Philippa Gregory - The Constant Princess

“Oranges?”

“Well, perhaps not oranges,” he conceded.

“Lemons? Olives?”

He bridled. “Yes, indeed.”

She looked suspiciously at him. “Dates?”

“In Cornwall,” he asserted, straight-faced. “Of course it is warmer in Cornwall.”

“Sugarcane? Rice? Pineapples?”

He tried to say yes, but he could not repress the giggles and she crowed with laughter, and fell on him.

When they were steady again he glanced around the inner bailey and said, “Come on, nobody will miss us for a while,” and led her down the steps to the little sally port and let them out of the hidden door.

A small path led them to the hillside which fell away steeply from the castle down to the river. A few lambs scampered off as they approached, a lad wandering after them. Arthur slid his arm around her waist and she let herself fall into pace with him.

“We do grow peaches,” he assured her. “Not the other things, of course. But I am sure we can grow your lactuca, whatever it is. All we need is a gardener who can bring the seeds and who has already grown the things you want. Why don’t you write to the gardener at the Alhambra and ask him to send you someone?”

“Could I send for a gardener?” she asked incredulously.

“My love, you are going to be Queen of England. You can send for a regiment of gardeners.”

“Really?”

Arthur laughed at the delight dawning on her face. “At once. Did you not realize it?”

“No! But where should he garden? There is no room against the castle wall, and if we are to grow fruit as well as vegetables…”

“You are Princess of Wales! You can plant your garden wherever you please. You shall have all of Kent if you want it, my darling.”

“Kent?”

“We grow apples and hops there, I think we might have a try at lactuca. ”

Catalina laughed with him. “I didn’t think. I didn’t dream of sending for a gardener. If only I had brought one in the first place. I have all these useless ladies-in-waiting and I need a gardener.”

“You could swap him for Doña Elvira.”

She gurgled with laughter.

“Ah, God, we are blessed,” he said simply. “In each other and in our lives. You shall have anything you want, always. I swear it. Do you want to write to your mother? She can send you a couple of good men and I will get some land turned over at once.”

“I will write to Juana,” she decided. “In the Netherlands. She is in the north of Christendom like me. She must know what will grow in this weather. I shall write to her and see what she has done.”

“And we shall eat lactuca !” he said, kissing her fingers. “All day. We shall eat nothing but lactuca, like sheep grazing grass, whatever it is.”

“Tell me a story.”

“No, you tell me something.”

“If you will tell me about the fall of Granada again.”

“I will tell you. But you have to explain something to me.”

Arthur stretched out and pulled her so that she was lying across the bed, her head on his shoulder. She could feel the rise and fall of his smooth chest as he breathed and hear the gentle thud of his heartbeat, constant as love.

“I shall explain everything.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “I am extraordinarily wise today. You should have heard me after dinner tonight dispensing justice.”

“You are very fair,” she conceded. “I do love it when you give a judgment.”

“I am a Solomon,” he said. “They will call me Arthur the Good.”

“Arthur the Wise,” she suggested.

“Arthur the Magnificent.”

Catalina giggled. “But I want you to explain to me something that I heard about your mother.”

“Oh yes?”

“One of the English ladies-in-waiting told me that she had been betrothed to the tyrant Richard. I thought I must have misunderstood her. We were speaking French and I thought I must have had it wrong.”

“Oh, that story,” he said with a little turn of the head.

“Is it not true? I hope I have not offended you?”

“No, not at all. It’s a tale often told.”

“It cannot be true?”

“Who knows? Only my mother and Richard the tyrant can know what took place. And one of them is dead and the other is silent as the grave.”

“Will you tell me?” she asked tentatively. “Or should we not speak of it at all?”

He shrugged. “There are two stories. The well-known one and its shadow. The story that everyone knows is that my mother fled into sanctuary with her mother and sisters, they were hiding in a church all together. They knew if they left they would be arrested by Richard the Usurper and would disappear into the Tower like her young brothers. No one knew if the princes were alive or dead, but nobody had seen them, everyone feared they were dead. My mother wrote to my father—well, she was ordered to by her mother—she told him that if he would come to England, a Tudor from the Lancaster line, then she, a York princess, would marry him, and the old feud between the two families would be over forever. She told him to come and save her, and know her love. He received the letter, he raised an army, he came to find the princess, he married her and brought peace to England.”

“That is what you told me before. It is a very good story.”

Arthur nodded.

“And the story you don’t tell?”

Despite himself he giggled. “It’s rather scandalous. They say that she was not in sanctuary at all. They say that she left the sanctuary and her mother and sisters. She went to court. King Richard’s wife was dead and he was looking for another. She accepted the proposal of King Richard. She would have married her uncle, the tyrant, the man who murdered her brothers.”

Catalina’s hand stole over her mouth to cover her gasp of shock, her eyes were wide. “No!”

“So they say.”

“The queen, your mother?”

“Herself,” he said. “Actually, they say worse. That she and Richard were betrothed as his wife lay dying. That is why there is always such enmity between her and my grandmother. My grandmother does not trust her, but she will never say why.”

“How could she?” she demanded.

“How could she not?” he returned. “If you look at it from her point of view, she was a princess of York, her father was dead, her mother was the enemy of the king trapped in sanctuary, as much in prison as if she were in the Tower. If she wanted to live, she would have to find some way into the favor of the king. If she wanted to be acknowledged as a princess at all, she would have to have his recognition. If she wanted to be Queen of England she would have to marry him.”

“But surely, she could have…” she began and then she fell silent.

“No.” He shook his head. “You see? She was a princess, she had very little choice. If she wanted to live she would have to obey the king. If she wanted to be queen she would have to marry him.”

“She could have raised an army on her own account.”

“Not in England,” he reminded her. “She would have to marry the King of England to be its queen. It was her only way.”

Catalina was silent for a moment. “Thank God that for me to be queen I had to marry you, that my destiny brought me so easily here.”

He smiled. “Thank God we are happy with our destiny. For we would have married, and you would have been Queen of England, whether you had liked me or not. Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “There is never a choice for a princess.”

He nodded.

“But your grandmother, My Lady the King’s Mother, must have planned your mother’s wedding to your father. Why does she not forgive her? She was part of the plan.”

“Those two powerful women, my father’s mother and my mother’s mother, brokered the deal between them like a pair of washerwomen selling stolen linen.”