Philippa Gregory - The Constant Princess

He pointed to the highest windows. “See up there? On the right-hand side, matching mine, but on the opposite side of the hall.”

She looked a little daunted. “But how will you get to my rooms?” she asked quietly.

He took her hand and led her, smiling to his right and to his left, towards the grand stone stairs to the double doors of the great hall. There was a ripple of applause, and their companions fell in behind them. “As My Lady the King’s Mother commanded me, four times a month I shall come to your room in a formal procession through the great hall, ”he said. He led her up the steps.

“Oh.” She was dashed.

He smiled down at her. “And all the other nights, I shall come to you along the battlements,” he whispered. “There is a private door that goes from your rooms to the battlements that run all around the castle. My rooms go onto them too. You can walk from your rooms to mine whenever you wish and nobody will know whether we are together or not. They will not even know whose room we are in.”

He loved how her face lit up. “We can be together whenever we want?”

“We will be happy here.”

Yes I will, I will be happy here. I will not mourn like a Persian for the beautiful courts of his home and declare that there is nowhere else fit for life. I will not say that these mountains are a desert without oases, like a Berber longing for his birthright. I will accustom myself to Ludlow, and I will learn to live here, on the border, and later in England. My mother is not just a queen, she is a soldier, and she raised me to know my duty and to do it. It is my duty to learn to be happy here and to live here without complaining.

I may never wear armor as she did, I may never fight for my country, as she did; but there are many ways to serve a kingdom, and to be a merry, honest, constant queen is one of them. If God does not call me to arms, He may call me to serve as a lawgiver, as a bringer of justice. Whether I defend my people by fighting for them against an enemy or by fighting for their freedom in the law, I shall be their queen, heart and soul, Queen of England.

It was nighttime, past midnight. Catalina glowed in the firelight. They were in bed, sleepy, but too desirous of each other for sleep.

“Tell me a story.”

“I have told you dozens of stories.”

“Tell me another. Tell me the one about Boabdil giving up the Alhambra Palace with the golden keys on a silk cushion and going away crying.”

“You know that one. I told it to you last night.”

“Then tell me the story about Yarfa and his horse that gnashed its teeth at Christians.”

“You are a child. And his name was Yarfe.”

“But you saw him killed?”

“I was there, but I didn’t see him actually die.”

“How could you not watch it?”

“Well, partly because I was praying as my mother ordered me to, and because I was a girl and not a bloodthirsty, monstrous boy.”

Arthur tossed an embroidered cushion at her head. She caught it and threw it back at him.

“Well, tell me about your mother pawning her jewels to pay for the crusade.”

She laughed again and shook her head, making her auburn hair swing this way and that. “I shall tell you about my home,” she offered.

“All right.” He gathered the purple blanket around them both and waited.

“When you come through the first door to the Alhambra, it looks like a little room. Your father would not stoop to enter a palace like that.”

“It’s not grand?”

“It’s the size of a little merchant’s hall in the town here. It is a good hall for a small house in Ludlow, nothing more.”

“And then?”

“And then you go into the courtyard and from there into the golden chamber.”

“A little better?”

“It is filled with color, but still it is not much bigger. The walls are bright with colored tiles and gold leaf and there is a high balcony, but it is still only a little space.”

“And then where shall we go today?”

“Today we shall turn right and go into the Court of the Myrtles.”

He closed his eyes, trying to remember her descriptions. “A courtyard in the shape of a rectangle, surrounded by high buildings of gold.”

“With a huge, dark wooden doorway framed with beautiful tiles at the far end.”

“And a lake, a lake of a simple rectangle shape, and on either side of the water, a hedge of sweet-scented myrtle trees.”

“Not a hedge like you have,” she demurred, thinking of the ragged edges of the Welsh fields in their struggle of thorn and weed.

“Like what, then?” he asked, opening his eyes.

“A hedge like a wall,” she said. “Cut straight and square, like a block of green marble, like a living green sweet-scented statue. And the gateway at the end is reflected back in the water, and the arch around it, and the building that it is set in. So that the whole thing is mirrored in ripples at your feet. And the walls are pierced with light screens of stucco, as airy as paper, like white-on-white embroidery. And the birds—”

“The birds?” he asked, surprised, for she had not told him of them before.

She paused while she thought of the word. “Apodes?” she said in Latin.

“ Apodes? Swifts?”

She nodded. “They flow like a turbulent river of birds just above your head, round and round the narrow courtyard, screaming as they go, as fast as a cavalry charge. They go like the wind, round and round, as long as the sun shines on the water they go round, all day. And at night—”

“At night?”

She made a little gesture with her hands, like an enchantress. “At night they disappear, you never see them settle or nest. They just disappear—they set with the sun, but at dawn they are there again, like a river, like a flood.” She paused. “It is hard to describe,” she said in a small voice. “But I see it all the time.”

“You miss it,” he said flatly. “However happy I may make you, you will always miss it.”

She made a little gesture. “Of course. It is to be expected. But I never forget who I am. Who I was born to be.”

Arthur waited.

She smiled at him, her face was warmed by her smile, her blue eyes shining. “The Princess of Wales,” she said. “From my childhood I knew it. They always called me the Princess of Wales. And so Queen of England, as destined by God. Catalina, Infanta of Spain, Princess of Wales.”

He smiled in reply and drew her closer to him. They lay back together, his head on her shoulder, her dark red hair a veil across his chest.

“I knew I would marry you almost from the moment I was born,” he said reflectively. “I can’t remember a time when I was not betrothed to you. I can’t remember a time when I was not writing letters to you and taking them to my tutor for correction.”

“Lucky that I please you, now I am here.”

He put his finger under her chin and turned her face up towards him for a kiss. “Even luckier that I please you,” he said.

“I would have been a good wife anyway,” she insisted. “Even without this…”

He pulled her hand down beneath the silky sheets to touch him where he was growing big again.

“Without this, you mean?” he teased.

“Without this…joy,” she said and closed her eyes and lay back, waiting for his touch.

Their servants woke them at dawn and Arthur was ceremonially escorted from her bed. They saw each other again at Mass but they were seated at opposite sides of the round chapel, each with their own household, and could not speak.

The Mass should be the most important moment of my day, and it should bring me comfort—I know that. But I always feel lonely during Mass. I do pray to God and thank Him for His especial care of me, but just being in this chapel—shaped like a tiny mosque—reminds me so much of my mother. The smell of incense is as evocative of her as if it were her perfume, I cannot believe that I am not kneeling beside her as I have done four times a day for almost every day of my life. When I say “Hail Mary, full of grace” it is my mother’s round, smiling, determined face that I see. And when I pray for courage to do my duty in this strange land with these dour, undemonstrative people, it is my mother’s strength that I need.