The Constant Princess ttc-1

by Philippa Gregory

  “Leave us,” she said.

  “Princess.”

  “I have to speak to him. This is the business of the kingdom.”

  One glance at her determined face told him that she would not be denied. He went past her with his head low, his assistants following behind him. Catalina made a little gesture with her hand and Doña Elvira retreated. Catalina stepped over the threshold and pushed the door shut on them.

  She saw Arthur stir in protest.

  “I won’t come any closer,” she assured him. “I swear it. But I have to be with you. I cannot bear—” she broke off.

  His face when he turned it to her was shiny with sweat, his hair as wet as when he came in from hunting in the rain. His young, round face was strained as the disease leached the life out of him.

  “Amo te,” he said through lips that were cracked and dark with fever.

  “Amo te,” she replied.

  “I am dying,” he said bleakly.

  Catalina did not interrupt nor deny him. He saw her straighten a little, as if she had staggered beneath a mortal blow.

  He took a rasping breath. “But you must still be Queen of England.”

  “What?”

  He took a shaky breath. “Love—obey me. You have sworn to obey me.”

  “I will do anything.”

  “Marry Harry. Be queen. Have our children.”

  “What?” She was dizzy with shock. She could hardly make out what he was saying.

  “England needs a great queen,” he said. “Especially with him. He’s not fit to rule. You must teach him. Build my forts. Build my navy. Defend against the Scots. Have my daughter Mary. Have my son Arthur. Let me live through you.”

  “My love—”

  “Let me do it,” he whispered longingly. “Let me keep England safe through you. Let me live through you.”

  “I am your wife,” she said fiercely. “Not his.”

  He nodded. “Tell them you are not.”

  She staggered at that and felt for the door to support her.

  “Tell them I could not do it.” A hint of a smile came to his drained face. “Tell them I was unmanned. Then marry Harry.”

  “You hate Harry!” she burst out. “You cannot want me to marry him. He is a child! And I love you.”

  “He will be king,” he said desperately. “So you will be queen. Marry him. Please. Beloved. For me.”

  The door behind her opened a crack and Lady Margaret said quietly, “You must not exhaust him, Princess.”

  “I have to go,” Catalina said desperately to the still figure in the bed.

  “Promise me…”

  “I will come back. You will get better.”

  “Please.”

  Lady Margaret opened the door wider and took Catalina’s hand. “For his own good,” she said quietly. “You have to leave him.”

  Catalina turned away from the room; she looked back over her shoulder. Arthur lifted a hand a few inches from the rich coverlet. “Promise,” he said. “Please. For my sake. Promise. Promise me now, beloved.”

  “I promise,” burst out of her.

  His hand fell; she heard him give a little sigh of relief.

  They were the last words they said to each other.

  2ND APRIL 1502

  At six o’clock, vespers, Arthur’s confessor, Dr. Eldenham, administered extreme unction and Arthur died soon after. Catalina kneeled on the threshold as the priest anointed her husband with the oil and bowed her head for the blessing. She did not rise from her knees until they told her that her boy husband was dead and she was a widow of sixteen years old.

  Lady Margaret on one side and Doña Elvira on the other half carried and half dragged Catalina to her bedchamber. Catalina slipped between the cold sheets of her bed and knew that however long she waited there, she would not hear Arthur’s quiet footstep on the battlements outside her room and his tap on the door. She would never again open her door and step into his arms. She would never again be snatched up and carried to her bed, having wanted all day to be in his arms.

  “I cannot believe it,” she said brokenly.

  “Drink this,” Lady Margaret said. “The physician left it for you. It is a sleeping draft. I will wake you at noon.”

  “I cannot believe it.”

  “Princess, drink.”

  Catalina drank it down, ignoring the bitter taste. More than anything else she wanted to be asleep and never wake again.

  That night I dreamed I was on the top of the great gateway of the red fort that guards and encircles the Alhambra Palace. Above my head the standards of Castile and Aragon were flapping like the sails on Cristóbal Colón’s ships. Shading my eyes from the autumn sun, looking out over the great plain of Granada, I saw the simple, familiar beauty of the land, the tawny soil intersected by a thousand little ditches carrying water from one field to another. Below me was the white-walled town of Granada, even now, ten years on from our conquest, still, unmistakably a Moorish town: the houses all arranged around shady courtyards, a fountain splashing seductively in the center, the gardens rich with the perfume of late-flowering roses, and the boughs of the trees heavy with fruit.

  Someone was calling for me: “Where is the Infanta?”

  And in my dream I answered: “I am Katherine, Queen of England. That is my name now.”

  They buried Arthur, Prince of Wales, on St. George’s Day, this first prince of all England, after a nightmare journey from Ludlow to Worcester when the rain lashed down so hard that they could barely make way. The lanes were awash, the water meadows knee-high in floodwater and the Teme had burst its banks and they could not get through the fords. They had to use bullock carts for the funeral procession—horses could not have made their way through the mire on the lanes—and all the plumage and black cloth was sodden by the time they finally straggled into Worcester.

