Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1: The Constant Princess, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Boleyn Inheritance. Philippa Gregory
another child, and Catalina, hoping for their favour, was sewing an exquisite layette of baby clothes before a small fire in the smallest room of Durham Palace in the early days of February 1503. Her ladies, hemming seams according to their abilities, were seated at a distance; Dona Elvira could speak privately.
‘This should be your baby’s layette,’ the duenna said resentfully under her breath. ‘A widow for a year, and no progress made. What is going to become of you?’
Catalina looked up from her delicate black-thread work. ‘Peace, Dona Elvira,’ she said quietly. ‘It will be as God and my parents and the king decide.’
‘Seventeen, now,’ Dona Elvira said, stubbornly pursuing her theme, her head down. ‘How long are we to stay in this Godforsaken country, neither a bride nor a wife? Neither at court nor elsewhere? With bills mounting up and the jointure still not paid?’
‘Dona Elvira, if you knew how much your words grieve me, I don’t think you would say them,’ Catalina said clearly. ‘Just because you mutter them into your sewing like a cursing Egyptian doesn’t mean I don’t hear them. If I knew what was to happen, I would tell you myself at once. You will not learn any more by whispering your fears.’
The woman looked up and met Catalina’s clear gaze.
‘I think of you,’ she said bluntly. ‘Even if no-one else does. Even if that fool ambassador and that idiot the emissary does not. If the king does not order your marriage to the prince then what is to become of you? If he will not let you go, if your parents do not insist on your return, then what is going to happen? Is he just going to keep you forever? Are you a princess or a prisoner? It is nearly a year. Are you a hostage for the alliance with Spain? How long can you wait? You are seventeen, how long can you wait?’
‘I am waiting,’ Catalina said calmly. ‘Patiently. Until it is resolved.’
The duenna said nothing more, Catalina did not have the energy to argue. She knew that during this year of mourning for Arthur, she had been steadily pushed more and more to the margins of court life. Her claim to be a virgin had not produced a new betrothal as she had thought it would; it had made her yet more irrelevant. She was only summoned to court on the great occasions, and then she was dependent on the kindness of Queen Elizabeth.
The king’s mother, Lady Margaret, had no interest in the impoverished Spanish princess. She had not proved readily fertile, she now said she had never even been bedded, she was widowed and brought no more money into the royal treasury. She was of no use to the house of Tudor except as a bargaining counter in the continuing struggle with Spain. She might as well stay at her house in the Strand, as be summoned to court. Besides, My Lady the King’s Mother did not like the way that the new Prince of Wales looked at his widowed sister-in-law.
Whenever Prince Harry met her, he fixed his eyes on her with puppy-like devotion. My Lady the King’s Mother had privately decided that she would keep them apart. She thought that the girl smiled on the young prince too warmly, she thought she encouraged his boyish adoration to serve her own foreign vanity. My Lady the King’s Mother was resentful of anyone’s influence on the only surviving son and heir. Also, she mistrusted Catalina. Why would the young widow encourage a brother-in-law who was nearly six years her junior? What did she hope to gain from his friendship? Surely she knew that he was kept as close as a child: bedded in his father’s rooms, chaperoned night and day, constantly supervised? What did the Spanish widow hope to achieve by sending him books, teaching him Spanish, laughing at his accent and watching him ride at the quintain, as if he were in training as her knight errant?
Nothing would come of it. Nothing could come of it. But My Lady the King’s Mother would allow no-one to be intimate with Harry but herself, and she ruled that Catalina’s visits to court were to be rare and brief.
The king himself was kind enough to Catalina when he saw her, but she felt him eye her as if she were some sort of treasure that he had purloined. She always felt with him as if she were some sort of trophy – not a young woman of seventeen years old, wholly dependent on his honour, his daughter by marriage.
If she could have brought herself to speak of Arthur to her mother-in-law or to the king then perhaps they would have sought her out to share their grief. But she could not use his name to curry favour with them. Even a year since his death, she could not think of him without a tightness in her chest which was so great that she thought it could stop her breathing for very grief. She still could not say his name out loud. She certainly could not play on her grief to help her at court.
‘But what will happen?’ Dona Elvira continued.
Catalina turned her head away. ‘I don’t know,’ she said shortly.
‘Perhaps if the queen has another son with this baby, the king will send us back to Spain,’ the duenna pursued.
Catalina nodded. ‘Perhaps.’
The duenna knew her well enough to recognise Catalina’s silent determination. ‘Your trouble is, that you still don’t want to go,’ she whispered. ‘The king may keep you as a hostage against the dowry money, your parents may let you stay; but if you insisted you could get home. You still think you can make them marry you to Harry; but if that was going to happen you would be betrothed by now. You have to give up. We have been here a year now and you make no progress. You will trap us all here while you are defeated.’
Catalina’s sandy eyelashes swept down to veil her eyes. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I don’t think that.’
There was a sharp rap at the door. ‘Urgent message for the Dowager Princess of Wales!’ the voice called out.
Catalina dropped her sewing and rose to her feet. Her ladies sprang up too. It was so unusual for anything to happen in the quiet court of Durham House that they were thrown into a flutter.
‘Well, let him in!’ Catalina exclaimed.
Maria de Salinas flung open the door and one of the royal grooms of the chamber came in and kneeled before the princess. ‘Grave news,’ he said shortly. ‘A son, a prince, has been born of the queen and has died. Her Grace the Queen has died too. God pray for His Grace in his kingly grief.’
‘What?’ demanded Dona Elvira, trying to take in the astounding rush of events.
‘God save her soul,’ Catalina replied correctly. ‘God save the King.’
‘Heavenly Father, take Your daughter Elizabeth into Your keeping. You must love her, she was a woman of great gentleness and grace.’
I sit back on my heels and abandon the prayer. I think the queen’s life, ended so tragically, was one of sorrow. If Arthur’s version of the scandal were true, then she had been prepared to marry King Richard, however despicable a tyrant. She had wanted to marry him and be his queen. Her mother and My Lady the King’s Mother and the victory of Bosworth had forced her to take King Henry. She had been born to be Queen of England, and she had married the man who could give her the throne.
I thought that if I had been able to tell her of my promise then she would have known the pain that seeps through me like ice every time I think of Arthur, and know that I promised him I would marry Harry. I thought that she might have understood if you are born to be Queen of England you have to be Queen of England, whoever is king. Whoever your husband will have to be.
Without her quiet presence at court I feel that I am more at risk, further from my goal. She was kind to me, she was a loving woman. I was waiting out my year of mourning and trusting that she would help me into marriage with Harry, because he would be a refuge for me, and because I would be a good wife to him. I was trusting that she knew one could marry a man for whom one feels nothing but indifference and still be a good wife.
But now the court will be ruled by My Lady the King’s Mother and she is a formidable woman, no friend to anyone but