Catherine of Aragon (7 page)

Unfortunately, the Earl is a cousin of King James, and a close personal friend, so there is great Scottish fury at his arrest. Catherine thinks Henry was perfectly justified. Although she likes Margaret, and is sorry for her, she has no patience with the Scots. As far as she can see, their old friendship with France makes them the enemies of Spain and of England. She reminds me so much of her dead mother these days. Queen Isabella, too, saw things in black and white. Those who were not with her were against her, with no word to be said in their favour. Thomas Wolsey has been sent to Edinburgh to try to smooth things over. I hope he succeeds.

21st June 1508

I cannot believe what has happened. Poor Uncle Rod – the whole thing is appalling. He was at a long, difficult meeting this afternoon with the King and the new ambassador, Fuensalida, about the situation between Scotland and France. Things are a little better since Wolsey's intervention, and Uncle Rod managed to persuade the King to be slightly more friendly to Catherine's father in Spain – but when they emerged from the chamber, Fuensalida turned on my uncle, shouting that his “pussyfoot tactics” were useless. Why did he not
demand
that Henry treat Ferdinand with more respect?

For once in his life, my uncle lost his temper. “I can do no more!” he shouted back. “I cannot twist the ears of the King of England!” And at that point, Fuensalida produced a letter from King Ferdinand and gave it to him. It was a letter dismissing Dr Rodrigo De Puebla from his post. He then said, with a triumphant smile on his face, that he had been carrying two letters from the Spanish king ever since his arrival here, one praising De Puebla for his excellent work, and the other dismissing him. Fuensalida had been waiting to choose which one to deploy. And he had now chosen.

I am so angry. This arrogant, tactless, trouble-making man has undone all Uncle Rod's years of faithful work, and he has proved, too, that Ferdinand never really trusted my uncle or liked him. I didn't know at first what had happened, but when I saw my uncle leaving the palace, he looked old and shrunken, and leaned heavily on the arm of his servant. I was so troubled that I ran up to ask if he was all right, and he shook his head. I went with him to his lodgings and stayed there for the night, sleeping on the couch in his room. He seems utterly collapsed.

22nd June 1508

Uncle Rod is still in his bed. He says he will never get up again. This morning he wrote a letter to King Ferdinand, then sealed it and gave it to me. “Make sure it is sent, my dear,” he said. “There is no one else I can trust.” Then he said it would be his last letter. “I will not have to trouble you again.” I wept as I took it from his hand, but he seems beyond tears.

15th July 1508

The court has moved to Windsor where we are wretchedly quartered in rooms above the stables. I hate to be so far from Uncle Rod.

2nd August 1508

We have just heard that Margaret had a little girl two weeks ago, but the child did not live, and Margaret is ill. How ironic it is that King James has so many healthy children by his various mistresses, but his legal wife struggles to produce a living baby.

Henry has released the Earl of Arran from prison, and James has promised that he will not send an army to France, to fight on the side of the French king. Catherine gave a cynical smile when she heard this. “An easy promise,” she said. “So he keeps his army in Scotland – but who is to say he will not attack us from across our northern border? He has made no promise about that.”

20th September 1508

The whole court fled to the country three weeks ago, in panic because of an outbreak of plague in London. They took every available horse and carriage and all the supplies they needed, but not one of them suggested that Catherine should go with them. We were left here in Windsor, in our squalid rooms over the empty stables, and we foraged in the garden and the fields for food. It was humiliating that the peasants, who are so poor, gave us milk and cheese. Catherine assured me she would pay them, but I don't know how. Maybe she still has a few valuables that she can pawn, but if so, she keeps them hidden. However, we did not die or even become sick, and the courtiers are back now, chattering and gossiping like a flock of starlings.

They are all hysterically convinced that Henry means to attack Spain, and Fuensalida has actually written to Ferdinand, asking him to send a ship so that Catherine and her remaining household can be taken back to Granada before war breaks out.

Catherine is furious with him. He had no right to send such a letter without consulting her, she says. She has not struggled through all these years to cave in now, and whatever happens, she is staying here.

