Читать книгу Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1: The Constant Princess, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Boleyn Inheritance - Philippa Gregory - Страница 31

And then, I waited. Incredibly, I waited for a total of six years. Six years when I went from a bride of seventeen to a woman of twenty-three. I knew then that King Henry’s rage against me was bitter, and effective, and long-lasting. No princess in the world had ever been made to wait so long, or treated so harshly, or left in such despair. I am not exaggerating this, as a troubadour might do to make a better story – as I might have told you, beloved, in the dark hours of the night. No, it was not like a story, it was not even like a life. It was like a prison sentence, it was like being a hostage with no chance of redemption, it was loneliness, and the slow realisation that I had failed.

I failed my mother and failed to bring to her the alliance with England that I had been born and bred to do. I was ashamed of my failure. Without the dowry payment from Spain I could not force the English to honour the betrothal. With the king’s enmity I could force them to do nothing. Harry was a child of thirteen, I hardly ever saw him. I could not appeal to him to make his promise good. I was powerless, neglected by the court and falling into shameful poverty.

Then Harry was fourteen years of age and our betrothal was still not made marriage, and that marriage not celebrated. I waited a year, he reached fifteen years, and nobody came for me. So Harry reached his sixteenth and then his seventeenth birthday, and still nobody came for me. Those years turned. I grew older. I waited. I was constant. It was all I could be.

I turned the panels on my gowns and sold my jewels for food. I had to sell my precious plate, one gold piece at a time. I knew it was the property of the king as I sent for the goldsmiths. I knew that each time I pawned a piece I put my wedding back another day. But I had to eat, my household had to eat. I could pay them no wages, I could hardly ask them to beg for me as well as go hungry on their own account.

I was friendless. I discovered that Dona Elvira was plotting against my father in favour of Juana and her husband Philip and I dismissed her, in a rage, and sent her away. I did not care if she spoke against me, if she named me as a liar. I did not care even if she declared that Arthur and I had been lovers. I had caught her in treason against my father; did she truly think I would ally with my sister against the King of Aragon? I was so angry that I did not care what her enmity cost me.

Also, since I am not a fool, I calculated rightly that no-one would believe her word against mine. She fled to Philip and Juana in the Netherlands, and I never heard from her again, and I never complained of my loss.

I lost my ambassador, Dr de Puebla. I had often complained to my father of his divided loyalties, of his disrespect, of his concessions to the English court. But when he was recalled to Spain I found that he had known more than I had realised, he had used his friendship with the king to my advantage, he had understood his way around this most difficult court. He had been a better friend than I had known, and I was the poorer without him. I lost a friend and an ally, through my own arrogance; and I was sorry for his absence. His replacement: the emissary who had come to take me home, Don Gutierre Gomez de Fuensalida, was a pompous fool who thought the English were honoured by his presence. They sneered at his face and laughed behind his back and I was a ragged princess with an ambassador entranced by his own self-importance.

I lost my dear father in Christ, the confessor I trusted, appointed by my mother to guide me, and I had to find another for myself. I lost the ladies of my little court, who would not live in hardship and poverty, and I could not pay anyone else to serve me. Maria de Salinas stood by me, through all these long years of endurance, for love; but the other ladies wanted to leave. Then, finally, I lost my house, my lovely house on the Strand, which had been my home, a little safe place in this most foreign land.

The king promised me rooms at court and I thought that he had at last forgiven me. I thought he was offering me to come to court, to live in the rooms of a princess and to see Harry. But when I moved my household there I found that I was given the worst rooms, allocated the poorest service, unable to see the prince, except on the most formal of state occasions. One dreadful day, the court left on progress without telling us and we had to dash after them, finding our way down the unmarked country lanes, as unwanted and as irrelevant as a wagon filled with old goods. When we caught up, no-one had noticed that we were missing and I had to take the only rooms left: over the stables, like a servant.

The king stopped paying my allowance, his mother did not press my case. I had no money of my own at all. I lived despised on the fringe of the court, with Spaniards who served me only because they could not leave. They were trapped like me, watching the years slide by, getting older and more resentful till I felt like the sleeping princess of the fairy tale and thought that I would never wake.

