Читать книгу Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1: The Constant Princess, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Boleyn Inheritance - Philippa Gregory - Страница 17

The winter sun was low and red over the rounded hills as they rattled through the great gate that pierced the stone wall around Ludlow. Arthur, who had been riding beside the litter, shouted to Catalina over the noise of the hooves on the cobbles. ‘This is Ludlow, at last!’

Ahead of them the men-at-arms shouted: ‘Make way for Arthur! Prince of Wales!’ and the doors banged open and people tumbled out of their houses to see the procession go by.

Catalina saw a town as pretty as a tapestry. The timbered second storeys of the crowded buildings overhung cobbled streets with prosperous little shops and working yards tucked cosily underneath them on the ground floor. The shopkeepers’ wives jumped up from their stools set outside the shops to wave to her and Catalina smiled, and waved back. From the upper storeys the glovers’ girls and shoemakers’ apprentices, the goldsmiths’ boys and the spinsters leaned out and called her name. Catalina laughed, and caught her breath as one young lad looked ready to overbalance but was hauled back in by his cheering mates.

They passed a great bull ring with a dark-timbered inn, as the church bells of the half-dozen religious houses, college, chapels and hospital of Ludlow started to peal their bells to welcome the prince and his bride home.

Catalina leaned forwards to see her castle, and noted the unassailable march of the outer bailey. The gate was flung open, they went in, and found the greatest men of the town, the mayor, the church elders, the leaders of the wealthy trades guilds, assembled to greet them.

Arthur pulled up his horse and listened politely to a long speech in Welsh and then in English.

‘When do we eat?’ Catalina whispered to him in Latin and saw his mouth quiver as he held back a smile.

‘When do we go to bed?’ she breathed, and had the satisfaction of seeing his hand tremble on the rein with desire. She gave a little giggle and ducked back into the litter until finally the interminable speeches of welcome were finished and the royal party could ride on through the great gate of the castle to the inner bailey.

It was a neat castle, as sound as any border castle in Spain. The curtain wall marched around the inner bailey high and strong, made in a curious rosy-coloured stone that made the powerful walls more warm and domestic.

Catalina’s eye, sharpened by her training, looked from the thick walls to the well in the outer bailey, the well in the inner bailey, took in how one defensible area led to another, thought that a siege could be held off for years. But it was small, it was like a toy castle, something her father would build to protect a river crossing or a vulnerable road. Something a very minor lord of Spain would be proud to have as his home.

‘Is this it?’ she asked blankly, thinking of the city that was housed inside the walls of her home, of the gardens and the terraces, of the hill and the views, of the teeming life of the town centre, all inside defended walls. Of the long hike for the guards: if they went all around the battlements they would be gone for more than an hour. At Ludlow a sentry would complete the circle in minutes. ‘Is this it?’

At once he was aghast. ‘Did you expect more? What were you expecting?’

She would have caressed his anxious face, if there had not been hundreds of people watching. She made herself keep her hands still. ‘Oh, I was foolish. I was thinking of Richmond.’ Nothing in the world would have made her say that she was thinking of the Alhambra.

He smiled, reassured. ‘Oh, my love. Richmond is new-built, my father’s great pride and joy. London is one of the greatest cities of Christendom, and the palace matches its size. But Ludlow is only a town, a great town in the Marches, for sure, but a town. But it is wealthy, you will see, and the hunting is good and the people are welcoming. You will be happy here.’

‘I am sure of it,’ said Catalina, smiling at him, putting aside the thought of a palace built for beauty, only for beauty, where the builders had thought firstly where the light would fall and what reflections it would make in still pools of marble.

She looked around her and saw, in the centre of the inner bailey, a curious circular building like a squat tower.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, struggling out of the litter as Arthur held her hand.

He glanced over his shoulder. ‘It’s our round chapel,’ he said negligently.

‘A round chapel?’

‘Yes, like in Jerusalem.’

At once she recognised with delight the traditional shape of the mosque – designed and built in the round so that no worshipper was better placed than any others, because Allah is praised by the poor man as well as the rich. ‘It’s lovely.’

Arthur glanced at her in surprise. To him it was only a round tower built with the pretty plum-coloured local stone, but he saw that it glowed in the afternoon light, and radiated a sense of peace.

‘Yes,’ he said, hardly noticing it. ‘Now this,’ he indicated the great building facing them, with a handsome flight of steps up to the open door, ‘this is the great hall. To the left are the council chambers of Wales and, above them, my rooms. To the right are the guest bedrooms and chambers for the warden of the castle and his lady: Sir Richard and Lady Margaret Pole. Your rooms are above, on the top floor.’

He saw her swift reaction. ‘She is here now?’

‘She is away from the castle at the moment.’

