The Constant Princess ttc-1

by Philippa Gregory

  “Oh, she knows all about it!” the boy burst out resentfully. “She has no…”

  His father waited. “No…what?”

  “No shame at all.”

  Henry caught his breath. “She is shameless? She is passionate?” He tried to keep the desire from his voice, a sudden lascivious picture of his daughter-in-law, naked and shameless, in his mind.

  “No! She goes at it like a man harnessing a horse,” Arthur said miserably. “A task to be done.”

  Henry choked down a laugh. “But at least she does it,” he said. “You don’t have to beg her or persuade her. She knows what she has to do?”

  Arthur turned from him to the window and looked out of the arrow slit to the cold river Thames below. “I don’t think she likes me. She only likes her Spanish friends, and Mary, and perhaps Henry. I see her laughing with them and dancing with them as if she were very merry in their company. She chatters away with her own people, she is courteous to everyone who passes by. She has a smile for everyone. I hardly ever see her, and I don’t want to see her either.”

  Henry dropped his hand on his son’s shoulder. “My boy, she doesn’t know what she thinks of you,” he assured him. “She’s too busy in her own little world of dresses and jewels and those damned gossipy Spanish women. The sooner you and she are alone together, the sooner you two will come to terms. You can take her with you to Ludlow, and you can get acquainted.”

  The boy nodded, but he did not look convinced. “If it is your wish, sire,” he said formally.

  “Shall I ask her if she wants to go?”

  The color flooded into the young man’s cheeks. “What if she says no?” he asked anxiously.

  His father laughed. “She won’t,” he promised. “You’ll see.”

  Henry was right. Catalina was too much of a princess to say either yes or no to a king. When he asked her if she would like to go to Ludlow with the prince, she said that she would do whatever the king wished.

  “Is Lady Margaret Pole still at the castle?” she asked, her voice a little nervous.

  He scowled at her. Lady Margaret was now safely married to Sir Richard Pole, one of the solid Tudor warhorses, and warden of Ludlow Castle. But Lady Margaret had been born Margaret Plantagenet, beloved daughter of the Duke of Clarence, cousin to King Edward and sister to Edward of Warwick, whose claim to the throne had been so much greater than Henry’s own.

  “What of it?”

  “Nothing,” she said hastily.

  “You have no cause to avoid her,” he said gruffly. “What was done was done in my name, by my order. You don’t bear any blame for it.”

  She flushed as if they were talking of something shameful. “I know.”

  “I can’t have anyone challenging my right to the throne,” he said abruptly. “There are too many of them, Yorks and Beauforts, and Lancasters too, and endless others who fancy their chances as pretenders. You don’t know this country. We’re all married and intermarried like so many coneys in a warren.” He paused to see if she would laugh, but she was frowning, following his rapid French. “I can’t have anyone claiming by their pretended right what I have won by conquest,” he said. “And I won’t have anyone else claiming by conquest either.”

  “I thought you were the true king,” Catalina said hesitantly.

  “I am now,” said Henry Tudor bluntly. “And that’s all that matters.”

  “You were anointed.”

  “I am now,” he repeated with a grim smile.

  “But you are of the royal line?”

  “I have royal blood in my veins,” he said, his voice hard. “No need to measure how much or how little. I picked up my crown off the battlefield, literally, it was at my feet in the mud. So I knew; everyone knew—everyone saw God give me the victory because I was his chosen king. The archbishop anointed me because he knew that too. I am as much king as any in Christendom, and more than most because I did not just inherit as a baby, the fruit of another man’s struggle—God gave me my kingdom when I was a man. It is my just desert.”

  “But you had to claim it…”

  “I claimed my own,” he said finally. “I won my own. God gave my own to me. That’s an end to it.”

  She bowed her head to the energy in his words. “I know, sire.”

  Her submissiveness, and the pride that was hidden behind it, fascinated him. He thought that there had never been a young woman whose smooth face could hide her thoughts like this one.

