Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (44 page)

These years have not been kind to me. He has never seen me laughing with joy, he has never seen me smiling and easy. He has never seen me dressed other than poorly, and anxious about my appearance. They have never called me forwards to dance before him, or to sing for him. I always have a poor horse when the court is hunting and sometimes I cannot keep up. I always look weary and I am always anxious. He is young and frivolous and he loves luxury and fineness of dress. He might have a picture of me in his mind as a poor woman, a drag upon his family, a pale widow, a ghost at the feast. He is a self-indulgent boy, he might decide to excuse himself from his duty. He is vain and light-hearted and might think nothing of sending me away.

But I have to stay. If I leave, he will forget me in a moment, I am certain of that, at least. I have to stay.

Fuensalida, summoned to the king’s council, went in with his head held high, trying to seem unbowed, certain that they had sent for him to tell him to leave and take the unwanted Infanta with him. His high Spanish pride, which had so much offended them so very often in the past, took him through the door and to the Privy Council table. The new king’s ministers were seated around the table, there was a place left empty for him in the plumb centre. He felt like a boy, summoned before his tutors for a scolding.

‘Perhaps I should start by explaining the condition of the Princess of Wales,’ he said diffidently. ‘The dowry payment is safely stored, out of the country, and can be paid in…’

‘The dowry does not matter,’ one of the councillors said.

‘The dowry?’ Fuensalida was stunned into silence. ‘But the princess’s plate?’

‘The king is minded to be generous to his betrothed.’

There was a stunned silence from the ambassador. ‘His betrothed?’

‘Of the greatest importance now is the power of the King of France and the danger of his ambitions in Europe. It has been thus since Agincourt. The king is most anxious to restore the glory of England. And now we have a king as great as that Henry, ready to make England great again. English safety depends on a three-way alliance between Spain and England, and the emperor. The young king believes that his wedding with the Infanta will secure the support of the King of Aragon to this great cause. This is, presumably, the case?’

‘Certainly,’ said Fuensalida, his head reeling. ‘But the plate…’

‘The plate does not matter,’ one of the councillors repeated.

‘I thought that her goods…’

‘They do not matter.’

‘I shall have to tell her of this…change…in her fortunes.’

The Privy Council rose to their feet. ‘Pray do.’

‘I shall return when I have…er…seen her.’ Pointless, Fuensalida thought, to tell them that she had been so angry with him for what she saw as his betrayal that he could not be sure that she would see him. Pointless to reveal that the last time he had seen her he had told her that she was lost and her cause was lost and everyone had known it for years.

He staggered as much as walked from the room, and almost collided with the young prince. The youth, still not yet eighteen, was radiant. ‘Ambassador!’

Fuensalida threw himself back and dropped to his knee. ‘Your Grace! I must…condole with you on the death of…’

‘Yes, yes.’ He waved aside the sympathy. He could not make himself look grave. He was wreathed in smiles, taller than ever. ‘You will wish to tell the princess that I propose that our marriage takes place as soon as possible.’

Fuensalida found he was stammering with a dry mouth. ‘Of course, sire.’

‘I shall send a message to her for you,’ the young man said generously. He giggled. ‘I know that you are out of favour. I know that she has refused to see you, but I am sure that she will see you for my sake.’

‘I thank you,’ the ambassador said. The prince waved him away. Fuensalida rose from his bow and went towards the Princess’s chambers. He realised that it would be hard for the Spanish to recover from the largesse of this new English king. His generosity, his ostentatious generosity, was crushing.

Catalina kept her ambassador waiting, but she admitted him within the hour. He had to admire the self-control that set her to watch the clock when the man who knew her destiny was waiting outside to tell her.

‘Emissary,’ she said levelly.

He bowed. The hem of her gown was ragged. He saw the neat, small threads where it had been stitched up, and then worn ragged again. He had a sense of great relief that whatever happened to her after this unexpected marriage, she would never again have to wear an old gown.

‘Dowager Princess, I have been to the Privy Council. Our troubles are over. He wants to marry you.’

