Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (7 page)

“Since I am an English princess, I must learn your customs,” she said. “Would an English princess get up in the middle of the night and dance for the king after he forced his way into her rooms?”

Henry laughed at her. “If she had any sense she would.”

She threw him a small, demure smile. “Then I will dance with my ladies,” she decided, and rose from her seat at the high table and went down to the center of the floor. She called one by name, Henry noted, María de Salinas, a pretty, dark-haired girl who came quickly to stand beside Catalina. Three other young women, pretending shyness but eager to show themselves off, came forwards.

Henry looked them over. He had asked Their Majesties of Spain that their daughter’s companions should all be pretty, and he was pleased to see that however blunt and ill-mannered they had found his request, they had acceded to it. The girls were all good-looking, but none of them outshone the princess, who stood composed and then raised her hands and clapped, to order the musicians to play.

He noticed at once that she moved like a sensual woman. The dance was a pavane, a slow ceremonial dance, and she moved with her hips swaying and her eyes heavy-lidded, a little smile on her face. She had been well schooled. Any princess would be taught how to dance in the courtly world where dancing, singing, music, and poetry mattered more than anything else; but she danced like a woman who let the music move her, and Henry, who had some experience, believed that women who could be summoned by music were the ones who responded to the rhythms of lust.

He went from pleasure in watching her to a sense of rising irritation that this exquisite piece would be put in Arthur’s cold bed. He could not see his thoughtful, scholarly boy teasing and arousing the passion in this girl on the edge of womanhood. He imagined that Arthur would fumble about and perhaps hurt her, and she would grit her teeth and do her duty as a woman and a queen must, and then, like as not, she would die in childbirth; and the whole performance of finding a bride for Arthur would have to be undergone again, with no benefit for himself but only this irritated, frustrated arousal that she seemed to inspire in him. It was good to see she was desirable, since she would be an ornament to his court; but it was a nuisance that she should be so very desirable to him.

Henry looked away from her dancing and comforted himself with the
thought of her dowry, which would bring him lasting benefit and come directly to him, unlike this bride, who seemed bound to unsettle him and must go, however mismatched, to his son. As soon as they were married her treasurer would hand over the first payment of her dowry: in solid gold. A year later he would deliver the second part in gold and in her plate and jewels. Having fought his way to the throne on a shoestring and uncertain credit, Henry trusted the power of money more than anything in life—more even than his throne, for he knew he could buy a throne with money, and far more than women, for they are cheaply bought; and far, far more than the joy of a smile from a virgin princess who stopped her dance now, swept him a curtsey, and came up smiling.

“Do I please you?” she demanded, flushed and a little breathless.

“Well enough,” he said, determined that she should never know how much. “But it’s late now and you should go back to your bed. We’ll ride with you a little way in the morning before we go ahead of you to London.”

She was surprised at the abruptness of his reply. Again, she glanced towards Arthur as if he might contradict his father’s plans; perhaps stay with her for the remainder of the journey, since his father had bragged of their informality. But the boy said nothing. “As you wish, Your Grace,” she said politely.

The king nodded and rose to his feet. The court billowed into deep curtseys and bows as he stalked past them, out of the room. “Not so informal at all,” Catalina thought as she watched the King of England stride through his court, his head high. “He may boast of being a soldier with the manners of the camp, but he insists on obedience and on the show of deference. As indeed he should,” added Isabella’s daughter to herself.

Arthur followed behind his father with a quick “Good night” to the princess as he left. In a moment all the men in their train had gone too, and the princess was alone but for her ladies.

“What an extraordinary man,” she remarked to her favorite, María de Salinas.

“He liked you,” the young woman said. “He watched you very closely, he liked you.”

“And why should he not?” she asked with the instinctive arrogance of a girl born to the greatest kingdom in Europe. “And even if he did not,
it is all already agreed, and there can be no change. It has been agreed for almost all my life.”

*     *     *

He is not what I expected, this king who fought his way to the throne and picked up his crown from the mud of a battlefield. I expected him to be more like a champion, like a great soldier, perhaps like my father. Instead he has the look of a merchant, a man who puzzles over profit indoors, not a man who won his kingdom and his wife at the point of a sword.

I suppose I hoped for a man like Don Hernando, a hero that I could look up to, a man I would be proud to call father. But this king is lean and pale like a clerk, not a knight from the romances at all.

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 for 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.”