“I am sure you are right,” she said. “But we must not forget our other enemies. The seas are one border, and we must dominate them with ships both great and small. But our other border must be made safe too.”
“D’you mean the Scots? They have taken their warning from the Pope. I don’t expect to be troubled with them.”
She smiled. She would never openly disagree with him. “Certainly,” she said. “The archbishop has secured us a breathing space. But next year, or the year after, we will have to go against the Scots.”
SUMMER 1512
Then there was nothing for Katherine to do but to wait. It seemed as if everyone was waiting. The English army were in Fuenterrabia, waiting for the Spanish to join with them for their invasion of southern France. The heat of the summer came on as they kicked their heels, ate badly, and drank like thirsty madmen. Katherine alone of Henry’s council knew that the heat of midsummer Spain could kill an army as they did nothing but wait for orders. She concealed her fears from Henry and from the council, but privately she wrote to her father asking what his plans were, she tackled his ambassador asking him what her father intended the English army to do, and when should they march?
Her father, riding with his own army, on the move, did not reply; and the ambassador did not know.
The summer wore on. Katherine did not write again. In a bitter moment, which she did not even acknowledge to herself, she saw that she was not her father’s ally on the chessboard of Europe—she realized that she was nothing more than a pawn in his plan. She did not need to ask her father’s strategy; once he had the English army in place and did not use them, she guessed it.
It grew colder in England, but it was still hot in Spain. At last Ferdinand had a use for his allies, but when he sent for them, and ordered that they should spend the winter season on campaign, they refused to answer his call. They mutinied against their own commanders and demanded to go home.
WINTER 1512
It came as no surprise to Katherine, nor to the cynics on the council when the English army came home in dishonored tatters in December. Lord Dorset, despairing of ever receiving orders and reinforcements from King Ferdinand, confronted by mutinying troops—hungry, weary, and with two thousand men lost to illness—straggled home in disgrace, as he had taken them out in glory.
“What can have gone wrong?” Henry rushed into Katherine’s rooms and waved away her ladies-in-waiting. He was almost in tears of rage at the shame of the defeat. He could not believe that his force that had gone out so bravely should come home in such disarray. He had letters from his father-in-law complaining of the behavior of the English allies. He had lost face in Spain, he had lost face with his enemy France. He fled to Katherine as the only person in the world who would share his shock and dismay. He was almost stammering with distress, it was the first time in his reign that anything had gone wrong and he had thought—like a boy—that nothing would ever go wrong for him.
I take his hands. I have been waiting for this since the first moment in the summer when there was no battle plan for the English troops. As soon as they arrived and were not deployed I knew that we had been misled. Worse, I knew that we had been misled by my father.
I am no fool. I know my father as a commander, and I know him as a man. When he did not fling the English into battle on the day that they arrived, I knew that he had another plan for them, and that plan was hidden from us. My father would never leave good men in camp to gossip and drink and get sick. I was on campaign with my father for most of my childhood. I never saw him let the men sit idle. He always keeps his men moving, he always keeps them in work and out of mischief. There is not a horse in my father’s stables with a pound of extra fat on it; he treats his soldiers just the same.
If the English were left to rot in camp, it was because he had need of them just where they were—in camp. He did not care that they were getting sick and lazy. That made me look again at the map and I saw what he was doing. He was using them as a counterweight, as an inactive diversion. I read the reports from our commanders as they arrived—their complaints at their pointless inaction, their exercises on the border, sighting the French army and being seen by them, but not being ordered to engage—and I knew I was right. My father kept the English troops dancing on the spot in Fuenterrabia so that the French, alarmed by such a force on their flank, would place their army in defense. Guarding against the English they could not attack my father who, joyously alone and unencumbered, at the head of his troops, marched into the unprotected kingdom of Navarre and so picked up that which he had desired for so long at no expense or danger to himself.
“My dear, your soldiers were not tried and found wanting,” I say to my distressed young husband. “There is no question as to the courage of the English. There can be no doubting you.”
“He says…” He waves the letter at me.
“It doesn’t matter what he says,” I say patiently. “You have to look at what he does.”
The face he turns to me is so hurt that I cannot bring myself to tell him that my father has used him, played him for a fool, used his army, used even me, to win himself Navarre.
“My father has taken his fee before his work, that is all,” I say robustly. “Now we have to make him do the work.”
“What do you mean?” Henry is still puzzled.
“God forgive me for saying it, but my father is a masterly double-dealer. If we are going to make treaties with him, we will have to learn to be as clever as him. He made a treaty with us and said he would be our partner in war against France, but all we have done is win him Navarre, by sending our army out and home again.”
“They have been shamed. I have been shamed.”
He cannot understand what I am trying to tell him. “Your army has done exactly what my father wanted them to do. In that sense, it has been a most successful campaign.”
“They did nothing! He complains to me that they are good for nothing!”
“They pinned down the French with that nothing. Think of that! The French have lost Navarre.”
