Philippa Gregory - The Constant Princess

“It is agreed,” de Puebla said flatly to Catalina. He was standing before her—“Like an errand boy!” he thought indignantly—as she was ripping the velvet panels out of a gown to remodel the dress.

“I am to marry Prince Harry,” she said in a tone as dull as his own. “Has he signed anything?”

“He has agreed. He has to wait for a dispensation. But he has agreed.”

She looked up at him. “Was he very angry?”

“I think he was even angrier than he showed me. And what he showed me was bad.”

“What will he do?” she asked.

He scrutinized her pale face. She was white but she was not fearful. Her blue eyes were veiled as her father’s were veiled when he was planning something. She did not look like a damsel in distress; she looked like a woman trying to outwit a most dangerous protagonist. She was not endearing, as a woman in tears would have been endearing, he thought. She was formidable but not pleasing.

“I don’t know what he will do,” he said. “His nature is vengeful. But we must give him no advantage. We have to pay your dowry at once. We have to complete our side of the contract to force him to complete his.”

“The plate has lost its value,” she said flatly. “It is damaged by use. And I have sold some.”

He gasped. “You have sold it? It is the king’s own!”

She shrugged. “I have to eat, Dr. de Puebla. We cannot all go uninvited to court and thrust our way in to the common table. I am not living well, but I do have to live. And I have nothing to live on but my goods.”

“You should have preserved them intact!”

She shrugged. “I should never have been reduced to this. I have had to pawn my own plate to live. Whoever is to blame, it is not me.”

“Your father will have to pay the dowry and pay you an allowance,” he said grimly. “We must give them no excuse to withdraw. If your dowry is not paid he will not marry you to the prince. Infanta, I must warn you, he will revel in your discomfort. He will prolong it.”

Catalina nodded. “He is my enemy too, then.”

“I fear it.”

“It will happen, you know,” she said inconsequentially.

“What?”

“I will marry Harry. I will be queen.”

“Infanta, it is my dearest wish.”

“Princess,” she replied.

Whitehall, June 1503

“YOU ARE TO BE BETROTHED TO CATALINA OF ARAGON,” the king told his son, thinking of the son who had gone before.

The blond boy flushed as pink as a girl. “Yes, sire.”

He had been coached perfectly by his grandmother. He was prepared for everything but real life.

“Don’t think the marriage will happen,” the king warned him.

The boy’s eyes flashed up in surprise and were then cast down again. “No?”

“No. They have robbed us and cheated us at every turn. They have rolled us over like a bawd in a tavern. They have cozened us and promised one thing after another like a cock teaser in drink. They say—” He broke off, his son’s wide-eyed gaze reminding him that he had spoken as a man to a man, and this was a boy. Also, his resentment should not show however fiercely it burned.

“They have taken advantage of our friendship,” he summed up. “And now we will take advantage of their weakness.”

“Surely we are all friends?”

Henry grimaced, thinking of that scoundrel Ferdinand and of his daughter, the cool beauty who had turned him down. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Loyal friends.”

“So I am to be betrothed, and later, when I am fifteen, we will be married?”

The boy had understood nothing. So be it. “Say sixteen.”

“Arthur was fifteen.”

Henry bit down the reply that much good it had done Arthur. Besides, it did not matter since it would never happen. “Oh, yes,” he said again. “Fifteen, then.”

The boy knew that something was wrong. His smooth forehead was furrowed. “We do mean this, don’t we, Father? I would not mislead such a princess. It is a most solemn oath I will make?”

“Oh, yes,” the king said again.

The night before my betrothal to Prince Harry, I have a dream so lovely that I do not want to wake. I am in the garden of the Alhambra, walking with my hand in Arthur’s, laughing up at him and showing him the beauty around us: the great sandstone wall which encircles the fort, the city of Granada below us, and the mountains capped with silvery snow on the horizon.

“I have won,” I say to him. “I have done everything you wanted, everything that we planned. I will be princess as you made me. I will be queen as you wanted me to be. My mother’s wishes are fulfilled, my own destiny will be complete, your desire and God’s will. Are you happy now, my love?”

He smiles down at me, his eyes warm, his face tender, a smile he has only for me. “I shall watch over you,” he whispers. “All the time. Here in al-Yanna.”

I hesitate at the odd sound of the word on his lips, and then I realize that he has used the Moorish word “al-Yanna,” which means both heaven, a cemetery, and a garden. For the Moors heaven is a garden, an eternal garden.

“I shall come to you one day,” I whisper, even as his grasp on my hand becomes lighter and then fades, though I try to hold him. “I shall be with you again, my love. I shall meet you here in the garden.”

“I know,” he says, and now his face is melting away like mist in the morning, like a mirage in the hot air of the sierra. “I know we will be together again, Catalina, my Katherine, my love.”

25TH JUNE 1503

It was a bright, hot June day. Catalina was dressed in a new gown of blue with a blue hood. The eleven-year-old boy opposite her was radiant with excitement, dressed in cloth of gold.

They were before the Bishop of Salisbury with a small court present: the king, his mother, the Princess Mary, and a few other witnesses. Catalina put her cold hand in the prince’s warm palm and felt the plumpness of childhood beneath her fingers.

Catalina looked beyond the flushed boy to his father’s grave face. The king had aged in the months since the death of his wife, and the lines in his face were more deeply grooved, his eyes shadowed. Men at the court said he was sick, some illness which was thinning his blood and wearing him out. Others said that he was sour with disappointment: at the loss of his heir, at the loss of his wife, at the frustration of his plans. Some said he had been crossed in love, outwitted by a woman. Only that could have unmanned him so bitterly.

Catalina smiled shyly at him, but there was no echoing warmth from the man who would be her father-in-law for the second time; but had wanted her for his own. For a moment, her confidence dimmed. She had allowed herself to hope that the king had surrendered to her determination, to her mother’s ruling, to God’s will. Now, seeing his cold look, she had a moment of fear that perhaps this ceremony—even something as serious and sacred as a betrothal—might perhaps be nothing more than revenge by this most cunning of kings.

Chilled, she turned away from him to listen to the bishop recite the words of the marriage service and she repeated her part, making sure not to think of when she had said the words before, only a year and a half ago, when her hand had been cool in the grasp of the most handsome young man she had ever seen, when her bridegroom had given her a shy sideways smile, when she had stared at him through the veil of her mantilla and been aware of the thousands of silently watching faces beyond.

The young prince, who had been dazzled then by the beauty of his sister-in-law the bride, was now the bridegroom. His beam was the boisterous joy of a young boy in the presence of a beautiful older girl. She had been the bride of his older brother, she was the young woman he had been proud to escort on her wedding day. He had begged her for a present of a Barbary horse for his tenth birthday. He had looked at her at her wedding feast and that night prayed that he too might have a Spanish bride just like her.