Katharine, the Virgin Widow

by Виктория Холт

  A horrified silence fell on the company. The sweating sickness was considered to be one of the greatest calamities which could befall a community. It spread rapidly from one to another and invariably ended in death, although if the patient could survive the first twenty-four hours of the disease, it was said that he usually recovered.

  Questions were fired at Griffith, who said that several of the townsfolk were stricken and that he had himself seen people in the streets sinking to the ground because the fever had overcome them before they could reach their homes.

  When this was explained to Elvira she began giving rapid orders. The castle was to be closed to all visitors; they were to consider themselves in a state of siege. At all costs the sweating sickness must not be allowed to enter Ludlow Castle while the Infanta of Spain was there.

  The news had cast a gloom on the company, but Katharine was eager to know more about the dreaded disease, and Griffith sat beside her and told her and Arthur how it began with a fever and that many died before the sweating stage began. Then they sweated profusely and, if they could cling to life long enough, they stood a chance of recovery; for in sweating they cast off the evil humors of the body and thus recovered.

  Arthur was disturbed; he told Katharine: “The disease broke out soon after my father won the throne. I think some looked upon it as an evil omen. It is strange that it should have broken out here in Ludlow now we are come. It would seem that there is a blight on our House.”

  “No,” replied Katharine fiercely, “this sickness could happen anywhere.”

  “It started in the army which landed at Milford Haven with my father.”

  Katharine endeavored to disperse his gloom, but it was not easy; and that night the singing ceased in Ludlow Castle.

  * * *

  * * *

  * * *

  KATHARINE AWOKE in the night. She was conscious of a curious burning sensation in her limbs; she tried to call out but her mouth was parched.

  She lay still, thinking: So it has come to Ludlow Castle and I am its victim. Yet if I am to die, then I shall be with my sister Isabella and my brother Juan, and I think I should be happy.

  There was another thought which came to her and which she would not voice. It was that her mother might not be long for this world, and if she too were going to pass from the Earth to be with Isabella and Juan, then Katharine would long to join them.

  She felt lightheaded; she had forgotten she was in grim Ludlow Castle; she thought she was back behind the rose-tinted walls of the Alhambra; she thought that she lingered in one of the patios, trailing her hot fingers in the cool fountains; but the fountains were not cool; they were hot as fire and she believed she had put her fingers in the fires in which the heretics were burned, mistaking them for fountains.

  She was tossing from side to side in her bed when Maria de Rojas came to bid her good morning.

  Maria took one look at her mistress and was terrified. She ran screaming to Doña Elvira.

  * * *

  * * *

  * * *

  SO KATHARINE lay a victim of the dreaded sickness. All through the day and night which followed Elvira was in the sickroom. Angrily she ordered possets and herbal drinks to be prepared in case they might be of some use to her Infanta. She cursed those who had dared bring infection into the castle. She had no thought of anything but the health of her mistress.

  Katharine had passed into the sweating period. Elvira hovered anxiously about her bed. If she sweated profusely the evil humors would be thrown off; and she was sweating.

  “The Sovereigns will never forgive me,” cried Elvira, “for letting their daughter face such infection. She must recover. It is unthinkable that she should die…her dowry not even paid, her virginity intact.”

  The energy of Doña Elvira affected all who came in contact with the sickroom.

  News was brought for Katharine, but Elvira would not admit the messenger.

  So the Prince was sick? Well, was not the Prince always ailing? The Infanta, who was never ill, was now laid low with their miserable sweating sickness!

  It was twenty-four hours since Katharine had been taken ill. She lay limp and exhausted on her bed; but she still lived.

  Doña Elvira busied herself with making a brew of aromatic herbs, laurel and juniper berries which the physicians had recommended; and when Katharine had drunk it she opened her eyes and said: “Doña Elvira, bring my mother to me.”

  “You are in your bed in Ludlow Castle, Highness. You have been very ill but I have nursed you back to health.”

  Katharine nodded her head slightly. “I remember now,” she said; and there were tears in her eyes which would never have appeared but for her bodily weakness. She wanted her mother now, even more than ever. She knew that, if only she could feel that cool hand on her brow, see those serene eyes looking into hers, commanding her to bear whatever ill fortune God had seen fit to send to her, she could have wept for joy; as it was she could not prevent herself from weeping in sorrow.

  “The worst is over,” said Elvira. “You will get well now. I have nursed you with my own hands, and shall do so until you are completely recovered.”

  “Thank you, Doña Elvira.”

  Elvira took Katharine’s hand in hers and kissed it. “Always I am at your service, my dearest Infanta,” she said. “Do you not understand that?”

  “I understand,” said Katharine; and she closed her eyes. But try as she might she could not prevent the tears seeping through.

  If I could see her but once…she thought. She turned her head that Doña Elvira might not see the tears.

  “Does my mother know of my illness?” she asked.

  “She will hear of it and of your recovery in the same message.”

  “I am glad of that. Now she will not be grieved. If I had died that would have been her greatest sorrow. She loves me dearly.”

