought it?”

  “From the moment they told me that he was put to death for my sake.”

  “My love, you cannot really think that we are accursed?”

  “In this one thing.”

  He tried to laugh off her intensity. “No. You must know we are blessed.” He drew closer and said very quietly, so that no one else could hear, “Every morning when you wake in my arms, do you feel accursed then?”

  “No,” she said unwillingly. “No, I don’t.”

  “Every night when I come to your rooms, do you feel the shadow of sin upon you?”

  “No,” she conceded.

  “We are not cursed,” he said firmly. “We are blessed with God’s favor. Catalina, my love, trust me. She has forgiven my father, she certainly would never blame you. I swear to you, she is a woman with a heart as big as a cathedral. She wants to meet you. Come with me and let me present her to you.”

  “Alone, then,” she said, still fearing some terrible scene.

  “Alone. She is in the castle warden’s rooms now. If you come at once, we can leave them all here and go quietly by ourselves and see her.”

  She rose from her seat and put her hand on the crook of his arm. “I am walking alone with the princess,” Arthur said to her ladies. “You can all stay here.”

  They looked surprised to be excluded, and some of them were openly disappointed. Catalina went past them without looking up.

  Once out of the door he preceded her down the tight spiral staircase, one hand on the central stone post, one on the wall. Catalina followed him, lingering at every deep-set arrow-slit window, looking down into the valley where the Teme had burst its banks and was like a silver lake over the water meadows. It was cold, even for March in the Borders, and Catalina shivered as if a s
tranger were walking on her grave.

  “My love,” he said, looking back up the narrow stairs towards her. “Courage. Your mother would have courage.”

  “She ordered this thing,” she said crossly. “She thought it was for my benefit. But a man died for her ambition, and now I have to face his sister.”

  “She did it for you,” he reminded her. “And nobody blames you.” They came to the floor below the princess’s suite of rooms, and without hesitation Arthur tapped on the thick wooden door of the warden’s apartments and went in.

  The square room overlooking the valley was the match of Catalina’s presence chamber upstairs, paneled with wood and hung with bright tapestries. There was a lady waiting for them, seated by the fireside, and when the door opened she rose. She was dressed in a pale gray gown with a gray hood on her hair. She was about thirty years of age; she looked at Catalina with friendly interest, and then she sank into a deep, respectful curtsey.

  Disobeying the nip of his bride’s fingers, Arthur withdrew his arm and stepped back as far as the doorway. Catalina looked back at him reproachfully and then bobbed a small curtsey to the older woman. They rose up together.

  “I am so pleased to meet you,” Lady Pole said sweetly. “And I am sorry not to have been here to greet you. But one of my children was ill and I went to make sure that he was well nursed.”

  “Your husband has been very kind,” Catalina managed to say.

  “I hope so, for I left him a long list of commandments; I so wanted your rooms to be warm and comfortable. You must tell me if there is anything you would like. I don’t know Spain, so I didn’t know what things would give you pleasure.”

  “No! It is all…absolutely.”

  The older woman looked at the princess. “Then I hope you will be very happy here with us,” she said.

  “I hope to…” Catalina breathed. “But I…I…”

  “Yes?”

  “I was very sorry to hear of the death of your brother.” Catalina dived in. Her face, which had been white with discomfort, now flushed scarlet. She could feel her ears burning, and to her horror she heard her voice tremble. “Indeed, I was very sorry. Very…”

  “It was a great loss to me, and to mine,” the woman said steadily. “But it is the way of the world.”

  “I am afraid that my coming…”

  “I never thought that it was any choice or any fault of yours, Princess. When our dear Prince Arthur was to be married his father was bound to make sure that his inheritance was secured. I know that my brother would never have threatened the peace of the Tudors, but they were not to know that. And he was ill-advised by a mischievous young man, drawn into some foolish plot…” She broke off as her voice shook; but rapidly she recovered herself. “Forgive me. It still grieves me. He was an innocent, my brother. His silly plotting was proof of his innocence, not of his guilt. There is no doubt in my mind that he is in God’s keeping now, with all innocents.”

  She smiled at the princess. “In this world, we women often find that we have no power over what men do. I am sure you would have wished my brother no harm, and indeed, I am sure that he would not have stood against you or against our dearest prince here—but it is the way of the world that harsh measures are sometimes taken. My father made some bad choices in his life, and God knows he paid for them in full. His son, though innocent, went the way of his father. A turn of the coin and it could all have been different. I think a woman has to learn to live with the turn of the coin even when it falls against her.”

  Catalina was listening intently. “I know my mother and father wanted to be sure that the Tudor line was without challenge,” she breathed. “I know that they told the king.” She felt as if she had to make sure that this woman knew the depth of her guilt.

  “As I might have done if I had been them,” Lady Margaret said simply. “Princess, I do not blame you, nor your mother or father. I do not blame our great king. Were I any one of them, I might have behaved just as they have done, and explained myself only to God. All I have to do, since I am not one of these great people but merely the humble wife to a fine man, is to take care how I behave and how I will explain myself to God.”

