Katherine of Aragón: The True Queen

by Alison Weir

  “Highness, there is a banker of Genoa in whose house the ambassador lodges. His name is Francisco de Grimaldi, and with your permission we wish to marry.”

  Katherine winced inwardly at the mention of Signor Grimaldi. She had taken his loan and given him her bond, but there was now no hope of her being able to repay him, with her marriage seeming as remote a prospect as ever. She was in a difficult position, but duty had to come first.

  “Francesca, the answer must be no. Your family is an ancient one; they would never forgive me for allowing you to marry a mere banker.”

  “But, Highness, he is very rich. It is a good match.”

  “I am sorry, Francesca, but it is out of the question.”

  “Highness, we love each other!” Francesca pleaded. She did not realize that Fray Diego had come in and was standing behind her.

  “You heard your mistress,” he said. “You are bound to obey her.”

  “You!” she rounded on him. “Are you interfering again?”

  “You will not speak to Fray Diego like that,” Katherine said. “Remember the respect due to his office.”

  Francesca was seething. “I would that he deserved it, Highness!”

  Fray Diego’s temper flared. “Francesca, if you have any complaint to make of me, you may say it now in front of Her Highness.”

  His steely eyes were fixed on the girl’s face.

  “For shame, I would not speak of it,” she muttered.

  “This is monstrous,” said the friar.

  Francesca turned on him. “All I will say is that a man such as you should not be allowed in a household of women!”

  “You will kindly explain what you mean,” Katherine erupted, shocked.

  “Ask him!” Francesca flung back.

  “I have no idea what the woman is talking about,” Fray Diego said.

  “Ask Fuensalida!” Francesca challenged.

  “There we have it!” he retorted. “That man will say anything against me.”

  “He knows what he has heard.”

  “Then your complaint is thirdhand,” Katherine said, “and it is prejudiced. Francesca, I cannot have anyone making unfounded allegations against my confessor, whom I would trust with my life. I understand that you are disappointed about being forbidden to marry Signor Grimaldi, but there is no need to take it out on Fray Diego.”

  “That man is poison!” Francesca cried, pointing at the friar. “Your Highness is too full of goodness to see it.”

  “I think I am in a good position to judge his character. He has served me unfailingly well for two years.”

  “You are a fool!” Francesca said, then realized to whom she was speaking, and clapped her hand to her mouth. “Highness, I beg your pardon. That was unforgivable.”

  “I fear it was,” Katherine said, perilously close to tears. She hated confrontations like this, but she could not allow a maid of honor to speak to her so disrespectfully. “I will not have anyone causing trouble in my household. You must consider yourself dismissed.”

  “Highness! I beg of you—”

  “No, Francesca.” Katherine’s heart was pounding. “My mind is made up.”

  Francesca flounced out of the door. As soon as she was out of earshot, Katherine sank down on a stool and gave way to weeping.

  “Highness,” Fray Diego said, laying a hand on her shoulder, “I assure you, her complaint was without foundation. I have no idea what she meant.”

  “Fuensalida has got to her,” Katherine sighed, moving away. “He is determined to have you dismissed. But I will never allow it.”

  —

  Francesca had gone.

  “She told me that Fuensalida invited her into his house,” Maria told Katherine. “She and Signor Grimaldi are to be married.”

  “That does not look well, considering his official position as my father’s representative,” Katherine fumed.

  Things looked even worse when Fuensalida appeared with Signor Grimaldi in tow. The banker was an elderly man, and Katherine guessed that, for Francesca, the lure had been his wealth.

  “I ask your Highness to pay something of what you have promised me,” Grimaldi said, regarding her implacably. She suspected this was in revenge for her dismissal of Francesca.

  “If you will give me two days’ grace, I will do so,” she said, resolving desperately to pawn some more of her diminished store of plate.

  “If your Highness does not pay,” Fuensalida said nastily, “you must surrender your jewels and plate to me for safekeeping, as surety for Signor Grimaldi.”

