Philippa Gregory - The Constant Princess

Arthur hid a grin at the romantic rhythm of the story. “You do this awfully well,” he said. “I hope it ends happily.”

Catalina raised her hand like a troubadour calling for silence. “Her greatest friend and lady-in-waiting Beatriz had taken up a knife and sworn that she would kill Don Pedro before he laid hands on Isabella; but my mother kneeled before her prie-dieu for three days and three nights and prayed without ceasing to be spared this rape.

“He was on his journey towards her, he would arrive the very next day. He ate well and drank well, telling his companions that tomorrow he would be in the bed of the highest-born virgin of Castile.

“But that very night he died.” Catalina’s voice dropped to an awed whisper. “Died before he had finished his wine from dinner. Dropped dead as surely as if God had reached down from the heavens and pinched the life out of him as a good gardener pinches out a greenfly.”

“Poison?” asked Arthur, who knew something of the ways of determined monarchs and who thought Isabella of Castile quite capable of murder.

“God’s will,” Catalina answered seriously. “Don Pedro found, as everyone else has found, that God’s will and my mother’s desires always run together. And if you knew God and my mother as I know them, you would know that their will is always done.”

He raised his glass and drank a toast to her. “Now that is a good story,” he said. “I wish you could tell it in the hall.”

“And it is all true,” she reminded him. “I know it is. My mother told me it herself.”

“So she fought for her throne too,” he said thoughtfully.

“First for her throne, and then to make the kingdom of Spain.”

He smiled. “For all that they tell us that we are of royal blood, we both come from a line of fighters. We have our thrones by conquest.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I come from royal blood,” she said. “My mother has her throne by right.”

“Oh yes. But if your mother had not fought for her place in the world, she would have been Doña whatever his name was—”

“Girón.”

“Girón. And you would have been born a nobody.”

Catalina shook her head. The idea was quite impossible for her to grasp. “I should have been the daughter of the sister of the king whatever happened. I should always have had royal blood in my veins.”

“You would have been a nobody,” he said bluntly. “A nobody with royal blood. And so would I if my father had not fought for his throne. We are both from families who claim their own.”

“Yes,” she conceded reluctantly.

“We are both the children of parents who claim what rightfully belongs to others.” He went further.

Her head came up at once. “They do not! At least my mother did not. She was the rightful heir.”

Arthur disagreed. “Her brother made his daughter his heir, he recognized her. Your mother had the throne by conquest. Just as my father won his.”

Her color rose. “She did not,” she insisted. “She is the rightful heir to the throne. All she did was defend her right from a pretender.”

“Don’t you see?” he said. “We are all pretenders until we win. When we win, we can rewrite the history and rewrite the family trees, and execute our rivals, or imprison them, until we can argue that there was always only one true heir: ourselves. But before then, we are one of many claimants. And not even always the best claimant with the strongest claim.”

She frowned. “What are you saying?” she demanded. “Are you saying that I am not the true princess? That you are not the true heir to England?”

He took her hand. “No, no. Don’t be angry with me,” he soothed her. “I am saying that we have and we hold what we claim. I am saying that we make our own inheritance. We claim what we want, we say that we are Prince of Wales, Queen of England. That we decide the name and the title we go by. Just like everyone else does.”

“You are wrong,” she said. “I was born Infanta of Spain and I will die Queen of England. It is not a matter of choice, it is my destiny.”

He took her hand and kissed it. He saw there was no point pursuing his belief that a man or a woman could make their own destiny with their own conviction. He might have his doubts; but with her the task was already done. She had complete conviction: her destiny was made. He had no doubt that she would indeed defend it to death. Her title, her pride, her sense of self were all one. “Katherine, Queen of England,” he said, kissing her fingers, and saw her smile return.

I love him so deeply, I did not know that I could ever love anyone like this. I can feel myself growing in patience and wisdom, just through my love for him. I step back from irritability and impatience, I even bear my homesickness without complaint. I can feel myself becoming a better woman, a better wife, as I seek to please him and make him proud of me. I want him always to be glad that he married me. I want us always to be as happy as we are today. There are no words to describe him…there are no words.

A messenger came from the king’s court bringing the newlyweds some gifts: a pair of deer from the Windsor forest, a parcel of books for Catalina, letters from Elizabeth the queen, and orders from My Lady the King’s Mother who had heard, though no one could imagine how, that the prince’s hunt had broken down some hedges, and who commanded Arthur to make sure that they were restored and the landowner compensated.

He brought the letter to Catalina’s room when he came at night. “How can she know everything?” he demanded.

“The man will have written to her,” she said ruefully.

“Why not come direct to me?”

“Because he knows her? Is he her liege man?”

“Could be,” he said. “She has a network of alliances like spider threads across the country.”

“You should go to see him,” Catalina decided. “We could both go. We could take him a present, some meat or something, and pay what we owe.”

Arthur shook his head at the power of his grandmother. “Oh yes, we can do that. But how can she know everything?”

“It’s how you rule,” she said. “Isn’t it? You make sure that you know everything and that anyone with a trouble comes to you. Then they take the habit of obedience and you take the habit of command.”

He chuckled. “I can see I have married another Margaret Beaufort,” he said. “God help me with another one in the family.”

Catalina smiled. “You should be warned,” she admitted. “I am the daughter of a strong woman. Even my father does as he is bid by her.”

He put down the letter and gathered her to him. “I have longed for you all day,” he said into the warm crook of her neck.

She opened the front of his nightshirt so she could lay her cheek against his sweet-smelling skin. “Oh, my love.”

With one accord they moved to the bed. “Oh, my love.”

“Tell me a story.”

“What shall I tell you tonight?”

“Tell me about how your father and mother were married. Was it arranged for them, as it was for us?”

“Oh no,” she exclaimed. “Not at all. She was quite alone in the world, and though God had saved her from Don Pedro she was still not safe. She knew that her brother would marry her to anyone who would guarantee to keep her from inheriting his throne.

“They were dark years for her—she said that when she appealed to her mother it was like talking to the dead. My grandmother was lost in a world of her own sorrow, she could do nothing to help her own daughter.

“My mother’s cousin, her only hope, was the heir to the neighboring kingdom: Ferdinand of Aragon. He came to her in disguise. Without any servants, without any soldiers, he rode through the night and came to the castle where she was struggling to survive. He had himself brought in, and threw off his hat and cape so she saw him, and knew him at once.”