It got worse along the way, they tell me. The horses had to be replaced by oxen, whose powerful bodies and split hooves get a better grip. How shameful, though, that the corpse of gentle Prince Arthur should be hauled through the mire by beasts of the field.
Don Alessandro was with them. The rain stopped, he says, when they got to Worcester, so at least they could approach the cathedral with fresh black horses and some semblance of dignity. The assembled bishops looked magnificent, he said. I wish I had been there to see them. The English embroidery done for the church is famous all over Europe – the opus Anglicanum, it is called. I saw something of it at Catherine’s wedding, but the robes worn for a funeral would be different, rich and dark.
Even at this time of grief, the Tudor gift of theatricality did not desert them. The coffin was covered in cloth of gold, and each nobleman who came in added his own golden pall, so that the dead prince lay under a mound of gleaming softness. A man of arms rode a black horse down the aisle of the cathedral, bearing Arthur’s armour and his battle-axe, its head to the floor, and the court officials who carried golden staffs of office broke them in two and cast the pieces into the grave.
Catherine is beginning to regain her strength, but she seems lost and confused. At sixteen, she is a widow. The courtiers still cling to a faint hope that she may be carrying Arthur’s child, but Doña Elvira shakes her head firmly at any mention of it. Catherine herself says nothing.
17th June 1502
At last the weather is dry. It is so good to go out of doors without the hems of one’s dress becoming fouled with mud and one’s shoes sodden. Catherine has had a letter from her mother, who has only just heard of Prince Arthur’s death. Queen Isabella wants Catherine to come home to Spain. She says Ludlow Castle is an unhealthy place, and her daughter must leave it at once. A flutter of hope ran through all the Spaniards here, for all of us long for the sun and for warm tiles under our feet instead of these stinking rushes – but Catherine will not go. Her mouth is set in the obstinate line I know so well, and nothing will move her. The English must keep their side of the bargain, she says. She came here out of duty to marry Prince Arthur, on the promise that she would receive one third of the income from Wales, Chester and Cornwall. “They will not shuffle me off so easily,” she says. And means it.
24th June 1502
One battle, at least, has been won. We are to move to London next week.
25th July 1502
We are at Durham House in the Strand, a road which runs by the River Thames in London. It’s a grand house, built for the bishops of Durham but used mostly by visiting ambassadors. There’s a garden laid out in the Italian style, with low hedges of clipped yew and rosemary, and high walls on either side with peach and plum trees trained against them. Stairs lead down to the river, where one may step into a boat to be rowed up to Westminster – far pleasanter than being jolted over the cobbles in a carriage.
Inside, there’s a great hall, as there has been in all the other mansion houses I’ve seen, with a gallery at one end where musicians can play. This is summer, so it’s not so cold, but smoke drifts past the carved screen from the kitchen and its fires, all part of the same room.
I’d hoped London streets would be cleaner than the muddy lanes of Wales, but there seems to be little difference. The paving hardly exists, and to make things worse, great troupes of oxen go through with barrels of water on their backs, churning up the mud and adding to it with their droppings. In the heavy warmth of the English summer the stink is dreadful.
Uncle Rod was here yesterday on official business. He brought the new envoy from Spain, a tall man called Hernan, the Duke of Estrada. They went to a long meeting from which Doña Elvira emerged looking flushed and angry, and I was longing to know what had happened. I caught my uncle in the garden for a few moments, and he told me there is a huge argument going on about Catherine’s dowry. King Ferdinand paid the first half of it – 100,000 crowns – at the time of the wedding, but he now refuses to pay the second half. His daughter no longer has a husband, he says, so the English cannot claim that their side of the bargain has been kept. What’s more, he wants the first half returned.
King Henry is furious, of course. He was counting on the money from Spain, and if he doesn’t get it, he will not give Catherine her promised income. Indeed, he has not done so up until now, which is why none of her Spanish attendants has yet been paid. I told Uncle Rod how discontented we all feel, and asked if he could persuade the King to release just a little of the money, but he pursed his lips and shook his head. It would be indelicate to speak of money just now, he said, when the King and Queen are still in mourning for their son. I suppose diplomats have to learn to be patient.
26th July 1502
A letter has come from my mother. She has written only once before, in answer to my letter, and then she was full of concern for my welfare, but this time she mentions larger things. King Louis of France has invaded Italy, and there is a danger that Spain will be surrounded by hostile French forces. The English must stand by us, Mama says. Can’t Uncle Rod start negotiating for a new marriage between Catherine and the King’s younger son, Harry?
She doesn’t realize that young Harry is still only eleven years old. A boy is not of legal age to marry until he is fourteen, so there are three years to wait. I think Catherine wishes it were otherwise, for there is something about Harry’s broad-shouldered stance and direct, ruthless stare that disturbs every female heart, young though he is.
