Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1: The Constant Princess, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Boleyn Inheritance. Philippa Gregory
him on the bed. Catalina heard him cough, a thick cough as though his throat was bubbling with water.
‘Madre de Dios,’ she said softly. ‘Holy Mother of God, keep Arthur safe.’
The doctor turned at her whisper. His face was pale. ‘Keep back!’ he said urgently. ‘It is the Sweat.’
At that most feared word Dona Elvira stepped back and laid hold of Catalina’s gown as if she would drag her from danger.
‘Loose me!’ Catalina snapped and tugged her gown from the duenna’s hands. ‘I will come no closer, but I have to speak with him,’ she said steadily.
The doctor heard the resolution in her voice. ‘Princess, he is too weak.’
‘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 Dona 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.
Ludlow Castle, 2nd April 1502
At six o’clock, Vespers, Arthur’s confessor, Dr Eldenham, administered extreme unction and Arthur died soon after. Catalina knelt 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 Dona 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 draught. 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 centre, 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 flood water 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