“He’s mad, I tell you, Catherine! Utterly mad!” The prince paced up and down on the grass beside his own private tiltyard at Richmond, the only place King Henry allowed him to go for exercise. As he paced he ran his large hands through his curling reddish-blond hair in exasperation. He was rosy-cheeked and sweating, he had triumphed over every challenger he faced in the lists. At sixteen he was already the tallest man at his father’s court, and the strongest.
“He keeps me caged like a dog, he won’t let me out. I sleep under guard, in a room next to his bedchamber. He listens through the wall. I can hear him coughing. He spies on me day and night. The only exercise I am allowed is to come to this park, through a secret palace door. He keeps the key to the door. He thinks he has the only one.”
“Is there another key?” I asked.
“Paul has one. That is how he brought you here, by means of that second key. It opens the door and also a gate—a gate my father does not know exists.”
Prince Henry’s huntsman and harness gilder, Paul Van Vrelant, had come to me earlier that afternoon to ask me courteously to accompany him. I did not hesitate. He brought me along quiet, seldom-used paths to the prince’s small hunting park, with its woods and tiltyard, and led me in through a gate concealed by a screen of trees.
“He keeps me locked away here at Richmond, and you, Catherine, are imprisoned at Durham House,” Prince Henry was saying.
I nodded. “I am not allowed much liberty. If only he would let me return to my father’s court!” As I spoke the prince was shaking his head in exasperation. “Perhaps in another year or two—”
“No!” he shouted. “Another year or two makes no difference at all to a madman! Don’t you see, Catherine, we are both being made to suffer, because he has taken leave of his senses! Can you not send word to your sister Queen Juana, and her husband, and ask for their help?”
His words startled me.
“Then you have not heard—” I began.
“Heard what?”
“What has happened to poor Juana.”
The prince stopped pacing, and came nearer to me. “I am not allowed to know anything of what is going on outside the palace.”
I sighed and squared my shoulders. “Juana is living at my father’s court. She is—an invalid. She is not capable of caring for herself.”
His small eyes grew wide with astonishment.
“Why not?”
“Because she is no longer in possession of herself. She is as simple, as confused, as a child. A dangerous child. She is the victim of strange fancies.”
“She is possessed by a demon, you mean,” said the prince, and I saw a shudder pass through his strong young frame.
I told him what I had seen and heard from others about my sister. How she became violently angry at her husband, and at my maid of honor Maria Juana, who had become his mistress, and tried to stab Maria Juana with a pair of sharp scissors. How her husband Philip had died—some said by poison—and how, after his death, my sister had refused to attend his funeral mass and continued to treat him as though he were alive—even though he was lying in his coffin.
Prince Henry listened, horrified yet fascinated, as I relayed what my father’s envoy Don Gutierre Gomez de Fuensalida had confided to me.
“He said that Juana believed that she had poisoned Philip. She told her confessor that she was already in hell, but that if she nursed Philip back to health, she might be released from her torment.”
“So she refused to let him be buried,” was Prince Henry’s astonished comment. “By all that’s holy, what sacrilege!”
“Sacrilege or not, she kept his coffin with her, everywhere she and her unfortunate son Charles went. She kept watch beside the body. She never slept at all. She brought the dead Philip his favorite food, and imagined that he ate it. She covered him with blankets when it was cold, and fanned his lifeless face when the sun was hot.
“When she arrived in Granada, our father was already there, waiting. Don Fuensalida says that Juana now lives in her own apartments in the palace, and never leaves them. She is queen, but he rules in her place.”
Prince Henry was thoughtful for a time.
“If your sister cannot help us, and your father will not—then we must endure,” he said at last.
The smile we exchanged then established a bond between us.
“Whatever lies I am told, however badly I am treated—” I began.
“Whatever he may do to me—” the prince interrupted.
“We will hold fast.”
