Читать книгу Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1: The Constant Princess, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Boleyn Inheritance - Philippa Gregory - Страница 19

‘I want to ask you to meet a lady who is a good friend of mine and is ready to be a friend of yours,’ Arthur said, choosing his words with care.

Catalina’s ladies-in-waiting, bored on a cold afternoon with no entertainment, craned forwards to listen while trying to appear engaged in their needlework.

At once she blanched as white as the linen she was embroidering. ‘My lord?’ she asked anxiously. He had said nothing of this in the early hours of the morning when they had woken and made love. She had not expected to see him until dinner. His arrival in her rooms signalled that something had happened. She was wary, waiting to know what was going on.

“A lady? Who is she?’

‘You may have heard of her from others, but I beg you to remember that she is eager to be your friend, and she has always been a good friend to me.’

Catalina’s head flew up, she took a breath. For a moment, for a dreadful moment, she thought that he was introducing a former mistress into her court, begging a place among ladies-in-waiting for some woman who had been his lover, so that they might continue their affair.

If this is what he is doing, I know what part I must play. I have seen my mother haunted by the pretty girls that my father, God forgive him, cannot resist. Again and again we would see him pay attention to some new face at court. Each time my mother behaved as if she had noticed nothing, dowered the girl handsomely, married her off to an eligible courtier, and encouraged him to take his new bride far, far away. It was such a common occurrence that it became a joke: that if a girl wanted to marry well with the queen’s blessing, and travel to some remote province, all she had to do was to catch the eye of the king, and in no time she would find herself riding away from the Alhambra on a fine new horse with a set of new clothes.

I know that a sensible woman looks the other way and tries to bear her hurt and humiliation when her husband chooses to take another woman to his bed. What she must not do, what she absolutely must never do, is behave like my sister Juana, who shames herself and all of us by giving way to screaming fits, hysterical tears, and threats of revenge.

‘It does no good,’ my mother once told me when one of the ambassadors relayed to us some awful scene at Philip’s court in the Netherlands: Juana threatening to cut off the woman’s hair, attacking her with a pair of scissors, and then swearing she would stab herself.

‘It only makes it worse to complain. If a husband goes astray you will have to take him back into your life and into your bed, whatever he has done; there is no escape from marriage. If you are queen and he is king you have to deal together. If he forgets his duty to you, that is no reason to forget yours to him. However painful, you are always his queen and he is always your husband.’

‘Whatever he does?’ I asked her. ‘However he behaves? He is free though you are bound?’

She shrugged. ‘Whatever he does cannot break the marriage bond. You are married in the sight of God: he is always your husband, you are always queen. Those whom God has joined together, no man can put asunder. Whatever pain your husband brings you, he is still your husband. He may be a bad husband; but he is still your husband.’

‘What if he wants another?’ I asked, sharp in my young girl’s curiosity.

‘If he wants another he can have her or she can refuse him, that is between them. That is for her and her conscience,’ my mother had said steadily. ‘What must not change is you. Whatever he says, whatever she wants: you are still his wife and his queen.’

Catalina summoned this bleak counsel and faced her young husband. ‘I am always glad to meet a friend of yours, my lord,’ she said levelly, hoping that her voice did not quaver at all. ‘But, as you know, I have only a small household. Your father was very clear that I am not allowed any more companions than I have at present. As you know, he does not pay me any allowance. I have no money to pay another lady for her service. In short, I cannot add any lady, even a special friend of yours, to my court.’

Arthur flinched at the reminder of his father’s mean haggling over her train. ‘Oh no, you mistake me. It is not a friend who wants a place. She would not be one of your ladies-in-waiting,’ he said hastily. ‘It is Lady Margaret Pole, who is waiting to meet you. She has come home here at last.’

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us. This is worse than if it was his mistress. I knew I would have to face her one day. This is her home, but she was away when we got here and I thought she had deliberately snubbed me by being away and staying away. I thought she was avoiding me out of hatred, as I would avoid her from shame. Lady Margaret Pole is sister to that poor boy, the Duke of Warwick, beheaded to make the succession safe for me, and for my line. I have been dreading the moment when I would have to meet her. I have been praying to the saints that she would stay away, hating me, blaming me, but keeping her distance.

Arthur saw her quick gesture of rejection, but he had known of no way to prepare her for this. ‘Please,’ he said hurriedly. ‘She has been away caring for her children or she would have been here with her husband to welcome you to the castle when we first arrived. I told you she would return. She wants to greet you now. We all have to live together here. Sir Richard is a trusted friend of my father, the lord of my council and the warden of this castle. We will all have to live together.’

Catalina put out a shaking hand to him and at once he came closer, ignoring the fascinated attention of her ladies.

‘I cannot meet her,’ she whispered. ‘Truly, I can’t. I know that her brother was put to death for my sake. I know my parents insisted on it, before they would send me to England. I know he was innocent, innocent as a flower, kept in the Tower by your father so that men should not gather round him and claim the throne in his name. He could have lived there in safety all his life but for my parents demanding his death. She must hate me.’

‘She doesn’t hate you,’ he said truthfully. ‘Believe me, Catalina, I would not expose you to anyone’s unkindness. She does not hate you, she doesn’t hate me, she doesn’t even hate my father who ordered the execution. She knows that these things happen. She is a princess, she knows as well as you do that it is not choice but policy that governs us. It was not your choice, nor mine. She knows that your father and mother had to be sure that there were no rival princes to claim the throne, that my father would clear my way, whatever it cost him. She is resigned.’

‘Resigned?’ she gasped incredulously. ‘How can a woman be resigned to the murder of her brother, the heir of the family? How can she greet me with friendship when he died for my convenience? When we lost my brother our world ended, our hopes died with him. Our future was buried with him. My mother, who is a living saint, still cannot bear it. She has not been happy since the day of his death. It is unbearable to her. If he had been executed for some stranger I swear she would have taken a life in return. How could Lady Margaret lose her brother and bear it? How can she bear me?’

‘She has resignation,’ he said simply. ‘She is a most spiritual woman and if she looked for reward, she has one in that she is married to Sir Richard Pole, a man most trusted by my father, and she lives here in the highest regard and she is my friend and I hope will be yours.’

He took her hand and felt it tremble. ‘Come, Catalina. This isn’t like you. Be brave, my love. She won’t blame you.’

‘She must blame me,’ she said in an anguished whisper. ‘My parents insisted that there should be no doubt over your inheritance. I know they did. Your own father promised that there would be no rival princes. They knew what he meant to do. They did not tell him to leave an innocent man with his life. They let him do it. They wanted him to do it. Edward Plantagenet’s blood is on my head. Our marriage is under the curse of his death.’

Arthur recoiled, he had never before seen her so distressed. ‘My God, Catalina, you cannot call us accursed.’

She nodded miserably.

‘You have never spoken of this.’

‘I could not bear to say it.’

‘But you have thought it?’

‘From the moment they told me that he was put to death for my sake.’

‘My love, you cannot really think that we are accursed?’

‘In this one thing.’

He tried to laugh off her intensity. ‘No. You must know we are blessed.’ He drew closer and said very quietly, so that no-one else could hear, ‘Every morning when you wake in my arms, do you feel accursed then?’

‘No,’ she said unwillingly. ‘No, I don’t.’

‘Every night when I come to your rooms, do you feel the shadow of sin upon you?’

‘No,’ she conceded.

‘We are not cursed,’ he said firmly. ‘We are blessed with God’s favour. Catalina, my love, trust me. She has forgiven my father, she certainly would never blame you. I swear to you, she is a woman with a heart as big as a cathedral. She wants to meet you. Come with me and let me present her to you.’

‘Alone then,’ she said, still fearing some terrible scene.

‘Alone. She is in the castle warden’s rooms now. If you come at once, we can leave them all here, and go quietly by ourselves and see her.’

She rose from her seat and put her hand on the crook of his arm. ‘I am walking alone with the princess,’ Arthur said to her ladies. ‘You can all stay here.’

They looked surprised to be excluded, and some of them were openly disappointed. Catalina went past them without looking up.

Once out of the door he preceded her down the tight spiral staircase, one hand on the central stone post, one on the wall. Catalina followed him, lingering at every deep-set arrowslit window, looking down into the valley where the Teme had burst its banks and was like a silver lake over the water meadows. It was cold, even for March in the Borders, and Catalina shivered as if a stranger was walking on her grave.

‘My love,’ he said, looking back up the narrow stairs towards her. ‘Courage. Your mother would have courage.’

‘She ordered this thing,’ she said crossly. ‘She thought it was for my benefit. But a man died for her ambition, and now I have to face his sister.’

‘She did it for you,’ he reminded her. ‘And nobody blames you.’ They came to the floor below the princess’s suite of rooms and without hesitation, Arthur tapped on the thick wooden door of the warden’s apartments and went in.

The square room overlooking the valley was the match of Catalina’s presence chamber upstairs, panelled with wood and hung with bright tapestries. There was a lady waiting for them, seated by the fireside, and when the door opened she rose. She was dressed in a pale grey gown with a grey hood on her hair. She was about thirty years of age; she looked at Catalina with friendly interest, and then she sank into a deep, respectful curtsey.

Disobeying the nip of his bride’s fingers, Arthur withdrew his arm and stepped back as far as the doorway. Catalina looked back at him reproachfully and then bobbed a small curtsey to the older woman. They rose up together.

‘I am so pleased to meet you,’ Lady Pole said sweetly. ‘And I am sorry not to have been here to greet you. But one of my children was ill and I went to make sure that he was well nursed.’

‘Your husband has been very kind,’ Catalina managed to say.

‘I hope so, for I left him a long list of commandments; I so wanted your rooms to be warm and comfortable. You must tell me if there is anything you would like. I don’t know Spain, so I didn’t know what things would give you pleasure.’

‘No! It is all…absolutely.’

The older woman looked at the princess. ‘Then I hope you will be very happy here with us,’ she said.

‘I hope to…’ Catalina breathed. ‘But I…I…’

‘Yes?’