  Now the tears were flowing more freely, and it was no use trying to restrain them. These were the tears which had been demanding to be shed for so long, and which in her strength she had withheld. Now she was too weak to fight them and she wept shamelessly.

  “For she loves me so,” she whispered, “and we are parted. There will never be another to love me as my mother loved me. All my life there will never be love for me such as she gave me.”

  “What nonsense is this?” said Elvira. “You must keep well covered. It may be that you have not sweated enough. There may be more humors to be released. Come, what would your mother say if she saw those foolish tears?”

  “She would understand,” cried Katharine. “Did she not always understand?”

  Elvira covered her up sharply. The Infanta’s tears shocked her.

  She is very weak, she thought. But the worst is over. I have nursed her through this. She is right when she says the Queen dotes on her. I shall have Isabella’s undying gratitude for nursing her daughter through this illness.

  * * *

  * * *

  * * *

  THERE WAS A MUFFLED silence throughout the castle. People were speaking in whispers. Griffith ap Rhys sat with his harp at his knees, but the harp was silent.

  There was death in the Castle of Ludlow. Disease had struck where it could not be defeated.

  In the chamber of the Prince of Wales the candles were lighted by the bed and the watchers kept their vigil. Sir Richard Pole’s courier was on his way to Greenwich, to break the news to the King and Queen.

  In the whole of Ludlow Castle Katharine, lying on her sick bed, was the only one who did not know that this day she had become a widow.

  Intrigue at Durham House

  AS SOON AS QUEEN ELIZABETH RECEIVED THE MESSAGE that she was to go with all haste to the King’s chamber, as soon as she looked into the face of the messenger, she knew that some dire tragedy had befallen her House. And when she learned that the couriers had come from Ludlow she guessed that what she had been dreading so long had at last taken place.

  She steeled herself for the ordeal.


  Henry was standing in the center of the chamber; his usually pale face was gray and his eyes looked stricken. He did not speak for a moment, and the Queen’s glance went from her husband to the Friar Observant who was the King’s confessor.

  “My son?” whispered the Queen.

  The Friar bowed his head.

  “He is…ill?”

  “He has departed to God, Your Grace.”

  The Queen did not speak. For so many years she had waited for this news, dreading it. The fear of it had come to her in the days when she had held Arthur in her arms, a weak baby who did not cry but lay placid in his cradle, not because he was contented, but because he was too weak for aught else. It had come at last.

  The King said: “Pray leave the Queen and myself. We will share this painful sorrow alone.”

  The Friar left them and even when the door shut on them they did not move towards each other; and for some seconds there was silence between them.

  It was the King who broke it. “This is a bitter blow.”

  She nodded. “He was never strong. I always feared it. Now it has befallen us.”

  She lifted her eyes to her husband’s face and she was suddenly aware of a deep pity for him. She looked at the lean face, the lines etched by the sides of his mouth; the eyes which were too alert. She read the thoughts behind that lean and clever face. The heir to the throne was dead, and there was only one male child left to him. There was also a nobility which he would never trust and which was constantly on the alert to shout that the Tudors had no legitimate claim to the throne. All her life Elizabeth had lived close to the struggle to win and keep a crown. It was painful to her now that her husband should not think of Arthur as their dear son, but as the heir.

  He would never know what it was to love, to feel acute sorrow such as she was feeling now. Should she feel envious of him because he did not suffer as she did through the loss of their son? No, even in this bitter moment she felt sorry for him because he would never know the joy of loving.

  “Why does God do this to us?” demanded Henry harshly. “The Friar has just said that if we receive good at the hands of God, we must patiently sustain the ill He sends us.”

  “It is true,” said Elizabeth. She went to the window and looked out on the river as it flowed peacefully past this Palace of Greenwich. “We have much for which to thank God,” she added.

  “But this was my eldest son…my heir!”

  “You must not grieve. You must remember that you have your duty to do. You have other children.”

  “Yet the plague could carry off our children in a few hours.”

  “Arthur was not strong enough to withstand the attack. The others are stronger. Why, Henry, your mother had but you, and look to what you have come. You have one healthy Prince and two Princesses.”

  “Henry is my heir now,” mused the King.

  Elizabeth had left the window and was walking towards him. She had to comfort him.

  “Henry,” she said, “we are not old. Perhaps we shall have more children. More sons.”

  The King seemed somewhat pacified. He put his arm about her and said with more feeling than he usually displayed: “You have been a good wife to me. But of course we shall get ourselves more sons.”

  She closed her eyes and tried to smile. She was thinking of the nights ahead which must be dedicated to the begetting of children. She longed for peace at night. She was growing more and more aware of her need for rest. She thought of the weary months of pregnancy, which must precede a birth.

  But it was the duty of Queens to turn their backs on sorrow, to stop grieving for the children who were lost to them, and to think of those as yet unborn.

  Henry took her hand and raised it to his cold lips.

