Chilled, she turned away from him to listen to the bishop recite the words of the marriage service and she repeated her part, making sure not to think of when she had said the words before, only a year and a half ago, when her hand had been cool in the grasp of the most handsome young man she had ever seen, when her bridegroom had given her a shy sideways smile, when she had stared at him through the veil of her mantilla and been aware of the thousands of silently watching faces beyond.
The young prince, who had been dazzled then by the beauty of his sister-in-law the bride, was now the bridegroom. His beam was the boisterous joy of a young boy in the presence of a beautiful older girl. She had been the bride of his older brother, she was the young woman he had been proud to escort on her wedding day. He had begged her for a present of a Barbary horse for his tenth birthday. He had looked at her at her wedding feast and that night prayed that he too might have a Spanish bride just like her.
When she had left the court with Arthur he had dreamed of her, he had written poems and love songs, secretly dedicating them to her. He had heard of Arthur’s death with a bright, fierce joy that now she was free.
Now, not even two years on, she was before him, her hair brushed out bronze and golden over her shoulders signifying her virgin state, her blue lace mantilla veiling her face. Her hand was in his, her blue eyes were on him, her smile was only for him.
Harry’s braggart boyish heart swelled so full in his chest that he could scarcely reply to his part of the service. Arthur was gone, and he was Prince of Wales; Arthur was gone, and he was his father’s favorite, the rosebush of England. Arthur was gone, and Arthur’s bride was his wife. He stood straight and proud and repeated his oaths in his clear treble voice. Arthur was gone, and there was only one Prince of Wales and one Princess: Prince Harry and Princess Katherine.
Princess Again
1504
I MAY THINK THAT I HAVE WON, but still I have not won. I should have won, but I have not won. Harry reaches twelve, and they declare him Prince of Wales but they do not come for me, declare our betrothal, or invest me as princess. I send for the ambassador. He does not come in the morning, he does not even come that day. He comes the day after, as if my affairs have no urgency, and he does not apologize for his delay. I ask him why I have not been invested as Princess of Wales alongside Harry and he does not know. He suggests that they are waiting for the payment of my dowry and without it nothing can go ahead. But he knows, and I know, and King Henry knows, that I no longer have all my plate to give to them, and if my father will not send his share, there is nothing I can do.
My mother the queen must know that I am desolate, but I hear from her only rarely. It is as if I am one of her explorers, a solitary Cristóbal Colón with no companions and no maps. She has sent me out into the world and if I tumble off the edge or am lost at sea, there is nothing that anyone can do.
She has nothing to say to me. I fear that she is ashamed of me, as I wait at court like a supplicant for the prince to honor his promise. In November I am so filled with foreboding that she is ill or sad that I write to her and beg her to reply to me, to send me at least one word. That, as it happens, was the very day that she died and so she never had my letter and I never had my one word. She leaves me in death as she left me in life: to silence and a sense of her absence.
I knew that I would miss her when I left home. But it was a comfort to me to know that the sun still shone in the gardens of the Alhambra and she was still there beside the green-trimmed pool. I did not know that the loss of her would make my situation in England so much worse. My father, having long refused to pay the second half of my dowry as part of his game with the King of England, now finds his play has become a bitter fruit—he cannot pay. He has spent his life and his fortune in ceaseless crusade against the Moors and there is no money left for anyone. The rich revenues of Castile are now paid to Juana, my mother’s heir, and my father has nothing in the treasury of Aragon for my marriage. My father is now no more than one of the many kings of Spain. Juana is the great heiress of Castile, and, if the gossips are to be believed, Juana has run as mad as a rabid dog, tormented by love and by her husband into insanity. Anyone looking at me now no longer sees a princess of a united Spain, one of the great brides of Christendom, but a widowed pauper with bad blood. Our family fortunes are cascading down like a house of cards without my mother’s steady hand and watchful eye. There is nothing left for my father but despair, and I fear that is all the dowry he can give me.
I am only nineteen. Is my life over?
1509
And then, I waited. Incredibly, I waited for a total of six years. Six years when I went from a bride of seventeen to a woman of twenty-three. I knew then that King Henry’s rage against me was bitter, and effective, and long-lasting. No princess in the world had ever been made to wait so long or been treated so harshly, or left in such despair. I am not exaggerating this, as a troubadour might do to make a better story—as I might have told you, beloved, in the dark hours of the night. No, it was not like a story, it was not even like a life. It was like a prison sentence; it was like being a hostage with no chance of redemption; it was loneliness and the slow realization that I had failed.
I failed my mother and failed to bring to her the alliance with England that I had been born and bred to do. I was ashamed of my failure. Without the dowry payment from Spain I could not force the English to honor the betrothal. With the king’s enmity I could force them to do nothing. Harry was a child of thirteen. I hardly ever saw him. I could not appeal to him to make his promise good. I was powerless, neglected by the court, and falling into shameful poverty.
Then Harry was fourteen years of age and our betrothal was still not made marriage, and that marriage not celebrated. I waited a year. He reached fifteen years, and nobody came for me. So Harry reached his sixteenth, and then his seventeenth birthday, and still nobody came for me. Those years turned. I grew older. I waited. I was constant. It was all I could be.