‘I was very sorry to hear of the death of your brother.’ Catalina dived in. Her face, which had been white with discomfort, now flushed scarlet. She could feel her ears burning, and to her horror she heard her voice tremble. ‘Indeed, I was very sorry. Very…’

‘It was a great loss to me, and to mine,’ the woman said steadily. ‘But it is the way of the world.’

‘I am afraid that my coming…’

‘I never thought that it was any choice or any fault of yours, Princess. When our dear Prince Arthur was to be married his father was bound to make sure that his inheritance was secured. I know that my brother would never have threatened the peace of the Tudors, but they were not to know that. And he was ill-advised by a mischievous young man, drawn into some foolish plot…’ She broke off as her voice shook; but rapidly she recovered herself. ‘Forgive me. It still grieves me. He was an innocent, my brother. His silly plotting was proof of his innocence, not of his guilt. There is no doubt in my mind that he is in God’s keeping now, with all innocents.’

She smiled at the princess. ‘In this world, we women often find that we have no power over what men do. I am sure you would have wished my brother no harm, and indeed, I am sure that he would not have stood against you or against our dearest prince here – but it is the way of the world that harsh measures are sometimes taken. My father made some bad choices in his life, and God knows he paid for them in full. His son, though innocent, went the way of his father. A turn of the coin and it could all have been different. I think a woman has to learn to live with the turn of the coin even when it falls against her.’

Catalina was listening intently. ‘I know my mother and father wanted to be sure that the Tudor line was without challenge,’ she breathed. ‘I know that they told the king.’ She felt as if she had to make sure that this woman knew the depth of her guilt.

‘As I might have done if I had been them,’ Lady Margaret said simply. ‘Princess, I do not blame you, nor your mother or father. I do not blame our great king. Were I any one of them, I might have behaved just as they have done, and explained myself only to God. All I have to do, since I am not one of these great people but merely the humble wife to a fine man, is to take care how I behave, and how I will explain myself to God.’

‘I felt that I came to this country with his death on my conscience,’ Catalina admitted in a sudden rush.

The older woman shook her head. ‘His death is not on your conscience,’ she said firmly. ‘And it is wrong to blame yourself for another’s doing. Indeed, I would think your confessor would tell you: it is a form of pride. Let that be the sin that you confess, you need not take the blame for the sins of others.’

Catalina looked up for the first time and met the steady eyes of Lady Pole, and saw her smile. Cautiously she smiled back, and the older woman stretched out her hand, as a man would offer to shake on a bargain. ‘You see,’ she said pleasantly. ‘I was a Princess Royal myself once. I was the last Plantagenet princess, raised by King Richard in his nursery with his son. Of all the women in the world, I should know that there is more to life than a woman can ever control. There is the will of your husband, and of your parents, and of your king, and of your God. Nobody could blame a princess for the doings of a king. How could one ever challenge it? Or make any difference? Our way has to be obedience.’

Catalina, her hand in the warm, firm grasp, felt wonderfully reassured. ‘I am afraid I am not always very obedient,’ she confessed.

The older woman laughed. ‘Oh yes, for one would be a fool not to think for oneself,’ she allowed. ‘True obedience can only happen when you secretly think you know better, and you choose to bow your head. Anything short of that is just agreement, and any ninny-in-waiting can agree. Don’t you think?’

And Catalina, giggling with an English woman for the first time, laughed aloud and said: ‘I never wanted to be a ninny-in-waiting.’

‘Neither did I,’ gleamed Margaret Pole, who had been a Plantagenet, a Princess Royal and was now a mere wife buried in the fastness of the Tudor Borders. ‘I always know that I am myself, in my heart, whatever title I am given.’

I am so surprised to find that the woman whose presence I have dreaded is making the castle at Ludlow feel like a home for me. Lady Margaret Pole is a companion and friend to comfort me for the loss of my mother and sisters. I realise now that I have always lived in a world dominated by women: the queen my mother, my sisters, our ladies- and maids-in-waiting, and all the women servants of the seraglio. In the Alhambra we lived almost withdrawn from men, in rooms built for the pleasure and comfort of women. We lived almost in seclusion, in the privacy of the cool rooms, and ran through the courtyards and leaned on the balconies secure in the knowledge that half the palace was exclusively in the ownership of us women.

We would attend the court with my father, we were not hidden from sight; but the natural desire of women for privacy was served and emphasised by the design of the Alhambra where the prettiest rooms and the best gardens were reserved for us.

It is strange to come to England and find the world dominated by men. Of course I have my rooms and my ladies, but any man can come and ask for admittance at any time. Sir Richard Pole or any other of Arthur’s gentlemen can come to my rooms without notice and think that they are paying me a compliment. The English seem to think it right and normal that men and women should mix. I have not yet seen a house with rooms that are exclusive to women, and no woman goes veiled as we sometimes did in Spain, not even when travelling, not even among strangers.

Even the royal family is open to all. Men, even strangers, can stroll through the royal palaces as long as they are smart enough for the guards to admit them. They can wait around in the queen’s presence chamber and see her any time she walks by, staring at her as if they were family. The great hall, the chapel, the queen’s public rooms are open to anyone who can find a good hat and a cape and pass as gentry. The English treat women as if they are boys or servants, they can go anywhere, they can be looked at by anyone. For a while I thought this was a great freedom, and for a while I revelled in it; then I realised the English women may show their faces but they are not bold like men, they are not free like boys; they still have to remain silent and obey.

Now with Lady Margaret Pole returned to the warden’s rooms it feels as if this castle has come under the rule of women. The evenings in the hall are less hearty, even the food at dinner has changed. The troubadours sing of love and less of battles, there is more French spoken and less Welsh.

My rooms are above, and hers are on the floor below, and we go up and down stairs all day to see each other. When Arthur and Sir Richard are out hunting, the castle’s mistress is still at home and the place does not feel empty any more. Somehow, she makes it a lady’s castle, just by being here. When Arthur is away, the life of the castle is not silent, waiting for his return. It is a warm, happy place, busy in its own day’s work.

I have missed having an older woman to be my friend. Maria de Salinas is a girl as young and silly as I am, she is a companion, not a mentor. Dona Elvira was nominated by my mother the queen to stand in a mother’s place for me; but she is not a woman I can warm to, though I have tried to love her. She is strict with me, jealous of her influence over me, ambitious to run the whole court. She and her husband, who commands my household, want to dominate my life. Since that first evening at Dogmersfield when she contradicted the king himself, I have doubted her judgement. Even now she continually cautions me against becoming too close with Arthur, as if it were wrong to love a husband, as if I could resist him! She wants to make a little Spain in England, she wants me to still be the Infanta. But I am certain that my way ahead in England is to become English.

Dona Elvira will not learn English. She affects not to be able to understand French when it is spoken with an English accent. The Welsh she treats with absolute contempt as barbarians on the very edge of civilisation, which is not very comfortable when we are visiting the townspeople of Ludlow. To be honest, sometimes she behaves more grandly than any woman I have ever known, she is prouder than my mother herself. She is certainly grander than me. I have to admire her, but I cannot truly love her.

But Margaret Pole was educated as the niece of a king and is as fluent in Latin as me. We speak French easily together, she is teaching me English, and when we come across a word we don’t know in any of our shared languages, we compose great mimes that set us wailing with giggles. I made her cry with laughing when I tried to demonstrate indigestion, and the guards came running, thinking we were under attack when she used all the ladies of the court and their maidservants to demonstrate to me the correct protocol for an English hunt in the field.

With Margaret, Catalina thought she could raise the question of her future, and her father-in-law of whom she was frankly nervous.

‘He was displeased before we came away,’ she said. ‘It is the question of the dowry.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Margaret replied. The two women were seated in a window, waiting for the men to come back from hunting. It was bitterly cold and damp outside, neither of them had wanted to go out. Margaret thought it better to volunteer nothing about the vexed question of Catalina’s dowry; she had already heard from her husband that the Spanish king had perfected the art of double dealing. He had agreed a substantial dowry for the Infanta, but then sent her to England with only half the money. The rest, he suggested, could be made up with the plate and treasure that she brought as her household goods. Outraged, King Henry had demanded the full amount. Sweetly Ferdinand of Spain replied that the Infanta’s household had been supplied with the very best, Henry could take his pick.

It was a bad way to start a marriage that was, in any case, founded only on greed and ambition, and a shared fear of France. Catalina was caught between the determination of two cold-hearted men. Margaret guessed that one of the reasons that Catalina had been sent to Ludlow Castle with her husband was to force her to use her own household goods and so diminish their value. If King Henry had kept her at court in Windsor or Greenwich or Westminster, she would have eaten off his plates and her father could have argued that the Spanish plate was as good as new, and must be taken as the dowry. But now, every night they ate from Catalina’s gold plates and every scrape of a careless knife knocked a little off the value. When it was time to pay the second half of the dowry, the King of Spain would find he would have to pay cash. King Ferdinand might be a hard man and a cunning negotiator but he had met his match in Henry Tudor of England.

‘He said that I should be a daughter to him,’ Catalina started carefully. ‘But I cannot obey him as a daughter should, if I am to obey my own father. My father tells me not to use my plate and to give it to the king. But he won’t accept it. And since the dowry is unpaid the king sends me away with no provision, he doesn’t even pay my allowance.’

‘Does the Spanish ambassador not advise you?’

Catalina made a little face. ‘He is the king’s own man,’ she said. ‘No help to me. I don’t like him. He is a Jew, but converted. An adaptable man. A Spaniard, but he has lived here for years. He is become a man for the Tudors, not for Aragon. I shall tell my father that he is poorly served by Dr de Puebla, but in the meantime, I have no good advice, and in my household Dona Elvira and my treasurer never stop quarrelling. She says that my goods and my treasure must be loaned to the goldsmiths to raise money, he says he will not let them out of his sight until they are paid to the king.’

‘And have you not asked the prince what you should do?’

Catalina hesitated. ‘It is a matter between his father and my father,’ she said cautiously. ‘I didn’t want to let it disturb us. He has paid for all my travelling expenses here. He is going to have to pay for my ladies’ wages at midsummer, and soon I will need new gowns. I don’t want to ask him for money. I don’t want him to think me greedy.’

