The Constant Princess ttc-1

by Philippa Gregory

  It made absolute sense to secure Catalina; he tried to focus on the political advantage and not think of the line of her neck nor the curve of her waist. He tried to steady his mind by thinking of the small fortune that would be saved by not having to provide her with a jointure nor with her keep, by not having to send a ship, several ships probably, to escort her home. But all he could think was that she had touched her soft mouth with her finger and told him that she did not like the lingering taste of ale. At the thought of the tip of her tongue against her lips, he groaned aloud and the groom holding the horse for him to dismount looked up and said: “Sire?”

  “Bile,” the king said sourly.

  It did feel like too rich a fare that was sickening him, he decided as he strode to his private apartments, courtiers eddying out of his way with sycophantic smiles. He felt that he must remember that she was little more than a child, she was his own daughter-in-law. If he listened to the good sense that had carried him so far, he should simply promise to pay her jointure, send her back to her parents, and then delay the payment till they had her married to some other kingly fool elsewhere and he could get away with paying nothing.

  But at the mere thought of her married to another man he had to stop and put his hand out to the oak paneling for support.

  “Your Grace?” someone asked him. “Are you ill?”

  “Bile,” the king repeated. “Something I have eaten.”

  His chief groom of the body came to him. “Shall I send for your physician, Your Grace?”

  “No,” the king said. “But send a couple of barrels of the best wine to the Dowager Princess. She has nothing in her cellar, and when I have to visit her I should like to drink wine and not ale.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” the man said, bowed, and went away. Henry straightened up and went to his rooms. They were crowded with people as usual: petitioners, courtiers, favor seekers, fortune hunters, some friends, some gentry, some noblemen attending on him for love or calculation. Henry regarded them all sourly. When he had been Henry Tudor on the run in Brittany, he had not been blessed with so many friends.

  “Where is my mother?” he asked one of them.

  “In her rooms, Your Grace,” the man replied.

  “I shall visit her,” he said. “Let her know.”

  He gave her a few moments to ready herself, and then he went to her chambers. On her daughter-in-law’s death she had moved into the apartment traditionally given to the queen. She had ordered new tapestries and new furniture and now the place was more grandly furnished than any queen had ever had before.

  “I’ll announce myself,” the king said to the guard at her door and stepped in without ceremony.

  Lady Margaret was seated at a table in the window, the household accounts spread before her, inspecting the costs of the royal court as if it were a well-run farm. There was very little waste and no extravagance allowed in the court run by Lady Margaret, and royal servants who had thought that some of the payments which passed through their hands might leave a little gold on the side were soon disappointed.

  Henry nodded his approval at the sight of his mother’s supervision of the royal business. He had never rid himself of his own anxiety that the ostentatious wealth of the throne of England might prove to be hollow show. He had financed a campaign for the throne on debt and favors; he never wanted to be cap in hand again.

  She looked up as he came in. “My son.”

  He kneeled for her blessing, as he always did when he first greeted her every day, and felt her fingers gently touch the top of his head.

  “You look troubled,” she remarked.

  “I am,” he said. “I went to see the Dowager Princess.”

  “Yes?” A faint expression of disdain crossed her face. “What are they asking for now?”

  “We—” He broke off and then started again. “We have to decide what is to become of her. She spoke of going home to Spain.”

  “When they pay us what they owe,” she said at once. “They know they have to pay the rest of her dowry before she can leave.”

  “Yes, she knows that.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “She asked if there could not be another agreement,” he said. “Some resolution.”

  “Ah, I’ve been waiting for this,” Lady Margaret said exultantly. “I knew they would be after this. I am only surprised they have waited so long. I suppose they thought they should wait until she was out of mourning.”

  “After what?”

  “They will want her to stay,” she said.

  Henry could feel himself beginning to smile and deliberately he set his face still. “You think so?”

  “I have been waiting for them to show their hand. I knew that they were waiting for us to make the first move. Ha! That we have made them declare first!”

  He raised his eyebrows, longing for her to spell out his desire. “For what?”

  “A proposal from us, of course,” she said. “They knew that we would never let such a chance go. She was the right match then, and she is the right match now. We had a good bargain with her then, and it is still good. Especially if they pay in full. And now she is more profitable than ever.”

  His color flushed as he beamed at her. “You think so?”

  “Of course. She is here, half her dowry already paid, the rest we have only to collect. We have already rid ourselves of her escort. The alliance is already working to our benefit—we would never have the respect of the French if they did not fear her parents; the Scots fear us too—she is still the best match in Christendom for us.”

  His sense of relief was overwhelming. If his mother did not oppose the plan, then he felt he could push on with it. She had been his best and safest advisor for so long that he could not have gone against her will.

  “And the difference in age?”

  She shrugged. “It is…what? Five, nearly six years? That is nothing for a prince.”

  He recoiled as if she had slapped him in the face. “Six years?” he repeated.

  “And Harry is tall for his age and strong. They will not look mismatched,” she said.

  “No,” he said flatly. “No. Not Harry. I did not mean Harry. I was not speaking of Harry!”

