The Constant Princess ttc-1 Read online

  Chilled, she turned away from him to listen to the bishop recite the words of the marriage service and she repeated her part, making sure not to think of when she had said the words before, only a year and a half ago, when her hand had been cool in the grasp of the most handsome young man she had ever seen, when her bridegroom had given her a shy sideways smile, when she had stared at him through the veil of her mantilla and been aware of the thousands of silently watching faces beyond.

  The young prince, who had been dazzled then by the beauty of his sister-in-law the bride, was now the bridegroom. His beam was the boisterous joy of a young boy in the presence of a beautiful older girl. She had been the bride of his older brother, she was the young woman he had been proud to escort on her wedding day. He had begged her for a present of a Barbary horse for his tenth birthday. He had looked at her at her wedding feast and that night prayed that he too might have a Spanish bride just like her.

  When she had left the court with Arthur he had dreamed of her, he had written poems and love songs, secretly dedicating them to her. He had heard of Arthur’s death with a bright, fierce joy that now she was free.

  Now, not even two years on, she was before him, her hair brushed out bronze and golden over her shoulders signifying her virgin state, her blue lace mantilla veiling her face. Her hand was in his, her blue eyes were on him, her smile was only for him.

  Harry’s braggart boyish heart swelled so full in his chest that he could scarcely reply to his part of the service. Arthur was gone, and he was Prince of Wales; Arthur was gone, and he was his father’s favorite, the rosebush of England. Arthur was gone, and Arthur’s bride was his wife. He stood straight and proud and repeated his oaths in his clear treble voice. Arthur was gone, and there was only one Prince of Wales and one Princess: Prince Harry and Princess Katherine.

  Princess Again

  1504

  I MAY THINK THAT I HAVE WON, but still I have not won. I should have won, but I have not won. Harry reaches twelve, and they declare him Prince of Wales but they do not come for me, declare our betrothal, or invest me as princess. I send for the ambassador. He does not come in the morning, he does not even come that day. He comes the day after, as if my affairs have no urgency, and he does not apologize for his delay. I ask him why I have not been invested as Princess of Wales alongside Harry and he does not know. He suggests that they are waiting for the payment of my dowry and without it nothing can go ahead. But he knows, and I know, and King Henry knows, that I no longer have all my plate to give to them, and if my father will not send his share, there is nothing I can do.

  My mother the queen must know that I am desolate, but I hear from her only rarely. It is as if I am one of her explorers, a solitary Cristóbal Colón with no companions and no maps. She has sent me out into the world and if I tumble off the edge or am lost at sea, there is nothing that anyone can do.

  She has nothing to say to me. I fear that she is ashamed of me, as I wait at court like a supplicant for the prince to honor his promise. In November I am so filled with foreboding that she is ill or sad that I write to her and beg her to reply to me, to send me at least one word. That, as it happens, was the very day that she died and so she never had my letter and I never had my one word. She leaves me in death as she left me in life: to silence and a sense of her absence.

  I knew that I would miss her when I left home. But it was a comfort to me to know that the sun still shone in the gardens of the Alhambra and she was still there beside the green-trimmed pool. I did not know that the loss of her would make my situation in England so much worse. My father, having long refused to pay the second half of my dowry as part of his game with the King of England, now finds his play has become a bitter fruit—he cannot pay. He has spent his life and his fortune in ceaseless crusade against the Moors and there is no money left for anyone. The rich revenues of Castile are now paid to Juana, my mother’s heir, and my father has nothing in the treasury of Aragon for my marriage. My father is now no more than one of the many kings of Spain. Juana is the great heiress of Castile, and, if the gossips are to be believed, Juana has run as mad as a rabid dog, tormented by love and by her husband into insanity. Anyone looking at me now no longer sees a princess of a united Spain, one of the great brides of Christendom, but a widowed pauper with bad blood. Our family fortunes are cascading down like a house of cards without my mother’s steady hand and watchful eye. There is nothing left for my father but despair, and I fear that is all the dowry he can give me.

  I am only nineteen. Is my life over?

  1509

  And then, I waited. Incredibly, I waited for a total of six years. Six years when I went from a bride of seventeen to a woman of twenty-three. I knew then that King Henry’s rage against me was bitter, and effective, and long-lasting. No princess in the world had ever been made to wait so long or been treated so harshly, or left in such despair. I am not exaggerating this, as a troubadour might do to make a better story—as I might have told you, beloved, in the dark hours of the night. No, it was not like a story, it was not even like a life. It was like a prison sentence; it was like being a hostage with no chance of redemption; it was loneliness and the slow realization that I had failed.

  I failed my mother and failed to bring to her the alliance with England that I had been born and bred to do. I was ashamed of my failure. Without the dowry payment from Spain I could not force the English to honor the betrothal. With the king’s enmity I could force them to do nothing. Harry was a child of thirteen. I hardly ever saw him. I could not appeal to him to make his promise good. I was powerless, neglected by the court, and falling into shameful poverty.

  Then Harry was fourteen years of age and our betrothal was still not made marriage, and that marriage not celebrated. I waited a year. He reached fifteen years, and nobody came for me. So Harry reached his sixteenth, and then his seventeenth birthday, and still nobody came for me. Those years turned. I grew older. I waited. I was constant. It was all I could be.

  I turned the panels on my gowns and sold my jewels for food. I had to sell my precious plate, one gold piece at a time. I knew it was the property of the king as I sent for the goldsmiths. I knew that each time I pawned a piece I put my wedding back another day. But I had to eat, my household had to eat. I could pay them no wages, I could hardly ask them to beg for me as well as go hungry on their own account.

  I was friendless. I discovered that Doña Elvira was plotting against my father in favor of Juana and her husband, Philip, and I dismissed her in a rage and sent her away. I did not care if she spoke against me, if she named me as a liar. I did not care even if she declared that Arthur and I had been lovers. I had caught her in treason against my father; did she truly think I would ally with my sister against the King of Aragon? I was so angry that I did not care what her enmity cost me.

  Also, since I am not a fool, I calculated rightly that no one would believe her word against mine. She fled to Philip and Juana in the Netherlands, and I never heard from her again, and I never complained of my loss.

  I lost my ambassador, Dr. de Puebla. I had often complained to my father of his divided loyalties, of his disrespect, of his concessions to the English court. But when he was recalled to Spain I found that he had known more than I had realized, he had used his friendship with the king to my advantage, he had understood his way around this most difficult court. He had been a better friend than I had known, and I was the poorer without him. I lost a friend and an ally, through my own arrogance, and I was sorry for his absence. His replacement: the emissary who had come to take me home, Don Gutierre Gómez de Fuensalida, was a pompous fool who thought the English were honored by his presence. They sneered at his face and laughed behind his back, and I was a ragged princess with an ambassador entranced by his own self-importance.

  I lost my dear father in Christ, the confessor I trusted, appointed by my mother to guide me, and I had to find another for myself. I lost the ladies of my little court, who would not live in hardship and poverty,