I lost my vanity – my proud sense that I could be cleverer than that old fox who was my father-in-law, and that sharp vixen his mother. I learned that he had betrothed me to his son Prince Harry, not because he loved and forgave me, but because it was the cleverest and cruellest way to punish me. If he could not have me, then he could make sure that no-one had me. It was a bitter day when I realised that.

And then, Philip died and my sister Juana was a widow like me, and King Henry came up with a plan to marry her, my poor sister – driven from her wits by the loss of her husband – and put her over me, on the throne of England, where everyone would see that she was crazed, where everyone could see the bad blood which I share, where everyone would know that he had made her queen and thrown me down to nothing. It was a wicked plan, certain to shame and distress both me and Juana. He would have done it if he could, and he made me his pander as well – he forced me to recommend him to my father. Under my father’s orders I spoke to the king of Juana’s beauty; under the king’s orders I urged my father to accept his suit, all the time knowing that I was betraying my very soul. I lost my ability to refuse King Henry my persecutor, my father-in-law, my would-be seducer. I was afraid to say ‘no’ to him. I was very much reduced, that day.

I lost my vanity in my allure, I lost my confidence in my intelligence and skills; but I never lost my will to live. I was not like my mother, I was not like Juana, I did not turn my face to the wall and long for my pain to be over. I did not slide into the wailing grief of madness nor into the gentle darkness of sloth. I gritted my teeth, I am the constant princess, I don’t stop when everyone else stops. I carried on. I waited. Even when I could do nothing else, I could still wait. So I waited.

These were not the years of my defeat; these were the years when I grew up, and it was a bitter maturing. I grew from a girl of sixteen ready for love to a half-orphaned, lonely widow of twenty-three. These were the years when I drew on the happiness of my childhood in the Alhambra and my love for my husband to sustain me, and swore that whatever the obstacles before me, I should be Queen of England. These were the years when, though my mother was dead, she lived again through me. I found her determination inside me, I found her courage inside me, I found Arthur’s love and optimism inside me. These were the years when although I had nothing left: no husband, no mother, no friends, no fortune and no prospects; I swore that however disregarded, however poor, however unlikely a prospect, I would still be Queen of England.

News, always slow to reach the bedraggled Spaniards on the fringe of the royal court, filtered through that Harry’s sister the Princess Mary was to be married, gloriously, to Prince Charles, son of King Philip and Queen Juana, grandson to both the Emperor Maximilian and King Ferdinand. Amazingly, at this of all moments, King Ferdinand at last found the money for Catalina’s dowry, and packed it off to London.

‘My God, we are freed. There can be a double wedding. I can marry him,’ Catalina said, heartfelt, to the Spanish emissary, Don Gutierre Gomez de Fuensalida.

He was pale with worry, his yellow teeth nipping at his lips. ‘Oh, Infanta, I hardly know how to tell you. Even with this alliance, even with the dowry money – dear God, I fear it comes too late. I fear it will not help us at all.’

‘How can it be? Princess Mary’s betrothal only deepens the alliance with my family.’

‘What if…’ He started and broke off. He could hardly speak of the danger that he foresaw. ‘Princess, all the English know that the dowry money is coming, but they do not speak of your marriage. Oh, Princess, what if they plan an alliance that does not include Spain? What if they plan an alliance between the emperor and King Henry? What if the alliance is for them to go to war against Spain?’

She turned her head. ‘It cannot be.’

‘What if it is?’

‘Against the boy’s own grandfather?’ she demanded.

‘It would only be one grandfather, the emperor, against another, your father.’

‘They would not,’ she said determinedly.

‘They could.’

‘King Henry would not be so dishonest.’

‘Princess, you know that he would.’

She hesitated. ‘What is it?’ she suddenly demanded, sharp with irritation. ‘There is something else. Something you are not telling me. What is it?’

He paused, a lie in his mouth; then he told her the truth. ‘I am afraid, I am very afraid, that they will betroth Prince Harry to Princess Eleanor, the sister of Charles.’

‘They cannot, he is betrothed to me.’

‘They may plan it as part of a great treaty. Your sister Juana to marry the king, your nephew Charles for Princess Mary, and your niece Eleanor for Prince Harry.’

