The King's Curse Read online

  “Very well,” I say dryly. I have no doubt that Arthur has considered that introducing me to the young lady whose parents demanded my brother was killed before they would send her to England is a task that should be handled carefully. Equally, I know that this idea will not have crossed the mind of my husband.

  I meet her as Arthur wishes, without ceremony, alone in the presence chamber of the Castle Warden of Ludlow, a great wood-paneled room immediately below her own apartment. There is a good fire in the grate and rich tapestries on the walls. It is not the glorious palace of the Alhambra; but equally it is nothing poor or shameful. I go to the hammered metal mirror and I adjust my headdress. My reflection looks dimly back at me, my dark eyes, pale clear skin, and pretty rosebud mouth—these are my best features. My long Plantagenet nose is my greatest disappointment. I straighten my headdress and feel the pins pull in my thickly coiled auburn hair, and then I turn from the mirror as a vanity that I should despise, and wait by the fireside.

  In a few moments I hear Arthur’s knock on the door and I nod to my lady-in-waiting who opens it and steps outside as Arthur comes in alone, bobs a swift bow to me as I curtsey to him, and then we kiss each other on both cheeks.

  “Are all three of them quite well?” he asks. “And the baby?”

  “Thanks be to God,” I say.

  He crosses himself quickly. “Amen. And you didn’t take it?”

  “It was surprising how few people took it this time,” I say. “We were very blessed. Just a couple of people in the village and only two deaths. The baby showed no signs at all. God is merciful indeed.”

  He nods. “May I bring the Princess of Wales to you?”

  I smile as he says her title with such care. “And how do you like being a married man, Your Grace?”

  The quick flush on his cheek tells me that he likes her a lot and is embarrassed to own it. “I like it well enough,” he says quietly.

  “You deal well together, Arthur?”

  The red in his cheek deepens and spreads to his forehead. “She is . . .” He breaks off. Clearly there are no words for what she is.

  “Beautiful?” I suggest.

  “Yes! And . . .”

  “Pleasing?”

  “Oh yes! And . . .”

  “Charming?”

  “She has such . . .” he starts and falls silent.

  “I had better see her. Clearly she is beyond describing.”

  “Ah, Lady Guardian, you are laughing at me but you will see . . .”

  He goes outside to fetch her. I had not realized we were keeping her waiting, and I wonder if she will be offended. After all, she is an Infanta of Spain and raised to be a very grand woman indeed.

  As the heavy wooden door opens I get to my feet and Arthur brings her into the room, bows, and steps out. He closes the door. The Princess of Wales and I are quite alone.

  My first thought is that she is so slight and so dainty that you would think her a portrait of a princess in stained glass, not a real girl at all. She has bronze-colored hair tucked modestly under a heavy hood, a tiny waist cinched in by a stomacher as big and heavy as a breastplate, and a high headdress draped in priceless lace, which falls to either side and shields her as if she might wear it down over her face like an infidel’s veil. She curtseys to me with her eyes and face downturned, and only when I take her hand and she glances up can I see that she has bright blue eyes and a shy pretty smile.

  She is pale with anxiety as I deliver my speech in Latin, welcoming her to the castle, and apologizing for my previous absence. I see her glance around for Arthur. I see her bite her lower lip as if to summon courage, and plunge into words. At once she speaks of the one thing that I would willingly never hear, especially from her.

  “I was sorry for the death of your brother, very sorry,” she says.

  I am quite astounded that she should dare to speak to me of this at all, let alone that she should do so with frankness and compassion.

  “It was a great loss,” I say coolly. “Alas, it is the way of the world.”

  “I am afraid that my coming . . .”

  I cannot bear for her to apologize to me for the murder that was done in her name. I cut her off with a few words. She looks at me, poor child, as if she would ask how she can comfort me. She looks at me as if she is ready to fall at my feet and confess it as her fault. It is unbearable for me that she should speak of my brother. I cannot hear his name on her lips, I cannot let this conversation continue or I will break down and weep for him in front of this young woman whose coming caused his death. He would be alive but for her. How can I speak calmly of this?

  I put out my hand to her to keep her at a distance, to silence her, but she grasps it, and makes a little curtsey. “It’s not your fault,” I manage to whisper. “And we must all be obedient to the king.”

  Her blue eyes are drowned in tears. “I am sorry,” she says. “So sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I say, to stop her saying another word. “And it was not his fault. Nor mine.”

  And then, strangely, we live together happily. The courage that she showed when she faced me and told me that she was sorry for my grief and that she would have wanted to prevent it, I see in her every day. She misses her home terribly; her mother writes only rarely, and then briefly. Katherine is little more than a motherless child in a strange land, with everything to learn: our language, our customs, even our foods are foreign to her, and sometimes, when we sit together in the afternoon, sewing, I divert her by asking her about her home.

  She describes their palace, the Alhambra, as if it were a jewel set in a lining of a green garden, placed in the treasure chest of the castle of Granada. She tells me of the icy water that flows in the fountains in the courtyards piped from the mountains of the high sierra, and of the burning sun that bakes the landscape to arid gold. She tells me of the silks that she wore every day, and of the languid mornings in the marble-tiled bathhouse, of her mother in the throne room dispensing justice and ruling the kingdom as an equal monarch with her father, and of their determination that their rule and the law of God should stretch throughout Spain.

  “This must all feel so strange to you,” I say wonderingly, looking out of the narrow window to where the light is draining from the dark wintry landscape, the sky going from ash gray through slate gray, to soot gray. There is snow on the hills and the clouds are rolling up the valley, as a scud of rain hammers against the little panes of glass in the window. “It must seem like another world.”

  “It is like a dream,” she says quietly. “You know? When everything is different, and you keep hoping and hoping to wake?”

  Silently, I assent. I know what it is like to find that everything has changed and you cannot get back to your earlier life.

  “If it were not for Arth . . . for His Grace,” she whispers and lowers her eyes to her sewing, “if it were not for him, I would be most unhappy.”

  I put my hand over hers. “Thank God that he loves you,” I say quietly. “And I hope that we can all make you happy.”

  At once she looks up, her blue eyes seeking mine. “He does love me, doesn’t he?”

  “Without any doubt,” I smile. “I have known him since he was a baby and he has a most loving and generous heart. It is a blessing that you two should come together. What a king and queen you will make, some day.”

  She has the dazzled look of a young woman very much in love.

  “And are there any signs?” I ask her quietly. “Any signs of a child? You do know how to tell if a baby is coming? Your mother or your duenna has talked to you?”

  “You need say nothing; my mother told me all about it,” she says with endearing dignity. “I know everything. And there are no signs yet. But I am sure that we will have a child. And I want to call her Mary.”

  “You should pray for a son,” I remind her. “A son and call him Henry.”

  “A son named Arthur, but first a girl called Mary,” she says, as if she is certain already. “Mary for