The Constant Princess ttc-1 Read online

  I expected his court to be more grand: I expected a great procession and a formal meeting with long introductions and elegant speeches, as we would have done it in the Alhambra. But he is abrupt; in my view he is rude. I shall have to become accustomed to these northern ways, this scramble to do things, this brusque ordering. I cannot expect things to be done well or even correctly. I shall have to overlook a lot until I am queen and can change things.

  But, anyway, it hardly matters whether I like the king or he likes me. He has engaged in this treaty with my father and I am betrothed to his son. It hardly matters what I think of him, or what he thinks of me. It is not as if we will have to deal much together. I shall live and rule Wales, and he will live and rule England, and when he dies, it will be my husband on his throne and my son will be the next Prince of Wales, and I shall be queen.

  As for my husband-to-be—oh!—he has made a very different first impression. He is so handsome! I did not expect him to be so handsome! He is so fair and slight, he is like a page boy from one of the old romances. I can imagine him waking all night in a vigil, or singing up to a castle window. He has pale, almost silvery skin, he has fine golden hair, and yet he is taller than me and lean and strong like a boy on the edge of manhood.

  He has a rare smile, one that comes reluctantly and then shines. And he is kind. That is a great thing in a husband. He was kind when he took the glass of wine from me: he saw that I was trembling, and he tried to reassure me.

  I wonder what he thinks of me. I do so wonder what he thinks of me.

  Just as the king had ruled, he and Arthur went swiftly back to Windsor the next morning, and Catalina’s train, with her litter carried by mules, with her trousseau in great traveling chests, her ladies-in-waiting, her Spanish household, and the guards for her dowry treasure, labored up the muddy roads to London at a far slower pace.

  She did not see the prince again until their wedding day, but when she arrived in the village of Kingston-upon-Thames, her train halted in order to meet the greatest man in the kingdom, the young Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, and Henry, Duke of York, the king’s second son, who were appointed to accompany her to Lambeth Palace.

  “I’ll come out,” Catalina said hastily, emerging from her litter and walking quickly past the waiting horses, not wanting another quarrel with her strict duenna about young ladies meeting young men before their wedding day. “Doña Elvira, say nothing. The boy is a child of ten years old. It doesn’t matter. Not even my mother would think that it matters.”

  “At least wear your veil!” the woman implored. “The Duke of Buck…Buck…whatever his name, is here too. Wear your veil when you go before him, for your own reputation, Infanta.”

  “Buckingham,” Catalina corrected her. “The Duke of Buckingham. And call me Princess of Wales. And you know I cannot wear my veil because he will have been commanded to report to the king. You know what my mother said: that he is the king’s mother’s ward, restored to his family fortunes, and must be shown the greatest respect.”

  The older woman shook her head, but Catalina marched out barefaced, feeling both fearful and reckless at her own daring, and saw the duke’s men drawn up in array on the road and before them, a young boy: helmet off, bright head shining in the sunshine.

  Her first thought was that he was utterly unlike his brother. While Arthur was fair-haired and slight and serious-looking, with a pale complexion and warm brown eyes, this was a sunny boy who looked as if he had never had a serious thought in his head. He did not take after his lean-faced father. He had the look of a boy for whom life came easily. His hair was red-gold, his face round and still baby-plump, his smile when he first saw her was genuinely friendly and bright, and his blue eyes shone as if he were accustomed to seeing a very pleasing world.

  “Sister!” he said warmly, jumping down from his horse with a clatter of armor and sweeping her a low bow.

  “Brother Henry,” she said curtseying back to him to precisely the right height, considering that he was only a second son of England, and she was an infanta of Spain.

  “I am so pleased to see you,” he said quickly, his Latin rapid, his English accent strong. “I was so hoping that His Majesty would let me come to meet you before I had to take you into London on your wedding day. I thought it would be so awkward to go marching down the aisle with you and hand you over to Arthur if we hadn’t even spoken. And call me Harry. Everyone calls me Harry.”

