Philippa Gregory - The Constant Princess

“Look, here’s your new horse,” Harry interrupted, as the groom led a beautiful black mare forwards. “You’ll be used to good horses, of course. D’you have Barbary horses all the time?”

“My mother insists on them for the cavalry,” she said.

“Oh,” he breathed. “Because they are so fast?”

“They can be trained as fighting horses,” she said, going forwards and holding out her hand, palm upwards, for the mare to sniff at and nibble at her fingers with a soft, gentle mouth.

“Fighting horses?” he pursued.

“The Saracens have horses which can fight as their masters do, and the Barbary horses can be trained to do it too,” she said. “They rear up and strike down a soldier with their front hooves, and they will kick out behind, too. The Turks have horses that will pick up a sword from the ground and hand it back to the rider. My mother says that one good horse is worth ten men in battle.”

“I should so like to have a horse like that,” Harry said longingly. “I wonder how I should ever get one?”

He paused, but she did not rise to the bait. “If only someone would give me a horse like that, I could learn how to ride it,” he said transparently. “Perhaps for my birthday, or perhaps next week, since it is not me getting married, and I am not getting any wedding gifts. Since I am quite left out, and quite neglected.”

“Perhaps,” said Catalina, who had once seen her own brother get his way with exactly the same wheedling.

“I should be trained to ride properly,” he said. “Father has promised that though I am to go into the church I shall be allowed to ride at the quintain. But My Lady the King’s Mother says I may not joust. And it’s really unfair. I should be allowed to joust. If I had a proper horse, I could joust. I am sure I would beat everyone.”

“I am sure you would,” she said.

“Well, shall we go?” he asked, seeing that she would not give him a horse for asking.

“I cannot ride. I do not have my riding clothes unpacked.”

He hesitated. “Can’t you just go in that?”

Catalina laughed. “This is velvet and silk. I can’t ride in it. And besides, I can’t gallop around England looking like a mummer.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, shall you go in your litter, then? Won’t it make us very slow?”

“I am sorry for that, but I am ordered to travel in a litter,” she said. “With the curtains drawn. I can’t think that even your father would want me to charge around the country with my skirts tucked up.”

“Of course the princess cannot ride today,” the Duke of Buckingham ruled. “As I told you. She has to go in her litter.”

Harry shrugged. “Well, I didn’t know. Nobody told me what you were going to wear. Can I go ahead, then? My horses will be so much faster than the mules.”

“You can ride ahead but not out of sight,” Catalina decided. “Since you are supposed to be escorting me, you should be with me.”

“As I said,” the Duke of Buckingham observed quietly and exchanged a little smile with the princess.

“I’ll wait at every crossroads,” Harry promised. “I am escorting you, remember. And on your wedding day I shall be escorting you again. I have a white suit with gold slashing.”

“How handsome you will look,” she said, and saw him flush with pleasure.

“Oh, I don’t know…”

“I am sure everyone will remark what a handsome boy you are,” she said, as he looked pleased.

“Everyone always cheers most loudly for me,” he confided. “And I like to know that the people love me. Father says that the only way to keep a throne is to be beloved by the people. That was King Richard’s mistake, Father says.”

“My mother says that the way to keep the throne is to do God’s work.”

“Oh,” he said, clearly unimpressed. “Well, different countries, I suppose.”

“So we shall travel together,” she said. “I will tell my people that we are ready to move on.”

“I will tell them,” he insisted. “It is me who escorts you. I shall give the orders, and you shall rest in your litter.” He gave one quick sideways glance at her. “When we get to Lambeth Palace, you shall stay in your litter till I come for you. I shall draw back the curtains and take you in, and you should hold my hand.”

“I should like that very much,” she assured him and saw his ready rush of color once again.

He bustled off, and the duke bowed to her with a smile. “He is a very bright boy, very eager,” he said. “You must forgive his enthusiasm. He has been much indulged.”

“His mother’s favorite?” she asked, thinking of her own mother’s adoration for her only son.

“Worse still,” the duke said with a smile. “His mother loves him as she should; but he is the absolute apple of his grandmother’s eye, and it is she who rules the court. Luckily he is a good boy, and well-mannered. He has too good a nature to be spoiled, and the king’s mother tempers her treats with lessons.”

“She is an indulgent woman?” she asked.

He gave a little gulp of laughter. “Only to her son,” he said. “The rest of us find her—er—more majestic than motherly.”

“May we talk again at Lambeth?” Catalina asked, tempted to know more about this household that she was to join.

“At Lambeth and London, I shall be proud to serve you,” the young man said, his eyes warm with admiration. “You must command me as you wish. I shall be your friend in England; you can call on me.”

I must have courage: I am the daughter of a brave woman, and I have prepared for this all my life. When the young duke spoke so kindly to me, there was no need for me to feel like weeping; that was foolish. I must keep my head up and smile. My mother said to me that if I smile, no one will know that I am homesick or afraid. I shall smile and smile however odd things seem.

And though this England seems so strange now, I will become accustomed. I will learn their ways and feel at home here. Their odd ways will become my ways, and the worst things—the things that I utterly cannot bear—those I shall change when I am queen. And anyway, it will be better for me than it was for Isabel, my sister. She was only married a few months and then she had to come home, a widow. Better for me than for María, who had to follow in Isabel’s footsteps to Portugal, better for me than for Juana, who is sick with love for her husband, Philip. It must be better for me than it was for Juan, my poor brother, who died so soon after finding happiness. And always better for me than for my mother, whose childhood was lived on a knife edge.

My story won’t be like hers, of course. I have been born to less exciting times. I shall hope to make terms with my husband, Arthur, and with his odd, loud father, and with his sweet little braggart brother. I shall hope that his mother and his grandmother will love me or at the very least teach me how to be a Princess of Wales, a Queen of England. I shall not have to ride in desperate dashes by night from one besieged fortress to another as my mother did. I shall not have to pawn my own jewels to pay mercenary soldiers, as she did. I shall not have to ride out in my own armor to rally my troops. I shall not be threatened by the wicked French on one side and the heretic Moors on the other, as my mother was. I shall marry Arthur, and when his father dies—which must be soon, for he is so very old and so very bad-tempered—then we shall be King and Queen of England, and my mother will rule in Spain as I rule in England and she will see me keep England in alliance with Spain as I have promised her. She will see me hold my country in an unbreakable treaty with hers; she will see I shall be safe forever.

London,