The Constant Princess. Philippa Gregory

will not, Your Grace. I take my orders from the Queen of Spain herself and she charged me to make sure that every respect was shown to the Infanta and that her behaviour was in every way …’

      ‘Madam, you can take your working orders from me; or your marching orders from me. I don’t care which. Now send the girl out or I swear on my crown I will come in and if I catch her naked in bed then she won’t be the first woman I have ever seen in such a case. But she had better pray that she is the prettiest.’

      The Spanish duenna went quite white at the insult.

      ‘Choose,’ the king said stonily.

      ‘I cannot fetch the Infanta,’ she said stubbornly.

      ‘Dear God! That’s it! Tell her I am coming in at once.’

      She scuttled backwards like an angry crow, her face blanched with shock. Henry gave her a few moments to prepare, and then called her bluff by striding in behind her.

      The room was lit only by candles and firelight. The covers of the bed were turned back as if the girl had hastily jumped up. Henry registered the intimacy of being in her bedroom, with her sheets still warm, the scent of her lingering in the enclosed space, before he looked at her. She was standing by the bed, one small white hand on the carved wooden post. She had a cloak of dark blue thrown over her shoulders and her white nightgown trimmed with priceless lace peeped through the opening at the front. Her rich auburn hair, plaited for sleep, hung down her back, but her face was completely shrouded in a hastily thrown mantilla of dark lace.

      Dona Elvira darted between the girl and the king. ‘This is the Infanta,’ she said. ‘Veiled until her wedding day.’

      ‘Not on my money,’ Henry Tudor said bitterly. ‘I’ll see what I’ve bought, thank you.’

      He stepped forwards. The desperate duenna nearly threw herself to her knees. ‘Her modesty …’

      ‘Has she got some awful mark?’ he demanded, driven to voice his deepest fear. ‘Some blemish? Is she scarred by the pox and they did not tell me?’

      ‘No! I swear.’

      Silently, the girl put out her white hand and took the ornate lace hem of her veil. Her duenna gasped a protest but could do nothing to stop the princess as she raised the veil, and then flung it back. Her clear blue eyes stared into the lined, angry face of Henry Tudor without wavering. The king drank her in, and then gave a little sigh of relief at the sight of her.

      She was an utter beauty: a smooth, rounded face, a straight, long nose, a full, sulky, sexy mouth. Her chin was up, he saw; her gaze challenging. This was no shrinking maiden fearing ravishment. This was a fighting princess standing on her dignity even in this most appalling moment of embarrassment.

      He bowed. ‘I am Henry Tudor, King of England,’ he said.

      She curtseyed.

      He stepped forwards and saw her curb her instinct to flinch away. He took her firmly at the shoulders, and kissed one warm, smooth cheek and then the other. The perfume of her hair and the warm, female smell of her body came to him and he felt desire pulse in his groin and at his temples. Quickly he stepped back and let her go.

      ‘You are welcome to England,’ he said. He cleared his throat. ‘You will forgive my impatience to see you. My son too is on his way to visit you.’

      ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said icily, speaking in perfectly phrased French. ‘I was not informed until a few moments ago that Your Grace was insisting on the honour of this unexpected visit.’

      Henry fell back a little from the whip of her temper. ‘I have a right …’

      She shrugged, an absolutely Spanish gesture. ‘Of course. You have every right over me.’

      At the ambiguous, provocative words, he was again aware of his closeness to her: of the intimacy of the small room, the tester bed hung with rich draperies, the sheets invitingly turned back, the pillow still impressed with the shape of her head. It was a scene for ravishment, not for a royal greeting. Again he felt the secret thud-thud of lust.

      ‘I’ll see you outside,’ he said abruptly, as if it was her fault that he could not rid himself of the flash in his mind of what it would be like to have this ripe little beauty that he had bought. What would it be like if he had bought her for himself, rather than for his son?

      ‘I shall be honoured,’ she said coldly.

      He got himself out of the room briskly enough, and nearly collided with Prince Arthur, hovering anxiously in the doorway.

      ‘Fool,’ he remarked.

      Prince Arthur, pale with nerves, pushed his blond fringe back from his face, stood still and said nothing.

      ‘I’ll send that duenna home at the first moment I can,’ the king said. ‘And the rest of them. She can’t make a little Spain in England, my son. The country won’t stand for it, and I damned well won’t stand for it.’

      ‘People don’t object. The country people seem to love the princess,’ Arthur suggested mildly. ‘Her escort says …’

      ‘Because she wears a stupid hat. Because she is odd: Spanish, rare. Because she is young and –’ he broke off ‘– pretty.’

      ‘Is she?’ he gasped. ‘I mean: is she?’

      ‘Haven’t I just gone in to make sure? But no Englishman will stand for any Spanish nonsense once they get over the novelty. And neither will I. This is a marriage to cement an alliance; not to flatter her vanity. Whether they like her or not, she’s marrying you. Whether you like her or not, she’s marrying you. Whether she likes it or not, she’s marrying you. And she’d better get out here now or I won’t like her and that will be the only thing that can make a difference.’

       I have to go out, I have won only the briefest of reprieves and I know he is waiting for me outside the door to my bedchamber and he has demonstrated, powerfully enough, that if I do not go to him, then the mountain will come to Mohammed and I will be shamed again.

       I brush Dona Elvira aside as a duenna who cannot protect me now, and I go to the door of my rooms. My servants are frozen, like slaves enchanted in a fairy tale by this extraordinary behaviour from a king. My heart hammers in my ears and I know a girl’s embarrassment at having to step forwards in public, but also a soldier’s desire to let battle be joined, the eagerness to know the worst, to face danger rather than evade it.

       Henry of England wants me to meet his son, before his travelling party, without ceremony, without dignity as if we were a scramble of peasants. So be it. He will not find a princess of Spain falling back for fear. I grit my teeth, I smile as my mother commanded me.

       I nod to my herald, who is as stunned as the rest of my companions. ‘Announce me,’ I order him.

       His face blank with shock, he throws open the door. ‘The Infanta

       Catalina, Princess of Spain and Princess of Wales,’ he bellows.

       This is me. This is my moment. This is my battle cry.

       I step forwards.

      The Spanish Infanta – with her face naked to every man’s gaze – stood in the darkened doorway and then walked into the room, only a little flame of colour in both cheeks betraying her ordeal.

      At his father’s side, Prince Arthur swallowed. She was far more beautiful than he had imagined, and a million times more haughty. She was dressed in a gown