  “But they are part of my dowry,” she protested, fearful of Fuensalida finding out that her store was alarmingly depleted. “I cannot give them to you.”

  “Then we look forward to your settlement, Highness,” he said.

  When they had gone, Katherine realized that she was in an impossible position. She had planned, should her father order the handing over of the plate and jewels, to appeal to Signor Grimaldi to lend her the money to redeem the pieces she had pawned. But now—what in heaven was she to do?

  Later that day she received a summons from the King. She had not set eyes on him for weeks and was shocked to find him skeletally thin and much wasted. Seeing his eyes burning with anger in his skull-like face, she shrank back.

  “Why is your Highness obstructing payment of your dowry?” he demanded to know.

  “Your Grace, I promise I am not. I but wait for my father’s command to hand it over.”

  “His ambassador tells me you refused to do so.”

  So Fuensalida was lying about her now. “No, sire,” she replied. “I said I could not repay a loan. That was nothing to do with the payment of the dowry.”

  “That’s not what he told me. And he said also that your household is under the sway of an insolent friar who is young, light-minded, haughty, and causing scandal.”

  “Sire, that is not true. Whatever you have heard—”

  “The Knight Commander is most concerned. He urged me to speak to you—” The King broke off, attacked by a bout of coughing so violent that he could not speak for several minutes, but sat barking into his handkerchief. Katherine did not know whether she should go and comfort him or stay where she was. At length the King lay back wearily against his chair, clutching the bloodstained cloth. She stared at it, appalled.

  “Katherine, I urge you to dismiss this friar. Remember that his conduct is damaging your reputation. Remember to whom you are betrothed. If I hear one more complaint, out that man goes. Do I make myself plain?”

  “Yes, sire,” she murmured.

  “And if the Knight Commander asks again for the plate and jewels, give them to him!”

  “Sire, if I may—”

  “No, you may not. Now go.” The King’s voice cracked and he began coughing again. Katherine fled from the room, trembling with the injustice of it all.

  With Fray Diego’s connivance, she sold some of her jewels. The price he obtained was not a fair one, but it was enough to repay Signor Grimaldi. Katherine entrusted the bag of gold to her chamberlain and told him to go to the banker’s house and deliver it into his hands, and to wait for a receipt. She did not stop trembling until he returned with it.

  —

  When next Fuensalida came asking to see her, Katherine refused to receive him, and Maria, who had now taken upon herself some of the authority that Doña Elvira had once exercised, sent him away.

  “He was furious!” she reported. “He said that Fray Diego has put him out of favor with your Highness, and if he had committed some treason you could not have treated him worse. He bade me tell you he is asking King Ferdinand to recall Fray Diego and replace him with an old and honest confessor.”

  The friar was listening. “I do not wish to cause grief to your Highness. It might be better if I leave your service.”

  “No!” Katherine cried. “What would I do without you? You have been a true friend. And who would I rely on for spiritual advice?”

  “Highness, I cannot fee
l comfortable knowing that I am the cause of such dissension. Give me leave to go back to Spain.”

  Katherine felt tears brimming. “No, I will not hear of it! The greatest comfort in my troubles is the consolation and support you give me. I will write myself to my father and warn him that Fuensalida is a liar.”

  In desperation, she scribbled the letter, complaining of how badly the ambassador had behaved. Things here become daily worse, and my life more and more insupportable. I can no longer bear this. Your ambassador here is a traitor. Recall him, and punish him as he deserves. He has crippled your service.

  That night Katherine felt really ill. Her stomach was heaving and she vomited three times.

  “It is all the worry you suffer,” Maria said, shaking her head and covering the bowl with a cloth.

  The next morning, when Katherine had made herself rise from her bed and was trying to force down some breakfast, a royal messenger arrived, commanding her to make ready to move with the court to Richmond.

  “You cannot go,” Fray Diego said, regarding her with concern. “You are unwell.”