‘You love him, don’t you?’ Margaret asked, smiling, and watched the younger woman’s face light up.

‘Oh yes,’ the girl breathed. ‘I do love him so.’

The older woman smiled. ‘You are blessed,’ she said gently. ‘To be a princess and to find love with the husband you are ordered to marry. You are blessed, Catalina.’

‘I know. I do think it is a sign of God’s especial favour to me.’

The older woman paused at the grandness of the claim, but did not correct her. The confidence of youth would wear away soon enough without any need for warnings. ‘And do you have any signs?’

Catalina looked puzzled.

‘Of a child coming? You do know what to look for?’

The young woman blushed. ‘I do know. My mother told me. There are no signs yet.’

‘It’s early days,’ Lady Margaret said comfortingly. ‘But if you had a child on the way I think there would be no difficulty with a dowry. I think nothing would be too good for you if you were carrying the next Tudor prince.’

‘I ought to be paid my allowance whether I have a child or not,’ Catalina observed. ‘I am Princess of Wales, I should have an allowance to keep my state.’

‘Yes,’ said Margaret drily. ‘But who is going to tell the king that?’

‘Tell me a story.’

They were bathed in the dappled gold of candlelight and firelight. It was midnight and the castle was silent but for their low voices, all the lights were out but for the blaze of Catalina’s chambers where the two young lovers were resisting sleep.

‘What shall I tell you about?’

‘Tell me a story about the Moors.’

She thought for a moment, throwing a shawl around her bare shoulders against the cold. Arthur was sprawled across the bed but when she moved he gathered her to him so her head rested on his naked chest. He ran his hand through her rich red hair and gathered it into his fist.

‘I will tell you a story about one of the sultanas,’ she said. ‘It is not a story. It is true. She was in the harem; you know that the women live apart from the men in their own rooms?’

He nodded, watching the candlelight flicker on her neck, on the hollow at her collarbone.

‘She looked out of the window and the tidal river beneath her window was at low ebb. The poor children of the town were playing in the water. They were on the slipway for the boats and they had spread mud all around and they were slipping and sliding, skating in the mud. She laughed while she watched them and she said to her ladies how she wished that she could play like that.’

‘But she couldn’t go out?’

‘No, she could never go out. Her ladies told the eunuchs who guarded the harem and they told the Grand Vizier and he told the sultan, and when she left the window and went to her presence chamber, guess what?’

He shook his head, smiling. ‘What?’

‘Her presence chamber was a great marble hall. The floor was made of rose-veined marble. The sultan had ordered them to bring great flasks of perfumed oils and pour them on the floor. All the perfumiers in the town had been ordered to bring oil of roses to the palace. They had brought rose petals and sweet-smelling herbs and they had made a thick paste of oil of roses and rose petals and herbs and spread it, one foot thick, all across the floor of her presence chamber. The sultana and her ladies stripped to their chemises and slid and played in the mud, threw rose water and petals and all the afternoon played like the mudlarks.’

He was entranced. ‘How glorious.’

She smiled up at him. ‘Now it is your turn. You tell me a story.’

‘I have no stories like that. It is all fighting and winning.’

‘Those are the stories you like best when I tell them,’ she pointed out.

‘I do. And now your father is going to war again.’

‘He is?’

‘Did you not know?’

Catalina shook her head. ‘The Spanish ambassador sometimes sends me a note with the news, but he has told me nothing. Is it a crusade?’

‘You are a bloodthirsty soldier of Christ. I should think the infidels shake in their sandals. No, it is not a crusade. It is a far less heroic cause. Your father, rather surprisingly to us, has made an alliance with King Louis of France. Apparently they plan to invade Italy together and share the spoils.’

‘King Louis?’ she asked in surprise. ‘Never! I had thought they would be enemies until death.’

‘Well, it seems that the French king does not care who he allies with. First the Turks and now your father.’

‘Well, better that King Louis makes alliance with my father than with the Turks,’ she said stoutly. ‘Anything is better than they are invited in.’

‘But why would your father join with our enemy?’

‘He has always wanted Naples,’ she confided to him. ‘Naples and Navarre. One way or another he will have them. King Louis may think he has an ally but there will be a high price to pay. I know him. He plays a long game but he usually gets his own way. Who sent you the news?’

‘My father. I think he is vexed not to be in their counsel. He fears the French worse only than the Scots. It is a disappointment for us that your father would ally with them on anything.’

‘On the contrary, your father should be pleased that my father is keeping the French busy in the south. My father is doing him a service.’

He laughed at her. ‘You are a great help.’

‘Will your father not join with them?’

Arthur shook his head. ‘Perhaps, but his one great desire is to keep England at peace. War is a terrible thing for a country. You are a soldier’s daughter and you should know. My father says it is a terrible thing to see a country at war.’

‘Your father only fought one big battle,’ she said. ‘Sometimes you have to fight. Sometimes you have to beat your enemy.’

‘I wouldn’t fight to gain land,’ he said. ‘But I would fight to defend our borders. And I think we will have to fight against the Scots unless my sister can change their very nature.’

‘And is your father prepared for war?’

‘He has the Howard family to keep the north for him,’ he said. ‘And he has the trust of every northern landlord. He has reinforced the castles and he keeps the Great North Road open so that he can get his soldiers up there if needs be.’

Catalina looked thoughtful. ‘If he has to fight he would do better to invade them,’ she said. ‘Then he can choose the time and the place to fight and not be forced into defence.’

‘Is that the better way?’

She nodded. ‘My father would say so. It is everything to have your army moving forwards and confident. You have the wealth of the country ahead of you, for your supplies; you have the movement forwards: soldiers like to feel that they are making progress. There is nothing worse than being forced to turn and fight.’

‘You are a tactician,’ he said. ‘I wish to God I had your childhood and knew the things you know.’

‘You do have,’ she said sweetly. ‘For everything I know is yours, and everything I am is yours. And if you and our country ever need me to fight for you then I will be there.’

It has become colder and colder and the long week of rain has turned into showers of hail and now snow. Even so it is not bright, cold wintry weather but a low, damp mist with swirling cloud and flurries of slush which clings in clumps to trees and turrets and sits in the river like old sherbet.

When Arthur comes to my room he slips along the battlements like a skater and this morning, as he went back to his room, we were certain we would be discovered because he slid on fresh ice and fell and cursed so loud that the sentry on the next tower put his head out and shouted ‘Who goes there?’ and I had to call back that it was only me, feeding the winter birds. So Arthur whistled at me and told me it was the call of a robin and we both laughed so much that we could barely stand. I am certain that the sentry knew anyway, but it was so cold he did not come out.

Now today Arthur has gone out riding with his council, who want to look at a site for a new corn mill while the river is in spate and partly blocked by snow and ice, and Lady Margaret and I are staying at home and playing cards.

It is cold and grey, it is wet all the time, even the walls of the castle weep with icy moisture, but I am happy. I love him, I would live with him anywhere, and spring will come and then summer. I know we will be happy then too.

The tap on the door came late at night. She threw it open.

‘Ah love, my love! Where have you been?’

He stepped into the room and kissed her. She could taste the wine on his breath. ‘They would not leave,’ he said. ‘I have been trying to get away to be with you for three hours at the very least.’

He picked her up off her feet and carried her to the bed. ‘But Arthur, don’t you want…?’

‘I want you.’

‘Tell me a story.’

‘Are you not sleepy now?’

‘No. I want you to sing me the song about the Moors losing the battle of Malaga.’

Catalina laughed. ‘It was the battle of Alhama. I shall sing you some of the verses; but it goes on and on.’

‘Sing me all of them.’

‘We would need all night,’ she protested.

‘We have all night, thank God,’ he said, joy in his voice. ‘We have all night and we have every night for the rest of our lives, thank God for it.’

‘It is a forbidden song,’ she said. ‘Forbidden by my mother herself.’

‘So how did you learn it?’ Arthur demanded, instantly diverted.

‘Servants,’ she said carelessly. ‘I had a nursemaid who was a Morisco and she would forget who I was, and who she was, and sing to me.’

‘What’s a Morisco? And why was the song banned?’ he asked curiously.

‘A Morisco means “little Moor” in Spanish,’ she explained. ‘It’s what we call the Moors who live in Spain. They are not really Moors like those in Africa. So we call them little Moors, or Moros. As I left, they were starting to call themselves Mudajjan – one allowed to remain.’

‘One allowed to remain?’ he asked. ‘In their own land?’

‘It’s not their land,’ she said instantly. ‘It’s ours. Spanish land.’

‘They had it for seven hundred years,’ he pointed out. ‘When you Spanish were doing nothing but herding goats in the mountains, they were building roads and castles and universities. You told me so yourself.’

‘Well, it’s ours now,’ she said flatly.

He clapped his hands like a sultan. ‘Sing the song, Scheherazade. And sing it in French, you barbarian, so I can understand it.’

Catalina put her hands together like a woman about to pray and bowed low to him.

‘Now that is good,’ Arthur said, revelling in her. ‘Did you learn that in the harem?’

She smiled at him and tipped up her head and sang.

“An old man cries to the king: Why comes this sudden calling? – Alas! Alhama!

Alas my friends, Christians have won Alhama – Alas! Alhama! A white-bearded imam answers: This has thou merited, oh King! – Alas! Alhama!

In an evil hour thou slewest the Abencerrages, flower of Granada – Alas! Alhama!

Not Granada, not kingdom, not thy life shall long remain – Alas! Alhama!’

She fell silent. ‘And it was true,’ she said. ‘Poor Boabdil came out of the Alhambra Palace, out of the red fort that they said would never fall, with the keys on a silk cushion, bowed low and gave them to my mother and my father and rode away. They say that at the mountain pass he looked back at his kingdom, his beautiful kingdom, and wept, and his mother told him to weep like a woman for what he could not hold as a man.’

Arthur let out a boyish crack of laughter. ‘She said what?’

Catalina looked up, her face grave. ‘It was very tragic.’

‘It is just the sort of thing my grandmother would say,’ he said delightedly. ‘Thank God my father won his crown. My grandmother would be just as sweet in defeat as Boabdil’s mother. Good God: “weep like a woman for what you cannot hold as a man.” What a thing to say to a man as he walks away in defeat!’

