Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  PHILIPPA GREGORY

  TUDOR COLLECTION VOLUME 1

  The Constant Princess

  The Other Boleyn Girl

  The Boleyn Inheritance

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  The Constant Princess

  The Other Boleyn Girl

  The Boleyn Inheritance

  About the Author

  Also by Philippa Gregory

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PHILIPPA GREGORY

  THE CONSTANT PRINCESS

  Dedication

  For Anthony

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Letters

  Princess of Wales

  Granada, 1491

  Dogmersfield Palace, Hampshire, Autumn 1501

  London, Winter 1501

  Ludlow Castle, Spring 1502

  Summer 1502

  Princess in Waiting

  Winter 1503

  Princess Again

  1504

  1509

  Katherine, Queen of England

  Summer 1509

  Autumn 1509

  Spring 1510

  Winter 1510

  Spring 1511

  Summer 1511

  Autumn 1511

  Spring 1512

  Summer 1512

  Winter 1512

  Spring 1513

  Summer 1513

  Blackfriars Hall The Papal Legate sitting as a court to hear the King’s Great Matter, June 1529

  Author’s Note

  Letters

  Princess of Wales

  Granada, 1491

  There was a scream, and then the loud roar of fire enveloping silken hangings, then a mounting crescendo of shouts of panic that spread and spread from one tent to another as the flames ran too, leaping from one silk standard to another, running up guy ropes and bursting through muslin doors. Then the horses were neighing in terror and men shouting to calm them, but the terror in their own voices made it worse, until the whole plain was alight with a thousand raging blazes, and the night swirled with smoke and rang with shouts and screams.

  The little girl, starting up out of her bed in her fear, cried out in Spanish for her mother and screamed: ‘The Moors? Are the Moors coming for us?’

  ‘Dear God, save us, they are firing the camp!’ her nurse gasped. ‘Mother of God, they will rape me, and spit you on their sickle blades.’

  ‘Mother!’ cried the child, struggling from her bed. ‘Where is my mother?’

  She dashed outside, her nightgown flapping at her legs, the hangings of her tent now alight and blazing up behind her in an inferno of panic. All the thousand, thousand tents in the camp were ablaze, sparks pouring up into the dark night sky like fiery fountains, blowing like a swarm of fireflies to carry the disaster onwards.

  ‘Mother!’ She screamed for help.

  Out of the flames came two huge, dark horses, like great, mythical beasts moving as one, jet black against the brightness of the fire. High up, higher than one could dream, the child’s mother bent down to speak to her daughter who was trembling, her head no higher than the horse’s shoulder. ‘Stay with your nurse and be a good girl,’ the woman commanded, no trace of fear in her voice. ‘Your father and I have to ride out and show ourselves.’

  ‘Let me come with you! Mother! I shall be burned. Let me come! The Moors will get me!’ The little girl reached her arms up to her mother.

  The firelight glinted weirdly off the mother’s breastplate, off the embossed greaves of her legs, as if she were a metal woman, a woman of silver and gilt, as she leaned forwards to command. ‘If the men don’t see me, then they will desert,’ she said sternly. ‘You don’t want that.’

  ‘I don’t care!’ the child wailed in her panic. ‘I don’t care about anything but you! Lift me up!’

  ‘The army comes first,’ the woman mounted high on the black horse ruled. ‘I have to ride out.’

  She turned her horse’s head from her panic-stricken daughter. ‘I will come back for you,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Wait there. I have to do this now.’

  Helpless, the child watched her mother and father ride away. ‘Madre!’ she whimpered. ‘Madre! Please!’ but the woman did not turn.

  ‘We will be burned alive!’ Madilla, her servant, screamed behind her. ‘Run! Run and hide!’

  ‘You can be quiet.’ The child rounded on her with sudden angry spite. ‘If I, the Princess of Wales herself, can be left in a burning campsite, then you, who are nothing but a Morisco anyway, can certainly endure it.’

  She watched the two horses go to and fro among the burning tents. Everywhere they went the screams were stilled and some discipline returned to the terrified camp. The men formed lines, passing buckets all the way to the irrigation channel, coming out of terror back into order. Desperately, their general ran among his men, beating them with the side of his sword into a scratch battalion from those who had been fleeing only a moment before, and arrayed them in defence formation on the plain, in case the Moors had seen the pillar of fire from their dark battlements, and sallied out to attack and catch the camp in chaos. But no Moors came that night; they stayed behind the high walls of their castle and wondered what fresh devilry the mad Christians were creating in the darkness, too fearful to come out to the inferno that the Christians had made, suspecting that it must be some infidel trap.

  The five-year-old child watched her mother’s determination conquer fire itself, her queenly certainty douse panic, her belief in success overcome the reality of disaster and defeat. The little girl perched on one of the treasure chests, tucked her nightgown around her bare toes, and waited for the camp to settle.

  When the mother rode back to her daughter she found her dry-eyed and steady.

  ‘Catalina, are you all right?’ Isabella of Spain dismounted and turned to her youngest, most precious daughter, restraining herself from pitching to her knees and hugging the little girl. Tenderness would not raise this child as a warrior for Christ, weakness must not be encouraged in a princess.

  The child was as iron-spined as her mother. ‘I am all right now,’ she said.

  ‘You weren’t afraid?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  The woman nodded her approbation. ‘That is good,’ she said. ‘That is what I expect of a princess of Spain.’

  ‘And Princess of Wales,’ her daughter added.

  This is me, this little five-year-old girl, perching on the treasure chest with a face white as marble and blue eyes wide with fear, refusing to tremble, biting my lips so I don’t cry out again. This is me, conceived in a camp by parents who are rivals as well as lovers, born in a moment snatched between battles in a winter of torrential floods, raised by a strong woman in armour, on campaign for all of my childhood, destined to fight for my place in the world, to fight for my faith against another, to fight for my word against another’s: born to fight for my name, for my faith and for my throne. I am Catalina, Princess of Spain, daughter of the two greatest monarchs the world has ever known: Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. Their names are feared from Cairo to Baghdad to Constantinople to India and beyond by all the Moors in all their many nations: Turks, Indians, Chinamen; our rivals, admirers, enemies till death. My parents’ names are blessed by the Pope as the finest kings to defend the faith against the might of Islam, they are the greatest crusaders of Christendom as well as the first kings of Spain; and I am their youngest daughter, Catalina, Princess of Wales, and I will be Queen of England.

  Since I was a child of three I have been betrothed in marriage to Prince Arthur, son of Kin