  “I too am pleased to meet you, Brother Harry,” Catalina said politely, rather taken aback at his enthusiasm.

  “Pleased! You should be dancing with joy!” he exclaimed buoyantly. “Because Father said that I could bring you the horse which was to be one of your wedding-day presents and so we can ride together to Lambeth. Arthur said you should wait for your wedding day, but I said, why should she wait? She won’t be able to ride on her wedding day. She’ll be too busy getting married. But if I take it to her now, we can ride at once.”

  “That was kind of you.”

  “Oh, I never take any notice of Arthur,” Harry said cheerfully.

  Catalina had to choke down a giggle. “You don’t?”

  He made a face and shook his head. “Serious,” he said. “You’ll be amazed how serious. And scholarly, of course, but not gifted. Everyone says I am very gifted, languages mostly, but music also. We can speak French together if you wish, I am extraordinarily fluent for my age. I am considered a pretty fair musician. And of course I am a sportsman. Do you hunt?”

  “No,” Catalina said, a little overwhelmed. “At least, I only follow the hunt when we go after boar or wolves.”

  “Wolves? I should so like to hunt wolves. D’you really have bears?”

  “Yes, in the hills.”

  “I should so like to hunt a bear. Do you hunt wolves on foot like boar?”

  “No, on horseback,” she said. “They’re very fast. You have to take very fast dogs to pull them down. It’s a horrid hunt.”

  “I shouldn’t mind that,” he said. “I don’t mind anything like that. Everyone says I am terribly brave about things like that.”

  “I am sure they do,” she said, smiling.

  A handsome man in his mid-twenties came forwards and bowed. “Oh, this is Edward Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham,” Harry said quickly. “May I present him?”

  Catalina held out her hand, and the man bowed again over it. His intelligent, handsome face was warm with a smile. “You are welcome to your own country,” he said in faultless Castilian. “I hope everything has been to your liking on your journey? Is there anything I can provide for you?”

  “I have been well cared for indeed,” Catalina said, blushing with pleasure at being greeted in her own language. “And the welcome I have had from people all along the way has been very kind.”

  “Look, here’s your new horse,” Harry interrupted, as the groom led a beautiful black mare forwards. “You’ll be used to good horses, of course. D’you have Barbary horses all the time?”

  “My mother insists on them for the cavalry,” she said.

  “Oh,” he breathed. “Because they are so fast?”

  “They can be trained as fighting horses,” she said, going forwards and holding out her hand, palm upwards, for the mare to sniff at and nibble at her fingers with a soft, gentle mouth.

  “Fighting horses?” he pursued.

  “The Saracens have horses which can fight as their masters do, and the Barbary horses can be trained to do it too,” she said. “They rear up and strike down a soldier with their front hooves, and they will kick out behind, too. The Turks have horses that will pick up a sword from the ground and hand it back to the rider. My mother says that one good horse is worth ten men in battle.”

  “I should so like to have a horse like that,” Harry said longingly. “I wonder how I should ever get one?”

  He paused, but she did not rise to the bait. “If only someone would give me a horse like that, I could learn how to ride it,” he said transparently. “Perhaps f
or my birthday, or perhaps next week, since it is not me getting married, and I am not getting any wedding gifts. Since I am quite left out, and quite neglected.”

  “Perhaps,” said Catalina, who had once seen her own brother get his way with exactly the same wheedling.

  “I should be trained to ride properly,” he said. “Father has promised that though I am to go into the church I shall be allowed to ride at the quintain. But My Lady the King’s Mother says I may not joust. And it’s really unfair. I should be allowed to joust. If I had a proper horse, I could joust. I am sure I would beat everyone.”

  “I am sure you would,” she said.

  “Well, shall we go?” he asked, seeing that she would not give him a horse for asking.

  “I cannot ride. I do not have my riding clothes unpacked.”

  He hesitated. “Can’t you just go in that?”

  Catalina laughed. “This is velvet and silk. I can’t ride in it. And besides, I can’t gallop around England looking like a mummer.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Well, shall you go in your litter, then? Won’t it make us very slow?”