Catalina laughed too. ‘I never thought of it like that,’ she said. ‘It isn’t very comforting.’

‘Imagine going into exile with your mother, and she so angry with you!’

‘Imagine losing the Alhambra, never going back there!’

He pulled her to him and kissed her face. ‘No regrets!’ he commanded.

At once she smiled for him. ‘Then divert me,’ she ordered. ‘Tell me about your mother and father.’

He thought for a moment. ‘My father was born an heir to the Tudors, but there were dozens in line for the throne before him,’ he said. ‘His father wanted him called Owen, Owen Tudor, a good Welsh name, but his father died before his birth, in the war. My grandmother was only a child of twelve when he was born, but she had her way and called him Henry – a royal name. You can see what she was thinking even then, even though she was little more than a child herself, and her husband was dead.

‘My father’s fortunes soared up and down with every battle of the civil war. One time he was a son of the ruling family, the next they were on the run. His uncle Jasper Tudor – you remember him – kept faith with my father and with the Tudor cause, but there was a final battle and our cause was lost, and our king executed. Edward came to the throne and my father was the last of the line. He was in such danger that Uncle Jasper broke out of the castle where they were being held and fled with him out of the country to Brittany.’

‘To safety?’

‘Of a sort. He told me once that he woke every morning expecting to be handed over to Edward. And once, King Edward said that he should come home and there would be a kind welcome and a wedding arranged for him. My father pretended to be ill on the road and escaped. He would have come home to his death.’

Catalina blinked. ‘So he was a pretender too, in his time.’

He grinned at her. ‘As I said. That is why he fears them so much. He knows what a pretender can do if the luck is with him. If they had caught him they would have brought him home to his death in the Tower. Just like he did to Warwick. My father would have been put to death the moment King Edward had him. But he pretended to be ill and got away, over the border into France.’

‘They didn’t hand him back?’

Arthur laughed. ‘They supported him. He was the greatest challenge to the peace of England, of course they encouraged him. It suited the French to support him then: when he was not king but pretender.’

She nodded, she was a child of a prince praised by Machiavelli himself. Any daughter of Ferdinand was born to double-dealing. ‘And then?’

‘Edward died young, in his prime, with only a young son to inherit. His brother Richard first held the throne in trust and then claimed it for himself and put his own nephews, Edward’s sons, the little princes, in the Tower of London.’

She nodded, this was a history she had been taught in Spain, and the greater story – of deadly rivalry for a throne – was a common theme for both young people.

‘They went into the Tower and never came out again,’ Arthur said bleakly. ‘God bless their souls, poor boys, no-one knows what happened to them. The people turned against Richard, and summoned my father from France.’

‘Yes?’

‘My grandmother organised the great lords one after another, she was an arch-plotter. She and the Duke of Buckingham put their heads together and had the nobles of the kingdom in readiness. That’s why my father honours her so highly: he owes her his throne. And he waited until he could get a message to my mother to tell her that he would marry her if he won the throne.’

‘Because he loved her?’ Catalina asked hopefully. ‘She is so beautiful.’

‘Not he. He hadn’t even seen her. He had been in exile for most of his life, remember. It was a marriage cobbled together because his mother knew that if she could get those two married then everyone would see that the heir of York had married the heir of Lancaster and the war could be over. And her mother saw it as her only way out to safety. The two mothers brokered the deal together like a pair of crones over a cauldron. They’re both women you wouldn’t want to cross.’

‘He didn’t love her?’ She was disappointed.

Arthur smiled. ‘No. It’s not a romance. And she didn’t love him. But they knew what they had to do. When my father marched in and beat Richard and picked the crown of England out of the bodies and the wreckage of the battlefield, he knew that he would marry the princess, take the throne, and found a new line.’

‘But wasn’t she next heir to the throne anyway?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘Since it was her father who had been King Edward? And her uncle who had died in the battle, and her brothers were dead?’

He nodded. ‘She was the oldest princess.’

‘So why didn’t she claim the throne for herself?’

‘Aha, you are a rebel!’ he said. He took a handful of her hair and pulled her face towards him. He kissed her mouth, tasting of wine and sweetmeats. ‘A Yorkist rebel, which is worse.’

‘I just thought she should have claimed the throne for herself.’

‘Not in this country,’ Arthur ruled. ‘We don’t have reigning queens in this England. Girls don’t inherit. They cannot take the throne.’

‘But if a king had only a daughter?’

He shrugged. ‘Then it would be a tragedy for the country. You have to give me a boy, my love. Nothing else will do.’

‘But if we only had a girl?’

‘She would marry a prince and make him King Consort of England, and he would rule alongside her. England has to have a king. Like your mother did. She reigns alongside her husband.’

‘In Aragon she does, but in Castile he rules alongside her. Castile is her country and Aragon his.’

‘We’d never stand for it in England,’ Arthur said.

She drew away from him in indignation. She was only half-pretending. ‘I tell you this, if we have only one child and she is a girl then she will rule as queen and she will be a queen as good as any man can be king.’

‘Well, she will be a novelty,’ he said. ‘We don’t believe a woman can defend the country as a king needs to do.’

‘A woman can fight,’ she said instantly. ‘You should see my mother in armour. Even I could defend the country. I have seen warfare, which is more than you have done. I could be as good a king as any man.’

He smiled at her, shaking his head. ‘Not if the country was invaded. You couldn’t command an army.’

‘I could command an army. Why not?’

‘No English army would be commanded by a woman. They wouldn’t take orders from a woman.’

‘They would take orders from their commander,’ she flashed out. ‘And if they don’t then they are no good as soldiers and they have to be trained.’

He laughed. ‘No Englishman would obey a woman,’ he said. He saw by her stubborn face that she was not convinced.

‘All that matters is that you win the battle,’ she said. ‘All that matters is that the country is defended. It doesn’t matter who leads the army as long as they follow.’

‘Well, at any rate, my mother had no thought of claiming the throne for herself. She would not have dreamed of it. She married my father and became Queen of England through marriage. And because she was the York Princess and he was the Lancaster heir my grandmother’s plan succeeded. My father may have won the throne by conquest and acclaim; but we will have it by inheritance.’

Catalina nodded. ‘My mother said there was nothing wrong with a man who is new-come to the throne. What matters is not the winning but the keeping of it.’

‘We shall keep it,’ he said with certainty. ‘We shall make a great country here, you and me. We shall build roads and markets, churches and schools. We shall put a ring of forts around the coastline and build ships.’

‘We shall create courts of justice as my mother and father have done in Spain,’ she said, settling back into the pleasure of planning a future on which they could agree. ‘So that no man can be cruelly treated by another. So that every man knows that he can go to the court and have his case heard.’

He raised his glass to her. ‘We should start writing this down,’ he said. ‘And we should start planning how it is to be done.’

‘It will be years before we come to our thrones.’

‘You never know. I don’t wish it – God knows, I honour my father and my mother and I would want nothing before God’s own time. But you never know. I am Prince of Wales, you are Princess. But we will be King and Queen of England. We should know who we will have at our court, we should know what advisors we will choose, we should know how we are going to make this country truly great. If it is a dream, then we can talk of it together at nighttime, as we do. But if it is a plan, we should write it in the daytime, take advice on it, think how we might do the things we want.’

Her face lit up. ‘When we have finished our lessons for the day, perhaps we could do it then. Perhaps your tutor would help us, and my confessor.’

‘And my advisors,’ he said. ‘And we could start here. In Wales. I can do what I want, within reason. We could make a college here, and build some schools. We could even commission a ship to be built here. There are shipwrights in Wales, we could build the first of our defensive ships.’

She clapped her hands like the girl she was. ‘We could start our reign!’ she said.

‘Hail Queen Katherine! Queen of England!’ Arthur said playfully, but at the ring of the words he stopped and looked at her more seriously. ‘You know, you will hear them say that, my love. Vivat! Vivat Catalina Regina, Queen Katherine, Queen of England.’

It is like an adventure, wondering what sort of country we can make, what sort of king and queen we will be. It is natural we should think of Camelot. It was my favourite book in my mother’s library and I found Arthur’s own well-thumbed copy in his father’s library.

I know that Camelot is a story, an ideal, as unreal as the love of a troubadour, or a fairy-tale castle or legends about thieves and treasure and genies. But there is something about the idea of ruling a kingdom with justice, with the consent of the people, which is more than a fairy tale.

Arthur and I will inherit great power, his father has seen to that. I think we will inherit a strong throne and a great treasure. We will inherit with the goodwill of the people; the king is not loved but he is respected, and nobody wants a return to endless battles. These English have a horror of civil war. If we come to the throne with this power, this wealth, and this goodwill, there is no doubt in my mind that we can make a great country here.

And it shall be a great country in alliance with Spain. My parents’ heir is Juana’s son, Charles. He will be Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. He will be my nephew and we will have the friendship of kinsmen. What a powerful alliance this will be: the great Holy Roman Empire and England. Nobody will be able to stand against us, we might divide France, we might divide most of Europe. Then we will stand, the empire and England against the Moors, then we will win and the whole of the East, Persia, the Ottomans, the Indies, even China will be laid open to us.

The routine of the castle changed. In the days which were starting to become warmer and brighter the young Prince and Princess of Wales set up their office in her rooms, dragged a big table over to the window for the afternoon light, and pinned up maps of the Principality on the linenfold panelling.

‘You look as if you are planning a campaign,’ Lady Margaret Pole said pleasantly.

‘The princess should be resting,’ Dona Elvira remarked resentfully to no-one in particular.

‘Are you unwell?’ Lady Margaret asked quickly.

Catalina smiled and shook her head, she was becoming accustomed to the obsessive interest in her health. Until she could say that she was carrying England’s heir she would have no peace from people asking her how she did.

‘I don’t need to rest,’ she said. ‘And tomorrow, if you will take me, I should like to go out and see the fields.’

‘The fields?’ asked Lady Margaret, rather taken aback. ‘In March? They won’t plough for another week or so, there is almost nothing to see.’

