The Constant Princess

“Will you take a cup of wedding ale?” she invited him. She made sure that she did not think of Arthur bringing her a cup and saying it was for courage.

“I will,” he said. His voice, still so young, was unsteady in its register. She turned away to pour the ale so he should not see her smile.

They lifted their cups to each other. “I hope you did not find today too quiet for your taste,” he said uncertainly. “I thought with my father newly dead we should not have too merry a wedding. I did not want to distress My Lady his mother.”

She nodded but said nothing.

“I hope you are not disappointed,” he pressed on. “Your first wedding was so very grand.”

Catalina smiled. “I hardly remember it, it was so long ago.”

He looked pleased at her reply, she noted. “It was, wasn’t it? We were all little more than children.”

“Yes,” she said. “Far too young to marry.”

He shifted in his seat. She knew that the courtiers who had taken Hapsburg gold would have spoken against her. The enemies of Spain would have spoken against her. His own grandmother had advised against this wedding. This transparent young man was still anxious about his decision, however bold he might try to appear.

“Not that young; you were fifteen,” he reminded her. “A young woman.”

“And Arthur was the same age,” she said, daring to name him. “But he was never strong, I think. He could not be a husband to me.”

Harry was silent and she was afraid she had gone too far. But then she saw the glimpse of hope in his face.

“It is indeed true then, that the marriage was never consummated?” he asked, coloring up in embarrassment. “I am sorry…I wondered…I know they said…but I did wonder…”

“Never,” she said calmly. “He tried once or twice but you will remember that he was not strong. He may have even bragged that he had done it, but, poor Arthur, it meant nothing.”

“I shall do this for you,” I say fiercely, in my mind, to my beloved. “You wanted this lie. I shall do it thoroughly. If it is going to be done, it must be done thoroughly. It has to be done with courage, conviction; and it must never be undone.”

Aloud, Catalina said, “We married in the November, you remember. December we spent most of the time traveling to Ludlow and were apart on the journey. He was not well after Christmas, and then he died in April. I was very sad for him.”

“He was never your lover?” Harry asked, desperate to be certain.

“How could he be?” She gave a pretty, deprecatory shrug that made the gown slip off one creamy shoulder a little. She saw his eyes drawn to the exposed skin, she saw him swallow. “He was not strong. Your own mother thought that he should have gone back to Ludlow alone for the first year. I wish we had done that. It would have made no difference to me, and he might have been spared. He was like a stranger to me for all our marriage. We lived like children in a royal nursery. We were hardly even companions.”

He sighed as if he were free of a burden; the face he turned to her was bright. “You know, I could not help but be afraid,” he said. “My grandmother said…”

“Oh! Old women always gossip in the corners,” she said, smiling. She ignored his widened eyes at her casual disrespect. “Thank God we are young and need pay no attention.”

“So it was just gossip,” he said, quickly adopting her dismissive tone. “Just old women’s gossip.”

“We won’t listen to her,” she said, daring him to go on. “You are king and I am queen and we shall make up our own minds. We hardly need her advice. Why—it is her advice that has kept us apart when we could have been together.”

It had not struck him before. “Indeed,” he said, his face hardening. “We have both been deprived. And all the time she hinted that you were Arthur’s wife, wedded and bedded, and I should look elsewhere.”

“I am a virgin, as I was when I came to England,” she asserted boldly. “You could ask my old duenna or any of my women. They all knew it. My mother knew it. I am a virgin untouched.”

He gave a little sigh as if released from some worry. “You are kind to tell me,” he said. “It is better to have these things in the light, so we know, so we both know. So that no one is uncertain. It would be terrible to sin.”

“We are young,” she said. “We can speak of such things between ourselves. We can be honest and straightforward together. We need not fear rumors and slanders. We need have no fear of sin.”

“It will be my first time too,” he admitted shyly. “I hope you don’t think the less of me?”

“Of course not,” she said sweetly. “When were you ever allowed to go out? Your grandmother and your father had you mewed up as close as a precious falcon. I am glad that we shall be together, that it will be the first time, for both of us, together.”

Harry rose to his feet and held out his hand. “So we shall have to learn together,” he said. “We shall have to be kind to each other. I don’t want to hurt you, Catalina. You must tell me if anything hurts you.”

Easily she moved into his arms and felt his whole body stiffen at her touch. Gracefully, she stepped back, as if modestly shrinking but kept one hand on his shoulder to encourage him to press forwards until the bed was behind her. Then she let herself lean back until she was on the pillows, smiling up at him, and she could see his blue eyes darken with desire.

“I have wanted you since I first saw you,” he said breathlessly. He stroked her hair, her neck, her naked shoulder, with a hurried touch, wanting all of her, at once.

She smiled. “And I, you.”

“Really?”

She nodded.

“I dreamed that it was me that married you that day.” He was flushed, breathless.

Slowly, she untied the ribbons at the throat of her nightgown, letting the silky linen fall apart so that he could see her throat, her round firm breasts, her waist, the dark shadow between her legs. Harry gave a little groan of desire at the sight of her. “It might as well have been,” she whispered. “I have had no other. And we are married now, at last.”

“Ah, God, we are,” he said longingly. “We are married now, at last.”

He dropped his face into the warmth of her neck. She could feel his breath coming fast and urgent in her hair, his body was pushing against hers, Catalina felt herself respond. She remembered Arthur’s touch and gently bit the tip of her tongue to remind herself never, never to say Arthur’s name out loud. She let Harry push against her, force himself against her and then he was inside her. She gave a little rehearsed cry of pain but she knew at once, in a heart thud of dread, that it was not enough. She had not cried out enough, her body had not resisted him enough. She had been too warm, too welcoming. It had been too easy. He did not know much, this callow boy, but he knew that it was not difficult enough.

He checked, even in the midst of his desire. He knew that something was not as it should be. He looked down at her. “You are a virgin,” he said uncertainly. “I hope that I do not hurt too much.”

But he knew that she was not. Deep down, he knew that she was no virgin. He did not know much, this overprotected boy, but he knew this. Somewhere in his mind, he knew that she was lying.

She looked up at him. “I was a virgin until this moment,” she said, managing the smallest of smiles. “But your potency has overcome me. You are so strong. You overwhelmed me.”

His face was still troubled, but his desire could not wait. He started to move again, he could not resist the pleasure. “You have mastered me,” she encouraged him. “You are my husband, you have taken your own.” She saw him forget his doubt in his rising desire. “You have done what Arthur could not do,” she whispered.

They were the very words to trigger his desire. The young man gave a groan of pleasure and fell down on to her, his seed pumping into her, the deed undeniably done.

He doesn’t question me again. He wants so much to believe me that he does not ask the question, fearing that he might get an answer he doesn’t like. He is cowardly in this. He is accustomed to hearing the answers he wants to hear and he would rather an agreeable lie than an unpalatable truth.

Partly it is his desire to have me, and he wants me as I was when he first saw me: a virgin in bridal white. Partly it is to disprove everyone who warned him against the trap that I had set for him. But more than anything else: he hated and envied my beloved Arthur and he wants me just because I was Arthur’s bride, and—God forgive him for a spiteful, envious, second son—he wants me to tell him that he can do something that Arthur could not do, that he can have something that Arthur could not have. Even though my beloved husband is cold under the nave of Worcester Cathedral, the child that wears his crown still wants to triumph over him. The greatest lie is not in telling Harry that I am a virgin. The greatest lie is in telling him that he is a better man, more of a man than his brother. And I did that too.

In the dawn, while he is still sleeping, I take my penknife and cut the sole of my foot, where he will not notice a scar, and drip blood on the sheet where we had lain, enough to pass muster for an inspection by My Lady the King’s Grandmother or any other bad-tempered, suspicious enemy who might still seek to discomfort me. There is to be no showing of the sheets for a king and his bride; but I know that everyone will ask, and it is best that my ladies can say that they have all seen the smear of blood and that I am complaining of the pain.

In the morning, I do everything that a bride should do. I say I am tired, and I rest for the morning. I smile with my eyes looking downwards as if I have discovered some sweet secret. I walk a little stiffly and I refuse to ride out to hunt for a week. I do everything to indicate that I am a young woman who has lost her virginity. I convince everyone. And besides, no one wants to believe anything other.

The cut on my foot is sore for a long, long time. It catches me every time I step into my new shoes, the ones with the great diamond buckles. It is like a reminder to me of the lie I promised Arthur that I would tell. Of the great lie that I will live, for the rest of my life. I don’t mind the sharp little nip of pain when I slide my right foot into my shoe. It is nothing to the pain that is hidden deep inside me when I smile at the unworthy boy who is king and call him, in my new admiring voice: “husband.”

SUMMER 1509

Harry woke in the night and his quiet stillness woke Catalina.

“My lord?” she asked.

“Go to sleep,” he said. “It’s not yet dawn.”

She slipped from the bed and lit a taper in the red embers of the fire, then lit a candle. She let him see her, nightgown half open, her smooth flanks only half hidden by the fall of the gown. “Would you like some ale? Or some wine?”

“A glass of wine,” he said. “You have one too.”

She put the candle in the silver holder and came back to the bed beside him with the wineglasses in her hand. She could not read his face, but suppressed her pang of irritation that, whatever it was, she had to be woken, she had to inquire what was troubling him, she had to demonstrate her concern. With Arthur she had known in a second what he wanted, what he was thinking. But anything could distract Harry—a song, a dream, a note thrown from the crowd. Anything could trouble him. He had been raised to be accustomed to sharing his thoughts, accustomed to guidance. He needed an entourage of friends and admirers, tutors, mentors, parents. He liked constant conversation. Catalina had to be everyone to him.

“I have been thinking about war,” he said.

“Oh.”

“King Louis thinks he can avoid us, but we will force war on him. They tell me he wants peace, but I will not have it. I am the King of England, the victors of Agincourt. He will find me a force to be reckoned with.”

She nodded. Her father had been clear that Harry should be encouraged in his warlike ambitions against the King of France. He had written to her in the warmest of terms as his dearest daughter and advised her that any war between England and France should be launched, not on the north coast—where the English usually invaded—but on the borders between France and Spain. He suggested that the English should reconquer the region of Aquitaine which would be glad to be free of France and would rise up to meet its liberators. Spain would be in strong support. It would be an easy and glorious campaign.

“In the morning I am going to order a new suit of armor,” Harry said. “Not a suit for jousting, I want heavy armor, for the battlefield.”

She was about to say that he could hardly go to war when there was so much to do in the country. The moment that an English army left for France, the Scots, even with an English bride on their throne, were certain to take advantage and invade the north. The whole tax system was riddled with greed and injustice and must be reformed, there were new plans for schools, for a king’s council, for forts and a navy of ships to defend the coast. These were Arthur’s plans for England, they should come before Harry’s desire for a war.

“I shall make my grandmother regent when I go to war,” Harry said. “She knows what has to be done.”

Catalina hesitated, marshaling her thoughts. “Yes indeed,” she said. “But the poor lady is so old now. She has done so much already. Perhaps it might be too much of a burden for her?”

He smiled. “Not her! She has always run everything. She keeps the royal accounts, she knows what is to be done. I don’t think anything would be too much for her as long as it kept us Tudors in power.”

“Yes,” Catalina said, gently touching on his resentment. “And see how well she ruled you! She never let you out of her sight for a moment. Why, I don’t think she would let you go out even now if she could prevent you. When you were a boy, she never let you joust, she never let you gamble, she never let you have any friends. She dedicated herself to your safety and your well-being. She could not have kept you closer if you had been a princess.” She laughed. “I think she thought you were a princess and not a lusty boy. Surely it is time that she had a rest? And you had some freedom?”

His swift, sulky look told her that she would win this.

“Besides”—she smiled—“if you give her any power in the country she will be certain to tell the council that you will have to come home, that war is too dangerous for you.”

“She could hardly stop me going to war,” he bristled. “I am the king.”

Catalina raised her eyebrows. “Whatever you wish, my love. But I imagine she will stop your funds, if the war starts to go badly. If she and the Privy Council doubt your conduct of the war they need do nothing but sit on their hands and not raise taxes for your army. You could find yourself betrayed at home—betrayed by her love, I mean—while you are attacked abroad. You might find that the old people stop you doing what you want. Like they always try to do.”

He was aghast. “She would never work against me.”

“Never on purpose,” Catalina agreed with him. “She would always think she was serving your interest. It is just that…”

“What?”

“She will always think that she knows your business best. To her, you will always be a little boy.”

She saw him flush with annoyance.

“To her you will always be a second son, the one who came after Arthur. Not the true heir. Not fitted for the throne. Old people cannot change their minds, cannot see that everything is different now. But really, how can she ever trust your judgment, when she has spent her life ruling you? To her, you will always be the youngest prince, the baby.”

“I shall not be limited by an old woman,” he swore.

“Your time is now,” Catalina agreed.

“D’you know what I shall do?” he demanded. “I shall make you regent when I go to war! You shall rule the country for me while I am gone. You shall command our forces at home. I would trust no one else. We shall rule together. And you will support me as I require. D’you think you could do that?”

She smiled at him. “I know I can. I won’t fail,” she said. “I was born to rule England. I shall keep the country safe while you are away.”

“That’s what I need,” Harry said. “And your mother was a great commander, wasn’t she? She supported her husband. I always heard that he led the troops but she raised the money and raised the army?”

“Yes,” she said, a little surprised at his interest. “Yes, she was always there. Behind the lines, planning his campaigns and making sure he had the forces he needed, raising funds and raising troops, and sometimes she was in the very forefront of the battles. She had her own armor, she would ride out with the army.”

“Tell me about her,” he said, settling himself down in the pillows. “Tell me about Spain. About what it was like when you were a little girl in the palaces of Spain. What was it like? In—what is it called—the Alhambra?”

It was too close to what had been before. It was as if a shadow had stretched over her heart. “Oh, I hardly remember it at all,” she said, smiling at his eager face. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Go on. Tell me a story about it.”

“No. I can’t tell you anything. D’you know, I have been an English princess for so long, I could not tell you anything about it at all.”

In the morning Harry was filled with energy, excited at the thought of ordering his suit of armor, wanting a reason to declare war at once. He woke her with kisses and was on her, like an eager boy, while she was waking. She held him close, welcomed his quick, selfish pleasure, and smiled when he was up and out of bed in a moment, hammering at the door and shouting for his guards to take him to his rooms.

“I want to ride before Mass today,” he said. “It is such a wonderful day. Will you come with me?”

“I’ll see you at Mass,” Catalina promised him. “And then you can breakfast with me, if you wish.”

“We’ll take breakfast in the hall,” he ruled. “And then we must go hunting. It is too good weather not to take the dogs out. You will come, won’t you?”

“I’ll come,” she promised him, smiling at his exuberance. “And shall we have a picnic?”

“You are the best of wives!” he exclaimed. “A picnic would be wonderful. Will you tell them to get some musicians and we can dance? And bring ladies, bring all your ladies, and we shall all dance.”

She caught him before he went out of the door. “Harry, may I send for Lady Margaret Pole? You like her, don’t you? Can I have her as a lady-in-waiting?”

He stepped back into the room, caught her into his arms and kissed her heartily. “You shall have whoever you want to serve you. Anyone you want, always. Send for her at once, I know she is the finest of women. And appoint Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, too. She is returning to court after her confinement. She has had another girl.”

“What will she call her?” Catalina asked, diverted.

“Mary, I think. Or Anne. I can’t remember. Now, about our dance…”

She beamed at him. “I shall get a troupe of musicians and dancers and if I can order soft-voice zephyrs I will do that too.” She laughed at the happiness in his face. She could hear the tramp of his guard coming to the door. “See you at Mass!”

I married him for Arthur, for my mother, for God, for our cause, and for myself. But in a very little while I have come to love him. It is impossible not to love such a sweet-hearted, energetic, good-natured boy as Harry in these first years of his reign. He has never known anything but admiration and kindness, he expects nothing less. He wakes happy every morning, filled with the confident expectation of a happy day. And, since he is king, and surrounded by courtiers and flatterers, he always has a happy day. When work troubles him or people come to him with disagreeable complaints he looks around for someone to take the bother of it away from him. In the first few weeks it was his grandmother who commanded. Slowly, I make sure that it is to me that he hands the burdens of ruling the kingdom.

The Privy Councilors learn to come to me to ascertain what the king would think. It is easier for them to present a letter or a suggestion, if he has been prepared by me. The courtiers soon know that anything that encourages him to go away from me, anything that takes the country away from the alliance with Spain will displease me, and Harry does not like it when I frown. Men seeking advantage, advocates seeking help, petitioners seeking justice—all learn that the quickest way to a fair, prompt decision is to call first at the queen’s rooms and then wait for my introduction.

I never have to ask anyone to handle him with tact. Everyone knows that a request should come to him as it were fresh, for the first time. Everyone knows that the self-love of a young man is very new and very bright and should not be tarnished. Everyone takes a warning from the case of his grandmother who is finding herself put gently and implacably to one side, because she openly advises him, because she takes decisions without him, because once—foolishly—she scolded him. Harry is a king so careless that he will hand over the keys of his kingdom to anyone he trusts. The trick for me is to make sure that he trusts only me.

I make sure that I never blame him for not being Arthur. I taught myself—in the seven years of widowhood—that God’s will was done when He took Arthur from me, and there is no point in blaming those who survive when the best prince is dead. Arthur died with my promise in his ears and I think myself very lucky indeed that marriage to his brother is not a vow that I have to endure but one I can enjoy.

I like being queen. I like having pretty things and rich jewels and a lapdog, and assembling ladies-in-waiting whose company is a pleasure. I like paying María de Salinas the long debt of her wages and watching her order a dozen gowns and fall in love. I like writing to Lady Margaret Pole and summoning her to my court, falling into her arms and crying for joy to see her again, and having her promise that she will be with me. I like knowing that her discretion is absolute; she never says one word about Arthur. But I like it that she knows what this marriage has cost me and why I have done it. I like her watching me make Arthur’s England even though it is Harry on the throne.

The first month of marriage is nothing for Harry but a round of parties, feasts, hunts, outings, pleasure trips, boating trips, plays, and tournaments. Harry is like a boy who has been locked up in a schoolroom for too long and is suddenly given a summer holiday. The world is so filled with amusement for him that the least experience gives him great pleasure. He loves to hunt—and he had never been allowed fast horses before. He loves to joust and his father and grandmother had never even allowed him in the lists. He loves the company of men of the world who carefully adapt their conversation and their amusements to divert him. He loves the company of women but—thank God—his childlike devotion to me holds him firm. He likes to talk to pretty women, play cards with them, watch them dance and reward them with great prizes for petty feats—but always he glances towards me to see that I approve. Always he stays at my side, looking down at me from his greater height with a gaze of such devotion that I can’t help but be loving towards him for what he brings me and in a very little while, I can’t help but love him for himself.

