Philippa Gregory - The Constant Princess

That night I dream I am a bird, a volucris, a swift, flying high and fearless over the kingdom of New Castile, south from Toledo, over Córdoba, south to the kingdom of Granada, the ground below me laid out like a tawny carpet, woven from the gold-fleeced sheep of the Berbers, the brass earth pierced by bronze cliffs, the hills so high that not even olive trees can cling to their steep slopes. On I fly, my little bird heart thudding until I see the rosy walls of the Alcázar, the great fort which encloses the palace of the Alhambra, and flying low and fast, I skim the brutal squareness of the watchtower where the flag of the sickle moon once waved, to plunge down towards the Court of Myrtles to fly round and around in the warm air, enclosed by dainty buildings of stucco and tile, looking down on the mirror of water and seeing at last the one I am looking for: my mother, Isabella of Spain, walking in the warm evening air, and thinking of her daughter in faraway England.

MARCH 1502

“I want to ask you to meet a lady who is a good friend of mine and is ready to be a friend of yours,” Arthur said, choosing his words with care.

Catalina’s ladies-in-waiting, bored on a cold afternoon with no entertainment, craned forwards to listen while trying to appear engaged in their needlework.

At once she blanched as white as the linen she was embroidering. “My lord?” she asked anxiously. He had said nothing of this in the early hours of the morning when they had woken and made love. She had not expected to see him until dinner. His arrival in her rooms signaled that something had happened. She was wary, waiting to know what was going on.

“A lady? Who is she?”

“You may have heard of her from others, but I beg you to remember that she is eager to be your friend, and she has always been a good friend to me.”

Catalina’s head flew up, she took a breath. For a moment, for a dreadful moment she thought that he was introducing a former mistress into her court, begging a place among ladies-in-waiting for some woman who had been his lover, so that they might continue their affair.

If this is what he is doing, I know what part I must play. I have seen my mother haunted by the pretty girls that my father, God forgive him, cannot resist. Again and again we would see him pay attention to some new face at court. Each time my mother behaved as if she had noticed nothing, dowered the girl handsomely, married her off to an eligible courtier, and encouraged him to take his new bride far, far away. It was such a common occurrence that it became a joke: that if a girl wanted to marry well with the queen’s blessing, and travel to some remote province, all she had to do was to catch the eye of the king, and in no time she would find herself riding away from the Alhambra on a fine new horse with a set of new clothes.

I know that a sensible woman looks the other way and tries to bear her hurt and humiliation when her husband chooses to take another woman to his bed. What she must not do, what she absolutely must never do, is behave like my sister Juana, who shames herself and all of us by giving way to screaming fits, hysterical tears, and threats of revenge.

“It does no good,” my mother once told me when one of the ambassadors relayed to us some awful scene at Philip’s court in the Netherlands: Juana threatening to cut off the woman’s hair, attacking her with a pair of scissors, and then swearing she would stab herself.

“It only makes it worse to complain. If a husband goes astray you will have to take him back into your life and into your bed, whatever he has done; there is no escape from marriage. If you are queen and he is king you have to deal together. If he forgets his duty to you, that is no reason to forget yours to him. However painful, you are always his queen and he is always your husband.”

“Whatever he does?” I asked her. “However he behaves? He is free though you are bound?”

She shrugged. “Whatever he does cannot break the marriage bond. You are married in the sight of God: he is always your husband, you are always queen. Those whom God has joined together, no man can put asunder. Whatever pain your husband brings you, he is still your husband. He may be a bad husband; but he is still your husband.”

“What if he wants another?” I asked, sharp in my young girl’s curiosity.

“If he wants another he can have her or she can refuse him, that is between them. That is for her and her conscience,” my mother had said steadily. “What must not change is you. Whatever he says, whatever she wants: you are still his wife and his queen.”

Catalina summoned this bleak counsel and faced her young husband. “I am always glad to meet a friend of yours, my lord,” she said levelly, hoping that her voice did not quaver at all. “But, as you know, I have only a small household. Your father was very clear that I am not allowed any more companions than I have at present. As you know, he does not pay me any allowance. I have no money to pay another lady for her service. In short, I cannot add any lady, even a special friend of yours, to my court.”

Arthur flinched at the reminder of his father’s mean haggling over her train. “Oh no, you mistake me. It is not a friend who wants a place. She would not be one of your ladies-in-waiting,” he said hastily. “It is Lady Margaret Pole, who is waiting to meet you. She has come home here at last.”

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us. This is worse than if it was his mistress. I knew I would have to face her one day. This is her home, but she was away when we got here and I thought she had deliberately snubbed me by being away and staying away. I thought she was avoiding me out of hatred, as I would avoid her from shame. Lady Margaret Pole is sister to that poor boy, the Duke of Warwick, beheaded to make the succession safe for me, and for my line. I have been dreading the moment when I would have to meet her. I have been praying to the saints that she would stay away, hating me, blaming me, but keeping her distance.

Arthur saw her quick gesture of rejection, but he had known of no way to prepare her for this. “Please,” he said hurriedly. “She has been away caring for her children or she would have been here with her husband to welcome you to the castle when we first arrived. I told you she would return. She wants to greet you now. We all have to live together here. Sir Richard is a trusted friend of my father, the lord of my council, and the warden of this castle. We will all have to live together.”

Catalina put out a shaking hand to him and at once he came closer, ignoring the fascinated attention of her ladies.

“I cannot meet her,” she whispered. “Truly, I can’t. I know that her brother was put to death for my sake. I know my parents insisted on it, before they would send me to England. I know he was innocent, innocent as a flower, kept in the Tower by your father so that men should not gather round him and claim the throne in his name. He could have lived there in safety all his life but for my parents’ demanding his death. She must hate me.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” he said truthfully. “Believe me, Catalina, I would not expose you to anyone’s unkindness. She does not hate you, she doesn’t hate me, she doesn’t even hate my father who ordered the execution. She knows that these things happen. She is a princess, she knows as well as you do that it is not choice but policy that governs us. It was not your choice, nor mine. She knows that your father and mother had to be sure that there were no rival princes to claim the throne, that my father would clear my way, whatever it cost him. She is resigned.”

“Resigned?” she gasped incredulously. “How can a woman be resigned to the murder of her brother, the heir of the family? How can she greet me with friendship when he died for my convenience? When we lost my brother our world ended, our hopes died with him. Our future was buried with him. My mother, who is a living saint, still cannot bear it. She has not been happy since the day of his death. It is unbearable to her. If he had been executed for some stranger I swear she would have taken a life in return. How could Lady Margaret lose her brother and bear it? How can she bear me?”