She nodded. ‘There are buildings behind the great hall?’

‘No. It is set into the outer wall. This is all of it.’

Catalina schooled herself to keep her face smiling and pleasant.

‘We have more guest rooms in the outer bailey,’ he said defensively. ‘And we have a lodge house, as well. It is a busy place, merry. You will like it.’

‘I am sure I will,’ she smiled. ‘And which are my rooms?’

He pointed to the highest windows. ‘See up there? On the right-hand side, matching mine, but on the opposite side of the hall.’

She looked a little daunted. ‘But how will you get to my rooms?’ she asked quietly.

He took her hand and led her, smiling to his right and to his left, towards the grand stone stairs to the double doors of the great hall. There was a ripple of applause and their companions fell in behind them. ‘As My Lady the King’s Mother commanded me, four times a month I shall come to your room in a formal procession through the great hall,’ he said. He led her up the steps.

‘Oh.’ She was dashed.

He smiled down at her. ‘And all the other nights I shall come to you along the battlements,’ he whispered. ‘There is a private door that goes from your rooms to the battlements that run all around the castle. My rooms go on to them too. You can walk from your rooms to mine whenever you wish and nobody will know whether we are together or not. They will not even know whose room we are in.’

He loved how her face lit up. ‘We can be together, whenever we want?’

‘We will be happy here.’

Yes I will, I will be happy here. I will not mourn like a Persian for the beautiful courts of his home and declare that there is nowhere else fit for life. I will not say that these mountains are a desert without oases like a Berber longing for his birthright. I will accustom myself to Ludlow, and I will learn to live here, on the border, and later in England. My mother is not just a queen, she is a soldier, and she raised me to know my duty and to do it. It is my duty to learn to be happy here and to live here without complaining.

I may never wear armour as she did, I may never fight for my country, as she did; but there are many ways to serve a kingdom, and to be a merry, honest, constant queen is one of them. If God does not call me to arms, He may call me to serve as a lawgiver, as a bringer of justice. Whether I defend my people by fighting for them against an enemy or by fighting for their freedom in the law, I shall be their queen, heart and soul, Queen of England.

It was night time, past midnight. Catalina glowed in the firelight. They were in bed, sleepy, but too desirous of each other for sleep.

‘Tell me a story.’

‘I have told you dozens of stories.’

‘Tell me another. Tell me the one about Boabdil giving up the Alhambra Palace with the golden keys on a silk cushion and going away crying.’

‘You know that one. I told it to you last night.’

‘Then tell me the story about Yarfa and his horse that gnashed its teeth at Christians.’

‘You are a child. And his name was Yarfe.’

‘But you saw him killed?’

‘I was there; but I didn’t see him actually die.’

‘How could you not watch it?’

‘Well, partly because I was praying as my mother ordered me to, and because I was a girl and not a bloodthirsty, monstrous boy.’

Arthur tossed an embroidered cushion at her head. She caught it and threw it back at him.

‘Well, tell me about your mother pawning her jewels to pay for the crusade.’

She laughed again and shook her head, making her auburn hair swing this way and that. ‘I shall tell you about my home,’ she offered.

‘All right.’ He gathered the purple blanket around them both and waited.

‘When you come through the first door to the Alhambra it looks like a little room. Your father would not stoop to enter a palace like that.’

‘It’s not grand?’

‘It’s the size of a little merchant’s hall in the town here. It is a good hall for a small house in Ludlow, nothing more.’

‘And then?’

‘And then you go into the courtyard and from there into the golden chamber.’

‘A little better?’

‘It is filled with colour, but still it is not much bigger. The walls are bright with coloured tiles and gold leaf and there is a high balcony, but it is still only a little space.’

‘And then, where shall we go today?’

‘Today we shall turn right and go into the Court of the Myrtles.’

He closed his eyes, trying to remember her descriptions. ‘A courtyard in the shape of a rectangle, surrounded by high buildings of gold.’

‘With a huge, dark wooden doorway framed with beautiful tiles at the far end.’

‘And a lake, a lake of a simple rectangle shape, and on either side of the water, a hedge of sweet-scented myrtle trees.’

‘Not a hedge like you have,’ she demurred, thinking of the ragged edges of the Welsh fields in their struggle of thorn and weed.

‘Like what, then?’ he asked, opening his eyes.

‘A hedge like a wall,’ she said. ‘Cut straight and square, like a block of green marble, like a living green sweet-scented statue. And the gateway at the end is reflected back in the water, and the arch around it, and the building that it is set in. So that the whole thing is mirrored in ripples at your feet. And the walls are pierced with light screens of stucco, as airy as paper, like white on white embroidery. And the birds…’

‘The birds?’ he asked, surprised, for she had not told him of them before.

