The Constant Princess Read online

  “Oh! Old women always gossip in the corners,” she said, smiling. She ignored his widened eyes at her casual disrespect. “Thank God we are young and need pay no attention.”

  “So it was just gossip,” he said, quickly adopting her dismissive tone. “Just old women’s gossip.”

  “We won’t listen to her,” she said, daring him to go on. “You are king and I am queen and we shall make up our own minds. We hardly need her advice. Why—it is her advice that has kept us apart when we could have been together.”

  It had not struck him before. “Indeed,” he said, his face hardening. “We have both been deprived. And all the time she hinted that you were Arthur’s wife, wedded and bedded, and I should look elsewhere.”

  “I am a virgin, as I was when I came to England,” she asserted boldly. “You could ask my old duenna or any of my women. They all knew it. My mother knew it. I am a virgin untouched.”

  He gave a little sigh as if released from some worry. “You are kind to tell me,” he said. “It is better to have these things in the light, so we know, so we both know. So that no one is uncertain. It would be terrible to sin.”

  “We are young,” she said. “We can speak of such things between ourselves. We can be honest and straightforward together. We need not fear rumors and slanders. We need have no fear of sin.”

  “It will be my first time too,” he admitted shyly. “I hope you don’t think the less of me?”

  “Of course not,” she said sweetly. “When were you ever allowed to go out? Your grandmother and your father had you mewed up as close as a precious falcon. I am glad that we shall be together, that it will be the first time, for both of us, together.”

  Harry rose to his feet and held out his hand. “So we shall have to learn together,” he said. “We shall have to be kind to each other. I don’t want to hurt you, Catalina. You must tell me if anything hurts you.”

  Easily she moved into his arms and felt his whole body stiffen at her touch. Gracefully, she stepped back, as if modestly shrinking but kept one hand on his shoulder to encourage him to press forwards until the bed was behind her. Then she let herself lean back until she was on the pillows, smiling up at him, and she could see his blue eyes darken with desire.

  “I have wanted you since I first saw you,” he said breathlessly. He stroked her hair, her neck, her naked shoulder, with a hurried touch, wanting all of her, at once.

  She smiled. “And I, you.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded.

  “I dreamed that it was me that married you that day.” He was flushed, breathless.

  Slowly, she untied the ribbons at the throat of her nightgown, letting the silky linen fall apart so that he could see her throat, her round firm breasts, her waist, the dark shadow between her legs. Harry gave a little groan of desire at the sight of her. “It might as well have been,” she whispered. “I have had no other. And we are married now, at last.”

  “Ah, God, we are,” he said longingly. “We are married now, at last.”

  He dropped his face into the warmth of her neck. She could feel his breath coming fast and urgent in her hair, his body was pushing against hers, Catalina felt herself respond. She remembered Arthur’s touch and gently bit the tip of her tongue to remind herself never, never to say Arthur’s name out loud. She let Harry push against her, force himself against her and then he was inside her. She gave a little rehearsed cry of pain but she knew at once, in a heart thud of dread, that it was not enough. She had not cried out enough, her body had not resisted him enough. She had been too warm, too welcoming. It had been too easy. He did not know much, this callow boy, but he knew that it was not difficult enough.

  He checked, even in the midst of his desire. He knew that something was not as it should be. He looked down at her. “You are a virgin,” he said uncertainly. “I hope that I do not hurt too much.”

  But he knew that she was not. Deep down, he knew that she was no virgin. He did not know much, this overprotected boy, but he knew this. Somewhere in his mind, he knew that she was lying.

  She looked up at him. “I was a virgin until this moment,” she said, managing the smallest of smiles. “But your potency has overcome me. You are so strong. You overwhelmed me.”

  His face was still troubled, but his desire could not wait. He started to move again, he could not resist the pleasure. “You have mastered me,” she encouraged him. “You are my husband, you have taken your own.” She saw him forget his doubt in his rising desire. “You have done what Arthur could not do,” she whispered.

  They were the very words to trigger his desire. The young man gave a groan of pleasure and fell down on to her, his seed pumping into her, the deed undeniably done.

  He doesn’t question me again. He wants so much to believe me that he does not ask the question, fearing that he might get an answer he doesn’t like. He is cowardly in this. He is accustomed to hearing the answers he wants to hear and he would rather an agreeable lie than an unpalatable truth.

  Partly it is his desire to have me, and he wants me as I was when he first saw me: a virgin in bridal white. Partly it is to disprove everyone who warned him against the trap that I had set for him. But more than anything else: he hated and envied my beloved Arthur and he wants me just because I was Arthur’s bride, and—God forgive him for a spiteful, envious, second son—he wants me to tell him that he can do something that Arthur could not do, that he can have something that Arthur could not have. Even though my beloved husband is cold under the nave of Worcester Cathedral, the child that wears his crown still wants to triumph over him. The greatest lie is not in telling Harry that I am a virgin. The greatest lie is in telling him that he is a better man, more of a man than his brother. And I did that too.

  In the dawn, while he is still sleeping, I take my penknife and cut the sole of my foot, where he will not notice a scar, and drip blood on the sheet where we had lain, enough to pass muster for an inspection by My Lady the King’s Grandmother or any other bad-tempered, suspicious enemy who might still seek to discomfort me. There is to be no showing of the sheets for a king and his bride; but I know that everyone will ask, and it is best that my ladies can say that they have all seen the smear of blood and that I am complaining of the pain.

  In the morning, I do everything that a bride should do. I say I am tired, and I rest for the morning. I smile with my eyes looking downwards as if I have discovered some sweet secret. I walk a little stiffly and I refuse to ride out to hunt for a week. I do everything to indicate that I am a young woman who has lost her virginity. I convince everyone. And besides, no one wants to believe anything other.

  The cut on my foot is sore for a long, long time. It catches me every time I step into my new shoes, the ones with the great diamond buckles. It is like a reminder to me of the lie I promised Arthur that I would tell. Of the great lie that I will live, for the rest of my life. I don’t mind the sharp little nip of pain when I slide my right foot into my shoe. It is nothing to the pain that is hidden deep inside me when I smile at the unworthy boy who is king and call him, in my new admiring voice: “husband.”

  SUMMER 1509

  Harry woke in the night and his quiet stillness woke Catalina.

  “My lord?” she asked.

  “Go to sleep,” he said. “It’s not yet dawn.”

  She slipped from the bed and lit a taper in the red embers of the fire, then lit a candle. She let him see her, nightgown half open, her smooth flanks only half hidden by the fall of the gown. “Would you like some ale? Or some wine?”

  “A glass of wine,” he said. “You have one too.”

  She put the candle in the silver holder and came back to the bed beside him with the wineglasses in her hand. She could not read his face, but suppressed her pang of irritation that, whatever it was, she had to be woken, she had to inquire what was troubling him, she had to demonstrate her concern. With Arthur she had known in a second what he wanted, what he was thinking. But anything could distract Harry