Fuensalida had thought she might cry with joy, or pitch into his arms, or fall to her knees and thank God. She did none of these things. Slowly, she inclined her head. The tarnished gold leaf on the hood caught the light. ‘I am glad to hear it,’ was all she said.

‘They say that there is no issue about the plate.’ He could not keep the jubilation from his voice.

She nodded again.

‘The dowry will have to be paid. I shall get them to send the
money back from Bruges. It has been in safe-keeping, Your Grace. I have kept it safe for you.’ His voice quavered, he could not help it.

Again she nodded.

He dropped to one knee. ‘Princess, rejoice! You will be Queen of England.’

Her blue eyes when she turned them to him were hard, like the sapphires she had sold long ago. ‘Emissary, I was always going to be Queen of England.’

I have done it. Good God, I have done it. After seven endless years of waiting, after hardship and humiliation, I have done it. I go into my bedchamber and kneel before my prie-dieu and close my eyes. But I speak to Arthur, not to the risen Lord.

‘I have done it,’ I tell him. ‘Harry will marry me, I have done as you wished me to do.’

For a moment I can see his smile, I can see him as I did so often, when I glanced sideways at him during dinner and caught him smiling down the hall to someone. Before me again is the brightness of his face, the darkness of his eyes, the clear line of his profile. And more than anything else, the scent of him, the very perfume of my desire.

Even on my knees before a crucifix I give a little sigh of longing. ‘Arthur, beloved. My only love. I shall marry your brother but I am always yours.’ For a moment, I remember, as bright as the first taste of early cherries, the scent of his skin in the morning. I raise my face and it is as if I can feel his chest against my cheek as he bears down on me, thrusts towards me. ‘Arthur,’ I whisper. I am now, I will always be, forever his.

Catalina had to face one ordeal. As she went into dinner in a hastily tailored new gown, with a collar of gold at her neck and pearls in
her ears, and was conducted to a new table at the very front of the hall, she curtseyed to her husband-to-be and saw his bright smile at her, and then she turned to her grandmother-in-law and met the basilisk gaze of Lady Margaret Beaufort.

‘You are fortunate,’ the old lady said afterwards, as the musicians started to play and the tables were taken away.

‘I am?’ Catalina replied, deliberately dense.

‘You married one great prince of England and lost him; now it seems you will marry another.’

‘This can come as no surprise,’ Catalina observed in flawless French, ‘since I have been betrothed to him for six years. Surely, my lady, you never doubted that this day would come? You never thought that such an honourable prince would break his holy word?’

The old woman hid her discomfiture well. ‘I never doubted our intentions,’ she returned. ‘We keep our word. But when you withheld your dowry and your father reneged on his payments, I wondered as to your intentions. I wondered about the honour of Spain.’

‘Then you were kind to say nothing to disturb the king,’ Catalina said smoothly. ‘For he trusted me, I know. And I never doubted your desire to have me as your granddaughter. And see! Now I will be your granddaughter, I will be Queen of England, the dowry is paid, and everything is as it should be.’

She left the old lady with nothing to say – and there were few that could do that. ‘Well, at any rate, we will have to hope that you are fertile,’ was all she sourly mustered.

‘Why not? My mother had half a dozen children,’ Catalina said sweetly. ‘Let us hope my husband and I are blessed with the fertility of Spain. My emblem is the pomegranate – a Spanish fruit, filled with life.’

My Lady the King’s Grandmother swept away, leaving Catalina alone. Catalina curtseyed to her departing back and rose up, her
head high. It did not matter what Lady Margaret might think or say, all that mattered was what she could do. Catalina did not think she could prevent the wedding, and that was all that mattered.

I was dreading the wedding, the moment when I would have to say the words of the marriage vows that I had said to Arthur. But in the end the service was so unlike that glorious day in St Paul’s Cathedral that I could go through it with Harry before me, and Arthur locked away in the very back of my mind. I was doing this for Arthur, the very thing he had commanded, the very thing that he had insisted on
–
and I could not risk thinking of him.