  “I am better,” Katherine lied, knowing it would be foolhardy to risk offending the King further. “I want to go.”

  “Listen to me!” he said, stern. “I tell you that, upon pain of mortal sin, you will not go today.” He turned to the messenger. “And so you may tell the King.”

  Katherine raised a small protest.

  “I am well enough to travel. I do not see why going is a mortal sin.”

  “Disobeying your confessor is,” Fray Diego said. “Look at you. You look ill. You have not slept. I am making you stay for your own good. If you are better tomorrow, we will leave.”

  When Katherine did arrive at Richmond the next day, Fuensalida was waiting for her.

  “The King was very much vexed that you did not come yesterday,” he told her. “He knows that his order was countermanded.”

  “Then I must go to him and apologize,” she said.

  “He will not see you.”

  In fact the King did not speak to her for three weeks, nor did he send to inquire after her health. Her only consolation was that he had again quarreled with Fuensalida and was refusing to see him too, or to transact any business with him.

  —

  Katherine was overjoyed to hear from her father that he was recalling his ambassador at once, and sending another, Luis Caroz, in his place. She began reading Ferdinand’s letter out loud to Maria as they sat together in her shabby chamber, knowing her friend would share her sense of victory. But her voice faltered as she took in the next words. Her father was sending Caroz to England to escort her home to Spain, so that he himself could arrange a new marriage for her.

  She looked at Maria, unable to speak. She was to go home, after more than seven years in England? For a moment she could not take it in. She did not know what to feel. She would be returning to a Spain that had changed greatly since she left. There would be no beloved mother there to welcome her, no sisters, for all had married or died—only the father who she could not help but feel had betrayed her. It would be good to see her homeland again; it would be wonderful not to live at the English court on sufferance, not to live in poverty, not to feel guilty about the privations of her people, and not to endure the interminable squabbles in her distressed household. But leaving England would mean giving up all hope of marrying Prince Henry. She had not seen him for so long, yet she had never forgotten that day of the tournament, and how he had looked at her. Did he think of her now as she had so often thought of him? All her life she had envisioned herself as the future Queen of England; she wanted to be Prince Henry’s queen, not to marry someone else, go to another foreign land and learn another set of customs, another language. She was quite proficient in English now.

  King Henry was dying, that much was clear. She could never wish for anyone’s death, and prayed daily for his recovery, but she had dared to speculate that, once he departed this life, Prince Henry would come like a knight-errant to claim her, and they would live happily ever after, as in all the old romances. But evidently her father knew that would not happen; otherwise, why summon her home?

  The unpalatable truth was that what she wanted was immaterial. She knew she was powerless to affect her future. It would be decided to the advantage of others. That was the way it had always been if you were a princess.

  —

  Katherine sat at table, her household about her. No one commented on the bad smell emanating from the fish before them; they were too used to eating fish a day old from the market. It was Lent, and they were fasting, and with Fray Diego in charge no laxity was permitted, so there was very little else on the table. We could not have afforded meat anyway, she reflected.

  She felt nauseous and shivery.

  “I cannot eat any more,” she said. “I must go and rest.”

  Maria rose. “Go to bed, Highness. I will help you.”

  In the bedchamber, Katherine lay down, fully dressed, on her bed.

  “Leave me; just let me sleep,” she murmured when Maria protested. Sleep would not solve her problems, but it would give her some respite from worrying about them.

  She lay ill for two days, kept to her chamber over Easter, and rested for another week or so. She was still convalescing but dressed and seated in her chair with her maids and ladies around her when Luis Caroz, the new ambassador, arrived.

  “Do bring him to me, Maria,” Katherine commanded.

  Caroz was a neat, dark-bearded man in his thirties, his oval face just shy of handsome, but pleasing. Maria was regarding him appreciatively.

  “You are very welcome, Señor Caroz,” Katherine said.

  “Highness, the pleasure is mine. I have heard so much about your unfortunate situation, and it is my fervent hope that I can serve you usefully. You will be glad to know that King Ferdinand is well and sends his dearest love.”