‘I have to learn,’ Catalina said. ‘Where I live, it is so dry in summer that we have to build little ditches in every field, to the foot of every tree, to channel water to the plants to make sure that they can drink and live. When we first rode through this country and I saw the ditches in your fields, I was so ignorant I thought they were bringing water in.’ She laughed aloud at the memory. “And then the prince told me they were drains to take the water away. I could not believe it! So we had better ride out and you must tell me everything.’

‘A queen does not need to know about fields,’ Dona Elvira said in muted disapproval from the corner. ‘Why should she know what the farmers grow?’

‘Of course a queen needs to know,’ Catalina replied, irritated. ‘She should know everything about her country. How else can she rule?’

‘I am sure you will be a very fine Queen of England,’ Lady Margaret said, making the peace.

Catalina glowed. ‘I shall be the best Queen of England that I can be,’ she said. ‘I shall care for the poor and assist the church, and if we are ever at war I shall ride out and fight for England just as my mother did for Spain.’

Planning for the future with Arthur, I forget my homesickness for Spain. Every day we think of some improvement we could make, of some law that should be changed. We read together, books of philosophy and politics, we talk about whether people can be trusted with their freedom, of whether a king should be a good tyrant or should step back from power. We talk about my home: of my parents’ belief that you make a country by one church, one language, and one law. Or whether it could be possible to do as the Moors did: to make a country with one law but with many faiths and many languages, and assume that people are wise enough to choose the best.

We argue, we talk. Sometimes we break up in laughter, sometimes we disagree. Arthur is my lover always, my husband, undeniably. And now he is becoming my friend.

Catalina was in the little garden of Ludlow Castle, which was set along the east wall, in earnest conversation with one of the castle gardeners. In neat beds around her were the herbs that the cooks used, and some herbs and flowers with medicinal properties grown by Lady Margaret. Arthur, seeing Catalina as he walked back from confession in the round chapel, glanced up to the great hall to check that no-one would prevent him, and slipped off to be with her. As he drew up she was gesturing, trying to describe something. Arthur smiled.

‘Princess,’ he said formally in greeting.

She swept him a low curtsey, but her eyes were warm with pleasure at the sight of him. ‘Sire.’

The gardener had dropped to his knees in the mud at the arrival of the prince. ‘You can get up,’ Arthur said pleasantly. ‘I don’t think you will find many pretty flowers at this time of year, Princess.’

‘I was trying to talk to him about growing salad vegetables,’ she said. ‘But he speaks Welsh and English and I have tried Latin and French and we don’t understand each other at all.’

‘I think I am with him. I don’t understand either. What is salad?’

She thought for a moment. ‘Acetaria.’

‘Acetaria?’ he queried.

‘Yes, salad.’

‘What is it, exactly?’

‘It is vegetables that grow in the ground and you eat them without cooking them,’ she explained. ‘I was asking if he could plant some for me.’

‘You eat them raw? Without boiling?’

‘Yes, why not?’

‘Because you will be dreadfully ill, eating uncooked food in this country.’

‘Like fruit, like apples. You eat them raw.’

He was unconvinced. ‘More often cooked, or preserved or dried. And anyway, that is a fruit and not leaves. But what sorts of vegetables do you want?’

‘Lactuca,’ she said.

‘Lactuca?’ he repeated. ‘I have never heard of it.’

She sighed. ‘I know. You none of you seem to know anything of vegetables. Lactuca is like…’ She searched her mind for the truly terrible vegetable that she had been forced to eat, boiled into a pulp at one dinner at Greenwich. ‘Samphire,’ she said. ‘The closest thing you have to lactuca is probably samphire. But you eat lactuca without cooking and it is crisp and sweet.’

‘Vegetables? Crisp?’

‘Yes,’ she said patiently.

‘And you eat this in Spain?’

She nearly laughed at his appalled expression. ‘Yes. You would like it.’

‘And can we grow it here?’

‘I think he is telling me: no. He has never heard of such a thing. He has no seeds. He does not know where we would find such seeds. He does not think it would grow here.’ She looked up at the blue sky with the scudding rain clouds. ‘Perhaps he is right,’ she said, a little weariness in her voice. ‘I am sure that it needs much sunshine.’

Arthur turned to the gardener. ‘Ever heard of a plant called lactuca?’

‘No, Your Grace,’ the man said, his head bowed. ‘I’m sorry, Your Grace. Perhaps it is a Spanish plant. It sounds very barbaric. Is Her Royal Highness saying they eat grass there? Like sheep?’

Arthur’s lip quivered. ‘No, it is a herb, I think. I will ask her.’

He turned to Catalina and took her hand and tucked it in the crook of his arm. ‘You know sometimes in summer, it is very sunny and very hot here. Truly. You would find the midday sun was too hot. You would have to sit in the shade.’

She looked disbelievingly from the cold mud to the thickening clouds.

‘Not now, I know; but in summer. I have leaned against this wall and found it warm to the touch. You know, we grow strawberries and raspberries and peaches. All the fruit that you grow in Spain.’

‘Oranges?’

‘Well, perhaps not oranges,’ he conceded.

‘Lemons? Olives?’

He bridled. ‘Yes, indeed.’

She looked suspiciously at him. ‘Dates?’

‘In Cornwall,’ he asserted, straight-faced. ‘Of course it is warmer in Cornwall.’

‘Sugar cane? Rice? Pineapples?’

He tried to say yes, but he could not repress the giggles and she crowed with laughter, and fell on him.

When they were steady again he glanced around the inner bailey and said, ‘Come on, nobody will miss us for a while,’ and led her down the steps to the little sally-port and let them out of the hidden door.

A small path led them to the hillside which fell away steeply from the castle down to the river. A few lambs scampered off as they approached, a lad wandering after them. Arthur slid his arm around her waist and she let herself fall into pace with him.

‘We do grow peaches,’ he assured her. ‘Not the other things, of course. But I am sure we can grow your lactuca, whatever it is. All we need is a gardener who can bring the seeds and who has already grown the things you want. Why don’t you write to the gardener at the Alhambra and ask him to send you someone?’

‘Could I send for a gardener?’ she asked incredulously.

‘My love, you are going to be Queen of England. You can send for a regiment of gardeners.’

‘Really?’

Arthur laughed at the delight dawning on her face. ‘At once. Did you not realise it?’

‘No! But where should he garden? There is no room against the castle wall, and if we are to grow fruit as well as vegetables…’

‘You are Princess of Wales! You can plant your garden wherever you please. You shall have all of Kent if you want it, my darling.’

‘Kent?’

‘We grow apples and hops there, I think we might have a try at lactuca.’

Catalina laughed with him. ‘I didn’t think. I didn’t dream of sending for a gardener. If only I had brought one in the first place. I have all these useless ladies-in-waiting and I need a gardener.’

‘You could swap him for Dona Elvira.’

She gurgled with laughter.

‘Ah God, we are blessed,’ he said simply. ‘In each other and in our lives. You shall have anything you want, always. I swear it. Do you want to write to your mother? She can send you a couple of good men and I will get some land turned over at once.’

‘I will write to Juana,’ she decided. ‘In the Netherlands. She is in the north of Christendom like me. She must know what will grow in this weather. I shall write to her and see what she has done.’

‘And we shall eat lactuca!’ he said, kissing her fingers. ‘All day. We shall eat nothing but lactuca, like sheep grazing grass, whatever it is.’

‘Tell me a story.’

‘No, you tell me something.’

‘If you will tell me about the fall of Granada, again.’

‘I will tell you. But you have to explain something to me.’

Arthur stretched out and pulled her so that she was lying across the bed, her head on his shoulder. She could feel the rise and fall of his smooth chest as he breathed and hear the gentle thud of his heartbeat, constant as love.

‘I shall explain everything.’ She could hear the smile in his voice. ‘I am extraordinarily wise today. You should have heard me after dinner tonight dispensing justice.’

‘You are very fair,’ she conceded. ‘I do love it when you give a judgement.’

‘I am a Solomon,’ he said. ‘They will call me Arthur the Good.’

‘Arthur the Wise,’ she suggested.

‘Arthur the Magnificent.’

Catalina giggled. ‘But I want you to explain to me something that I heard about your mother.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘One of the English ladies-in-waiting told me that she had been betrothed to the tyrant Richard. I thought I must have misunderstood her. We were speaking French and I thought I must have had it wrong.’

‘Oh, that story,’ he said with a little turn of the head.

‘Is it not true? I hope I have not offended you?’

‘No, not at all. It’s a tale often told.’

‘It cannot be true?’

‘Who knows? Only my mother and Richard the tyrant can know what took place. And one of them is dead and the other is silent as the grave.’

‘Will you tell me?’ she asked tentatively. ‘Or should we not speak of it at all?’

He shrugged. ‘There are two stories. The well-known one, and its shadow. The story that everyone knows is that my mother fled into sanctuary with her mother and sisters, they were hiding in a church all together. They knew if they left they would be arrested by Richard the Usurper and would disappear into the Tower like her young brothers. No-one knew if the princes were alive or dead, but nobody had seen them, everyone feared they were dead. My mother wrote to my father – well, she was ordered to by her mother – she told him that if he would come to England, a Tudor from the Lancaster line, then she, a York princess, would marry him, and the old feud between the two families would be over forever. She told him to come and save her, and know her love. He received the letter, he raised an army, he came to find the princess, he married her and brought peace to England.’

‘That is what you told me before. It is a very good story.’

Arthur nodded.

‘And the story you don’t tell?’

Despite himself he giggled. ‘It’s rather scandalous. They say that she was not in sanctuary at all. They say that she left the sanctuary and her mother and sisters. She went to court. King Richard’s wife was dead and he was looking for another. She accepted the proposal of King Richard. She would have married her uncle, the tyrant, the man who murdered her brothers.’

Catalina’s hand stole over her mouth to cover her gasp of shock, her eyes were wide. ‘No!’

‘So they say.’

‘The queen, your mother?’

‘Herself,’ he said. ‘Actually, they say worse. That she and Richard were betrothed as his wife lay dying. That is why there is always such enmity between her and my grandmother. My grandmother does not trust her; but she will never say why.’