I turned the panels on my gowns and sold my jewels for food. I had to sell my precious plate, one gold piece at a time. I knew it was the property of the king as I sent for the goldsmiths. I knew that each time I pawned a piece I put my wedding back another day. But I had to eat, my household had to eat. I could pay them no wages, I could hardly ask them to beg for me as well as go hungry on their own account.
I was friendless. I discovered that Doña Elvira was plotting against my father in favor of Juana and her husband, Philip, and I dismissed her in a rage and sent her away. I did not care if she spoke against me, if she named me as a liar. I did not care even if she declared that Arthur and I had been lovers. I had caught her in treason against my father; did she truly think I would ally with my sister against the King of Aragon? I was so angry that I did not care what her enmity cost me.
Also, since I am not a fool, I calculated rightly that no one would believe her word against mine. She fled to Philip and Juana in the Netherlands, and I never heard from her again, and I never complained of my loss.
I lost my ambassador, Dr. de Puebla. I had often complained to my father of his divided loyalties, of his disrespect, of his concessions to the English court. But when he was recalled to Spain I found that he had known more than I had realized, he had used his friendship with the king to my advantage, he had understood his way around this most difficult court. He had been a better friend than I had known, and I was the poorer without him. I lost a friend and an ally, through my own arrogance, and I was sorry for his absence. His replacement: the emissary who had come to take me home, Don Gutierre Gómez de Fuensalida, was a pompous fool who thought the English were honored by his presence. They sneered at his face and laughed behind his back, and I was a ragged princess with an ambassador entranced by his own self-importance.
I lost my dear father in Christ, the confessor I trusted, appointed by my mother to guide me, and I had to find another for myself. I lost the ladies of my little court, who would not live in hardship and poverty,
and I could not pay anyone else to serve me. María de Salinas stood by me through all these long years of endurance, for love; but the other ladies wanted to leave. Then, finally, I lost my house, my lovely house on the Strand, which had been my home, a little safe place in this most foreign land.
The king promised me rooms at court and I thought that he had at last forgiven me. I thought he was offering me to come to court, to live in the rooms of a princess and to see Harry. But when I moved my household there I found that I was given the worst rooms, allocated the poorest service, unable to see the prince except on the most formal of state occasions. One dreadful day, the court left on progress without telling us and we had to dash after them, finding our way down the unmarked country lanes, as unwanted and as irrelevant as a wagon filled with old goods. When we caught up, no one had noticed that we were missing and I had to take the only rooms left: over the stables, like a servant.
The king stopped paying my allowance; his mother did not press my case. I had no money of my own at all. I lived despised on the fringe of the court, with Spaniards who served me only because they could not leave. They were trapped like me, watching the years slide by, getting older and more resentful till I felt like the sleeping princess of the fairy tale and thought that I would never wake.
I lost my vanity—my proud sense that I could be cleverer than that old fox who was my father-in-law and that sharp vixen his mother. I learned that he had betrothed me to his son Prince Harry not because he loved and forgave me, but because it was the cleverest and cruelest way to punish me. If he could not have me, then he could make sure that no one had me. It was a bitter day when I realized that.
And then Philip died and my sister Juana was a widow like me, and King Henry came up with a plan to marry her, my poor sister—driven from her wits by the loss of her husband—and put her over me, on the throne of England, where everyone would see that she was crazed, where everyone could see the bad blood which I share, where everyone would know that he had made her queen and thrown me down to nothing. It was a wicked plan, certain to shame and distress both me and Juana. He would have done it if he could, and he made me his pander as well—he forced me to recommend him to my father. Under my father’s orders I spoke to the king of Juana’s beauty; under the king’s orders I urged my father to accept his suit, all the time knowing that I was betraying my very soul. I lost my ability to refuse King Henry my persecutor, my father-in-law, my would-be seducer. I was afraid to say no to him. I was very much reduced that day.
I lost my vanity in my allure, I lost my confidence in my intelligence and skills, but I never lost my will to live. I was not like my mother, I was not like Juana, I did not turn my face to the wall and long for my pain to be over. I did not slide into the wailing grief of madness nor into the gentle darkness of sloth. I gritted my teeth, I am the constant princess, I don’t stop when everyone else stops. I carried on. I waited. Even when I could do nothing else, I could still wait. So I waited.
These were not the years of my defeat; these were the years when I grew up, and it was a bitter maturing. I grew from a girl of sixteen ready for love to a half-orphaned, lonely widow of twenty-three. These were the years when I drew on the happiness of my childhood in the Alhambra and my love for my husband to sustain me, and swore that whatever the obstacles before me, I should be Queen of England. These were the years when, though my mother was dead, she lived again through me. I found her determination inside me, I found her courage inside me, I found Arthur’s love and optimism inside me. These were the years when although I had nothing left—no husband, no mother, no friends, no fortune and no prospects—I swore that however disregarded, however poor, however unlikely a prospect, I would still be Queen of England.