28th September 1508

I begged a lift to the Strand with a court lady who was going to visit her sister in London, and spent a day with Uncle Rod. He is still in bed, looking frail. I told him, truthfully, that Catherine now detests Fuensalida, and wishes she had listened more carefully to Uncle Rod's advice, and he smiled wearily. “History will judge,” he said. He is hardly eating anything, and the skin is loose on his bony hands. I don't know what to do. I so much wish Michel was here. But at least Gonsalvo and his wife come often to see my uncle, so I know he is looked after.

1st October 1508

A letter from Mama came today. In Spain, too, people are afraid of an attack from Henry – though they are more afraid of the French. For the first time, Mama chides me for having fallen in love with a Frenchman. Couldn't I have found a nice Spaniard, she asks? But Michel has not been in France for years – he is a man of all nations. How I hate this wrangling and distrust.

Mama says Juana is now a prisoner, locked up by her father. Nobody knows if she is truly insane, but Ferdinand is ruling in her place, and he is making sure to keep her away from the public eye.

12th October 1508

Oh, what a rumpus! Catherine found out this morning that Fuensalida has been sending the plate, jewels and money that were meant to pay the last of her dowry out of the country “for safe keeping” in the Netherlands, because he is so sure there will be war between England and Spain. This all emerged when he walked into her room this morning and told her she must not go to the ceremony of Mary's betrothal.

Mary, Harry's little sister, is thirteen now, and when Philip and Juana came here because of the storm, she was promised to their son Charles. Catherine is very fond of Mary, and she was outraged by Fuensalida's high-handed order. It would be an unthinkable insult to Henry and the whole royal family to stay away from the ceremony. Catherine shouted at the ambassador, telling him he had no idea of manners or courtesy and was totally unfitted to be a diplomat. (In which I agree with her.) He tried to stand his ground, but she jumped to her feet and snatched up her embroidery scissors, and I think he really believed she might attack him. Anyway, he fled, and Catherine went rampaging to the King.

13th October 1508

When Fuensalida rode into Court this morning, the King's servants simply took his horse by the bridle and turned it round, directing the ambassador out again. Henry has refused to see him any more.

I sent a note to Uncle Rod, telling him of this in hopes it would cheer him up.

15th October 1508

The messenger who took my note brought no reply. He said my uncle seemed listless and ill. Catherine caught me weeping and asked what was the matter, and I told her. She promises she will send her own doctor to him. I hope it may do some good.

3rd November 1508

A short letter came from Uncle Rod today, written in his own hand, for which I thank God. I must not worry about him, he says. Gonsalvo or Bianca come every day, sometimes with their little son Miguel, and his landlady is kind. As to death, he says, that is not a thing to be feared. It is only a return to the mystery in which we existed before we were born. At the end he added a guarded sentence. “Gonsalvo will say for me that which should be said.” He means
kaddish
, the Jewish prayer for the dead. Tears come to my eyes at that, but I am not sure why.

20th December 1508

Mary's betrothal has been celebrated with the usual splendour. Though still only thirteen, she was wonderfully composed, and a long account of the whole ceremony has been written in Latin, to be widely circulated. A translation in Spanish is to go to King Ferdinand. As Michel might say, with a straight face, “I'm sure he'll love it.”

And now we are to have another merry Christmas.

16th April 1509

King Henry is gravely ill. Here at Richmond, the palace which he designed and built, he fights for each laboured breath. The doctors are with him constantly, but I fear he is beyond the help of their leeches and potions. The court is hushed, and there is a constant murmur of prayer.

Nobody prays for my old uncle, who also lies waiting for his death, though in complete tranquillity. A message came from Gonsalvo yesterday, to say I should come if I wished to see him still alive, and Catherine said I must go at once. I don't know how she arranged it, but I was taken that morning by boat down the river to the Strand, with a manservant to look after me.

It seemed strange that the spirit still inhabited Uncle Rod's bony frame, so wasted and fleshless has he become, but he smiled when he saw me. I had to bend close to hear what he was trying to say. “There is nothing to do.” It was just a whisper, then he closed his eyes in great tiredness. I still wonder what he meant. A life's work completed, perhaps, and the last ends tied up. Or maybe he was thinking of the wreckage that had been made of his skilled care, and the braggart non-diplomacy that had replaced it. Nothing to be done. The nations are heading for war.