  “D’you want to stay here with me?” Henry asked softly, knowing that he should not ask her such a thing, praying, as soon as the words were out of his mouth, that she would say no and silence his secret desire for her.

  “Why, I wish whatever Your Majesty wishes,” she said coolly.

  “I suppose you want to be with Arthur?” he asked, daring her to deny it.

  “As you wish, sire,” she said steadily.

  “Tell me! Would you like to go to Ludlow with Arthur, or would you rather stay here with me?”

  She smiled faintly and would not be drawn. “You are the king,” she said quietly. “I must do whatever you command.”

  Henry knew he should not keep her at court beside him but he could not resist playing with the idea. He consulted her Spanish advisors, and found them hopelessly divided and squabbling among themselves. The Spanish ambassador, who had worked so hard to deliver the intractable marriage contract, insisted that the princess should go with her new husband and that she should be seen to be a married woman in every way. Her confessor, who alone of all of them seemed to have a tenderness for the little princess, urged that the young couple should be allowed to stay together. Her duenna, the formidable and difficult Doña Elvira, preferred not to leave London. She had heard that Wales was a hundred miles away, a mountainous and rocky land. If Catalina stayed in Baynard’s Castle and the household was rid of Arthur, then they would make a little Spanish enclave in the heart of the City, and the duenna’s power would be unchallenged, she would rule the princess and the little Spanish court.

  The queen volunteered her opinion that Catalina would find Ludlow too cold and lonely in mid-December and suggested that perhaps the young couple could stay together in London until spring.

  “You just hope to keep Arthur with you, but he has to go,” Henry said brusquely to her. “He has to learn the business of kingship and there is no better way to learn to rule England than to rule the principality.”

  “He’s still young, and he is shy with her.”

  “He has to learn to be a husband too.”

  “They will have to learn to deal together.”

  “Better that they learn in private then.”

  In the end, it was the king’s mother who gave the decisive advice. “Send her,” she said to her son. “We need a child off her. She won’t make one on her own in London. Send her with Arthur to Ludlow.” She laughed shortly. God knows, they’ll have nothing else to do there.”

  “Elizabeth is afraid that she will be sad and lonely,” the king remarked. “And Arthur is afraid that they will not deal well together.”

  “Who cares?” his mother asked. “What difference does that make? They are married and they have to live together and make an heir.”

  He shot her a swift smile. “She is only just sixteen,” he said, “and the baby of her family, still missing her mother. You don’t make any allowances for her youth, do you?”

  “I was married at twelve years old, and gave birth to you in the same year,” she returned. “No one made any allowances for me. And yet I survived.”

  “I doubt you were happy.”

  “I was not. I doubt that she is. But that, surely, is the last thing that matters?”

  Doña Elvira told me that I must refuse to go to Ludlow. Father Geraldini said that it was my duty to go with my husband. Dr. de Puebla said that for certain my mother would want me to live with my husband, to do everything to show that the marriage is complete in word and deed. Arthur, the hopeless beanpole, said nothing, and his
father seems to want me to decide; but he is a king and I don’t trust him.

  All I really want to do is to go home to Spain. Whether we are in London or whether we live in Ludlow it will be cold, and it will rain all the time—the very air feels wet—I cannot get anything good to eat, and I cannot understand a word anybody says.

  I know I am Princess of Wales and I will be Queen of England. That is true, and it will be true. But, this day, I cannot feel very glad about it.

  “We are to go to my castle at Ludlow,” Arthur remarked awkwardly to Catalina. They were seated side by side at dinner, the hall below them, the gallery above, and the wide doors crowded with people who had come from the City for the free entertainment of watching the court dine. Most people were observing the Prince of Wales and his young bride.

  She bowed her head but did not look at him. “Is it your father’s command?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I shall be happy to go,” she said.

