Patience, Princess Catherine (6 page)

 

What is she like, York?" the prince asked the duke as they left the Great Hall after the wedding banquet. "You have spent more time with her than I have."

"Very nice," Henry told his brother. "Intelligent, too. And comely, I should say."

Arthur sent him a sidelong glance. "Beautiful hair," he agreed. "But her gowns," he added dubiously. "Rather odd, do you not think?"

"I paid no attention to her gowns. I was too busy trying to make out what she was saying," Henry explained. "She is eloquent in Latin, but her pronunciation is difficult to understand. I have become skilled at speaking Latin
her
way. You will too, if you try."

"I wonder if she plays chess. It would give us a way to
pass the time at Ludlow. And do you happen to know if she sings well or plays an instrument? The virginals, for instance, or the lute? That might be pleasant on cold winter evenings."

"The princess did not speak of chess or music." Henry paused, helping his brother out of his ermine-trimmed robe and into the night robe that he was to wear for the next ceremony. "Is she going with you to Ludlow, then? I heard that her mother thinks you should not live together for a year or so. Queen Isabella wants to let her stay with Mother, the queen, and Grandmother to learn our language and the ways of our court."

Arthur frowned. "She is my wife now. She should be with me."

Henry said nothing, thinking how much he would enjoy having Arthur's comely new wife at court a while longer.

Arthur had begun to pace nervously. "Are you ready, Arthur?" Henry asked. "I am to escort you, and Buckingham will be with us. Brandon and many others are coming, too."

"I know that!" Arthur replied fretfully. He stopped pacing. His face was the color of ashes. "York, I am not sure about this—this bedding ceremony. I am not entirely clear on what is expected of me."

Henry's eyes widened with surprise. "Has Buckingham not instructed you? It is really just another ceremony, Arthur. Brandon has spoken to me of it. Something to be gotten over with. Nothing to worry about."

"Yes, I know what is supposed to happen. But what if it does not, quite? What if she—?" Arthur's voice faltered and failed. He sat down abruptly on a bench and covered his eyes with both hands.

Henry regarded his older brother benevolently. He even felt a little sorry for him. After a moment he tenderly grasped Arthur's hand and coaxed him to his feet. "Come, my lord of Wales, let us go now to the bedchamber. Your bride awaits you. Brandon says that even if it does not go just as you wish, all you need do is boast of it afterwards as though it did!"

 

E
VER SINCE
D
OGMERSFIELD
D
OÑA
E
LVIRA HAD LECTURED
me on many points regarding my wedding day, insisting especially that I must eat but little. "To evidence too much pleasure in the enjoyment of food would show you to be a person of appetites. That is unseemly for a highborn Spanish lady!"

This discourse on appetites led my duenna eventually to a much more detailed instruction on how I was to conduct myself on my wedding night.

My mother and I had had long talks about what I should expect in the marital bed. "What happens between a man and a woman is blessed by God and will lead in time to the begetting of offspring," she said—as though I did not know this, with three older sisters!—"but your father and I believe strongly that this should be delayed for a time, due to the youthful age of the prince and his delicate constitution."

My mother also made it clear that she did not wish me to accompany Arthur to Ludlow but preferred that I remain in London with the king and queen.

Doña Elvira supported my mother's view. "You have only to follow my instructions, and all will be well." But when I asked, she refused to tell me in advance what these instructions would be. "In due time," she said.

On our wedding night Arthur was escorted by the duke of York and the duke of Buckingham to his chambers and I to mine by the duchess of Norfolk and Princess Margaret and, of course, Doña Elvira. My ladies removed my robe, gown, and farthingale and replaced them with a delicately embroidered silken kirtle. Then my duenna took me aside and pressed into my hand a tiny bottle of Venetian glass containing a dark liquid. "Take this with you, but conceal it well," she whispered.

Thinking it some potion that I was to swallow, perhaps to put me into a light slumber, I asked what it contained.

