Philippa Gregory - The Constant Princess

She had swathed the plain wooden furniture in scarves of light cloth in vivid colors. She had even draped scarves from the tapestries to hide the cold walls, so the room was like a beautifully trimmed tent.

She had ordered them to saw the legs of the table down to stumps, so the table sat as low as a footstool, a most ridiculous piece of furniture. She had set big cushions at either end, as if they should recline like savages to eat. The dinner was set out on the table at knee level, drawn up to the warmth of the burning logs like some barbaric feast. There were candles everywhere and a rich smell like incense, as heady as a church on a feast day.

Arthur was about to complain at the wild extravagance of sawing up the furniture, but then he paused. This was, perhaps, not just some girlish folly; she was trying to show him something.

She was wearing a most extraordinary costume. On her head was a twist of the finest silk, turned and knotted like a coronet with a tail hanging down behind that she had tucked nonchalantly in one side of the headdress as if she would pull it over her face like a veil. Instead of a decent gown she wore a simple shift of the finest, lightest silk, smoky blue in color, so fine that he could almost see through it, to glimpse the paleness of her skin underneath. He could feel his heartbeat thud when he realized she was naked beneath this wisp of silk. Beneath the chemise she was wearing a pair of hose—like men’s hose—but nothing like men’s hose, for they were billowy leggings which fell from her slim hips where they were tied with a drawstring of gold thread, to her feet where they were tied again, leaving her feet half bare in dainty crimson slippers worked with a gold thread. He looked her up and down, from barbaric turban to Turkish slippers, and found himself bereft of speech.

“You don’t like my clothes,” Catalina said flatly, and he was too inexperienced to recognize the depth of embarrassment that she was ready to feel.

“I’ve never seen anything like them before,” he stammered. “Are they Arab clothes? Show me!”

She turned on the spot, watching him over her shoulder and then coming back to face him again. “We all wear them in Spain,” she said. “My mother too. They are more comfortable than gowns and cleaner. Everything can be washed, not like velvets and damask.”

He nodded. He noticed now a light rosewater scent which came from the silk.

“And they are cool in the heat of the day,” she added.

“They are…beautiful.” He nearly said “barbaric” and was so glad that he had not, when her eyes lit up.

“Do you think so?”

“Yes.”

At once she raised her arms and twirled again to show him the flutter of the hose and the lightness of the chemise.

“You wear them to sleep in?”

She laughed. “We wear them nearly all the time. My mother always wears them under her armor. They are far more comfortable than anything else, and she could not wear gowns under chain mail.”

“No…”

“When we are receiving Christian ambassadors, or for great state occasions, or when the court is at feast, we wear gowns and robes, especially at Christmas when it is cold. But in our own rooms, and always in the summer, and always when we are on campaign, we wear Morisco dress. It is easy to make, and easy to wash, and easy to carry, and best to wear.”

“You cannot wear it here,” Arthur said. “I am so sorry. But My Lady the King’s Mother would object if she knew you even had them with you.”

She nodded. “I know that. My mother was against me even bringing them. But I wanted something to remind me of my home and I thought I might keep them in my cupboard and tell nobody. Then tonight, I thought I might show you. Show you myself, and how I used to be.”

Catalina stepped to one side and gestured to him that he should come to the table. He felt too big, too clumsy, and on an instinct he stooped and shucked off his riding boots and stepped onto the rich rugs barefoot. She gave a little nod of approval and beckoned him to sit. He dropped to one of the gold-embroidered cushions.

Serenely, she sat opposite him and passed him a bowl of scented water, with a white napkin. He dipped his fingers and wiped them. She smiled and offered him a gold plate laid with food. It was a dish of his childhood, roasted chicken legs, deviled kidneys, with white manchet bread: a proper English dinner. But she had made them serve only tiny portions on each individual plate, dainty bones artfully arranged. She had sliced apples served alongside the meat and added some precious spiced meats next to sliced sugared plums. She had done everything she could to serve him a Spanish meal, with all the delicacy and luxury of the Moorish taste.

Arthur was shaken from his prejudice. “This is…beautiful,” he said, seeking a word to describe it. “This is…like a picture. You are like…” He could not think of anything that he had ever seen that was like her. Then an image came to him. “You are like a painting I once saw on a plate,” he said. “A treasure of my mother’s from Persia. You are like that. Strange, and most lovely.”

She glowed at his praise. “I want you to understand,” she said, speaking carefully in Latin. “I want you to understand what I am. Cuiusmodi sum .”

“What you are?”

“I am your wife,” she assured him. “I am the Princess of Wales, I will be Queen of England. I will be an Englishwoman. That is my destiny. But also, as well as this, I am the Infanta of Spain, of al Andalus.”

“I know.”

“You know; but you don’t know. You don’t know about Spain, you don’t know about me. I want to explain myself to you. I want you to know about Spain. I am a princess of Spain. I am my father’s favorite. When we dine alone, we eat like this. When we are on campaign, we live in tents and sit before the braziers like this, and we were on campaign for every year of my life until I was seven.”

“But you are a Christian court,” he protested. “You are a power in Christendom. You have chairs, proper chairs. You must eat your dinner off a proper table.”

“Only at banquets of state,” she said. “When we are in our private rooms we live like this, like Moors. Oh, we say grace; we thank the One God at the breaking of the bread. But we do not live as you live here in England. We have beautiful gardens filled with fountains and running water. We have rooms in our palaces inlaid with precious stones and inscribed with gold letters telling beautiful truths in poetry. We have bathhouses with hot water to wash in and thick steam to fill the scented room, we have icehouses packed in winter with snow from the sierras so our fruit and our drinks are chilled in summer.”

The words were as seductive as the images. “You make yourself sound so strange,” he said reluctantly. “Like a fairy tale.”

“I am only just realizing now how strange we are to each other,” Catalina said. “I thought that your country would be like mine, but it is quite different. I am coming to think that we are more like Persians than like Germans. We are more Arabic than Visigoth. Perhaps you thought that I would be a princess like your sisters, but I am quite, quite different.”

He nodded. “I shall have to learn your ways,” he proposed tentatively. “As you will have to learn mine.”

“I shall be Queen of England, I shall have to become English. But I want you to know what I was, when I was a girl.”

Arthur nodded. “Were you very cold today?” he asked. He could feel a strange new feeling, like a weight in his belly. He realized it was discomfort, at the thought of her being unhappy.

She met his look without concealment. “Yes,” she said. “I was very cold. And then I thought that I had been unkind to you, and I was very unhappy. And then I thought that I was far away from my home and from the heat and the sunshine and my mother, and I was very homesick. It was a horrible day, today. I had a horrible day, today.”