Three Sisters Three Queens Read online

  The jousting arena at Greenwich is as fine as any in Europe. The queen’s box is set opposite the king’s, and my sisters and I, with our ladies, sit in the center of the stand, curtains billowing in the warm winds, facing the tilt rail. Harry and his friends are never in their box, of course; they are challengers, not spectators. There are long rippling flags flying all around the arena. The ground is sifted sand, white as snow. The seats in the stands are packed with people in their very best clothes. Only the nobility and their favorites are invited—you cannot buy a ticket, this is a diversion for the very cream of the country. The merchants of London and the country people come to this great spectacle, wait behind the half walls of the arena and jostle one another for room. The younger ones, the bolder ones, climb the sides to get a better view and are cuffed and pushed down when they bob up alongside the nobility. Everyone laughs as they tumble down.

  The poorer people cannot even get into the palace, but they line the riverbank where they can watch the ceaseless coming and going of the barges of the noble houses, bringing the guests. They stand along the lane that runs from the gates of the walled palace to Greenwich and the docks. This is where the horses are brought in, and they see the magnificent saddles and the beautiful jousting costumes as the big chargers, sidling and snorting, come down the road ridden by the squires, or led by the grooms.

  The smell of a tournament is instantly recognizable. There is a hint of woodsmoke from where the people are frying bacon on little fires, to eat when the joust is over, and the tang of the black smoke from the forge where horses are being quickly reshod and the sharp ends of lances hammered down to make them blunt. Everywhere, there is the smell of the horses, a mixture of sweat and dung and excitement like a hunt or a race, and over it all the perfume of the flower garlands that hang around the boxes. The orchards have been stripped of apple blossom for our pleasure; the costly pink and white flowers have made the queen’s box into a bower. At every corner the buds of early roses are in posies that we will throw to the bravest challenger. Over all the blossoms, threaded through them, are the starry flowers of honeysuckle in rose pink and yellow and cream, with their haunting heady scent, as sweet as honey. The queen and I and all the ladies have bathed in rosewater and our linen has been sprinkled with lavender water. The bees buzz into the royal box, dazed by perfume, as if they were in an orchard.

  I have a sudden memory, unexpected as summer lightning, of my husband James the king in his strength and beauty when he rode as the wild man in green, and the Sieur de la Bastie was all in white, and I was the queen of the joust that celebrated the birth of my first son, when I thought that I would be happy and triumphant and the first in the land forever.

  “What is it?” Mary asks me gently.

  I shake away the flood of grief. “Nothing. Nothing.”

  Everyone is waiting for the entry of the king into the arena. The sand is raked flat, as if a retreating sea has lapped it clean; the squires in their bright liveries stand at every doorway. There is a buzz of excitement and laughter that becomes louder and louder and louder until there is a sudden blast of trumpets and a gasp, then silence as the great doors roll open, and Harry rides into the arena.

  I see him as others see him, not as my little brother, but as a great king and a magnificent man. He is on a huge warhorse, a black brute of an animal, broad at the shoulder, powerful in the haunches. Harry has ordered it to be shod with silver and the nails sparkle on the black hooves. His saddle and bridle, the breastplate and the stirrup leathers, are a gorgeous deep blue, the best leather dyed as dark as indigo, and the shine on the horse’s black coat is as bright as if it has been polished. It is wearing a trapper of cloth of gold, set with golden bells that tinkle at each great bouncing stride. Harry himself is wearing deep blue velvet embroidered all over with golden thread in bursts of honeysuckle flowers, so that he sparkles as he rides the full circle of the arena, one hand holding his magnificent horse on a tight blue rein, the other holding his tall lance, couched in gold-inlaid leather at his dark blue leather boot.

  Like a warm summer breeze, the crowd sighs in awe at this appearance: a knight from a storybook, a god from a tapestry. Harry is so tall, so handsome, his horse is so toweringly big, his velvets so deep and iridescent, he is more like a portrait of a king, a great king, than the real presence. But then he halts the great horse at the queen’s box and pulls off his hat, set with sapphires, and his bright smile at Katherine tells us all that this is a man, the most handsome man in England, the most loving husband in the world.

  Everyone cheers. Even the people outside the arena, on the banks of the river, on the roads leading to the port, hear the deep-throated roar of approval and they cheer too. Harry glows like an actor welcomed to the stage, and then turns and beckons his companions.

  There are four challengers, dressed to match the king, Charles Brandon among them, his handsome face turning this way and that to acknowledge the applause. Behind them come eighteen knights, also in blue velvet on their great horses, behind them their attendants on foot, wearing satin of so deep a blue that it shines with color, and after them all the grooms and the knights, the trumpeters, the saddlers, the servants, the water-carriers, the runners of errands, dozens and dozens of them, all in blue damask.

  They all draw up before the royal box and Katherine, in her blue gown which suddenly looks dull and dowdy beside the blaze of peacock blue from her husband’s livery, stands to take the salute from the challengers.

  “Let the tournament begin!” bellows the herald. There is a blast of sound from the trumpets so all the warhorses sidle and trample in their excitement and Harry rides slowly towards his end of the list while his squire waits with his helmet and gold-inlaid gauntlets.

  When he is ready, strapped into his beautiful suit of armor, helmet on his head, visor lowered, horse sidling slightly from nerves on one side of the brightly painted tilt rail, his opponent waiting at the other end, on the opposite side, Katherine rises to her feet, holding her white napkin in her bare hand. Her glove is tucked inside Harry’s breastplate, over his heart. He is meticulous in these chivalric signs of devotion. She holds the napkin high, and then she lets it fall.

  The minute it is released Harry has spurred his horse and the beast leaps from its powerful haunches and thunders down the long list. His opponent starts at the same time and the lances thunder closer and closer. Harry’s reach is longer, his stance low in the saddle but thrusting forward. There is a terrific clang of noise as his lance crashes against his opponent’s breastplate, and Harry wrenches it back, so that he does not overbalance and come down. A few seconds later and the opponent’s lance, off balance and reeling from the impact, has struck him a glancing blow on the shoulder. But Harry is already riding by, regaining his balance, heaving the long lance back towards him as his opponent rocks in the saddle, grabs the pommel and horse’s neck with his mailed hand, is falling, is going, and reels backwards off his horse, flung to the ground with the ringing crash of metal armor. The horse bucks, its trappings flapping, its reins trailing; the knight lies still, obviously winded, perhaps worse. Grooms in their blue damask catch the horse, squires in their blue satin run to the knight. They open his visor, his head lolls.

  “Is his neck broken?” my little sister asks anxiously.

  “No,” I say, as I always used to say to her when she was a little princess, afraid for every horse, for every knight. “He’s probably just shaken.”

  The physician comes running, and the barber surgeon. The hurdle comes, carried by four squires. Carefully they lift the knight on. Harry, down from his horse, his helmet under his arms, goes stiff-legged in his armor to see his opponent. Smiling, he says a few words to the fallen knight. We see them touch gauntlets as if shaking hands.

  “There,” I tell Mary. “He’s fine.”

  There is a roar as they carry him out of the arena and Harry turns all around the circle, taking in the applause, his bright smile gleaming, his red hair dark with sweat. He puts h