"Sheep's blood," she replied. "Before morning, make certain to spill a few drops upon the linen sheet. When the lords wish to see proof that your virginity was taken by the prince, this will be the evidence. But you need have no fear. I am assured that the prince has been directed by his father, the king, that the two of you are to live as brother and sister until some time in the future when it is deemed fitting for you to live as man and wife."

Arthur from his chamber and I from mine were then led to the nuptial chamber, already crowded with dignitaries, many of whom were merry with drink. The heavy damask bed curtains were drawn back, and the archbishop of Canterbury with great ceremony and many prayers and sprinkles of holy water blessed the bed upon which we were to lie. While Arthur's gentlemen guided him into the great bed from one side, my ladies helped me from the other. "Do not worry, Catalina," Francesca whispered. "It is the lot of women. Soon it will be over, and you will not mind at all."

"How would you know that, Francesca?" I asked, more sharply than intended due to my nervousness.

"So I have been told," she replied, blushing deeply and lowering her eyes. Perhaps, I thought, Doña Elvira was correct in saying that Francesca was lacking in shame.

The duke of Buckingham and Princess Margaret handed each of us a goblet containing spiced wine, which we sipped dutifully. The goblets were taken away, and Arthur and I lay down side by side, like the carved effigies on a royal tomb, still surrounded by lords and ladies of the court. Buckingham and the princess ceremoniously drew the bed curtains closed around us, and the revelers noisily withdrew from the bedchamber. The heavy door closed. We lay there listening as the raucous laughter gradually faded until all was quiet.

I clutched the glass vial in my left hand as Arthur reached for my right. He was trembling. Minutes passed. He sighed deeply. "Are you weary, dearest wife?" he asked at last.

"Quite weary, my lord."

"Perhaps, then, it would be wise to delay the conjugal act until another time?"

His question startled me, for I thought that decision had already been made. I was also not certain I understood him, for his Latin words were still strange to my ears. "As you wish, my lord," I replied.

Arthur shifted restlessly in the bed. "But it is the custom to show evidence of the act to the noblemen."

"I have the evidence here. My duenna gave it to me."

"You do?" Arthur rolled over onto his stomach. "What sort of evidence?"

"A vial of sheep's blood."

Arthur laughed with relief. "Splendid!" He patted my shoulder. "Then good night, dearest wife," he said. "Sleep well." Arthur turned away from me and curled up on his side.

I whispered, "Good night, beloved husband. God grant you a peaceful rest."

I tucked the glass vial between the mattresses, intending to follow Doña Elvira's instructions first thing in the morning. Soon Arthur was breathing deeply. Exhausted though I was, I could not sleep—not while this boy, this stranger, lay in the bed beside me, close enough to touch.

 

Arthur was still sleeping when a great clamor erupted outside our chamber the next morning. Doña Elvira's voice registered loud protest on the other side of the door, with even louder shouts and much boisterous laughter in reply.

"What can it be?" I asked Arthur, who was now fully awake and running his fingers through his thick blond curls.

"The lords of the bedchamber have come to greet us," he explained.

"This is an outrage!" my duenna shouted as the door burst open.

They paid her no attention. In a moment a dozen strangers had pulled back the bed curtains and gaped at us rudely. Behind them came musicians making all sorts of insufferable noises. There was much laughter and rough joking, and Arthur's fool pranced about, making comments that I was glad not to understand. So distressed was I by this intrusion that I burst into tears of shame. Under the coverlet Arthur squeezed my hand to comfort me and tried to explain that such was the custom here. I retorted that in my country such an invasion would be considered an insult.

This racket continued for some minutes. Arthur whispered to me, "Watch now. Here is my great pretense." He threw back the bedcovers, calling out in Latin in a great, boastful voice, "My friends, I believe that it is indeed a good pastime to have a wife!"

This remark was greeted with more laughter and all sorts of ill-mannered whistles and hoots. Stunned, I peered around for my duenna to come to my aid, but I soon found that she had swooned dead away and only halfhearted efforts were being made to revive her.

