The Constant Princess Read online

  “What if there is no end to them?” I once asked my mother as we leaned over the sun-warmed walls of the fort and watched the dispatch of a new group of Moors leaving the city of Granada, their baggage loaded on mules, the women weeping, the men with their heads bowed low, the flag of St. James now flying over the red fort where the crescent had rippled for seven centuries, the bells ringing for Mass where once horns had blown for heretic prayers. “What if now we have defeated these, they just go back to Africa and in another year, they come again?”

  “That is why you have to be brave, my Princess of Wales,” my mother had answered. “That is why you have to be ready to fight them whenever they come, wherever they come. This is war till the end of the world, till the end of time when God finally ends it. It will take many shapes. It will never cease. They will come again and again, and you will have to be ready in Wales as we will be ready in Spain. I bore you to be a fighting princess as I am a Queen Militant. Your father and I placed you in England as María is placed in Portugal, as Juana is placed with the Hapsburgs in the Netherlands. You are there to defend the lands of your husbands and to hold them in alliance with us. It is your task to make England ready and keep it safe. Make sure that you never fail your country, as your sisters must never fail theirs, as I have never failed mine.”

  Catalina was awakened in the early hours of the morning by Arthur gently pushing between her legs. Resentfully, she let him do as he wanted, knowing that this was the way to get a son and make the alliance secure. Some princesses, like her mother, had to fight their way in open warfare to secure their kingdom. Most princesses, like her, had to endure painful ordeals in private. It did not take long, and then he fell asleep. Catalina lay as still as a frozen stone in order not to wake him again.

  He did not stir until daybreak, when his grooms of the bedchamber rapped brightly on the door. He rose up with a slightly embarrassed “Good morning” to her and went out. They greeted him with cheers and marched him in triumph to his own rooms. Catalina heard him say, vulgarly, boastfully, “Gentlemen, this night I have been in Spain,” and heard the yell of laughter that applauded his joke. Her ladies came in with her gown and heard the men’s laughter. Doña Elvira raised her thin eyebrows to heaven at the manners of these English.

  “I don’t know what your mother would say,” Doña Elvira remarked.

  “She would say that words count less than God’s will, and God’s will has been done,” Catalina said firmly.

  It was not like this for my mother. She fell in love with my father on sight and she married him with great joy. When I grew older I began to understand that they felt a real desire for each other—it was not just a powerful partnership of a great king and queen. My father might take other women as his lovers; but he needed his wife, he could not be happy without her. And my mother could not even see another man. She was blind to anybody but my father. Alone, of all the courts in Europe, the court of Spain had no tradition of love play, of flirtation, of adoration of the queen in the practice of courtly love. It would have been a waste of time. My mother simply did not notice other men and when they sighed for her and said her eyes were as blue as the skies she simply laughed and said, “What nonsense,” and that was an end to it.

  When my parents had to be apart they wrote every day, he would not move one step without telling her of it, and asking for her advice. When he was in danger she hardly slept.

  He could not have got through the Sierra Nevada if she had not been sending him men and digging teams to level the road for him. No one else could have driven a road through there. He would have trusted no one else to support him, to hold the kingdom together as he pushed forwards. She could have conquered the mountains for no one else; he was the only one that could have attracted her support. What looked like a remarkable unity of two calculating players was deceptive—it was their passion which they played out on the political stage. She was a great queen because that was how she could evoke his desire. He was a great general in order to match her. It was their love, their lust, which drove them; almost as much as God.

  We are a passionate family. When Isabel, my sister, now with God, came back from Portugal a widow she swore that she had loved her husband so much that she would never take another. She had been with him for only six months but she said that without him, life had no meaning. Juana, my second sister, is so in love with her husband, Philip, that she cannot bear to let him out of her sight. When she learns that he is interested in another woman, she swears that she will poison her rival—she is quite mad with love for him. And my brother…my darling brother, Juan…simply died of love. He and his beautiful wife, Margot, were so passionate, so besotted with each other that his health failed; he was dead within six months of their wedding. Is there anything more tragic than a young man dying six months into his marriage? I come from passionate stock—but what about me? Shall I ever fall in love?

  Not with this clumsy boy, for a certainty. My early liking for him has quite melted away. He is too shy to speak to me; he mumbles and pretends he cannot think of the words. He forced me to command in the bedroom, and I am ashamed that I had to be the one to make the first move. He makes me into a woman without shame, a woman of the marketplace when I want to be wooed like a lady in a romance. But if I had not invited him—what could he have done? I feel a fool now, and I blame him for my embarrassment. “In Spain,” indeed! He would have got no closer than the Indies if I had not showed him how to do it. Stupid puppy.

  When I first saw him I thought he was as beautiful as a knight from the romances, like a troubadour, like a poet. I thought I could be like a lady in a tower and he could sing beneath my window and persuade me to love him. But although he has the looks of a poet he doesn’t have the wit. I can never get more than two words out of him, and I begin to feel that I demean myself in trying to please him.

  Of course, I will never forget that it is my duty to endure this youth, this Arthur. My hope is always for a child, and my destiny is to keep England safe against the Moors. I shall do that; whatever else happens, I shall be Queen of England and protect my two countries: the Spain of my birth and the England of my marriage.

  LONDON, WINTER 1501

  Arthur and Catalina, standing stiffly side by side on the royal barge but not exchanging so much as one word, led a great fleet of gaily painted barges downriver to Baynard’s Castle, which would be their London home for the next weeks. It was a huge, rectangular palace of a house overlooking the river, with gardens running down to the water’s edge. The mayor of London, the councilors, and all the court followed the royal barge and musicians played as the heirs to the throne took up residence in the heart of the City.

  Catalina noticed that the Scots envoys were much in attendance, negotiating the marriage of her new sister-in-law, Princess Margaret. King Henry was using his children as pawns in his game for power, as every king must do. Arthur had made the vital link with Spain, Margaret, though only twelve years old, would make Scotland into a friend, rather than the enemy that it had been for generations. Princess Mary also would be married, when her time came, either to the greatest enemy that the country faced or the greatest friend that they hoped to keep. Catalina was glad that she had known from childhood that she should be the next Queen of England. There had been no changes of policy and no shifting alliances. She had been Queen of England-to-be almost from birth. It made the separation from her home and from her family so much easier.

  She noticed that Arthur was very restrained in his greeting when he met the Scots lords at dinner at the Palace of Westminster.

  “The Scots are our most dangerous enemies,” Edward Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, told Catalina in whispered Castilian as they stood at the back of the hall waiting for the company to take their seats. “The king and the prince hope that this marriage will make them our friend forever, will bind the Scots to us. But it is hard for any of us to forget how they have constantly harried us. We have all been brought up to know that we have a most con