Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 Read online

  ‘You don’t like my clothes,’ Catalina said flatly, and he was too inexperienced to recognise the depth of embarrassment that she was ready to feel.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like them before,’ he stammered. ‘Are they Arab clothes? Show me!’

  She turned on the spot, watching him over her shoulder and then coming back to face him again. ‘We all wear them in Spain,’ she said. ‘My mother too. They are more comfortable than gowns, and cleaner. Everything can be washed, not like velvets and damask.’

  He nodded, he noticed now a light rosewater scent which came from the silk.

  ‘And they are cool in the heat of the day,’ she added.

  ‘They are…beautiful.’ He nearly said ‘barbaric’ and was so glad that he had not, when her eyes lit up.

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  At once she raised her arms and twirled again to show him the flutter of the hose and the lightness of the chemise.

  ‘You wear them to sleep in?’

  She laughed. ‘We wear them nearly all the time. My mother always wears them under her armour, they are far more comfortable than anything else, and she could not wear gowns under chain mail.’

  ‘No…’

  ‘When we are receiving Christian ambassadors, or for great state occasions, or when the court is at feast, we wear gowns and robes, especially at Christmas when it is cold. But in our own rooms, and always in the summer, and always when we are on campaign, we wear Morisco dress. It is easy to make, and easy to wash, and easy to carry, and best to wear.’

  ‘You cannot wear it here,’ Arthur said. ‘I am so sorry. But My Lady the King’s Mother would object if she knew you even had them with you.’

  She nodded. ‘I know that. My mother was against me even bringing them. But I wanted something to remind me of my home and I thought I might keep them in my cupboard and tell nobody. Then tonight, I thought I might show you. Show you myself, and how I used to be.’

  Catalina stepped to one side and gestured to him that he should come to the table. He felt too big, too clumsy, and on an instinct, he stooped and shucked off his riding boots and stepped on to the rich rugs barefoot. She gave a little nod of approval and beckoned him to sit. He dropped to one of the gold-embroidered cushions.

  Serenely, she sat opposite him and passed him a bowl of scented water, with a white napkin. He dipped his fingers and wiped them. She smiled and offered him a gold plate laid with food. It was a dish of his childhood, roasted chicken legs, devilled kidneys, with white manchet bread: a proper English dinner. But she had made them serve only tiny portions on each individual plate, dainty bones artfully arranged. She had sliced apples served alongside the meat, and added some precious spiced meats next to sliced sugared plums. She had done everything she could to serve him a Spanish meal, with all the delicacy and luxury of the Moorish taste.

  Arthur was shaken from his prejudice. ‘This is…beautiful,’ he said, seeking a word to describe it. ‘This is…like a picture. You are like…’ He could not think of anything that he had ever seen that was like her. Then an image came to him. ‘You are like a painting I once saw on a plate,’ he said. ‘A treasure of my mother’s from Persia. You are like that. Strange, and most lovely.’

  She glowed at his praise. ‘I want you to understand,’ she said, speaking carefully in Latin. ‘I want you to understand what I am. Cuiusmodi sum.’

  ‘What you are?’

  ‘I am your wife,’ she assured him. ‘I am the Princess of Wales, I will be Queen of England. I will be an Englishwoman. That is my destiny. But also, as well as this, I am the Infanta of Spain, of al Andalus.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You know; but you don’t know. You don’t know about Spain, you don’t know about me. I want to explain myself to you. I want you to know about Spain. I am a princess of Spain. I am my father’s favourite. When we dine alone, we eat like this. When we are on campaign, we live in tents and sit before the braziers like this, and we were on campaign for every year of my life until I was seven.’

  ‘But you are a Christian court,’ he protested. ‘You are a power in Christendom. You have chairs, proper chairs, you must eat your dinner off a proper table.’

  ‘Only at banquets of state,’ she said. ‘When we are in our private rooms we live like this, like Moors. Oh, we say grace; we thank the One God at the breaking of the bread. But we do not live as you live here in England. We have beautiful gardens filled with fountains and running water. We have rooms in our palaces inlaid with precious stones and inscribed with gold letters telling beautiful truths in poetry. We have bath houses with hot water to wash in and thick steam to fill the scented room, we have ice houses packed in winter with snow from the sierras so our fruit and our drinks are chilled in summer.’

  The words were as seductive as the images. ‘You make yourself sound so strange,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Like a fairy tale.’

  ‘I am only just realising now how strange we are to each other,’ Catalina said. ‘I thought that your country would be like mine but it is quite different. I am coming to think that we are more like Persians than like Germans. We are more Arabic than Visigoth. Perhaps you thought that I would be a princess like your sisters, but I am quite, quite different.’

  He nodded. ‘I shall have to learn your ways,’ he proposed tentatively. ‘As you will have to learn mine.’

  ‘I shall be Queen of England, I shall have to become English. But I want you to know what I was, when I was a girl.’

  Arthur nodded. ‘Were you very cold today?’ he asked. He could feel a strange new feeling, like a weight in his belly. He realised it was discomfort, at the thought of her being unhappy.

  She met his look without concealment. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was very cold. And then I thought that I had been unkind to you and I was very unhappy. And then I thought that I was far away from my home and from the heat and the sunshine and my mother and I was very homesick. It was a horrible day, today. I had a horrible day, today.’

  He reached his hand out to her. ‘Can I comfort you?’

  Her fingertips met his. ‘You did,’ she said. ‘When you brought me in to the fire and told me you were sorry. You do comfort me. I will learn to trust that you always will.’

  He drew her to him; the cushions were soft and easy, he laid her beside him and he gently tugged at the silk that was wrapped around her head. It slipped off at once and the rich red tresses tumbled down. He touched them with his lips, then her sweet slightly trembling mouth, her eyes with the sandy eyelashes, her light eyebrows, the blue veins at her temples, the lobes of her ears. Then he felt his desire rise and he kissed the hollow at the base of her throat, her thin collarbones, the warm, seductive flesh from neck to shoulder, the hollow of her elbow, the warmth of her palm, the erotically deep-scented armpit, and then he drew her shift over her head and she was naked, in his arms, and she was his wife, and a loving wife, at last, indeed.

  I love him. I did not think it possible, but I love him. I have fallen in love with him. I look at myself in the mirror, in wonderment, as if I am changed, as everything else is changed. I am a young woman in love with my husband. I am in love with the Prince of Wales. I, Catalina of Spain, am in love. I wanted this love, I thought it was impossible, and I have it. I am in love with my husband and we shall be King and Queen of England. Who can doubt now that I am chosen by God for His especial favour? He brought me from the dangers of war to safety and peace in the Alhambra Palace and now He has given me England and the love of the young man who will be its king.

  In a sudden rush of emotion I put my hands together and pray: ‘Oh God, let me love him forever, do not take us from each other as Juan was taken from Margot, in their first months of joy. Let us grow old together, let us love each other for ever.’

  Ludlow Castle, January 1502

  The winter sun was low and red over the rounded hills as they rattled through the great gate that pierced the stone wall around Ludlow. Arthur, who h