He has surrounded himself with a court of young men and women who are such a contrast to his father’s court that they demonstrate by their very being that everything has changed. His father’s court was filled with old men, men who had been through hard times together, some of them battle-hardened; all of them had lost and regained their lands at least once. Harry’s court is filled with men who have never known hardship, never been tested.

I have made a point of saying nothing to criticize either him or the group of wild young men that gather around him. They call themselves the “Minions” and they encourage each other in mad bets and jests all the day and—according to gossip—half the night too. Harry was kept so quiet and so close for all his childhood that I think it natural he should long to run wild now, and that he should love the young men who boast of drinking bouts and fights, and chases and attacks, and girls who they seduce, and fathers who pursue them with cudgels. His best friend is William Compton, the two go about with their arms around each other’s shoulders as if ready to dance or braced for a fight for half the day. There is no harm in William, he is as great a fool as the rest of the court, he loves Harry as a comrade, and he has a mock-adoration of me that makes us all laugh. Half of the Minions pretend to be in love with me and I let them dedicate verses and sing songs to me and I make sure that Harry always knows that his songs and poems are the best.

The older members of the court disapprove and have made stern criticisms of the king’s boisterous lads, but I say nothing. When the councilors come to me with complaints I say that the king is a young man and youth will have its way. There is no great harm in any one of the comrades; when they are not drinking, they are sweet young men.

One or two, like the Duke of Buckingham who greeted me long ago, or the young Thomas Howard, are fine young men who would be an ornament to any court. My mother would have liked them. But when the lads are deep in their cups they are noisy and rowdy and excitable as young men always are and when they are sober they talk nonsense. I look at them with my mother’s eyes and I know that they are the boys who will become the officers in our army. When we go to war their energy and their courage is just what we will need. The noisiest, most disruptive young men in peacetime are exactly the leaders I will need in time of war.

Lady Margaret, the king’s grandmother, having buried a husband or two, a daughter-in-law, a grandson and finally her own precious prince, was a little weary of fighting for her place in the world and Catalina was careful not to provoke her old enemy into open warfare. Thanks to Catalina’s discretion, the rivalry between the two women was not played overtly—anyone hoping to see Lady Margaret abuse her granddaughter-in-law as she had insulted her son’s wife was disappointed. Catalina slid away from conflict.

When Lady Margaret tried to claim precedence by arriving at the dining hall door a few footsteps before Catalina, a Princess of the Blood, an Infanta of Spain and now Queen of England, Catalina stepped back at once and gave way to her with such an air of generosity that everyone remarked on the pretty behavior of the new queen. Catalina had a way of ushering the older woman before her that absolutely denied all rules of precedence and instead somehow emphasized Lady Margaret’s ungainly gallop to beat her granddaughter-in-law to the high table. They also saw Catalina pointedly step back, and everyone remarked on the grace and generosity of the younger woman.

The death of Lady Margaret’s son, King Henry, had hit the old lady hard. It was not so much that she had lost a beloved child; it was more that she had lost a cause. In his absence she could hardly summon the energy to force the Privy Councilors to report to her before going to the king’s rooms. Harry’s joyful excusing of his father’s debts and freeing of his father’s prisoners she took as an insult to his father’s memory and to her own rule. The sudden leap of the court into youth and freedom and playfulness made her feel old and bad-tempered. She, who had once been the commander of the court and the maker of the rules, was left to one side. Her opinion no longer mattered. The great book by which all court events must be governed had been written by her; but suddenly, they were celebrating events that were not in her book, they invented pastimes and activities, and she was not consulted.

She blamed Catalina for all the changes she most disliked, and Catalina smiled very sweetly and continued to encourage the young king to hunt and to dance and to stay up late at night. The old lady grumbled to her ladies that the queen was a giddy, vain thing and would lead the prince to disaster. Insultingly, she even remarked that it was no wonder Arthur had died, if this was the way that the Spanish girl thought a royal household should be run.

Lady Margaret Pole remonstrated with her old acquaintance as tactfully as she could. “My lady, the queen has a merry court but she never does anything against the dignity of the throne. Indeed, without her, the court would be far wilder. It is the king who insists on one pleasure after another. It is the queen who gives this court its manners. The young men adore her and nobody drinks or misbehaves before her.”

“It is the queen whom I blame,” the old woman said crossly. “Princess Eleanor would never have behaved like this. Princess Eleanor would have been housed in my rooms, and the place would have run by my rules.”

Tactfully, Catalina heard nothing, not even when people came to her and repeated the slanders. Catalina simply ignored her grandmother-inlaw and the constant stream of her criticism. She could have done nothing that would irritate her more.

It was the late hours that the court now kept that were the old lady’s greatest complaint. Increasingly, she had to wait and wait for dinner to be served. She would complain that it was so late at night that the servants would not be finished before dawn, and then she would retire before the court had even finished their dinner.

“You keep late hours,” she told Harry. “It is foolish. You need your sleep. You are only a boy; you should not be roistering all night. I cannot keep hours like this, and it is a waste of candles.”

“Yes, but my lady grandmother, you are nearly seventy years old,” he said patiently. “Of course you should have your rest. You shall retire whenever you wish. Catalina and I are only young. It is natural for us to want to stay up late. We like amusement.”

“She should be resting. She has to conceive an heir,” Lady Margaret said irritably. “She’s not going to do that bobbing about in a dance with a bunch of featherheads. Masking every night. Whoever heard of such a thing? And who is to pay for all this?”

“We’ve been married less than a month!” he exclaimed, a little irritated. “These are our wedding celebrations. I think we can enjoy good pastimes and keep a merry court. I like to dance.”

“You act as if there was no end to money,” she snapped. “How much has this dinner cost you? And last night’s? The strewing herbs alone must cost a fortune. And the musicians? This is a country that has to hoard its wealth, it cannot afford a spendthrift king. It is not the English way to have a popinjay on the throne, a court of mummers.”

Harry flushed. He was about to make a sharp retort.

“The king is no spendthrift,” Catalina intervened quickly. “This is just part of the wedding festivities. Your son, the late king, always thought that there should be a merry court. He thought that people should know that the court was wealthy and gay. King Harry is only following in the footsteps of his wise father.”

“His father was not a young fool under the thumb of his foreign wife!” the old lady said spitefully.

Catalina’s eyes widened slightly and she put her hand on Harry’s sleeve to keep him silent. “I am his partner and his helpmeet, as God has bidden me,” she said gently. “As I am sure you would want me to be.”

The old lady grunted. “I hear you claim to be more than that,” she began.

The two young people waited. Catalina could feel Harry shift restlessly under the gentle pressure of her hand.

“I hear that your father is to recall his ambassador. Am I right?” She glared at them both. “Presumably he does not need an ambassador now. The King of England’s own wife is in the pay and train of Spain. The King of England’s own wife is to be the Spanish ambassador. How can that be?”

“My lady grandmother—” Harry burst out; but Catalina was sweetly calm.

“I am a princess of Spain. Of course I would represent the country of my birth to my country by marriage. I am proud to be able to do such a thing. Of course I will tell my father that his beloved son, my husband, is well, that our kingdom is prosperous. Of course I will tell my husband that my loving father wants to support him in war and peace.”

“When we go to war—” Harry began.

“War?” the old lady demanded, her face darkening. “Why should we go to war? We have no quarrel with France. It is only her father who wants war with France, no one else. Tell me that not even you will be such a fool as to take us into war to fight for the Spanish! What are you now? Their errand boy? Their vassal?”

“The King of France is a danger to us all!” Harry stormed. “And the glory of England has always been—”

“I am sure My Lady the King’s Grandmother did not mean to disagree with you, sire,” Catalina said sweetly. “These are changing times. We cannot expect older people always to understand when things change so quickly.”

“I’m not quite in my dotage yet!” the old woman flared. “And I know danger when I see it. And I know divided loyalties when I see them. And I know a Spanish spy—”

“You are a most treasured advisor,” Catalina assured her. “And my lord the king and I are always glad of your advice. Aren’t we, Harry?”

He was still angry. “Agincourt was—”

“I’m tired,” the old woman said. “And you twist and twist things about. I’m going to my room.”

Catalina swept her a deep, respectful curtsey, Harry ducked his head with scant politeness. When Catalina came up the old woman had gone.

“How can she say such things?” Harry demanded. “How can you bear to listen to her when she says such things? She makes me want to roar like a baited bear! She understands nothing, and she insults you! And you just stand and listen!”

Catalina laughed, took his cross face in her hands, and kissed him on the lips. “Oh, Harry, who cares what she thinks as long as she can do nothing? Nobody cares what she says now.”

“I am going to war with France whatever she thinks,” he promised.

“Of course you are, as soon as the time is right.”

I hide my triumph over her, but I know the taste of it, and it is sweet. I think to myself that one day the other tormentors of my widowhood, the princesses, Harry’s sisters, will know my power too. But I can wait.

Lady Margaret may be old but she cannot even gather the senior people of court about her. They have known her forever; the bonds of kinship, wardship, rivalry, and feud run through them all like veins through dirty marble. She was never well liked: not as a woman, not as the mother of a king. She was from one of the great families of the country but when she leapt up so high after Bosworth she flaunted her importance. She has a great reputation for learning and for holiness but she is not beloved. She always insisted on her position as the king’s mother and a gulf has grown between her and the other people of the court.

Drifting away from her, they are becoming friends of mine: Lady Margaret Pole of course; the Duke of Buckingham and his sisters, Elizabeth and Anne; Thomas Howard; his sons; Sir Thomas and Lady Elizabeth Boleyn; dearest William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury; George Talbot; Sir Henry Vernon that I knew from Wales. They all know that although Harry neglects the business of the realm, I do not.

I consult them for their advice, I share with them the hopes that Arthur and I had. Together with the men of the Privy Council I am bringing the kingdom into one powerful, peaceful country. We are starting to consider how to make the law run from one coast to another, through the wastes, the mountains, and forests alike. We are starting to work on the defenses of the coast. We are making a survey of the ships that could be commanded into a fighting navy, we are creating muster rolls for an army. I have taken the reins of the kingdom into my hands and found that I know how it is done.

Statecraft is my family business. I sat at my mother’s feet in the throne room of the Alhambra Palace. I listened to my father in the beautiful golden Hall of the Ambassadors. I learned the art and the craft of kingship as I had learned about beauty, music, and the art of building, all in the same place, all in the same lessons. I learned a taste for rich tiling, for bright sunlight falling on a delicate tracery of stucco, and for power, all at the same time. Becoming a Queen Regnant is like coming home. I am happy as Queen of England. I am where I was born and raised to be.

The king’s grandmother lay in her ornate bed, rich curtains drawn close so that she was lulled by shadows. At the foot of the bed an uncomplaining lady-in-waiting held up the monstrance for her to see the body of Christ in its white purity through the diamond-cut piece of glass. The dying woman fixed her eyes on it, occasionally looking to the ivory crucifix on the wall beside the bed, ignoring the soft murmur of prayers around her.

Catalina kneeled at the foot of the bed, her head bowed, a coral rosary in her hands, praying silently. My Lady Margaret, confident of a hard-won place in heaven, was sliding away from her place on earth.

Outside, in her presence chamber, Harry waited for them to tell him that his grandmother was dead. The last link to his subordinate, junior childhood would be broken with her death. The years in which he had been the second son—trying a little harder for attention, smiling a little brighter, working at being clever—would all be gone. From now on, everyone he would meet would know him only as the most senior member of his family, the greatest of his line. There would be no articulate, critical old Tudor lady to watch over this gullible prince, to cut him down with one quiet word in the very moment of his springing up. When she was dead he could be a man, on his own terms. There would be no one left who knew him as a boy. Although he was waiting, outwardly pious, for news of her death, inside he was longing to hear that she was gone, that he was at last truly independent, at last a man and a king. He had no idea that he still desperately needed her counsel.

“He must not go to war,” the king’s grandmother said hoarsely from the bed.

The lady-in-waiting gave a little gasp at the sudden clarity of her mistress’s speech. Catalina rose to her feet. “What did you say, my lady?”

“He must not go to war,” she repeated. “Our way is to keep out of the endless wars of Europe, to keep behind the seas, to keep safe and far away from all those princeling squabbles. Our way is keep the kingdom at peace.”

“No,” Catalina said steadily. “Our way is to take the crusade into the heart of Christendom and beyond. Our way is to make England a leader in establishing the church throughout Europe, throughout the Holy Land, to Africa, to the Turks, to the Saracens, to the edge of the world.”

“The Scots…”

“I shall defeat the Scots,” Catalina said firmly. “I am well aware of the danger.”

“I did not let him marry you for you to lead us to war.” The dark eyes flared with fading resentment.

“You did not let him marry me at all. You opposed it from the first moment,” Catalina said bluntly. “And I married him precisely so that he should mount a great crusade.” She ignored the little whimper from the lady-in-waiting, who believed that a dying woman should not be contradicted.

“You will promise me that you will not let him go to war,” the old lady breathed. “My dying promise, my deathbed promise. I lay it on you from my deathbed, as a sacred duty.”

“No.” Catalina shook her head. “Not me. Not another. I made one deathbed promise and it has cost me dearly. I will not make another. Least of all to you. You have lived your life and made your world as you wished. Now it is my turn. I shall see my son as King of England and perhaps King of Spain. I shall see my husband lead a glorious crusade against the Moors and the Turks. I shall see my country, England, take its place in the world, where it should be. I shall see England at the heart of Europe, a leader of Europe. And I shall be the one that defends it and keeps it safe. I shall be the one that is Queen of England, as you never were.”

“No…” the old woman breathed.

“Yes,” Catalina swore, without compromise. “I am Queen of England now and I will be till my death.”

The old woman raised herself up, struggled for breath. “You pray for me.” She laid the order on the younger woman almost as if it were a curse. “I have done my duty to England, to the Tudor line. You see that my name is remembered as if I were a queen.”

Catalina hesitated. If this woman had not served herself, her son and her country, the Tudors would not be on the throne. “I will pray for you,” she conceded grudgingly. “And as long as there is a chantry in England, as long as the Holy Roman Catholic Church is in England, your name will be remembered.”

“Forever,” the old woman said, happy in her belief that some things could never change.

“Forever,” Catalina agreed.

Then, less than an hour later, she was dead; and I became queen, ruling queen, undeniably in command, without a rival, even before my coronation. No one knows what to do in the court, there is no one who can give a coherent order. Harry has never ordered a royal funeral—how should he know where to begin, how to judge the extent of the honor that should be given to his grandmother? How many mourners? How long the time of mourning? Where should she be buried? How should the whole ceremonial be done?

I summon my oldest friend in England, the Duke of Buckingham, who greeted me on my arrival all those years ago and is now lord high steward, and I ask for Lady Margaret Pole to come to me. My ladies bring me the great volume of ceremonial, the Royal Book, written by the king’s dead grandmother herself, and I set about organizing my first public English event.

I am lucky; tucked inside the cover of the book I find three pages of handwritten instructions. The vain old lady had laid out the order of the procession that she wanted for her funeral. Lady Margaret and I gasp at the numbers of bishops she would like to serve, the pallbearers, the mutes, the mourners, the decorations on the streets, the duration of the mourning. I show them to the Duke of Buckingham, her onetime ward, who says nothing but in discreet silence just smiles and shakes his head. Hiding my unworthy sense of triumph I take a quill, dip it in black ink, cut almost everything by a half, and then start to give orders.

It was a quiet ceremony of smooth dignity, and everyone knew that it had been commanded and ordered by the Spanish bride. Those who had not known before realized now that the girl who had been waiting for seven years to come to the throne of England had not wasted her time. She knew the temperament of the English people, she knew how to put on a show for them. She knew the tenor of the court: what they regarded as stylish, what they saw as mean. And she knew, as a princess born, how to rule. In those days before her coronation, Catalina established herself as the undeniable queen, and those who had ignored her in her years of poverty now discovered in themselves tremendous affection and respect for the princess.

She accepted their admiration, just as she had accepted their neglect: with calm politeness. She knew that by ordering the funeral of the king’s grandmother she established herself as the first woman of the new court, and the arbiter of all decisions of court life. She had, in one brilliant performance, established herself as the foremost leader of England. And she was certain that after this triumph no one would ever be able to supplant her.

We decide not to cancel our coronation, though My Lady the King’s Grandmother’s funeral preceded it. The arrangements are all in place, we judge that we should do nothing to mar the joy of the City or of the people who have come from all over England to see the boy Harry take his father’s crown. They say that some have traveled all the way from Plymouth, who saw me come ashore, a frightened seasick girl, all those years ago. We are not going to tell them that the great celebration of Harry’s coming to the throne, of my coronation, is canceled because a cross old lady has died at an ill-judged time. We agree that the people are expecting a great celebration and we should not deny them.

In truth, it is Harry who cannot bear a disappointment. He had promised himself a great moment of glory and he would not miss it for the world. Certainly not for the death of a very old lady who spent the last years of her life preventing him from having his own way in anything.

I agree with him. I judge that the king’s grandmother seized her power and enjoyed her time, and now it is time for us. I judge that it is the mood of the country and the mood of the court to celebrate the triumph of Harry’s coming to the throne with me at his side. Indeed, for some of them, who have long taken an interest in me, there is the greatest delight that I shall have the crown at last. I decide—and there is no one but me to decide—that we will go ahead. And so we do.

I know that Harry’s grief for his grandmother is only superficial; his mourning is mostly show. I saw him when I came from her privy chamber, and he knew, since I had left her bedside, that she must be dead. I saw his shoulders stretch out and lift, as if he were suddenly free from the burden of her care, as if her skinny, loving, age-spotted hand had been a dead weight on his neck. I saw his quick smile—his delight that he was alive and young and lusty, and that she was gone. Then I saw the careful composing of his face into conventional sadness and I stepped forwards, with my face grave also, and told him that she was dead, in a low sad voice, and he answered me in the same tone.

I am glad to know that he can play the hypocrite. The court room in the Alhambra Palace has many doors, my father told me that a king should be able to go out of one and come in through another and nobody know his mind. I know that to rule is to keep your own counsel. Harry is a boy now, but one day he will be a man and he will have to make up his own mind and judge well. I will remember that he can say one thing and think another.