17th April 1509

I wish I had not come back to Richmond last night. I should have sent the man back alone. I should have stayed. Uncle Rod died at dawn this morning, and I was not there. Gonsalvo sent a rider to Richmond with a letter to tell me what had happened. I cannot stop weeping.

21st April 1509

Henry VII of England is dead.

Such a public death. Not for him the obscurity of a small bedroom in a street near the river – Henry died with statesmen round his bed and the royal coat of arms above him. I felt bitter at first, but this evening I know I would not have wanted Uncle Rod to have been subjected to such a blaze of morbid interest. He died as he would have wished, with his son beside him and the murmured chant of an ancient prayer in his ears.

Henry, too, was watched over by his son in the slow days of his dying. Young Harry was with him constantly – but not just out of compassion. Together, the son and the dying father agreed on how the kingship should continue, and how England should stand among the other nations.

I knew nothing of this, of course, until Catherine, fresh from a meeting with Prince Harry, burst into the room where I was mending a dress yet again, and seized my hands, whirling me into a dance. “Eva! Do you know what the King's last words were? He said Harry and I must wed! We must marry before the coronation, so the people will have a new king and his queen. I have won, Eva! I've won, I've won!”

It's hard to believe, but it seems to be true. We can hardly celebrate when the King's body lies in state, awaiting burial, but all the Spaniards here are in a state of suppressed excitement. And Catherine herself seems to radiate pure joy.

11th May 1509

Yesterday was the King's funeral. Five black horses drew his carriage through black-shrouded streets. And Harry, or Henry, as I suppose I should now call him – Henry VIII of England – will marry Catherine in a month's time at the Church of the Observant Friars, by Greenwich Palace – the place where he was christened eighteen years ago.

Fuensalida is utterly confounded. He could not believe it when young Henry told him of his father's death-bed instruction. He walks about in silent consternation, like a man whose world has fallen about his ears, and he will have to retrieve all the money and valuables he spirited away to Flanders. “Everybody makes mistakes,” Henry told him kindly when he gave this instruction. But the corners of his mouth twitched, and everyone saw his amusement. Henry is not to be trifled with, though. Catherine told me in a private moment this evening that he has already made arrangements for Fuensalida to be returned to Spain.

3rd June 1509

When will I get time to write a proper entry again? There is such a frenzy of cutting and stitching that I never have a free moment. Catherine's little household has to leap from obscurity to a queen's opulence, and we are so taken by surprise that we hardly know where to start. Lady Margaret Beaufort, who is regent of the country during this time between kings, has helped us by making her own stocks of silks and velvets available and by lending us sempstresses and embroidresses. Luckily the daylight is long at this time of the year, for some of the detailed work is hard to do by the glow of candles. We work at such a rate that it's a kind of madness, but as Michel said once, it's better to be mad than dull. Nobody could call it dull here now. Not any more.

24th June 1509, Midsummer Day

At last! Henry VIII of England and Catherine, Princess of Aragon and Wales (I feel I must give them their full titles) were crowned King and Queen of England today after their private marriage yesterday in Greenwich. They spent the night at the Tower of London, as tradition demands, and the waiting crowds yelled and cheered when they saw them. Henry looked magnificent, so tall and broad, every inch a king, clad in richly embroidered cloth of gold and his hair a red-gold colour too. Catherine rode in a white silk litter carried between two white palfreys, looking as young and untouched by the years as she was when she went to that other wedding. It seems now to have been so brief and so long ago that it might never have happened, except that these eight years of hardship and insult have been its direct result.

The people in the streets didn't care. For them, Catherine was their beautiful new bride-queen, and they roared their approval of her all the way to Westminster Abbey. We, her ladies, rode beside her on white horses, and our robes of blue velvet, edged with crimson, set off her silken whiteness perfectly. The streets were hung with scarlet cloth, thousands of yards of it, and the entire court was dressed in scarlet robes, richly furred. For weeks, Lady Margaret has been buying up all the cloth she could lay her hands on. What an amazing woman she is! At 66 years old, she has run the country since her son's death, and now she presides over the wedding and coronation of her grandson as well, with absolute efficiency. No wonder she looks exhausted.