  The anger in his voice alerted her. “What?”

  “No. No. Not Harry. Damn it! Not Harry!”

  “What? Whatever can you mean?”

  “It is obvious! Surely it is obvious!”

  Her gaze flashed across his face, reading him rapidly, as only she could. “Not Harry?”

  “I thought you were speaking of me.”

  “Of you?” She quickly reconsidered the conversation. “Of you for the Infanta?” she asked incredulously.

  He felt himself flush again. “Yes.”

  “Arthur’s widow? Your own daughter-in-law?”

  “Yes! Why not?”

  Lady Margaret stared at him in alarm. She did not even have to list the obstacles.

  “He was too young. It was not consummated,” he said, repeating the words that the Spanish ambassador had learned from Doña Elvira, which had been spread throughout Christendom.

  She looked skeptical.

  “She says so herself. Her duenna says so. The Spanish say so. Everybody says so.”

  “And you believe them?” she asked coldly.

  “He was impotent.”

  “Well…” It was typical of her that she said nothing while she considered it. She looked at him, noting the color in his cheeks and the trouble in his face. “They are probably lying. We saw them wedded and bedded and there was no suggestion then that it had not been done.”

  “That is their business. If they all tell the same lie and stick to it, then it is the same as the truth.”

  “Only if we accept it.”

  “We do,” he ruled.

  She raised her eyebrows. “It is your desire?”

  “It is not a question of desire. I need a wife,” Henry said coolly, as though it could be anyone. “And she is convenien
tly here, as you say.”

  “She would be suitable by birth,” his mother conceded, “but for her relationship to you. She is your daughter-in-law even if it was not consummated. And she is very young.”

  “She is seventeen,” he said. “A good age for a woman. And a widow. She is ready for a second marriage.”

  “She is either a virgin or she is not,” Lady Margaret observed waspishly. “We had better agree.”

  “She is seventeen,” he corrected himself. “A good age for marriage. She is ready for a full marriage.”

  “The people won’t like it,” she observed. “They will remember her wedding to Arthur, we made such a show of it. They took to her. They took to the two of them. The pomegranate and the rose. She caught their fancy in her lace mantilla.”

  “Well, he is dead,” he said harshly. “And she will have to marry someone.”

  “People will think it odd.”

  He shrugged. “They will be glad enough if she gives me a son.”

  “Oh, yes, if she can do that. But she was barren with Arthur.”

  “As we have agreed, Arthur was impotent. The marriage was not consummated.”

  She pursed her lips but said nothing.

  “And it gains us the dowry and removes the cost of the jointure,” he pointed out.

  She nodded. She loved the thought of the fortune that Catalina would bring.

  “And she is here already.”

  “A most constant presence,” she said sourly.

  “A constant princess.” He smiled.

  “Do you really think her parents would agree? Their Majesties of Spain?”

  “It solves their dilemma as well as ours. And it maintains the alliance.” He found he was still smiling, and tried to make his face stern, as normal. “She herself would think it was her destiny. She believes herself born to be Queen of England.”

  “Well then, she is a fool,” his mother remarked smartly.

  “She was raised to be queen since she was a child.”

  “But she will be a barren queen. No son of hers will be any good. He could never be king. If she has one at all, he will come after Harry,” she reminded him. “He will even come after Harry’s sons. It’s a far poorer alliance for her than marriage to a Prince of Wales. The Spanish won’t like it.”

  “Oh, Harry is still a child. His sons are a long way ahead. Years.”

  “Even so. It would weigh on her parents. They will prefer Prince Harry for her. That way, she is queen and her son is king after her. Why would they agree to anything less?”

  Henry hesitated. There was nothing he could say to fault her logic, except that he did not wish to follow it.

  “Oh. I see. You want her,” she said flatly when the silence extended so long that she realized there was something he could not let himself say. “It is a matter of your desire.”

  He took the plunge. “Yes,” he confirmed.

  Lady Margaret looked at him with calculation in her gaze. He had been taken from her as little more than a baby for safekeeping. Since then she had always seen him as a prospect, as a potential heir to the throne, as her passport to grandeur. She had hardly known him as a baby, never loved him as a child. She had planned his future as a man, she had defended his rights as a king, she had mapped his campaign as a threat to the House of York—but she had never known tenderness for him. She could not learn to feel indulgent towards him this late in her life; she was hardly ever indulgent to anyone, not even to herself.

  “That’s very shocking,” she said coolly. “ I thought we were talking of a marriage of advantage. She stands as a daughter to you. This desire is a carnal sin.”

  “It is not and she is not,” he said. “There is nothing wrong in honorable love. She is not my daughter. She is his widow. And it was not consummated.”

  “You will need a dispensation. It is a sin.”

  “He never even had her!” he exclaimed.

  “The whole court put them to bed,” she pointed out levelly.

  “He was too young. He was impotent. And he was dead, poor lad, within months.”

  She nodded. “So she says now.”

  “But you do not advise me against it,” he said.

