Patience, Princess Catherine (11 page)

"My guess," Brandon ventured, "is that the king will betroth you to Princess Catherine. Otherwise, he might find that he has to return her and her dowry to Spain."

Whatever his father decided, Henry hoped the princess would remain in England. Whether they wed or not, he wanted Catherine as his friend. That, he was certain, would have pleased Arthur as much as it pleased
him.

 

T
HE PLEASANT EARLY DAYS OF AUTUMN
1502
GAVE WAY
to blustering chill and dampness. My life was as bleakly gray as the weather. I was invited nowhere and saw no one but Doña Elvira and the members of my little Spanish court. King Henry seemed to have forgotten me, though the queen occasionally sent me small gifts—a book she thought I might enjoy, a collar for Payaso. Don Rodrigo informed me that the negotiations for my marriage to young Henry remained stalled over issues of my dowry.

My health worsened. One day, as I lay suffering from a derangement of the stomach, my page announced the arrival of an envoy from my parents, the duke of Estrada. The duke was from one of Spain's oldest noble families, known to be loyal and trustworthy, but puffed up with self-importance and pompous in the extreme. I was forced to rouse myself from my bed to receive him.

Stroking his luxuriant mustaches, the duke delivered a long speech, choked with flowery phrases, informing me that my father had ordered him to prepare a ship to carry me and my retinue back to Spain.

"The ship already lies at anchor in the River Thames, my esteemed princess. Their Catholic majesties desire that you and the members of your court begin packing."

"Is it true?" I cried, my physical discomfort suddenly disappearing. "Swear to me that it is true!"

"Alas, no, my lady, it is not true," the duke confessed, his mustaches drooping forlornly. "But it must
appear
to be true."

My eyes filled with tears of disappointment. "Please explain this," I said miserably. "And, I beg you, do not disappoint me like this again."

"It is meant as a threat, my lady. King Ferdinand has not paid the second portion of your dowry since Arthur's death. If King Henry expects to collect that second portion and keep the first, then he must agree to a betrothal between you and his second son."

Now I understood that the sight of a ship lying ready to take me back to Spain was intended to force King Henry's hand. I had been in England long enough to know that the king would not willingly let 200, 000 escudos escape from his treasury. And so, having no choice but to go through the pretense, I ordered my wooden chests to be brought from storage and a few items placed in them. Apparently the ploy was successful. Within days King Henry sent word that negotiations would begin on a new marriage contract. I quietly unpacked again, and the waiting ship disappeared from the Thames.

I consoled myself with the knowledge that, even if I had been allowed to return to Spain, it would have been for only a short time until my parents dispatched me to a new marriage. Perhaps, I thought, a future marriage to Henry could work out very well. I liked him. I believed we would be friends.

But still no money arrived for my household. Since Arthur's death my father had not sent any money for my expenses, and I had nothing with which to pay my servants or to support the members of my court. I learned from Don Rodrigo that Spain's engagement in a war in Italy had drained the royal treasury and that even he had not received his ambassador's salary in over a year.

Surely, I thought, my father would not allow me to live in penury. My ladies and I repaired our threadbare gowns as best we could, though there were few reasons to do so. I was not invited to any events at court—in part because I was still officially in mourning. My duenna believed it her duty to keep me in seclusion. My seventeenth birthday was a poor affair, for there was no money to order a banquet. My minstrels played and Santiago and Urraca performed new tricks, but nothing cheered me. With a heavy heart I remembered the previous year when I was Arthur's bride and every imaginable dish had been presented at our banquet table at Bewdley.

Yuletide also found little celebration at Durham. On the twenty-sixth of December, the feast of Saint Stephen, Arthur's sisters, Mary and Margaret, along with Henry, came to deliver Yuletide greetings. I had looked forward to their visit and had a small token for each of them: embroidered ribbons to mark the place in their missals. But their talk was all about the Yuletide merrymaking they had enjoyed at Richmond, the great feast that had taken place in observance of Margaret's thirteenth birthday, and the plans being made for Twelfth Night. I had no part in any of it. In the end their visit left me feeling more disconsolate than ever.

There was another reason for my gloom: Henry was now a half year short of his twelfth birthday. Because a betrothal seemed likely, I did hope that we could become better acquainted. But Doña Elvira refused to allow it, insisting that we must not spend time together at all, even in the company of his sisters and all of my ladies. "I permitted it at Dogmersfield. I shall not permit it again. We cannot allow even a hint of impropriety to besmirch your spotless reputation."

One day we received word that the young Tudors were on their way to Durham. When Doña Elvira saw that I meant to defy her and welcome them, she took the precaution of locking me in my chamber and sent word that I was unable to receive visitors. Francesca found a key and unlocked the door, but it was too late. The Tudors had gone. I was so distressed and angry that I refused to speak to my duenna for more than a week.

My anger deepened at Doña Elvira's ironfisted rule, but I believed I had no way to loosen her grip without help. Everyone feared her. All I could do, for now, was to observe this boy, with his increasing good looks and high spirits, and to steal glances at him out of the corner of my eye whenever we happened to be at mass or some large public occasion. And I wondered what he might be thinking about me.

 

In January the court moved to the Tower of London, and there, on the second of February, Queen Elizabeth was delivered of her eighth child—not the hoped-for son, but another daughter. Nine days later, on her thirty-sixth birthday, the queen was dead of childbed fever. Her infant daughter, christened Catherine in honor of the queen's sister, lived only a few days more. Once again the royal family was plunged into deepest sorrow, and I with them, for I had lost my protector and friend.

The death watch over the queen's body had not yet ended when King Henry summoned me to his chambers. I knelt three times as I approached him, and when the king raised me up I saw that he had become an old man. It was as though he had shrunken to a poor copy of the vigorous man I had first met at Dogmersfield only sixteen months earlier. His shrewd eyes swept over me, as they had at that first meeting, but now they seemed haunted, nearly lifeless.