The harness gilder brought Prince Henry his horse, and he mounted and returned to the tiltyard, riding up and down the lists until rain started to fall, and both horse and rider were mud-splattered and tired, and Paul Van Vrelant accompanied me back to Durham House.
* * *
We held fast, Prince Henry and I, through another year and more of the king’s harsh treatment. It grew worse. Cruel words and shouted accusations gave way to fierce rages and, before long, to blows. When the king imagined that Princess Mary—who was not yet twelve years old—was in bed with a serving boy he beat her and kicked her until she bled. And when Prince Henry tried to defend his sister, the king attacked him with a knife—and would have killed him, as the prince told me, were it not for his own greater strength and agility.
“He hates me. He wants me dead,” the prince insisted. “He imagines that I am raising a rebellion against him. He is so frightened of me—and my imaginary army of rebels—that he keeps his crown on a pillow right next to his bed, and his jewels and treasure in heavy chests underneath the bed. His servants say he never sleeps at all, but watches over his crown and his treasure chests, all night long.
“He has given orders to his physicians that when he dies, his death is to be kept secret. He made every member of his household swear to keep silent about it. He knows that once the truth becomes known, everything he owns will be stolen.”
The prince threw up his hands. “I tell you, Catherine, I cannot endure this madhouse much longer!”
Nor did he need to endure it. At last, in the spring of the Year of Our Lord 1509, King Henry quietly expired—so quietly that for several days no one but his most trusted servants knew it.
We knew that he was ill, there were reports that his physicians were going into his bedchamber and coming out again. We did not doubt that he was alive, however, as food was taken in to him and empty platters brought out. But there was no disguising the stench that seeped from the royal bedchamber: it was the stench of the death-rot. And so it was that, in the end, the announcement was made.
His Majesty King Henry the Seventh was dead. His Majesty King Henry the Eighth was king. May the Lord preserve him!
Amid the shouts of rejoicing and well wishes another announcement was made. That the new king, of his goodness, was graciously pleased to take unto himself as his bride the Lady Catherine, Dowager Princess of Wales, England’s next queen.
* * *
Oh to breathe again the sweet, fragrant air of those heady days, the days of our freedom—and of our wedding!
All that spring, as the lilies and roses bloomed in the royal gardens and the flowering trees sent down showers of pink and white blossoms, we rejoiced. Outwardly, to be sure, we wore for a time the black vestments of mourning. But beneath those somber garments our hearts beat with excitement, and we all gave vent to our inner joy.
No one celebrated our deliverance with greater energy and zest than the new king, who was soon to be my husband.
Like a young bull suddenly released into a wide pasture, with no restraints and nothing to impede his rampaging vitality, King Henry charged headlong into his new reign.
The corridors of Greenwich palace rang with boisterous shouts and running feet. Everywhere the king went, it seemed, he left cheerful disorderliness behind. Surrounded by a dozen of his favorite companions, he visited me in my new apartments, interrupting me in the midst of whatever I was doing and calling for his musicians to play us a lively tun
e. To my delight, he would sweep me up and lead me in a dance, all but lifting me off the ground, perspiring heavily as he capered and jumped and shouting to the others to dance with my maids of honor. Then as swiftly and suddenly as he had arrived, he was gone, taking his companions with him, the sounds of the sackbuts and viols and drums still lingering on the air.
I was caught up in his noisy frolics. He insisted that I come along when he went plunging and crashing through the hunting park, or riding in the royal barge—often taking a turn at the oars himself—or picnicking in the open air, throwing scraps to his dogs and grinning broadly to watch them leap up yelping to catch them.
I was glad to see him as he was then, exuberant and full of vigor. Yet he seemed unable to stop, to rest. He danced until his muscles ached. He sang with his chamber gentlemen until his voice was raw. And though some said he was tireless, I saw how, after many strenuous hours in the tiltyard, he would all at once become pale and start to pant, and then, just as suddenly, empty his stomach into the nearest hedge.
