Katharine, the Virgin Widow

by Виктория Холт

  * * *

  THERE WAS NO NEWS from Spain. Each day, tense and eager, Katharine waited.

  She knew that the affairs of her parents must be in dire disorder for them so to neglect their daughter. If only they would send for her. If she could sail back to Spain the treacherous seas would have no menace for her. She would be completely happy.

  Never, she believed, had anyone longed for home as she did now.

  Maria de Rojas was restive. Why did she never hear from the Sovereigns about their consent to her marriage? Why was there no reply regarding her dowry? Katharine had written again because she feared her first letter might not have reached her mother; but still there was no reply to the questions.

  Francesca gave loud voice to her grievances; Maria was filled with melancholy. Only Maria de Salinas and Inez de Veñegas alternately soothed and scolded them. They were unhappy, but what of the Infanta? How much harder was her lot. Imagine, it might well be that she would have to submit to the will of the old King of England.

  * * *

  AT LAST CAME the news from Spain. Katharine saw the messengers arrive with the dispatches and had them brought to her immediately.

  Her mother wrote as affectionately as ever, and the very sight of that beloved handwriting made the longing for home more intense.

  Isabella did not wish her daughter to marry the King of England. She was eager for a match between Katharine and the young Prince of Wales. She was writing to the King of England suggesting that he look elsewhere for a bride.

  Katharine felt limp with relief, as though she had been reprieved from a terrible fate.

  Unless some satisfactory arrangement could be made for Katharine’s future in England, Isabella wrote, she would demand that her daughter be returned to Spain.

  This made Katharine almost dizzy with happiness and, when her maids of honor came to her, they found her sitting at her table smiling dazedly at the letter before her.

  “I am not to marry him,” she announced.

  Then they all forgot the dignity due to an Infanta and fell upon her, hugging and kissing her.

  At last Maria de Rojas said: “Does she give her consent to my marriage?”

  “Alas,” Katharine told her, “there is no mention of it.”

  * * *

  HENRY SAT for a long time listening to Puebla’s account of his instructions from Spain. So the Sovereigns did not want him for a son-in-law. He read between the lines. They would be delighted if their daughter became the Queen of England, but he was old and she was young; they believed that he could not live for a great number of years and, when he died, she would be merely the Dowager Queen, who would play no part in state affairs. Moreover even as Queen, she would have no power, for Henry was not the man to allow a young wife to share in his counsels.

  Isabella was emphatic in her refusal of this match.

  “Her Highness,” Puebla told the King, “suggests that it might be well if the Infanta returned to Spain.”

  This was high-handed indeed. Henry had no wish to send the Infanta back to Spain. With their daughter living in semiretirement in England he had some hold over the Sovereigns. He wanted the rest of her dowry, and he was determined to get it.

  “These are matters not to be resolved in an hour,” replied Henry evasively.

  “Her Highness suggests that, since you are looking for a wife, the Queen of Naples, now widowed, might very well suit you.”

  “The Queen of Naples!” Henry’s eyes were momentarily narrowed. It was not a suggestion to be ignored. Such a marriage should give him a stake in Europe; so if the widow were young and handsome and likely to bear children, she would be a good match; and Henry, ever conscious of his age, was eager to marry soon.

  He therefore decided to send an embassy to Naples immediately.

  It was rather soon after his wife’s death and he did not wish to appear overeager.

  Puebla was whispering: “The Infanta might write a letter to the Queen of Naples, to be delivered into her hands and hers alone. This would give some messenger on whom you could rely the opportunity of looking closely at the Queen.”

  Henry looked with friendship on the Spaniard who had ever seemed a good friend to him.

  It was an excellent idea.

  “Tell her to write this letter at once,” he said. “You will find me a messenger on whom I can rely. I wish to know whether she be plump or lean, whether her teeth be white or black and her breath sweet or sour.”

  “If Your Grace will leave this matter with me I will see that you have a description of the lady which shall not prove false. And, Your Grace, you will remember that it is the hope of the Sovereigns that there should be a betrothal between their daughter and the Prince of Wales.”

  “The Prince of Wales is one of the most eligible bachelors in the world.”

  “And therefore, Your Grace, well matched to the Infanta of Spain.”

  Henry looked grave. “The wars in Europe would seem to be going more favorably for the French than the Spaniards. It might be well if the Infanta did return to Spain.”

  Puebla shook his head. “If she returned, the Sovereigns would expect you to return with her the hundred thousand crowns which constituted half of her dowry.”

  “I see no reason why I should do that.”

  “If you did not, Your Grace, you would have a very powerful enemy in the Sovereigns. Where are your friends in Europe? Do you trust the French? And who in Europe trusts Maximilian?”

  Henry was silent for a few moments. But he saw the wisdom of Puebla’s advice.

  He said: “I will consider this matter.”

  Puebla was jubilant. He knew that he had won his point. He would soon be writing to the Sovereigns to tell them that he had arranged for the betrothal of their daughter with the Prince of Wales.

