The Constant Princess ttc-1

by Philippa Gregory

  “Why should you doubt your own physician’s opinion?”

  I turn from his inquiring, honest gaze. “I don’t know,” I say evasively.

  “Infanta, I think you do know.”

  “How can I know?”

  “With a woman’s sense.”

  “I have it not.”

  He smiles at my stubbornness. “Well, then, woman without any feelings, what do you think with your clever mind, since you have decided to deny what your body tells you?”

  “How can I know what I should think?” I ask. “My mother is dead. My greatest friend in England—” I break off before I can say the name of Arthur. “I have no one to confide in. One midwife says one thing, one says another. The physician is sure…but he wants to be sure. The king rewards him only for good news. How can I know the truth?”

  “I should think you do know, despite yourself,” he insists gently. “Your body will tell you. I suppose your courses have not returned?”

  “No, I have bled,” I admit unwillingly. “Last week.”

  “With pain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your breasts are tender?”

  “They were.”

  “Are they fuller than usual?”

  “No.”

  “You can feel the child? He moves inside you?”

  “I can’t feel anything since I lost the girl.”

  “You are in pain now?”

  “Not anymore. I feel…”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing. I feel nothing.”

  He says nothing; he sits quietly, he breathes so softly it is like sitting with a quietly sleeping black cat. He looks at María. “May I touch her?”

  “No,” she says. “She is the queen. Nobody can touch her.”

  He shrugs his shoulders. “She is a woman like any other. She wants a child like any woman. Why should I not touch her belly as I would touch any woman?”

  “She is the queen,” she repeats. “She cannot be touched. She has an anointed body.”

  He smiles as if the holy truth is amusing. “Well, I hope someone has touched her, or there cannot be a child at all,” he remarks.

  “Her husband. An anointed king,” María says shortly. “And take care of how you speak. These are sacred matters.”

  “If I may not examine her, then I shall have to say only what I think from looking at her. If she cannot bear examination then she will have to make do with guesswork.” He turns to me. “If you were an ordinary woman and not a queen, I would take your hands in mine now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is a hard word I have to tell you.”

  Slowly, I stretch out my hands with the priceless rings on my fingers. He takes them gently, his dark hands as soft as the touch of a child. His dark eyes look into mine without fear, his face is tender, moved. “If you are bleeding then it is most likely that your womb is empty,” he says. “There is no child there. If your breasts are not full then they are not filling with milk, your body is not preparing to feed a child. If you do not feel a child move inside you in the sixth month, then either the child is dead, or there is no child there. If you feel nothing then that is most probably because there is nothing to feel.”

  “My belly is still swollen.” I draw back my cloak and show him the curve of my belly under my shift. “It is hard, I am not fat, I look as I did before I lost the first baby.”

  “It could be an infection,” he says consideringly. “Or—pray Allah that it is not—it could be a growth, a swelling. Or it could be a miscarriage which you have not yet expelled.”

  I draw my hands back. “You are ill-wishing me!”

  “Never,” he says. “To me, here and now, you are not Catalina, Infanta of Spain, but simply a woman who has asked for my help. I am sorry for you.”

  “Some help!” María de Salinas interrupts crossly. “Some help you have been!”

  “Anyway, I don’t believe it,” I say. “Yours is one opinion, Dr. Fielding has another. Why should I believe you, rather than a good Christian?”

  He looks at me for a long time, his face tender. “I wish I could tell you a better opinion,” he says. “But I imagine there are many who will tell you agreeable lies. I believe in telling the truth. I will pray for you.”

  “I don’t want your heathen prayers,” I say roughly. “You can go, and take your bad opinion and your heresies with you.”

  “Go with God, Infanta,” he says with dignity, as if I have not insulted him. He bows. “And since you don’t want my prayers to my God (praise be to His holy name), I shall hope instead that when you are in your time of trouble that your doctor is right, and your own God is with you.”

  I let him leave, as silent as a dark cat down the hidden staircase and I say nothing. I hear his sandals clicking down the stone steps, just like the hushed footsteps of the servants at my home. I hear the whisper of his long gown, so unlike the stiff brush of English cloth. I feel the air gradually lose the scent of him, the warm, spicy scent of my home.

  And when he is gone, quite gone, and the downstairs door is shut and I hear María de Salinas turn the key in the lock then I find that I want to weep—not just because he has told me such bad news, but because one of the few people in the world who has ever told me the truth has gone.

  SPRING 1510

  Katherine did not tell her young husband of the visit of the Moor doctor, nor of the bad opinion that he had so honestly given her. She did not mention his visit to anyone, not even Lady Margaret Pole. She drew on her sense of destiny, on her pride, and on her faith that she was still especially favored by God, and she continued with the pregnancy, not even allowing herself to doubt.

  She had good reason. The English physician, Dr. Fielding, remained confident; the midwives did not contradict him; the court behaved as if Katherine would be brought to bed of a child in March or April; and so she went through the spring weather, the greening gardens, the bursting trees, with a serene smile and her hand clasped gently against her rounded belly.

