The Constant Princess

by Philippa Gregory

  “You assured me of that on her word?”

  “The duenna said…”

  “Then it is nothing,” the king ruled. “They were little more than promised to one another. Hardly man and wife.”

  “I will have to put this to Their Majesties of Spain,” de Puebla said, desperately trying to assemble some order to his whirling thoughts, striving to keep his deep shock from his face. “Does the Privy Council agree?” he asked, playing for time. “The Archbishop of Canterbury?”

  “It is a matter between ourselves at the moment,” Henry said grandly. “It is early days for me as a widower. I want to be able to reassure Their Majesties that their daughter will be cared for. It has been a difficult year for her.”

  “If she could have gone home…”

  “Now there will be no need for her to go home. Her home is England. This is her country,” Henry said flatly. “She shall be queen here, as she was brought up to be.”

  De Puebla could hardly speak for shock at the suggestion that this old man, who had just buried his wife, should marry his dead son’s bride. “Of course. So, shall I tell Their Majesties that you are quite determined on this course? There is no other arrangement that we should consider?” De Puebla racked his brains as to how he could bring in the name of Prince Harry, who was surely Catalina’s most appropriate future husband. Finally, he plunged in. “Your son, for instance?”

  “My son is too young to be considered for marriage as yet.” Henry disposed of the suggestion with speed. “He is eleven and a strong, forward boy, but his grandmother insists that we plan nothing for him for another four years. And by then, the Princess Dowager would be twenty-one.”

  “Still young,” gasped de Puebla. “Still a young woman, and near him in age.”

  “I don’t think Their Majesties would want their daughter to stay in England for another four years without husband or household of her own,” Henry said with unconcealed threat. “They could hardly want her to wait for Harry’s majority. What would she do in those years? Where would she live? Are they proposing to buy her a palace and set up a household for her? Are they prepared to give her an income? A court, appropriate to her position? For four years?”

  “If she could return to Spain to wait?” de Puebla hazarded.

  “She can leave at once, if she will pay the full amount of her dowry and find her own fortune elsewhere. Do you really think she can get a better offer than Queen of England? Take her away if you do!”

  It was the sticking point that they had reached over and over again in the past year. De Puebla knew he was beaten. “I will write to Their Majesties tonight,” he said.

  I dreamed I was a swift, flying over the golden hills of the Sierra Nevada. But this time, I was flying north, the hot afternoon sun was on my left, ahead of me was a gathering of cool cloud. Then suddenly, the cloud took shape. It was Ludlow Castle, and my little bird heart fluttered at the sight of it and at the thought of the night that would come when he would take me in his arms and press down on me, and I would melt with desire for him.

  Then I saw it was not Ludlow but these great gray walls were those of Windsor Castle, and the curve of the river was the great gray glass of the river Thames, and all the traffic plying up and down and the great ships at anchor were the wealth and the bustle of the English. I knew I was far from my home, and yet I was at home. This would be my home. I would build a little nest against the gray stone of the towers here, just as I would have done in Spain. And here they would call me a swift; a bird which flies so fast that no one has ever seen it land, a bird that flies so high that they think it never touches the ground. I shall not be Catalina, the Infanta of Spain. I shall be Katherine of Aragon, Queen of England, just as Arthur named me: Katherine, Queen of England.

  “The king is here again,” Doña Elvira said, looking out of the window. “He has ridden here with just two men. Not even a standard-bearer or guards.” She sniffed. The widespread English informality was bad enough but this king had the manners of a stableboy.

  Catalina flew to the window and peered out. “What can he want?” she wondered. “Tell them to decant some of his wine.”

  Doña Elvira went out of the room in a hurry. In the next moment Henry strolled in, unannounced. “I thought I would call on you,” he said.

  Catalina sank into a deep curtsey. “Your Grace does me much honor,” she said. “And at least now I can offer you a glass of good wine.”