‘But what about me? Now that my dowry money is on its way at last?’

He was silent. It was painfully apparent that Catalina was excluded by these alliances, and no provision made for her.

‘A true prince has to honour his promise,’ she said passionately. ‘We were betrothed by a bishop before witnesses, it is a solemn oath.’

The ambassador shrugged, hesitated. He could hardly make himself tell her the worst news of all. ‘Your Grace, Princess, be brave. I am afraid he may withdraw his oath.’

‘He cannot.’

Fuensalida went further. ‘Indeed, I am afraid it is already withdrawn. He may have withdrawn it years ago.’

‘What?’ she asked sharply. ‘How?’

‘A rumour, I cannot be sure of it. But I am afraid…’ He broke off.

‘Afraid of what?’

‘I am afraid that the prince may be already released from his betrothal to you.’ He hesitated at the sudden darkening of her face. ‘It will not have been his choice,’ he said quickly. ‘His father is determined against us.’

‘How could he? How can such a thing be done?’

‘He could have sworn an oath that he was too young, that he was under duress. He may have declared that he did not want to marry you. Indeed, I think that is what he has done.’

‘He was not under duress!’ Catalina exclaimed. ‘He was utterly delighted. He has been in love with me for years, I am sure he still is. He did want to marry me!’

‘An oath sworn before a bishop that he was not acting of his own free will would be enough to secure his release from his promise.’

‘So all these years that I have been betrothed to him, and acted on that premise, all these years that I have waited and waited and endured…’ She could not finish. ‘Are you telling me that for all these years, when I believed that we had them tied down, contracted, bound, he has been free?’

The ambassador nodded; her face was so stark and shocked that he could hardly find his voice.

‘This is…a betrayal,’ she said. ‘A most terrible betrayal.’ She choked on the words. ‘This is the worst betrayal of all.’

He nodded again.

There was a long, painful silence. ‘I am lost,’ she said simply. ‘Now I know it. I have been lost for years and I did not know. I have been fighting a battle with no army, with no support. Actually – with no cause. You tell me that I have been defending a cause that was gone long ago. I was fighting for my betrothal but I was not betrothed. I have been all alone, all this long time. And now I know it.’

Still she did not weep, though her blue eyes were horrified.

‘I made a promise,’ she said, her voice harsh. ‘I made a solemn and binding promise.’

‘Your betrothal?’

She made a little gesture with her hand. ‘Not that. I swore a promise. A deathbed promise. Now you tell me it has all been for nothing.’

‘Princess, you have stayed at your post, as your mother would have wanted you to do.’

‘I have been made a fool!’ burst out of her, from the depth of her shock. ‘I have been fighting for the fulfilment of a vow, not knowing that the vow was long broken.’

He could say nothing, her pain was too raw for any soothing words.

After a few moments, she raised her head. ‘Does everyone know but me?’ she asked bleakly.

He shook his head. ‘I am sure it was kept most secret.’

‘My Lady the King’s Mother,’ she predicted bitterly. ‘She will have known. It will have been her decision. And the king, the prince himself, and if he knew, then the Princess Mary will know – he would have told her. And his closest companions…’ She raised her head. ‘The king’s mother’s ladies, the princess’s ladies. The bishop that he swore to, a witness or two. Half the court, I suppose.’ She paused. ‘I thought that at least some of them were my friends,’ she said.

The ambassador shrugged. ‘In a court there are no friends, only courtiers.’

‘My father will defend me from this…cruelty!’ she burst out. ‘They should have thought of that before they treated me so! There will be no treaties for England with Spain when he hears about this. He will take revenge for this abuse of me.’

He could say nothing, and in the still silent face that he turned to her she saw the worst truth.

‘No,’ she said simply. ‘Not him. Not him as well. Not my father. He did not know. He loves me. He would never injure me. He would never abandon me here.’

Still he could not tell her. He saw her take a deep breath.

‘Oh. Oh. I see. I see from your silence. Of course. He knows, of course he knows, doesn’t he? My father? The dowry money is just another trick. He knows of the proposal to marry Prince Harry to Princess Eleanor. He has been leading the king on to think that he can marry Juana. He ordered me to encourage the king to marry Juana. He will have agreed to this new proposal for Prince Harry. And so he knows that the prince has broken his oath to me? And is free to marry?’

