The King's Curse Read online

  I know that this is a lie. Lady Margaret wants to send her home.

  “The marriage between Prince Arthur and the princess was consummated, was it not?” The grip on my arm tightens as if she would squeeze a confession from the marrow of my bones. We have reached the end of the room, but instead of turning to stroll back again through the crowd of petitioners, she nods to her liveried servants on the double doors to throw them open, and we pass through into her private rooms and the doors close behind us. We are alone; nobody can hear my answer but her.

  “I cannot say,” I say steadily, though I find I am frightened of her, here in this empty room with guards on the doors. “Your ladyship, I told you, my husband took the prince to her bedchamber; but she told me that he was not able.”

  “She said that. I know what she said.” There is a grating impatience in her voice, but she manages a smile. “But, my dear Margaret, what do you believe?”

  More than anything else I believe that this is going to cost me my post as lady-in-waiting and my son his education. I rack my brains to think of something I can say to satisfy her that will not betray the princess. She is waiting, hard-faced. She will be satisfied with nothing but the words she wants to hear. She is the most powerful woman in England and she will insist that I agree with her. Miserably, I whisper: “I believe Her Grace the Dowager Princess.”

  “She thinks that if she is a virgin untouched, we will marry her to Prince Harry,” My Lady says flatly. “Her parents asked for a dispensation from the Pope and told him the marriage was not consummated. He gave them a dispensation that leaves it deliberately unclear. It is typical of Isabella of Castile to get a document that can be read any way she wants. Even after death she tricks us. Apparently, her daughter is not to be challenged. She must not even be questioned. She thinks that she can walk into our family, walk into our house, walk into these very rooms—my rooms—and make them her own. She thinks to take the prince and everything away from me.”

  “I am sure Prince Harry will be well suited—”

  “Prince Harry will not choose his bride,” she declares. “I shall choose her. And I will not have that young woman as my daughter-in-law. Not after this lie. Not after her attempt to seduce the king in the very first days of his grief. She thinks that because she is a princess born and bred she can take everything that I have won, everything that God has given to me: my son, my grandson, my position, my whole life’s work. I spent the best years of my life bringing my son to England, keeping him safe. I married to give him allies, I befriended people that I despised for his sake. I stooped to . . .” She breaks off as if she does not want to remember what she stooped to do. “But she thinks she can walk in here with a lie in her mouth because she is a princess of royal blood. She thinks she is entitled. But I say that she is not.”

  I realize that when Katherine marries Prince Harry, she will precede My Lady in every procession, every time they go to Mass or to dinner. She will have these very rooms, she will command the best gowns from the royal wardrobes, she will outrank the king’s mother, and if the court follows the tastes of the king—and courts always do—then they will empty out from My Lady’s rooms and flock to the pretty young princess. Princess Katherine will not step back and yield to My Lady as my cousin the queen yielded to her. Katherine has grit. If she ever becomes Princess of Wales, then she will make My Lady give her precedence, everywhere, in everything. She will wrest her dues from this possessive old woman and repay her enmity.

  “I have told you everything I know,” I say quietly. “I am yours to command, My Lady.”

  She turns her back on me, as if she does not care to see my white face and my pleading eyes. “You have a choice,” she says shortly. “You can be my lady-in-waiting and your son can be a companion to Prince Harry. You will be generously paid and there will be gifts and grants of land. Or you can support the dowager princess in her monstrous lie and her disgusting ambition. It is your choice. But if you collude in tempting the Prince of Wales, our prince, our only prince, into marriage with that young woman, then you will never come to court for as long as I live.”

  I wait until dusk before I go to visit Princess Katherine. I go on foot with one lady companion and a manservant, and my steward leads the way with a cudgel in his hand. The beggars are everywhere in London nowadays, desperate men driven from their farms by higher rents, made homeless when they could not pay fines, made paupers by the king’s taxes. Some of my own tenants may be sleeping in the doorways of the London churches and begging for food.

  I walk with my hood pulled over the betraying bronze of my hair, and I look all around me in case we are being followed. There are more spies in England than there have ever been before, as everyone is paid to report on their neighbor, and I would rather that My Lady did not know that I am visiting the home of the princess that she calls “that young woman.”

  There is no light burning at her doorway, and it takes a long time for anyone to respond to the quiet tap that my steward makes on the double wooden doors. There is no guard to open them but only a page boy who leads us across the cold great hall and knocks on the door of what used to be the grand presence chamber.

  One of Katherine’s remaining Spanish ladies peeps around the door and, seeing me, straightens up, brushes down her gown, sweeps a curtsey, and leads me through the echoing presence chamber and into the privy chamber where a small group of ladies huddle around a mean fire.

  Katherine recognizes me as soon as I put back my hood, jumps up with a cry, and runs towards me. I am about to curtsey but she flings herself into my arms and hugs me, kisses me on one cheek and then the other, leans back to study my face, and then hugs me again.

  “I have been thinking and thinking of you. I was so sorry when I heard of your loss. You will have had my letters? I was so sorry for you, and for the children. And for the new baby! A boy, God bless him! Is he thriving? And you? Could you get the price of horseshoes down?”

  She draws me towards the light of the single sconce of wax candles, so that she can look into my face.

  “Santa Maria! But you are so thin, and my dear, you look so weary.”

  She turns and shoos away her ladies from the fireside seats. “Go. All of you. Go to your bedrooms. Go to bed. Lady Margaret and I will talk alone.”

  “To their bedrooms?” I query.

  “There’s not enough firewood for a fire anywhere but here and the kitchen,” she says simply. “And they’re all too grand to sit in the kitchen. So if they don’t sit here, they have to go to bed to keep warm.”

  I look at her in disbelief. “They are keeping you so short of money that you cannot have a fire in the bedrooms?”

  “As you see,” she says grimly.

  “I have come from Westminster,” I say, taking a stool beside her chair. “I had a terrible conversation with My Lady.”

  She nods, as if this does not surprise her.

  “She questioned me as to your marriage with . . .” Even now, three years on, I cannot easily say his name. “With our prince,” I amend.

  “She would do. She is very much against me.”

  “Why, do you think?” I ask curiously.

  She slides her mischievous girl’s smile towards me. “Oh, was she such a loving mother-in-law to your cousin the queen?” she asks.

  “She was not. We were both terrified of her,” I admit.

  “She’s not a woman who enjoys the company of women,” she remarks. “With her son a widower and her grandson unmarried, she’s mistress of the court. She doesn’t want a young woman coming in and being merry and loving and happy, making it a true court of learning and elegance and pleasure. She’s not even very kind to her granddaughter Princess Mary because she’s so very pretty. She’s always telling her that looks mean nothing and that she should strive for humility! She doesn’t like pretty girls, she doesn’t like rivals. If she lets Prince Harry marry at all, it will be to a young woman that she can command. She’ll marry him off to a child, someone who can’t e