  Hundreds turned out to see the miserable cortege go through the streets to the cathedral. Hundreds wept for the loss of the rose of England. After they lowered his coffin into the vault beneath the choir, the servants of his household broke their staves of office and threw them into the grave with their lost master. It was over for them. Everything they had hoped for, in the service of such a young and promising prince was finished. It was over for Arthur. It felt as if everything were over and could never be set right again.

  No, no, no.

  For the first month of mourning Catalina stayed in her rooms. Lady Margaret and Doña Elvira gave out that she was ill, but not in danger. In truth they feared for her reason. She did not rave or cry, she did not rail against fate or weep for her mother’s comfort. She lay in utter silence, her face turned towards the wall. Her family tendency to despair tempted her like a sin. She knew she must not give way to weeping and madness, for if she once let go she would never be able to stop. For the long month of seclusion Catalina gritted her teeth and it took all her willpower and all her strength to stop herself from screaming out in grief.

  When they woke her in the morning she said she was tired. They did not know that she hardly dared to move for fear that she would moan aloud. After they had dressed her, she would sit on her chair like a stone. As soon as they allowed it, she would go back to bed, lie on her back, and look up at the brightly colored tester that she had seen with eyes half closed by love, and know that Arthur would never pull her into the crook of his arm again.

  They summoned the physician, Dr. Bereworth, but when she saw him, her mouth trembled and her eyes filled with tears. She turned her head away from him and she went swiftly into her bedchamber and closed the door on them all. She could not bear to see him, the doctor who had let Arthur die, the friends who had watched it happen. She could not bear to speak to him. She felt a murderous rage at the sight of the doctor who had failed to save the boy. She wished him dead, and not Arthur.

  “I am afraid her mind is affected,” Lady Margaret said to the doctor as they heard the latch click on the privy-chamber door. “She does not speak, she does not even weep for him.
”

  “Will she eat?”

  “If food is put before her and if she is reminded to eat.”

  “Get someone, someone familiar—her confessor, perhaps—to read to her. Encouraging words.”

  “She will see no one.”

  “Might she be with child?” he whispered. It was the only question that now mattered.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “She has said nothing.”

  “She is mourning him,” he said. “She is mourning like a young woman, for the young husband she has lost. We should let her be. Let her grieve. She will have to rise up soon enough. Is she to go back to court?”

  “The king commands it,” Lady Margaret said. “The queen is sending her own litter.”

  “Well, when it comes, she will have to change her ways then,” he said comfortably. “She is only young. She will recover. The young have strong hearts. And it will help her to leave here, where she has such sad memories. If you need any advice, please call me. But I will not force myself into her presence, poor child.”

  No, no, no.

  But Catalina did not look like a poor child, Lady Margaret thought. She looked like a statue, like a stone princess carved from grief. Doña Elvira had dressed her in her new dark clothes of mourning and persuaded her to sit in the window where she could see the green trees and the hedges creamy with may blossom, the sun on the fields, and hear the singing of the birds. The summer had come as Arthur had promised her that it would, it was warm as he had sworn it would be; but she was not walking by the river with him, greeting the swifts as they flew in from Spain. She was not planting salad vegetables in the gardens of the castle and persuading him to try them. The summer was here, the sun was here, Catalina was here, but Arthur was cold in the dark vault of Worcester Cathedral.

  Catalina sat still, her hands folded on the black silk of her gown, her eyes looking out of the window but seeing nothing, her mouth folded tight over her gritted teeth as if she were biting back a storm of words.

  “Princess,” Lady Margaret started tentatively.

  Slowly, the head under the heavy black hood turned towards her. “Yes, Lady Margaret?” Her voice was hoarse.

  “I would speak with you.”

  Catalina inclined her head.

  Doña Elvira stepped back and went quietly out of the room.

  “I have to ask you about your journey to London. The royal litter has arrived and you will have to leave here.”

  There was no flicker of animation in Catalina’s deep blue eyes. She nodded again, as if they were discussing the transport of a parcel.

  “I don’t know if you are strong enough to travel.”

  “Can I not stay here?” Catalina asked.

  “I understand the king has sent for you. I am sorry for it. They write that you may stay here until you are well enough to travel.”

  “Why, what is to become of me?” Catalina asked, as if it were a matter of absolute indifference. “When I get to London?”

  “I don’t know.” The former princess did not pretend for one moment that a girl of a royal family could choose her future. “I am sorry. I do not know what is planned. My husband has been told nothing except to prepare for your journey to London.”

  “What do you think might happen? When my sister’s husband died, they sent her back to us from Portugal. She came home to Spain again.”

  “I would expect that they will send you home,” Lady Margaret said.

  Catalina turned her head away once more. She looked out of the window but her eyes saw nothing. Lady Margaret waited; she wondered if the princess would say anything more.

  “Does a Princess of Wales have a house in London as well as here?” she asked. “Shall I go back to Baynard’s Castle?”

  “You are not the Princess of Wales,” Lady Margaret started. She was going to explain, but the look that Catalina turned on her was so darkly angry that she hesitated. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I thought perhaps you did not understand…”

  “Understand what?” Catalina’s white face was slowly flushing pink with temper.

  “Princess?”