  Henry smiled and waited. The two of them stood while Doña Elvira returned to the room with a Spanish maid-in-waiting carrying a tray of Morisco brassware with two Venetian glasses of red wine. Henry noted the fineness of the workmanship and assumed correctly that it was part of the dowry that the Spanish had withheld.

  “Your health,” he said, holding up his glass to the princess.

  To his surprise she did not simply raise her glass in return, she raised her eyes and gave him a long, thoughtful look. He felt himself tingle, like a boy, as his eyes met hers. “Princess?” he said quietly.

  “Your Grace?”

  They both of them glanced towards Doña Elvira, who was standing uncomfortably close, quietly regarding the floorboards beneath her worn shoes.

  “You can leave us,” the king said.

  The woman looked at the princess for her orders and made no move to leave.

  “I shall talk in private with my daughter-in-law,” King Henry said firmly. “You may go.”

  Doña Elvira curtseyed and left, and the rest of the ladies swept out after her.

  Catalina smiled at the king. “As you command,” she said.

  He felt his pulse speed at her smile. “Indeed, I do need to speak to you privately. I have a proposal to put to you. I have spoken to the Spanish ambassador and he has written to your parents.”

  “At last. This is it. At last,” Catalina thought. “He has come to propose Harry for me. Thank God, who has brought me to this day. Arthur, beloved, this day you will see that I shall be faithful to my promise to you.”

  “I need to marry again,” Henry said. “I am still young—” He thought he would not say his age of forty-six. “It may be that I can have another child or two.”

  Catalina nodded politely, but she was barely listening. She was waiting for him to ask her to marry Prince Harry.

  “I have been thinking of all the princesses in Europe who would be suitable partners for me,” he said.

  Still the princess before him said nothing.

  “I can find no one I would choose.”

  She widened her eyes to indicate her attention.

  Henry plowed on. “My choice has fallen on you,” he said bluntly, “for these reasons. You are here in London already, you have become accustomed to living here. You were brought up to be Queen of England, and you will be queen as my wife. The difficulties with the dowry can be put aside. You will have the same allowance that I paid to Queen Elizabeth. My mother agrees with this.”

  At last his words penetrated her mind. She was so shocked that she could barely speak. She just stared at him. “Me?”

  “There is a slight objection on the grounds of affinity, but I shall ask the Pope to grant a dispensation,” he went on. “I understand that your marriage to Prince Arthur was never consummated. In that case, there is no real objection.”

  “It was not consummated.” Catalina repeated the words by rote, as if she no longer understood them. The great lie had been part of a plot to take her to the altar with Prince Harry, not with his father. She could not now retract it. Her mind was so dizzy that she could only cling to it. “It was not consummated.”

  “Then there should be no difficulty,” the king said. “I take it that you do not object?”

  He found that he could hardly breathe, waiting for her answer. Any thought that she had been leading him on, tempting him to this moment, had vanished when he looked into her bleached, shocked face.

  He took her hand. “Don’t look so afraid,” he said, his voice low with tenderness. “I won�
��t hurt you. This is to resolve all your problems. I will be a good husband to you. I will care for you.” Desperately, he racked his brains for something that might please her. “I will buy you pretty things,” he said. “Like those sapphires that you liked so much. You shall have a cupboard full of pretty things, Catalina.”

  She knew she had to reply. “I am so surprised,” she said.

  “Surely you must have known that I desired you?”

  I stopped my cry of denial. I wanted to say that of course I had not known. But it was not true. I had known, as any young woman would have known, from the way he had looked at me, from the way that I had responded to him. From the very first moment that I met him, there was this undercurrent between us. I ignored it. I pretended it was something easier than it was. I deployed it. I have been most at fault.

  In my vanity, I thought that I was encouraging an old man to think of me kindly, that I could engage him, delight him, even flirt with him, first as a fond father-in-law and then to prevail upon him to marry me to Harry. I had meant to delight him as a daughter, I had wanted him to admire me, to pet me. I wanted him to dote on me.