  “We will be alone, but for the warden of the castle and his wife,” Arthur went on. He wanted to say that he hoped she would not mind, that he hoped she would not be bored or sad or—worst of all—angry with him.

  She looked at him without a smile. “And so?”

  “I hope you will be content,” he stumbled.

  “Whatever your father wishes,” she said steadily, as if to remind him that they were merely prince and princess and had no rights and no power at all.

  He cleared his throat. “I shall come to your room tonight,” he asserted.

  She gave him a look from eyes as blue and hard as the sapphires around her neck. “Whatever you wish,” she said in the same neutral tone.

  He came when she was in bed, and Doña Elvira admitted him to the room, her face like a stone, disapproval in every gesture. Catalina sat up in bed and watched as his groom of the bedchamber took his gown from his shoulders and went quietly out, closing the door behind him.

  “Wine?” Arthur asked. He was afraid his voice quavered slightly.

  “No, thank you,” she said.

  Awkwardly the young man came to the bed, turned back the sheets, got in beside her. She turned to look at him, and he knew he was blushing beneath her inquiring gaze. He blew out the candle so she could not see his discomfort. A little torchlight from the guard outside flickered through the slats of the shutters, and then was gone as the guard moved on. Arthur felt the bed move as she lay back and pulled her nightdress out of the way. He felt as if he were a thing to her, an object of no importance, something she had to endure in order to be Queen of England.

  He threw back the covers and jumped from the bed. “I’m not staying here. I’m going to my room,” he said tersely.

  “What?”

  “I shan’t stay here. I’m not wanted…”

  “Not wanted? I never said you were not—”

  “It is obvious. The way you look—”

  “It’s pitch black! How d’you know how I look? And anyway, you look as if someone forced you here!”

  “I? It isn’t me who sent a message that half the court heard, that I was not to come to your bed.”

  He heard her gasp. “I did not say you were not to come. I had to tell them to tell you—” She broke off in embarrassment. “It was my time…you had to know…”

  “Your duenna told my steward that I was not to come to your bed. How do you think that made me feel? How d’you think that looked to everyone?”

  “How else was I to tell you?” she demanded.

  “Tell me yourself!” he raged. “Don’t tell everyone else in the world.”

  “How could I? How could I say such a thing? I should be so embarrassed!”

  “Instead it is me who is made to look a fool!”

  Catalina slipped out of bed and steadied herself, holding the tall carved bedpost. “My lord, I apologize if I have offended you, I don’t know how such things are done here…. In future I will do as you wish….”

  He said nothing.

  She waited.

  “I’m going,” he said and went to hammer on the door for his groom to come to him.

  “Don’t!” The cry was forced out of her.

  “What?” He turned.

  “Everyone will know,” she said desperately. “Know that there is something wrong between us. Everyone will know that you have just come to me. If you leave at once, everyone will think…”

  “I won’t stay here!” he shouted.

  Her pride rushed up. “You will shame us both!” she cried out. “What do you want people to think? That I disgust you, or that you are impotent?”

  “Why not? If both are true?” He hammered on the door even louder.

  She gasped in horror and fell back against the bedpost.

  “Your Grace?” came a shout from the outer chamber, and the door opened to reveal the groom of the bedchamber and a couple of pages, and behind them Doña Elvira and a lady-in-waiting.

  Catalina stalked over to the window and turned her back to the room. Uncertainly, Arthur hesitated, glancing back at her for help, for some indication that he could stay after all.

  “For shame!” Doña Elvira exclaimed, pushing past Arthur and running to throw a gown around Catalina’s shoulders. Once the woman was standing with her arm around Catalina, glaring at him, Arthur could not return to his bride; he stepped over the threshold and went to his own rooms.

  I cannot bear him. I cannot bear this country. I cannot live here for the rest of my life. That he should say that I disgust him! That he should dare to speak to me so! Has he run mad like one of their disgusting dogs that pant everywhere? Has he forgotten who I am? Has he forgotten himself?