“I want to court-martial Dorset!”
“Yes, we can do so, if you wish. But the main thing is that we still have our army, we have lost only two thousand men, and my father is our ally. He owes us for this year. Next year you can go back to France and this time Father will fight for us, not us for him.”
“He says he will conquer Guienne for me; he says it as if I cannot do it myself! He speaks to me as a weakling with a useless force!”
“Good,” I say, surprising him. “Let him conquer Guienne for us.”
“He wants us to pay him.”
“Let us pay for it. What does it matter as long as my father is on our side when we go to war with the French? If he wins Guienne for us, then that is to our good; if he does not, but just distracts the French when we invade in the north from Calais, then that is all to the good as well.”
For a moment he gapes at me, his head spinning. Then he sees what I mean. “He pins down the French for us as we advance, just as we did for him?”
“Exactly.”
“We use him, as he used us?”
“Yes.”
He is amazed. “Did your father teach you how to do this—to plan ahead as if a campaign were a chessboard, and you have to move the pieces around?”
I shake my head. “Not on purpose. But you cannot live with a man like my father without learning the arts of diplomacy. You know Machiavelli himself called him the perfect prince? You could not be at my father’s court, as I was, or on campaign with him, as I was, without seeing that he spends his life seeking advantage. He taught me every day. I could not help but learn, just from watching him. I know how his mind works. I know how a general thinks.”
“But what made you think of invading from Calais?”
“Oh, my dear, where else would England invade France? My father can fight in the south for us, and we will see if he can win us Guienne. You can be sure that he will do so if it is in his inte
rest. And, at any rate, while he is doing that, the French will not be able to defend Normandy.”
Henry’s confidence comes rushing back to him. “I shall go myself,” he declares. “I shall take to the field of battle myself. Your father will not be able to criticize the command of the English army if I do it myself.”
For a moment I hesitate. Even playing at war is a dangerous game, and while we do not have an heir, Henry is precious beyond belief. Without him, the safety of England will be torn between a hundred pretenders. But I will never keep my hold on him if I coop him up as his grandmother did. Henry will have to learn the nature of war, and I know that he will be safest in a campaign commanded by my father, who wants to keep me on my throne as much as I want it; and safer by far facing the chivalrous French than the murderous Scots. Besides, I have a plan that is a secret. And it requires him to be out of the country.
“Yes, you shall,” I say. “And you shall have the best armor and strongest horse and handsomest guard of any other king who takes the field.”
“Thomas Howard says that we should abandon our battle against France until we have suppressed the Scots.”
I shake my head. “You shall fight in France in the alliance of the three kings,” I assure him. “It will be a mighty war, one that everyone will remember. The Scots are a minor danger, they can wait. At the worst they are a petty border raid. And if they invade the north when you go to war, they are so unimportant that even I could command an expedition against them while you go to the real war in France.”
“You?” he asks.
“Why not? Are we not a king and queen come young to our thrones in our power? Who should deny us?”
“No one! I shall not be diverted,” Henry declares. “I shall conquer in France and you shall guard us against the Scots.”
“I will,” I promise him. This is just what I want.
SPRING 1513
Henry talked of nothing but war all winter, and in the spring Katherine started a great muster of men and materials for the invasion of northern France. The treaty with Ferdinand agreed that he would invade Guienne for England at the same time as the English troops took Normandy. The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian would join with the English army in the battle in the north. It was an infallible plan if the three parties attacked simultaneously, if they kept meticulous faith with each other.
It comes as no surprise to me to find that my father has been talking peace with France in the very same days that I have had Thomas Wolsey, my right-hand man, the royal almoner, writing to every town in England and asking them how many men they can muster for the king’s service when we go to war in France. I knew my father would think only of the survival of Spain: Spain before everything. I do not blame him for it. Now that I am a queen I understand a little better what it means to love a country with such a passion that one will betray anything—even one’s own child, as he does—to keep it safe. My father, with the prospect on one hand of a troublesome war and little gain and, on the other hand peace, with everything to play for, chooses peace and chooses France as his friend. He has betrayed us in absolute secrecy and he fooled even me.
When the news of his grand perfidy comes out he blames it all on his ambassador, and on letters going astray. It is a slight excuse, but I do not complain. My father will join us as soon as it looks as if we will win. The main thing for me now is that Henry should have his campaign in France and leave me alone to settle with the Scots.
“He has to learn how to lead men into battle,” Thomas Howard says to me. “Not boys into a bawdy house—excuse me, Your Grace.”
“I know,” I reply. “He has to win his spurs. But there is such a risk.”
The old soldier puts his hand over mine. “Very few kings die in battle,” he says. “Don’t think of King Richard, for he all but ran on the swords. He knew he was betrayed. Mostly, kings get ransomed. It’s not one half of the risk that you will be facing if you equip an army and send it across the narrow seas to France, and then try and fight the Scots with what is left.”