‘How could she?’ she demanded.

‘How could she not?’ he returned. ‘If you look at it from her point of view, she was a princess of York, her father was dead, her mother was the enemy of the king trapped in sanctuary, as much in prison as if she was in the Tower. If she wanted to live, she would have to find some way into the favour of the king. If she wanted to be acknowledged as a princess at all, she would have to have his recognition. If she wanted to be Queen of England she would have to marry him.’

‘But surely, she could have…’ she began and then she fell silent.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘You see? She was a princess, she had very little choice. If she wanted to live she would have to obey the king. If she wanted to be queen she would have to marry him.’

‘She could have raised an army on her own account.’

‘Not in England,’ he reminded her. ‘She would have to marry the King of England to be its queen. It was her only way.’

Catalina was silent for a moment. ‘Thank God that for me to be queen I had to marry you, that my destiny brought me so easily here.’

He smiled. ‘Thank God we are happy with our destiny. For we would have married, and you would have been Queen of England, whether you had liked me or not. Wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There is never a choice for a princess.’

He nodded.

‘But your grandmother, My Lady the King’s Mother, must have planned your mother’s wedding to your father. Why does she not forgive her? She was part of the plan.’

‘Those two powerful women, my father’s mother and my mother’s mother, brokered the deal between them like a pair of washerwomen selling stolen linen.’

She gave a little squeak of shock.

Arthur chuckled, he found that he dearly loved surprising her. ‘Dreadful, isn’t it?’ he replied calmly. ‘My mother’s mother was probably the most hated woman in England at one time.’

‘And where is she now?’

He shrugged. ‘She was at court for a while, but My Lady the King’s Mother disliked her so much she got rid of her. She was famously beautiful, you know, and a schemer. My grandmother accused her of plotting against my father and he chose to believe her.’

‘She is never dead? They never executed her!’

‘No. He put her into a convent and she never comes to court.’

She was aghast. ‘Your grandmother had the queen’s own mother confined in a convent?’

He nodded, his face grave. ‘Truly. You be warned by this, beloved. My grandmother welcomes no-one to court that might distract from her own power. Make sure you never cross her.’

Catalina shook her head. ‘I never would. I am absolutely terrified of her.’

‘So am I!’ he laughed. ‘But I know her, and I warn you. She will stop at nothing to maintain the power of her son, and of her family. Nothing will distract her from this. She loves no-one but him. Not me, not her husbands, no-one but him.’

‘Not you?’

He shook his head. ‘She does not even love him, as you would understand it. He is the boy that she decided was born to be king. She sent him away when he was little more than a baby for his safety. She saw him survive his boyhood. Then she ordered him into the face of terrible danger to claim the throne. She could only love a king.’

She nodded. ‘He is her pretender.’

‘Exactly. She claimed the throne for him. She made him king. He is king.’

He saw her grave face. ‘Now, enough of this. You have to sing me your song.’

‘Which one?’

‘Is there another one about the fall of Granada?’

‘Dozens, I should think.’

‘Sing me one,’ he commanded. He piled a couple of extra cushions behind his head, and she knelt up before him, tossed back her mane of red hair and began to sing in a low sweet voice:

‘There was crying in Granada when the sun was going down Some calling on the Trinity, some calling on Mahoun, Here passed away the Koran and therein the Cross was borne, And here was heard the Christian bell and there the Moorish horn.

Te Deum Laudamus! Was up the Alcala sung: Down from the Alhambra minarets were all the crescents flung, The arms thereon of Aragon, they with Castile display One king comes in in triumph, one weeping goes away.’

He was silent for long minutes. She stretched out again beside him on her back, looking, without seeing, the embroidered tester of the bed over their heads.

‘It’s always like that, isn’t it?’ he remarked. ‘The rise of one is the fall of another. I shall be king but only at my father’s death. And at my death, my son will reign.’

‘Shall we call him Arthur?’ she asked. ‘Or Henry for your father?’

‘Arthur is a good name,’ he said. ‘A good name for a new royal family in Britain. Arthur for Camelot, and Arthur for me. We don’t want another Henry; my brother is enough for anyone. Let’s call him Arthur, and his older sister will be called Mary.’

‘Mary? I wanted to call her Isabella, for my mother.’

‘You can call the next girl Isabella. But I want our first-born to be called Mary.’

‘Arthur must be first.’

He shook his head. ‘First we will have Mary so that we learn how to do it all with a girl.’

‘How to do it all?’

He gestured. ‘The christening, the confinement, the birthing, the whole fuss and worry, the wet nurse, the rockers, the nursemaids. My grandmother has written a great book to rule how it shall be done. It is dreadfully complicated. But if we have our Mary first then our nursery is all ready, and in your next confinement we shall put our son and heir into the cradle.’

She rose up and turned on him in mock indignation. ‘You would practise being a father on my daughter!’ she exclaimed.

‘You wouldn’t want to start with my son,’ he protested. ‘This will be the rose of the rose of England. That’s what they call me, remember: “the rose of England”. I think you should deal with my little rosebud, my little blossom, with great respect.’

‘She is to be Isabella then,’ Catalina stipulated. ‘If she comes first, she shall be Isabella.’

‘Mary, for the queen of heaven.’

‘Isabella for the Queen of Spain.’

‘Mary, to give thanks for you coming to me. The sweetest gift that heaven could have given me.’

Catalina melted into his arms. ‘Isabella,’ she said as he kissed her.

‘Mary,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘And let us make her now.’

It is morning. I lie awake, it is dawn and I can hear the birds slowly starting to sing. The sun is coming up and through the lattice window I can see a glimpse of blue sky. Perhaps it will be a warm day, perhaps the summer is coming at last.

Beside me, Arthur is breathing quietly and steadily. I can feel my heart swell with love for him, I put my hand on the fair curls of his head and wonder if any woman has ever loved a man as I love him.

I stir and put my other hand on the warm roundness of my belly. Can it be possible that last night we made a child? Is there already, safe in my belly, a baby who will be called Mary, Princess Mary, who will be the rose of the rose of England?

I hear the footsteps of the maid moving about in my presence chamber, bringing wood for the fire, raking up the embers. Still Arthur does not stir. I put a gentle hand on his shoulder. ‘Wake up, sleepyhead,’ I say, my voice warm with love. ‘The servants are outside, you must go.’

He is damp with sweat, the skin of his shoulder is cold and clammy.

‘My love?’ I ask. ‘Are you well?’

He opens his eyes and smiles at me. ‘Don’t tell me it’s morning already. I am so weary I could sleep for another day.’

‘It is.’

‘Oh, why didn’t you wake me earlier? I love you so much in the morning and now I can’t have you till tonight.’

I put my face against his chest. ‘Don’t. I slept late too. We keep late hours. And you will have to go now.’

Arthur holds me close, as if he cannot bear to let me go; but I can hear the groom of the chamber open the outside door to bring hot water. I draw myself away from him. It is like tearing off a layer of my own skin. I cannot bear to move away from him.

Suddenly, I am struck by the warmth of his body, the tangled heat of the sheets around us. ‘You are so hot!’

‘It is desire,’ he says, smiling. ‘I shall have to go to Mass to cool down.’

He gets out of bed and throws his gown around his shoulders. He gives a little stagger.

‘Beloved, are you all right?’ I ask.

‘A little dizzy, nothing more,’ he says. ‘Blind with desire, and it is all your fault. See you in chapel. Pray for me, sweetheart.’

I get up from bed, and unbolt the battlements door to let him out. He sways a little as he goes up the stone steps, then I see him straighten his shoulders to breathe in the fresh air. I close the door behind him, and then go back to my bed. I glance round the room, nobody could know that he has been here. In a moment, Dona Elvira taps on my door and comes in with the maid-in-waiting and behind them a couple of maids with the jug of hot water, and my dress for the day.

‘You slept late, you must be overtired,’ Dona Elvira says disapprovingly; but I am so peaceful and so happy that I cannot even be troubled to reply.

In the chapel they could do no more than exchange hidden smiles. After Mass, Arthur went riding and Catalina went to break her fast. After breakfast was her time to study with her chaplain and Catalina sat at the table in the window with him, their books before them, and studied the letters of St Paul.

Margaret Pole came in as Catalina was closing her book. ‘The prince begs your attendance in his rooms,’ she said.

Catalina rose to her feet. ‘Has something happened?’

‘I think he is unwell. He has sent away everyone but the grooms of the body and his servers.’

Catalina left at once, followed by Dona Elvira and Lady Margaret. The prince’s rooms were crowded by the usual hangers-on of the little court: men seeking favour or attention, petitioners asking for justice, the curious come to stare, and the host of lesser servants and functionaries. Catalina went through them all to the double doors of Arthur’s private chamber, and went in.

He was seated in a chair by the fire, his face very pale. Dona Elvira and Lady Margaret waited at the door as Catalina went quickly towards him.

‘Are you ill, my love?’ she asked quickly.

He managed a smile but she saw it was an effort. ‘I have taken some kind of chill, I think,’ he said. ‘Come no closer, I don’t want to pass it to you.’

‘Are you hot?’ she asked fearfully, thinking of the Sweat which came on like a fever and left a corpse.

‘No, I feel cold.’

‘Well, it is not surprising in this country where it either snows or rains all the time.’

He managed another smile.

Catalina looked around and saw Lady Margaret. ‘Lady Margaret, we must call the prince’s physician.’

‘I sent my servants to find him already,’ she said, coming forwards.

‘I don’t want a fuss made,’ Arthur said irritably. ‘I just wanted to tell you, Princess, that I cannot come to dinner.’

Her eyes went to his. ‘How shall we be alone?’ was the unspoken question.

‘May I dine in your rooms?’ she asked. ‘Can we dine alone, privately, since you are ill?’

‘Yes, let’s,’ he ruled.

‘See the doctor first,’ Lady Margaret advised. ‘If Your Grace permits. He can advise what you should eat, and if it is safe for the princess to be with you.’

‘He has no disease,’ Catalina insisted. ‘He says he just feels tired. It is just the cold air here, or the damp. It was cold yesterday and he was riding half the day.’