At the last moment I remembered the glass vial of sheep's blood hidden between the mattresses. While Arthur roistered with the gentlemen who laughed and joked with him, I pulled the cork stopper and, following my duenna's instructions, sprinkled a few drops of blood upon the spotless white linen sheet.

 

For a fortnight the celebrations continued—pageants and tournaments, feasting and dancing, masquing and disguising, gambling at cards and at dice—and so did the debate about whether I should accompany my husband to Ludlow and begin to share his life or whether I should remain with the royal court in London. On the thirtieth of November the celebrations came to an end; I learned that the first portion of my dowry—100, 000 escudos—had been handed over by the ambassador to King Henry, and my household and I were moved to Richmond Palace, the king's favorite.

I understood that Arthur needed to return to Ludlow to resume his duties as prince of Wales. I also understood that I was too young and possibly too delicate to take up life in that wild, rough country. Doña Elvira insisted that I must not go, that she had given her word to my mother I would not. "Perhaps in a year," she said.

But my chaplain, Padre Alessandro, insisted just as strongly that I must go now.

I felt myself pulled first one way and then the other and sometimes wept with perplexity and bafflement. It was not my choice to make, and just as well, for I would not have known how to make it. "The king will decide," I reminded my duenna and my chaplain. "Neither you nor I have a voice."

At last Arthur sent me a message: King Henry had decided that the prince of Wales must return to Ludlow before the start of Yuletide and that I was to accompany him. Padre Alessandro smiled benevolently while Doña Elvira raged, but she could not defy the orders of the English king. Early in December, I prepared to make another journey, this time with my husband to my new home in Wales.

Eltham Palace, January 1502

 

Henry watched as the great procession—Arthur's knights and priests and henchmen and the princess's Spanish retinue, carts and mules laden with their belongings, the princess closed in her litter and Arthur on horseback—set off from Richmond Palace, wound through the hills, and finally disappeared into the forest.

After the excitement of the wedding, he was sorry to see them leave. He had grown fond of the princess and of his role as her escort and the attention it brought him. If Catherine had remained at court, he believed there was much he could have taught her: to speak French fluently; to dance in the English manner; to play upon the lute, if she did not know how; and to sing some pretty songs. Perhaps he could have taught her to speak English as well.

"Why do you not stay at Richmond for Yuletide?" Henry had asked Arthur, who shrugged and replied, "Father, the king, wishes me to be in the Welsh Marches by Christmas." And that was that.

After Twelfth Night the duke and his sisters returned by royal barge to Eltham Palace near Greenwich with its great hunting park, fine banqueting halls, and puppet theater. Henry had spent the past ten years at Eltham under the care of various nursemaids, governors, and tutors. He resumed his studies under the direction of his principal tutor, John Skelton, who had been chosen by Lady Margaret.

His days began long before the sun rose. Henry shivered sleepily through matins sung by his chaplain, and at six o'clock stumbled to the chapel royal to hear daily mass. He was always ravenous by the first meal of the day, gulping down a flagon of ale and devouring the bread and meat set out for him in his chambers.

The intellectually rigorous mornings ground by: Latin and Greek, followed by French and penmanship lessons, and later, under Skelton's demanding eye, on to mathematics, logic, and law. His tutors agreed that Henry was a gifted student, and Erasmus, the renowned humanist scholar who came from Amsterdam to visit the Tudor court that winter, pronounced him "brilliant."

By dinnertime, after the morning lessons, Henry was again famished. Liveried servants presented the dishes and Skelton presided at table with a stout stick, whacking Henry's knuckles when the duke forgot himself and wiped his greasy hands on his doublet.

Once dinner was finished, Henry could scarcely wait to be away from his books and out into the park. Brandon often waited for him, challenging him to a sword fight, a footrace, a contest of some kind. He could run faster than the cousins who often joined them. He leaped easily over ditches and fences, leaving the others far behind, except for Brandon who always won.