I am silent for a moment. I did not know that he had seen what I plan. “Who thinks that this is what I am doing?”
“Only me.”
“Have you told anyone?”
“No,” he says stoically. “My first duty is to England, and I think you are right. We have to finish with the Scots once and for all, and it had better be done when the king is safely overseas.”
“I see you don’t fear overmuch for my safety?” I observe.
He shrugs and smiles. “You are a queen,” he says. “Dearly beloved, perhaps. But we can always get another queen. We have no other Tudor king.”
“I know,” I say. It is a truth as clear as water. I can be replaced but Henry cannot. Not until I have a Tudor son.
Thomas Howard has guessed my plan. I have no doubt in my mind where my truest duty lies. It is as Arthur taught me—the greatest danger to the safety of England comes from the north, from the Scots, and so it is to the north that I should march. Henry should be encouraged to put on his most handsome armor to go with his most agreeable friends in a sort of grand joust against the French. But there will be bloody work on the northern border; a victory there will keep us safe for generations. If I want to make England safe for me and for my unborn son, and for the kings who come after me, I must defeat the Scots.
Even if I never have a son, even if I never have cause to go to Walsingham to thank Our Lady for the son she has given me, I shall still have done my first and greatest duty by this, my beloved country of England, if I beat the Scots. Even if I die in doing it.
I maintain Henry’s resolve; I do not allow him to lose his temper or his will. I fight the Privy Council who choose to see my father’s unreliability as another sign that we should not go to war. Partly, I agree with them. I think we have no real cause against France and no great gains to make. But I know that Henry is wild to go to war and he thinks that France is his enemy and King Louis his rival. I want Henry out of the way this summer, when it is my intention to destroy the Scots. I know that the only thing that can divert him will be a glorious war. I want war, not because I am angry with the French or want to show our strength to my father; I want war because we have the French to the south and the Scots to the north and we will have to engage with one and play with the other to keep England safe.
I spend hours on my knees in the royal chapel; but it is Arthur that I am talking to, in long, silent reveries. “I am sure I am right, my love,” I whisper into my clasped hands. “I am sure that you were right when you warned me of the danger of the Scots. We have to subdue the Scots, or we will never have a kingdom that can sleep in peace. If I can have my way, this will be the year when the fate of England is decided. If I have my way, I will send Henry against the French and I will go against the Scots and our fate can be decided. I know the Scots are the greater danger. Everyone thinks of the French—your brother thinks of nothing but the French—but these are men who know nothing of the reality of war. The enemy who is across the sea, however much you hate him, is a lesser enemy than the one who can march over your borders in a night.”
I can almost see him in the shadowy darkness behind my closed eyes. “Oh, yes,” I say with a smile to him. “You can think that a woman cannot lead an army. You can think that a woman cannot wear armor. But I know more about warfare than most men at this peaceable court. This is a court devoted to jousting; all the young men think war is a game. But I know what war is. I have seen it. This is the year when you will see me ride out as my mother did, when you see me face our enemy—the only enemy that really matters. This is my country now; you yourself made it my country. And I will defend it for you, for me, and for our heirs.”
The English preparations for the war against France went on briskly, with Katherine and Thomas Wolsey, her faithful assistant, working daily on the muster rolls for the towns, the gathering of provisions for the army, the forging of armor, and the training of volunteers to march, prepare to attack, and retrea
t, on command. Wolsey observed that the queen had two muster rolls, almost as if she were preparing for two armies. “Are you thinking we will have to fight the Scots as well as the French?” he asked her.
“I am sure of it.”
“The Scots will snap at us as soon as our troops leave for France,” he said. “We shall have to reinforce the borders.”
“I hope to do more than that,” was all she said.
“His Grace the King will not be distracted from his war with France,” he pointed out.
She did not confide in him, as he wanted her to do. “I know. We must make sure he has a great force to take to Calais. He must not be distracted by anything.”
“We will have to keep some men back to defend against the Scots. They are certain to attack,” he warned her.
“Border guards,” she said dismissively.
Handsome young Edward Howard, in a new cloak of dark sea-blue, came to take leave of Katherine as the fleet prepared to set sail with orders to blockade the French in port, or engage them if possible on the high seas.
“God bless you,” said the queen, and heard her voice a little shaken with emotion. “God bless you, Edward Howard, and may your luck go with you as it always does.”
He bowed low. “I have the luck of a man favored by a great queen who serves a great country,” he said. “It is an honor to serve my country, the king…and”—he lowered his voice to an intimate whisper—“and you, my queen.”
Katherine smiled. All of Henry’s friends shared a tendency to think themselves into the pages of a romance. Camelot was never very far away from their minds. Katherine had served as the lady of the courtly myth ever since she had been queen. She liked Edward Howard more than any of the other young men. His genuine gaiety and his open affection endeared him to everyone, and he had a passion for the navy and the ships under his command that commended him to Katherine, who saw the safety of England could only be assured by holding the seas.
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