The Constant Princess Read online

  “Sire, good evening,” she said and rose and curtseyed as he entered.

  Arthur had to check his backwards step, in retreat at the first encounter. He was ready for bed, in his nightgown with only a robe thrown over his shoulders. He was acutely aware of his bare feet and vulnerable toes. Catalina blazed in her evening finery. The ladies all turned and looked at him, their faces unfriendly. He was acutely conscious of his nightgown and his bare legs and a chuckle of barely suppressed laughter from one of his men behind him.

  “I expected you to be in bed,” he said.

  “Of course, I can go to bed,” she returned with glacial courtesy. “I was about to go to bed. It is very late. But when you announced so publicly that you would visit me in my rooms, I thought you must be planning to bring all the court with you. I thought you were telling everyone to come to my rooms. Why else announce it at the top of your voice so that everybody could hear?”

  “I did not announce it at the top of my voice!”

  She raised an eyebrow in wordless contradiction.

  “I shall stay the night,” he said stubbornly. He marched to her bedroom door. “These ladies can go to their beds, it is late.” He nodded to his men. “Leave us.” He went into her room and closed the door behind him.

  She followed him and closed the door behind her, shutting out the bright, scandalized faces of the ladies. Her back to the door, she watched him throw off his robe and nightgown so he was naked, and climb into her bed. He plumped up the pillows and leaned back, his arms crossed against his narrow bare chest, like a man awaiting an entertainment.

  It was her turn to be discomforted. “Your Grace…”

  “You had better get undressed,” he taunted her. “As you say, it’s very late.”

  She turned one way and then the other. “I shall send for Doña Elvira.”

  “Do. And send for whoever else undresses you. Don’t mind me, please.”

  Catalina bit her lip. He could see her uncertainty. She could not bear to be stripped naked in front of him. She turned and went out of the bedchamber.

  There was a rattle of irritable Spanish from the room next door. Arthur grinned. He guessed that she was clearing the room of her ladies and undressing out there. When she came back, he saw that he was right. She was wearing a white gown trimmed with exquisite lace, and her hair was in a long plait down her back. She looked more like a little girl than the haughty princess she had been only moments before, and he felt his desire rise up with some other feeling: a tenderness.

  She glanced at him, her face unfriendly. “I will have to say my prayers,” she said. She went to the prie-dieu and kneeled before it. He watched her bow her head over her clasped hands and start to whisper. For the first time his irritation left him, and he thought how hard it must be for her. Surely his unease and fear must be nothing to hers: alone in a strange land, at the beck and call of a boy a few months younger than her, with no real friends and no family, far away from everything and everyone she knew.

  The bed was warm. The wine he had drunk to give him courage now made him feel sleepy. He leaned back on the pillow. Her prayers were taking a long time, but it was good for a man to have a spiritual wife. He closed his eyes on the thought. When she came to bed, he thought he would take her with confidence but with gentleness. It was Christmas, he should be kind to her. She was probably lonely and afraid. He should be generous. He thought warmly of how loving he would be to her, and how grateful she would be. Perhaps they would learn to give each other pleasure, perhaps he would make her happy. His breathing deepened, he gave a tiny little snuffly snore. He slept.

  Catalina looked around from her prayers and smiled in pure triumph. Then, absolutely silently, she crept into bed beside him, and, carefully arranging herself so that not even of the hem of her nightgown could touch him, she composed herself for sleep.

  You thought to embarrass me before my women, before all the court. You thought you could shame me and triumph over me. But I am a princess of Spain, and I have known things and seen things that you, in this safe little country, in this smug little haven, would never dream of. I am the Infanta, I am the daughter of the two most powerful monarchs in the whole of Christendom, who alone have defeated the greatest threat ever to march against it. For seven hundred years the Moors have occupied Spain, an empire mightier than that of the Romans, and who drove them out? My mother! My father! So you needn’t think I am afraid of you—you rose-petal prince, or whatever they call you. I shall never stoop to do anything that a princess of Spain should not do. I shall never be petty or spiteful. But if you challenge me, I shall defeat you.

  Arthur did not speak to her in the morning. His boy’s high pride was utterly cut to the quick. She had shamed him at his father’s court by denying him her rooms, and now she had shamed him in private. He felt that she had trapped him, made a fool of him, and was even now laughing at him. He rose up and went out in sullen silence. He went to Mass and did not meet her eyes. He went hunting and was gone all day. He did not speak to her at night. They watched a play, seated side by side, and not one word was exchanged all evening. A whole week they stayed at Oxford, and they did not say more than a dozen words to each other every day. He swore a private, bitter oath to himself that he would never, ever speak to her again. He would get a child on her, if he could, he would humiliate her in every way that he could, but he would never say one direct word to her, and he would never, never, never sleep again in her bed.

  When the morning came for them to move on to Ludlow, the sky was gray with clouds, fat-bellied with snow. Catalina came out of the doorway of the college and recoiled as the icy, damp air hit her in the face. Arthur ignored her.

  She stepped out into the yard where the train was all drawn up and waiting for her. She hesitated before the litter. It struck him that she was like a prisoner, hesitating before a cart. She could not choose.

  “Will it not be very cold?” she asked.

  He turned a hard face to her. “You will have to get used to the cold. You’re not in Spain now.”

  “So I see.”

  She drew back the curtains of the litter. Inside there were rugs for her to wrap around herself and cushions for her to rest on, but it did not look very cozy.

  “It gets far worse than this,” he said cheerfully. “Far colder, it rains or sleets or snows, and it gets darker. In February we have only a couple of hours of daylight at best, and then there are the freezing fogs which turn day into night so it is forever gray.”

  She turned and looked up at him. “Could we not set out another day?”

  “You agreed to come,” he taunted her. “I would have been happy to leave you at Greenwich.”

  “I did as I was told.”

  “So here we are. Traveling on as we have been ordered to do.”

  “At least you can move about and keep warm,” she said plaintively. “Can I not ride?”

  “My Lady the King’s Mother said you could not.”

  She made a little face but she did not argue.

  “It’s your choice. Shall I leave you here?” he asked briskly, as if he had little time for these uncertainties.

  “No,” she said. “Of course not,” and climbed into the litter and pulled the rugs over her feet and up around her shoulders.

  Arthur led the way out of Oxford, bowing and smiling at the people who had turned out to cheer him. Catalina drew the curtains of her litter against the cold wind and the curious stares, and would not show her face.

  They stopped for dinner at a great house on the way and Arthur went in to dine without even waiting to help her from the litter. The lady of the house, flustered, went out to the litter and found Catalina stumbling out, white-faced and with red eyes.

  “Princess, are you all right?” the woman asked her.

  “I am cold,” Catalina said miserably. “I am freezing cold. I think I have never been so cold.”

  She hardly ate any dinner. They could not make her take any wine. She looked ready to drop wi