  * * *

  PRINCE HENRY CAME IN, hot from the tennis court. With him were his attendants, boys of his own age and older men, all admiring, all ready to tell him that they had never seen tennis played as he played it.

  He could never have enough of their praises and, although he knew they were flattery, he did not care. Such flattery was sweet, for it meant they understood his power.

  Each day when he awoke—and he awoke with the dawn—he would remember that he was now his father’s only son and that one day there would be a crown on his head.

  It was right and fitting that he should wear that crown. Was he not a good head taller than most of his friends? It was his secret boast that, if anyone had not known that he was the King’s heir, they would have selected him from any group as a natural leader.

  It could not be long before he was King. His father was not a young man. And how he had aged since the death of the Queen! He was in continual pain from his rheumatism and was sometimes bent double with it. He was growing more and more irritable and Henry knew that many were longing for the day when there would be a new King on the throne—young, merry, extravagant, all that the old King was not.

  Henry had no sympathy for his father, because he who had never felt a pain in his life could not understand pain. The physical disabilities of others interested him only because they called attention to his own superb physique and health.

  Life was good. It always had been. But during Arthur’s lifetime there had been that gnawing resentment because he was not the firstborn.

  He made his way now from the tennis court to the apartments of his sister Margaret. He found her there and her eyes were red from weeping. Poor Margaret! She was not the domineering elder sister today. He did feel a little sorry. He would miss her sorely.

  “So tomorrow you leave us,” he said. “It will be strange not to have you here.”

  Margaret’s answer was to put her arms about him and hug him tightly.

  “Scotland!” she whimpered. “It is so cold there, I hear. The castles are so drafty.”

  “They are drafty here,” Henry reminded her.

  “There they are doubly so. And how shall I like my husband,
and how will he like me?”

  “You will rule him, I doubt not.”

  “I hear he leads a most irregular life and has many mistresses.”

  Henry laughed. “He is a King, if it is only King of Scotland. He should have mistresses if he wishes.”

  “He shall not have them when he has a wife,” cried Margaret fiercely.

  “You will make sure of that, I’ll swear. So there will only be one sister left to me now. And Mary is little more than a baby.”

  “Always look after her, Henry. She is wayward and will need your care.”

  “She will be my subject and I shall look after all my subjects.”

  “You are not yet King, Henry.”

  “No,” he murmured reflectively, “not yet.”

  “I wish that the Infanta might be with us. It is sad to think of her in Durham House, cut off from us all. I should have liked to have had a sister of my own age to talk to. There would have been so much for us to discuss together.”

  “She could tell you little of the married state,” said Henry. “Unless rumor lies, our brother never knew his wife. What a strange marriage that was!”

  “Poor Katharine! I suffer for her. She felt as I feel now. To leave one’s home…to go to a strange country…”

  “I doubt your James will be as mild as our brother Arthur.”

  “No, it may be that he will be more like my brother Henry.”

  Henry looked at his sister through narrowed eyes.

  “They say,” went on Margaret, “that Katharine is to be your bride.”

  “I have heard it.”

  He was smiling. Margaret thought: He must have everything. Others marry, so he must marry. Already he seems to be contemplating his enjoyment of his bride.

  “Well, what are you thinking?” Henry asked.

  “If you are like this at twelve, what will you be at eighteen?”

  Henry laughed aloud. “Much taller. I shall be the tallest English King. I shall stand over six feet. I shall outride all my subjects. I shall be recognized wherever I go as the King of England.”

  “You do it as much as ever,” she said.

  “What is that?”

  “Begin every sentence with I.”

  “And why should I not? Am I not to be the King?”

  He was half laughing, but half in earnest. Margaret felt a new rush of sadness. She wished that she need not go to Scotland, that she could stay here in London and see this brother of hers mount the throne.

  * * *

  PUEBLA BROUGHT the news to Katharine. The little man was delighted. It seemed to him that what he had continued to work for during many difficult months was at last achieved. In his opinion there was only one way out of the Infanta’s predicament: marriage with the heir of England.

  “Your Highness, I have at last prevailed upon the King to agree to your betrothal to the Prince of Wales.”

  There had been many occasions when Katharine had considered this possibility, but now she was face to face with it and she realized how deeply it disturbed her.

  She had at once to abandon all hope of returning home to Spain. She remembered too that she had been the wife of young Henry’s brother, and she felt therefore that the relationship between herself and Henry was too close. Moreover she was eighteen years old, Henry was twelve. Was not the disparity in their ages a little too great?

  Yet were these the real reasons? Was she a little afraid of that arrogant, flamboyant Prince?

  “When is this to take place?” she asked.

  “The formal betrothal will be celebrated in the house of the Bishop of Salisbury in the near future.”

  Katharine said quickly: “But I have been his brother’s wife. The affinity between us is too close.”

  “The Pope will not withhold the Bull of Dispensation.”

  There was no way out, Katharine realized, as she dismissed Puebla and went to her own apartment. She wanted to think of this alone, and not share it even with her maids of honor as yet.