News, always slow to reach the bedraggled Spaniards on the fringe of the royal court, filtered through that Harry’s sister the Princess Mary was to be married, gloriously, to Prince Charles, son of King Philip and Queen Juana, grandson to both the Emperor Maximilian and King Ferdinand. Amazingly, at this of all moments, King Ferdinand at last found the money for Catalina’s dowry and packed it off to London.
“My God, we are freed. There can be a double wedding. I can marry him,” Catalina said, heartfelt, to the Spanish emissary, Don Gutierre Gómez de Fuensalida.
He was pale with worry, his yellow teeth nipping at his lips. “Oh, Infanta, I hardly know how to tell you. Even with this alliance, even with the dowry money—dear God, I fear it comes too late. I fear it will not help us at all.”
“How can it be? Princess Mary’s betrothal only deepens the alliance with my family.”
“What if…” he started and broke off. He could hardly speak of the danger that he foresaw. “Princess, all the English know that the dowry money is coming, but they do not speak of your marriage. Oh, Princess, what if they plan an alliance that does not include Spain? What if they plan an alliance between the emperor and King Henry? What if the alliance is for them to go to war against Spain?”
She turned her head. “It cannot be.”
“What if it is?”
“Against the boy’s own grandfather?” she demanded.
“It would only be one grandfather, the emperor, against another, your father.”
“They would not,” she said determinedly.
“They could.”
“King Henry would not be so dishonest.”
“Princess, you know that he would.”
She hesitated. “What is it?” she suddenly demanded, sharp with irritation. “There is something else. Something you are not telling me. What is it?”
He paused, a lie in his mouth; then he told her the truth. “I am afraid, I am very afraid, that they will betroth Prince Harry to Princess Eleanor, the sister of Charles.”
“They cannot, he is betrothed to me.”
“They may plan it as part of a great treaty. Your sister Juana to marry the king, your nephew Charles for Princess Mary, and your niece Eleanor for Prince Harry.”
“But what about me? Now that my dowry money is on its way at last?”
He was silent. It was painfully apparent that Catalina was excluded by these alliances and no provision made for her.
“A true prince has to honor his promise,” she said passionately. “We were betrothed by a bishop before witnesses. It is a solemn oath.”
The ambassador shrugged, hesitated. He could hardly make himself tell her the worst news of all. “Your Grace, Princess, be brave. I am afraid he may withdraw his oath.”
“He cannot.”
Fuensalida went further. “Indeed, I am afraid it is already withdrawn. He may have withdrawn it years ago.”
“What?” she asked sharply. “How?”
“A rumor, I cannot be sure of it. But I am afraid…” He broke off.
“Afraid of what?”
“I am afraid that the prince may be already released from his betrothal to you.” He hesitated at the sudden darkening of her face. “It will not have been his choice,” he said quickly. “His father is determined against us.”
“How could he? How can such a thing be done?”
“He could have sworn an oath that he was too young, that he was under duress. He may have declared that he did not want to marry you. Indeed, I think that is what he has done.”
“He was not under duress!” Catalina exclaimed. “He was utterly delighted. He has been in love with me for years, I am sure he still is. He did want to marry me!”
“An oath sworn before a bishop that he was not acting of his own free will would be enough to secure his release from his promise.”
“So all these years that I have been betrothed to him, and acted on that premise, all these years that I have waited and waited and endured…” She could not finish. “Are you telling me that for all these years, when I believed that we had them tied down, contracted, bound, he has been free?”
The ambassador nodded; her face was so stark and shocked that he could hardly find his voice.
“This is…a b
etrayal,” she said. “A most terrible betrayal.” She choked on the words. “This is the worst betrayal of all.”
He nodded again.
There was a long, painful silence. “I am lost,” she said simply. “Now I know it. I have been lost for years and I did not know. I have been fighting a battle with no army, with no support. Actually—with no cause. You tell me that I have been defending a cause that was gone long ago. I was fighting for my betrothal but I was not betrothed. I have been all alone, all this long time. And now I know it.”
Still she did not weep, though her blue eyes were horrified.
“I made a promise,” she said, her voice harsh. “I made a solemn and binding promise.”
“Your betrothal?”
She made a little gesture with her hand. “Not that. I swore a promise. A deathbed promise. Now you tell me it has all been for nothing.”
“Princess, you have stayed at your post, as your mother would have wanted you to do.”
“I have been made a fool!” burst out of her, from the depth of her shock. “I have been fighting for the fulfillment of a vow, not knowing that the vow was long broken.”
He could say nothing; her pain was too raw for any soothing words.
After a few moments, she raised her head. “Does everyone know but me?” she asked bleakly.
He shook his head. “I am sure it was kept most secret.”
“My Lady the King’s Mother,” she predicted bitterly. “She will have known. It will have been her decision. And the king, the prince himself, and if he knew, then the Princess Mary will know—he would have told her. And his closest companions…” She raised her head. “The king’s mother’s ladies, the princess’s ladies. The bishop that he swore to, a witness or two. Half the court, I suppose.” She paused. “I thought that at least some of them were my friends,” she said.
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