‘Princess, he has told me nothing. I think he must know. But perhaps he plans…’

Her gesture stopped him. ‘He has given up on me. I see. I have failed him and he has cast me aside. I am indeed alone.’

‘So shall I try to get us home now?’ Fuensalida asked quietly. Truly, he thought, it had become the very pinnacle of his ambitions. If he could get this doomed princess home to her unhappy father and her increasingly deranged sister, the new Queen of Castile, he would have done the best he could in a desperate situation. Nobody would marry Catalina of Spain now she was the daughter of a divided kingdom. Everyone could see that the madness in her blood was coming out in her sister. Not even Henry of England could pretend that Juana was fit to marry when she was on a crazed progress across Spain with her dead husband’s coffin. Ferdinand’s tricky diplomacy had rebounded on him and now everyone in Europe was his enemy, with two of the most powerful men in Europe allied to make war against him. Ferdinand was lost, and going down. The best that this unlucky princess could expect was a scratch marriage to some Spanish grandee and retirement to the countryside, with a chance to escape the war that must come. The worst was to remain trapped and in poverty in England, a forgotten hostage that no-one would ransom. A prisoner who would be soon forgotten, even by her gaolers.

‘What shall I do?’ Finally she accepted danger. He saw her take it in. Finally, she understood that she had lost. He saw her, a queen in every inch, learn the depth of her defeat. ‘I must know what I should do. Or I shall be hostage, in an enemy country, with no-one to speak for me.’

He did not say that he had thought her just that, ever since he had arrived.

‘We shall leave,’ he said decisively. ‘If war comes they will keep you as a hostage and they will seize your dowry. God forbid that now the money is finally coming, it should be used to make war against Spain.’

‘I cannot leave,’ she said flatly. ‘If I go, I will never get back here.’

‘It is over!’ he cried in sudden passion. ‘You see it yourself, at last. We have lost. We are defeated. It is over for you and England. You have held on and faced humiliation and poverty, you have faced it like a princess, like a queen, like a saint. Your mother herself could not have shown more courage. But we are defeated, Infanta. You have lost. We have to get home as best we can. We have to run, before they catch us.’

‘Catch us?’

‘They could imprison us both as enemy spies and hold us to ransom,’ he told her. ‘They could impound whatever remains of your dowry goods and impound the rest when it arrives. God knows, they can make up a charge, and execute you, if they want to enough.’

‘They dare not touch me! I am a princess of royal blood,’ she flared up. ‘Whatever else they can take from me, they can never take that! I am Infanta of Spain even if I am nothing else! Even if I am never Queen of England, at least I will always be Infanta of Spain.’

‘Princes of royal blood have gone into the Tower of London before and not come out again,’ the ambassador said bleakly. ‘Princes of the royal blood of England have had those gates shut behind them and never seen daylight again. He could call you a pretender. You know what happens in England to pretenders. We have to go.’

Catalina curtseyed to My Lady the King’s Mother and received not even a nod of the head in return. She stiffened. The two retinues had met on their way to Mass; behind the old lady was her granddaughter the Princess Mary and half a dozen ladies. All of them showed frosty faces to the young woman who was supposed to be betrothed to the Prince of Wales but who had been neglected for so long.

‘My lady.’ Catalina stood in her path, waiting for an acknowledgement.

The king’s mother looked at the young woman with open dislike. ‘I hear that there are difficulties over the betrothal of the Princess Mary,’ she said.

Catalina looked towards the Princess Mary and the girl, hidden behind her grandmother, made an ugly grimace at her and broke off with a sudden snort of laughter.

‘I did not know,’ Catalina said.

‘You may not know, but your father undoubtedly knows,’ the old woman said irritably. ‘In one of your constant letters to him you might tell him that he does his cause and your cause no good by trying to disturb our plans for our family.’

‘I am very sure he does not…’ Catalina started.

‘I am very sure that he does; and you had better warn him not to stand in our way,’ the old woman interrupted her sharply, and swept on.

‘My own betrothal…’ Catalina tried.

