The Constant Princess. Philippa Gregory

shall not lose the road,’ Arthur said, and strode out to his horse. ‘You shall follow me.’

      The lady of the house sent a servant flying for a heated stone to put in the litter at Catalina’s feet. The princess climbed in, hunched the rugs around her shoulders, and tucked her hands in deep.

      ‘I am sure that he is impatient to get you to Ludlow to show you his castle,’ the woman said, trying to put the best aspect on a miserable situation.

      ‘He is impatient to show me nothing but neglect,’ Catalina snapped; but she took care to say it in Spanish.

      They left the warmth and lights of the great house and heard the doors bang behind them as they turned the horses’ heads to the west, and to the white sun which was sinking low on the horizon. It was two hours past noon but the sky was so filled with snow clouds that there was an eerie grey glow over the rolling landscape. The road snaked ahead of them, brown tracks against brown fields, both of them bleaching to whiteness under the haze of swirling snow. Arthur rode ahead, singing merrily, Catalina’s litter laboured along behind. At every step the mules threw the litter to one side and then the other, she had to keep a hand on the edge to hold herself in place, and her fingers became chilled and then cramped, blue from cold. The curtains kept out the worst of the snowflakes but not the insistent, penetrating draughts. If she drew back a corner to look out at the country she saw a whirl of whiteness as the snowflakes danced and circled the road, the sky seeming greyer every moment.

      The sun set white in a white sky and the world grew more shadowy. Snow and clouds closed down around the little cavalcade which wound its way across a white land under a grey sky.

      Arthur’s horse cantered ahead, the prince riding easily in the saddle, one gloved hand on the reins, the other on his whip. He had stout woollen undergarments under his thick leather jerkin and soft, warm leather boots. Catalina watched him ride forwards. She was too cold and too miserable even to resent him. More than anything else she wished he would ride back to tell her that the journey was nearly over, that they were there.

      An hour passed, the mules walked down the road, their heads bowed low against the wind that whirled flakes around their ears and into the litter. The snow was getting thicker now, filling the air and drifting into the ruts of the lane. Catalina had hunched up under the covers, lying like a child, the rapidly cooling stone at her belly, her knees drawn up, her cold hands tucked in, her face ducked down, buried in the furs and rugs. Her feet were freezing cold, there was a gap in the rugs at her back and now and then she shivered at a fresh draught of icy air.

      All around, outside the litter, she could hear men chattering and laughing about the cold, swearing that they would eat well when the train got into Burford. Their voices seemed to come from far away; Catalina drifted into a sleep from coldness and exhaustion.

      Groggily, she woke when the litter bumped down to the ground and the curtains were swept back. A wave of icy air washed over her and she ducked her head down and cried out in discomfort.

      ‘Infanta?’ Dona Elvira asked. The duenna had been riding her mule, the exercise had kept her warm. ‘Infanta? Thank God, at last we are here.’

      Catalina would not lift her head.

      ‘Infanta, they are waiting to greet you.’

      Still Catalina would not look up.

      ‘What’s this?’ It was Arthur’s voice, he had seen the litter put down and the duenna bending over it. He saw that the heap of rugs made no movement. For a moment, with a pang of dismay, he thought that the princess might have been taken ill. Maria de Salinas gave him a reproachful look. ‘What’s the matter?’

      ‘It is nothing.’ Dona Elvira straightened up and stood between the prince and his young wife, shielding Catalina as he jumped from his horse and came towards her. ‘The princess has been asleep, she is composing herself.’

      ‘I’ll see her,’ he said. He put the woman aside with one confident hand and kneeled down beside the litter.

      ‘Catalina?’ he asked quietly.

      ‘I am frozen with cold,’ said a little thread of voice. She lifted her head and he saw that she was as white as the snow itself and her lips were blue. ‘I am so c … cold that I shall die and then you will be happy. You can b … bury me in this horrible country and m … marry some fat, stupid Englishwoman. And I shall never see …’ She broke off into sobs.

      ‘Catalina?’ He was utterly bemused.

      ‘I shall never see my m … mother again. But she will know that you killed me with your miserable country and your cruelty.’

      ‘I have not been cruel!’ he rejoined at once, quite blind to the gathering crowd of courtiers around them. ‘By God, Catalina, it was not me!’

      ‘You have been cruel.’ She lifted her face from the rugs. ‘You have been cruel because –’

      It was her sad, white, tearstained face that spoke to him far more than her words could ever have done. She looked like one of his sisters when their grandmother scolded them. She did not look like an infuriating, insulting princess of Spain, she looked like a girl who had been bullied into tears – and he realised that it was he who had bullied her, he had made her cry, and he had left her in the cold litter for all the afternoon while he had ridden on ahead and delighted in the thought of her discomfort.

      He reached into the rugs and pulled out her icy hand. Her fingers were numb with cold. He knew he had done wrong. He took her blue fingertips to his mouth and kissed them, then he held them against his lips and blew his warm breath against them. ‘God forgive me,’ he said. ‘I forgot I was a husband. I didn’t know I had to be a husband. I didn’t realise that I could make you cry. I won’t ever do so again.’

      She blinked, her blue eyes swimming in unshed tears. ‘What?’

      ‘I was wrong. I was angry but quite wrong. Let me take you inside and we will get warm and I shall tell you how sorry I am and I will never be unkind to you again.’

      At once she struggled with her rugs and Arthur pulled them off her legs. She was so cramped and so chilled that she stumbled when she tried to stand. Ignoring the muffled protests of her duenna, he swept her up into his arms and carried her like a bride across the threshold of the hall.

      Gently he put her down before the roaring fire, gently he put back her hood, untied her cloak, chafed her hands. He waved away the servants who would have come to take her cloak, offered her wine. He made a little circle of peace and silence around them, and he watched the colour come back to her pale cheeks.

      ‘I am sorry,’ he said, heartfelt. ‘I was very, very angry with you but I should not have taken you so far in such bad weather and I should never have let you get cold. It was wrong of me.’

      ‘I forgive you,’ she whispered, a little smile lighting her face.

      ‘I didn’t know that I had to take care of you. I didn’t think. I have been like a child, an unkind child. But I know now, Catalina. I will never be unkind to you again.’

      She nodded. ‘Oh, please. And you too must forgive me. I have been unkind to you.’

      ‘Have you?’

      ‘At Oxford,’ she whispered, very low.

      He nodded. ‘And what do you say to me?’

      She stole a quick upwards glance at him. He was not making a play of offence. He was a boy still, with a boy’s fierce sense of fairness. He needed a proper apology.

      ‘I am very, very sorry,’ she said, speaking nothing but the truth. ‘It was not a good thing to do, and I was sorry in the morning, but I could not tell you.’

      ‘Shall we go to bed now?’ he whispered to her, his mouth very close to her ear.

      ‘Can we?’

      ‘If I say that you are ill?’