She paused while she thought of the word. ‘Apodes?’ she said in Latin.

‘Apodes? Swifts?’

She nodded. ‘They flow like a turbulent river of birds just above your head, round and round the narrow courtyard, screaming as they go, as fast as a cavalry charge, they go like the wind, round and round, as long as the sun shines on the water they go round, all day. And at night –’

‘At night?’

She made a little gesture with her hands, like an enchantress. ‘At night they disappear, you never see them settle or nest. They just disappear – they set with the sun, but at dawn they are there again, like a river, like a flood.’ She paused. ‘It is hard to describe,’ she said in a small voice. ‘But I see it all the time.’

‘You miss it,’ he said flatly. ‘However happy I may make you, you will always miss it.’

She made a little gesture. ‘Of course. It is to be expected. But I never forget who I am. Who I was born to be.’

Arthur waited.

She smiled at him, her face was warmed by her smile, her blue eyes shining. ‘The Princess of Wales,’ she said. ‘From my childhood I knew it. They always called me the Princess of Wales. And so Queen of England, as destined by God. Catalina, Infanta of Spain, Princess of Wales.’

He smiled in reply and drew her closer to him, they lay back together, her head on his shoulder, her dark red hair a veil across his chest.

‘I knew I would marry you almost from the moment I was born,’ he said reflectively. ‘I can’t remember a time when I was not betrothed to you. I can’t remember a time when I was not writing letters to you and taking them to my tutor for correction.’

‘Lucky that I please you, now I am here.’

He put his finger under her chin and turned her face up towards him for a kiss. ‘Even luckier, that I please you,’ he said.

‘I would have been a good wife anyway,’ she insisted. ‘Even without this…’

He pulled her hand down beneath the silky sheets to touch him where he was growing big again.

‘Without this, you mean?’ he teased.

‘Without this…joy,’ she said and closed her eyes and lay back, waiting for his touch.

Their servants woke them at dawn and Arthur was ceremonially escorted from her bed. They saw each other again at Mass but they were seated at opposite sides of the round chapel, each with their own household, and could not speak.

The Mass should be the most important moment of my day, and it should bring me comfort – I know that. But I always feel lonely during Mass. I do pray to God and thank Him for His especial care of me, but just being in this chapel – shaped like a tiny mosque – reminds me so much of my mother. The smell of incense is as evocative of her as if it were her perfume, I cannot believe that I am not kneeling beside her as I have done four times a day for almost every day of my life. When I say ‘Hail Mary, full of grace’ it is my mother’s round, smiling, determined face that I see. And when I pray for courage to do my duty in this strange land with these dour, undemonstrative people, it is my mother’s strength that I need.

I should give thanks for Arthur but I dare not even think of him when I am on my knees to God. I cannot think of him without the sin of desire. The very image of him in my mind is a deep secret, a pagan pleasure. I am certain that this is not the holy joy of matrimony. Such intense pleasure must be a sin. Such dark, deep desire and satisfaction cannot be the pure conception of a little prince that is the whole point and purpose of this marriage. We were put to bed by an archbishop but our passionate coupling is as animal as a pair of sun-warmed snakes twisted all around in their pleasure. I keep my joy in Arthur a secret from everyone, even from God.

I could not confide in anyone, even if I wanted to. We are expressly forbidden from being together as we wish. His grandmother, My Lady the King’s Mother, has ordered this, as she orders everything, even everything here in the Welsh Marches. She has said that he should come to my room once a week every week, except for the time of my courses, he should arrive before ten of the clock and leave by six. We obey her of course, everybody obeys her. Once a week, as she has commanded, he comes through the great hall, like a young man reluctantly obedient, and in the morning he leaves me in silence and goes quietly away as a young man who has done his duty, not one that has been awake all night in breathless delight. He never boasts of pleasure, when they come to fetch him from my chamber he says nothing, nobody knows the joy we take in each other’s passion. No-one will ever know that we are together every night. We meet on the battlements which run from his rooms to mine at the very top of the castle, grey-blue sky arching above us, and we consort like lovers in secret, concealed by the night, we go to my room, or to his, and we make a private world together, filled with hidden joy.

Even in this crowded small castle filled with busybodies and the king’s mother’s spies, nobody knows that we are together, and nobody knows how much we are in love.

After Mass the royal pair went to break their fast in their separate rooms, though they would rather have been together. Ludlow Castle was a small reproduction of the formality of the king’s court. The king’s mother had commanded that after breakfast Arthur must work with his tutor at his books or at sports as the weather allowed; and Catalina must work with her tutor, sew, or read, or walk in the garden.

‘A garden!’ Catalina whispered under her breath in the little patch of green with the sodden turf bench on one side of a thin border, set in the corner of the castle walls. ‘I wonder if she has ever seen a real garden?’

