Philippa Gregory - The Constant Princess

“The king commands it,” Lady Margaret said. “The queen is sending her own litter.”

“Well, when it comes, she will have to change her ways then,” he said comfortably. “She is only young. She will recover. The young have strong hearts. And it will help her to leave here, where she has such sad memories. If you need any advice, please call me. But I will not force myself into her presence, poor child.”

No, no, no.

But Catalina did not look like a poor child, Lady Margaret thought. She looked like a statue, like a stone princess carved from grief. Doña Elvira had dressed her in her new dark clothes of mourning and persuaded her to sit in the window where she could see the green trees and the hedges creamy with may blossom, the sun on the fields, and hear the singing of the birds. The summer had come as Arthur had promised her that it would, it was warm as he had sworn it would be; but she was not walking by the river with him, greeting the swifts as they flew in from Spain. She was not planting salad vegetables in the gardens of the castle and persuading him to try them. The summer was here, the sun was here, Catalina was here, but Arthur was cold in the dark vault of Worcester Cathedral.

Catalina sat still, her hands folded on the black silk of her gown, her eyes looking out of the window but seeing nothing, her mouth folded tight over her gritted teeth as if she were biting back a storm of words.

“Princess,” Lady Margaret started tentatively.

Slowly, the head under the heavy black hood turned towards her. “Yes, Lady Margaret?” Her voice was hoarse.

“I would speak with you.”

Catalina inclined her head.

Doña Elvira stepped back and went quietly out of the room.

“I have to ask you about your journey to London. The royal litter has arrived and you will have to leave here.”

There was no flicker of animation in Catalina’s deep blue eyes. She nodded again, as if they were discussing the transport of a parcel.

“I don’t know if you are strong enough to travel.”

“Can I not stay here?” Catalina asked.

“I understand the king has sent for you. I am sorry for it. They write that you may stay here until you are well enough to travel.”

“Why, what is to become of me?” Catalina asked, as if it were a matter of absolute indifference. “When I get to London?”

“I don’t know.” The former princess did not pretend for one moment that a girl of a royal family could choose her future. “I am sorry. I do not know what is planned. My husband has been told nothing except to prepare for your journey to London.”

“What do you think might happen? When my sister’s husband died, they sent her back to us from Portugal. She came home to Spain again.”

“I would expect that they will send you home,” Lady Margaret said.

Catalina turned her head away once more. She looked out of the window but her eyes saw nothing. Lady Margaret waited; she wondered if the princess would say anything more.

“Does a Princess of Wales have a house in London as well as here?” she asked. “Shall I go back to Baynard’s Castle?”

“You are not the Princess of Wales,” Lady Margaret started. She was going to explain, but the look that Catalina turned on her was so darkly angry that she hesitated. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I thought perhaps you did not understand…”

“Understand what?” Catalina’s white face was slowly flushing pink with temper.

“Princess?”

“Princess of what?” Catalina snapped.

Lady Margaret dropped into a curtsey, and stayed low.

“Princess of what?” Catalina shouted loudly, and the door opened behind them and Doña Elvira came quickly into the room and then checked as she saw Catalina on her feet, her cheeks burning with temper, and Lady Margaret on her knees. She went out again without a word.

“Princess of Spain,” Lady Margaret said very quietly.

There was intense silence.

“I am the Princess of Wales,” Catalina said slowly. “I have been the Princess of Wales all my life.”

Lady Margaret rose up and faced her. “Now you are the dowager princess.”

Catalina clapped a hand over her mouth to hold back a cry of pain.

“I am sorry, Princess.”

Catalina shook her head, beyond words, her fist at her mouth muffling her whimpers of pain. Lady Margaret’s face was grim. “They will call you Dowager Princess.”

“I will never answer to it.”

“It is a title of respect. It is only the English word for widow.”

Catalina gritted her teeth and turned away from her friend to look out of the window. “You can get up,” she said through her teeth. “There is no need for you to kneel to me.”

The older woman rose to her feet and hesitated. “The queen writes to me. They want to know of your health. Not only if you feel well and strong enough to travel; they really need to know if you might be with child.”

Catalina clenched her hands together, turned away her face so that Lady Margaret should not see her cold rage.

“If you are with child and that child is a boy, then he will be the Prince of Wales, and then King of England, and you would be My Lady the King’s Mother,” Lady Margaret reminded her quietly.

“And if I am not with child?”

“Then you are the dowager princess, and Prince Harry is Prince of Wales.”

“And when the king dies?”

“Then Prince Harry becomes king.”

“And I?”

Lady Margaret shrugged in silence. “Next to nothing,” said the gesture. Aloud she said, “You are the Infanta still.” Lady Margaret tried to smile. “As you will always be.”

“And the next Queen of England?”

“Will be the wife of Prince Harry.”

The anger went out of Catalina. She walked to the fireplace, took hold of the high mantelpiece and steadied herself with it. The little fire burning in the grate threw out no heat that she could feel through the thick black skirt of her mourning gown. She stared at the flames as if she would understand what had happened to her.

“I am become again what I was, when I was a child of three,” she said slowly. “The Infanta of Spain, not the Princess of Wales. A baby. Of no importance.”

Lady Margaret, whose own royal blood had been carefully diluted by a lowly marriage so that she could pose no threat to the Tudor throne of England, nodded. “Princess, you take the position of your husband. It is always thus for all women. If you have no husband and no son, then you have no position. You have only what you were born to.”

“If I go home to Spain as a widow, and they marry me to an archduke, I will be Archduchess Catalina, and not a princess at all. Not Princess of Wales, and never Queen of England.”

Lady Margaret nodded. “Like me,” she said.

Catalina turned her head. “You?”

“I was a Plantagenet princess, King Edward’s niece, sister to Edward of Warwick, the heir to King Richard’s throne. If King Henry had lost the battle at Bosworth Field it would have been King Richard on the throne now, my brother as his heir and Prince of Wales, and I should be Princess Margaret, as I was born to be.”

“Instead you are Lady Margaret, wife to the warden of a little castle, not even his own, on the edge of England.”

The older woman nodded her assent to the bleak description of her status.

“Why did you not refuse?” Catalina asked rudely.

Lady Margaret glanced behind her to see that the door to the presence chamber was shut and none of Catalina’s women could hear.

“How could I refuse?” she asked simply. “My brother was in the Tower of London, simply for being born a prince. If I had refused to marry Sir Richard, I should have joined him. My brother put his dear head down on the block for nothing more than bearing his name. As a girl, I had the chance to change my name. So I did.”