Carrie Vaughn - Kitty's Greatest Hits

“We must tell a priest!” Catherine said, pleading. “We must tell the archbishop!”

“If we did, would they believe us? I, a boy, and you, a foreigner? They’ll say we are mad, or playing at games.”

She couldn’t argue because she’d thought the same. She said, “This woman made me sleep with a glance. How would we kill such a thing?” Even if they wanted to kill her. What if the woman was right, and if they acted against her she would find some way to kill Arthur? Perhaps they should bide their time.

“Highness? Are you there?” Doña Elvira called to her.

“I must away,” Catherine said, and curtsied to her brother-in-law. “We must think on what to do. We must not be rash.”

He returned the respect with a bow. “Surely. Farewell.”

She hoped he would not be rash. She feared he looked upon all this as a game.

“His Highness is not seeing visitors,” the gentleman of Arthur’s chamber told her. He spoke apologetically and bowed respectfully, but he would not let her through the doors to see Arthur. She wanted to scream.

“You will tell him that I was here?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” the man said and bowed again.

Catherine could do nothing more than turn around and walk away, trailed by her own attending ladies.

What they must think of her. She caught the whispers among them, when they thought she couldn’t hear. Pobre Catalina. Poor Catherine, whose husband would not see her, who spent every night alone.

That evening, she sent Doña Elvira and her ladies on an errand for wine. Once again, she crept from her chambers alone, furtive as a mouse.

I will see my husband, Catherine thought. It is my right. It should not have been so difficult for her to see him alone. But as it was the palace swarmed with courtiers.

She wanted to reach him before the woman arrived to work her spells on him.

Quietly, she slipped through Arthur’s door and closed it behind her.

The bed curtains were open. Arthur, in his nightclothes, sat on the edge of the bed, hunched over. She could hear his wheezing breaths across the room.

“Your Highness,” she said, curtsying.

“Catherine?” He looked up—and did he smile? Just a little? “Why are you here?”

She said, “Who is the woman who comes to you at night?”

“No one comes to me at night.” He said this flatly, as if she were to blame for his loneliness.

She shook her head, fighting tears. She would keep her wits and not cry. “Three nights ago I came, and she was here. You were bleeding, Arthur. She hurt you. She’s killing you!”

“That isn’t true. No one has been here. And—what business is it of yours if a woman has been here?”

“I am your wife. You have a duty to me.”

“Catherine, I am so tired.”

She knelt at his side and dared to put her hand on his knee. “Then you must grow strong. So that we may have children. Your heirs.”

He touched her hand. A thrill went through her flesh, like fire. So much feeling in a simple touch! But his skin was ice cold.

“I am telling the truth,” said the boy who was her husband. “I remember nothing of any woman coming here. I come to bed every night and fall into such a deep sleep that nothing rouses me but my own coughing. I do not know of what you speak.”

This woman had put a spell on them all.

“Your father is sending your household to Ludlow Castle, in Wales,” she said.

He set his lips in a thin, pale line. “Then we shall go to Ludlow.”

“You cannot travel so far,” she said. “The journey will kill you.”

“If I were really so weak my father would not send me.”

“His pride blinds him!”

“You should not speak so of the king, my lady.” He gave a tired sigh. What would have been an accusation of treason from fiery young Henry’s lips was weary observation from Arthur’s. “Now please, Catherine. Let me sleep. If I sleep well tonight, perhaps I’ll be strong enough to see you tomorrow.”

It was an empty promise and they both knew it. He was as pale and wasted as he had ever been. She kissed his hand with as much passion as she had ever been allowed to show. She pressed her cheek to it, let tears fall on it. She would pray every day for him. Every hour.

She stood, curtsied, and left him alone in the chamber.

Outside, however, she waited, sitting on a chair in the corner normally reserved for pages or stewards. Doña Elvira would be scandalized to see her there.

In an hour, the woman Angeline came. She moved like smoke. Catherine had been staring ahead so intently she thought her eyes played a trick on her. A shadow flickered where there was no flame. A draft blew where no window was open.

Angeline did not approach, but all the same she appeared. She stood before the doors of Arthur’s bedchamber as regal as any queen.

Catherine was still gathering the courage to stand when Angeline looked at her. Her face was alabaster, a statue draped with a gown of black velvet. She might as well have been stone, her gaze was so hard.

Finally, Catherine stood.

“Es la novia niña,” Angeline said.

The princess would not be cowed by a commoner. “By the laws of Church and country I am not a child, I am a woman.”

“By one very important consideration, you are not.” She turned a pointed smile.

Catherine blushed; her gaze fell. She was still a maid. That was certainly not her fault.

“I demand that you leave here,” Catherine said. “Leave here, and leave my husband alone.”

“Oh, child, you don’t want me to do that.”

“I insist. You are some witch, some demon. That much I know. You have worked a spell on him that sickens him to death—”

“Oh no, I’ll not let my puppet die. I could keep your Arthur alive forever, if I wished. I hold that secret.”

“You … you are an abomination against the Church. Against God!”

She smiled thinly. “Perhaps.”

“Why?” Catherine said. “Why him? Why this?”

“He’ll be a weak king. At best, an indifferent king. He won’t be leading any troops to war against France. He will keep England a quiet, unimportant country.”

“You do not know that. You cannot see the future. He will be a great king—”

“One need not see the future to guess such things, dear Catherine.”

“You will address me as Your Highness, as is proper.”

“Of course, Your Highness. You must trust me—I will not kill Arthur. If his brother were to become king—you have seen the kind of boy he is: fierce, competitive, strong. You can imagine the kind of king he will be. No one in Europe wishes for a strong king of England.”

“My father King Ferdinand—”

“Not even King Ferdinand. From the first, he wanted a son-in-law he could control.”

Catherine knew it was true, all of it, the chess-like machinations of politics that had ruled her life. Her marriage to Arthur had given Spain another playing piece, that was all.

There was no room for love in any of this.

She was descended from two royal houses. Her ancestors were the oldest and most noble in all of Europe. Dignity was bred into the sinews of her flesh. She stood tall, did not collapse, did not cry, however much the little girl inside of her was trembling.

“And what of children?” she said. “What of the children I’m meant to bear?”

“It may be possible. Or it may not.”

“I do not believe you. I do not believe anything that you say.”

“Yes, you do,” she said. “But more importantly, you cannot stop me. You’ll go to sleep, now. You will not remember.”

She wanted to fling herself at the woman, strangle her with her own hands. Tiny hands that couldn’t strangle a kitten, alas.