In the afternoon they might ride out together to hunt in the woods around the castle. It was a rich countryside, the river fast-flowing through a wide valley with old thick woodlands on the sides of the hills. Catalina thought she would grow to love the pasture lands around the River Teme and, on the horizon, the way the darkness of the hills gave way to the sky. But in the mid-winter weather it was a landscape of grey and white, only the frost or the snow bringing brightness to the blackness of the cold woods. The weather was often too bad for the princess to go out at all. She hated the damp fog or when it drizzled with icy sleet. Arthur often rode alone.

‘Even if I stayed behind I would not be allowed to be with you,’ he said mournfully. ‘My grandmother would have set me something else to do.’

‘So go!’ she said, smiling, though it seemed a long, long time until dinner and she had nothing to do but to wait for the hunt to come home.

They went out into the town once a week, to go to St Laurence’s Church for Mass, or to visit the little chapel by the castle wall, to attend a dinner organised by one of the great guilds, or to see a cockfight, a bull baiting, or players. Catalina was impressed by the neat prettiness of the town; the place had escaped the violence of the wars between York and Lancaster that had finally been ended by Henry Tudor.

‘Peace is everything to a kingdom,’ she observed to Arthur.

‘The only thing that can threaten us now is the Scots,’ he said. ‘The Yorkist line are my forebears, the Lancasters too, so the rivalry ends with me. All we have to do is keep the north safe.’

‘And your father thinks he has done that with Princess Margaret’s marriage?’

‘Pray God he is right, but they are a faithless lot. When I am king I shall keep the border strong. You shall advise me, we’ll go out together and make sure the border castles are repaired.’

‘I shall like that,’ she said.

‘Of course, you spent your childhood with an army fighting for border lands, you would know better than I what to look for.’

She smiled. ‘I am glad it is a skill of mine that you can use. My father always complained that my mother was making Amazons, not princesses.’

They dined together at dusk, and thankfully, dusk came very early on those cold winter nights. At last they could be close, seated side by side at the high table looking down the hall of the castle, the great hearth heaped with logs on the side wall. Arthur always put Catalina on his left, closest to the fire, and she wore a cloak lined with fur, and had layer upon layer of linen shifts under her ornate gown. Even so, she was still cold when she came down the icy stairs from her warm rooms to the smoky hall. Her Spanish ladies, Maria de Salinas, her duenna Dona Elvira and a few others, were seated at one table, the English ladies who were supposed to be her companions at another and her retinue of Spanish servants were seated at another. The great lords of Arthur’s council, his chamberlain, Sir Richard Pole, warden of the castle, Bishop William Smith of Lincoln, his physician, Dr Bereworth, his treasurer Sir Henry Vernon, the steward of his household, Sir Richard Croft, his groom of the privy chamber, Sir William Thomas of Carmarthen, and all the leading men of the Principality, were seated in the body of the hall. At the back and in the gallery every nosy parker, every busybody in Wales could pile in to see the Spanish princess take her dinner, and speculate if she pleased the young prince or no.

There was no way to tell. Most of them thought that he had failed to bed her. For see! The Infanta sat like a stiff little doll and rarely leaned towards her young husband. The Prince of Wales spoke to her as if by rote, every ten minutes. They were little patterns of good behaviour, and they scarcely even looked at each other. The gossips said that he went to her rooms, as ordered, but only once a week and never of his own choice. Perhaps the young couple did not please each other. They were young, perhaps too young for marriage.

No-one could tell that Catalina’s hands were gripped tight in her lap to stop herself from touching her husband, nor that every half-hour or so he glanced at her, apparently indifferent, and whispered so low that only she could hear: ‘I want you right now.’

After dinner there would be dancing and perhaps mummers or a storyteller, a Welsh bard or strolling players to watch. Sometimes the poets would come in from the high hills and tell old, strange tales in their own tongue that Arthur could follow only with difficulty, but which he would try to translate for Catalina.

‘When the long yellow summer comes and victory comes to us,And the spreading of the sails of Brittany,And when the heat comes and when the fever is kindledThere are portents that victory will be given to us.’

‘What is that about?’ she asked him.

‘The long yellow summer is when my father decided to invade from Brittany. His road took him to Bosworth and victory.’

She nodded.

‘It was hot, that year, and the troops came with the Sweat, a new disease, which now curses England as it does Europe with the heat of every summer.’

She nodded again. A new poet came forwards, played a chord on his harp and sang.

‘And this?’

‘It’s about a red dragon that flies over the Principality,’ he said. ‘It kills the boar.’

‘What does it mean?’ Catalina asked.