1st August 1502
The Spanish retainers here are growing louder in their complaints. They had hoped that Estrada was going to persuade the King to release some money so they would be paid, but nothing has happened and we are all penniless, Catherine as well. Fewer candles burn in the big iron holders, and the cooks present us with thin soup and tough meat, and their faces are full of contempt. Uncle Rod warns me to be careful what I say, but he explained privately that the King’s prime concern is not with Catherine or Spain, but to bring about the wedding between Margaret and King James of Scotland. He needs this strong link, because he is always afraid that the Scots, who have no great love for England, will side with France. Margaret and James would have been married by now had it not been for Arthur’s death and the mourning that followed it, and Henry is full of plans for sending his daughter on the long journey to Edinburgh, with all the great train of soldiers, attendants and courtiers who must go with her. So we will have to wait.
2nd August 1502
Today Doña Elvira flounced into the sewing room and flopped down so heavily that she sent scraps of silk flying everywhere, and burst into tears. Maria and I patted and consoled her, asking what was the matter, and she blurted out indignantly that she had only tried to be helpful. At a meeting with the King and my uncle and various dignitaries, she had said there was no reason why Catherine should not marry Henry’s younger son, because her marriage to Arthur had not been “a proper one”.
She was so agitated that she found herself blurting out what nobody has ever told me. It seems we do indeed copulate in the same way as animals, but when this happens to a girl for the first time, it causes her to bleed a little. In Catherine and Arthur’s case, this did not happen, Doña Elvira says. She would have known, and so would the servants who changed the bed linen.
Apparently this makes a legal difference to Catherine’s status. If her marriage to Arthur was not “consummated”, as they call it, then it has no standing in law. Catherine remains a virgin – and this, Doña Elvira says, is a good thing because there is a passage in the Bible which forbids a man to marry his brother’s widow. If Catherine really was Arthur’s proper wife, then she could not marry his brother. Spain and England need a second marriage, so why are they not glad to know it is perfectly possible? She burst into noisy tears all over again, deeply offended that she had been told to be quiet and that she could not know what she was talking about.
I ran across to Un
cle Rod’s lodgings in the Strand this evening – a poor place, but he, too, has not been paid for months – and asked him to explain. Doña Elvira had put her foot in it rather badly, it seems, though she didn’t know the other side of it. If Catherine was indeed not Arthur’s “proper wife”, then she has no right to the title of Princess of Wales, and no claim to be supported by King Henry. She cannot call herself a royal widow, because she was never a royal wife. She is nothing.
What a nightmare! We are caught in the middle of a dispute between kings, and either way, Catherine is the loser. I wish she would abandon this hopeless struggle, and go home. But she won’t.
10th August 1502
The King’s wife, Queen Elizabeth, has given Catherine some money. It’s not a lot, Catherine confided as we sat stitching by the open window this afternoon, but at least she can pay her servants something of what they are owed. She glanced round to make sure the door was shut, then leaned towards me and said, “Do you know how she got it? She pawned some of the gold plate! Just fancy!”
I’m sure the King does not know. He lives with penny-pinching meanness, counting each candle and refusing to have a fire in his room even though he suffers from asthma and coughs constantly. How many candles will he have to save to pay for sending his daughter in splendour to marry the Scottish king? But as my uncle points out, Henry’s concerns about Scotland come first at the moment. “I will keep trying, my dear,” he said. “After all, I am a Spaniard. All my sympathies are with Catherine. But I have to be careful.” No wonder he looks so tired sometimes.
23rd August 1502
Thomas Fish was here today, bringing Catherine some linen cloth and a length of fine lawn for a pair of embroidered sleeves. He had just come from Windsor, where he takes cloth regularly for the Queen. He also took her some cherry jam made by his wife, for Queen Elizabeth is pregnant again, and has a great longing for the sharp taste of cherries. She has a pet monkey, he says, and this morning it tore to shreds a notebook in which the King keeps his private accounts. His roars of rage made the whole palace tremble, Fish said, and the monkey leapt to Elizabeth for protection. It would be safe with her, for she is a kind woman. Everyone prays she will have a healthy son to replace the lost Arthur. According to Fish, she told her grieving husband, “We are both young enough.”
11th February 1503
The Queen has given birth to a daughter. There is rejoicing, of course, but of a slightly muted kind. A son would have been so much better. The little girl is to be called Katherine, spelled the English way, and all the Spaniards here are pleased.
13th February 1503
Queen Elizabeth is ill with the child-bed fever. We all went to Mass to pray for her safe recovery, but the smell of incense reminded me of the heavy scent that hung about Ludlow after Arthur had died. I must put such thoughts away, for fear they may come true.
20th February 1503
Our prayers did not save her. Sweet Elizabeth, Queen of England, died today on her 37th birthday. We are plunged again into mourning, and the baby Katherine is sickly and unlikely to live. Rain falls like tears.
4th March 1503
All London is in mourning. The state funeral of the Queen took place today at Westminster Abbey, and the chief mourner was Lady Katherine Courtney, after whom the baby, now also dead, had been called. So much for our Spanish hopes that it had been Catherine who was thus honoured.