There was a tap on the door and a voice called out. ‘Dr Bereworth is here, Your Grace.’

Arthur raised his hand in permission, Dona Elvira opened the door and the man came into the room.

‘The prince feels cold and tired.’ Catalina went to him at once, speaking rapidly in French. ‘Is he ill? I don’t think he’s ill. What do you think?’

The doctor bowed low to her and to the prince. He bowed to Lady Margaret and Dona Elvira.

‘I am sorry, I don’t understand,’ he said uncomfortably in English to Lady Margaret. ‘What is the princess saying?’

Catalina clapped her hands together in frustration. ‘The prince…’ she began in English.

Margaret Pole came to her side. ‘His Grace is unwell,’ she said.

‘May I speak with him alone?’ he asked.

Arthur nodded. He tried to rise from the chair but he almost staggered. The doctor was at once at his side, supporting him, and led him into his bedchamber.

‘He cannot be ill.’ Catalina turned to Dona Elvira and spoke to her in Spanish. ‘He was well last night. Just this morning he felt hot. But he said he was only tired. But now he can hardly stand. He cannot be ill.’

‘Who knows what illness a man might take in this rain and fog?’ the duenna replied dourly. ‘It’s a wonder that you are not sick yourself. It is a wonder that any of us can bear it.’

‘He is not sick,’ Catalina said. ‘He is just overtired. He rode for a long time yesterday. And it was cold, there was a very cold wind. I noticed it myself.’

‘A wind like this can kill a man,’ Dona Elvira said gloomily. ‘It blows so cold and so damp.’

‘Stop it!’ Catalina said, clapping her hands to her ears. ‘I won’t hear another word. He is just tired, overtired. And perhaps he has taken a chill. There is no need to speak of killing winds and damp.’

Lady Margaret stepped forwards and gently took Catalina’s hands. ‘Be patient, Princess,’ she counselled. ‘Dr Bereworth is a very good doctor, and he has known the prince from childhood. The prince is a strong young man and his health is good. It is probably nothing to worry about at all. If Dr Bereworth is concerned we will send for the king’s own physician from London. We will soon have him well again.’

Catalina nodded, and turned to sit by the window and look out. The sky had clouded over, the sun was quite gone. It was raining again, the raindrops chasing down the small panes of glass. Catalina watched them. She tried to keep her mind from the death of her brother who had loved his wife so much, who had been looking forward to the birth of their son. Juan had died within days of taking sick, and no-one had ever known what was wrong with him.

‘I shan’t think of him, not of poor Juan,’ Catalina whispered to herself. ‘The cases are not alike at all. Juan was always slight, little; but Arthur is strong.’

The physician seemed to take a long time and when he came out of the bedchamber, Arthur was not with him. Catalina who had risen from her seat as soon as the door opened, peeped around him to see Arthur lying on the bed, half-undressed, half-asleep.

‘I think his grooms of the body should prepare him for bed,’ the doctor said. ‘He is very weary. He would be better for rest. If they take care, they can get him into bed without waking him.’

‘Is he ill?’ Catalina demanded speaking slowly in Latin. ‘Aegrotat? Is he very ill?’

The doctor spread his hands. ‘He has a fever,’ he said cautiously in slow French. ‘I can give him a draught to bring down his fever.’

‘Do you know what it is?’ Lady Margaret asked, her voice very low. ‘It’s not the Sweat, is it?’

‘Please God it is not. And there are no other cases in the town, as far as I know. But he should be kept quiet and allowed to rest. I shall go and make up this draught and I will come back.’

The low-voiced English was incomprehensible to Catalina. ‘What does he say? What did he say?’ she demanded of Lady Margaret.

‘Nothing more than you heard,’ the older woman assured her. ‘He has a fever and needs rest. Let me get his men to undress him and put him properly to bed. If he is better tonight, you can dine with him. I know he would like that.’

‘Where is he going?’ Catalina cried out as the doctor bowed and went to the door. ‘He must stay and watch the prince!’

‘He is going to make a draught to bring down his fever. He will be back at once. The prince will have the best of care, Your Grace. We love him as you do. We will not neglect him.’

‘I know you would not…it is only…Will the doctor be long?’

‘He will be as quick as he can. And see, the prince is asleep. Sleep will be his best medicine. He can rest and grow strong and dine with you tonight.’

‘You think he will be better tonight?’

‘If it is just a little fever and fatigue then he will be better in a few days,’ Lady Margaret said firmly.

‘I will watch over his sleep,’ Catalina said.

Lady Margaret opened the door and beckoned to the prince’s chief gentlemen. She gave them their orders and then she drew the princess through the crowd to her own rooms. ‘Come, Your Grace,’ she said. ‘Come for a walk in the inner bailey with me and then I shall go back to his rooms and see that everything is comfortable for him.’

‘I shall go back now,’ Catalina insisted. ‘I shall watch over his sleep.’

Margaret glanced at Dona Elvira. ‘You should stay away from his rooms in case he does have a fever,’ she said speaking slowly and clearly in French, so that the duenna could understand her. ‘Your health is most important, Princess. I would not forgive myself if anything happened to either of you.’

Dona Elvira stepped forwards and narrowed her lips. Lady Margaret knew she could be relied on to keep the princess from danger.

‘But you said he only had a slight fever. I can go to him?’

‘Let us wait to see what the doctor has to say.’ Lady Margaret lowered her voice. ‘If you should be with child, dear Princess, we would not want you to take his fever.’

‘But I will dine with him.’

‘If he is well enough.’

‘But he will want to see me!’

‘Depend upon it,’ Lady Margaret smiled. ‘When his fever has broken and he is better this evening and sitting up and eating his dinner he will want to see you. You have to be patient.’

Catalina nodded. ‘If I go now, do you swear that you will stay with him all the time?’

‘I will go back now, if you will walk outside and then go to your room and read or study or sew.’

‘I’ll go!’ said Catalina, instantly obedient. ‘I’ll go to my rooms if you will stay with him.’

‘At once,’ Lady Margaret promised.

This small garden is like a prison yard, I walk round and round in the herb garden, and the rain drizzles over everything like tears. My rooms are no better, my privy chamber is like a cell, I cannot bear to have anyone with me, and yet I cannot bear to be alone. I have made the ladies sit in the presence chamber, their unending chatter makes me want to scream with irritation. But when I am alone in my room I long for company. I want someone to hold my hand and tell me that everything will be all right.

I go down the narrow stone stairs and across the cobbles to the round chapel. A cross and a stone altar is set in the rounded wall, a light burning before it. It is a place of perfect peace; but I can find no peace. I fold my cold hands inside my sleeves and hug myself and I walk around the circular wall, it is thirty-six steps to the door and then I walk the circle again, like a donkey on a treadmill. I am praying; but I have no faith that I am heard.

‘I am Catalina, Princess of Spain and of Wales,’ I remind myself. ‘I am Catalina, beloved of God, especially favoured by God. Nothing can go wrong for me. Nothing as bad as this could ever go wrong for me. It is God’s will that I should marry Arthur and unite the kingdoms of Spain and England. God will not let anything happen to Arthur nor to me. I know that He favours my mother and me above all others. This fear must be sent to try me. But I will not be afraid because I know that nothing will ever go wrong for me.’

Catalina waited in her rooms, sending her women every hour to ask how her husband did. The first few hours they said he was still sleeping, the doctor had made his draught and was standing by his bed, waiting for him to wake. Then, at three in the afternoon, they said that he had wakened but was very hot and feverish. He had taken the draught and they were waiting to see his fever cool. At four he was worse, not better, and the doctor was making up a different prescription.

He would take no dinner, he would just drink some cool ale and the doctor’s cures for fever.

‘Go and ask him if he will see me?’ Catalina ordered one of her English women. ‘Make sure you speak to Lady Margaret. She promised me that I should dine with him. Remind her.’

The woman went and came back with a grave face. ‘Princess, they are all very anxious,’ she said. ‘They have sent for a physician from London. Dr Bereworth, who has been watching over him, does not know why the fever does not cool down. Lady Margaret is there and Sir Richard Pole, Sir William Thomas, Sir Henry Vernon, Sir Richard Croft, they are all waiting outside his chamber and you cannot be admitted to see him. They say he is wandering in his mind.’

‘I must go to the chapel. I must pray,’ Catalina said instantly.

She threw a veil over her head and went back to the round chapel. To her dismay, Prince Arthur’s confessor was at the altar, his head bowed low in supplication, some of the greatest men of the town and castle were seated around the wall, their heads bowed. Catalina slipped into the room, and fell to her knees. She rested her chin on her hands and scrutinised the hunched shoulders of the priest for any sign that his prayers were being heard. There was no way of telling. She closed her eyes.

Dearest God, spare Arthur, spare my darling husband, Arthur. He is only a boy, I am only a girl, we have had no time together, no time at all. You know what a kingdom we will make if he is spared. You know what plans we have for this country, what a holy castle we will make from this land, how we shall hammer the Moors, how we shall defend this kingdom from the Scots. Dear God, in your mercy spare Arthur and let him come back to me. We want to have our children: Mary, who is to be the rose of the rose, and our son Arthur who will be the third Holy Roman Catholic Tudor king for England. Let us do as we have promised. Oh dear Lord, be merciful and spare him. Dear Lady, intercede for us, and spare him. Sweet Jesus, spare him. It is I, Catalina, who asks this, and I ask in the name of my mother, Queen Isabella, who has worked all her life in your service, who is the most Christian queen, who has served on your crusades. She is beloved of You, I am beloved of You. Do not, I beg You, disappoint me.

It grew dark as Catalina prayed but she did not notice. It was late when Dona Elvira touched her gently on the shoulder and said, ‘Infanta, you should have some dinner and go to bed.’

Catalina turned a white face to her duenna. ‘What word?’ she asked.

‘They say he is worse.’

Sweet Jesus, spare him, sweet Jesus, spare me, sweet Jesus, spare England. Say that Arthur is no worse.

