The Constant Princess. Philippa Gregory

      He did not stir until daybreak, when his grooms of the bedchamber rapped brightly on the door. He rose up with a slightly embarrassed ‘Good morning’ to her; and went out. They greeted him with cheers and marched him in triumph to his own rooms. Catalina heard him say, vulgarly, boastfully, ‘Gentlemen, this night I have been in Spain,’ and heard the yell of laughter that applauded his joke. Her ladies came in with her gown and heard the men’s laughter. Dona Elvira raised her thin eyebrows to heaven at the manners of these English.

      ‘I don’t know what your mother would say,’ Dona Elvira remarked.

      ‘She would say that words count less than God’s will, and God’s will has been done,’ Catalina said firmly.

       It was not like this for my mother. She fell in love with my father on sight and she married him with great joy. When I grew older I began to understand that they felt a real desire for each other – it was not just a powerful partnership of a great king and queen. My father might take other women as his lovers; but he needed his wife, he could not be happy without her. And my mother could not even see another man. She was blind to anybody but my father. Alone, of all the courts in Europe, the court of Spain had no tradition of love-play, of flirtation, of adoration of the queen in the practice of courtly love. It would have been a waste of time. My mother simply did not notice other men and when they sighed for her and said her eyes were as blue as the skies she simply laughed and said, ‘What nonsense,’ and that was an end to it.

       When my parents had to be apart they wrote every day, he would not move one step without telling her of it, and asking for her advice. When he was in danger she hardly slept.

       He could not have got through the Sierra Nevada if she had not been sending him men and digging teams to level the road for him. No-one else could have driven a road through there. He would have trusted no-one else to support him, to hold the kingdom together as he pushed forwards. She could have conquered the mountains for no-one else, he was the only one that could have attracted her support. What looked like a remarkable unity of two calculating players was deceptive – it was their passion which they played out on the political stage. She was a great queen because that was how she could evoke his desire. He was a great general in order to match her. It was their love, their lust, which drove them; almost as much as God.

       We are a passionate family. When Isabel, my sister, now with God, came back from Portugal a widow she swore that she had loved her husband so much that she would never take another. She had been with him for only six months but she said that without him, life had no meaning. Juana, my second sister, is so in love with her husband Philip that she cannot bear to let him out of her sight, when she learns that he is interested in another woman she swears that she will poison her rival, she is quite mad with love for him. And my brother … my darling brother Juan … simply died of love. He and his beautiful wife Margot were so passionate, so besotted with each other, that his health failed, he was dead within six months of their wedding. Is there anything more tragic than a young man dying six months into his marriage? I come from passionate stock – but what about me? Shall I ever fall in love?

       Not with this clumsy boy, for a certainty. My early liking for him has quite melted away. He is too shy to speak to me, he mumbles and pretends he cannot think of the words. He forced me to command in the bedroom, and I am ashamed that I had to be the one to make the first move. He makes me into a woman without shame, a woman of the marketplace when I want to be wooed like a lady in a romance. But if I had not invited him – what could he have done? I feel a fool now, and I blame him for my embarrassment. ‘In Spain,’ indeed! He would have got no closer than the Indies if I had not showed him how to do it. Stupid puppy.

       When I first saw him I thought he was as beautiful as a knight from the romances, like a troubadour, like a poet. I thought I could be like a lady in a tower and he could sing beneath my window and persuade me to love him. But although he has the looks of a poet he doesn’t have the wit. I can never get more than two words out of him, and I begin to feel that I demean myself in trying to please him.

       Of course, I will never forget that it is my duty to endure this youth, this Arthur. My hope is always for a child, and my destiny is to keep England safe against the Moors. I shall do that; whatever else happens, I shall be Queen of England and protect my two countries: the Spain of my birth and the England of my marriage.

       London, Winter 1501

      

      Arthur and Catalina, standing stiffly side by side on the royal barge, but not exchanging so much as one word, led a great fleet of gaily painted barges downriver to Baynard’s Castle, which would be their London home for the next weeks. It was a huge, rectangular palace of a house overlooking the river, with gardens running down to the water’s edge. The Mayor of London, the councillors, and all the court followed the royal barge; and musicians played as the heirs to the throne took up residence in the heart of the City.

      Catalina noticed that the Scots envoys were much in attendance, negotiating the marriage of her new sister-in-law, Princess Margaret. King Henry was using his children as pawns in his game for power, as every king must do. Arthur had made the vital link with Spain, Margaret, though only twelve years old, would make Scotland into a friend, rather than the enemy that it had been for generations. Princess Mary also would be married, when her time came, either to the greatest enemy that the country faced, or the greatest friend that they hoped to keep. Catalina was glad that she had known from childhood that she should be the next Queen of England. There had been no changes of policy and no shifting alliances. She had been Queen of England-to-be almost from birth. It made the separation from her home and from her family so much easier.

      She noticed that Arthur was very restrained in his greeting when he met the Scots lords at dinner at the Palace of Westminster.

      ‘The Scots are our most dangerous enemies,’ Edward Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, told Catalina in whispered Castilian, as they stood at the back of the hall, waiting for the company to take their seats. ‘The king and the prince hope that this marriage will make them our friend forever, will bind the Scots to us. But it is hard for any of us to forget how they have constantly harried us. We have all been brought up to know that we have a most constant and malignant enemy to the north.’

      ‘Surely they are only a poor little kingdom,’ she queried. ‘What harm can they do us?’

      ‘They always ally with France,’ he told her. ‘Every time we have a war with France they make an alliance and pour over our northern borders. And, they may be small and poor but they are the doorway for the terrible danger of France to invade us from the north. I think Your Grace knows from your own childhood that even a small country on your frontier can be a danger.’

      ‘Well, the Moors had only a small country at the end,’ she observed. ‘My father always said that the Moors were like a disease. They might be a small irritation but they were always there.’

      ‘The Scots are our plague,’ he agreed. ‘Once every three years or so, they invade and make a little war, and we lose an acre of land or win it back again. And every summer they harry the border countries and steal what they cannot grow or make themselves. No northern farmer has ever been safe from them. The king is determined to have peace.’

      ‘Will they be kind to the Princess Margaret?’

      ‘In their own rough way.’ He smiled. ‘Not as you have been welcomed, Infanta.’