“There is no need to go about with that melancholy air. You will still have Maria.” The very close association between Joanna and Katharine had left Maria somewhat isolated, a fact which, when Isabella had time to notice it, had drawn admonitions. It was true that Maria was a self-contained child, inclined to be dull, but being always left out of things did not improve matters. “What is more, you will soon have another sister, Margaret. She may be homesick at first and our ways may seem strange to her. You must behave to her as you wish Margaret Tudor to behave to you when you go to England.”

  It was sound, sensible advice and kindly meant but Katharine spurned it. It simply showed how little grown-ups understood. For one thing nobody could ever take Joanna’s place; and for another, if she made a close bond with Margaret there would be another wrench when she herself went to England. She would try to be kind to Margaret, to take a little more notice of Maria, and naturally she would continue to love her mother. But when she thought the matter over she decided that she would never wholeheartedly love anyone again until she was married. Men and women, as Joanna said, belonged together, and the husband-and-wife relationship seemed the only safe and durable one.

  There was evidence of this before her eyes. Few people could be less fundamentally alike than her father and mother and sharp disputes between them were frequent. Partly this was the result of circumstance; it was all too easy for Father to accuse Mother of favoring Castile and all things Castilian and Mother to retort that she could say the same about him and his Aragonese. Yet all differences seemed to blow over; they continued to work together and plan together and as far as their various duties allowed, to be together. That was the kind of link with another human being which she craved; and she hoped that she would find it with Arthur Tudor.

  Margaret arrived; she was pretty enough and gay—Mother said giddy—but with a gaiety quite different from Joanna’s. She had not, by Spanish standards, been well-brought up and seemed not to mind; she made no secret of the fact that she thought the Spanish Court old-fashioned and dull and pompous. She decried even the Spanish dresses, complaining that they made it impossible to move one’s arms. “And is it necessary to move one’s arms? One is not expected to go hay-making in a satin gown,” Isabella said coldly.

  “When I am Queen I shall alter everything,” Margaret said to Katharine. That sounded rather shocking. And on another day, Margaret said something even worse. “The Queen, your mother, can afford to behave as though she had no legs. She can throw off these pompous rules whenever she is tired of them; She has only to start a war and she can dress like a man and enjoy a man’s freedom.”

  “The Queen, my mother, has never started a war in her life,” Katharine said fiercely. “But, once involved she has never lost one.”

  Since that could not be said of Margaret’s father, the Emperor, the argument ended there. Yet, despite the fact that there was no great fondness between them, Margaret, indirectly, influenced Katharine in a way that possibly shaped her whole life.

  The young couple had been married only a short time when preparations were made for the journey to Alcantara where Isabella was for the second time, to cross the border into Portugal. Katharine was to go with her father and mother, and two days before they were due to start she developed a rash. Smallpox, everybody said, except Mother, who, taking a look said, “Nonsense. She has eaten something that disagreed with her.” Then, because everyone else seemed dubious and frightened, Katharine was wrapped in a blanket and carried into Isabella’s bedroom and put on a couch, given a long drink of goat’s milk, and presently fell asleep.

  She woke to the sound of voices; Father and Mother in argument; one almost always knew because in dispute Father’s voice grew shrill and sharp, Mother’s deep and gruff.

  “Don’t say nonsense to me,” Father said. “It is fact. “Look at peasants, scraping and saving to get married at thirty, or soldiers who have to weather four of five campaigns. What they do in bed never hurts them; the young of the rich often die within a year or two.”

  “Give me one example.”

  “I could give a dozen. They’re said to die of other ills; but the truth is they’ve spent their vital forces and so fall easy prey. You’d be well advised to bring the girl to Alcantara and give him a rest.”

  “They would not agree to be parted.”

  “They’d obey a direct order. You could say you wanted Margaret as part of Isabella’s train. Promise her half a dozen new dresses.”

  “Whom God hath joined let no man put asunder.”

  “Give me patience! Who spoke of sundering them? All I say is, give him a rest. They’re young and she’s an insatiable bitch. He’s thinner and paler and his cough is worse.”