‘Your betrothal?’ The king’s mother repeated the words as if she had never heard them before. ‘Your betrothal?’ Suddenly, she laughed, throwing her head back, her mouth wide. Behind her, the princess laughed too, and then all the ladies were laughing out loud at the thought of the pauper princess speaking of her betrothal to the most eligible prince in Christendom.

‘My father is sending my dowry!’ Catalina cried out.

‘Too late! You are far too late!’ the king’s mother wailed, clutching at the arm of her friend.

Catalina, confronted by a dozen laughing faces, reduced to helpless hysteria at the thought of this patched princess offering her bits of plate and gold, ducked her head down, pushed through them, and went away.

That night the ambassador of Spain and an Italian merchant of some wealth and great discretion stood side by side on a shadowy quayside at a quiet corner of the London docks, and watched the quiet loading of Spanish goods on to a ship bound for Bruges.

‘She has not authorised this?’ the merchant whispered, his dark face lit by flickering torchlight. ‘We are all but stealing her dowry! What will happen if the English suddenly say that the marriage is to go ahead and we have emptied her treasure room? What if they see that the dowry has come from Spain at last, but it never reached her treasure room? They will call us thieves. We will be thieves!’

‘They will never say it is to go ahead,’ the ambassador said simply. ‘They will impound her goods and imprison her the moment that they declare war on Spain, and they could do that any day now. I dare not let King Ferdinand’s money fall into the hands of the English. They are our enemies, not our allies.’

‘What will she do? We have emptied her treasury. There is nothing in her strong-room but empty boxes. We have left her a pauper.’

The ambassador shrugged. ‘She is ruined anyway. If she stays here when England is at war with Spain then she is an enemy hostage and they will imprison her. If she runs away with me she will have no kind welcome back at home. Her mother is dead and her family is ruined and she is ruined too. I would not be surprised if she did not throw herself into the Thames and drown. Her life is over. I cannot see what will become of her. I can save her money, if you will ship it out for me. But I cannot save her.’

I know I have to leave England; Arthur would not want me to stay to face danger. I have a terror of the Tower and the block that would be fitting only if I were a traitor, and not a princess who has never done anything wrong but tell one great lie, and that for the best. It would be the jest of all time if I had to put my head down on Warwick’s block and die, a Spanish pretender to the throne where he died a Plantagenet. That must not happen. I see that my writ does not run. I am not such a fool as to think I can command any more. I do not even pray any more. I do not even ask for my destiny. But I can run away. And I think the time to run away is now.

‘You have done what?’ Catalina demanded of her ambassador. The inventory in her hand trembled.

‘I took it upon my own authority to move your father’s treasure from the country. I could not risk…’

‘My dowry.’ She raised her voice.

‘Your Grace, we both know it will not be needed for a wedding. He will never marry you. They would take your dowry and he would still not marry you.’

‘It was my side of the bargain!’ she shouted. ‘I keep faith! Even if no-one else does! I have not eaten, I have given up my own house so as not to pawn that treasure. I make a promise and I keep to it, whatever the cost!’

‘The king would have used it to pay for soldiers to fight against your father. He would have fought against Spain with your father’s own gold!’ Fuensalida exclaimed miserably. ‘I could not let it happen.’

‘So you robbed me!’

He stumbled over the words. ‘I took your treasure into safe-keeping in the hopes that…’

‘Go!’ she said abruptly.

‘Princess?’

‘You have betrayed me, just as Dona Elvira betrayed me, just as everyone always betrays me,’ she said bitterly. ‘You may leave me. I shall not send for you again. Ever. Be very sure that I shall never speak to you again. But I shall tell my father what you have done. I shall write to him at once and tell him that you have stolen my dowry monies, that you are a thief. You will never be received at the court in Spain.’

He bowed, trembling with emotion, and then he turned to leave, too proud to defend himself.

‘You are nothing more than a traitor!’ Catalina cried as he reached the door. ‘And if I were a queen with the power of the queen I would have you hanged for treason.’