  “Princess of what?” Catalina snapped.

  Lady Margaret dropped into a curtsey, and stayed low.

  “Princess of what?” Catalina shouted loudly, and the door opened behind them and Doña Elvira came quickly into the room and then checked as she saw Catalina on her feet, her cheeks burning with temper, and Lady Margaret on her knees. She went out again without a word.

  “Princess of Spain,” Lady Margaret said very quietly.

  There was intense silence.

  “I am the Princess of Wales,” Catalina said slowly. “I have been the Princess of Wales all my life.”

  Lady Margaret rose up and faced her. “Now you are the dowager princess.”

  Catalina clapped a hand over her mouth to hold back a cry of pain.

  “I am sorry, Princess.”

  Catalina shook her head, beyond words, her fist at her mouth muffling her whimpers of pain. Lady Margaret’s face was grim. “They will call you Dowager Princess.”

  “I will never answer to it.”

  “It is a title of respect. It is only the English word for widow.”

  Catalina gritted her teeth and turned away from her friend to look out of the window. “You can get up,” she said through her teeth. “There is no need for you to kneel to me.”

  The older woman rose to her feet and hesitated. “The queen writes to me. They want to know of your health. Not only if you feel well and strong enough to travel; they really need to know if you might be with child.”

  Catalina clenched her hands together, turned away her face so that Lady Margaret should not see her cold rage.

  “If you are with child and that child is a boy, then he will be the Prince of Wales, and then King of England, and you would be My Lady the King’s Mother,” Lady Margaret reminded her quietly.

  “And if I am not with child?”

  “Then you are the dowager princess, and Prince Harry is Prince of Wales.”

  “And when the king dies?”

  “Then Prince Harry becomes king.”

  “And I?”

  Lady Margaret shrugged in silence. “Next to nothing,” said the gesture. Aloud she said, “You are the Infanta still.” Lady Margaret tried to smile. “As you will always be.”

  “And the next Queen of England?”

  “Will be the wife of Prince Harry.”

  The anger went out of Catalina. She walked to the fireplace, took hold of the high mantelpiece and steadied herself with it. The little fire burning in the grate threw out no heat that she could feel through the thick black skirt of her mourning gown. She stared at the flames as if she would understand what had happened to her.

  “I am become again what I was, when I was a child of three,” she said slowly. “The Infanta of Spain, not the Princess of Wales. A baby. Of no importance.”

  Lady Margaret, whose own royal blood had been carefully diluted by a lowly marriage so that she could pose no threat to the Tudor throne of England, nodded. “Princess, you take the position of your husband. It is always thus for all women. If you have no husband and no son, then you have no position. You have only what you were born to.”

  “If I go home to Spain as a widow, and they marry me to an archduke, I will be Archduchess Catalina, and not a princess at all. Not Princess of Wales, and never Queen of England.”

  Lady Margaret nodded. “Like me,” she said.

  Catalina turned her head. “You?”

  “I was a Plantagenet princess, King Edward’s niece, sister to Edward of Warwick, the heir to King Richard’s throne. If King Henry had lost the battle at Bosworth Field it would have been King Richard on the throne now, my brother as his heir and Prince of Wales, and I should be Princess Margaret, as I was born to be.”

  “Instead you are Lady Margaret, wife to the warden of a little castle, not even his own, on the edge of England.”

  The older woman no
dded her assent to the bleak description of her status.

  “Why did you not refuse?” Catalina asked rudely.

  Lady Margaret glanced behind her to see that the door to the presence chamber was shut and none of Catalina’s women could hear.

  “How could I refuse?” she asked simply. “My brother was in the Tower of London, simply for being born a prince. If I had refused to marry Sir Richard, I should have joined him. My brother put his dear head down on the block for nothing more than bearing his name. As a girl, I had the chance to change my name. So I did.”

  “You had the chance to be Queen of England!” Catalina protested.

  Lady Margaret turned away from the younger woman’s energy. “It is as God wills,” she said simply. “My chance, such as it was, has gone. Your chance has gone too. You will have to find a way to live the rest of your life without regrets, Infanta.”

  Catalina said nothing, but the face that she showed to her friend was closed and cold. “I will find a way to fulfill my destiny,” she said. “Ar—” She broke off, she could not name him, even to her friend. “I once had a conversation about claiming one’s own,” she said. “I understand it now. I shall have to be a pretender to myself. I shall insist on what is mine. I know what is my duty and what I have to do. I shall do as God wills, whatever the difficulties for me.”

  The older woman nodded. “Perhaps God wills that you accept your fate. Perhaps it is God’s will that you be resigned,” she suggested.

  “He does not,” Catalina said firmly.

  I will tell no one what I promised. I will tell no one that in my heart I am still Princess of Wales, I will always be Princess of Wales until I see the wedding of my son and see my daughter-in-law crowned. I will tell no one that I understand now what Arthur told me: that even a princess born may have to claim her title.

  I have told no one whether or not I am with child. But I know, well enough. I had my course in April; there is no baby. There is no Princess Mary, there is no Prince Arthur. My love, my only love, is dead and there is nothing left of him for me, not even his unborn child.