The Constant Princess Read online

“Of a sort. He told me once that he woke every morning expecting to be handed over to Edward. And once King Edward said that he should come home and there would be a kind welcome and a wedding arranged for him. My father pretended to be ill on the road and escaped. He would have come home to his death.”

  Catalina blinked. “So he was a pretender too, in his time.”

  He grinned at her. “As I said. That is why he fears them so much. He knows what a pretender can do if the luck is with him. If they had caught him, they would have brought him home to his death in the Tower. Just like he did to Warwick. My father would have been put to death the moment King Edward had him. But he pretended to be ill and got away, over the border into France.”

  “They didn’t hand him back?”

  Arthur laughed. “They supported him. He was the greatest challenge to the peace of England—of course they encouraged him. It suited the French to support him then: when he was not king but pretender.”

  She nodded. She was a child of a prince praised by Machiavelli himself. Any daughter of Ferdinand was born to double-dealing. “And then?”

  “Edward died young, in his prime, with only a young son to inherit. His brother Richard first held the throne in trust and then claimed it for himself and put his own nephews, Edward’s sons, the little princes, in the Tower of London.”

  She nodded. This was a history she had been taught in Spain, and the greater story—of deadly rivalry for a throne—was a common theme for both young people.

  “They went into the Tower and never came out again,” Arthur said bleakly. “God bless their souls, poor boys, no one knows what happened to them. The people turned against Richard and summoned my father from France.”

  “Yes?”

  “My grandmother organized the great lords one after another, she was an archplotter. She and the Duke of Buckingham put their heads together and had the nobles of the kingdom in readiness. That’s why my father honors her so highly: he owes her his throne. And he waited until he could get a message to my mother to tell her that he would marry her if he won the throne.”

  “Because he loved her?” Catalina asked hopefully. “She is so beautiful.”

  “Not he. He hadn’t even seen her. He had been in exile for most of his life, remember. It was a marriage cobbled together because his mother knew that if she could get those two married, then everyone would see that the heir of York had married the heir of Lancaster and the war could be over. And her mother saw it as her only way out to safety. The two mothers brokered the deal together like a pair of crones over a cauldron. They’re both women you wouldn’t want to cross.”

  “He didn’t love her?” She was disappointed.

  Arthur smiled. “No. It’s not a romance. And she didn’t love him. But they knew what they had to do. When my father marched in and beat Richard and picked the crown of England out of the bodies and the wreckage of the battlefield, he knew that he would marry the princess, take the throne, and found a new line.”

  “But wasn’t she next heir to the throne anyway?” she asked, puzzled. “Since it was her father who had been King Edward? And her uncle who had died in the battle, and her brothers were dead?”

  He nodded. “She was the oldest princess.”

  “So why didn’t she claim the throne for herself?”

  “Aha, you are a rebel!” he said. He took a handful of her hair and pulled her face towards him. He kissed her mouth, tasting of wine and sweetmeats. “A Yorkist rebel, which is worse.”

  “I just thought she should have claimed the throne for herself.”

  “Not in this country,” Arthur ruled. “We don’t have reigning queens in England. Girls don’t inherit. They cannot take the throne.”

  “But if a king had only a daughter?”

  He shrugged. “Then it would be a tragedy for the country. You have to give me a boy, my love. Nothing else will do.”

  “But if we only had a girl?”

  “She would marry a prince and make him King Consort of England, and he would rule alongside her. England has to have a king. Like your mother did. She reigns alongside her husband.”

  “In Aragon she does, but in Castile he rules alongside her. Castile is her country and Aragon his.”

  “We’d never stand for it in England,” Arthur said.

  She drew away from him in indignation. She was only half pretending. “I tell you this: if we have only one child and she is a girl then she will rule as queen and she will be a queen as good as any man can be king.”

  “Well, she will be a novelty,” he said. “We don’t believe a woman can defend the country as a king needs to do.”

  “A woman can fight,” she said instantly. “You should see my mother in armor. Even I could defend the country. I have seen warfare, which is more than you have done. I could be as good a king as any man.”

  He smiled at her, shaking his head. “Not if the country was invaded. You couldn’t command an army.”

  “I could command an army. Why not?”

  “No English army would be commanded by a woman. They wouldn’t take orders from a woman.”

  “They would take orders from their commander,” she flashed out. “And if they don’t then they are no good as soldiers and they have to be trained.”

  He laughed. “No Englishman would obey a woman,” he said. He saw by her stubborn face that she was not convinced.

  “All that matters is that you win the battle,” she said. “All that matters is that the country is defended. It doesn’t matter who leads the army as long as they follow.”

  “Well, at any rate, my mother had no thought of claiming the throne for herself. She would not have dreamed of it. She married my father and became Queen of England through marriage. And because she was the York princess and he was the Lancaster heir, my grandmother’s plan succeeded. My father may have won the throne by conquest and acclaim; but we will have it by inheritance.”

  Catalina nodded. “My mother said there was nothing wrong with a man who is new-come to the throne. What matters is not the winning but the keeping of it.”

  “We shall keep it,” he said with certainty. “We shall make a great country here, you and me. We shall build roads and markets, churches and schools. We shall put a ring of forts around the coastline and build ships.”

  “We shall create courts of justice as my mother and father have done in Spain,” she said, settling back into the pleasure of planning a future on which they could agree. “So that no man can be cruelly treated by another. So that every man knows that he can go to the court and have his case heard.”

  He raised his glass to her. “We should start writing this down,” he said. “And we should start planning how it is to be done.”

  “It will be years before we come to our thrones.”

  “You never know. I don’t wish it—God knows, I honor my father and my mother and I would want nothing before God’s own time. But you never know. I am Prince of Wales, you are Princess. But we will be King and Queen of England. We should know who we will have at our court, we should know what advisors we will choose, we should know how we are going to make this country truly great. If it is a dream, then we can talk of it together at nighttime, as we do. But if it is a plan, we should write it in the daytime, take advice on it, think how we might do the things we want.”

  Her face lit up. “When we have finished our lessons for the day, perhaps we could do it then. Perhaps your tutor would help us, and my confessor.”

  “And my advisors,” he said. “And we could start here. In Wales. I can do what I want, within reason. We could make a college here, and build some schools. We could even commission a ship to be built here. There are shipwrights in Wales, we could build the first of our defensive ships.”

  She clapped her hands like the girl she was. “We could start our reign!” she said.

  “Hail Queen Katherine! Queen of England!” Arthur said playfully, but at the ring of the words he stopped and looked at her more seriously. “You