Philippa Gregory - The Constant Princess

The sun set white in a white sky, and the world grew more shadowy. Snow and clouds closed down around the little cavalcade which wound its way across a white land under a gray sky.

Arthur’s horse cantered ahead, the prince riding easily in the saddle, one gloved hand on the reins, the other on his whip. He had stout woolen undergarments under his thick leather jerkin and soft, warm leather boots. Catalina watched him ride forwards. She was too cold and too miserable even to resent him. More than anything else she wished he would ride back to tell her that the journey was nearly over, that they were there.

An hour passed. The mules walked down the road, their heads bowed low against the wind that whirled flakes around their ears and into the litter. The snow was getting thicker now, filling the air and drifting into the ruts of the lane. Catalina had hunched up under the covers, lying like a child, the rapidly cooling stone at her belly, her knees drawn up, her cold hands tucked in, her face ducked down, buried in the furs and rugs. Her feet were freezing cold, there was a gap in the rugs at her back, and now and then she shivered at a fresh draft of icy air.

All around, outside the litter, she could hear men chattering and laughing about the cold, swearing that they would eat well when the train got into Burford. Their voices seemed to come from far away, Catalina drifted into a sleep from coldness and exhaustion.

Groggily, she woke when the litter bumped down to the ground and the curtains were swept back. A wave of icy air washed over her, and she ducked her head down and cried out in discomfort.

“Infanta?” Doña Elvira asked. The duenna had been riding her mule, the exercise had kept her warm. “Infanta? Thank God, at last we are here.”

Catalina would not lift her head.

“Infanta, they are waiting to greet you.”

Still Catalina would not look up.

“What’s this?” It was Arthur’s voice. He had seen the litter put down and the duenna bending over it. He saw that the heap of rugs made no movement. For a moment, with a pang of dismay, he thought that the princess might have been taken ill. María de Salinas gave him a reproachful look. “What’s the matter?”

“It is nothing.” Doña Elvira straightened up and stood between the prince and his young wife, shielding Catalina as he jumped from his horse and came towards her. “The princess has been asleep. She is composing herself.”

“I’ll see her,” he said. He put the woman aside with one confident hand and kneeled down beside the litter.

“Catalina?” he asked quietly.

“I am frozen with cold,” said a little thread of voice. She lifted her head, and he saw that she was as white as the snow itself and her lips were blue. “I am so c-cold that I shall die and then you will be happy. You can b-bury me in this horrible country and m-marry some fat, stupid Englishwoman. And I shall never see—” She broke off into sobs.

“Catalina?” He was utterly bemused.

“I shall never see my m-mother again. But she will know that you killed me with your miserable country and your cruelty.”

“I have not been cruel!” he rejoined at once, quite blind to the gathering crowd of courtiers around them. “By God, Catalina, it was not me!”

“You have been cruel.” She lifted her face from the rugs. “You have been cruel because—”

It was her sad, white, tearstained face that spoke to him far more than her words could ever have done. She looked like one of his sisters when their grandmother scolded them. She did not look like an infuriating, insulting princess of Spain, she looked like a girl who had been bullied into tears—and he realized that it was he who had bullied her. He had made her cry, and he had left her in the cold litter for all the afternoon while he had ridden on ahead and delighted in the thought of her discomfort.

He reached into the rugs and pulled out her icy hand. Her fingers were numb with cold. He knew he had done wrong. He took her blue fingertips to his mouth and kissed them, then he held them against his lips and blew his warm breath against them. “God forgive me,” he said. “I forgot I was a husband. I didn’t know I had to be a husband. I didn’t realize that I could make you cry. I won’t ever do so again.”

She blinked, her blue eyes swimming in unshed tears. “What?”

“I was wrong. I was angry but quite wrong. Let me take you inside and we will get warm and I shall tell you how sorry I am and I will never be unkind to you again.”

At once she struggled with her rugs, and Arthur pulled them off her legs. She was so cramped and so chilled that she stumbled when she tried to stand. Ignoring the muffled protests of her duenna, he swept her up into his arms and carried her like a bride across the threshold of the hall.

Gently he put her down before the roaring fire, gently he put back her hood, untied her cloak, chafed her hands. He waved away the servants who would have come to take her cloak, offered her wine. He made a little circle of peace and silence around them, and he watched the color come back to her pale cheeks.

“I am sorry,” he said, heartfelt. “I was very, very angry with you, but I should not have taken you so far in such bad weather, and I should never have let you get cold. It was wrong of me.”

“I forgive you,” she whispered, a little smile lighting her face.

“I didn’t know that I had to take care of you. I didn’t think. I have been like a child, an unkind child. But I know now, Catalina. I will never be unkind to you again.”

She nodded. “Oh, please. And you too must forgive me. I have been unkind to you.”

“Have you?”

“At Oxford,” she whispered, very low.

He nodded. “And what do you say to me?”

She stole a quick upwards glance at him. He was not making a play of offense. He was a boy still, with a boy’s fierce sense of fairness. He needed a proper apology.

“I am very, very sorry,” she said, speaking nothing but the truth. “It was not a good thing to do, and I was sorry in the morning, but I could not tell you.”

“Shall we go to bed now?” he whispered to her, his mouth very close to her ear.

“Can we?”

“If I say that you are ill?”

She nodded and said nothing more.

“The princess is unwell from the cold,” Arthur announced generally. “Doña Elvira will take her to her room, and I shall dine there, alone with her, later.”

“But the people have come to see Your Grace…” his host pleaded. “They have an entertainment for you, and some disputes they would like you to hear…”

“I shall see them all in the hall now, and we shall stay tomorrow also. But the princess must go to her rooms at once.”

“Of course.”

There was a flurry around the princess as her ladies, led by Doña Elvira, escorted her to her room. Catalina glanced back at Arthur. “Please come to my room for dinner,” she said clearly enough for everyone to hear. “I want to see you, Your Grace.”

It was everything to him: to hear her publicly avow her desire for him. He bowed at the compliment, and then he went to the great hall and called for a cup of ale and dealt very graciously with the half dozen men who had mustered to see him, and then he excused himself and went to her room.

Catalina was waiting for him, alone by the fireside. She had dismissed her women, her servants, there was no one to wait on them, they were quite alone. He almost recoiled at the sight of the empty room; the Tudor princes and princesses were never left alone. But she had banished the servants who should wait at the table, she had sent away the ladies who should dine with them. She had even dismissed her duenna. There was no one to see what she had done to her apartments, nor how she had set the dinner table.