  This is a sin, a sin. This is a sin of vanity and a sin of pride. I have deployed his lust and covetousness. I have led him to sin through my folly. No wonder God has turned His face from me and my mother never writes to me. I am most wrong.

  Dear God, I am a fool, and a childish, vain fool at that. I have not lured the king into a trap of my own satisfaction but merely baited his trap for me. My vanity and pride in myself made me think that I could tempt him to do whatever I want. Instead, I have tempted him only to his own desires, and now he will do what he wants. And what he wants is me. And it is my own stupid fault.

  “You must have known.” Henry smiled down at her confidently. “You must have known when I came to see you yesterday, and when I sent you the good wine?”

  Catalina gave a little nod. She had known something—fool that she was—she had known something was happening and praised her own diplomatic skills for being so clever as to lead the King of England by the nose. She had thought herself a woman of the world and thought her ambassador an idiot for not achieving this outcome from a king who was so easily manipulated. She had thought she had the King of England dancing to her bidding, when in fact he had his own tune in mind.

  “I desired you from the moment I first saw you,” he told her, his voice very low.

  She looked up. “You did?”

  “Truly. When I came into your bedchamber at Dogmersfield.”

  She remembered an old man, travel-stained and lean, the father of the man she would marry. She remembered the sweaty male scent as he forced his way into her bedroom and she remembered standing before him and thinking: what a clown, what a rough soldier to push in where he is not wanted. And then Arthur arrived, his blond hair tousled, and with the brightness of his shy smile.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. From somewhere deep inside her own resolution, she found a smile. “I remember. I danced for you.”

  Henry drew her a little closer and slid his arm around her waist. Catalina forced herself not to pull away. “I watched you,” he said. “I longed for you.”

  “But you were married,” Catalina said primly.

  “And now I am widowed and so are you,” he said. He felt the stiffness of her body through the hard boning of the stomacher and let her go. He would have to court her slowly, he thought. She might have flirted with him, but now she was startled by the turn that things had taken. She had come from an absurdly sheltered upbringing and her innocent months with Arthur had hardly opened her eyes at all. He would have to take matters slowly with her. He would have to wait until she had permission from Spain, he would leave the ambassador to tell her of the wealth she might command, he would have to let her women urge the benefits of the match upon her. She was a young woman; by nature and experience she was bound to be a fool. He would have to give her time.

  “I will leave you now,” he said. “I will come again tomorrow.”

  She nodded and walked with him to the door of her privy chamber. There she hesitated. “You mean it?” she asked him, her blue eyes suddenly anxious. “You mean this as a proposal of marriage, not as a feint in a negotiation? You truly want to marry me? I will be queen?”

  He nodded. “I mean it.” The depth of her ambition began to dawn on him and he smiled as he slowly saw the way to her. “Do you want to be queen so very much?”

  Catalina nodded. “I was brought up to it,” she said. “I want nothing more.” She hesitated. For a moment she almost thought to tell him that it had been the last thought of his son, but then her passion for Arthur was too great for her to share him with anyone, even his father. And besides, Arthur had planned that she should marry Harry.

  The king was smiling. “So you don’t have desire, but you do have ambition,” he observed a little coldly.

  “It is nothing more than my due,” she said flatly. “I was born to be a queen.”

  He took her hand and bent over it. He kissed her fingers, and he stopped himself from licking them. “Take it slowly,” he warned himself. “This is a girl and possibly a virgin, certainly not a whore.” He straightened up. “I shall make you Katherine of Aragon, Queen of England,” he promised her, and saw her blue eyes darken with desire at the title. “We can marry as soon as we have the dispensation from the Pope.”

  Think! Think! I urgently command myself. You were not raised by a fool to be a fool, you were raised by a queen to be a queen. If this is a feint you ought to be able to see it. If it is a true offer you ought to be able to turn it to your advantage.