  “I am sorry for that, but I am ordered to travel in a litter,” she said. “With the curtains drawn. I can’t think that even your father would want me to charge around the country with my skirts tucked up.”

  “Of course the princess cannot ride today,” the Duke of Buckingham ruled. “As I told you. She has to go in her litter.”

  Harry shrugged. “Well, I didn’t know. Nobody told me what you were going to wear. Can I go ahead, then? My horses will be so much faster than the mules.”

  “You can ride ahead but not out of sight,” Catalina decided. “Since you are supposed to be escorting me, you should be with me.”

  “As I said,” the Duke of Buckingham observed quietly and exchanged a little smile with the princess.

  “I’ll wait at every crossroads,” Harry promised. “I am escorting you, remember. And on your wedding day I shall be escorting you again. I have a white suit with gold slashing.”

  “How handsome you will look,” she said, and saw him flush with pleasure.

  “Oh, I don’t know…”

  “I am sure everyone will remark what a handsome boy you are,” she said, as he looked pleased.

  “Everyone always cheers most loudly for me,” he confided. “And I like to know that the people love me. Father says that the only way to keep a throne is to be beloved by the people. That was King Richard’s mistake, Father says.”

  “My mother says that the way to keep the throne is to do God’s work.”

  “Oh,” he said, clearly unimpressed. “Well, different countries, I suppose.”

  “So we shall travel together,” she said. “I will tell my people that we are ready to move on.”

  “I will tell them,” he insisted. “It is me who escorts you. I shall give the orders, and you shall rest in your litter.” He gave one quick sideways glance at her. “When we get to Lambeth Palace, you shall stay in your litter till I come for you. I shall draw back the curtains and take you in, and you should hold my hand.”

  “I should like that very much,” she assured him and saw his ready rush of color once again.

  He bustled off, and the duke bowed to her with a smile. “He is a very bright boy, very eager,” he said. “You must forgive his enthusiasm. He has been much indulged.”

  “His mother’s favorite?” she asked, thinking of her own mother’s adoration for her only son.

  “Worse still,” the duke said with a smile. “His mother loves him as she should; but he is the absolute apple of his grandmother’s eye, and it is she who rules the court. Luckily he is a good boy, and well-mannered. He has too good a nature to be spoiled, and the king’s mother tempers her treats with lessons.”

  “She is an indulgent woman?” she asked.

  He gave a little gulp of laughter. “Only to her son,” he said. “The rest of us find her—er—more majestic than motherly.”

  “May we talk again at Lambeth?” Catalina asked, tempted to know more about this household that she was to join.

  “At Lambeth and London, I shall be proud to serve you,” the young man said, his eyes warm with admiration. “You must command me as you wish. I shall be your friend in England; you can call on me.”

  I must have courage: I am the daughter of a brave woman, and I have prepared for this all my life. When the young duke spoke so kindly to me, there was no need for me to feel like weeping; that was foolish. I must keep my head up and smile. My mother said to me that if I smile, no one will know that I am homesick or afraid. I shall smile and smile however odd things seem.

  And though this England seems so strange now, I will become accustomed. I will learn their ways and feel at home here. Their odd ways will become my ways, and the worst things—the things that I utterly cannot bear—those I shall change when I am queen. And anyway, it will be better for me than it was for Isabel, my sister. She was only married a few months and then she had to come home, a widow. Better for me than for María, who had to follow in Isabel’s footsteps to Portugal, better for me than for Juana, who is sick with love for her husband, Philip. It must be better for me than it was for Juan, my poor brother, who died so soon after finding happiness. And always better for me than for my mother, whose childhood was lived on a knife edge.