  “Then the doctors must examine him. And also give their opinion upon the other matter.”

  “Is that not what I began by saying? Sometimes…You are supposed to be an intelligent woman…I said, did I not, that Dr. de La Sa told me that in his opinion the marriage should not have been consummated for a year.”

  “In less than a year I hope there will be a child.”

  “There may well be. A child without a father.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Will you not say nonsense to me? I am not one of your mercenaries. I am your husband.”

  “You should remember that more often.”

  Even inside the sheltering blanket Katharine felt the sense of danger threatening, something violent about to happen. But nothing did.

  “Will you order Margaret to come with us to Alcantara?”

  “No. And if you do I shall countermand the order. This is Castile.”

  “Then if the boy kills himself…” Father said. She heard the rapid footsteps, the slammed door. There was a silence so deep that for a moment or two Katharine thought both her parents had gone. Mother could move almost soundlessly. Then there were hands, gentle about the blanket. Katharine pretended to be newly awakened. Such pretence she knew was the equivalent of a lie; it must be confessed and she would do penance.

  “And how is the smallpox?” Isabella asked, peering closely.

  The rash had vanished. Mother, as always, had been right.

  But not about Juan.

  That was the terrible fact which left its indelible stamp on Katharine’s mind.

  They were still making merry on the frontier; even the younger Isabella seemed happy again and restored, when word was brought that Juan, in Salamanca, was very ill, dying, dead.

  “If the boy kills himself…”

  After that things were never quite the same. Juan’s death was, Katharine admitted to herself, to her a lesser matter than Joanna’s departure because their lives had been less closely intertwined; but he was her brother, handsome, amiable whenever they met, and to think that anyone should die so young was sad.

  It was sad, too, to see the effect upon Mother, the lightly silvered hair growing white almost perceptibly from day to day, the step heavier, the shoulders a little bowed.

  For Spain, plunged into grief as it was, there was still a dynastic hope. Margaret was pregnant. Mother’s wish for a child within a year seemed likely to be fulfilled. But the child was born prematurely, dead. Spain had no heir.

  Then, in Portugal, Isabella gave birth to a son who was named Miguel. That she died in childbed nobody seemed to notice much. Women, especially Princesses, were, Katharine reflected, like soldiers, expendable. Miguel lived for two years, heir apparent to Portugal and Spain. Then he fell ill of a childish ailment and died. Fortunately for everybody’s peace of mind, just before he did so, Joanna, in faraway Ghent, had borne a son who was named Charles and who, if he lived, would inherit more territory than any other man in the modern world. Flanders, Burgundy, Austria, Spain and the expanding colonies in the west, in what people were beginning to recognize as a new world.

  A new world was opening out, new ideas, some of them very strange, were spreading; but the old ideas still had power. One was that Spain and Portugal must be linked by marriage. The period of mourning for Isabella was hardly over before plans were afoot for Maria to take her place. Could Manoel marry his deceased wife’s sister? Yes, if the Pope made a special dispensation. Couriers began to hurry between Spain and Rome and presently the necessary permission arrived. With the same solemn pomp as had twice accompanied Isabella to the border, Maria went to marriage and Queendom.

  Katharine and her mother spent the next winter alone in Granada. Ferdinand had combated his grief at Juan’s death by an increased activity and could usually contrive some good reason for being wherever Isabella was not. He blamed her for the boy’s death and then, when his own sorrow eased, was displeased by her continued melancholy which he considered excessive. She never abandoned her mourning clothes, and now wore, under the black, the rough habit of a Franciscan nun. In December 1500 Katharine was fifteen and it had been arranged that she was to leave for England as soon after her fifteenth birthday as the weather made travel possible and when the new year came she found herself looking forward to the prospect of getting away and at the same time accusing herself of heartlessness. When she was gone her mother would be lonely indeed.

  Nobody who was not forced to it would set out on such a journey in January or February and the March gales were notorious; but April came and May and Isabella’s only mention of plans was a negative one; there was plague in the north and travel would be unwise at present.