His spasms of illness soon passed, and before long he would be capering vigorously once again, and showing no signs of numbness or pallor. I reminded myself that he was still very young, only seventeen years old in that spring when he became king, and that all his boisterousness and clamor was the natural behavior of a royal boy—a boy who had been kept too long in unnatural restraint.
Yet there were times when I wished I did not feel so much older, so much more a mistress of my impulses and my emotions. I reminded myself that I was indeed older than Henry by five years and more. I made an attempt to join him in his exuberant pastimes. Henry was an excellent lutenist, and I was a passable one; we were able to enjoy playing duets. When he and his chamber gentlemen dressed in Lincoln green and declared themselves to be Robin Hood and his band of outlaws, I put on my Moorish waistcoat and silken pantaloons and velvet slippers with turned-up toes and played at being an Arab slave girl.
Yet even when I felt best able to subdue my will and desires to his, as I had always been taught to do, for a wife must subordinate her will to her husband’s, I had the constant feeling that I was indulging him, and that he was aware of it. And as the day of our wedding drew closer, this feeling did not decrease.
* * *
My wedding to Henry was nothing like my wedding to Arthur had been, so many years earlier. There was no grand cathedral, no trumpets to play a fanfare, no great crowd to witness our union and hear us repeat our vows.
It was Henry’s wish that we marry quietly, in a small chapel at Greenwich, and I was more than content with his choice.
Many of the women in my new, greatly enlarged royal household were discontented when they heard there was to be no magnificent ceremony. But one among them was not only understanding, but warmly sympathetic: my lady-in-waiting Elizabeth Boleyn.
She was slender and graceful, with an attractive face that was just beginning to show the lines of age. Her brown hair was lightly streaked with gray, but her expression was youthful, and—this I found most remarkable—she had no hint of hauteur, though she belonged to the highest nobility, the Howard family. She was respectful to me, as indeed she should have been, yet she seemed to sense when I was unsure of myself in my new role as King Henry’s future wife and was quick to offer whatever help I appeared to need.
I was at a loss to decide what gown to wear for my wedding, and asked her for her opinion.
She was thoughtful, and took her time replying.
“Has the king not said what he would like you to wear, Your Majesty?”
I shook my head. “He is concerned only about the coronation ceremony, and what we will wear when we are crowned. To him, our wedding matters far less.”
Henry had decreed that his coronation would take place only a few days after our wedding, and that I too would be crowned on that day.
“And Your Majesty would not wish to wear the gown you wore when you were married to Prince Arthur, even if it could be altered. The silk was of very fine quality, as I remember,” she added. “And the beautiful veil—”
“I had that gown burned,” I said bluntly. “It brought me bad luck.”
“Then it is to be hoped that a new gown will alter your fortunes, and that Your Majesty’s wedding to King Henry will be enduring and fruitful. Now, as to the shape and stuffs of the new gown—”
“It must be of Bruges satin, white, with an underskirt of gold,” I told her. “That much I have decided.”
“With a wide, round skirt or a more narrow one, that drapes like a waterfall?”
“More narrow, I think.”
“And the sleeves? What of the sleeves?”
We went on, back and forth, discussing the cut of the sleeves, the shape of the bodice, even the weight of the satin and which jewels I should wear, from among those Henry had given me. (He had been lavish with his gifts; since his father’s death he reveled in dispensing the late king’s abundant treasure.) Soon we had made together the decision I had found it so difficult to make on my own. I summoned my dressmaker and the work of cutting and stitching and fitting began.
Over the following weeks, while both my wedding gown and my coronation garments were prepared, I often asked Elizabeth Boleyn to keep me company. She told me of her family, and of her own wedding years earlier to Thomas Boleyn, who though he was not of noble birth did come from a wealthy merchant family with lands in Norfolk and Kent.
I asked her to tell me more about him, less out of genuine interest than because I was tired of standing where I was, surrounded by seamstresses who were slowly and painstakingly marking the hem of my gold underskirt.