  “It is a sin,” she repeated. “But if you can get dispensation and her parents agree to it, then—” She pulled a sour face. “Well, better her than many others, I suppose,” she said begrudgingly. “And she can live at court under my care. I can watch over her and command her more easily than I could an older girl, and we know that she behaves herself well. She is obedient. She will learn her duties under me. And the people love her.”

  “I shall speak to the Spanish ambassador today.”

  She thought she had never seen such a bright gladness in his face. “I suppose I can teach her.” She gestured to the books before her. “She will have much to learn.”

  “I shall tell the ambassador to propose it to Their Majesties of Spain and I shall talk to her tomorrow.”

  “You will go again so soon?” she asked curiously.

  Henry nodded. He would not tell her that even to wait till tomorrow seemed too long. If he had been free to do so, he would have gone back straightaway and asked her to marry him that very night, as if he were a humble squire and she a maid, and not King of England and Princess of Spain; father- and daughter-in-law.

  Henry saw that Dr. de Puebla the Spanish ambassador was invited to Whitehall in time for dinner, given a seat at one of the top tables, and plied with the best wine. Some venison, hanged to perfection and cooked in a brandywine sauce, came to the king’s table; he helped himself to a small portion and sent the dish to the Spanish ambassador. De Puebla, who had not experienced such favors since first negotiating the Infanta’s marriage contract, loaded his plate with a heavy spoon and dipped the best manchet bread into the gravy, glad to eat well at court, wondering quietly behind his avid smile what it might mean.

  The king’s mother nodded towards him, and de Puebla rose up from his seat to bow to her. “Most gracious,” he remarked to himself as he sat down once more. “Extremely. Exceptionally.”

  He was no fool, he knew that something would be required for all these public favors. But given the horror of the past year—when the hopes of Spain had been buried beneath the nave in Worcester Cathedral—at least these were straws in a good wind. Clearly, King Henry had a use for him again as something other than a whipping boy for the failure of the Spanish sovereigns to pay their debts.

  De Puebla had tried to defend Their Majesties of Spain to an increasingly irritable English king. He had tried to explain to them in long, detailed letters that it was fruitless asking for Catalina’s widow’s jointure if they would not pay the remainder of the dowry. He tried to explain to Catalina that he could not make the English king pay a more generous allowance for the upkeep of her household, nor could he persuade the Spanish king to give his daughter financial support. Both kings were utterly stubborn, both quite determined to force the other into a weak position. Neither seemed to care that in the meantime Catalina, only seventeen, was forced to keep house with an extravagant entourage in a foreign land on next to no money. Neither king would take the first step and undertake to be responsible for her keep, fearing that this would commit him to keeping her and her household forever.

  De Puebla smiled up at the king, seated on his throne under the canopy of state. He genuinely liked King Henry, he admired the courage with which he had seized and held the throne, he liked the man’s direct good sense. And more than that, de Puebla liked living in England; he was accustomed to his good house in London, to the importance conferred on him by representing the newest and most powerful ruling house in Europe. He liked the fact that his Jewish background and recent conversion were utterly ignored in England, since everyone at this court had come from nowhere and changed their name or their affiliation at least once. England suited de Puebla, and he would do his best to remain. If it meant serving the King of England better than the King of Spain, he thought it was a
small compromise to make.

  Henry rose from the throne and gave the signal that the servers could clear the plates. They swept the board and cleared the trestle tables, and Henry strolled among the diners, pausing for a word here and there, still very much the commander among his men. All the favorites at the Tudor court were the gamblers who had put their swords behind their words and marched into England with Henry. They knew their value to him, and he knew his to them. It was still a victors’ camp rather than a softened civilian court.

  At length Henry completed his circuit and came to de Puebla’s table. “Ambassador,” he greeted him.

  De Puebla bowed low. “I thank you for your gift of the dish of venison,” he said. “It was delicious.”

  The king nodded. “I would have a word with you.”

  “Of course.”

  “Privately.”

  The two men strolled to a quieter corner of the hall while the musicians in the gallery struck a note and began to play.

  “I have a proposal to resolve the issue of the Dowager Princess,” Henry said as drily as possible.

  “Indeed?”

  “You may find my suggestion unusual, but I think it has much to recommend it.”

  “At last,” de Puebla thought. “He is going to propose Harry. I thought he was going to let her sink a lot lower before he did that. I thought he would bring her down so that he could charge us double for a second try at Wales. But, so be it. God is merciful.”

  “Ah, yes?” de Puebla said aloud.

  “I suggest that we forget the issue of the dowry,” Henry started. “Her goods will be absorbed into my household. I shall pay her an appropriate allowance, as I did for the late Queen Elizabeth—God bless her. I shall marry the Infanta myself.”

  De Puebla was almost too shocked to speak. “You?”

  “I. Is there any reason why not?”

  The ambassador gulped, drew a breath, managed to say, “No, no, at least…I suppose there could be an objection on the grounds of affinity.”

  “I shall apply for a dispensation. I take it that you are certain that the marriage was not consummated?”