  “Would it not be possible for me to leave from Huelva? Or even cross into Portugal and sail from Lisbon?”

  “You are so eager to be gone?”

  “I am not anxious to leave you, or Spain. I dread the parting. But the Prince of Wales writes more and more impatiently.” Arthur wrote in Latin, good enough but less perfect than her own—a fact that she found touching—and he wrote how much he looked forward to her coming; he said he already looked upon her as his wife; he hoped that the gales would not be prolonged this year.

  Isabella’s Ambassador to England, Dr. Puebla, had also written, urging that the Princess should leave for England soon: the King of England mentioned the matter at every interview and seemed to be growing suspicious.

  “I have been betrothed for twelve years,” Katharine said, as Isabella sat silent. “And I must go, sooner or later.”

  “Not unless you wish,” Isabella said, to Katharine’s astonishment. “I have been thinking. I want what is best for you.”

  Katharine’s heart gave a little jerk. A change of plan—which meant a change in political attitudes—at this late hour! And she so accustomed to regarding herself as Princess of Wales; so ready to love Arthur who was young, and sounded friendly. But there was nothing she could do. Princesses had as little say in their own destinies as hounds and horses. She waited for her mother’s next words with breathless trepidation, remembering something that now seemed to have an ominous significance—amongst all the things she had learned English was not included. Had this withdrawal been planned all along?

  Isabella stood up and began to walk about in a characteristic attitude, her fingers linked, tips upward, her head bent, her shoulders hunched. Katharine rose immediately.

  “Sit down, child. Sit down. Words come to me more easily when I am on my feet. The truth is, and I see it more and more clearly as time goes by, this is a false, hollow world and any woman is well out of it. I suppose that on the face of it I have been luckier than most. But I can say frankly that had I my time over again I should do differently. I should go into a convent and devote myself entirely to the worship of God. Would you prefer that to marriage?”

  “Become a nun? Mother, I should hate it!” Too violent, too vehement. “I have no vocation. I am not good enough. I try to be good, to love God and please Him, to obey the laws of the Church…But to take the veil…I never once thought about it.”

  “Then think about it now…I am not trying to persuade you; I am offering you a choice that I think no girl in your situation has ever been offered, before. An opportunity to abandon the world before it betrays you. As it will…it will…I know. I speak of what I know. Win a war and prepare for another! Here we are in the Alhambra but Granada is not subdued. Bear children, they die; or are sold away like calves. And men—I’ll warrant that your father is now in some hunting lodge, with a fat peasant girl whose name he may know tonight but will not remember tomorrow.”

  It was like seeing a great fortress crumble and collapse under the fire of culverins. Mother, a woman who had managed so well in a world made for and by men. Mother, indomitable, resourceful, proud.

  But she is growing old, and I am young. I want to be married and have children. I love fine clothes and jewels, and music and dancing and gay company.

  “Think about it,” Isabella said again. “Of all my children you are most like me and for that reason I wish to spare you. I bore ten children, three are now alive. I sent Columbus out and what did it profit me? The whole thing ended in a sordid little quarrel over who should govern in a place that is not the India he thought to find. Child, there is nothing, nothing in this world that once taken in the hand is worth handling.”

  Katharine was too young and uninformed to know that her mother was suffering from the menopause and singularly unfortunate in that it had coincided with the loss of a son, the death of a daughter and a grandchild and presently with a husband’s infidelity.

  She said, very gently, “Mother, I think that those God chooses for a religious life, He calls. Had He called you the Infidel would still rule here. And I do not feel any desire to be a nun.”

  “Then I pity you. You will have the world to deal with,” Isabella said.

  Next day it seemed that this dispirited conversation had never taken place. Activity began; stuff for dresses, ladies and maids in waiting to be chosen, the silver plate and jewels that were part of the dowry to be selected and packed, the escort to ride with her to Corunna picked. Isabella, who wished that she had abandoned the world before it had a chance to betray her, saw to it that Katharine, going out to face the world, went well provided.

  She took with her, in coin and goods the worth of half her dowry, the other half was to follow; she took a household of sixty people including Doña Elvira who had been chosen as her duenna. She took twelve huge chests containing her clothes and linen.