But I have learned something else about him too. When I saw that he did not weep one real tear for his grandmother I knew that this king, our golden Harry, has a cold heart that no one can trust. She had been as a mother to him; she had dominated his childhood. She had cared for him, watched over him, and taught him herself. She supervised his every waking moment and shielded him from every unpleasant sight, she kept him from tutors who would have taught him of the world, and allowed him to walk only in the gardens of her making. She spent hours on her knees in prayer for him and insisted that he be taught the rule and the power of the church. But when she stood in his way, when she denied him his pleasures, he saw her as his enemy; and he cannot forgive anyone who refuses him something he wants. I know from this that this boy, this charming boy, will grow to be a man whose selfishness will be a danger to himself, and to those around him. One day we may all wish that his grandmother had taught him better.

24TH JUNE 1509

They carried Catalina from the Tower to Westminster as an English princess. She traveled in a litter made of cloth of gold, carried high by four white palfreys so everyone could see her. She wore a gown of white satin and a coronet set with pearls, her hair brushed out over her shoulders. Harry was crowned first and then Catalina bowed her head and took the holy oil of kingship on her head and breasts, stretched out her hand for the scepter and the ivory wand, knew that, at last, she was a queen, as her mother had been: an anointed queen, a greater being than mere mortals, a step closer to the angels, appointed by God to rule His country, and under His especial protection. She knew that finally she had fulfilled the destiny that she had been born for, she had taken her place, as she had promised that she would.

She took a throne just a little lower than King Henry’s, and the crowd that cheered for the handsome young king coming to his throne also cheered for her, the Spanish princess, who had been constant against the odds and was crowned Queen Katherine of England at last.

I have waited for this day for so long that when it comes it is like a dream, like the dreams I have had of my greatest desires. I go through the coronation ceremony: my place in the procession, my seat on the throne, the cool lightness of the ivory rod in my hand, my other hand tightly gripping the heavy scepter, the deep heady scent of the holy oil on my forehead and breasts, as if it is another dream of longing for Arthur.

But this time it is real.

When we come out of the abbey and I hear the crowd cheer for him, for me, I turn to look at my husband beside me. I am shocked then, a sudden shock like waking suddenly from a dream—that he is not Arthur. He is not my love. I had expected to be crowned beside Arthur and for us to take our thrones together. But instead of the handsome, thoughtful face of my husband, it is Harry’s round, flushed beam. Instead of my husband’s shy, coltish grace, it is Harry’s exuberant swagger at my side.

I realize at that moment that Arthur really is dead, really gone from me. I am fulfilling my part of our promise, marrying the King of England, even though it is Harry. Please God, Arthur is fulfilling his part: to watch over me from al-Yanna and to wait for me there. One day, when my work is done and I can go to my love, I will live with him forever.

“Are you happy?” the boy asks me, shouting to make himself heard above the pealing of the bells and the cheering of the crowds. “Are you happy, Catalina? Are you glad that I married you? Are you glad to be Queen of England, that I have given you this crown?”

“I am very happy,” I promise him. “And you must call me Katherine now.”

“Katherine?” he asks. “Not Catalina anymore?”

“I am Queen of England,” I say, thinking of Arthur saying these very words. “I am Queen Katherine of England.”

“Oh, I say!” he exclaims, delighted at the idea of changing his name, as I have changed mine. “That’s good. We shall be King Henry, and Queen Katherine. They shall call me Henry too.”

This is the king but he is not Arthur, he is Harry who wants to be called Henry, like a man. I am the queen, and I shall not be Catalina. I shall be Katherine—English through and through, and not the girl who was once so very much in love with the Prince of Wales.

Katherine,

Queen of England

Summer 1509

THE COURT, DRUNK WITH JOY, with delight in its own youth, with freedom, took the summer for pleasure. The progress from one beautiful, welcoming house to another lasted for two long months when Henry and Katherine hunted, dined in the greenwood, danced until midnight, and spent money like water. The great lumbering carts of the royal household went along the dusty lanes of England so that the next house might shine with gold and be bright with tapestries, so that the royal bed—which they shared every night—would be rich with the best linen and the glossiest furs.

No business of any worth was transacted by Henry at all. He wrote once to his father-in-law to tell him how happy he was, but the rest of the work for the king followed him in boxes from one beautiful parkland castle or mansion to another, and these were opened and read only by Katherine, Queen of England, who ordered the clerks to write her orders to the Privy Council and sent them out herself over the king’s signature.

Not until mid-September did the court return to Richmond and Henry at once declared that the party should go on. Why should they ever cease in pleasure? The weather was fair, they could have hunting and boating, archery and tennis contests, parties and masquings. The nobles and gentry flocked to Richmond to join the unending party: the families whose power and name were older than the Tudors’ and the new ones, whose wealth and names were bobbing upwards on the rise of the Tudor tide, floated by Tudor wealth. The victors of Bosworth who had staked their lives on the Tudor courage in great danger found themselves alongside newcomers who made their fortunes on nothing more than Tudor amusements.

Henry welcomed everyone with uncritical delight; anyone who was witty and well read, charming or a good sportsman could have a place at court. Katherine smiled on them all, never rested, never refused a challenge or an invitation, and set herself the task of keeping her teenage husband entertained all the day long. Slowly but surely, she drew the management of the entertainments, then of the household, then of the king’s business, then of the kingdom, into her hands.

Queen Katherine had the accounts for the royal court spread out before her, a clerk to one side, a comptroller of the household with his great book to another, the men who served as exchequers of the household standing behind her. She was checking the books of the great departments of the court: the kitchen, the cellar, the wardrobe, the servery, the payments for services, the stables, the musicians. Each department of the palace had to compile its monthly expenditure and send it to the Queen’s Exchequer—just as they had sent it to My Lady the King’s Mother, for her to approve their business, and if they overspent by very much, they could expect a visit from one of the exchequers for the Privy Purse to ask them pointedly if they could explain why costs had so suddenly risen?

Every court in Europe was engaged in the struggle to control the cost of running the sprawling feudal households with the newly fashionable wealth and display. All the kings wanted a great entourage, like a mediaeval lord; but now they wanted culture, wealth, architecture and rich display as well. England was managed better than any court in Europe. Queen Katherine had learned her housekeeping skills the hard way: when she had tried to run Durham House as a royal palace should be run, but with no income. She knew to a penny what was the price of a gallon loaf, she knew the difference between salted fish and fresh, she knew the price of cheap wine imported from Spain and expensive wine brought in from France. Even more rigorous than that of My Lady the King’s Mother, Queen Katherine’s scrutiny of the household books made the cooks argue with suppliers at the kitchen doors and get the very best price for the extravagantly consuming court.

Once a week Queen Katherine surveyed the expenditure of the different departments of the court, and every day at dawn, while King Henry was out hunting, she read the letters that came for him, and drafted his replies.

It was steady, unrelenting work, to keep the court running as a well-ordered center for the country and to keep the king’s business under tight control. Queen Katherine, determined to understand her new country, did not begrudge the hours she spent reading letters, taking advice from Privy Councilors, inviting objections, taking opinions. She had seen her own mother dominate a country by persuasion. Isabella of Spain had brokered her country out of a collection of rival kingships and lordships by offering them a trouble-free, cheap, central administration, a nationwide system of justice, an end to corruption and banditry, and an infallible defense system. Her daughter saw at once that these advantages could be transferred to England.

But she was also following in the steps of her Tudor father-in-law, and the more she worked on his papers and read his letters, the more she admired the steadiness of his judgment. Oddly, she wished now that she had known him as a ruler, as she would have benefited from his advice. From his records she could see how he balanced the desire of the English lords to be independent, on their own lands, with his own need to bind them to the crown. Cunningly, he allowed the northern lords greater freedom and greater wealth and status than anyone, since they were his bulwark against the Scots. Katherine had maps of the northern lands pinned around the council chamber and saw how the border with Scotland was nothing more than a handful of disputed territories in difficult country. Such a border could never be made safe from a threatening neighbor. She thought that the Scots were England’s Moors: the land could not be shared with them. They would have to be utterly defeated.

She shared her father-in-law’s fears of overmighty English lords at court, she learned his jealousy of their wealth and power; and when Henry thought to give one man a handsome pension in an exuberant moment, it was Katherine who pointed out that he was a wealthy man already, there was no need to make his position any stronger. Henry wanted to be a king famed for his generosity, beloved for the sudden shower of his gifts. Katherine knew that power followed wealth and that kings new-come to their throne must hoard both wealth and power.

“Did your father never warn you about the Howards?” she asked as they stood together watching an archery contest. Henry, stripped down to his shirtsleeves, his bow in his hand, had the second-highest score and was waiting for his turn to go again.

“No,” he replied. “Should he have done so?”

“Oh, no,” she said swiftly. “I did not mean to suggest that they would play you false in any way, they are love and loyalty personified. Thomas Howard has been a great friend to your family, keeping the north safe for you, and Edward is my knight, my dearest knight of all. It is just that their wealth has increased so much, and their family alliances are so strong. I just wondered what your father thought of them.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Henry said easily. “I wouldn’t have asked him. He wouldn’t have told me anyway.”

“Not even when he knew you were to be the next king?”

He shook his head. “He thought I wouldn’t be king for years yet,” he said. “He had not finished making me study my books. He had not yet let me out into the world.”

She shook her head. “When we have a son we will make sure he is prepared for his kingdom from an early age.”

At once his hand stole around her waist. “Do you think it will be soon?” he asked.

“Please God,” she said sweetly, withholding her secret hope. “Do you know, I have been thinking of a name for him?”

“Have you, sweetheart? Shall you call him Ferdinand for your father?”

“If you would like it, I thought we might call him Arthur,” she said carefully.

“For my brother?” His face darkened at once.

“No, Arthur for England,” she said swiftly. “When I look at you sometimes I think you are like King Arthur of the Round Table, and this is Camelot. We are making a court here as beautiful and as magical as Camelot ever was.”

“Do you think that, little dreamer?”

“I think you could be the greatest king England has ever known since Arthur of Camelot,” she said.

“Arthur it is, then,” he said, soothed as always by praise. “Arthur Henry.”

“Yes.”

They called to him from the butts that it was his turn and that he had a high score to beat, and he went with a kiss blown to her. Katherine made sure that she was watching as he drew his bow, and when he glanced over, as he always did, he could see that her attention was wholly on him. The muscles in his lean back rippled as he drew back the arrow, he was like a statue, beautifully poised, and then slowly, like a dancer, he released the string and the arrow flew—faster than sight—true to the very center of the target.

“A hit!”

“A winning hit!”

“Victory to the king!”

The prize was a golden arrow and Henry came bright-faced to his wife to kneel at her feet so that she could bend down and kiss him on both cheeks, and then, lovingly, on the mouth.

“I won for you,” he said. “You alone. You bring me luck. I never miss when you are watching me. You shall keep the winning arrow.”

“It is a Cupid’s arrow,” she responded. “I shall keep it to remind me of the one in my heart.”

“She loves me.” He rose to his feet and turned to his court, and there was a ripple of applause and laughter. He shouted triumphantly, “She loves me!”

“Who could help but love you?” Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, one of the ladies-in-waiting, called out boldly. Henry glanced at her and then looked down from his great height to his petite wife.

“Who could help but love her?” he asked, smiling at her.

That night I kneel before my prie-dieu and clasp my hands over my belly. It is the second month that I have not bled, I am almost certain that I am with child.

“Arthur,” I whisper, my eyes closed. I can almost see him, as he was: naked in candlelight in our bedroom at Ludlow. “Arthur, my love. He says that I can call this boy Arthur Henry. So I will have fulfilled our hope—that I should give you a son called Arthur. And though I know you didn’t like your brother, I will show him the respect that I owe to him; he is a good boy and I pray that he will grow to a good man. I shall call my boy Arthur Henry for you both.”

I feel no guilt for my growing affection for this boy Henry, though he can never take the place of his brother, Arthur. It is right that I should love my husband and Henry is an endearing boy. The knowledge that I have of him, from watching him for long years as closely as if he were an enemy, has brought me to a deep awareness of the sort of boy he is. He is selfish as a child, but he has a child’s generosity and easy tenderness. He is vain, he is ambitious, to tell truth, he is as conceited as a player in a troupe, but he is quick to laughter and quick to tears, quick to compassion, quick to alleviate hardship. He will make a good man if he has good guides, if he can be taught to rein in his desires and learn service to his country and to God. He has been spoiled by those who should have guided him; but it is not too late to make a good man from him. It is my task and my duty to keep him from selfishness. Like any young man, he is a tyrant in the making. A good mother would have disciplined him, perhaps a loving wife can curb him. If I can love him, and hold him to love me, I can make a great king of him. And England needs a great king.

Perhaps this is one of the services I can do for England: guide him, gently and steadily, away from his spoiled childhood and towards a manhood which is responsible. His father and his grandmother kept him as a boy; perhaps it is my task to help him grow to be a man.

“Arthur, my dearest Arthur,” I say quietly as I rise and go towards the bed, and this time I am speaking to them both: to the husband that I loved first, and to the child that is slowly, quietly growing inside me.

AUTUMN 1509

At nighttime in October, after Katherine had refused to dance after midnight for the previous three weeks and had insisted, instead, on watching Henry dance with her ladies, she told him that she was with child and made him swear to keep it secret.

“I want to tell everyone!” he exclaimed. He had come to her room in his nightgown and they were seated either side of the warm fire, on their way to bed.

“You can write to my father next month,” she specified. “But I don’t want everyone to know yet. They will all guess soon enough.”

“You must rest,” he said instantly. “And should you have special things to eat? Do you have a desire for anything special to eat? I can send someone for it at once, they can wake the cooks. Tell me, love, what would you like?”

“Nothing! Nothing!” she said, laughing. “See, we have biscuits and wine. What more do I ever eat this late at night?”

“Oh usually, yes! But now everything is different.”

“I shall ask the physicians in the morning,” she said. “But I need nothing now. Truly, my love.”

“I want to get you something,” he said. “I want to look after you.”

“You do look after me,” she reassured him. “And I am perfectly well fed, and I feel very well.”

“Not sick? That is a sign of a boy, I am sure.”

“I have been feeling a little sick in the mornings,” she said, and watched his beam of happiness. “I feel certain that it is a boy. I hope this is our Arthur Henry.”

“Oh! You were thinking of him when you spoke to me at the archery contest.”

“Yes, I was. But I was not sure then, and I did not want to tell you too early.”

“And when do you think he will be born?”

“In early summer, I think.”

“It cannot take so long!” he exclaimed.

“My love, I think it does take that long.”

“I shall write to your father in the morning,” he said. “I shall tell him to expect great news in the summer. Perhaps we shall be home after a great campaign against the French then. Perhaps I shall bring you a victory and you shall give me a son.”

Henry has sent his own physician, the most skilled man in London, to see me. The man stands at one side of the room while I sit on a chair at the other. He cannot examine me, of course—the body of the queen cannot be touched by anyone but the king. He cannot ask me if I am regular in my courses or in my bowels; they too are sacred. He is so paralyzed with embarrassment at being called to see me that he keeps his eyes on the floor and asks me short questions in a quiet, clipped voice. He speaks English, and I have to strain to hear and understand him.

He asks me if I eat well and if I have any sickness. I answer that I eat well enough but that I am sick of the smell and sight of cooked meats. I miss the fruit and vegetables that were part of my daily diet in Spain, I am craving baklava sweetmeats made from honey or a tagine made with vegetables and rice. He says that it does not matter since there is no benefit to eating vegetables or fruit for humans, and, indeed, he would have advised me against eating any raw stuff for the duration of my pregnancy.

He asks me if I know when I conceived. I say that I cannot say for certain, but that I know the date of my last course. He smiles as a learned man to a fool and tells me that this is little guide as to when a baby might be due. I have seen Moorish doctors calculate the date of a baby’s birth with a special abacus. He says he has never heard of such things and such heathen devices would be unnatural and not wanted at the treatment of a Christian child.

He suggests that I rest. He asks me to send for him whenever I feel unwell and he will come to apply leeches. He says he is a great believer in bleeding women frequently to prevent them becoming overheated. Then he bows and leaves.

I look blankly at María de Salinas, standing in the corner of the room for this mockery of a consultation. “This is the best doctor in England?” I ask her. “This is the best that they have?”

She shakes her head in bewilderment.

“I wonder if we can get someone from Spain,” I think aloud.

“Your mother and father have all but cleared Spain of the learned men,” she says, and in that moment I feel almost ashamed of them.

“Their learning was heretical,” I say defensively.

She shrugs. “Well, the Inquisition arrested most of them. The rest have fled.”

“Where did they go?” I ask.

“Wherever people go. The Jews went to Portugal and then to Italy, to Turkey, I think throughout Europe. I suppose the Moors went to Africa and the East.”

“Can we not find someone from Turkey?” I suggest. “Not a heathen, of course. But someone who has learned from a Moorish physician? There must be some Christian doctors who have knowledge. Some who know more than this one?”

“I will ask the ambassador,” she says.

“He must be Christian,” I stipulate.

I know that I will need a better doctor than this shy ignoramus, but I do not want to go against the authority of my mother and the Holy Church. If they say that such knowledge is sin, then, surely, I should embrace ignorance. It is my duty. I am no scholar and it is better if I am guided by the ruling of the Holy Church. But can God really want us to deny knowledge? And what if this ignorance costs me England’s son and heir?

Katherine did not reduce her work, commanding the clerks to the king, hearing petitioners who needed royal justice, discussing with the Privy Council the news from the kingdom. But she wrote to Spain to suggest that her father might like to send an ambassador to represent Spanish interests, especially since Henry was determined on a war against France in alliance with Spain as soon as the season for war started in the spring, and there would be much correspondence between the two countries.

“He is most determined to do your bidding,” Catalina wrote to her father, carefully translating every word into the complex code that they used. “He is conscious that he has not been to war and is anxious that all goes well for an English-Spanish army. I am very concerned, indeed, that he is not exposed to danger. He has no heir, and even if he did, this is a hard country for princes in their minority. When he goes to war with you, I shall trust him into your safekeeping. He should certainly feel that he is experiencing war to the full, he should certainly learn how to campaign from you. But I shall trust you to keep him from any real danger. Do not misunderstand me on this,” she wrote sternly. “He must feel that he is at the heart of war, he must learn how battles are won, but he must not ever be in any real danger. And,” she added, “he must never know that we have protected him.”