  He said as he released it: “I see trouble ahead with regard to Katharine’s dowry. If only Arthur had lived another year it should all have been paid over, and perhaps by that time Arthur would have got her with child.”

  The Queen did not answer; she fancied that her husband was reproving their delicate son for dying at a time most inconvenient to his father’s schemes.

  Poor Henry! she mused. He knows nothing of love. He knows little of anything but statecraft and the best methods of filling the coffers of his treasury.

  Why should she say Poor Henry! when he was quite unaware of any lack in his life? Perhaps she should say Poor Katharine, who at this time lay sick at Ludlow, her dowry half paid, her position most insecure. What would happen to Katharine of Aragon now? The Queen of England would do all in her power to help the poor child, but what power had the Queen of England?

  * * *

  BEFORE THE burnished mirror in his apartment young Henry stood.

  He had received the news with mingled feelings. Arthur…dead! He had known it must happen, but it was nevertheless a shock when the news came.

  Never to see Arthur again! Never to show off his superior prowess, never to strut before the delicate brother. It made him feel a little sad.

  But what great avenues were opening out before him. To be Prince of Wales when one had been Duke of York! This was no trifling title, for one who had been destined to become Archbishop of Canterbury would one day be King of England.

  King of England! The little eyes were alight with pleasure; the smooth cheeks flushed pink. Now the homage he received would be doubled, the cries of the people in the streets intensified.

  No longer Prince Henry—but Henry, Prince of Wales, heir to the throne of England.

  “Henry VIII of England!” There were no sweeter words in the English language.

  When he contemplated them and all they meant he could cease to grieve for the death of his delicate brother Arthur.

  * * *

  IN A LITTER, covered with black velvet and black cloth, Katharine travelled from Ludlow to Richmond. How different was this journey from that other which she had taken such a short time before with Arthur!

  The weather had changed, but Katharine was unaware of all the beauty of an English spring. She could think only of the husband whom she had lost, the husband who had been no husband.

  And then there came a sudden blinding flash of hope as she remembered the fate of her sister Isabella, which was so like her own. Isabella had gone into Portugal to marry the heir to the throne, and shortly after their marriage he had died in a hunting accident. The result was that Isabella had returned to Spain.

  Now, thought Katharine, they will send me home. I shall see my mother again.

  So how could she be completely unhappy at that prospect? She believed that this time next year her stay in England would be like a distant dream. She would wander through the flagged corridors of the Alhambra; she would look through her windows on to the Courtyard of Lions; she would stray into the Court of Myrtles, and her mother would be beside her. The pomegranate would no longer merely be a device; it would be all about her—growing in the gardens, pictured on the shields and the walls of her parents’ palace. Happiest of all, her mother would be beside her. “You did your duty,” she would say. “You went uncomplaining to England. Now, my Catalina, you shall stay with me for ever.”

  Katharine of Aragon would again become Catalina, Infanta, beloved daughter of the Queen.

  So, as she went on her way to Richmond, she thought tenderly of Arthur who had been so kind to her in life, and who in death would, she believed, bring her relief from bondage.

  * * *

  QUEEN ELIZABETH was waiting to receive the widow.

  Poor child! she thought. She will be desolate. How will she feel, alone in a strange land? Does she realize how her position has changed? She, who was Princess of Wales, is now merely a Spanish Princess, who has been married in name only. If there had been an heir on the way the circumstances would have changed considerably. But now…what is her position? How sad that girls should be used thus by ambitious men.

  The King came to her apartment. He gave her that cool appraising look which she knew meant that he was looking for some sign o
f pregnancy.

  She said: “The Infanta should arrive at Richmond tomorrow, I believe.”

  A wary look replaced the speculative one in the King’s eyes.

  “I will keep her with me for a while,” went on the Queen. “This is a terrible shock for her.”

  “It would not be wise for her to remain at Richmond,” said the King quickly.

  The Queen did not answer, but waited for his commands.

  “She should be installed with her household outside the Court,” went on the King.

  “I thought that, so soon after her bereavement…”

  The King looked surprised. It was rarely that the Queen sought to question his orders.

  “This is a most unsatisfactory state of affairs,” he said. “Our son dead within a few months of his marriage, and that marriage never consummated—or at least so we believe.”

  “You have reason to suspect that it was consummated?” asked the Queen sharply.

  The King shrugged his shoulders. “I ordered that it should not be, but they went to Wales together—two young people, not displeased with each other. It would not have been impossible for them to be together…alone.”

  “If this happened,” said the Queen excitedly, “if Katharine should be with child…”

  “Then she would be carrying the heir to the throne. Our son Henry would not be pleased, I’ll swear.”

  “Henry! He is so like my father sometimes that I do not know whether to rejoice or tremble.”

  “I thank God we have our son Henry, but I am not an old man myself, and I should have some years left to me…enough that Henry may be of age before his turn comes to take the throne. But, as you say, what if Katharine should be carrying a child? It is possible, although I doubt Arthur would have gone against my expressed wish. If only he had lived a few months longer. You may be sure there will be difficulty with those Spaniards.”