It was beautifully done, of course. All along Cheapside, groups of 37 white-clad young girls, one for each year of the Queen’s life, stood holding lit tapers, their heads wreathed in leaves and white flowers. Green and white, the Tudor colours. Candles burned in every parish church and torches flared in the sunless London streets, lighting the Queen to her rest.
Only a few weeks ago, anticipating the end of the year’s mourning for Arthur, the Queen gave her daughter Margaret a magnificent gown of crimson, trimmed with the black squirrel fur they call pampilyon. Poor Margaret. Once again her marriage is postponed, and now she must face the journey to Scotland, when it comes, without the support of her beloved mother. She is a happy girl, given the chance, and these months of wearing black have damped her gay spirits. She was so glad when half-mourning allowed her to put a pair of embroidered white sleeves to her black dress, and then bright ones of orange sarcenet, which she loved. There was such a fuss in September when the court removed from Baynard’s Castle to Westminster and she found that the orange sleeves had been left behind. Richard Justice, the Queen’s Page of the Robes, was sent back to fetch them in a hired boat, which he was pleased about because he got paid extra. But now Margaret is in deepest black again, and her marriage will not take place until the summer.
6th March 1503
I found Catherine sitting by the window this morning, staring out at the river in something close to despair. She told me King Henry is thinking of marrying her himself now that Elizabeth is dead. Trying to cheer her up, I said, “But at least that way you would be the Queen of England” – but we both knew how hollow the words were.
Catherine looked at me very straight. “That’s the wrong way, Eva,” she said. “I will be queen one day, but not through marrying Henry. He is 46 and I am seventeen. With his bad chest and his gout, he might die within a couple of years, and then where would I be? A dowager whom nobody wants. Even if I bore his child, it would not be heir to the throne, for that position is Harry’s. So I must be Harry’s wife, not his father’s.”
She is right, of course, but it seems an impossible hope. Three years to wait before the royal boy is old enough to marry, and even then, she may not be the one they choose.
26th March 1503
The King’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, has come to Windsor to take over the running of the royal household. She is immensely capable – I remember well those magnificent banquets at the time of Catherine’s wedding, all of which were organized by her.
Catherine is looking happier. A letter from Queen Isabella has dealt very firmly with Henry’s idea of marrying her daughter. A barbarous notion, she told him. She suggests he should consider the widowed Queen of Naples, who would be much more suitable. Henry, apparently, is sending an envoy out there to inspect her and report back.
5th June 1503
At last Margaret has started on her journey to Scotland for her wedding with James. Henry has gone with her and all her retinue to his mother’s mansion in Collyweston, the first step on the way, and they will all stay there for some days, hunting and disporting themselves. Margaret looked happy at last. She rode a white palfrey whose saddlecloth was embroidered with red roses and the lion of Scotland, and a litter fringed in gold followed her so that she could rest and be carried if she tired of riding. The whole train looked magnificent with its banners flying and the baggage carts striped in white and green, and crowds lined the streets to cheer her. The journey will take a month and the wedding is set for 8th August.
Meanwhile, our living conditions get worse. The bread is dark, musty-tasting stuff, made from bad flour that has started to ferment, and I suspect that mice have got at it, too. My stocks of thread and fabric are almost all used up, and I hate to think of the shameful inactivity that will follow when they are gone. Stripped of any pride in my skilled work, I will be reduced to a mere pauper, living on the crumbs of charity. I have not started on a new design for several weeks, and use my remaining silks for the careful mending of our clothes. As to my function as an interpreter, it is never called for now, although Catherine’s grasp of English is not good. No English courtier has any need to speak to her. We are utterly forgotten.
23rd June 1503
Great news! Uncle Rod’s patient diplomacy has succeeded at last – or something has – for a treaty of intended marriage between Harry and Catherine has been signed. There was such a spontaneous lifting of spirits among us that we needed to celebrate, so off we went down the river to Hampton Court, where Henry is building a great palace. Some of the English nob
les came with us, for now they notice again that we exist, and several of them brought their dogs and crossbows and falcons for an afternoon’s hunting in the countryside. The hawks wore little hoods when they were not flying – as ours do in Spain – but the stitchery of jewels and silver wire on these hoods was exquisite, making the birds look like little emperors as they sat in their darkness.
How strange the English are. In some ways they seem brutish and crude, full of uncouth vulgarity, and yet one hears music sung and played everywhere, and their clothes and linens are a glory of fine, colourful work. They seem to take a lusty joy in beauty of all kinds, and for this one can forgive them much.
5th October 1503
The King has granted Catherine an allowance of 100 pounds a month. She says it will not go far towards keeping us all and paying off her debts (and she wants to retrieve some of the plate she was forced to pawn), but it is much better than nothing.
Nobody gives Uncle Rod any credit for his part in this, though I know it was his work that brought it about. Doña Elvira treats him with open contempt, even though he spoke to the King on her behalf when the Spanish retainers were particularly unruly and caused him to give her a cloth-of-gold cap as a sign of his trust in her authority.
Catherine of Aragon Page 3