King Ferdinand, in full possession of Castile and Aragon once more, ruling as regent for Juana—who was now said to be far beyond taking her throne, lost in a dark world of grief and madness—wrote smoothly back to his youngest daughter that she was not to worry about the safety of her husband in war; he would make sure that Henry was exposed to nothing but excitement. “And do not let your wifely fears distract him from his duty,” he reminded her. “In all her years with me your mother never shirked from danger. You must be the queen she would want you to be. This is a war that has to be fought for the safety and profit of us all, and the young king must play his part alongside this old king and the old emperor. This is an alliance of two old warhorses and one young colt, and he will want to be part of it.” He left a space in the letter as if for thought and then added a postscript. “Of course, we will both make sure it is mostly play for him. Of course he will not know.”

Ferdinand was right. Henry was desperate to be part of an alliance that would defeat France. The Privy Council, the thoughtful advisors of his father’s careful reign, were appalled to find that the young man was utterly set on the idea that kingship meant warfare, and he could imagine no better way to demonstrate that he had inherited the throne. The eager, boastful young men that formed the young court, desperate for a chance to show their own courage, were egging Henry on to war. The French had been hated for so long that it seemed incredible that a peace had ever been made and that it had lasted. It seemed unnatural to be at peace with the French—the normal state of warfare should be resumed as soon as victory was a certainty. And victory, with a new young king and a new young court, must be a certainty now.

Nothing that Katherine might quietly remark could completely calm the fever for war, and Henry was so bellicose with the French ambassador at their first meeting that the astounded representative reported to his master that the new young king was out of his mind with choler, denying that he had ever written a peaceable letter to the King of France, which the Privy Council had sent in his absence. Fortunately, their next meeting went better. Katherine made sure that she was there.

“Greet him pleasantly,” she prompted Henry as she saw the man advance.

“I will not feign kindness where I mean war.”

“You have to be cunning,” she said softly. “You have to be skilled in saying one thing and thinking another.”

“I will never pretend. I will never deny my righteous pride.”

“No, you should not pretend, exactly. But let him in his folly misunderstand you. There is more than one way to win a war, and it is winning that matters, not threatening. If he thinks you are his friend, we will catch them unprepared. Why would we give them warning of attack?”

He was troubled. He looked at her, frowning. “I am not a liar.”

“No, for you told him last time that the vain ambitions of his king would be corrected by you. The French cannot be allowed to capture Venice. We have an ancient alliance with Venice….”

“Do we?”

“Oh, yes,” Katherine said firmly. “England has an ancient alliance with Venice, and besides, it is the very first wall of Christianity against the Turks. By threatening Venice the French are on the brink of letting the heathens into Italy. They should be ashamed of themselves. But last time you met, you warned the French ambassador. You could not have been more clear. Now is the time for you to greet him with a smile. You do not need to spell out your campaign. We will keep our own counsel. We will not share it with such as him.”

“I have told him once, I need not tell him again. I do not repeat myself,” Henry said, warming to the thought.

“We don’t brag of our strength,” she said. “We know what we can do, and we know what we will do. They can find out for themselves in our own good time.”

“Indeed,” said Henry, and stepped down from the little dais to greet the French ambassador quite pleasantly, and was rewarded to see the man fumble in his bow and stutter in his address.

“I had him quite baffled,” he said to Katherine gleefully.

“You were masterly,” she assured him.

If he were a dullard I would have to bite back my impatience and curb my temper more often than I do. But he is not unintelligent. He is bright and clever, perhaps even as quick-witted as Arthur. But where Arthur had been trained to think, had been educated as a king from birth, they let this second son slide by on his charm and his ready tongue. They found him pleasing and encouraged him to be nothing more than agreeable. He has a good brain and he can read, debate and think well—but only if the topic catches his interest, and then only for a while. They taught him to study but only to demonstrate his own cleverness. He is lazy, he is terribly lazy—he would always rather that someone does the detailed work for him, and this is a great fault in a king: it throws him into the power of his clerks. A king who will not work will always be in the hands of his advisors. It is a recipe for overmighty councilors.

When we start to discuss the terms of the contract between Spain and England, he asks me to write it out for him. He does not like to do this himself, he likes to dictate and have a clerk write it out fair. And he will never bother to learn the code. It means that every letter between him and the emperor, every letter between him and my father, is either written by me, or translated by me. I am at the very center of the emerging plans for war, whether I want to be or no. I cannot help but be the decision maker at the very heart of this alliance, and Henry puts himself to one side.

Of course I am not reluctant to do my duty. No true child of my mother’s would ever have turned away from effort, especially one that led to war with the enemies of Spain. We were all raised to know that kingship is a vocation, not a treat. To be a king means to rule, and ruling is always demanding work. No true child of my father’s could have resisted being at the very heart of planning and plotting and preparing for war. There is no one at the English court better able than I to take our country into war.

I am no fool. I guessed from the start that my father planned to use our English troops against the French, and while we engage them at the time and place of his choosing, I wager that he will invade the kingdom of Navarre. I must have heard him a dozen times telling my mother that if he could have Navarre he would have rounded the north border of Aragon and besides, Navarre is a rich region, growing grapes and wheat. My father has wanted it from the moment he came to the throne of Aragon. I know that if he has a chance at Navarre he will win it, and if he can make the English do the work for him he would think that even better.

But I am not fighting this war to oblige my father, though I let him think that. He will not use me as his instrument—I will use him for mine. I want this war for England, and for God. The Pope himself has ruled that the French should not overrun Venice; the Pope himself is putting his own holy army into the field against the French. No true son or daughter of the church needs any greater cause than this: to know that the Holy Father is calling for support.

And for me there is another reason, even more powerful than that. I never forget my mother’s warning that the Moors will come against Christendom again, I never forget her telling me that I must be ready in England as she was always ready in Spain. If the French defeat the armies of the Pope and seize Venice, who can doubt but that the Moors will see it as their chance to snatch Venice in their turn from the French? And once the Moors get a toehold in the heart of Christendom once more, it will be my mother’s war to be fought all over again. They will come at us from the East, they will come at us from Venice, and Christian Europe will lie at their mercy. My father himself told me that Venice with its great trade, its arsenal, its powerful dockyards, must never be taken by the Moors; we must never let them win a city where they could build fighting galleys in a week, arm them in days, man them in a morning. If they have the Venetian dockyards and shipwrights then we have lost the seas. I know that it is my given duty, given to me by my mother and by God: to send Englishmen to serve the Pope and to defend Venice from any invader. It is easy to persuade Henry to think the same.

But I don’t forget Scotland. I never forget Arthur’s fear of Scotland. The Privy Council has spies along the border, and Thomas Howard, the old Earl of Surrey, was placed there, quite deliberately, I think, by the old king. King Henry my father-in-law gave Thomas Howard great lands in the north so that he, of all people, would keep the border safe. The old king was no fool. He did not let others do his business and trust to their abilities. He tied them into his success. If the Scots invade England they will come through Howard lands, and Thomas Howard is as anxious as I that this will never happen. He has assured me that the Scots will not come against us this summer, in any numbers worse than their usual brigand raids. All the intelligence we can gather from English merchants in Scotland, from travelers primed to keep their eyes open, confirms the earl’s view. We are safe for this summer at least. I can take this moment and send the English army to war against the French. Henry can march out in safety and learn to be a soldier.

Katherine watched the dancing at the Christmas festivities, applauded her husband when he twirled other ladies around the room, laughed at the mummers, and signed off the court’s bills for enormous amounts of wine, ale, beef, and the rarest and finest of everything. She gave Henry a beautiful inlaid saddle for his Christmas gift, and some shirts that she had sewn and embroidered herself with the beautiful blackwork of Spain.

“I want all my shirts to be sewn by you,” he said, putting the fine linen against his cheek. “I want to never wear anything that another woman has touched. Only your hands shall make my shirts.”

Katherine smiled and pulled his shoulder down to her height. He bent down like a grown boy, and she kissed his forehead. “Always,” she promised him. “I shall always sew your shirts for you.

“And now my gift to you,” he said. He pushed a large leather box towards her. Katherine opened it. There was a great set of magnificent jewels: a diadem, a necklace, two bracelets, and matching rings.

“Oh, Henry!”

“Do you like them?”

“I love them,” she said.

“Will you wear them tonight?”

“I shall wear them tonight and at the Twelfth Night feast,” she promised.

The young queen shone in her happiness, this first Christmas of her reign. The full skirts of her gown could not conceal the curve of her belly. Everywhere she went the young king would order a chair to be brought for her, she must not stand for a moment, she must never be wearied. He composed for her special songs that his musicians played, special dances and special masques were made up in her honor. The court, delighted with the young queen’s fertility, with the health and strength of the young king, with itself, made merry late into the night and Katherine sat on her throne, her feet slightly spread to accommodate the curve of her belly, and smiled in her joy.

Westminster Palace,

January 1510

I WAKE IN THE NIGHT TO PAIN and a strange sensation. I dreamed that a tide was rising in the river Thames and that a fleet of black-sailed ships were coming upriver. I think that it must be the Moors, coming for me, and then I think it is a Spanish fleet—an armada, but strangely, disturbingly, my enemy, and the enemy of England. In my distress I toss and turn in bed and I wake with a sense of dread and find that it is worse than any dream, my sheets are wet with blood, and there is a real pain in my belly.

I call out in terror, and my cry wakes María de Salinas, who is sleeping with me.

“What is it?” she asks. Then she sees my face and calls out sharply to the maid at the foot of the bed and sends her running for my ladies and for the midwives, but somewhere in the back of my mind I know already that there is nothing that they can do. I clamber into my chair in my bloodstained nightdress and feel the pain twist and turn in my belly.

By the time they arrive, struggling from their beds, all stupid with sleep, I am on my knees on the floor like a sick dog, praying for the pain to pass and to leave me whole. I know that there is no point in praying for the safety of my child. I know that my child is lost. I can feel the tearing sensation in my belly as he slowly comes away.

After a long, bitter day, when Henry comes to the door again and again, and I send him away, calling out to him in a bright voice of reassurance, biting the palm of my hand so that I do not cry out, the baby is born, dead. The midwife shows her to me, a little girl, a white, limp little thing: poor baby, my poor baby. My only comfort is that it is not the boy I had promised Arthur I would bear for him. It is a girl, a dead girl, and then I twist my face in grief when I remember that he wanted a girl first, and she was to be called Mary.

I cannot speak for grief, I cannot face Henry and tell him myself. I cannot bear the thought of anyone telling the court. I cannot bring myself to write to my father and tell him that I have failed England, I have failed Henry, I have failed Spain, and worst of all—and this I could never tell anyone—I have failed Arthur.

I stay in my room. I close the door on all the anxious faces, on the midwives wanting me to drink strawberry-leaf tisanes, on the ladies wanting to tell me about their stillbirths, and their mothers’ stillbirths and their happy endings, I shut them away from me and I kneel at the foot of my bed, and press my hot face against the covers. I whisper through my sobs, muffled so that no one but him can hear me. “I am sorry, so sorry, my love. I am so sorry not to have had your son. I don’t know why, I don’t know why our gentle God should send me this great sorrow. I am so sorry, my love. If I ever have another chance I will do my best, the very best that I can, to have our son, to keep him safe till birth and beyond. I will, I swear I will. I tried this time, God knows, I would have given anything to have your son and named him Arthur for you, my love.” I steady myself as I can feel the words tumbling out too quickly, I can feel myself losing control, I feel the sobs starting to choke me.

“Wait for me,” I say quietly. “Wait for me still. Wait for me by the quiet waters in the garden where the white and the red rose petals fall. Wait for me and when I have given birth to your son Arthur and your daughter Mary and done my duty here, I will come to you. Wait for me in the garden and I will never fail you. I will come to you, love. My love.”

The king’s physician went to the king directly from the queen’s apartments. “Your Grace, I have good news for you.”

Henry turned a face to him that was as sour as a child’s whose joy has been stolen. “You have?”

“I have indeed.”

“The queen is better? In less pain? She will be well?”

“Even better than well,” the physician said. “Although she lost one child, she has kept another. She was carrying twins, Your Grace. She has lost one child but her belly is still large and she is still with child.”

For a moment the young man could not understand the words. “She still has a child?”

The physician smiled. “Yes, Your Grace.”

It was like a stay of execution. Henry felt his heart turn over with hope. “How can it be?”

The physician was confident. “By various ways I can tell. Her belly is still firm, the bleeding has stopped. I am certain she is still with child.”

Henry crossed himself. “God is with us,” he said positively. “This is the sign of His favor.” He paused. “Can I see her?”

“Yes, she is as happy at this news as you.”

Henry bounded up the stairs to Katherine’s rooms. Her presence chamber was empty of anyone but the least-informed sightseers, the court and half the City knew that she had taken to her bed and would not be seen. Henry brushed through the crowd who whispered hushed blessings for him and the queen, strode through her privy chamber, where her women were sewing, and tapped on her bedroom door.

María de Salinas opened it and stepped back for the king. The queen was out of her bed, seated in the window seat, her book of prayers held up to the light.

“My love!” he exclaimed. “Here is Dr. Fielding come to me with the best of news.”

Her face was radiant. “I told him to tell you privately.”

“He did. No one else knows. My love, I am so glad!”

Her eyes were wet with tears. “It is like a redemption,” she said. “I feel as if a cross has been lifted from my shoulders.”

“I shall go to Walsingham the moment our baby is born and thank Our Lady for her favor,” he promised. “I shall endow the shrine with a fortune, if it is a boy.”

“Please God that He grants it,” she murmured.

“Why should He not?” Henry demanded. “When it is our desire, and right for England, and we ask it as holy children of the church?”

“Amen,” she said quickly. “If it is God’s will.”

He flicked his hand. “Of course it must be His will,” he said. “Now you must take care and rest.”

Katherine smiled at him. “As you see.”

“Well, you must. And anything you want, you shall have.”

“I shall tell the cooks if I want anything.”

“And the midwives shall attend you night and morning to make sure that you are well.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “And if God is willing, we shall have a son.”

It was María de Salinas, my true friend who had come with me from Spain, and stayed with me through our good months and our hard years, who found the Moor. He was attending on a wealthy merchant, traveling from Genoa to Paris. They had called in at London to value some gold and María heard of him from a woman who had given a hundred pounds to Our Lady of Walsingham, hoping to have a son.

“They say he can make barren women give birth,” she whispers to me, watching that none of my other ladies have come close enough to overhear.

I cross myself as if to avoid temptation. “Then he must use black arts.”

“Princess, he is supposed to be a great physician. Trained by masters who were at the University of Toledo.”

“I will not see him.”

“Because you think he must use black arts?”

“Because he is my enemy and my mother’s enemy. She knew that the Moors’ knowledge was unlawfully gained, drawn from the devil, not from the revealed truth of God. She drove the Moors from Spain and their magical arts with them.”

“Your Grace, he may be the only doctor in England who knows anything about women.”

“I will not see him.”

María took my refusal and let a few weeks go by and then I woke in the night with a deep pain in my belly, and slowly, felt the blood coming. She was quick and ready to call the maids with the towels and with a ewer to wash, and when I was back in bed again and we realized that it was no more than my monthly courses returned, she came quietly and stood beside the head of the bed. Lady Margaret Pole was silent at the doorway.

“Your Grace, please see this doctor.”

“He is a Moor.”

“Yes, but I think he is the only man in this country who will know what is happening. How can you have your courses if you are with child? You may be losing this second baby. You have to see a doctor that we can trust.”

“María, he is my enemy. He is my mother’s enemy. She spent her life driving his people from Spain.”

“We lost their wisdom with them,” María says quietly. “You have not lived in Spain for nearly a decade, Your Grace. You do not know what it is like there now. My brother writes to me that people fall sick and there are no hospitals that can cure them. The nuns and the monks do their best; but they have no knowledge. If you have a stone it has to be cut out of you by a horse doctor, if you have a broken arm or leg then the blacksmith has to set it. The barbers are surgeons, the tooth drawers work in the marketplace and break people’s jaws. The midwives go from burying a man sick with sores to a childbirth and lose as many babies as they deliver. The skills of the Moorish physicians, with their knowledge of the body, their herbs to soothe pain, their instruments for surgery, and their insistence on washing—it is all lost.”

“If it was sinful knowledge it is better lost,” I say stubbornly.

“Why would God be on the side of ignorance and dirt and disease?” she asks fiercely. “Forgive me, Your Grace, but this makes no sense. And you are forgetting what your mother wanted. She always said that the universities should be restored, to teach Christian knowledge. But by then she had killed or banished all the teachers who knew anything.”

“The queen will not want to be advised by a heretic,” Lady Margaret said firmly. “No English lady would consult a Moor.”

María turns to me. “Please, Your Grace.”

I am in such pain that I cannot bear an argument. “Both of you can leave me now,” I say. “Just let me sleep.”

Lady Margaret goes out of the door but María pauses to close the shutters so that I am in shadow. “Oh, let him come then,” I say. “But not while I am like this. He can come next week.”

She brings him by the hidden stairway which runs from the cellars through a servants’ passage to the queen’s private rooms at Richmond Palace. I am wearily dressing for dinner, and I let him come into my rooms while I am still unlaced, in my shift with a cape thrown on top. I grimace at the thought of what my mother would say at a man coming into my privy chamber. But I know, in my heart, that I have to see a doctor who can tell me how to get a son for England. And I know, if I am honest, that something is wrong with the baby they say I am carrying.

I know him for an unbeliever the moment I see him. He is black as ebony, his eyes as dark as jet, his mouth wide and sensual, his face both merry and compassionate, all at the same time. The back of his hands are black, dark as his face, long-fingered, his nails rosy pink, the palms brown, the creases ingrained with his color. If I were a palmist I could trace the lifeline on his African palm like cart tracks of brown dust in a field of terra-cotta. I know him at once for a Moor and a Nubian; and I want to order him away from my rooms. But I know, at the same time, that he may be the only doctor in this country who has the knowledge I need.

This man’s people, infidels, sinners who have set their black faces against God, have medicine that we do not. For some reason, God and His angels have not revealed to us the knowledge that these people have sought and found. These people have read in Greek everything that the Greek physicians thought. Then they have explored for themselves, with forbidden instruments, studying the human body as if it were an animal, without fear or respect. They create wild theories with forbidden thoughts and then they test them, without superstition. They are prepared to think anything, to consider anything; nothing is taboo. These people are educated where we are fools, where I am a fool. I might look down on him as coming from a race of savages, I might look down on him as an infidel doomed to hell, but I need to know what he knows.

If he will tell me.

“I am Catalina, Infanta of Spain and Queen Katherine of England,” I say bluntly, that he may know that he is dealing with a queen and the daughter of a queen who had defeated his people.

He inclines his head, as proud as a baron. “I am Yusuf, son of Ismail,” he says.

“You are a slave?”

