The Constant Princess Read online

  “No one doubts your bravery, and my fleet needs an admiral,” she told him. “I want the same admiral for many years. I need my champion at the next joust. I need my partner to dance with me. You come home safely, Edward Howard!”

  The king was uneasy at his friend Edward Howard setting sail against the Scots, even against a Scots privateer. He had hoped that his father’s alliance with Scotland, enforced by the marriage of the English princess, would have guaranteed peace.

  “James is such a hypocrite to promise peace and marry Margaret on one hand and license these raids on the other! I shall write to Margaret and tell her to warn her husband that we cannot accept raids on our shipping. They should keep to their borders too.”

  “Perhaps he will not listen to her,” Katherine pointed out.

  “She can’t be blamed for that,” he said quickly. “She should never have been married to him. She was too young, and he was too set in his ways, and he is a man for war. But she will bring peace if she can. She knows it was my father’s wish, she knows that we have to live in peace. We are kin now, we are neighbors.”

  But the border lords, the Percys and the Nevilles, reported that the Scots had recently become more daring in their raids on the northern lands. Unquestionably, James was spoiling for war; undoubtedly he meant to take land in Northumberland as his own. Any day now he could march south, take Berwick, and continue on to Newcastle.

  “How dare he?” Henry demanded. “How dare he just march in and take our goods and disturb our people? Does he not know that I could raise an army and take them against him tomorrow?”

  “It would be a hard campaign,” Katherine remarked, thinking of the wild land of the border and the long march to get to it. The Scotsmen would have everything to fight for, with the rich southern lands spread before them, and English soldiers never wanted to fight when they were far from their villages.

  “It would be easy,” Henry contradicted her. “Everyone knows that the Scots can’t keep an army in the field. They are nothing more than a raiding party. If I took out a great English army, properly armed and supplied and ordered, I would make an end of them in a day!”

  “Of course you would.” Katherine smiled. “But don’t forget, we have to muster our army to fight against the French. You would far rather win your spurs against the French on a field of chivalry which will go down in history than in some dirty border quarrel.”

  Katherine spoke to Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, Edward Howard’s father, at the end of the Privy Council meeting as the men came out of the king’s rooms.

  “My Lord? Have you heard from Edward? I miss my young chevalier.”

  The old man beamed at her. “We had a report this day. The king will tell you himself. He knew you would be pleased that your favorite has had a victory.”

  “He has?”

  “He has captured the pirate Andrew Barton with two of his ships.” His pride shone through his pretense of modesty. “He has only done his duty,” he said. “He has only done as any Howard boy should do.”

  “He is a hero!” Katherine said enthusiastically. “England needs great sailors as much as we need soldiers. The future for Christendom is in dominating the seas. We need to rule the seas as the Saracens rule the deserts. We have to drive pirates from the seas and make English ships a constant presence. And what else? Is he on his way home?”

  “He will bring his ships into London and the pirate in chains with him. We’ll try him and hang him on the quayside. But King James won’t like it.”

  “Do you think the Scots king means war?” Katherine asked him bluntly. “Would he go to war over such a cause as this? Is the country in danger?”

  “This is the worst danger to the peace of the kingdom of any in my lifetime,” the older man said honestly. “We have subdued the Welsh and brought peace to our borders in the west; now we will have to put down the Scots. After them we will have to settle the Irish.”

  “They are a separate country, with their own kings and laws,” Katherine demurred.

  “So were the Welsh till we defeated them,” he pointed out. “This is too small a land for three kingdoms. The Scots will have to be yoked into our service.”

  “Perhaps we could offer them a prince,” Katherine thought aloud. “As you did to the Welsh. The second son could be the Prince of Scotland as the firstborn is the Prince of Wales, for a kingdom united under the English king.”

  He was struck with her idea. “That’s right,” he said. “That would be the way to do it. Hit them hard and then offer them a peace with honor. Otherwise we will have them snapping at our heels forever.”

  “The king thinks that their army would be small and easily defeated,” Katherine remarked.

  Howard choked back a laugh. “His Grace has never been to Scotland,” he said. “He has never even been to war yet. The Scots are a formidable enemy, whether in pitched battle or a passing raid. They are a worse enemy than any of his fancy French cavalry. They have no laws of chivalry, they fight to win and they fight to the death. We will need to send a powerful force under a skilled commander.”

  “Could you do it?” Katherine asked.

  “I could try,” he replied honestly. “I am the best weapon to your hand at the moment, Your Grace.”

  “Could the king do it?” she asked quietly.

  He smiled at her. “He’s a young man,” he said. “He lacks nothing for courage—no one who has seen him in a joust could doubt his courage. And he is skilled on his horse. But a war is not a joust, and he does not know that yet. He needs to ride out at the head of a bold army and be seasoned in a few battles before he fights the greatest war of his life—the war for his very kingdom. You don’t put a colt into a cavalry charge on his first outing. He has to learn. The king, even though a king, will have to learn.”

  “He was taught nothing of warfare,” she said. “He has not had to study other battles. He knows nothing about observing the lie of the land and positioning a force. He knows nothing about supplies and keeping an army on the move. His father taught him nothing.”

  “His father knew next to nothing,” the earl said quietly, for her ears only. “His first battle was Bosworth and he won that partly by luck and partly by the allies his mother put in the field for him. He was courageous enough, but no general.”

  “But why did he not ensure that Henry was taught the art of warfare?” asked Ferdinand’s daughter, who had been raised in a camp and seen a campaign plan before she had learned how to sew.

  “Who would have thought he would need to know?” the old earl asked her. “We all thought it would be Arthur.”

  She made sure that her face did not betray the sudden pang of grief at the unexpected mention of his name. “Of course,” she said. “Of course you did. I forgot. Of course you did.”

  “Now, he would have been a great commander. He was interested in the waging of war. He read. He studied. He talked to his father, he pestered me. He was well aware of the danger of the Scots, he had a great sense of how to command men. He used to ask me about the land on the border, where the castles were placed, how the land fell. He could have led an army against the Scots with some hopes of success. Young Henry will be a great king when he has learned tactics, but Arthur knew it all. It was in his blood.”

  Katherine did not even allow herself the pleasure of speaking of him. “Perhaps,” was all she said. “But in the meantime, what can we do to limit the raids of the Scots? Should the border lords be reinforced?”

  “Yes, but it is a long border, and hard to keep. King James does not fear an English army led by the king. He does not fear the border lords.”

  “Why does he not fear us?”

  He shrugged, too much of a courtier to say any betraying word. “Well, James is an old warrior; he has been spoiling for a fight for two generations now.”

  “Who could make James fear us and keep him in Scotland while we reinforce the border and get ready for war? What would make James delay and buy us time?”