  She had escaped the father to fall to the son. She was certain that the King filled her with repugnance, but her feelings for young Henry were more difficult to analyze. The boy fascinated her as he seemed to fascinate everyone. But he was too bold, too arrogant.

  He is only a boy, she told herself; and I am already a woman.

  There came to her then an intense desire to escape, and impulsively she went to her table and sat down to write. This time she would write to her father, for she was sure of her mother’s support, and if she could move his heart, if she could bring him to ask her mother that she might return, Isabella would give way immediately.

  How difficult it was to express these vague fears. She had never been able to express her emotions. Perhaps it was because she had always been taught to suppress them.

  The words on the paper looked cold, without any great feeling.

  “I have no inclination for a second marriage in England…”

  She sat for some time staring at the words. Of what importance were her inclinations? She could almost hear her mother’s voice, gentle yet firm: “Have you forgotten, my dearest, that it is the duty of the daughters of Spain to subdue their own desires for the good of their country?”

  What was the use? There was nothing to be done. She must steel herself, become resigned. She must serenely accept the fate which was thrust upon her.

  She continued the letter:

  “But I beg you do not consider my tastes or convenience, but in all things act as you think best.”

  Then firmly she sealed the letter and, when her maids of honor came to her, she was still sitting with it in her hands.

  She turned to them and spoke as though she were awakening from a dream. “I shall never again see my home, never again see my mother.”

  * * *

  THE HOT JUNE SUN beat down on the walls of the Bishop’s house in Fleet Street.

  Inside that house Katharine of Aragon stood beside Henry, Prince of Wales, and was formally betrothed to him.

  Katharine was thinking: It is irrevocable. When this boy is fifteen years old, I shall be past twenty. Can such a marriage be a happy one?

  Henry studied his fiancée and was aware that she was not overjoyed at the prospect of their marriage. He was astounded, and this astonishment quickly turned to anger. How dared she not be overjoyed at the prospect! Here he was, the most handsome, the most popular and talented of Princes. Surely any woman should be overjoyed to contemplate marriage with him.

  He thought of some of the girls he had seen about the Court. They were a constant provocation; they were very eager to please him and delighted when he noticed them. John Skelton was amused at such adventures, implying that they were worthy of a virile Prince. And this woman, who was not outstandingly beautiful, who had been his brother’s wife, dared to appear doubtful.

  Henry looked at her coldly; when he took her hand he gave it no warm pressure; his small eyes were like pieces of flint; they had lost something of their deep blueness and were the color of the sea when a storm is brewing.

  He was annoyed that he must go through with the betrothal. He wanted to snatch his hand away and say: “You do not care to marry me, Madam. Well, rest assured that affects me little. There are many Princesses in the world who would count you fortunate, but since you are blind to the advantage which is yours, let us have no betrothal.”

  But there was his father, stern, pale, with the lines of pain etched on his face, and while he lived Prince Henry was only Prince of Wales, not King of England. It was doubly humiliating to realize that he dared not flout his father’s orders.

  As for the King, he watched the betrothal with satisfaction. He was to keep the hundred thousand crowns which he had already received as the first payment of Katharine’s dowry and another hundred thousand crown would be paid on her marriage. Meanwhile she would receive nothing of that third of the revenues of Wales, Chester and Cornwall, which was her right on her marriage to Arthur; although when she married Henry she
would receive a sum equal to that.

  This was very satisfactory, mused the King. Katharine would remain in England; he would keep the first half of the dowry; she would not receive the revenues due to her; and the betrothal was merely a promise that she should marry the heir to England; so that if the King should change his mind about that before the Prince reached his fifteenth birthday—well, it would not be the first time that a Prince and Princess had undergone a betrothal ceremony which was not followed by a wedding.

  Yes, very satisfactory. Thus he could keep what he had, maintain a truce with the Sovereigns of Spain, and shelve the marriage for a few years.

  Now he was only waiting to hear from Naples. His own marriage was of more urgency than that of his son.

  Out into the June sunshine of Fleet Street came a satisfied King, a sullen Prince and an apprehensive Princess.

  * * *

  NOW THAT KATHARINE was formally betrothed to the Prince of Wales, she could not be allowed to live in seclusion at Durham House, and life became more interesting for her.

  The maids of honor were delighted by the turn of events because it meant that now they could go occasionally to Court. There was activity in their apartments as they hastily reviewed their wardrobes and bewailed the fact that their gowns were shabby and not of the latest fashion.

  Katharine was upset. Badly she needed money. Her parents had written that they could send her nothing, because they needed everything they could lay their hands on to prosecute the war, and military events were not going well for Spain. Katharine must rely on the bounty of her father-in-law.

  It had been uncomfortable having to rely on the bounty of a miser. And it was the fact that she was unable to pay her servants that had upset Katharine most.

  But now that she was betrothed to his son, the King could no longer allow her to live in penury, and grudgingly he made her an allowance. This was relief, but as it was necessary to maintain a large household, and debts had been steadily mounting, the allowance was quickly swallowed up, and although the situation was relieved considerably, comparative poverty still prevailed at Durham House.