“I was born to a slave, but I am a free man.”

“My mother would not allow slavery,” I tell him. “She said it was not allowed by our religion, our Christian religion.”

“Nevertheless, she sent my people into slavery,” he remarks. “Perhaps she should have considered that high principles and good intentions end at the border.”

“Since your people won’t accept the salvation of God, then it doesn’t matter what happens to your earthly bodies.”

His face lights up with amusement, and he gives a delightful, irrepressible chuckle. “It matters to us, I think,” he says. “My nation allows slavery, but we don’t justify it like that. And most important, you cannot inherit slavery with us. When you are born, whatever the condition of your mother, you are born free. That is the law, and I think it a very good one.”

“Well, it makes no difference what you think,” I say rudely. “Since you are wrong.”

Again he laughs aloud, in true merriment, as if I have said something very funny. “How good it must be, always to know that you are right,” he says. “Perhaps you will always be certain of your rightness. But I would suggest to you, Catalina of Spain and Katherine of England, that sometimes it is better to know the questions than the answers.”

I pause at that. “But I want you only for answers,” I say. “Do you know medicine? Whether a woman can conceive a son? If she is with child?”

“Sometimes it can be known,” he says. “Sometimes it is in the hands of Allah, praise His holy name, and sometimes we do not yet understand enough to be sure.”

I cross myself against the name of Allah, quick as an old woman spitting on a shadow. He smiles at my gesture, not in the least disturbed. “What is it that you want to know?” he asks, his voice filled with kindness. “What is it that you want to know so much that you have to send for an infidel to advise you? Poor queen, you must be very alone if you need help from your enemy.”

My eyes are filling with too-quick tears at the sympathy in his voice and I brush my hand against my face.

“I have lost a baby,” I say shortly. “A daughter. My physician says that she was one of twins and that there is another child still inside me, that there will be another birth.”

“So why send for me?”

“I want to know for sure,” I say. “If there is another child I will have to go into confinement, the whole world will watch me. I want to know that the baby is alive inside me now, that it is a boy, that he will be born.”

“Why should you doubt your own physician’s opinion?”

I turn from his inquiring, honest gaze. “I don’t know,” I say evasively.

“Infanta, I think you do know.”

“How can I know?”

“With a woman’s sense.”

“I have it not.”

He smiles at my stubbornness. “Well, then, woman without any feelings, what do you think with your clever mind, since you have decided to deny what your body tells you?”

“How can I know what I should think?” I ask. “My mother is dead. My greatest friend in England—” I break off before I can say the name of Arthur. “I have no one to confide in. One midwife says one thing, one says another. The physician is sure…but he wants to be sure. The king rewards him only for good news. How can I know the truth?”

“I should think you do know, despite yourself,” he insists gently. “Your body will tell you. I suppose your courses have not returned?”

“No, I have bled,” I admit unwillingly. “Last week.”

“With pain?”

“Yes.”

“Your breasts are tender?”

“They were.”

“Are they fuller than usual?”

“No.”

“You can feel the child? He moves inside you?”

“I can’t feel anything since I lost the girl.”

“You are in pain now?”

“Not anymore. I feel…”

“Yes?”

“Nothing. I feel nothing.”

He says nothing; he sits quietly, he breathes so softly it is like sitting with a quietly sleeping black cat. He looks at María. “May I touch her?”

“No,” she says. “She is the queen. Nobody can touch her.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “She is a woman like any other. She wants a child like any woman. Why should I not touch her belly as I would touch any woman?”

“She is the queen,” she repeats. “She cannot be touched. She has an anointed body.”

He smiles as if the holy truth is amusing. “Well, I hope someone has touched her, or there cannot be a child at all,” he remarks.

“Her husband. An anointed king,” María says shortly. “And take care of how you speak. These are sacred matters.”

“If I may not examine her, then I shall have to say only what I think from looking at her. If she cannot bear examination then she will have to make do with guesswork.” He turns to me. “If you were an ordinary woman and not a queen, I would take your hands in mine now.”

“Why?”

“Because it is a hard word I have to tell you.”

Slowly, I stretch out my hands with the priceless rings on my fingers. He takes them gently, his dark hands as soft as the touch of a child. His dark eyes look into mine without fear, his face is tender, moved. “If you are bleeding then it is most likely that your womb is empty,” he says. “There is no child there. If your breasts are not full then they are not filling with milk, your body is not preparing to feed a child. If you do not feel a child move inside you in the sixth month, then either the child is dead, or there is no child there. If you feel nothing then that is most probably because there is nothing to feel.”

“My belly is still swollen.” I draw back my cloak and show him the curve of my belly under my shift. “It is hard, I am not fat, I look as I did before I lost the first baby.”

“It could be an infection,” he says consideringly. “Or—pray Allah that it is not—it could be a growth, a swelling. Or it could be a miscarriage which you have not yet expelled.”

I draw my hands back. “You are ill-wishing me!”

“Never,” he says. “To me, here and now, you are not Catalina, Infanta of Spain, but simply a woman who has asked for my help. I am sorry for you.”

“Some help!” María de Salinas interrupts crossly. “Some help you have been!”

“Anyway, I don’t believe it,” I say. “Yours is one opinion, Dr. Fielding has another. Why should I believe you, rather than a good Christian?”

He looks at me for a long time, his face tender. “I wish I could tell you a better opinion,” he says. “But I imagine there are many who will tell you agreeable lies. I believe in telling the truth. I will pray for you.”

“I don’t want your heathen prayers,” I say roughly. “You can go, and take your bad opinion and your heresies with you.”

“Go with God, Infanta,” he says with dignity, as if I have not insulted him. He bows. “And since you don’t want my prayers to my God (praise be to His holy name), I shall hope instead that when you are in your time of trouble that your doctor is right, and your own God is with you.”

I let him leave, as silent as a dark cat down the hidden staircase and I say nothing. I hear his sandals clicking down the stone steps, just like the hushed footsteps of the servants at my home. I hear the whisper of his long gown, so unlike the stiff brush of English cloth. I feel the air gradually lose the scent of him, the warm, spicy scent of my home.

And when he is gone, quite gone, and the downstairs door is shut and I hear María de Salinas turn the key in the lock then I find that I want to weep—not just because he has told me such bad news, but because one of the few people in the world who has ever told me the truth has gone.

SPRING 1510

Katherine did not tell her young husband of the visit of the Moor doctor, nor of the bad opinion that he had so honestly given her. She did not mention his visit to anyone, not even Lady Margaret Pole. She drew on her sense of destiny, on her pride, and on her faith that she was still especially favored by God, and she continued with the pregnancy, not even allowing herself to doubt.

She had good reason. The English physician, Dr. Fielding, remained confident; the midwives did not contradict him; the court behaved as if Katherine would be brought to bed of a child in March or April; and so she went through the spring weather, the greening gardens, the bursting trees, with a serene smile and her hand clasped gently against her rounded belly.

Henry was excited by the imminent birth of his child; he was planning a great tournament to be held at Greenwich once the baby was born. The loss of the girl had taught him no caution; he bragged all round the court that a healthy baby would soon come. He was forewarned only not to predict a boy. He told everyone that he did not mind if this first child was a prince or princess—he would love this baby for being the firstborn, for coming to himself and the queen in the first flush of their happiness.

Katherine stifled her doubts, and never even said to María de Salinas that she had not felt her baby kick, that she felt a little colder, a little more distant from everything every day. She spent longer and longer on her knees in her chapel; but God did not speak to her, and even the voice of her mother seemed to have grown silent. She found that she missed Arthur—not with the passionate longing of a young widow, but because he had been her dearest friend in England, and the only one she could have trusted now with her doubts.

In February she attended the great Shrove Tuesday feast and shone before the court and laughed. They saw the broad curve of her belly, they saw her confidence as they celebrated the start of Lent. They moved to Greenwich, certain that the baby would be born just after Easter.

We are going to Greenwich for the birth of my child. The rooms are prepared for me as laid down in My Lady the King’s Mother’s Royal Book—hung with tapestries with pleasing and encouraging scenes, carpeted with rugs and strewn with fresh herbs. I hesitate at the doorway, behind me my friends raise their glasses of spiced wine. This is where I shall do my greatest work for England, this is my moment of destiny. This is what I was born and bred to do. I take a deep breath and go inside. The door closes behind me. I will not see my friends—the Duke of Buckingham, my dear knight Edward Howard, my confessor, the Spanish ambassador—until my baby is born.

My women come in with me. Lady Elizabeth Boleyn places a sweet-smelling pomander on my bedside table. Lady Elizabeth and Lady Anne, sisters to the Duke of Buckingham straighten a tapestry, one at each corner, laughing over whether it leans to one side or the other. María de Salinas is smiling, standing by the great bed that is new-hung with dark curtains. Lady Margaret Pole is arranging the cradle for the baby at the foot of the bed. She looks up and smiles at me as I come in and I remember that she is a mother, she will know what is to be done.

“I shall want you to take charge of the royal nurseries,” I suddenly blurt out to her, my affection for her and my sense of needing the advice and comfort of an older woman is too much for me.

There is a little ripple of amusement among my women. They know that I am normally very formal, such an appointment should come through the head of my household after consultation with dozens of people.

Lady Margaret smiles at me. “I knew you would,” she says, speaking in reply as intimate as myself. “I have been counting on it.”

“Without royal invitation?” Lady Elizabeth Boleyn teases. “For shame, Lady Margaret! Thrusting yourself forwards!”

That makes us all laugh at the thought of Lady Margaret, that most dignified of women, as someone craving patronage.

“I know you will care for him as if he were your own son,” I whisper to her.

She takes my hand and helps me to the bed. I am heavy and ungainly. I have this constant pain in my belly that I try to hide.

“God willing,” she says quietly.

Henry comes in to bid me farewell. His face is flushed with emotion and his mouth is working, he looks more like a boy than a king. I take his hands and I kiss him tenderly on the mouth. “My love,” I say. “Pray for me, I am sure everything will go well for us.”

“I shall go to Our Lady of Walsingham to give thanks,” he tells me again. “I have written to the nunnery there and promised them great rewards if they will intercede with Our Lady for you. They are praying for you now, my love. They assure me that they are praying all the time.”

“God is good,” I say. I think briefly of the Moorish doctor who told me that I was not with child and I push his pagan folly from my mind. “This is my destiny and it is my mother’s wish and God’s will,” I say.

“I so wish your mother could be here,” Henry says clumsily. I do not let him see me flinch.

“Of course,” I say quietly. “And I am sure she is watching me from al-Yan—” I cut off the words before I can say them. “From paradise,” I say smoothly. “From heaven.”

“Can I get you anything?” he asks. “Before I leave, can I fetch you anything?”

I do not laugh at the thought of Henry—who never knows where anything is—running errands for me at this late stage. “I have everything I need,” I assure him. “And my women will care for me.”

He straightens up, very kingly, and he looks around at them. “Serve your mistress well,” he says firmly. To Lady Margaret he says, “Please send for me at once if there is any news, at any time, day or night.” Then he kisses me farewell very tenderly, and when he goes out, they close the door behind him and I am alone with my ladies, in the seclusion of my confinement.

I am glad to be confined. The shady, peaceful bedroom will be my haven, I can rest for a while in the familiar company of women. I can stop playacting the part of a fertile and confident queen, and be myself. I put aside all doubts. I will not think and I will not worry. I will wait patiently until my baby comes, and then I will bring him into the world without fear, without screaming. I am determined to be confident that this child, who has survived the loss of his twin, will be a strong baby. And I, who have survived the loss of my first child, will be a brave mother. Perhaps it might be true that we have surmounted grief and loss together: this baby and I.

I wait. All through March I wait, and I ask them to pin back the tapestry that covers the window so I can smell the scent of spring on the air and hear the seagulls as they call over the high tides on the river.

Nothing seems to be happening; not for my baby nor for me. The midwives ask me if I feel any pain, and I do not. Nothing more than the dull ache I have had for a long time. They ask if the baby has quickened, if I feel him kick me, but, to tell truth, I do not understand what they mean. They glance at one another and say overloudly, overemphatically, that it is a very good sign, a quiet baby is a strong baby: he must be resting.

The unease that I have felt right from the start of this second pregnancy, I put right away from me. I will not think of the warning from the Moorish doctor, nor of the compassion in his face. I am determined not to seek out fear, not to run towards disaster. But April comes and I can hear the patter of rain on the window, and then feel the heat of the sunshine, and still nothing happens.

My gowns that strained so tight across my belly through the winter, feel looser in April, and then looser yet. I send out all the women but María, and I unlace my gown and show her my belly and ask if she thinks I am losing my girth.

“I don’t know,” she says; but I can tell by her aghast face that my belly is smaller, that it is obvious that there is no baby in there, ready to be born.

In another week it is obvious to everyone that my belly is going down, I am growing slim again. The midwives try to tell me that sometimes a woman’s belly diminishes just before her baby is born, as her baby drops down to be born, or some such arcane knowledge. I look at them coldly, and I wish I could send for a decent physician who would tell me the truth.

“My belly is smaller and my course has come this very day,” I say to them flatly. “I am bleeding. As you know, I have bled every month since I lost the girl. How can I be with child?”

They flutter their hands, and cannot say. They don’t know. They tell me that these are questions for my husband’s respected physician. It was he who had said that I was still with child in the first place, not them. They had never said that I was with child; they had merely been called in to assist with a delivery. It was not they who had said that I was carrying a baby.

“But what did you think, when he said there was a twin?” I demand. “Did you not agree when he said that I had lost a child and yet kept one?”

They shake their heads. They did not know.

“You must have thought something,” I say impatiently. “You saw me lose my baby. You saw my belly stay big. What could cause that if not another child?”

“God’s will,” says one of them helplessly.

“Amen,” I say, and it costs me a good deal to say it.

“I want to see that physician again,” Katherine said quietly to María de Salinas.

“Your Grace, it may be that he is not in London. He travels in the household of a French count. It may be that he has gone.”

“Find out if he is still in London, or when they expect him to return,” the queen said. “Don’t tell anyone that it is I who have asked for him.”

María de Salinas looked at her mistress with sympathy. “You want him to advise you how to have a son?” she asked in a low voice.

“There is not a university in England that studies medicine,” Katherine said bitterly. “There is not one that teaches languages. There is not one that teaches astronomy, or mathematics, geometry, geography, cosmography, or even the study of animals, or plants. The universities of England are about as much use as a monastery full of monks coloring in the margins of sacred texts.”

María de Salinas gave a little gasp of shock at Katherine’s bluntness. “The church says…”

“The church does not need decent physicians. The church does not need to know how sons are conceived,” Katherine snapped. “The church can continue with the revelations of the saints. It needs nothing more than Scripture. The church is composed of men who are not troubled by the illnesses and difficulties of women. But for those of us on our pilgrimage today, those of us in the world, especially those of us who are women: we need a little more.”

“But you said that you did not want pagan knowledge. You said to the doctor himself. Your said your mother was right to close the universities of the infidel.”

“My mother had half a dozen children,” Katherine replied crossly. “But I tell you, if she could have found a doctor to save my brother she would have had him even if he had been trained in hell itself. She was wrong to turn her back on the learning of the Moors. She was mistaken. I have never thought that she was perfect, but I think the less of her now. She made a great mistake when she drove away their wise scholars along with their heretics.”

“The church itself said that their scholarship is heresy,” María observed. “How could you have one without the other?”

“I am sure that you know nothing about it,” said Isabella’s daughter, driven into a corner. “It is not a fit subject for you to discuss and besides, I have told you what I want you to do.”

The Moor, Yusuf, is away from London but the people at his lodging house say that he has reserved his rooms to return within the week. I shall have to be patient. I shall wait in my confinement and try to be patient.

They know him well, María’s servant tells her. His comings and goings are something of an event in their street. Africans are so rare in England as to be a spectacle—and he is a handsome man and generous with small coins for little services. They told María’s servant that he insisted on having fresh water for washing in his room and he washes every day, several times a day, and that—wonder of wonders—he bathes three or four times a week, using soap and towels, and throwing water all over the floor to the great inconvenience of the housemaids, and to great danger of his health.

I cannot help but laugh at the thought of the tall, fastidious Moor folding himself up into a washing tub, desperate for a steam, a tepid soak, a massage, a cold shower, and then a long, thoughtful rest while smoking a hookah and sipping a strong, sweet peppermint tea. It reminds me of my horror when I first came to England and discovered that they bathe only infrequently and wash only the tips of their fingers before eating. I think that he has done better than I—he has carried his love of his home with him, he has remade his home wherever he goes. But in my determination to be Queen Katherine of England I have given up being Catalina of Spain.

They brought the Moor to Katherine under cover of darkness, to the chamber where she was confined. She sent the women from the room at the appointed hour and told them that she wanted to be alone. She sat in her chair by the window, where the tapestries were drawn back for air, and the first thing he saw, as she rose when he came in, was her slim, candlelit profile against the darkness of the window. She saw his little grimace of sympathy.

“No child.”

“No,” she said shortly. “I shall come out of my confinement tomorrow.”

“You are in pain?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, I am glad of that. You are bleeding?”

“I had my normal course last week.”

He nodded. “Then you may have had a disease which has passed,” he said. “You may be fit to conceive a child. There is no need to despair.”

“I do not despair,” she said flatly. “I never despair. That is why I have sent for you.”

“You will want to conceive a child as soon as possible,” he guessed.

“Yes.”

He thought for a moment. “Well, Infanta, since you have had one child, even if you did not bear it to full term, we know that you and your husband are fertile. That is good.”

“Yes,” she said, surprised by the thought. She had been so distressed by the miscarriage she had not thought that her fertility had been proven. “But why do you speak of my husband’s fertility?”

The Moor smiled. “It takes both a man and a woman to conceive a child.”

“Here in England they think that it is only the woman.”

“Yes. But in this, as in so many other things, they are wrong. There are two parts to every baby: the man’s breath of life and the woman’s gift of the flesh.”

“They say that if a baby is lost, then the woman is at fault, perhaps she has committed a great sin.”

He frowned. “It is possible,” he conceded. “But not very likely. Otherwise how would murderesses ever give birth? Why would innocent animals miscarry their young? I think we will learn in time that there are humors and infections which cause miscarriage. I do not blame the woman, it makes no sense to me.”

“They say that if a woman is barren it is because the marriage is not blessed by God.”

“He is your God,” he remarked reasonably. “Would he persecute an unhappy woman in order to make a point?”

Katherine did not reply. “They will blame me if I do not have a live child,” she observed very quietly.

“I know,” he said. “But the truth of the matter is: having had one child and lost it, there is every reason to think that you might have another. And there should be no reason you should not conceive again.”