  “I felt that I came to this country with his death on my conscience,” Catalina admitted in a sudden rush.

  The older woman shook her head. “His death is not on your conscience,” she said firmly. “And it is wrong to blame yourself for another’s doing. Indeed, I would think your confessor would tell you: it is a form of pride. Let that be the sin that you confess, you need not take the blame for the sins of others.”

  Catalina looked up for the first time and met the steady eyes of Lady Pole and saw her smile. Cautiously she smiled back, and the older woman stretched out her hand, as a man would offer to shake on a bargain. “You see,” she said pleasantly. “I was a princess royal myself once. I was the last Plantagenet princess, raised by King Richard in his nursery with his son. Of all the women in the world, I should know that there is more to life than a woman can ever control. There is the will of your husband, and of your parents, and of your king, and of your God. Nobody could blame a princess for the doings of a king. How could one ever challenge it? Or make any difference? Our way has to be obedience.”

  Catalina, her hand in the warm, firm grasp, felt wonderfully reassured. “I am afraid I am not always very obedient,” she confessed.

  The older woman laughed. “Oh yes, for one would be a fool not to think for oneself,” she allowed. “True obedience can only happen when you secretly think you know better, and you choose to bow your head. Anything short of that is just agreement, and any ninny-in-waiting can agree. Don’t you think?”

  And Catalina, giggling with an Englishwoman for the first time, laughed aloud and said: “I never wanted to be a ninny-in-waiting.”

  “Neither did I,” gleamed Margaret Pole, who had been a Plantagenet, a princess royal and was now a mere wife buried in the fastness of the Tudor Borders. “I always know that I am myself, in my heart, whatever title I am given.”

  I am so surprised to find that the woman whose presence I have dreaded is making the castle at Ludlow feel like a home for me. Lady Margaret Pole is a companion and friend to comfort me for the loss of my mother and sisters. I realize now that I have always lived in a world dominated by women: the queen my mother, my sisters, our ladies- and maids-in-waiting, and all the women servants of the seraglio. In the Alhambra we lived almost withdrawn from men, in rooms built for the pleasure and comfort of women. We lived almost in seclusion, in the privacy of the cool rooms, and ran through the courtyards and leaned on the balconies secure in the knowledge that half the palace was exclusively in the ownership of us women.

  We would attend the court with my father—we were not hidden from sight—but the natural desire of women for privacy was served and emphasized by the design of the Alhambra where the prettiest rooms and the best gardens were reserved for us.

  It is strange to come to England and find the world dominated by men. Of course I have my rooms and my ladies, but any man can come and ask for admittance at any time. Sir Richard Pole or any other of Arthur’s gentlemen can come to my rooms without notice and think that they are paying me a compliment. The English seem to think it right and normal that men and women should mix. I have not yet seen a house with rooms that are exclusive to women, and no woman goes veiled as we sometimes did in Spain, not even when traveling, not even among strangers.

  Even the royal family is open to all. Men, even strangers, can stroll through the royal palaces as long as they are smart enough for the guards to admit them. They can wait around in the queen’s presence chamber and see her anytime she walks by, staring at her as if they were family. The great hall, the chapel, the queen’s public rooms are open to anyone who can find a good hat and a cape and pass as gentry. The English treat women as if they are boys or servants, they can go anywhere, they can be looked at by anyone. For a while I thought this was a great freedom, and for a while I reveled in it
; then I realized the Englishwomen may show their faces but they are not bold like men, they are not free like boys; they still have to remain silent and obey.

  Now with Lady Margaret Pole returned to the warden’s rooms it feels as if this castle has come under the rule of women. The evenings in the hall are less hearty, even the food at dinner has changed. The troubadours sing of love and less of battles, there is more French spoken and less Welsh.

  My rooms are above, and hers are on the floor below, and we go up and down stairs all day to see each other. When Arthur and Sir Richard are out hunting, the castle’s mistress is still at home and the place does not feel empty anymore. Somehow, she makes it a lady’s castle, just by being here. When Arthur is away, the life of the castle is not silent, waiting for his return. It is a warm, happy place, busy in its own day’s work.

  I have missed having an older woman to be my friend. María de Salinas is a girl as young and silly as I am, she is a companion, not a mentor. Doña Elvira was nominated by my mother the queen to stand in a mother’s place for me; but she is not a woman I can warm to, though I have tried to love her. She is strict with me, jealous of her influence over me, ambitious to run the whole court. She and her husband, who commands my household, want to dominate my life. Since that first evening at Dogmersfield when she contradicted the king himself, I have doubted her judgment. Even now she continually cautions me against becoming too close with Arthur, as if it were wrong to love a husband, as if I could resist him! She wants to make a little Spain in England, she wants me to still be the Infanta. But I am certain that my way ahead in England is to become English.