‘The dragon is the Tudors: us,’ he said. ‘You’ll have seen the red dragon on our standard. The boar is the usurper, Richard. It’s a compliment to my father, based on an old tale. All their songs are ancient songs. They probably sang them in the ark.’ He grinned. ‘Songs of Noah.’

‘Do they give you Tudors credit for surviving the flood? Was Noah a Tudor?’

‘Probably. My grandmother would take credit for the Garden of Eden itself,’ he returned. ‘This is the Welsh border, we come from Owen ap Tudor, from Glendower, we are happy to take the credit for everything.’

As Arthur predicted, when the fire burned low they would sing the old Welsh songs of magical doings in dark woods that no man could know. And they would tell of battles and glorious victories won by skill and courage. In their strange tongue they would tell stories of Arthur and Camelot, and Merlin the prince, and Guinevere: the queen who betrayed her husband for a guilty love.

‘I should die if you took a lover,’ he whispered to her as a page shielded them from the hall and poured wine.

‘I can never even see anyone else when you are here,’ she assured him. ‘All I see is you.’

Every evening there was music or some entertainment for the Ludlow court. The king’s mother had ruled that the prince should keep a merry house – it was a reward for the loyalty of Wales that had put her son Henry Tudor on an uncertain throne. Her grandson must pay the men who had come out of the hills to fight for the Tudors and remind them that he was a Welsh prince, and he would go on counting on their support to rule the English, whom no-one could count on at all. The Welsh must join with England and together, the two of them could keep out the Scots, and manage the Irish.

When the musicians played the slow formal dances of Spain, Catalina would dance with one of her ladies, conscious of Arthur’s gaze on her, keeping her face prim, like a little mummer’s mask of respectability; though she longed to twirl around and swing her hips like a woman in the seraglio, like a Moorish slave girl dancing for a sultan. But My Lady the King’s Mother’s spies watched everything, even in Ludlow, and would be quick to report any indiscreet behaviour by the young princess. Sometimes, Catalina would slide a glance at her husband and see his eyes on her, his look that of a man in love. She would snap her fingers as if part of the dance, but in fact to warn him that he was staring at her in a way that his grandmother would not like; and he would turn aside and speak to someone, tearing his gaze away from her.

Even after the music was over and the entertainers gone away, the young couple could not be alone. There were always men who sought council with Arthur, who wanted favours or land or influence, and they would approach him and talk low-voiced, in English, which Catalina did not yet fully understand, or in Welsh, which she thought no-one could ever understand. The rule of law barely ran in the border lands, each landowner was like a war-lord in his own domain. Deeper in the mountains there were people who still thought that Richard was on the throne, who knew nothing of the changed world, who spoke no English, who obeyed no laws at all.

Arthur argued, and praised, and suggested that feuds should be forgiven, that trespasses should be made good, that the proud Welsh chieftains should work together to make their land as prosperous as their neighbour England, instead of wasting their time in envy. The valleys and coastal lands were dominated by a dozen petty lords, and in the high hills the men ran in clans like wild tribes. Slowly, Arthur was determined to make the law run throughout the land.

‘Every man has to know that the law is greater than his lord,’ Catalina said. ‘That is what the Moors did in Spain, and my mother and father followed them. The Moors did not trouble themselves to change people’s religions nor their language, they just brought peace and prosperity and imposed the rule of law.’

‘Half of my lords would think that was heresy,’ he teased her. ‘And your mother and father are now imposing their religion, they have driven out the Jews already, the Moors will be next.’

She frowned. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘And there is much suffering. But their intention was to allow people to practise their own religion. When they won Granada that was their promise.’

‘D’you not think that to make one country, the people must always be of one faith?’ he asked.

‘Heretics can live like that,’ she said decidedly. ‘In al Andalus the Moors and Christians and Jews lived in peace and friendship alongside one another. But if you are a Christian king, it is your duty to bring your subjects to God.’

Catalina would watch Arthur as he talked with one man and then another, and then, at a sign from Dona Elvira, she would curtsey to her husband and withdraw from the hall. She would read her evening prayers, change into her robe for the night, sit with her ladies, go to her bedroom and wait, and wait and wait.

‘You can go, I shall sleep alone tonight,’ she said to Dona Elvira.

‘Again?’ The duenna frowned. ‘You have not had a bed companion since we came to the castle. What if you wake in the night and need some service?’

‘I sleep better with no-one else in the room,’ Catalina would say. ‘You can leave me now.’

The duenna and the ladies would bid her goodnight and leave, the maids would come and unlace her bodice, unpin her headdress, untie her shoes and pull off her stockings. They would hold out her warmed linen nightgown and she would ask for her cape and say she would sit by the fire for a few moments, and then send them away.