“I must bear the next child to full term.”

“If I could examine you, I might know more.”

She shook her head. “It is not possible.”

His glance at her was merry. “Oh, you savages,” he said softly.

She gave a little gasp of amused shock. “You forget yourself!”

“Then send me away.”

That stopped her. “You can stay,” she said. “But of course, you cannot examine me.”

“Then let us consider what might help you conceive and carry a child,” he said. “Your body needs to be strong. Do you ride horses?”

“Yes.”

“Ride astride before you conceive and then take a litter thereafter. Walk every day, swim if you can. You will conceive a child about two weeks after the end of your course. Rest at those times, and make sure that you lie with your husband at those times. Try to eat moderately at every meal and drink as little of their accursed small ale as you can.”

Katherine smiled at the reflection of her own prejudices. “Do you know Spain?”

“I was born there. My parents fled from Málaga when your mother brought in the Inquisition and they realized that they would be tormented to death.”

“I am sorry,” she said awkwardly.

“We will go back, it is written,” he said with nonchalant confidence.

“I should warn you that you will not.”

“I know that we will. I have seen the prophecy myself.”

At once they fell silent again.

“Shall I tell you what I advise? Or shall I just leave now?” he asked as if he did not much mind which it was to be.

“Tell me,” she said. “And then I can pay you, and you can go. We were born to be enemies. I should not have summoned you.”

“We are both Spanish, we both love our country. We both serve our God. Perhaps we were born to be friends.”

She had to stop herself giving him her hand. “Perhaps,” she said gruffly, turning her head away. “But I was brought up to hate your people and hate your faith.”

“I was brought up to hate no one,” he said gently. “Perhaps that is what I should be teaching you before anything else.”

“Just teach me how to have a son,” she repeated.

“Very well. Drink water that has been boiled, eat as much fruit and fresh vegetables as you can get. Do you have salad vegetables here?”

For a moment I am back in the garden at Ludlow with his bright eyes on me.

“Acetaria?”

“Yes, salad.”

“What is it, exactly?”

He saw the queen’s face glow. “What are you thinking of?”

“Of my first husband. He told me that I could send for gardeners to grow salad vegetables, but I never did.”

“I have seeds,” the Moor said surprisingly. “I can give you some seeds and you can grow the vegetables you will need.”

“You have?”

“Yes.”

“You would give me…you would sell them to me?”

“Yes. I would give them to you.”

For a moment she was silenced by his generosity. “You are very kind,” she said.

He smiled. “We are both Spanish and a long way from our homes. Doesn’t that matter more than the fact that I am black and you are white? That I worship my God facing Mecca and you worship yours facing west?”

“I am a child of the true religion and you are an infidel,” she said, but with less conviction than she had ever felt before.

“We are both people of faith,” he said quietly. “Our enemies should be the people who have no faith, neither in their God, nor in others, nor in themselves. The people who should face our crusade should be those who bring cruelty into the world for no reason but their own power. There is enough sin and wickedness to fight, without taking up arms against people who believe in a forgiving God and who try to lead a good life.”

Katherine found that she could not reply. On the one hand was her mother’s teaching, on the other was the simple goodness that radiated from this man. “I don’t know,” she said finally, and it was as if the very words set her free. “I don’t know. I would have to take the question to God. I would have to pray for guidance. I don’t pretend to know.”

“Now, that is the very beginning of wisdom,” he said gently. “I am sure of that, at least. Knowing that you do not know is to ask humbly, instead of tell arrogantly. That is the beginning of wisdom. Now, more important, I will go home and write you a list of things that you must not eat, and I will send you some medicine to strengthen your humors. Don’t let them cup you, don’t let them put leeches on you, and don’t let them persuade you to take any poisons or potions. You are a young woman with a young husband. A baby will come.”

It was like a blessing. “You are sure?” she said.

“I am sure,” he replied. “And very soon.”

Greenwich Palace,

May 1510

I SEND FOR HENRY, he should hear it first from me. He comes unwillingly. He has been filled with a terror of women’s secrets and women’s doings and he does not like to come into a room which had been prepared for a confinement. Also, there is something else: a lack of warmth. I see it in his face, turned away from me. The way he does not meet my eyes. But I cannot challenge him about coolness towards me when I first have to tell him such hard news. Lady Margaret leaves us alone, closing the door behind her. I know she will ensure no one outside eavesdrops. They will all know soon enough.

“Husband, I am sorry, I have sad news for us,” I say.

The face he turns to me is sulky. “I knew it could not be good when Lady Margaret came for me.”

There is no point in my feeling a flash of irritation. I shall have to manage us both. “I am not with child,” I say, plunging in. “The doctor must have made a mistake. There was only one child and I lost it. This confinement has been a mistake. I shall return to court tomorrow.”

“How can he have mistaken such a thing?”

I give a little shrug of the shoulders. I want to say: because he is a pompous fool and your man, and you surround yourself with people who only ever tell you the good news and are afraid to tell you bad. But instead I say neutrally: “He must have been mistaken.”

“I shall look a fool!” he bursts out. “You have been away for nearly three months and nothing to show for it.”

I say nothing for a moment. Pointless to wish that I were married to a man who might think beyond his appearance. Pointless to wish that I were married to a man whose first thought might be of me.

“No one will think anything at all,” I say firmly. “If anything, they will say that it is I who am a fool to not know whether I am with child or no. But at least we had a baby and that means we can have another.”

“It does?” he asks, immediately hopeful. “But why should we lose her? Is God displeased with us? Have we committed some sin? Is it a sign of God’s displeasure?”

I nip my lower lip to stop the Moor’s question: is God so vindictive that He would kill an innocent child to punish the parents for a sin so venial that they do not even know that they have committed it?

“My conscience is clear,” I say firmly.

“Mine too,” he says quickly, too quickly.

But my conscience is not clear. That night I go on my knees to the image of the crucified Lord and for once I truly pray, I do not dream of Arthur, or consult my memory of my mother. I close my eyes and I pray.

“Lord, it was a deathbed promise,” I say slowly. “He demanded it of me. It was for the good of England. It was to guide the kingdom and the new king in the paths of the church. It was to protect England from the Moor and from sin. I know that it has brought me wealth, and the throne, but I did not do it for gain. If it is sin, Lord, then show me now. If I should not be his wife, then tell me now. Because I believe that I did the right thing, and that I am doing the right thing. And I believe that You would not take my son from me in order to punish me for this. I believe that You are a merciful God. And I believe that I did the right thing for Arthur, for Henry, for England, and for me.”

I sit back on my heels and wait for a long time, for an hour, perhaps more, in case my God, the God of my mother, chooses to speak to me in His anger.

He does not.

So I will go on assuming that I am in the right. Arthur was right to call on my promise, I was right to tell the lie, my mother was right to call it God’s will that I should be Queen of England, and that whatever happens—nothing will change that.

Lady Margaret Pole comes to sit with me this evening, my last evening in confinement, and she takes the stool on the opposite side of the fire, close enough so that we cannot easily be overheard. “I have something to tell you,” she says.

I look at her face; she is so calm that I know at once that something bad has happened.

“Tell me,” I say instantly.

She makes a little moue of distaste. “I am sorry to bring you the tittle-tattle of the court.”

“Very well. Tell me.”

“It is the Duke of Buckingham’s sister.”

“Elizabeth?” I ask, thinking of the pretty young woman who had come to me the moment she knew I would be queen and asked if she could be my lady-in-waiting.

“No, Anne.”

I nod. This is Elizabeth’s younger sister, a dark-eyed girl with a roguish twinkle and a love of male company. She is popular at court among the young men but—at least as long as I am present—she behaves with all the demure grace of a young matron of the highest family in the land, in service to the queen.

“What of her?”

“She has been seeing William Compton, without telling anyone. They have had assignations. Her brother is very upset. He has told her husband, and he is furious at her risking her reputation and his good name in a flirtation with the king’s friend.”

I think for a moment. William Compton is one of Henry’s wilder companions, the two of them are inseparable.

“William will only have been amusing himself,” I say. “He is a heartbreaker.”

“It turns out that she has gone missing from a masque, once during dinner and once all day when the court was hunting.”

I nod. This is much more serious. “There is no suggestion that they are lovers?”

She shrugs. “Certainly her brother, Edward Stafford is furious. He has complained to Compton and there has been a quarrel. The king has defended Compton.”

I press my lips together to prevent myself snapping out a criticism in my irritation. The Duke of Buckingham is one of the oldest friends of the Tudor family, with massive lands and many retainers. He greeted me with Prince Harry all those years ago; he is now honored by the king, the greatest man in the land. He has been a good friend to me since then. Even when I was in disgrace I always had a smile and a kind word from him. Every summer he sent me a gift of game, and there were some weeks when that was the only meat we saw. Henry cannot quarrel with him as if he were a tradesman and Henry a surly farmer. This is the king and the greatest man of the state of England. The old king Henry could not even have won his throne without Buckingham’s support. A disagreement between them is not a private matter, it is a national disaster. If Henry had any sense he would not have involved himself in this petty courtiers’ quarrel. Lady Margaret nods at me, I need say nothing, she understands my disapproval.

“Can I not leave the court for a moment without my ladies climbing out of their bedroom windows to run after young men?”

She leans forwards and pats my hand. “It seems not. It is a foolish young court, Your Grace, and they need you to keep them steady. The king has spoken very high words to the duke and the duke is much offended. William Compton says he will say nothing of the matter to anyone, so everyone thinks the worst. Anne has been all but imprisoned by her husband, Sir George, we none of us have seen her today. I am afraid that when you come out of your confinement he will not allow her to wait on you, and then your honor is involved.” She pauses. “I thought you should know now rather than be surprised by it all tomorrow morning. Though it goes against the grain to be a talebearer of such folly.”

“It is ridiculous,” I say. “I shall deal with it tomorrow, when I come out of confinement. But really, what are they all thinking of? This is like a schoolyard! William should be ashamed of himself and I am surprised that Anne should so far forget herself as to chase after him. And what does her husband think he is? Some knight at Camelot to imprison her in a tower?”

Queen Katherine came out of her confinement, without announcement, and returned to her usual rooms at Greenwich Palace. There could be no churching ceremony to mark return her to normal life, since there had been no birth. There could be no christening since there was no child. She came out of the shadowy room without comment, as if she had suffered some secret, shameful illness, and everyone pretended that she had been gone for hours rather than nearly three months.

Her ladies-in-waiting, who had become accustomed to an idle pace of life, with the queen in her confinement, assembled at some speed in the queen’s chambers, and the housemaids hurried in with fresh strewing herbs and new candles.

Katherine caught several furtive glances among the ladies and assumed that they too had guilty consciences over misbehavior in her absence; but then she realized that there was a whispered buzz of conversation that ceased whenever she raised her head. Clearly, something had happened that was more serious than Anne’s disgrace; and, equally clearly, no one was telling her.

She beckoned one of her ladies, Lady Madge, to come to her side.

“Is Lady Elizabeth not joining us this morning?” she asked, as she could see no sign of the older Stafford sister.

The girl flushed scarlet to her ears. “I don’t know,” she stammered. “I don’t think so.”

“Where is she?” Katherine asked.

The girl looked desperately round for help but all the other ladies in the room were suddenly taking an intense interest in their sewing, in their embroidery, or in their books. Elizabeth Boleyn dealt a hand of cards with as much attention as if she had a fortune staked on it.

“I don’t know where she is,” the girl confessed.

“In the ladies’ room?” Katherine suggested. “In the Duke of Buckingham’s rooms?”

“I think she has gone,” the girl said baldly. At once someone gasped, and then there was silence.

“Gone?” Katherine looked around. “Will someone tell me what is happening?” she asked, her tone reasonable enough. “Where has Lady Elizabeth gone? And how can she have gone without my permission?”

The girl took a step back. At that moment, Lady Margaret Pole came into the room.

“Lady Margaret,” Katherine said pleasantly. “Here is Madge telling me that Lady Elizabeth has left court without my permission and without bidding me farewell. What is happening?”

Katherine felt her amused smile freeze on her face when her old friend shook her head slightly, and Madge, relieved, dropped back to her seat. “What is it?” Katherine asked more quietly.

Without seeming to move, all the ladies craned forward to hear how Lady Margaret would explain the latest development.

“I believe the king and the Duke of Buckingham have had hard words,” Lady Margaret said smoothly. “The duke has left court and taken both his sisters with him.”

“But they are my ladies-in-waiting. In service to me. They cannot leave without my permission.”

“It is very wrong of them, indeed,” Margaret said. Something in the way she folded her hands in her lap and looked so steadily and calmly warned Katherine not to probe.

“So what have you been doing in my absence?” Katherine turned to the ladies, trying to lighten the mood of the room.

At once they all looked sheepish. “Have you learned any new songs? Have you danced in any masques?” Katherine asked.

“I know a new song,” one of the girls volunteered. “Shall I sing it?”

Katherine nodded; at once one of the other women picked up a lute. It was as if everyone was quick to divert her. Katherine smiled and beat the time with her hand on the arm of her chair. She knew, as a woman who had been born and raised in a court of conspirators, that something was very wrong indeed.

There was the sound of company approaching and Katherine’s guards threw open the door to the king and his court. The ladies stood up, shook out their skirts, bit their lips to make them pink, and sparkled in anticipation. Someone laughed gaily at nothing. Henry strode in, still in his riding clothes, his friends around him, William Compton’s arm in his.

Katherine was again alert to some difference in her husband. He did not come in, take her in his arms, and kiss her cheeks. He did not stride into the very center of the room and bow to her either. He came in, twinned with his best friend, the two almost hiding behind each other, like boys caught out in a petty crime: part shamefaced, part braggart. At Katherine’s sharp look Compton awkwardly disengaged himself, Henry greeted his wife without enthusiasm, his eyes downcast, he took her hand and then kissed her cheek, not her mouth.

“Are you well now?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said calmly. “I am quite well now. And how are you, sire?”

“Oh,” he said carelessly. “I am well. We had such a chase this morning. I wish you had been with us. We were halfway to Sussex, I do believe.”

“I shall come out tomorrow,” Katherine promised him.

“Will you be well enough?”

“I am quite well,” she repeated.

He looked relieved. “I thought you would be ill for months,” he blurted out.

Smiling, she shook her head, wondering who had told him that.

“Let’s break our fast,” he said. “I am starving.”

He took her hand and led her to the great hall. The court fell in informally behind them. Katherine could hear the overexcited buzz of whispers. She leaned her head towards Henry so that no one could catch her words. “I hear there have been some quarrels in court.”

“Oh! You have heard of our little storm already, have you?” he said. He was far too loud, he was far too jovial. He was acting the part of a man with nothing to trouble his conscience. He threw a laugh over his shoulder and looked for someone to join in his forced amusement. Half a dozen men and women smiled, anxious to share his good humor. “It is something and nothing. I have had a quarrel with your great friend, the Duke of Buckingham. He has left the court in a temper!” He laughed again, even more heartily, glancing at her sideways to see if she was smiling, trying to judge if she already knew all about it.

“Indeed?” Katherine said coolly.

“He was insulting,” Henry said, gathering his sense of offense. “He can stay away until he is ready to apologize. He is such a pompous man, you know. Always thinks he knows everything. And his sour sister Elizabeth can go too.”

“She is a good lady-in-waiting and a kind companion to me,” Katherine observed. “I expected her to greet me this day. I have no quarrel with her, nor with her sister Anne. I take it you have no quarrel with them either?”

“Nonetheless I am most displeased with their brother,” Henry said. “They can all go.”

Katherine paused, took a breath. “She and her sister are in my household,” she observed. “I have the right to choose and dismiss my own ladies.”

She saw the quick flush of his childish temper. “You will oblige me by sending them away from your household! Whatever your rights! I don’t expect to hear talk of rights between us!”

The court behind them fell silent at once. Everyone wanted to hear the first royal quarrel.

Katherine released his hand and went around the high table to take her place. It gave her a moment to remind herself to be calm. When he came to his seat beside hers she took a breath and smiled at him. “As you wish,” she said evenly. “I have no great preference in the matter. But how am I to run a well-ordered court if I send away young women of good family who have done nothing wrong?”

“You were not here, so you have no idea what she did or didn’t do!” Henry sought for another complaint and found one. He waved the court to sit and dropped into his own chair. “You locked yourself away for months. What am I supposed to do without you? How are things supposed to be run if you just go away and leave everything?”

Katherine nodded, keeping her face absolutely serene. She was very well aware that the attention of the entire court was focused on her like a burning glass on fine paper. “I hardly left for my own amusement,” she observed.

“It has been most awkward for me,” he said, taking her words at face value. “Most awkward. It is all very well for you, taking to your bed for weeks at a time, but how is the court to run without a queen? Your ladies were without discipline, nobody knew how things were to go on, I couldn’t see you, I had to sleep alone—” He broke off.

Katherine realized, belatedly, that his bluster was hiding a genuine sense of hurt. In his selfishness, he had transformed her long endurance of pain and fear into his own difficulty. He had managed to see her fruitless confinement as her willfully deserting him, leaving him alone to rule over a lopsided court; in his eyes, she had let him down.

“I think at the very least you should do as I ask,” he said pettishly. “I have had trouble enough these last months. All this reflects very badly on me, I have been made to look a fool. And no help from you at all.”

“Very well,” Katherine said peaceably. “I shall send Elizabeth away and her sister Anne too, since you ask it of me. Of course.”

Henry found his smile, as if the sun were coming out from behind clouds. “Yes. And now you are back we can get everything back to normal.”

Not a word for me, not one word of comfort, not one thought of understanding. I could have died trying to bring his child into the world; without his child I have to face sorrow, grief and a haunting fear of sin. But he does not think of me at all.

I find a smile to reply to his. I knew when I married him that he was a selfish boy and I knew he would grow into a selfish man. I have set myself the task of guiding him and helping him to be a better man, the best man that he can be. There are bound to be times when I think he has failed to be the man he should be. And when those times come, as now, I must see it as my failure to guide him. I must forgive him.

Without my forgiveness, without me extending my patience further than I thought possible, our marriage will be a poorer one. He is always ready to resent a woman who cares for him—he learned that from his grandmother. And I, God forgive me, am too quick to think of the husband that I lost, and not of the husband that I won. He is not the man that Arthur was, and he will never be the king that Arthur would have been. But he is my husband and my king and I should respect him.

Indeed: I will respect him, whether he deserves it or not.

The court was subdued over breakfast, few of them could drag their eyes from the high table where, under the gold canopy of state, seated on their thrones, the king and queen exchanged conversation and seemed to be quite reconciled.