  Henry was excited by the imminent birth of his child; he was planning a great tournament to be held at Greenwich once the baby was born. The loss of the girl had taught him no caution; he bragged all round the court that a healthy baby would soon come. He was forewarned only not to predict a boy. He told everyone that he did not mind if this first child was a prince or princess—he would love this baby for being the firstborn, for coming to himself and the queen in the first flush of their happiness.

  Katherine stifled her doubts, and never even said to María de Salinas that she had not felt her baby kick, that she felt a little colder, a little more distant from everything every day. She spent longer and longer on her knees in her chapel; but God did not speak to her, and even the voice of her mother seemed to have grown silent. She found that she missed Arthur—not with the passionate longing of a young widow, but because he had been her dearest friend in England, and the only one she could have trusted now with her doubts.

  In February she attended the great Shrove Tuesday feast and shone before the court and laughed. They saw the broad curve of her belly, they saw her confidence as they celebrated the start of Lent. They moved to Greenwich, certain that the baby would be born just after Easter.

  We are going to Greenwich for the birth of my child. The rooms are prepared for me as laid down in My Lady the King’s Mother’s Royal Book—hung with tapestries with pleasing and encouraging scenes, carpeted with rugs and strewn with fresh herbs. I hesitate at the doorway, behind me my friends raise their glasses of spiced wine. This is where I shall do my greatest work for England, this is my moment of destiny. This is what I was born and bred to do. I take a deep breath and go inside. The door closes behind me. I will not see my friends—the Duke of Buckingham, my dear knight Edward Howard, my confessor, the Spanish ambassador—until my baby is born.

  My women come in with me. Lady Elizabeth Boleyn places a sweet-smelling pomander on my bedside table. Lady Elizabeth and Lady Anne, sisters to the Duke of Bu
ckingham straighten a tapestry, one at each corner, laughing over whether it leans to one side or the other. María de Salinas is smiling, standing by the great bed that is new-hung with dark curtains. Lady Margaret Pole is arranging the cradle for the baby at the foot of the bed. She looks up and smiles at me as I come in and I remember that she is a mother, she will know what is to be done.

  “I shall want you to take charge of the royal nurseries,” I suddenly blurt out to her, my affection for her and my sense of needing the advice and comfort of an older woman is too much for me.

  There is a little ripple of amusement among my women. They know that I am normally very formal, such an appointment should come through the head of my household after consultation with dozens of people.

  Lady Margaret smiles at me. “I knew you would,” she says, speaking in reply as intimate as myself. “I have been counting on it.”

  “Without royal invitation?” Lady Elizabeth Boleyn teases. “For shame, Lady Margaret! Thrusting yourself forwards!”

  That makes us all laugh at the thought of Lady Margaret, that most dignified of women, as someone craving patronage.

  “I know you will care for him as if he were your own son,” I whisper to her.

  She takes my hand and helps me to the bed. I am heavy and ungainly. I have this constant pain in my belly that I try to hide.

  “God willing,” she says quietly.

  Henry comes in to bid me farewell. His face is flushed with emotion and his mouth is working, he looks more like a boy than a king. I take his hands and I kiss him tenderly on the mouth. “My love,” I say. “Pray for me, I am sure everything will go well for us.”

  “I shall go to Our Lady of Walsingham to give thanks,” he tells me again. “I have written to the nunnery there and promised them great rewards if they will intercede with Our Lady for you. They are praying for you now, my love. They assure me that they are praying all the time.”

  “God is good,” I say. I think briefly of the Moorish doctor who told me that I was not with child and I push his pagan folly from my mind. “This is my destiny and it is my mother’s wish and God’s will,” I say.

  “I so wish your mother could be here,” Henry says clumsily. I do not let him see me flinch.

  “Of course,” I say quietly. “And I am sure she is watching me from al-Yan—” I cut off the words before I can say them. “From paradise,” I say smoothly. “From heaven.”

  “Can I get you anything?” he asks. “Before I leave, can I fetch you anything?”

  I do not laugh at the thought of Henry—who never knows where anything is—running errands for me at this late stage. “I have everything I need,” I assure him. “And my women will care for me.”

  He straightens up, very kingly, and he looks around at them. “Serve your mistress well,” he says firmly. To Lady Margaret he says, “Please send for me at once if there is any news, at any time, day or night.” Then he kisses me farewell very tenderly, and when he goes out, they close the door behind him and I am alone with my ladies, in the seclusion of my confinement.

  I am glad to be confined. The shady, peaceful bedroom will be my haven, I can rest for a while in the familiar company of women. I can stop playacting the part of a fertile and confident queen, and be myself. I put aside all doubts. I will not think and I will not worry. I will wait patiently until my baby comes, and then I will bring him into the world without fear, without screaming. I am determined to be confident that this child, who has survived the loss of his twin, will be a strong baby. And I, who have survived the loss of my first child, will be a brave mother. Perhaps it might be true that we have surmounted grief and loss together: this baby and I.

  I wait. All through March I wait, and I ask them to pin back the tapestry that covers the window so I can smell the scent of spring on the air and hear the seagulls as they call over the high tides on the river.