In the silence, as the castle settled for the night, she would wait for him. Then, at last she would hear the quiet sound of his footfall at the outer door of her room, where it opened on to the battlements that ran between his tower and hers. She would fly to the door and unbolt it, he would be pink-cheeked from the cold, his cape thrown over his own nightshirt as he tumbled in, the cold wind blowing in with him as she threw herself into his arms.

‘Tell me a story.’

‘Which story tonight?’

‘Tell me about your family.’

‘Shall I tell you about my mother when she was a girl?’

‘Oh yes. Was she a princess of Castile like you?’

Catalina shook her head. ‘No, not at all. She was not protected or safe. She lived in the court of her brother, her father was dead, and her brother did not love her as he should. He knew that she was his only true heir. He favoured his daughter; but everyone knew that she was a bastard, palmed off on him by his queen. She was even nicknamed by the name of the queen’s lover. They called her La Beltraneja after her father. Can you think of anything more shameful?’

Arthur obediently shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

‘My mother was all but a prisoner at her brother’s court; the queen hated her, of course, the courtiers were unfriendly and her brother was plotting to disinherit her. Even their own mother could not make him see reason.’

‘Why not?’ he asked, and then caught her hand when he saw the shadow cross her face. ‘Ah, love, I am sorry. What is the matter?’

‘Her mother was sick,’ she said. ‘Sick with sadness. I don’t understand quite why, or why it was so very bad. But she could hardly speak or move. She could only cry.’

‘So your mother had no protector?’

‘No, and then the king her brother ordered that she should be betrothed to Don Pedro Giron.’ She sat up a little and clasped her hands around her knees. ‘They said he had sold his soul to the devil, a most wicked man. My mother swore that she would offer her soul to God and God would save her, a virgin, from such a fate. She said that surely no merciful God would take a girl like her, a princess, who had survived long years in one of the worst courts of Europe, and then throw her at the end into the arms of a man who wanted her ruin, who desired her only because she was young and untouched, who wanted to despoil her?’

Arthur hid a grin at the romantic rhythm of the story. ‘You do this awfully well,’ he said. ‘I hope it ends happily.’

Catalina raised her hand like a troubadour calling for silence. ‘Her greatest friend and lady-in-waiting Beatriz had taken up a knife and sworn that she would kill Don Pedro before he laid hands on Isabella; but my mother kneeled before her prie-dieu for three days and three nights and prayed without ceasing to be spared this rape.

‘He was on his journey towards her, he would arrive the very next day. He ate well and drank well, telling his companions that tomorrow he would be in the bed of the highest-born virgin of Castile.

‘But that very night he died.’ Catalina’s voice dropped to an awed whisper. ‘Died before he had finished his wine from dinner. Dropped dead as surely as if God had reached down from the heavens and pinched the life out of him as a good gardener pinches out a greenfly.’

‘Poison?’ asked Arthur, who knew something of the ways of determined monarchs, and who thought Isabella of Castile quite capable of murder.

‘God’s will,’ Catalina answered seriously. ‘Don Pedro found, as everyone else has found, that God’s will and my mother’s desires always run together. And if you knew God and my mother as I know them, you would know that their will is always done.’

He raised his glass and drank a toast to her. ‘Now that is a good story,’ he said. ‘I wish you could tell it in the hall.’

‘And it is all true,’ she reminded him. ‘I know it is. My mother told me it herself.’

‘So she fought for her throne too,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘First for her throne, and then to make the kingdom of Spain.’

He smiled. ‘For all that they tell us that we are of royal blood, we both come from a line of fighters. We have our thrones by conquest.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘I come from royal blood,’ she said. ‘My mother has her throne by right.’

‘Oh yes. But if your mother had not fought for her place in the world she would have been Dona whatever his name was –’

‘Giron.’

‘Giron. And you would have been born a nobody.’

Catalina shook her head. The idea was quite impossible for her to grasp. ‘I should have been the daughter of the sister of the king whatever happened. I should always have had royal blood in my veins.’

‘You would have been a nobody,’ he said bluntly. ‘A nobody with royal blood. And so would I if my father had not fought for his throne. We are both from families who claim their own.’

‘Yes,’ she conceded reluctantly.

‘We are both the children of parents who claim what rightfully belongs to others.’ He went further.

Her head came up at once. ‘They do not! At least my mother did not. She was the rightful heir.’

Arthur disagreed. ‘Her brother made his daughter his heir, he recognised her. Your mother had the throne by conquest. Just as my father won his.’

Her colour rose. ‘She did not,’ she insisted. ‘She is the rightful heir to the throne. All she did was defend her right from a pretender.’

‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘We are all pretenders until we win. When we win, we can rewrite the history and rewrite the family trees, and execute our rivals, or imprison them, until we can argue that there was always only one true heir: ourselves. But before then, we are one of many claimants. And not even always the best claimant with the strongest claim.’

