The Constant Princess Read online

  I know that a sensible woman looks the other way and tries to bear her hurt and humiliation when her husband chooses to take another woman to his bed. What she must not do, what she absolutely must never do, is behave like my sister Juana, who shames herself and all of us by giving way to screaming fits, hysterical tears, and threats of revenge.

  “It does no good,” my mother once told me when one of the ambassadors relayed to us some awful scene at Philip’s court in the Netherlands: Juana threatening to cut off the woman’s hair, attacking her with a pair of scissors, and then swearing she would stab herself.

  “It only makes it worse to complain. If a husband goes astray you will have to take him back into your life and into your bed, whatever he has done; there is no escape from marriage. If you are queen and he is king you have to deal together. If he forgets his duty to you, that is no reason to forget yours to him. However painful, you are always his queen and he is always your husband.”

  “Whatever he does?” I asked her. “However he behaves? He is free though you are bound?”

  She shrugged. “Whatever he does cannot break the marriage bond. You are married in the sight of God: he is always your husband, you are always queen. Those whom God has joined together, no man can put asunder. Whatever pain your husband brings you, he is still your husband. He may be a bad husband; but he is still your husband.”

  “What if he wants another?” I asked, sharp in my young girl’s curiosity.

  “If he wants another he can have her or she can refuse him, that is between them. That is for her and her conscience,” my mother had said steadily. “What must not change is you. Whatever he says, whatever she wants: you are still his wife and his queen.”

  Catalina summoned this bleak counsel and faced her young husband. “I am always glad to meet a friend of yours, my lord,” she said levelly, hoping that her voice did not quaver at all. “But, as you know, I have only a small household. Your father was very clear that I am not allowed any more companions than I have at present. As you know, he does not pay me any allowance. I have no money to pay another lady for her service. In short, I cannot add any lady, even a special friend of yours, to my court.”

  Arthur flinched at the reminder of his father’s mean haggling over her train. “Oh no, you mistake me. It is not a friend who wants a place. She would not be one of your ladies-in-waiting,” he said hastily. “It is Lady Margaret Pole, who is waiting to meet you. She has come home here at last.”

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us. This is worse than if it was his mistress. I knew I would have to face her one day. This is her home, but she was away when we got here and I thought she had deliberately snubbed me by being away and staying away. I thought she was avoiding me out of hatred, as I would avoid her from shame. Lady Margaret Pole is sister to that poor boy, the Duke of Warwick, beheaded to make the succession safe for me, and for my line. I have been dreading the moment when I would have to meet her. I have been praying to the saints that she would stay away, hating me, blaming me, but keeping her distance.

  Arthur saw her quick gesture of rejection, but he had known of no way to prepare her for this. “Please,” he said hurriedly. “She has been away caring for her children or she would have been here with her husband to welcome you to the castle when we first arrived. I told you she would return. She wants to greet you now. We all have to live together here. Sir Richard is a trusted friend of my father, the lord of my council, and the warden of this castle. We will all have to live together.”

  Catalina put out a shaking hand to him and at once he came closer, ignoring the fascinated attention of her ladies.

  “I cannot meet her,” she whispered. “Truly, I can’t. I know that her brother was put to death for my sake. I know my parents insisted on it, before they would send me to England. I know he was innocent, innocent as a flower, kept in the Tower by your father so that men should not gather round him and claim the throne in his name. He could have lived there in safety all his life but for my parents’ demanding his death. She must hate me.”

  “She doesn’t hate you,” he said truthfully. “Believe me, Catalina, I would not expose you to anyone’s unkindness. She does not hate you, she doesn’t hate me, she doesn’t even hate my father who ordered the execution. She knows that these things happen. She is a princess, she knows as well as you do that it is not choice but policy that governs us. It was not your choice, nor mine. She knows that your father and mother had to be sure that there were no rival princes to claim the throne, that my father would clear my way, whatever it cost him. She is resigned.”

  “Resigned?” she gasped incredulously. “How can a woman be resigned to the murder of her brother, the heir of the family? How can she greet me with friendship when he died for my convenience? When we lost my brother our world ended, our hopes died with him. Our future was buried with him. My mother, who is a living saint, still cannot bear it. She has not been happy since the day of his death. It is unbearable to her. If he had been executed for some stranger I swear she would have taken a life in return. How could Lady Margaret lose her brother and bear it? How can she bear me?”

  “She has resignation,” he said simply. “She is a most spiritual woman and if she looked for reward, she has one in that she is married to Sir Richard Pole, a man most trusted by my father, and she lives here in the highest regard and she is my friend and I hope will be yours.”

  He took her hand and felt it tremble. “Come, Catalina. This isn’t like you. Be brave, my love. She won’t blame you.”

  “She must blame me,” she said in an anguished whisper. “My parents insisted that there should be no doubt over your inheritance. I know they did. Your own father promised that there would be no rival princes. They knew what he meant to do. They did not tell him to leave an innocent man with his life. They let him do it. They wanted him to do it. Edward Plantagenet’s blood is on my head. Our marriage is under the curse of his death.”

  Arthur recoiled; he had never before seen her so distressed. “My God, Catalina, you cannot call us accursed.”

  She nodded miserably.

  “You have never spoken of this.”

  “I could not bear to say it.”

  “But you have thought it?”

  “From the moment they told me that he was put to death for my sake.”

  “My love, you cannot really think that we are accursed?”

  “In this one thing.”

  He tried to laugh off her intensity. “No. You must know we are blessed.” He drew closer and said very quietly, so that no one else could hear, “Every morning when you wake in my arms, do you feel accursed then?”

  “No,” she said unwillingly. “No, I don’t.”

  “Every night when I come to your rooms, do you feel the shadow of sin upon you?”

  “No,” she conceded.

  “We are not cursed,” he said firmly. “We are blessed with God’s favor. Catalina, my love, trust me. She has forgiven my father, she certainly would never blame you. I swear to you, she is a woman with a heart as big as a cathedral. She wants to meet you. Come with me and let me present her to you.”

  “Alone, then,” she said, still fearing some terrible scene.

  “Alone. She is in the castle warden’s rooms now. If you come at once, we can leave them all here and go quietly by ourselves and see her.”

  She rose from her seat and put her hand on the crook of his arm. “I am walking alone with the princess,” Arthur said to her ladies. “You can all stay here.”

  They looked surprised to be excluded, and some of them were openly disappointed. Catalina went past them without looking up.

  Once out of the door he preceded her down the tight spiral staircase, one hand on the central stone post, one on the wall. Catalina followed him, lingering at every deep-set arrow-slit window, looking down into the valley where the Teme had burst its banks and was like a silver lake over the water meadows. It was cold, even for March in the Borders, and Catalina shivered as if a s