The Constant Princess Read online

  The duenna and the ladies would bid her good night and leave; the maids would come and unlace her bodice, unpin her headdress, untie her shoes, and pull off her stockings. They would hold out her warmed linen nightgown and she would ask for her cape and say she would sit by the fire for a few moments, and then send them away.

  In the silence, as the castle settled for the night, she would wait for him. Then, at last she would hear the quiet sound of his footfall at the outer door of her room, where it opened onto the battlements that ran between his tower and hers. She would fly to the door and unbolt it, he would be pink-cheeked from the cold, his cape thrown over his own nightshirt as he tumbled in, the cold wind blowing in with him as she threw herself into his arms.

  “Tell me a story.”

  “Which story tonight?”

  “Tell me about your family.”

  “Shall I tell you about my mother when she was a girl?”

  “Oh yes. Was she a princess of Castile like you?”

  Catalina shook her head. “No, not at all. She was not protected or safe. She lived in the court of her brother, her father was dead, and her brother did not love her as he should. He knew that she was his only true heir. He favored his daughter; but everyone knew that she was a bastard, palmed off on him by his queen. She was even nicknamed by the name of the queen’s lover. They called her La Beltraneja after her father. Can you think of anything more shameful?”

  Arthur obediently shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “My mother was all but a prisoner at her brother’s court; the queen hated her, of course, the courtiers were unfriendly, and her brother was plotting to disinherit her. Even their own mother could not make him see reason.”

  “Why not?” he asked, and then caught her hand when he saw the shadow cross her face. “Ah, love, I am sorry. What is the matter?”

  “Her mother was sick,” she said. “Sick with sadness. I don’t understand quite why, or why it was so very bad. But she could hardly speak or move. She could only cry.”

  “So your mother had no protector?”

  “No, and then the king her brother ordered that she should be betrothed to Don Pedro Girón.” She sat up a little and clasped her hands around her knees. “They said he had sold his soul to the devil, a most wicked man. My mother swore that she would offer her soul to God and God would save her, a virgin, from such a fate. She said that surely no merciful God would take a girl like her, a princess, who had survived long years in one of the worst courts of Europe, and then throw her at the end into the arms of a man who wanted her ruin, who desired her only because she was young and untouched, who wanted to despoil her.”

  Arthur hid a grin at the romantic rhythm of the story. “You do this awfully well,” he said. “I hope it ends happily.”

  Catalina raised her hand like a troubadour calling for silence. “Her greatest friend and lady-in-waiting Beatriz had taken up a knife and sworn that she would kill Don Pedro before he laid hands on Isabella; but my mother kneeled before her prie-dieu for three days and three nights and prayed without ceasing to be spared this rape.

  “He was on his journey towards her, he would arrive the very next day. He ate well and drank well, telling his companions that tomorrow he would be in the bed of the highest-born virgin of Castile.

  “But that very night he died.” Catalina’s voice dropped to an awed whisper. “Died before he had finished his wine from dinner. Dropped dead as surely as if God had reached down from the heavens and pinched the life out of him as a good gardener pinches out a greenfly.”

  “Poison?” asked Arthur, who knew something of the ways of determined monarchs and who thought Isabella of Castile quite capable of murder.

  “God’s will,” Catalina answered seriously. “Don Pedro found, as everyone else has found, that God’s will and my mother’s desires always run together. And if you knew God and my mother as I know them, you would know that their will is always done.”

  He raised his glass and drank a toast to her. “Now that is a good story,” he said. “I wish you could tell it in the hall.”

  “And it is all true,” she reminded him. “I know it is. My mother told me it herself.”

  “So she fought for her throne too,” he said thoughtfully.

  “First for her throne, and then to make the kingdom of Spain.”

  He smiled. “For all that they tell us that we are of royal blood, we both come from a line of fighters. We have our thrones by conquest.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I come from royal blood,” she said. “My mother has her throne by right.”

  “Oh yes. But if your mother had not fought for her place in the world, she would have been Doña whatever his name was—”

  “Girón.”

  “Girón. And you would have been born a nobody.”

  Catalina shook her head. The idea was quite impossible for her to grasp. “I should have been the daughter of the sister of the king whatever happened. I should always have had royal blood in my veins.”

  “You would have been a nobody,” he said bluntly. “A nobody with royal blood. And so would I if my father had not fought for his throne. We are both from families who claim their own.”

  “Yes,” she conceded reluctantly.

  “We are both the children of parents who claim what rightfully belongs to others.” He went further.

  Her head came up at once. “They do not! At least my mother did not. She was the rightful heir.”

  Arthur disagreed. “Her brother made his daughter his heir, he recognized her. Your mother had the throne by conquest. Just as my father won his.”

  Her color rose. “She did not,” she insisted. “She is the rightful heir to the throne. All she did was defend her right from a pretender.”

  “Don’t you see?” he said. “We are all pretenders until we win. When we win, we can rewrite the history and rewrite the family trees, and execute our rivals, or imprison them, until we can argue that there was always only one true heir: ourselves. But before then, we are one of many claimants. And not even always the best claimant with the strongest claim.”

  She frowned. “What are you saying?” she demanded. “Are you saying that I am not the true princess? That you are not the true heir to England?”

  He took her hand. “No, no. Don’t be angry with me,” he soothed her. “I am saying that we have and we hold what we claim. I am saying that we make our own inheritance. We claim what we want, we say that we are Prince of Wales, Queen of England. That we decide the name and the title we go by. Just like everyone else does.”

  “You are wrong,” she said. “I was born Infanta of Spain and I will die Queen of England. It is not a matter of choice, it is my destiny.”

  He took her hand and kissed it. He saw there was no point pursuing his belief that a man or a woman could make their own destiny with their own conviction. He might have his doubts; but with her the task was already done. She had complete conviction: her destiny was made. He had no doubt that she would indeed defend it to death. Her title, her pride, her sense of self were all one. “Katherine, Queen of England,” he said, kissing her fingers, and saw her smile return.

  I love him so deeply, I did not know that I could ever love anyone like this. I can feel myself growing in patience and wisdom, just through my love for him. I step back from irritability and impatience, I even bear my homesickness without complaint. I can feel myself becoming a better woman, a better wife, as I seek to please him and make him proud of me. I want him always to be glad that he married me. I want us always to be as happy as we are today. There are no words to describe him…there are no words.

  A messenger came from the king’s court bringing the newlyweds some gifts: a pair of deer from the Windsor forest, a parcel of books for Catalina, letters from Elizabeth the queen, and orders from My Lady the King’s Mother who had heard, though no one could imagine how, that the prince’s hunt had broken down some hedges, and who commanded Arthur to make sure that they were restored and the