She frowned. ‘What are you saying?’ she demanded. ‘Are you saying that I am not the true princess? That you are not the true heir to England?’

He took her hand. ‘No, no. Don’t be angry with me,’ he soothed her. ‘I am saying that we have and we hold what we claim. I am saying that we make our own inheritance. We claim what we want, we say that we are Prince of Wales, Queen of England. That we decide the name and the title we go by. Just like everyone else does.’

‘You are wrong,’ she said. ‘I was born Infanta of Spain and I will die Queen of England. It is not a matter of choice, it is my destiny.’

He took her hand and kissed it. He saw there was no point pursuing his belief that a man or a woman could make their own destiny with their own conviction. He might have his doubts; but with her the task was already done. She had complete conviction, her destiny was made. He had no doubt that she would indeed defend it to death. Her title, her pride, her sense of self were all one. ‘Katherine, Queen of England,’ he said, kissing her fingers, and saw her smile return.

I love him so deeply, I did not know that I could ever love anyone like this. I can feel myself growing in patience and wisdom, just through my love for him. I step back from irritability and impatience, I even bear my homesickness without complaint. I can feel myself becoming a better woman, a better wife, as I seek to please him and make him proud of me. I want him always to be glad that he married me. I want us always to be as happy as we are today. There are no words to describe him…there are no words.

A messenger came from the king’s court bringing the newlyweds some gifts: a pair of deer from the Windsor forest, a parcel of books for Catalina, letters from Elizabeth the queen, and orders from My Lady the King’s Mother who had heard, though no-one could imagine how, that the prince’s hunt had broken down some hedges, and who commanded Arthur to make sure that they were restored and the landowner compensated.

He brought the letter to Catalina’s room when he came at night. ‘How can she know everything?’ he demanded.

‘The man will have written to her,’ she said ruefully.

‘Why not come direct to me?’

‘Because he knows her? Is he her liege man?’

‘Could be,’ he said. ‘She has a network of alliances like spider threads across the country.’

‘You should go to see him,’ Catalina decided. ‘We could both go. We could take him a present, some meat or something, and pay what we owe.’

Arthur shook his head at the power of his grandmother. ‘Oh yes, we can do that. But how can she know everything?’

‘It’s how you rule,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it? You make sure that you know everything and that anyone with a trouble comes to you. Then they take the habit of obedience and you take the habit of command.’

He chuckled. ‘I can see I have married another Margaret Beaufort,’ he said. ‘God help me with another one in the family.’

Catalina smiled. ‘You should be warned,’ she admitted. ‘I am the daughter of a strong woman. Even my father does as he is bid by her.’

He put down the letter and gathered her to him. ‘I have longed for you all day,’ he said into the warm crook of her neck.

She opened the front of his nightshirt so she could lay her cheek against his sweet-smelling skin. ‘Oh, my love.’

With one accord they moved to the bed. ‘Oh, my love.’

‘Tell me a story.’

‘What shall I tell you tonight?’

‘Tell me about how your father and mother were married. Was it arranged for them, as it was for us?’

‘Oh no,’ she exclaimed. ‘Not at all. She was quite alone in the world, and though God had saved her from Don Pedro she was still not safe. She knew that her brother would marry her to anyone who would guarantee to keep her from inheriting his throne.

‘They were dark years for her, she said that when she appealed to her mother it was like talking to the dead. My grandmother was lost in a world of her own sorrow, she could do nothing to help her own daughter.

‘My mother’s cousin, her only hope, was the heir to the neighbouring kingdom: Ferdinand of Aragon. He came to her in disguise. Without any servants, without any soldiers, he rode through the night and came to the castle where she was struggling to survive. He had himself brought in, and threw off his hat and cape so she saw him, and knew him at once.’

Arthur was rapt. ‘Really?’

Catalina smiled. ‘Isn’t it like a romance? She told me that she loved him at once, fell in love on sight like a princess in a poem. He proposed marriage to her then and there, and she accepted him then and there. He fell in love with her that night, at first sight, which is something that no princess can expect. My mother, my father, were blessed by God. He moved them to love and their hearts followed their interests.’

‘God looks after the kings of Spain,’ Arthur remarked, half-joking.

She nodded. ‘Your father was right to seek our friendship. We are making our kingdom from al Andalus, the lands of the Moorish princes. We have Castile and Aragon, now we have Granada and we will have more. My father’s heart is set on Navarre, and he will not stop there. I know he is determined to have Naples. I don’t think he will be satisfied until all the south and western regions of France are ours. You will see. He has not made the borders he wants for Spain yet.’