  My story won’t be like hers, of course. I have been born to less exciting times. I shall hope to make terms with my husband, Arthur, and with his odd, loud father, and with his sweet little braggart brother. I shall hope that his mother and his grandmother will love me or at the very least teach me how to be a Princess of Wales, a Queen of England. I shall not have to ride in desperate dashes by night from one besieged fortress to another as my mother did. I shall not have to pawn my own jewels to pay mercenary soldiers, as she did. I shall not have to ride out in my own armor to rally my troops. I shall not be threatened by the wicked French on one side and the heretic Moors on the other, as my mother was. I shall marry Arthur, and when his father dies—which must be soon, for he is so very old and so very bad-tempered—then we shall be King and Queen of England, and my mother will rule in Spain as I rule in England and she will see me keep England in alliance with Spain as I have promised her. She will see me hold my country in an unbreakable treaty with hers; she will see I shall be safe forever.

  London,

  14th November 1501

  ON THE MORNING OF HER WEDDING DAY Catalina was called early; but she had been awake for hours, stirring as soon as the cold, wintry sun had started to light the pale sky. They had prepared a great bath—her ladies told her that the English were amazed that she was going to wash before her wedding day and that most of them thought that she was risking her life. Catalina, brought up in the Alhambra, where the bathhouses were the most beautiful suite of rooms in the palace, centers of gossip, laughter, and scented water, was equally amazed to hear that the English thought it perfectly adequate to bathe only occasionally and that the poor people would bathe only once a year.

  She had already realized that the scent of musk and ambergris which had wafted in with the king and Prince Arthur had underlying notes of sweat and horse, and that she would live for the rest of her life among people who did not change their underwear from one year to the next. She had seen it as another thing that she must learn to endure, as an angel from heaven endures the privations of earth. She had come from al-Yanna—the garden, the paradise—to the ordinary world. She had come from the Alhambra Palace to England; she had anticipated some disagreeable changes.

  “I suppose it is always so cold that it does not matter,” she said uncertainly to Doña Elvira.

  “It matters to us,” the duenna said. “And you shall bathe like an Infanta of Spain though all the cooks in the kitchen have had to stop what they are doing to boil up water.”

  Doña Elvira had commanded a great tureen from the flesh kitchen which was usually deployed to scald beast carcasses, had it scoured by three scullions, lined i
t with linen sheets and filled it to the brim with hot water scattered with rose petals and scented with oil of roses brought from Spain. She lovingly supervised the washing of Catalina’s long white limbs, the manicuring of her toes, the filing of her fingernails, the brushing of her teeth, and finally the three-rinse washing of her hair. Time after time, the incredulous English maids toiled to the door to receive another ewer of hot water from exhausted page boys and tipped it in the tub to keep the temperature of the bath hot.

  “If only we had a proper bathhouse,” Doña Elvira mourned, “with steam and a tepidarium and a proper clean marble floor! Hot water on tap and somewhere for you to sit and be properly scrubbed.”

  “Don’t fuss,” Catalina said dreamily as they helped her from the bath and patted her all over with scented towels. One maid took her hair, squeezed out the water, and rubbed it gently with red silk soaked in oil to give it shine and color.

  “Your mother would be so proud of you,” Doña Elvira said as they led the Infanta towards her wardrobe and started to dress her in the layer after layer of shifts and gowns. “Pull that lace tighter, girl, so that the skirt lies flat. This is her day as well as yours, Catalina. She said that you would marry him whatever it cost her.”

  Yes, but she did not pay the greatest price. I know they bought me this wedding with a king’s ransom for my dowry, and I know that they endured long and hard negotiations, and I survived the worst voyage anyone has ever taken, but there was another price paid that we never speak of—wasn’t there? And the thought of that price is in my mind today, as it has been on the journey, as it was on the voyage, as it has been ever since I first heard of it.

  There was a man of only twenty-four years old, Edward Plantagenet, the Duke of Warwick and a son of the Kings of England, with—truth be told—a better claim to the throne of England than that of my father-in-law. He was a prince, nephew to the king, and of blood royal. He committed no crime, he did nothing wrong, but he was arrested for my sake, taken to the Tower for my benefit, and finally killed, beheaded on the block, for my gain, so that my parents could be satisfied that there were no pretenders to the throne that they had bought for me.