“But does she know?” one courtier whispered to one of Katherine’s ladies.

“Who would tell her?” she replied. “If María de Salinas and Lady Margaret have not told her already then she doesn’t know. I would put my earrings on it.”

“Done,” he said. “Ten shillings that she finds out.”

“By when?”

“Tomorrow,” he said.

I had another piece of the puzzle when I came to look at the accounts for the weeks while I had been in confinement. In the first days that I had been away from court there had been no extraordinary expenses. But then the bill for amusements began to grow. There were bills from singers and actors to rehearse their celebration for the expected baby, bills from the organist, the choristers, from drapers for the material for pennants and standards, extra maids for polishing the gold christening bowl. Then there were payments for costumes of Lincoln green for disguising, singers to perform under the window of Lady Anne, a clerk to copy out the words of the king’s new song, rehearsals for a new May Day masque with a dance, and costumes for three ladies with Lady Anne to play the part of Unattainable Beauty.

I rose from the table where I had been turning over the papers and went to the window to look down at the garden. They had set up a wrestling ring and the young men of the court were stripped to their shirtsleeves. Henry and Charles Brandon were gripped in each other’s arms like blacksmiths at a fair. As I watched, Henry tripped his friend and threw him to the ground and then dropped his weight on him to hold him down. Princess Mary applauded, the court cheered.

I turned from the window. I began to wonder if Lady Anne had proved to be unattainable indeed. I wondered how merry they had been on May Day morning when I had woken on my own, in sadness, to silence, with no one singing beneath my window. And why should the court pay for singers, hired by Compton, to seduce his newest mistress?

The king summoned the queen to his rooms in the afternoon. Some messages had come from the Pope and he wanted her advice. Katherine sat beside him, listened to the report of the messenger and stretched up to whisper in her husband’s ear.

He nodded. “The queen reminds me of our well-known alliance with Venice,” he said pompously. “And indeed, she has no need to remind me. I am not likely to forget it. You can depend on our determination to protect Venice and indeed all Italy against the ambitions of the French king.”

The ambassadors nodded respectfully. “I shall send you a letter about this,” Henry said grandly. They bowed and withdrew.

“Will you write to them?” he asked Katherine.

She nodded. “Of course,” she said. “I thought that you handled that quite rightly.”

He smiled at her approval. “It is so much better when you are here,” he said. “Nothing goes on right when you are away.”

“Well, I am back now,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. She could feel the power of the muscle under her hand. Henry was a man now, with the strength of a man. “Dearest, I am so sorry about your quarrel with the Duke of Buckingham.”

Under her hand she felt his shoulder hunch; he shrugged away her touch. “It is nothing,” he said. “He shall beg my pardon and it will be forgotten.”

“But perhaps he could just come back to court,” she said. “Without his sisters if you don’t want to see them—”

Inexplicably he barked out a laugh. “Oh, bring them all back by all means,” he said. “If that is your true wish, if you think it will bring you happiness. You should never have gone into confinement. There was no child, anyone could have seen that there would be no child.”

She was so taken aback that she could hardly speak. “This is about my confinement?”

“It would hardly have happened without. But everyone could see there would be no child. It was wasted time.”

“Your own doctor—”

“What did he know? He only knows what you tell him.”

“He assured me—”

“Doctors know nothing!” he burst out. “They are always guided by the woman; everyone knows that. And a woman can say anything. Is there a baby, isn’t there a baby? Is she a virgin, isn’t she a virgin? Only the woman knows and the rest of us are fooled.”

Katherine felt her mind racing, trying to trace what had offended him, what she could say. “I trusted your doctor,” she said. “He was very certain. He assured me I was with child and so I went into confinement. Another time I will know better. I am truly sorry, my love. It has been a very great grief to me.”

“It just makes me look such a fool!” he said plaintively. “It’s no wonder that I…”

“That you? What?”

“Nothing,” said Henry, sulkily.

“It is such a lovely afternoon, let us go for a walk,” I say pleasantly to my ladies. “Lady Margaret will accompany me.”

We go outside. My cape is brought and put over my shoulders and my gloves. The path down to the river is wet and slippery and Lady Margaret takes my arm and we go down the steps together. The primroses are thick as churned butter in the hedgerows and the sun is out. There are white swans on the river, but when the barges and wherries go by the birds drift out of the way as if by magic. I breathe deeply. It is so good to be out of that small room and to feel the sun on my face again that I hardly want to open the subject of Lady Anne.

“You must know what took place?” I say to her shortly.

“I know some gossip,” she says levelly. “Nothing for certain.”

“What has angered the king so much?” I ask. “He is upset about my confinement, he is angry with me. What is troubling him? Surely not the Stafford girl’s flirtation with Compton?”

Lady Margaret’s face is grave. “The king is very attached to William Compton,” she said. “He would not have him insulted.”

“It sounds as if all the insult is the other way,” I say. “It is Lady Anne and her husband who are dishonored. I would have thought the king would have been angry with William. Lady Anne is not a girl to tumble behind a wall. There is her family to consider and her husband’s family. Surely the king should have told Compton to behave himself?”

Lady Margaret shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says. “None of the girls will even talk to me. They are as silent as if it were a grave matter.”

“But why, if it was nothing more than a foolish affair? Youth calls to youth in springtime?”

She shakes her head. “Truly, I don’t know. You would think so. But if it is a flirtation why would the duke be so very offended? Why quarrel with the king? Why would the girls not be laughing at Anne for getting caught?”

“And another thing…” I say.

She waits.

“Why should the king pay for Compton’s courtship? The fee for the singers is in the court accounts.”

She frowned. “Why would he encourage it? The king must have known that the duke would be greatly offended.”

“And Compton remains in high favor?”

“They are inseparable.”

I speak the thought that is sitting cold in my heart. “So do you think that Compton is the shield and the love affair is between the king, my husband, and Lady Anne?”

Lady Margaret’s grave face tells me that my guess is her own fear. “I don’t know,” she says, honest as ever. “As I say, the girls tell me nothing, and I have not asked anyone that question.”

“Because you think you will not like the answer?”

She nods. Slowly, I turn, and we walk back along the river in silence.

Katherine and Henry led the company into dinner in the grand hall and sat side by side under the gold canopy of state as they always did. There was a band of special singers that had come to England from the French court and they sang without instruments, very true to the note, with a dozen different parts. It was complicated and beautiful and Henry was entranced by the music. When the singers paused, he applauded and asked them to repeat the song. They smiled at his enthusiasm, and sang again. He asked for it once more, and then sang the tenor line back to them: note perfect.

It was their turn to applaud him and they invited him to sing with them the part that he had learned so rapidly. Katherine, on her throne, leaned forwards and smiled as her handsome young husband sang in his clear young voice, and the ladies of the court clapped in appreciation.

When the musicians struck up and the court danced, Katherine came down from the raised platform of the high table and danced with Henry, her face bright with happiness and her smile warm. Henry, encouraged by her, danced like an Italian, with fast, dainty footwork and high leaps. Katherine clapped her hands in delight and called for another dance as if she had never had a moment’s worry in her life. One of her ladies leaned towards the courtier who had taken the bet that Katherine would find out. “I think I shall keep my earrings,” she said. “He has fooled her. He has played her for a fool, and now he is fair game to any one of us. She has lost her hold on him.”

I wait till we are alone, and then I wait until he beds me with his eager joy, and then I slip from the bed and bring him a cup of small ale.

“So tell me the truth, Henry,” I say to him simply. “What is the truth of the quarrel between you and the Duke of Buckingham, and what were your dealings with his sister?”

His swift sideways glance tells me more than any words. He is about to lie to me. I hear the words he says: a story about a disguising and all of them in masks and the ladies dancing with them and Compton and Anne dancing together, and I know that he is lying.

It is an experience more painful than I thought I could have with him. We have been married for nearly a year, a year next month and always he has looked at me directly, with all his youth and honesty in his gaze. I have never heard anything but truth in his voice: boastfulness, certainly, the arrogance of a young man, but never this uncertain deceitful quaver. He is lying to me, and I would almost rather have a barefaced confession of infidelity than to see him look at me, blue-eyed and sweet as a boy, with a parcel of lies in his mouth.

I stop him, I truly cannot bear to hear it. “Enough,” I say. “I know enough at least to realize that this is not true. She was your lover, wasn’t she? And Compton was your friend and shield?”

His face is aghast. “Katherine…”

“Just tell me the truth.”

His mouth is trembling. He cannot bear to admit what he has done. “I didn’t mean to…”

“I know that you did not,” I say. “I am sure you were sorely tempted.”

“You were away for so long…”

“I know.”

A dreadful silence falls. I had thought that he would lie to me and I would track him down and then confront him with his lies and with his adultery and I would be a warrior queen in my righteous anger. But this is sadness and a taste of defeat. If Henry cannot remain faithful when I am in confinement with our child, our dearly needed child, then how shall he be faithful till death? How shall he obey his vow to forsake all others when he can be distracted so easily? What am I to do, what can any woman do, when her husband is such a fool as to desire a woman for a moment, rather than the woman he is pledged to for eternity?

“Dear husband, this is very wrong,” I say sadly.

“It was because I had such doubts. I thought for a moment that we were not married,” he confesses.

“You forgot we were married?” I ask incredulously.

“No!” His head comes up, his blue eyes are filled with unshed tears. His face shines with contrition. “I thought that since our marriage was not valid, I need not abide by it.”

I am quite amazed by him. “Our marriage? Why would it not be valid?”

He shakes his head. He is too ashamed to speak. I press him. “Why not?”

He kneels beside my bed and hides his face in the sheets. “I liked her and I desired her and she said some things which made me feel…”

“Feel what?”

“Made me think…”

“Think what?”

“What if you were not a virgin when I married you?”

At once I am alert, like a villain near the scene of a crime, like a murderer when the corpse bleeds at the sight of him. “What do you mean?”

“She was a virgin…”

“Anne?”

“Yes. Sir George is impotent. Everyone knows that.”

“Do they?”

“Yes. So she was a virgin. And she was not…” He rubs his face against the sheet of our bed. “She was not like you. She…” He stumbles for words. “She cried out in pain. She bled, I was afraid when I saw how much blood, really a lot…” He breaks off again. “She could not go on, the first time. I had to stop. She cried, I held her. She was a virgin. That is what it is like to lie with a virgin, the first time. I was her first love. I could tell. Her first love.”

There is a long, cold silence.

“She fooled you,” I say cruelly, throwing away her reputation, and his tenderness for her, with one sweep, making her a whore and him a fool, for the greater good.

He looks up, shocked. “She did?”

“She was not that badly hurt, she was pretending.” I shake my head at the sinfulness of young women. “It is an old trick. She will have had a bladder of blood in her hand and broke it to give you a show of blood. She will have cried out. I expect she whimpered and said she could not bear the pain from the very beginning.”

Henry is amazed. “She did.”

“She thought to make you feel sorry for her.”

“But I was!”

“Of course. She thought to make you feel that you had taken her virginity, her maidenhead, and that you owe her your protection.”

“That is what she said!”

“She tried to entrap you,” I say. “She was not a virgin, she was acting the part of one. I was a virgin when I came to your bed and the first night that we were lovers was very simple and sweet. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” he says.

“There was no crying and wailing like players on a stage. It was quiet and loving. Take that as your benchmark,” I say. “I was a true virgin. You and I were each other’s first love. We had no need for playacting and exaggeration. Hold to that truth of our love, Henry. You have been fooled by a counterfeit.”

“She said…” he begins.

“She said what?” I am not afraid. I am filled with utter determination that Anne Stafford will not put asunder what God and my mother have joined together.

“She said that you must have been Arthur’s lover.” He stumbles before the white fierceness of my face. “That you had lain with him, and that—”

“Not true.”

“I didn’t know.”

“It is not true.”

“Oh, yes.”

“My marriage with Arthur was not consummated. I came to you a virgin. You were my first love. Does anyone dare say different to me?”

“No,” he says rapidly. “No. No one shall say different to you.”

“Nor to you.”

“Nor to me.”

“Would anyone dare to say to my face that I am not your first love, a virgin untouched, your true wedded wife, and Queen of England?”

“No,” he says again.

“Not even you.”

“No.”

“It is to dishonor me,” I say furiously. “And where will scandal stop? Shall they suggest that you have no claim to the throne because your mother was no virgin on her wedding day?”

He is stunned with shock. “My mother? What of my mother?”

“They say that she lay with her uncle, Richard the usurper,” I say flatly. “Think of that! And they say that she lay with your father before they were married, before they were even betrothed. They say that she was far from a virgin on her wedding day when she wore her hair loose and went in white. They say she was dishonored twice over, little more than a harlot for the throne. Do we allow people to say such things of a queen? Are you to be disinherited by such gossip? Am I? Is our son?”

Henry is gasping with shock. He loved his mother and he had never thought of her as a sexual being before. “She would never have…she was a most…how can…”

“You see? This is what happens if we allow people to gossip about their betters.” I lay down the law which will protect me. “If you allow someone to dishonor me, there is no stopping the scandal. It insults me, but it threatens you. Who knows where scandal will stop once it takes hold? Scandal against the queen rocks the throne itself. Be warned, Henry.”

“She said it!” he exclaims. “Anne said that it was no sin for me to lie with her because I was not truly married!”

“She lied to you,” I say. “She pretended to her virgin state and she traduced me.”

His face flushes red with anger. It is a relief to him to turn to rage. “What a whore!” he exclaims crudely. “What a whore to trick me into thinking…what a jade’s trick!”

“You cannot trust young women,” I say quietly. “Now that you are King of England you will have to be on your guard, my love. They will run after you and they will try to charm you and seduce you, but you have to be faithful to me. I was your virgin bride, I was your first love. I am your wife. Do not forsake me.”

He takes me into his arms. “Forgive me,” he whispers brokenly.

“We will never, ever speak of this again,” I say solemnly. “I will not have it, and I will not allow anyone to dishonor either me or your mother.”

“No,” he says fervently. “Before God. We will never speak of this nor allow any other to speak of it again.”

Next morning Henry and Katherine rose up together and went quietly to Mass in the king’s chapel. Katherine met with her confessor and kneeled to confess her sins. She did not take very long, Henry observed, she must have no great sins to confess. It made him feel even worse to see her go to her priest for a brief confession and come away with her face so serene. He knew that she was a woman of holy purity, just like his mother. Penitently, his face in his hands, he thought that not only had Katherine never been unfaithful to her given word, she had probably never even told a lie in her life.

I go out with the court to hunt dressed in a red velvet gown, determined to show that I am well, that I am returned to the court, that everything will be as it was before. We have a long, hard run after a fine stag who takes a looping route around the great park and the hounds bring him down in the stream and Henry himself goes into the water, laughing, to cut his throat. The stream blooms red around him and stains his clothes and his hands. I laugh with the court but the sight of the blood makes me feel sick to my very belly.

We ride home slowly. I keep my face locked in a smile to hide my weariness and the pain in my thighs, in my belly, in my back. Lady Margaret brings her horse beside mine and glances at me. “You had better rest this afternoon.”

“I cannot,” I say shortly.

She does not need to ask why. She has been a princess; she knows that a queen has to be on show, whatever her own feelings. “I have the story, if you want to trouble yourself to hear such a thing.”

“You are a good friend,” I say. “Tell me briefly. I think I know the worst that it can be already.”

“After we had gone in for your confinement the king and the young men started to go into the City in the evenings.”

“With guards?”

“No, alone and disguised.”

I stifle a sigh. “Did no one try to stop him?”

“The Earl of Surrey, God bless him. But his own sons were of the party and it was lighthearted fun, and you know that the king will not be denied his pastimes.”

I nod.

“One evening they came into court in their disguises and pretended to be London merchants. The ladies danced with them; it was all very amusing. I was not there that evening, I was with you in confinement; someone told me about it the next day. I took no notice. But apparently one of the merchants singled out Lady Anne and danced with her all night.”

“Henry,” I say, and I can hear the bitterness in my own whisper.

“Yes, but everyone thought it was William Compton. They are about the same height, and they were all wearing false beards and hats. You know how they do.”

“Yes,” I say. “I know how they do.”

“Apparently they made an assignation and when the Duke thought that his sister was sitting with you in the evenings she was slipping away and meeting the king. When she went missing all night, it was too much for her sister. Elizabeth went to her brother and warned him of what Anne was doing. They told her husband and all of them confronted Anne and demanded to know who she was seeing, and she said it was Compton. But when she was missing, and they thought she was with her lover, they met Compton. So then they knew, it was not Compton, it was the king.”

I shake my head.

“I am sorry, my dear,” Lady Margaret says to me gently. “He is a young man. I am sure it is no more than vanity and thoughtlessness.”

I nod and say nothing. I check my horse, who is tossing his head against my hands, which are too heavy on the reins. I am thinking of Anne crying out in pain as her hymen was broken.

“And is her husband, Sir George, unmanned?” I ask. “Was she a virgin until now?”

“So they say,” Lady Margaret replies drily. “Who knows what goes on in a bedroom?”

“I think we know what goes on in the king’s bedroom,” I say bitterly. “They have hardly been discreet.”

“It is the way of the world,” she says quietly. “When you are confined it is only natural that he will take a lover.”

I nod again. This is nothing but the truth. What is surprising to me is that I should feel such hurt.

“The duke must have been much aggrieved,” I say, thinking of the dignity of the man and how it was he who put the Tudors on the throne in the first place.

“Yes,” she says. She hesitates. Something about her voice warns me that there is something she is not sure if she should say.

“What is it, Margaret?” I ask. “I know you well enough to know that there is something more.”

“It is something that Elizabeth said to one of the girls before she left,” she says.

“Oh?”

“Elizabeth says that her sister did not think it was a light love affair that would last while you were in confinement and then be forgotten.”

“What else could it be?”

“She thought that her sister had ambitions.”

“Ambitions for what?”

“She thought that she might take the king’s fancy and hold him.”

“For a season,” I say disparagingly.

“No, for longer,” she says. “He spoke of love. He is a romantic young man. He spoke of being hers till death.” She sees the look on my face and breaks off. “Forgive me, I should have said none of this.”

I think of Anne Stafford crying out in pain and telling him that she was a virgin, a true virgin, in too much pain to go on. That he was her first love, her only love. I know how much he would like that.

I check my horse again, he frets against the bit. “What do you mean she was ambitious?”

“I think she thought that given her family position, and the liking that was between her and the king, that she could become the great mistress of the English court.”

I blink. “And what about me?”