He stiffened. He turned, he bowed again, his voice when he spoke was ice. ‘Infanta, please do not make a fool of yourself by insulting me. You are badly mistaken. It was your own father who commanded me to return your dowry. I was obeying his direct order. Your own father wanted your treasury stripped of every valuable. It is he who decided to make you a pauper. He wanted the dowry money returned because he has given up all hope of your marriage. He wanted the money kept safe and smuggled safely out of England.

‘But I must tell you,’ he added with weighty malice, ‘he did not order me to make sure that you were safe. He gave no orders to smuggle you safely out of England. He thought of the treasure but not of you. His orders were to secure the safety of the goods. He did not even mention you by name. I think he must have given you up for lost.’

As soon as the words were out he wished he had not said them. The stricken look on her face was worse than anything he had ever seen before. ‘He told you to send back the gold but to leave me behind? With nothing?’

‘I am sure…’

Blindly, she turned her back to him and walked to the window so that he could not see the blank horror on her face. ‘Go,’ she repeated. ‘Just go.’

I am the sleeping princess in the story, a snow princess left in a cold land and forgetting the feel of the sun. This winter has been a long one, even for England. Even now, in April, the grass is so frosty in the morning that when I wake and see the ice on my bedroom windows the light filtering through is so white that I think it has snowed overnight. The water in the cup by my bed is frozen by midnight, and we cannot now afford to keep the fire in through the night. When I walk outside on the icy grass, it crunches thickly under my feet and I can feel its chill through the thin soles of my boots. This summer, I know, will have all the mild sweetness of an English summer; but I long for the burning heat of Spain. I want to have my despair baked out of me once more. I feel as if I have been cold for seven years, and if nothing comes to warm me soon I shall simply die of it, just melt away under the rain, just blow away like the mist off the river. If the king is indeed dying, as the court rumour says, and Prince Harry comes to the throne and marries Eleanor, then I shall ask my father for permission to take the veil and retire to a convent. It could not be worse than here. It could not be poorer, colder or more lonely. Clearly my father has forgotten his love for me and given me up, just as if I had died with Arthur. Indeed, now, I acknowledge that every day I wish that I had died with Arthur.

I have sworn never to despair – the women of my family dissolve into despair like molasses into water. But this ice in my heart does not feel like despair. It feels as if my rock-hard determination to be queen has turned me to stone. I don’t feel as if I am giving way to my feelings like Juana; I feel as if I have mislaid my feelings. I am a block, an icicle, a princess of constant snow.

I try to pray to God but I cannot hear Him. I fear He has forgotten me as everyone else has done. I have lost all sense of His presence, I have lost my fear of His will, and I have lost my joy in His blessing. I can feel nothing for Him. I no longer think I am His special child, chosen to be blessed. I no longer console myself that I am His special child, chosen to be tested. I think He has turned His face from me. I don’t know why, but if my earthly father can forget me, and forget that I was his favourite child, as he has done, then I suppose my Heavenly Father can forget me too.

In all the world I find that I care for only two things now: I can still feel my love for Arthur, like a warm, still-beating heart in a little bird that has fallen from a frozen sky, chilled and cold. And I still long for Spain, for the Alhambra Palace, for al-Yanna; the garden, the secret place, paradise.

I endure my life only because I cannot escape it. Each year I hope that my fortunes will change; each year when Harry’s birthday comes around and the betrothal is not made marriage, I know that another year of my fertile life has come and gone. Each midsummer day, when the dowry payment falls due and there is no draft from my father, I feel shame: like a sickness in my belly. And twelve times a year, for seven years, that is eighty-four times, my courses have come and gone. Each time I bleed I think, there is another chance to make a prince for England wasted. I have learned to grieve for the stain on my linen as if it is a child lost. Eighty-four chances for me to have a son, in the very flush of my youth; eighty-four chances lost. I am learning to miscarry. I am learning the sorrow of miscarriage.

Each day, when I go to pray I look up at the crucified Christ and say: ‘Your will be done’. That is each day for seven years, that is two thousand, five hundred and fifty-six times. This is the arithmetic of my pain. I say: ‘Your will be done’; but what I mean is: ‘make Your will on these wicked English councillors and this spiteful, unforgiving English king, and his old witch of a mother. Give me my rights. Make me queen. I must be queen, I must have a son, or I will become a princess of snow’.