  She also took what she had been born with and what fifteen years had taught her. She was deeply, but not fanatically pious; she had a fixed aversion to war; she had the born Spaniard’s Francophobia; she had a longing for a relationship that would be permanent; she knew that for a future Queen to bear sons was a matter of paramount importance. She went with hope and goodwill. She was healthy, pretty, accomplished and affectionate.

  In bright summer weather the Queen of Castile’s daughter set sail for England, and all the auguries were good.

  IV

  Henry Tudor rode towards Dogmersfield, a palace belonging to the Bishop of Bath, some forty-five miles out of London, at which, at last, at last, the Princess of Spain who was to be his daughter-in-law, had arrived.

  It was now the second week in November, the weather was foul, the road deep in mire. Henry’s mood matched the road and the weather. He was deeply suspicious about this whole business; it had been too long coming to the boil. The girl had been supposed to set out as soon as travel was feasible after her fifteenth birthday—that was eleven months ago; she had left Granada in May, sailed from Corunna in August, met with bad weather and needed the services of an English pilot from Devon to get her on her way again. She had landed in Plymouth in early October and been met, there, and at each stage of her journey, by the local officials and gentry whom Henry ordered to show her hospitality and every possible civility. The fact remained that no one had yet seen her, close to and face to face. There was a female official known as a duenna, a veritable tiger, who had so far managed to stand between the Princess and even the lords under whose roofs she had lodged; and when Henry had demanded of his own household steward, Lord Willoughby de Broke, sent to meet the girl at Exeter, “Well, what is she like?” the answer had been, “Your Grace, it would be difficult for me to say. She was so shrouded and beveiled in Spanish fashion. About so high.”

  Henry knew that Ferdinand of Aragon was not to be trusted; in his mind he always thought of him as “that fox beyond the Pyrénées,” and he hated him because in those early, unsure days Ferdinand had shown, by his rejection of the first marriage offers that he thought little of England and had no confidence in Henry’s ability to keep his throne. He’d changed his mind—but only because it suited him, and he had paid, or would pay, in good hard cash for that earlier hesitation; but it did occur to Henry as delay followed delay that Ferdinand might have outwitted him after all and sold him what he called “a pig in a poke.” This Katharine was, after all the eleventh child, and any family of more than three was likely to produce one member in some way defective; since the betrothal was made this girl’s brother had died, somewhat mysteriously; a sister had died in childbed and there were some very curious stories going the rounds about the sister who had married Philip of Burgundy, wrong in the head they said.

  Whom to believe; what to believe? His own emissaries to Spain had reported favorably about the Princess. Deluded? Bribed? Well, he intended to see for himself; and if the girl had, as he rather thought she might, a harelip, a squint, one shoulder or one hip higher than the other he’d turn her, her duenna, the vast expensive household which Spanish dignity demanded, back to Plymouth and though it was November that clever Devon pilot, what was his name? Stephen Brett—who’d brought her into Plymouth, could take her back. England was no longer in need of a Spanish alliance. It had been arranged, and he, busy with a thousand other things, involved with the complete reconstruction of a country broken by civil war, had let the thing ride. It was still a good match and the dowry he had demanded was something to be considered; but the keeping at a distance, the mention of veils and such flummery, alerted him. So despite the rheumatism which was beginning to trouble his bones, he rode out to see for himself; to interpose his judgment between Arthur and any kind of disillusionment. Arthur was already romantically and imaginatively in love with his Spanish princess and Arthur was so constituted that if he saw her and she was maimed or infirm he would simply love her more than ever. Arthur was—his father admitted it—given to the most costly extravagance of all, pity. For Arthur always the lame dog. If the delay, which Henry believed to be a bit of Ferdinand’s cagey policy, meant, as he suspected, that Ferdinand had hesitated to put his goods on the counter, it was better that Arthur never saw the merchandise. Send Arthur, who was, after all, Prince of Wales, on an official errand that would take two days, and ride out to see for himself.

 

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