In the morning they said that he had passed a good night, but the gossip among the servers of the body was that he was sinking. The fever had reached such a height that he was wandering in his mind, sometimes he thought he was in his nursery with his sisters and his brother, sometimes he thought he was at his wedding, dressed in brilliant white satin, and sometimes, most oddly, he thought he was in a fantastic palace. He spoke of a courtyard of myrtles, a rectangle of water like a mirror reflecting a building of gold, and a circular sweep of flocks of swifts who went round and round all the sunny day long.

‘I shall see him,’ Catalina announced to Lady Margaret at noon.

‘Princess, it may be the Sweat,’ her ladyship said bluntly. ‘I cannot allow you to go close to him. I cannot allow you to take any infection. I should be failing in my duty if I let you go too close to him.’

‘Your duty is to me!’ Catalina snapped.

The woman, a princess herself, never wavered. ‘My duty is to England,’ she said. ‘And if you are carrying a Tudor heir then my duty is to that child, as well as to you. Do not quarrel with me please, Princess. I cannot allow you to go closer than the foot of his bed.’

‘Let me go there, then,’ Catalina said, like a little girl. ‘Please just let me see him.’

Lady Margaret bowed her head and led the way to the royal chambers. The crowds in the presence chamber had swollen in numbers as the word had gone around the town that their prince was fighting for his life; but they were silent, silent as a crowd in mourning. They were waiting and praying for the rose of England. A few men saw Catalina, her face veiled in her lace mantilla, and called out a blessing on her, then one man stepped forwards and dropped to his knee. ‘God bless you, Princess of Wales,’ he said. ‘And may the prince rise from his bed and be merry with you again.’

‘Amen,’ Catalina said through cold lips, and went on.

The double doors to the inner chamber were thrown open and Catalina went in. A makeshift apothecary’s room had been set up in the prince’s privy chamber, a trestle table with large glass jars of ingredients, a pestle and mortar, a chopping board, and half a dozen men in the gaberdine gowns of physicians were gathered together. Catalina paused, looking for Dr Bereworth.

‘Doctor?’

He came towards her at once, and dropped to his knee. His face was grave. ‘Princess.’

‘What news of my husband?’ she said, speaking slowly and clearly for him in French.

‘I am sorry, he is no better.’

‘But he is not worse,’ she suggested. ‘He is getting better.’

He shook his head. ‘Il est très malade,’ he said simply.

Catalina heard the words but it was as if she had forgotten the language. She could not translate them. She turned to Lady Margaret. ‘He says that he is better?’ she asked.

Lady Margaret shook her head. ‘He says that he is worse,’ she said honestly.

‘But they will have something to give him?’ She turned to the doctor. ‘Vous avez un médicament?’

He gestured at the table behind him, at the apothecary.

‘Oh, if only we had a Moorish doctor!’ Catalina cried out. ‘They have the greatest skill, there is no-one like them. They had the best universities for medicines before…If only I had brought a doctor with me! Arab medicine is the finest in the world!’

‘We are doing everything we can,’ the doctor said stiffly.

Catalina tried to smile. ‘I am sure,’ she said. ‘I just so wish…Well! Can I see him?’

A quick glance between Lady Margaret and the doctor showed that this had been a matter of some anxious discussion.

‘I will see if he is awake,’ he said, and went through the door.

Catalina waited. She could not believe that only yesterday morning Arthur had slipped from her bed complaining that she had not woken him early enough to make love. Now, he was so ill that she could not even touch his hand.

The doctor opened the door. ‘You can come to the threshold, Princess,’ he said. ‘But for the sake of your own health, and for the health of any child you could be carrying, you should come no closer.’

Catalina stepped up quickly to the door. Lady Margaret pressed a pomander stuffed with cloves and herbs in her hand. Catalina held it to her nose. The acrid smell made her eyes water as she peered into the darkened room.

Arthur was sprawled on the bed, his nightgown pulled down for modesty, his face flushed with fever. His blond hair was dark with sweat, his face gaunt. He looked much older than his fifteen years. His eyes were sunk deep into his face, the skin beneath his eyes stained brown.

‘Your wife is here,’ the doctor said quietly to him.

Arthur’s eyes fluttered open and she saw them narrow as he tried to focus on the bright doorway and Catalina, standing before him, her face white with shock.

‘My love,’ he said. ‘Amo te.’

‘Amo te,’ she whispered. ‘They say I cannot come closer.’

‘Don’t come closer,’ he said, his voice a thread. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too!’ She could hear that her voice was strained with tears. ‘You will be well?’

He shook his head, too weary to speak.

‘Arthur?’ she said, demandingly. ‘You will get better?’

He rested his head back on his hot pillow, gathering his strength. ‘I will try, beloved. I will try so hard. For you. For us.’

‘Is there anything you want?’ she asked. ‘Anything I can get for you?’ She glanced around. There was nothing that she could do for him. There was nothing that would help. If she had brought a Moorish doctor with her, if her parents had not destroyed the learning of the Arab universities, if the church had allowed the study of medicine, and not called knowledge heresy…

‘All I want is to live with you,’ he said, his voice a thin thread.

She gave a little sob. “And I you.’

‘The prince should rest now, and you should not linger here.’ The doctor stepped forwards.

‘Please, let me stay!’ she cried in a whisper. ‘Please allow me. I beg you. Please let me be with him.’

Lady Margaret put a hand around her waist and drew her back. ‘You shall come again, if you leave now,’ she promised. ‘The prince needs to rest.’

‘I shall come back,’ Catalina called to him, and saw the little gesture of his hand which told her that he had heard her. ‘I shall not fail you.’

Catalina went to the chapel to pray for him, but she could not pray. All she could do was think of him, his white face on the white pillows. All she could do was feel the throb of desire for him. They had been married only one hundred and forty days, they had been passionate lovers for only ninety-four nights. They had promised that they would have a lifetime together, she could not believe that she was on her knees now, praying for his life.

This cannot be happening, he was well only yesterday. This is some terrible dream and in a moment I will wake up and he will kiss me and call me foolish. Nobody can take sick so quickly, nobody can go from strength and beauty to being so desperately ill in such a short time. In a moment I will wake up. This cannot be happening. I cannot pray, but it does not matter that I cannot pray because it is not really happening. A dream prayer would mean nothing. A dream illness means nothing. I am not a superstitious heathen to fear dreams. I shall wake up in a moment and we will laugh at my fears.

At dinner time she rose up, dipped her finger in the holy water, crossed herself, and with the water still wet on her forehead went back to his chambers, with Dona Elvira following, close behind.

The crowds in the halls outside the rooms and in the presence chamber were thicker than ever, women as well as men, silent with inarticulate grief. They made way for the princess without a word but a quiet murmur of blessings. Catalina went through them, looking neither to left nor right, through the presence chamber, past the apothecary bench, to the very door of his bedchamber.

The guard stepped to one side. Catalina tapped lightly on the door and pushed it open.

They were bending over him on the bed. Catalina heard him cough, a thick cough as though his throat was bubbling with water.

‘Madre de Dios,’ she said softly. ‘Holy Mother of God, keep Arthur safe.’

The doctor turned at her whisper. His face was pale. ‘Keep back!’ he said urgently. ‘It is the Sweat.’

At that most feared word Dona Elvira stepped back and laid hold of Catalina’s gown as if she would drag her from danger.

‘Loose me!’ Catalina snapped and tugged her gown from the duenna’s hands. ‘I will come no closer, but I have to speak with him,’ she said steadily.

The doctor heard the resolution in her voice. ‘Princess, he is too weak.’

‘Leave us,’ she said.

‘Princess.’

‘I have to speak to him. This is the business of the kingdom.’

One glance at her determined face told him that she would not be denied. He went past her with his head low, his assistants following behind him. Catalina made a little gesture with her hand and Dona Elvira retreated. Catalina stepped over the threshold and pushed the door shut on them.

She saw Arthur stir in protest.

‘I won’t come any closer,’ she assured him. ‘I swear it. But I have to be with you. I cannot bear…’ She broke off.

His face when he turned it to her was shiny with sweat, his hair as wet as when he came in from hunting in the rain. His young round face was strained as the disease leached the life out of him.

‘Amo te,’ he said through lips that were cracked and dark with fever.

‘Amo te,’ she replied.

‘I am dying,’ he said bleakly.

Catalina did not interrupt nor deny him. He saw her straighten a little, as if she had staggered beneath a mortal blow.

He took a rasping breath. ‘But you must still be Queen of England.’

‘What?’

He took a shaky breath. ‘Love – obey me. You have sworn to obey me.’

‘I will do anything.’

‘Marry Harry. Be queen. Have our children.’

‘What?’ She was dizzy with shock. She could hardly make out what he was saying.

‘England needs a great queen,’ he said. ‘Especially with him. He’s not fit to rule. You must teach him. Build my forts. Build my navy. Defend against the Scots. Have my daughter Mary. Have my son Arthur. Let me live through you.’

‘My love –’

‘Let me do it,’ he whispered longingly. ‘Let me keep England safe through you. Let me live through you.’

‘I am your wife,’ she said fiercely. ‘Not his.’

He nodded. ‘Tell them you are not.’

She staggered at that, and felt for the door to support her.

‘Tell them I could not do it.’ A hint of a smile came to his drained face. ‘Tell them I was unmanned. Then marry Harry.’

‘You hate Harry!’ she burst out. ‘You cannot want me to marry him. He is a child! And I love you.’

‘He will be king,’ he said desperately. ‘So you will be queen. Marry him. Please. Beloved. For me.’

The door behind her opened a crack and Lady Margaret said quietly, ‘You must not exhaust him, Princess.’

‘I have to go,’ Catalina said desperately to the still figure in the bed.

‘Promise me…’

‘I will come back. You will get better.’

‘Please.’

Lady Margaret opened the door wider and took Catalina’s hand. ‘For his own good,’ she said quietly. ‘You have to leave him.’

Catalina turned away from the room, she looked back over her shoulder. Arthur lifted a hand a few inches from the rich coverlet. ‘Promise,’ he said. ‘Please. For my sake. Promise. Promise me now, beloved.’

‘I promise,’ burst out of her.

His hand fell, she heard him give a little sigh of relief.

They were the last words they said to each other.