  “And Queen Juana?”

  Caroz looked pained. “I have not heard, Highness. I believe she is well looked after, poor lady.”

  “Have you seen King Henry yet?”

  “Highness, that is what I came to tell you. The King is too ill to see me. My instructions are to wait on events.”

  “Then I am not to go home immediately?” Katherine could feel the women around her draw breath, anxious to hear of their future.

  “No, Highness. Let us see what transpires.”

  —

  Katherine saw the King only once after that. She was walking in the palace gardens, enjoying the April sun and the spring breeze, when she happened to look up and saw him watching her from his window. He looked gray and spectral, and it seemed to her that he had aged a hundred years. But to her astonishment he smiled at her and raised his hand in greeting. She swept a hasty curtsey and waved back. Then he was nodding at her, as if in approval.

  Three days later she heard that he had died.

  1509

  “They are saying that His late Majesty was a great king,” Luis Caroz reported.

  That may be so, Katherine thought, but he was not a great man. She sat there in her faded mourning garments, the same ones she had worn for Arthur and her mother. She was thankful that they still fitted, even though they hung on her with room to spare, for she had lost weight in the years of her privations.

  “My sources tell me that he has left over a million pounds in his treasury.” That did not surprise her. The King had not spent a penny unless it brought some advantage to himself. She had not sensed much grief in the court at his passing. The poor, frail, aging Lady Margaret was devastated, of course, as was Princess Mary, who had loved—and been loved by—her father, and Katherine’s thoughts were also with the young Queen Margaret, who had yet to hear the dread news in faraway Scotland; but generally there was rather an atmosphere of anticipation, of suppressed excitement. She had heard the late King called miserly, grasping, even harsh, unpleasant aspects of his character traits she thought more manifest since Queen Elizabeth’s death.

&n
bsp; Now Prince Henry was king—King Henry VIII. She still had not seen him. He would be mourning his father and busy with the affairs of his kingdom. But there had undoubtedly been a change. It was like being her father’s ambassador all over again, for when she emerged from her lodging to go to chapel or walk in the gardens, people were quick to make obeisance and be noticed by her. She did not dare to hope what this might betoken.

  —

  The King was buried beside his queen in the magnificent Lady Chapel he had built in Westminster Abbey. Katherine did not attend. In charity, she spent the day praying for the old miser’s soul.

  Then came the order to move from Richmond to Greenwich, the great red-brick palace by the Thames, the beautiful Placentia that the new king was known to favor, for he had been born there. Here, Katherine found herself lodged in a finely furnished apartment with large diamond-paned windows that glittered in the sunshine and afforded prospects of dancing fountains, immaculate lawns and beds of flowers, and beyond them, magnificent views of London and the Thames. It was all a far cry from the dismal, overcrowded rooms at Richmond and other palaces. But still there was no summons from the young king.

  Soon there came a letter from King Ferdinand, who explained that he had not paid her dowry because he had not trusted the late king, whom he believed had no intention of marrying her to Prince Henry. He had been beset by the fear that his son might obtain too much power by his connection with Spain. Now, Katherine must rest assured that things would change. I love you the most of my children, Ferdinand wrote, and I look on the King of England as a son. I will give him advice about everything, like a true father. Your duty will be to bring about an understanding between us, and ensure that the King heeds my guidance in matters of state.

  That was all very well, she thought—but where was the King?

  —

  It was now June, and the roses were opening their delicate petals in full bloom. The old king had been dead for six weeks, and the court was still abuzz with excitement at the prospect of change and preparing excitedly for the coming coronation. Luis Caroz was cautiously optimistic—Katherine suspected he was cautious in all things, even love—and her ladies were predicting that she would be Queen ere long. She wished she could believe it. Fray Diego counseled her to have patience and to leave her future in the hands of God. But it was hard to remain positive. She could not help reading something ominous into this long silence.