Philippa Gregory - The Constant Princess

“Only until you remarry,” he observed. “He has to pay your jointure until you remarry. And we must assume that you will remarry soon. Their Majesties will want you to return home in order to arrange a new marriage for you. I imagine that the emissary is coming to fetch you home just for that. They probably have a marriage contract drawn up for you already. Perhaps you are already betrothed.”

For one moment de Puebla saw the shock in her face, then she turned abruptly from him to stare out of the window on the courtyard before the palace and the open gates to the busy streets outside.

He watched the tightly stretched shoulders and the tense turn of her neck, surprised that his shot at her second marriage had hit her so hard. Why should she be so shocked at the mention of marriage? Surely she must know that she would go home only to be married again?

Catalina let the silence grow as she watched the street beyond the Durham House gate. It was so unlike her home. There were no dark men in beautiful gowns, there were no veiled women. There were no street sellers with rich piles of spices, no flower sellers staggering under small mountains of blooms. There were no herbalists, physicians, or astronomers, plying their trade as if knowledge could be freely available to anyone. There was no silent movement to the mosque for prayer five times a day, there was no constant splash of fountains. Instead there was the bustle of one of the greatest cities in the world, the relentless, unstoppable buzz of prosperity and commerce and the ringing of the bells of hundreds of churches. This was a city bursting with confidence, rich on its own trade, exuberantly wealthy.

“This is my home now,” she said. Resolutely she put aside the pictures in her mind of a warmer city, of a smaller community, of an easier, more exotic world. “The king should not think that I will go home and remarry as if none of this has happened. My parents should not think that they can change my destiny. I was brought up to be Princess of Wales and Queen of England. I shall not be cast off like a bad debt.”

The ambassador, from a race who had known disappointment, so much older and wiser than the girl who stood at the window, smiled at her unseeing back. “Of course it shall be as you wish,” he lied easily. “I shall write to your father and mother and say that you prefer to wait here, in England, while your future is decided.”

Catalina rounded on him. “No, I shall decide my future.”

He had to bite the inside of his cheeks to hide his smile. “Of course you will, Infanta.”

“Dowager Princess.”

“Dowager Princess.”

She took a breath; but when it came, her voice was quite steady. “You may tell my father and mother, and you shall tell the king, that I am not with child.”

“Indeed,” he breathed. “Thank you for informing us. That makes everything much clearer.”

“How so?”

“The king will release you. You can go home. He would have no claim on you, no interest in you. There can be no reason for you to stay. I shall have to make arrangements but your jointure can follow you. You can leave at once.”

“No,” she said flatly.

De Puebla was surprised. “Dowager Princess, you can be released from this failure. You can go home. You are free to go.”

“You mean the English think they have no use for me?”

He gave the smallest of shrugs, as if to ask: what was she good for, since she was neither maid nor mother?

“What else can you do here? Your time here is over.”

She was not yet ready to show him her full plan. “I shall write to my mother,” was all she would reply. “But you are not to make arrangements for me to leave. It may be that I shall stay in England for a little while longer. If I am to be remarried, I could be remarried in England.”

“To whom?” he demanded.

She looked away from him. “How should I know? My parents and the king should decide.”

I have to find a way to put my marriage to Harry into the mind of the king. Now that he knows I am not with child surely it will occur to him that the resolution for all our difficulties is to marry me to Harry?

If I trusted Dr. de Puebla more, I should ask him to hint to the king that I could be betrothed to Harry. But I do not trust him. He muddled my first marriage contract, I don’t want him muddling this one.

If I could get a letter to my mother without de Puebla seeing it, then I could tell her of my plan, of Arthur’s plan.

But I cannot. I am alone in this. I do feel so fearfully alone.

“They are going to name Prince Harry as the new Prince of Wales,” Doña Elvira said quietly to the princess as she was brushing her hair in the last week of June. “He is to be Prince Harry, Prince of Wales.”

She expected the girl to break down at this last severing of her links with the past, but Catalina did nothing but look around the room. “Leave us,” she said shortly to the maids who were laying out her nightgown and turning down the bed.

They went out quietly and closed the door behind them. Catalina tossed back her hair and met Doña Elvira’s eyes in the mirror. She handed her the hairbrush again and nodded for her to continue.

“I want you to write to my parents and tell them that my marriage with Prince Arthur was not consummated,” she said smoothly. “I am a virgin as I was when I left Spain.”

Doña Elvira was stunned, the hairbrush suspended in midair, her mouth open. “You were bedded in the sight of the whole court,” she said.

“He was impotent,” Catalina said, her face as hard as a diamond.

“You were together once a week.”

“With no effect,” she said, unwavering. “It was a great sadness to him, and to me.”

“Infanta, you never said anything. Why did you not tell me?”

Catalina’s eyes were veiled. “What should I say? We were newly wed. He was very young. I thought it would come right in time.”

Doña Elvira did not even pretend to believe her. “Princess, there is no need for you to say this. Just because you have been a wife need not damage your future. Being a widow is no obstacle to a good marriage. They will find someone for you. They will find a good match for you, you do not have to pretend…”

“I don’t want ‘someone,’ ” Catalina said fiercely. “You should know that as well as I. I was born to be Princess of Wales and Queen of England. It was Arthur’s greatest wish that I should be Queen of England.” She pulled herself back from thinking of him, or saying more. She bit her lip; she should not have tried to say his name. She forced down the tears and took a breath. “I am a virgin untouched, now as I was in Spain. You shall tell them that.”

“But we need say nothing, we can go back to Spain, anyway,” the older woman pointed out.

“They will marry me to some lord, perhaps an archduke,” Catalina said. “I don’t want to be sent away again. Do you want to run my household in some little Spanish castle? Or Austria? Or worse? You will have to come with me, remember. Do you want to end up in the Netherlands or Germany?”

Doña Elvira’s eyes darted away; she was thinking furiously. “No one would believe us if we say you are a virgin.”

“They would. You have to tell them. No one would dare to ask me. You can tell them. It has to be you to tell them. They will believe you because you are close to me, as close as a mother.”

“I have said nothing so far.”

“And that was right. But you will speak now. Doña Elvira, if you don’t seem to know, or if you say one thing and I say another, then everyone will know that you are not in my confidence, that you have not cared for me as you should. They will think you are negligent of my interests, that you have lost my favor. I should think that my mother would recall you in disgrace if she thought that I was a virgin and you did not even know. You would never serve in a royal court again if they thought you had neglected me.”