“Thomas is an exceptional man,” she began. “He seems to do twice as much in a day as anyone else. He has a quick mind and never seems to tire, or even to need to sleep.”
She paused as the seamstresses shifted their positions.
“He took pride in his studies when he was a boy. His father sent him to study at Oxford, where we will send our son George when he is older. He is able to converse in Latin with officials and clerics from other realms, which fits him well to serve as a royal envoy. And he speaks the French tongue—the tongue of the north of France, that is. The speech of the south, the Languedoc, he says is not worth learning.”
This made me smile, though I said nothing. I was well aware that the English both feared and hated the French, and that the Languedoc was looked on as an unimportant, backward region, quaint and odd.
“And what of our Castilian tongue? Is he master of that also?”
“I shall have to ask him. I have never heard him speak it.”
“Is he courtly?” I asked. “Does he dance well?”
“He does his best, Your Majesty,” she answered, and I detected both loyalty to her husband and fondness in her tone. “My daughters are very good dancers,” she hastened to add, “especially my younger one, little Nan. Her dancing master says she is very quick to learn and graceful.”
She showed me miniatures of her children.
“This is Mary, my older daughter. She is not yet nine.” There was pride in her voice as she handed me one of the miniatures, and I could see why. With her delicate, pleasing features and engaging smile, Mary showed promise of becoming a beauty.
“This is Nan,” she went on, handing me another miniature with a noticeable scratch across it. The portrait showed an unsmiling girl quite unlike her sister, with dark hair and eyes and sallow skin.
“This one is the graceful dancer,” I said. Elizabeth nodded.
I studied the miniature, unsure what more to say. “How unfortunate that the portrait has been marred.”
I heard my lady-in-waiting sigh. “She can be obdurate,” she began. “Quite defiant, in fact. The likeness displeased her. She took a sharp pin and tried to destroy it.”
Hearing this I was reminded of my beautiful sister Juana, who was never satisfied with her portraits and who, according to Doña Elvira, had once thrown a goblet of wine at an Italian painter as he was sketching
her.
Yet I did not say this to Elizabeth Boleyn.
“My confessor would say that defiant girls not only disobey their parents, they disobey their Maker,” I remarked instead.
“And this is George.”
“Your son who will study well, like his father.” The miniature revealed a round-cheeked, bright-eyed young boy who resembled his sister Nan.
“A fine family,” I said, and handed the last of the portraits back, adding, “I trust that your daughters will join my household when they are older.”
But Elizabeth was quick to contradict me.
“Oh, we intend to send them to Terveuren, to join the household of the Archduchess Margaret.”
At this I merely nodded and made some approving comment. The archduchess was known for welcoming the children of noble families to her court, and providing an exceptionally cultivated environment in which they could refine their manners and learn to be at ease among their peers from a variety of lands. I knew that she was building a new palace at Mechelen, said to be in a style that was a departure from tradition and was causing much comment—and no little criticism.
I wondered whether my lady-in-waiting was aware that the Archduchess Margaret had been my sister-in-law, married to my brother Juan. Married for only a few months, to be sure, then widowed when my brother died. Hearing of her reminded me of my own brief marriage to Prince Arthur. And of my nephew Charles, Juana’s son, the solemn, stocky little boy who had been so silent during my sister’s visit to England three years earlier. I knew that Charles was living at Terveuren, as Archduchess Margaret had been made regent for his lands. It was her responsibility to administer his territories until he came of age.
As the day of my wedding came closer, I became less and less able to think or talk of such matters and gave all my thought and attention to the momentous change I was about to undergo. I was about to marry King Henry, and to become England’s queen.
* * *
It was all over so quickly, it seemed almost furtive. We repeated our vows, we were blessed, my gold wedding band was put on my finger, prayers were said—and then, in far less time than it had taken for me to be dressed in my gown of Bruges satin with its lovely gold underskirt, we were married.
The Spanish Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon Page 7
