Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1: The Constant Princess, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Boleyn Inheritance. Philippa GregoryЧитать онлайн книгу.
took his hand and put it to her lips.
‘And the nights!’
Her eyes darkened with desire. ‘Yes, the nights,’ she said quietly.
‘I long for every nine hundred and fifty-two more,’ he said. ‘And then I will have another thousand after that.’
‘And a thousand after that?’
‘And a thousand after that forever and ever until we are both dead.’
She smiled. ‘Pray God we have long years together,’ she said tenderly.
‘So what will you tell me tonight?’
She thought. ‘I shall tell you of a Moor’s poem.’
Arthur settled back against the pillows as she leaned forwards and fixed her blue gaze on the curtains of the bed, as if she could see beyond them, to somewhere else.
‘He was born in the deserts of Arabia,’ she explained. ‘So when he came to Spain he missed everything about his home. He wrote this poem.
“A palm tree stands in the middle of Rusafa,Born in the west, far from the land of palms.I said to it: How like me you are, far away and in exileIn long separation from your family and friends.You have sprung from soil in which you are a strangerAnd I, like you, am far from home.”’
He was silent, taking in the simplicity of the poem. ‘It is not like our poetry,’ he said.
‘No,’ she replied quietly. ‘They are a people who have a great love of words, they love to say a true thing simply.’
He opened his arms to her and she slid alongside him so that they were lying, thigh to thigh, side to side. He touched her face, her cheek was wet.
‘Oh my love! Tears?’
She said nothing.
‘I know that you miss your home,’ he said softly, taking her hand in his and kissing the fingertips. ‘But you will become accustomed to your life here, to your thousand, thousand days here.’
‘I am happy with you,’ Catalina said quickly. ‘It is just…’ Her voice trailed away. ‘My mother,’ she said, her voice very small. ‘I miss her. And I worry about her. Because…I am the youngest, you see. And she kept me with her as long as she could.’
‘She knew you would have to leave.’
‘She’s been much…tried. She lost her son, my brother, Juan, and he was our only heir. It is so terrible to lose a prince, you cannot imagine how terrible it is to lose a prince. It is not just the loss of him, but the loss of everything that might have been. His life has gone, but his reign and his future have gone too. His wife will no longer be queen, everything that he hoped for will not happen. And then the next heir, little Miguel, died at only two years old. He was all we had left of my sister Isabel, his mother, and then it pleased God to take him from us too. Poor Maria died far away from us in Portugal, she went away to be married and we never saw her again. It was natural that my mother kept me with her for comfort. I was her last child to leave home. And now I don’t know how she will manage without me.’
Arthur put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close. ‘God will comfort her.’
‘She will be so lonely,’ she said in a little voice.
‘Surely she, of all women in the world, feels God’s comfort?’
‘I don’t think she always does,’ Catalina said. ‘Her own mother was tormented by sadness, you know. Many of the women of our family can get quite sick with sorrow. I know that my mother fears sinking into sadness just like her mother: a woman who saw things so darkly that she would rather have been blind. I know she fears that she will never be happy again. I know that she liked to have me with her so that I could make her happy. She said that I was a child born for joy, that she could tell that I would always be happy.’
‘Does your father not comfort her?’
‘Yes,’ she said uncertainly. ‘But he is often away from her. And anyway, I should like to be with her. But you must know how I feel. Didn’t you miss your mother when you were first sent away? And your father and your sisters and your brother?’
‘I miss my sisters; but not my brother,’ he said so decidedly that she had to laugh.
‘Why not? I thought he was such fun.’
‘He is a braggart,’ Arthur said irritably. ‘He is always pushing himself forwards. Look at our wedding, he had to be at the centre of the stage all the time, look at our wedding feast when he had to dance so that all eyes were on him. Pulling Margaret up to dance and making a performance of himself.’
‘Oh no! It was just that your father told him to dance, and he was merry. He’s just a boy.’
‘He wants to be a man. He tries to be a man, he makes a fool of all of us when he tries. And nobody ever checks him! Did you not see how he looked at you?’
‘I saw nothing at all,’ she said truthfully. ‘It was all a blur for me.’
‘He fancies himself in love with you, and dreamed that he was walking you up the aisle on his own account.’
She laughed. ‘Oh! How silly!’
‘He’s always been like that,’ he said resentfully. ‘And because he is the favourite of everyone he is allowed to say and do exactly as he wants. I have to learn the law, and languages, and I have to live here and prepare myself for the crown; but Harry stays at Greenwich or Whitehall at the centre of court as if he were an ambassador; not an heir who should be trained. He has to have a horse when I have a horse – though I had been kept on a steady palfrey for years. He has a falcon when I have my first falcon – nobody makes him train a kestrel and then a goshawk for year after year, then he has to have my tutor and tries to outstrip me, tries to outshine me whenever he can, and always takes the eye.’
Catalina saw he was genuinely irritated. ‘But he is only a second son,’ she observed.
‘He is everyone’s favourite,’ Arthur said glumly. ‘He has everything for the asking and everything comes easily to him.’
‘He is not the Prince of Wales,’ she pointed out. ‘He may be liked; but he is not important. He only stays at court because he is not important enough to be sent here. He does not have his own Principality. Your father will have plans for him. He will probably be married and sent away. A second son is no more important than a daughter.’
‘He is to go into the church,’ he said. ‘He is to be a priest. Who would marry him? So he will be in England forever. I daresay I shall have to endure him as my archbishop, if he does not manage to make himself Pope.’
Catalina laughed at the thought of the flushed-faced blond, bright boy as Pope. ‘How grand we shall all be when we are grown up,’ she said. ‘You and me, King and Queen of England, and Harry, archbishop; perhaps even a cardinal.’
‘Harry won’t ever grow up,’ he insisted. ‘He will always be a selfish boy. And because my grandmother – and my father – have always given him whatever he wanted, just for the asking, he will be a greedy, difficult boy.’
‘Perhaps he will change,’ she said. ‘When my oldest sister, poor Isabel, went away to Portugal the first time, you would have thought her the vainest, most worldly girl you could imagine. But when her husband died and she came home she cared for nothing but to go into a convent. Her heart was quite broken.’
‘Nobody will break Harry’s heart,’ his older brother asserted. ‘He hasn’t got one.’
‘You’d have thought the same of Isabel,’ Catalina argued. ‘But she fell in love with her husband on her wedding day and she said she would never love again. She had to marry for the second time, of course. But she married unwillingly.’
‘And