  It is not a true fulfillment of the promise I made to my beloved, but it is close. He wanted me to be Queen of England and to have the children that he would have given me. So what if they will be his half brother and half sister rather than his niece and nephew? That makes no difference.

  I shrink from the thought of marrying this old man, old enough to be my father. The skin at his neck is fine and loose, like that of a turtle. I cannot imagine being in bed with him. His breath is sour, an old man’s breath; and he is thin, and he will feel bony at the hips and shoulders. But I shrink from the thought of being in bed with that child Harry. His face is as smooth and as rounded as a little girl’s. In truth, I cannot bear the thought of being anyone’s wife but Arthur’s; and that part of my life has gone.

  Think! Think! This might be the very right thing to do.

  Oh, God, beloved, I wish you were here to tell me. I wish I could just visit you in the garden for you to tell me what I should do. I am only seventeen, I cannot outwit a man old enough to be my father, a king with a nose for pretenders.

  Think!

  I will have no help from anyone. I have to think alone.

  Doña Elvira waited until the princess’s bedtime and until all the maids-in-waiting, the ladies and the grooms of the bedchamber had withdrawn. She closed the door on them all and then turned to the princess, who was seated in her bed, her hair in a neat plait, her pillows plumped behind her.

  “What did the king want?” she demanded without ceremony.

  “He proposed marriage to me,” Catalina said bluntly in reply. “For himself.”

  For a moment the duenna was too stunned to speak then she crossed herself, as a woman seeing something unclean. “God save us,” was all she said. Then: “God forgive him for even thinking it.”

  “God forgive you,” Catalina replied smartly. “I am considering it.”

  “He is your father-in-law, and old enough to be your father.”

  “His age doesn’t matter,” Catalina said truly. “If I go back to Spain they won’t seek a young husband for me but an advantageous one.”

  “But he is the father of your husband.”

  Catalina nipped her lips together. “My late husband,” she said bleakly. “And the marriage was not consummated.”

  Doña Elvira swallowed the lie; but her eyes flicked away, just once.

  “As you r
emember,” Catalina said smoothly.

  “Even so! It is against nature!”

  “It is not against nature,” Catalina asserted. “There was no consummation of the betrothal, there was no child. So there can be no sin against nature. And anyway, we can get a dispensation.”

  Doña Elvira hesitated. “You can?”

  “He says so.”

  “Princess, you cannot want this?”

  The princess’s little face was bleak. “He will not betroth me to Prince Harry,” she said. “He says the boy is too young. I cannot wait four years until he is grown. So what can I do but marry the king? I was born to be Queen of England and mother of the next King of England. I have to fulfill my destiny, it is my God-given destiny. I thought I would have to force myself to take Prince Harry. Now it seems I shall have to force myself to take the king. Perhaps this is God testing me. But my will is strong. I will be Queen of England and the mother of the king. I shall make this country a fortress against the Moors, as I promised my mother. I shall make it a country of justice and fairness defended against the Scots, as I promised Arthur.”

  “I don’t know what your mother will think,” the duenna said. “I should not have left you alone with him, if I had known.”

  Catalina nodded. “Don’t leave us alone again.” She paused. “Unless I nod to you,” she said. “I may nod for you to leave, and then you must go.”

  The duenna was shocked. “He should not even see you before your wedding day. I shall tell the ambassador that he must tell the king that he cannot visit you at all now.”

  Catalina shook her head. “We are not in Spain now,” she said fiercely. “D’you still not see it? We cannot leave this to the ambassador, not even my mother can say what shall happen. I shall have to make this happen. I alone have brought it so far, and I alone will make it happen.”

  I hoped to dream of you, but I dreamed of nothing. I feel as if you have gone far, far away. I have no letter from my mother, so I don’t know what she will make of the king’s wish. I pray, but I hear nothing from God. I speak very bravely of my destiny and God’s will, but they feel now quite intertwined. If God does not make me Queen of England, then I do not know how I can believe in Him. If I am not Queen of England, then I do not know what I am.