“I think she thought that, in time, he might turn from you to her. I think she hoped to supplant you in his love.”

I nod. “And if I died bearing his child, I suppose she thought she would have her empty marriage annulled and marry him?”

“That would be the very cusp of her ambition,” Lady Margaret says. “And stranger things have happened. Elizabeth Woodville got to the throne of England on looks alone.”

“Anne Stafford was my lady-in-waiting,” I say. “I chose her for the honor over many others. What about her duty to me? What about her friendship with me? Did she never think of me? If she had served me in Spain, we would have lived night and day together…” I break off. There is no way to explain the safety and affection of the harem to a woman who has always lived her life alert to the gaze of men.

Lady Margaret shakes her head. “Women are always rivals,” she says simply. “But until now everyone has thought that the king only had eyes for you. Now everyone knows different. There is not a pretty girl in the land who does not now think that the crown is for taking.”

“It is still my crown,” I point out.

“But girls will hope for it,” she says. “It is the way of the world.”

“They will have to wait for my death,” I say bleakly. “That could be a long wait even for the most ambitious girl.”

Lady Margaret nods. I indicate behind me and she looks back. The ladies-in-waiting are scattered among the huntsmen and courtiers, riding and laughing and flirting. Henry has Princess Mary on one side of him and one of her ladies-in-waiting on another. She is a new girl to court, young and pretty. A virgin, without doubt, another pretty virgin.

“And which of these will be next?” I ask bitterly. “When I next go in for my confinement and cannot watch them like a fierce hawk? Will it be a Percy girl? Or a Seymour? Or a Howard? Or a Neville? Which girl will step up to the king next and try to charm her way into his bed and into my place?”

“Some of your ladies love you dearly,” she says.

“And some of them will use their position at my side to get close to the king,” I say. “Now they have seen it done, they will be waiting for their chance. They will know that the easiest route to the king is to come into my rooms, to pretend to be my friend, to offer me service. First she will pretend friendship and loyalty to me and all the time she will watch for her chance. I can know that one will do it, but I cannot know which one she is.”

Lady Margaret leans forwards and strokes her horse’s neck, her face grave. “Yes,” she agrees.

“And one of them, one of the many, will be clever enough to turn the king’s head,” I say bitterly. “He is young and vain and easily misled. Sooner or later, one of them will turn him against me and want my place.”

Lady Margaret straightens up and looks directly at me, her gray eyes as honest as ever. “This may all be true, but I think you can do nothing to prevent it.”

“I know,” I say grimly.

“I have good news for you,” Katherine said to Henry. They had thrown open the windows of her bedroom to let in the cooler night air. It was a warm night in late May and for once, Henry had chosen to come to bed early.

“Tell me some good news,” he said. “My horse went lame today, and I cannot ride him tomorrow. I would welcome some good news.”

“I think I am with child.”

He bounced up in the bed. “You are?”

“I think so,” she said, smiling.

“Praise God! You are?”

“I am certain of it.”

“God be praised. I shall go to Walsingham the minute you give birth to our son. I shall go on my knees to Walsingham! I shall crawl along the road! I shall wear a suit of pure white. I shall give Our Lady pearls.”

“Our Lady has been gracious to us indeed.”

“And how potent they will all know that I am now! Out of confinement in the first week of May and pregnant by the end of the month. That will show them! That will prove that I am a husband indeed.”

“Indeed it will,” she said levelly.

“It is not too early to be sure?”

“I have missed my course, and I am sick in the morning. They tell me it is a certain sign.”

“And you are certain?” He had no tact to phrase his anxiety in gentle words. “You are certain this time? You know that there can be no mistake?”

She nodded. “I am certain. I have all the signs.”

“God be praised. I knew it would come. I knew that a marriage made in heaven would be blessed.”

Katherine nodded. Smiling.

“We shall go slowly on our progress, you shall not hunt. We shall go by boat for some of the way, barges.”

“I think I will not travel at all, if you will allow it,” she said. “I want to stay quietly in one place this summer, I don’t even want to ride in a litter.”

“Well, I shall go on progress with the court and then come home to you,” he said. “And what a celebration we shall have when our baby is born. When will it be?”

“After Christmas,” Katherine said. “In the New Year.”

WINTER 1510

I should have been a soothsayer, I have proved to be so accurate with my prediction, even without a Moorish abacus. We are holding the Christmas feast at Richmond and the court is joyful in my happiness. The baby is big in my belly, and he kicks so hard that Henry can put his hand on me and feel the little heel thud out against his hand. There is no doubt that he is alive and strong, and his vitality brings joy to the whole court. When I sit in council, I sometimes wince at the strange sensation of him moving inside me, the pressure of his body against my own, and some of the old councilors laugh—having seen their own wives in the same state—for joy that there is to be an heir for England and Spain at last.

I pray for a boy but I do not expect one. A child for England, a child for Arthur, is all I want. If it is the daughter that he had wanted, then I will call her Mary as he asked.

Henry’s desire for a son, and his love for me, has made him more thoughtful at last. He takes care of me in ways that he has never done before. I think he is growing up, the selfish boy is becoming a good man at last, and the fear that has haunted me since his affair with the Stafford girl is receding. Perhaps he will take lovers as kings always do, but perhaps he will resist falling in love with them and making the wild promises that a man can make but a king must not. Perhaps he will acquire the good sense that so many men seem to learn: to enjoy a new woman but remain constant, in their hearts, to their wife. Certainly, if he continues to be this sweet-natured, he will make a good father. I think of him teaching our son to ride, to hunt, to joust. No boy could have a better father for sports and pastimes than a son of Henry’s. Not even Arthur would have made a more playful father. Our boy’s education, his skill in court life, his upbringing as a Christian, his training as a ruler, these are the things that I will teach him. He will learn my mother’s courage and my father’s skills, and from me—I think I can teach him constancy, determination. These are my gifts now.

I believe that between Henry and me, we will raise a prince who will make his mark in Europe, who will keep England safe from the Moors, from the French, from the Scots, from all our enemies.

I will have to go into confinement again but I leave it as late as I dare. Henry swears to me that there will be no other while I am confined, that he is mine, all mine. I leave it till the evening of the Christmas feast and then I take my spiced wine with the members of my court and bid them merry Christmas as they bid me Godspeed, and I go once more into the quietness of my bedroom.

In truth, I don’t mind missing the dancing and the heavy drinking. I am tired, this baby is a weight to carry. I rise and then rest with the winter sun, rarely waking much before nine of the morning, and ready to sleep at five in the afternoon. I spend much time praying for a safe delivery, and for the health of the child that moves so strongly inside me.

Henry comes to see me, privately, most days. The Royal Book is clear that the queen should be in absolute isolation before the birth of her child, but the Royal Book was written by Henry’s grandmother and I suggest that we can please ourselves. I don’t see why she should command me from beyond the grave when she was such an unhelpful mentor in life. Besides, to put it as bluntly as an Aragonese: I don’t trust Henry on his own in court. On New Year’s Eve he dines with me before going to the hall for the great feast, and brings me a gift of rubies, with stones as big as Cristóbal Colón’s haul. I put them around my neck and see his eyes darken with desire for me as they gleam on the plump whiteness of my breasts.

“Not long now,” I say, smiling, I know exactly what he is thinking.

“I shall go to Walsingham as soon as our child is born, and when I come back you will be churched,” he says.

“And then, I suppose you will want to make another baby,” I say with mock weariness.

“I will,” he says, his face bright with laughter.

He kisses me good night, wishes me joy of the new year and then goes out of the hidden door in my chamber to his own rooms, and from there to the feast. I tell them to bring the boiled water that I still drink in obedience to the Moor’s advice, and then I sit before the fire sewing the tiniest little gown for my baby, while María de Salinas reads in Spanish to me.

Suddenly, it is as if my whole belly has turned over, as if I am falling from a great height. The pain is so thorough, so unlike anything I have ever known before, that the sewing drops from my hands and I grip the arms of my chair and let out a gasp before I can say a word. I know at once that the baby is coming. I had been afraid that I would not know what was happening, that it would be a pain like that when I lost my poor girl. But this is like the great force of a deep river, this feels like something powerful and wonderful starting to flow. I am filled with joy and a holy terror. I know that the baby is coming and that he is strong, and that I am young, and that everything will be all right.

As soon as I tell the ladies, the chamber bursts into uproar. My Lady the King’s Mother might have ruled that the whole thing shall be done soberly and quietly with the cradle made ready and two beds made up for the mother, one to give birth in and one to rest in; but in real life, the ladies run around like hens in a poultry yard, squawking in alarm. The midwives are summoned from the hall, they have gone off to make merry, gambling that they would not be needed on New Year’s Eve. One of them is quite tipsy and María de Salinas throws her out of the room before she falls over and breaks something. The physician cannot be found at all, and pages are sent running all over the palace looking for him.

The only ones who are settled and determined are Lady Margaret Pole, María de Salinas, and I. María, because she is naturally disposed to calm, Lady Margaret, because she has been confident from the start of this confinement, and I, because I can feel that nothing will stop this baby coming, and I might as well grab hold of the rope in one hand, my relic of the Virgin Mother in the other, fix my eyes on the little altar in the corner of the room and pray to St. Margaret of Antioch to give me a swift and easy delivery and a healthy baby.

Unbelievably, it is little more than six hours—though one of those hours lingers on for at least a day—and then there is a rush and a slither, and the midwife mutters “God be praised!” quietly and then there is a loud, irritable cry, almost a shout, and I realize that this is a new voice in the room, that of my baby.

“A boy, God be praised, a boy,” the midwife says and María looks up at me and sees me radiant with joy.

“Really?” I demand. “Let me see him.”

They cut the cord and pass him up to me, still naked, still bloody, his little mouth opened wide to shout, his eyes squeezed tight in anger, Henry’s son.

“My son,” I whisper.

“England’s son,” the midwife says. “God be praised.”

I put my face down to his warm little head, still sticky, I sniff him like a cat sniffs her kittens. “This is our boy,” I whisper to Arthur, who is so close at that moment that it is almost as if he is at my side, looking over my shoulder at this tiny miracle, who turns his head and nuzzles at my breast, little mouth gaping. “Oh, Arthur, my love, this is the boy I promised I would bear for you and for England. This is our son for England, and he will be king.”

Spring 1511

1ST JANUARY 1511

THE WHOLE OF ENGLAND WENT MAD when they learned on New Year’s Day that a boy had been born. Everyone called him Prince Henry at once, there was no other name possible. In the streets they roasted oxen and drank themselves into a stupor. In the country they rang the church bells and broke into the church ales to toast the health of the Tudor heir, the boy who would keep England at peace, who would keep England allied with Spain, who would protect England from her enemies, and who would defeat the Scots once and for all.

Henry came in to see his son, disobeying the rules of confinement, tiptoeing carefully, as if his footstep might shake the room. He peered into the cradle, afraid almost to breathe near the sleeping boy.

“He is so small,” he said. “How can he be so small?”

“The midwife says he is big and strong,” Katherine corrected him, instantly on the defense of her baby.

“I am sure. It is just that his hands are so…and look, he has fingernails! Real fingernails!”

“He has toenails too,” she said. The two of them stood side by side and looked down in amazement at the perfection that they had made together. “He has little plump feet and the tiniest toes you can imagine.”

“Show me,” he said.

Gently, she pulled off the little silk shoes that the baby wore. “There,” she said, her voice filled with tenderness. “Now I must put this back on so that he does not get cold.”

Henry bent over the crib, and tenderly took the tiny foot in his big hand. “My son,” he said wonderingly. “God be praised, I have a son.”

I lie on my bed as the old king’s mother commanded in the Royal Book, and I receive honored guests. I have to hide a smile when I think of my mother giving birth to me on campaign, in a tent, like any soldier’s doxy. But this is the English way and I am an English queen and this baby will be King of England.

I’ve never known such simple joy. When I doze I wake with my heart filled with delight, before I even know why. Then I remember. I have a son for England, for Arthur and for Henry; and I smile and turn my head, and whoever is watching over me answers the question before I have asked it: “Yes, your son is well, Your Grace.”

Henry is excessively busy with the care of our son. He comes in and out to see me twenty times a day with questions and with news of the arrangements he has made. He has appointed a household of no fewer than forty people for this tiny baby, and already chosen his rooms in the Palace of Westminster for his council chamber when he is a young man. I smile and say nothing. Henry is planning the greatest christening that has ever been seen in England, nothing is too good for this Henry who will be Henry the Ninth. Sometimes when I am sitting on my bed, supposed to be writing letters, I draw his monogram. Henry IX: my son, the King of England.

His sponsors are carefully chosen: the daughter of the emperor, Margaret of Austria, and King Louis the Twelfth of France. So he is working already, this little Tudor, to cloud the French suspicion against us, to maintain our alliance with the Hapsburg family. When they bring him to me and I put my finger in the palm of his tiny hand his fingers curl around, as if to grip on. As if he would hold my hand. As if he might love me in return. I lie quietly, watching him sleep, my finger against his little palm, the other hand cupped over his tender little head where I can feel a steady pulse throbbing.

His godparents are Archbishop Warham; my dear and true friend Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey; and the Earl and Countess of Devon. My dearest Lady Margaret is to run his nursery at Richmond. It is the newest and cleanest of all the palaces near London, and wherever we are, whether at Whitehall or Greenwich or Westminster, it will be easy for me to visit him.

I can hardly bear to let him go away, but it is better for him to be in the country than in the City. And I shall see him every week at the very least, Henry has promised me that I shall see him every week.

Henry went to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham, as he had promised, and Katherine asked him to tell the nuns who kept the shrine that she would come herself when she was next with child. When the next baby was in the queen’s womb she would give thanks for the safe birth of the first; and pray for the safe delivery of a second. She asked the king to tell the nuns that she would come to them every time she was with child, and that she hoped to visit them many times.

She gave him a heavy purse of gold. “Will you give them this, from me, and ask them for their prayers?”

He took it. “They pray for the Queen of England as their duty,” he said.

“I want to remind them.”

Henry returned to court for the greatest tournament that England had ever seen, and Katherine was up and out of her bed to organize it for him. He had commissioned new armor before he went away and she had commanded her favorite, Edward Howard, the talented younger son of the Howard house, to make sure that it would fit precisely to the slim young king’s measurements, and that the workmanship was perfect. She had banners made, and tapestries hung, masques prepared with glorious themes, gold everywhere: cloth of gold banners and curtains, and swathes of cloth, gold plates and gold cups, gold tips to the ornamental lances, gold-embossed shields, even gold on the king’s saddlery.

“This will be the greatest tournament that England has ever seen,” Edward Howard said to her. “English chivalry and Spanish elegance. It will be a thing of beauty.”

“It is the greatest celebration that we have ever had,” she said smiling. “For the greatest reason.”

I know I have made an outstanding showcase for Henry but when he rides into the tiltyard I catch my breath. It is the fashion that the knights who have come to joust choose a motto; sometimes they even compose a poem or play a part in a tableau before they ride. Henry has kept his motto a secret, and not told me what it is going to be. He has commissioned his own banner and the women have hidden from me, with much laughter, while they embroider his words on the banner of Tudor green silk. I truly have no idea what it will say until he bows before me in the royal box, the banner unfurls and his herald shouts out his title for the joust: “Sir Loyal Heart.”

I rise to my feet and clasp my hands before my face to hide my trembling mouth. My eyes fill with tears, I cannot help it. He has called himself “Sir Loyal Heart”—he has declared to the world the restoration of his devotion and love for me. My women step back so that I can see the canopy that he has commanded them to hang all around the royal box. He has had it pinned all over with little gold badges of H and K entwined. Everywhere I look, at every corner of the jousting green, on every banner, on every post there are Ks and Hs together. He has used this great joust, the finest and richest that England has ever seen, to tell the world that he loves me, that he is mine, that his heart is mine and that it is a loyal heart.

I look around at my ladies-in-waiting and I am utterly triumphant. If I could speak freely I would say to them: “There! Take this as your warning. He is not the man that you have thought him. He is not a man to turn from his true-married wife. He is not a man that you can seduce, however clever your tricks, however insidious your whispers against me. He has given his heart to me, and he has a loyal heart.” I run my eyes over them, the prettiest girls from the greatest families of England, and I know that every one of them secretly thinks that she could have my place. If she were to be lucky, if the king were to be seduced, if I were to die, she could have my throne.

But his banner tells them “Not so.” His banner tells them, the gold Ks and Hs tell them, the herald’s cry tells them that he is all mine, forever. The will of my mother, my word to Arthur, the destiny given by God to England have brought me finally to this: a son and heir in England’s cradle, the King of England publicly declaring his passion for me, and my initial twined with his in gold everywhere I look.

I touch my hand to my lips and hold it out to him. His visor is up, his blue eyes are blazing with passion for me. His love for me warms me like the hot sun of my childhood. I am a woman blessed by God, especially favored by Him, indeed. I survived widowhood and my despair at the loss of Arthur. The courtship of the old king did not seduce me, his enmity did not defeat me, the hatred of his mother did not destroy me. The love of Henry delights me but does not redeem me. With God’s especial favor, I have saved myself. I myself have come from the darkness of poverty into the glamour of the light. I myself have fought that terrible slide into blank despair. I myself have made myself into a woman who can face death and face life and endure them both.

I remember once when I was a little girl, my mother was praying before a battle and then she rose up from her knees, kissed the little ivory cross, put it back on its stand, and gestured for her lady-in-waiting to bring her breastplate and buckle it on.

I ran forwards and begged her not to go, and I asked her why she must ride, if God gives us His blessing? If we are blessed by God, why do we have to fight as well? Will He not just drive away the Moors for us?

“I am blessed because I am chosen to do His work.” She kneeled down and put her arm around me. “You might say, why not leave it to God and He will send a thunderstorm over the wicked Moors?”

I nodded.

“I am the thunderstorm,” she said, smiling. “I am God’s thunderstorm to drive them away. He has not chosen a thunderstorm today, He has chosen me. And neither I nor the dark clouds can refuse our duty.”

I smile at Henry as he drops his visor and turns his horse from the royal box. I understand now what my mother meant by being God’s thunderstorm. God has called me to be His sunshine in England. It is my God-given duty to bring happiness and prosperity and security to England. I do this by leading the king in the right choices, by securing the succession, and by protecting the safety of the borders. I am England’s queen chosen by God and I smile on Henry as his big, glossy-black horse trots slowly to the end of the lists, and I smile on the people of London who call out my name and shout, “God bless Queen Katherine!” and I smile to myself because I am doing as my mother wished, as God decreed, and Arthur is waiting for me in al-Yanna, the garden.