Philippa Gregory - The Constant Princess

Catalina made a little face. “I am well enough. And you? And the children?”

Lady Margaret smiled. “Praise God, yes. But do you know what plans the king has for you? Are you to…” She hesitated. “Are you to go back to Spain? Or stay here?”

Catalina drew a little closer. “They are talking, about the dowry, about my return. But nothing gets done. Nothing is decided. The king is holding me and holding my dowry, and my parents are letting him do it.”

Lady Margaret looked concerned. “I had heard that they might consider betrothing you to Prince Harry,” she said. “I did not know.”

“It is the obvious choice. But it does not seem obvious to the king,” Catalina said wryly. “What do you think? Is he a man to miss an obvious solution, d’you think?”

“No,” said Lady Margaret, whose life had been jeopardized by the king’s awareness of the obvious fact of her family’s claim on his throne.

“Then I must assume that he has thought of this choice and is waiting to see if it is the best he can make,” Catalina said. She gave a little sigh. “God knows, it is weary work, waiting.”

“Now your mourning is over, no doubt he will make arrangements,” her friend said hopefully.

“No doubt,” Catalina replied.

After weeks spent alone, mourning for his wife, the king returned to the court at Whitehall Palace, and Catalina was invited to dine with the royal family and seated with the Princess Mary and the ladies of the court. The young Harry, Prince of Wales, was placed securely between his father and grandmother. Not for this Prince of Wales the cold journey to Ludlow Castle and the rigorous training of a prince-in-waiting. Lady Margaret had ruled that this prince, their only surviving heir, should be brought up under her own eye, in ease and comfort. He was not to be sent away, he was to be watched all the time. He was not even allowed to take part in dangerous sports, jousting or fighting, though he was quite wild to take part, and a boy who loved activity and excitement. His grandmother had ruled that he was too precious to risk.

He smiled at Catalina and she shot him a look that she hoped was discreetly warm. But there was no opportunity to exchange so much as one word. She was firmly anchored farther down the table and she could hardly see him thanks to My Lady the King’s Mother, who plied him with the best of all foods from her own plate and interposed her broad shoulder between him and the ladies.

Catalina thought that it was as Arthur had said, that the boy was spoiled by this attention. His grandmother leaned back for a moment to speak to one of the ushers and Catalina saw Harry’s gaze flick towards her. She gave him a smile and then cast down her eyes. When she glanced up, he was still looking at her and then he blushed red to be caught. “A child.” She shot a sideways little smile even as she silently criticized him. “A child of eleven. All boasting and boyishness. And why should this plump, spoiled boy be spared when Arthur…” At once she stopped the thought. To compare Arthur with his brother was to wish the little boy dead, and she would not do that. To think of Arthur in public was to risk breaking down and she would never do that.

“A woman could rule a boy like that,” she thought. “A woman could be a very great queen if she married such a boy. For the first ten years he would know nothing, and by then perhaps he might be in such a habit of obedience that he would let his wife continue to rule. Or he might be, as Arthur told me, a lazy boy. A young man wasted. He might be so lazy that he could be diverted by games and hunting and sports and amusements, so that the business of the kingdom could be done by his wife.”

Catalina never forgot that Arthur had told her that the boy fancied himself in love with her. “If they give him everything that he wants, perhaps he might be the one who chooses his bride,” she thought. “They are in the habit of indulging him. Perhaps he could beg to marry me and they would feel obliged to say yes.”

She saw him blush even redder; even his ears turned pink. She held his gaze for a long moment, she took in a little breath and parted her lips as if to whisper a word to him. She saw his blue eyes focus on her mouth and darken with desire, and then, calculating the effect, she looked down. “Stupid boy,” she thought.

The king rose from the table and all the men and women on the crowded benches of the hall rose, too, and bowed their heads.

“Give you thanks for coming to greet me,” King Henry said. “Comrades in war and friends in peace. But now forgive me, as I wish to be alone.”

He nodded to Harry, he offered his mother his hand, and the royal family went through the little doorway at the back of the great hall to their privy chamber.

“You should have stayed longer,” the king’s mother remarked as they settled into chairs by the fire and the groom of the ewery brought them wine. “It looks bad, to leave so promptly. I had told the master of horse you would stay, and there would be singing.”

“I was weary,” Henry said shortly. He looked over to where Catalina and the Princess Mary were sitting together. The younger girl was red-eyed, the loss of her mother had hit her hard. Catalina was—as usual—cool as a stream. He thought she had a great power of self-containment. Even this loss of her only real friend at court, her last friend in England, did not seem to distress her.

“She can go back to Durham House tomorrow,” his mother remarked, following the direction of his gaze. “It does no good for her to come to court. She has not earned her place here with an heir, and she has not paid for her place here with her dowry.”

“She is constant,” he said. “She is constant in her attendance on you, and on me.”

“Constant like the plague,” his mother returned.

“You are hard on her.”

“It is a hard world,” she said simply. “I am nothing but just. Why don’t we send her home?”

“Do you not admire her at all?”

She was surprised by the question. “What is there to admire in her?”

“Her courage, her dignity. She has beauty, of course, but she also has charm. She is educated, she is graceful. I think, in other circumstances, she could have been merry. And she has borne herself, under this disappointment, like a queen.”

“She is of no use to us,” she said. “She was our Princess of Wales, but our boy is dead. She is of no use to us now, however charming she may seem to be.”

Catalina looked up and saw them watching her. She gave a small controlled smile and inclined her head. Henry rose, went to a window bay on his own, and crooked his finger for her. She did not jump to come to him, as any of the women of court would have jumped. She looked at him, she raised an eyebrow as if she were considering whether or not to obey, and then she gracefully rose to her feet and strolled towards him.

“Good God, she is desirable,” he thought. “No more than seventeen. Utterly in my power, and yet still she walks across the room as if she were Queen of England crowned.”

“You will miss the queen, I daresay,” he said abruptly in French as she came up to him.

“I shall,” she replied clearly. “I grieve for you in the loss of your wife. I am sure my mother and father would want me to give you their commiserations.”

He nodded, never taking his eyes from her face. “We share a grief now,” he observed. “You have lost your partner in life and I have lost mine.”

He saw her gaze sharpen. “Indeed,” she said steadily. “We do.”

He wondered if she was trying to unravel his meaning. If that quick mind was working behind that clear lovely face, there was no sign of it. “You must teach me the secret of your resignation,” he said.