  I am so furious with him I should like to take a scimitar and slice his stupid head off. If he thought for a moment, he would have known that everyone in the palace, everyone in London, probably everyone in this gross country, will laugh at us. They will say I am ugly and that I cannot please him.

  I am crying with temper, it’s not grief. I tuck my head into the pillow of my bed, so that no one can hear me and tell everyone else that the princess cried herself to sleep because her husband would not bed her. I am choking on tears and temper, I am so angry with him.

  After a little while, I stop, I wipe my face, I sit up. I am a princess by birth and by marriage, I should not give way. I shall have some dignity even if he has none. He is a young man, a young Englishman at that—how should he know how to behave? I think of my home in the moonlight, of how the walls and the tracery gleam white and the yellow stone is bleached to cream. That is a palace, where people know how to behave with grace and dignity. I wish with all my heart that I were still there.

  I remember that I used to watch a big yellow moon reflected in the water of the sultana’s garden. Like a fool, I used to dream of being married.

  Oxford,

  Christmas 1501

  THEY SET OFF A FEW DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Resolutely, they spoke to each other in public with utter courtesy, and ignored each other completely when no one was watching. The queen had asked that they might at least stay for the twelve-day feast, but My Lady the King’s Mother had ruled that they should take their Christmas at Oxford; it would give the country a chance to see the prince and the new Princess of Wales, and what the king’s mother said was law.

  Catalina traveled by litter, jolted mercilessly over the frozen roads, her mules foundering in the fords, chilled to the bone however many rugs and furs they packed around her. The king’s mother had ruled that she should not ride for fear of a fall. The unspoken hope was that Catalina was carrying a child. Catalina herself said nothing to confirm or deny the hope. Arthur was silence itself.

  They had separate rooms on the road to Oxford and separate rooms at Magdalene College when they arrived. The choristers were ready, the kitchens were ready, the extraordinarily rich hospitality of Oxford was ready to make merry; but the Prince and Princess of Wales were as cold and as dull as the weather.

  They dined together, seated at th
e great table facing down the hall, and as many of the citizens of Oxford who could get into the gallery took their seats and watched the princess put small morsels of food in her mouth and turn her shoulder to her husband, while he looked around the hall for companions and conversation, as if he were dining alone.

  They brought in dancers and tumblers, mummers and players. The princess smiled very pleasantly but never laughed, gave small purses of Spanish coins to all the entertainers, thanked them for their attendance but never once turned to her husband to ask him if he was enjoying the evening. The prince walked around the room, affable and pleasant to the great men of the city. He spoke in English all the time, and his Spanish-speaking bride had to wait for someone to talk to her in French or Latin, if they would. Instead they clustered around the prince and chatted and joked and laughed, almost as if they were laughing at her and did not want her to understand the jest. The princess sat alone, stiffly on her hard, carved wooden chair, her head held high and a small, defiant smile on her lips.

  At last it was midnight, and the long evening could end. Catalina rose from her seat and watched the court sink into bows and curtseys. She dropped a low Spanish curtsey to her husband, her duenna behind her with a face like flint. “I bid you good night, Your Grace,” said the princess in Latin, her voice clear, her accent perfect.

  “I shall come to your room,” he said. There was a little murmur of approval; the court wanted a lusty prince.

  The color rose in her cheeks at the very public announcement. There was nothing she could say. She could not refuse him, but the way she rose and left the room did not promise him a warm welcome when they were alone. Her ladies dipped their curtseys and followed her in a little offended flurry, swishing off like a many-colored veil trailing behind her. The court smiled behind their hands at the high spirits of the bride.

  Arthur came to her half an hour later, fired up by drink and resentment. He found her still dressed, waiting by the fire, her duenna at her side, her room ablaze with candles, her ladies still talking and playing cards as if it were the middle of the afternoon. Clearly, she was not a young woman on her way to bed.