  Nothing seems to be happening; not for my baby nor for me. The midwives ask me if I feel any pain, and I do not. Nothing more than the dull ache I have had for a long time. They ask if the baby has quickened, if I feel him kick me, but, to tell truth, I do not understand what they mean. They glance at one another and say overloudly, overemphatically, that it is a very good sign, a quiet baby is a strong baby: he must be resting.

  The unease that I have felt right from the start of this second pregnancy, I put right away from me. I will not think of the warning from the Moorish doctor, nor of the compassion in his face. I am determined not to seek out fear, not to run towards disaster. But April comes and I can hear the patter of rain on the window, and then feel the heat of the sunshine, and still nothing happens.

  My gowns that strained so tight across my belly through the winter, feel looser in April, and then looser yet. I send out all the women but María, and I unlace my gown and show her my belly and ask if she thinks I am losing my girth.

  “I don’t know,” she says; but I can tell by her aghast face that my belly is smaller, that it is obvious that there is no baby in there, ready to be born.

  In another week it is obvious to everyone that my belly is going down, I am growing slim again. The midwives try to tell me that sometimes a woman’s belly diminishes just before her baby is born, as her baby drops down to be born, or some such arcane knowledge. I look at them coldly, and I wish I could send for a decent physician who would tell me the truth.

  “My belly is smaller and my course has come this very day,” I say to them flatly. “I am bleeding. As you know, I have bled every month since I lost the girl. How can I be with child?”

  They flutter their hands, and cannot say. They don’t know. They tell me that these are questions for my husband’s respected physician. It was he who had said that I was still with child in the first place, not them. They had never said that I was with child; they had merely been called in to assist with a delivery. It was not they who had said that I was carrying a baby.

  “But what did you think, when he said there was a twin?” I demand. “Did you not agree when he said that I had lost a child and yet kept one?”

  They shake their heads. They did not know.

  “You must have thought something,” I say impatiently. “You saw me lose my baby. You saw my belly stay big. What could cause that if not another child?”

  “God’s will,” says one of them helplessly.

  “Amen,” I say, and it costs me a good deal to say it.

  “I want to see that physician again,” Katherine said quietly to María de Salinas.

  “Your Grace, it may be that he is not in London. He travels in the household of a French count. It may be that he has gone.”

  “Find out if he is still in London, or when they expect him to return,” the queen said. “Don’t tell anyone that it is I who have asked for him.”

  María de Salinas looked at her mistress with sympathy. “You want him to advise you how to have a son?” she asked in a low voice.

  “There is not a university in England that studies medicine,” Katherine said bitterly. “There is not one that teaches languages. There is not one that teaches astronomy, or mathematics, geometry, geography, cosmography, or even the study of animals, or plants. The universities of England are about as much use as a monastery full of monks coloring in the margins of sacred texts.”

  María de Salinas gave a little gasp of shock at Katherine’s bluntness. “The church says…”

  “The church does not need decent physicians. The church does not need to know how sons are conceived,” Katherine snapped. “The church can continue with the revelations of the saints. It needs nothing more than Scripture. The church is composed of men who are not troubled by the illnesses and difficulties of women. But for those of us on our pilgrimage today, those of us in the world, especially those of us who are women: we need a little more.”

  “But you said that you did not want pagan knowledge. You said to the doctor himself. Your said your mother was right to close the universities of the infidel.”

  “
My mother had half a dozen children,” Katherine replied crossly. “But I tell you, if she could have found a doctor to save my brother she would have had him even if he had been trained in hell itself. She was wrong to turn her back on the learning of the Moors. She was mistaken. I have never thought that she was perfect, but I think the less of her now. She made a great mistake when she drove away their wise scholars along with their heretics.”

  “The church itself said that their scholarship is heresy,” María observed. “How could you have one without the other?”

  “I am sure that you know nothing about it,” said Isabella’s daughter, driven into a corner. “It is not a fit subject for you to discuss and besides, I have told you what I want you to do.”

  The Moor, Yusuf, is away from London but the people at his lodging house say that he has reserved his rooms to return within the week. I shall have to be patient. I shall wait in my confinement and try to be patient.

  They know him well, María’s servant tells her. His comings and goings are something of an event in their street. Africans are so rare in England as to be a spectacle—and he is a handsome man and generous with small coins for little services. They told María’s servant that he insisted on having fresh water for washing in his room and he washes every day, several times a day, and that—wonder of wonders—he bathes three or four times a week, using soap and towels, and throwing water all over the floor to the great inconvenience of the housemaids, and to great danger of his health.

  I cannot help but laugh at the thought of the tall, fastidious Moor folding himself up into a washing tub, desperate for a steam, a tepid soak, a massage, a cold shower, and then a long, thoughtful rest while smoking a hookah and sipping a strong, sweet peppermint tea. It reminds me of my horror when I first came to England and discovered that they bathe only infrequently and wash only the tips of their fingers before eating. I think that he has done better than I—he has carried his love of his home with him, he has remade his home wherever he goes. But in my determination to be Queen Katherine of England I have given up being Catalina of Spain.