‘They married in secret?’ he asked, still amazed at this royal couple who had taken their lives into their own hands and made their own destiny.

She looked slightly sheepish. ‘He told her he had a dispensation, but it was not properly signed. I am afraid that he tricked her.’

He frowned. ‘Your wonderful father lied to his saintly wife?’

She gave a little rueful smile. ‘Indeed, he will do anything to get his own way. You quickly learn it when you have dealings with him. He always thinks ahead, two, perhaps three, steps ahead. He knew my mother was devout and would not marry without the dispensation and ole! – there is a dispensation in her hand.’

‘But they put it right later?’

‘Yes, and though his father and her brother were angry, it was the right thing to do.’

‘How could it be the right thing to do? To defy your family? To disobey your own father? That’s a sin. It breaks a commandment. It is a cardinal sin. No Pope could bless such a marriage.’

‘It was God’s will,’ she said confidently. ‘None of them knew that it was God’s will. But my mother knew. She always knows what God wills.’

‘How can she be so sure? How could she be so sure then, when she was only a girl?’

She chuckled. ‘God and my mother have always thought alike.’

He laughed and tweaked the lock of her hair. ‘She certainly did the right thing in sending you to me.’

‘She did,’ Catalina said. ‘And we shall do the right thing by the country.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have such plans for us when we come to the throne.’

‘What shall we do?’

Arthur hesitated. ‘You will think me a child, my head filled with stories from books.’

‘No I shan’t. Tell me!’

‘I should like to make a council, like the first Arthur did. Not like my father’s council, which is just filled with his friends who fought for him, but a proper council of all the kingdom. A council of knights, one for each county. Not chosen by me because I like their company, but chosen by their own county – as the best of men to represent them. And I should like them to come to the table and each of them should know what is happening in their own county, they should report. And so if a crop is going to fail and there is going to be hunger we should know in time and send food.’

Catalina sat up, interested. ‘They would be our advisors. Our eyes and ears.’

‘Yes. And I should like each of them to be responsible for building defences, especially the ones in the north and on the coasts.’

‘And for mustering troops once a year, so we are always ready for attack,’ she added. ‘They will come, you know.’

‘The Moors?’

She nodded. ‘They are defeated in Spain for now, but they are as strong as ever in Africa, in the Holy Lands, in Turkey and the lands beyond. When they need more land they will move again into Christendom. Once a year in the spring, the Ottoman sultan goes to war, like other men plough the fields. They will come against us. We cannot know when they will come, but we can be very certain that they will do so.’

‘I want defences all along the south coast against France, and against the Moors,’ Arthur said. ‘A string of castles, and beacons behind them, so that when we come under attack in – say – Kent, we can know about it in London, and everyone can be warned.’

‘You will need to build ships,’ she said. ‘My mother commissioned fighting ships from the dockyard in Venice.’

‘We have our own dockyards,’ he said. ‘We can build our own ships.’

‘How shall we raise the money for all these castles and ships?’ Isabella’s daughter asked the practical question.

‘Partly from taxing the people,’ he said. ‘Partly from taxing the merchants and the people who use the ports. It is for their safety, they should pay. I know people hate the taxes but that is because they don’t see what is done with the money.’

‘We will need honest tax collectors,’ Catalina said. ‘My father says that if you can collect the taxes that are due and not lose half of them along the way it is better than a regiment of cavalry.’

‘Yes, but how d’you find men that you can trust?’ Arthur thought aloud. ‘At the moment, any man who wants to make a fortune gets himself a post of collecting taxes. They should work for us, not for themselves. They should be paid a wage and not collect on their own account.’

‘That has never been achieved by anyone but the Moors,’ she said. ‘The Moors in al Andalus set up schools and even universities for the sons of poor men, so that they had clerks that they could trust. And their great offices of court are always done by the young scholars, sometimes the young sons of their king.’

‘Shall I take a hundred wives to get a thousand clerks for the throne?’ he teased her.

‘Not another single one.’

‘But we have to find good men,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You need loyal servants to the crown, those who owe their salary to the crown and their obedience to the crown. Otherwise they work for themselves and they take bribes and all their families become over-mighty.’

‘The church could teach them,’ Catalina suggested. ‘Just as the imam teaches the boys for the Moors. If every parish church was as learned as a mosque with a school attached to it, if every priest knew he had to teach reading and writing, then we could found new colleges at the universities, so that boys could go on and learn more.’

‘Is it possible?’ he asked. ‘Not just a dream?’

She nodded. ‘It could be real. To make a country is the most real thing anyone can do. We will make a kingdom that we can be proud of, just as my mother and father did in Spain. We can decide how it is to be, and we can make it happen.’

‘Camelot,’ he said simply.

‘Camelot,’ she repeated.