He wasted no time with an exchange of polite phrases. "Ten months have passed since the death of Prince Arthur. Is it true then, madam, as you claim, that you are not carrying Arthur's child, and that you will not provide the kingdom with his heir?"

"What you say is true, my lord," I answered.

He made no reply, merely sighing deeply and dismissing me with a wave of his bony hand before he turned away.

A few days later on the eighteenth of February, 1503, I attended a grimly formal ceremony in which Henry, duke of York, was created prince of Wales. Befitting the occasion Henry was more serious and subdued than I had ever seen him. Only once in the course of the long ritual did he glance in my direction, but I was heavily veiled in black, and he could not read the message my eyes held for him:
I shall be your friend.

 

Scarcely a month after that somber occasion, Maria de Salinas flew into my chambers with the latest court rumor. Maria was being courted by the duke of Derby, a grandson of the king's stepfather, and so was privy to much gossip. "Catalina, imagine this," she whispered excitedly. "King Henry is in search of a new wife!"

I was mending some table linens that had fallen into disrepair. "So soon?" I bit off the end of a thread. "The good queen has been dead for little more than a month."

"The king believes that he must tend to this matter immediately. He fears that some disaster might befall the new prince of Wales, as it did Arthur, and he will be left with only daughters. A new wife might produce yet another son for him."

I was not much surprised that King Henry wished to marry. I understood his concerns, for the death of my brother had left my parents without a male heir. But I gave no further thought to the king's predicament until the duke of Estrada strutted into my chambers puffed and preening with his own importance.

"What now, good sir," I gibed, "another order to begin imaginary packing for yet another phantom ship?"

But the duke saw no humor in my little jest and began one of his lengthy speeches. At last he reached his point: "King Henry the Seventh has informed me that he wishes to marry you, my lady princess."

I was shocked speechless. A look of horror must have crossed my face. I could not imagine myself wed to a man thirty years older than I, his teeth already blackened, his eyes rheumy, his skin like old parchment.
I, marry King Henry ?

"Does my mother, the queen, know?" I asked in a voice quavering with distress when I was again able to speak.

"She knows, madam. And she has refused to entertain his suit. The queen has said she would rather return you to Spain than allow such a marriage."

I nearly fainted with relief.

But it was the ambassador, Don Rodrigo, who supplied the practical details that the more refined duke had omitted: "The marriage would not be useful to Spain. Your sons would be in line for the throne after the new prince of Wales. You would have little power or influence over either the present or the future king. That power and influence is naturally what your parents require of your marriage."

I sat with bowed head, listening to his blunt but honest words. Whatever my mother's reasons, I was deeply grateful.

 

In April I observed the first anniversary of my husband's death. I was more than ready to throw off the mourning garments I had worn for a year and to seek some mild diversions in the life of the English court. Though Doña Elvira continued to cling to me like a shadow and to rule my days with an unbending will, there was no point in confronting her. With so little money in the household coffers, there was nothing at all to spend on pleasure anyway. The Great Feast of Easter was scarcely different from any other meal at my table—a little bread, a little meat, some poor wine.

When Juan de Cuero, my treasurer, refused to permit me to sell two or three pieces of plate in order to feed my household and to meet my obligations to my servants, I wrote to my parents yet again, pleading with them. My father answered that letter swiftly with a firm negative: The plate had to be preserved as part of my dowry and could not be touched.

But what, please God, was I to do in the meantime?

***

At last, on the twenty-third of June, five days before Henry's twelfth birthday, a marriage treaty was signed, betrothing me to the new prince of Wales. Certain agreements had been reached: The dowry—always the dowry!—would remain unchanged; the wedding would take place when Henry reached the age of fifteen, providing the pope granted the proper dispensations, and providing the balance of my dowry had been paid over to King Henry—100, 000 escudos, part in gold coin and part in jewels and plate.

The day after the marriage treaty was signed, Henry and I celebrated our betrothal with a great banquet. This was the first occasion of rejoicing and merriment since weeks before Arthur's death. I managed to put one of my gowns in good repair, sat between the king and his aged mother, and once again danced with my ladies, feeling almost lighthearted. My future husband led his sister, Princess Margaret, in a lively galliard with its rapid steps and vigorous leaps.
I must learn those steps,
I thought, watching as Henry danced with the abandon of a boy with no care in this world but to make merry.

The mourning period was over. I was betrothed to the future king of England. I would once more be invited to court and treated with the honor and respect that were due me. Surely my life would now improve.

Still, I was past seventeen, an age at which most young women were already married. Yet I would have to wait three long years until all the conditions of the betrothal were reached and I would once again be a wife. I felt that I was already growing old, my childbearing years fleeting, while my future husband—his cheeks flushed with the exertions of the dance—had not yet reached manhood.

But I knew that waiting was called for. I had already begun to imagine the man—and the king—that Henry would become. And I would be his queen. I was prepared to wait as long as I must.

Richmond Palace, September 1503

 

The king informed Henry that the marriage would not take place for several years. "And much could happen in the meantime. There is not a monarch in all of Christendom who would not be pleased to wed his daughter to the next king of England. Betrothals are made to be broken."

Henry wished to ask questions. Were betrothals so easily broken? Was this not the same as breaking one's word? What would then become of the princess? Would she be sent back to Spain? What other princesses were being considered? But his father did not allow such questions, and they remained unasked.

More troublesome to Henry than the matter of a broken betrothal was his father's new attitude toward him.
Since Henry had been invested as prince of Wales and given a number of other titles, the king insisted upon peeping him constantly by his side wherever he went—to Richmond, Greenwich, or Westminster. Brandon and one or two others traveled with them.