The Constant Princess. Philippa Gregory

God, she has a kissable mouth,’ he thought. ‘Not pearls?’ he asked aloud.

      ‘They are not my greatest favourite,’ she confided. She smiled up at him. ‘What is your favourite stone?’

      ‘Why, she is flirting with me,’ he said to himself, stunned at the thought. ‘She is playing me like she would an indulgent uncle. She is reeling me in like a fish.’

      ‘Emeralds?’

      She smiled again.

      ‘No. This,’ she said simply.

      She had picked out, in a moment, the most expensive thing in the jeweller’s pack, a collar of deepest blue sapphires with a matching pair of earrings. Charmingly, she held the collar against her smooth cheeks so that he could look from the jewels to her eyes. She took a step closer towards him so that he could smell the scent on her hair, orange-blossom water from the gardens of the Alhambra. She smelled as if she were an exotic flower herself. ‘Do they match my eyes?’ she asked him. ‘Are my eyes as blue as sapphires?’

      He took a little breath, surprised at the violence of his response. ‘They are. You shall have them,’ he said, almost choking on his desire for her. ‘You shall have this and anything else you like. You shall name your … your … wish.’

      The look she threw up at him was of pure delight. ‘And my ladies too?’

      ‘Call your ladies, they shall have their pick.’

      She laughed with pleasure and ran to the door. He let her go. He did not trust himself to stay in the room without chaperones. Hastily, he took himself out into the hall and met his mother, returning from hearing Mass.

      He kneeled and she put her fingers on his head in her blessing. ‘My son.’

      ‘My lady mother.’

      He rose to his feet. She quickly took in the flush of his face and his suppressed energy. ‘Has something troubled you?’

      ‘No!’

      She sighed. ‘Is it the queen? Is it Elizabeth?’ she asked wearily. ‘Is she complaining about the Scots’ marriage for Margaret again?’

      ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have not seen her today.’

      ‘She will have to accustom herself,’ she said. ‘A princess cannot choose whom she marries and when she leaves home. Elizabeth would know that if she had been properly brought up. But she was not.’

      He gave his crooked smile. ‘That is hardly her fault.’

      His mother’s disdain was apparent. ‘No good would ever have come from her mother,’ she said shortly. ‘Bad breeding, the Woodvilles.’

      Henry shrugged and said nothing. He never defended his wife to his mother – her malice was so constant and so impenetrable that it was a waste of time to try to change her mind. He never defended his mother to his wife; he never had to. Queen Elizabeth never commented on her difficult mother-in-law or her demanding husband. She took him, his mother, his autocratic rule, as if they were natural hazards, as unpleasant and as inevitable as bad weather.

      ‘You should not let her disturb you,’ his mother said.

      ‘She has never disturbed me,’ he said, thinking of the princess who did.

       I am certain now that the king likes me, above all his daughters, and I am so glad of it. I am used to being the favourite daughter, the baby of the family. I like it when I am the favourite of the king, I like to feel special.

       When he saw that I was sad at my court going back to Spain and leaving me in England he spent the afternoon with me, showing me his library, talking about his maps, and finally, giving me an exquisite collar of sapphires. He let me pick out exactly what I wanted from the goldsmith’s pack, and he said that the sapphires were the colour of my eyes.

       I did not like him very well at first, but I am becoming accustomed to his abrupt speech and his quick ways. He is a man whose word is law in this court and in this land and he owes thanks to no-one for anything, except perhaps his Lady Mother. He has no close friends, no intimates but her and the soldiers who fought with him, who are now the great men of his court. He is not tender to his wife nor warm to his daughters, but I like it that he attends to me. Perhaps I will come to love him as a daughter. Already I am glad when he singles me out. In a court such as this, which revolves around his approval, it makes me feel like a princess indeed when he praises me, or spends time with me.

       If it were not for him then I think I would be even more lonely than I am. The prince my husband treats me as if I were a table or a chair. He never speaks to me, he never smiles at me, he never starts a conversation, it is all he can do to find a reply. I think I was a fool when I thought he looked like a troubadour. He looks like a milksop and that is the truth. He never raises his voice above a whisper, he never says anything of any interest. He may well speak French and Latin and half a dozen languages, but since he has nothing to say – what good are they? We live as strangers and if he did not come to my bedchamber at night, once a week as if on duty, I would not know I was married at all.

       I show the sapphires to his sister, the Princess Margaret, and she is eaten up with jealousy. I shall have to confess to the sin of vanity and of pride. It is not right for me to flaunt them before her; but if she had ever been kind to me by word or deed then I would not have showed her. I want her to know that her father values me, even if she and her grandmother and her brother do not. But now all I have done is upset her and put myself in the wrong, and I will have to confess and make a penance.

       Worst of all, I did not behave with the dignity that a princess of Spain should always show. If she were not such a fishwife’s apprentice then I could have been better. This court dances around the king as if nothing matters more in the world than his favour, and I should know better than to join in. At the very least I should not be measuring myself against a girl four years younger than me and only a princess of England, even if she calls herself Queen of Scotland at every opportunity.

      The young Prince and Princess of Wales finished their visit to Richmond and started to make their own royal household in Baynard’s Castle. Catalina had her rooms at the back of the house, overlooking the gardens and the river, with her household, her Spanish ladies, her Spanish chaplain, and duenna, and Arthur’s rooms overlooked the City, with his household, his chaplain, and his tutor. They met formally only once a day for dinner, when the two households sat at opposite sides of the hall and stared at each other with mutual suspicion, more like enemies in the middle of a forced truce than members of a united home.

      The castle was run according to the commands of Lady Margaret, the king’s mother. The feast days and fast days, the entertainments and the daily timetable were all commanded by her. Even the nights when Arthur was to visit his wife in her bedchamber had been appointed by her. She did not want the young people becoming exhausted, nor did she want them neglecting their duties. So once a week the prince’s household and friends solemnly escorted him to the princess’s rooms and left him there overnight. For both young people the experience was an ordeal of embarrassment. Arthur became no more skilled, Catalina endured his silent determination as politely as she could. But then, one day in early December, Catalina’s monthly course started and she told Dona Elvira. The duenna at once told the prince’s groom of the bedchamber that the prince could not come to the Infanta’s bed for a week; the Infanta was indisposed. Within half an hour, everyone from the king at Whitehall to the spit boy at Baynard’s Castle knew that the Princess of Wales was having her course and so no child had yet been conceived; and everyone from the king to the spit boy wondered, since the girl was lusty and strong and since she was bleeding – obviously fertile – if Arthur was capable of