Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1: The Constant Princess, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Boleyn Inheritance. Philippa GregoryЧитать онлайн книгу.
dressed in cloth of gold.
They were before the Bishop of Salisbury with a small court present: the king, his mother, the Princess Mary, and a few other witnesses. Catalina put her cold hand in the prince’s warm palm and felt the plumpness of childhood beneath her fingers.
Catalina looked beyond the flushed boy to his father’s grave face. The king had aged in the months since the death of his wife, and the lines in his face were more deeply grooved, his eyes shadowed. Men at the court said he was sick, some illness which was thinning his blood and wearing him out. Others said that he was sour with disappointment: at the loss of his heir, at the loss of his wife, at the frustration of his plans. Some said he had been crossed in love, outwitted by a woman. Only that could have unmanned him so bitterly.
Catalina smiled shyly at him, but there was no echoing warmth from the man who would be her father-in-law for the second time, but had wanted her for his own. For a moment, her confidence dimmed. She had allowed herself to hope that the king had surrendered to her determination, to her mother’s ruling, to God’s will. Now, seeing his cold look, she had a moment of fear that perhaps this ceremony – even something as serious and sacred as a betrothal – might perhaps be nothing more than a revenge by this most cunning of kings.
Chilled, she turned away from him to listen to the bishop recite the words of the marriage service and she repeated her part, making sure not to think of when she had said the words before, only a year and a half ago, when her hand had been cool in the grasp of the most handsome young man she had ever seen, when her bridegroom had given her a shy sideways smile, when she had stared at him through the veil of her mantilla and been aware of the thousands of silently watching faces beyond.
The young prince, who had been dazzled then by the beauty of his sister-in-law the bride, was now the bridegroom. His beam was the boisterous joy of a young boy in the presence of a beautiful older girl. She had been the bride of his older brother, she was the young woman he had been proud to escort on her wedding day. He had begged her for a present of a Barbary horse for his tenth birthday. He had looked at her at her wedding feast and that night prayed that he too might have a Spanish bride just like her.
When she had left the court with Arthur he had dreamed of her, he had written poems and love-songs, secretly dedicating them to her. He had heard of Arthur’s death with a bright, fierce joy that now she was free.
Now, not even two years on, she was before him, her hair brushed out bronze and golden over her shoulders signifying her virgin state, her blue lace mantilla veiling her face. Her hand was in his, her blue eyes were on him, her smile was only for him.
Harry’s braggart boyish heart swelled so full in his chest that he could scarcely reply to his part of the service. Arthur was gone, and he was Prince of Wales; Arthur was gone, and he was his father’s favourite, the rosebush of England. Arthur was gone, and Arthur’s bride was his wife. He stood straight and proud and repeated his oaths in his clear treble voice. Arthur was gone, and there was only one Prince of Wales and one Princess: Prince Harry and Princess Katherine.
I may think that I have won; but still I have not won. I should have won; but I have not won. Harry reaches twelve, and they declare him Prince of Wales but they do not come for me, declare our betrothal or invest me as princess. I send for the ambassador. He does not come in the morning, he does not even come that day. He comes the day after, as if my affairs have no urgency, and he does not apologise for his delay. I ask him why I have not been invested as Princess of Wales alongside Harry and he does not know. He suggests that they are waiting for the payment of my dowry and without it, nothing can go ahead. But he knows, and I know, and King Henry knows, that I no longer have all my plate to give to them, and if my father will not send his share, there is nothing I can do.
My mother the queen must know that I am desolate; but I hear from her only rarely. It is as if I am one of her explorers, a solitary Cristóbal Colón with no companions and no maps. She has sent me out into the world and if I tumble off the edge or am lost at sea, there is nothing that anyone can do.
She has nothing to say to me. I fear that she is ashamed of me, as I wait at court like a supplicant for the prince to honour his promise. In November I am so filled with foreboding that she is ill or sad that I write to her and beg her to reply to me, to send me at least one word. That, as it happens, was the very day that she died and so she never had my letter and I never had my one word. She leaves me in death as she left me in life: to silence and a sense of her absence.
I knew that I would miss her when I left home. But it was a comfort to me to know that the sun still shone in the gardens of the Alhambra, and she was still there beside the green-trimmed pool. I did not know that the loss of her would make my situation in England so much worse. My father, having long refused to pay the second half of my dowry as part of his game with the King of England, now finds his play has become a bitter truth – he cannot pay. He has spent his life and his fortune in ceaseless crusade against the Moors and there is no money left for anyone. The rich revenues of Castile are now paid to Juana, my mother’s heir; and my father has nothing in the treasury of Aragon for my marriage. My father is now no more than one of the many kings of Spain. Juana is the great heiress of Castile and, if the gossips are to be believed, Juana has run as mad as a rabid dog, tormented by love and by her husband into insanity. Anyone looking at me now no longer sees a princess of a united Spain, one of the great brides of Christendom; but a widowed pauper with bad blood. Our family fortunes are cascading down like a house of cards without my mother’s steady hand and watchful eye. There is nothing left for my father but despair; and that is all the dowry he can give me.
I am only nineteen. Is my life over?
And then, I waited. Incredibly, I waited for a total of six years. Six years when I went from a bride of seventeen to a woman of twenty-three. I knew then that King Henry’s rage against me was bitter, and effective, and long-lasting. No princess in the world had ever been made to wait so long, or treated so harshly, or left in such despair. I am not exaggerating this, as a troubadour might do to make a better story – as I might have told you, beloved, in the dark hours of the night. No, it was not like a story, it was not even like a life. It was like a prison sentence, it was like being a hostage with no chance of redemption, it was loneliness, and the slow realisation that I had failed.
I failed my mother and failed to bring to her the alliance with England that I had been born and bred to do. I was ashamed of my failure. Without the dowry payment from Spain I could not force the English to honour the betrothal. With the king’s enmity I could force them to do nothing. Harry was a child of thirteen, I hardly ever saw him. I could not appeal to him to make his promise good. I was powerless, neglected by the court and falling into shameful poverty.
Then Harry was fourteen years of age and our betrothal was still not made marriage, and that marriage not celebrated. I waited a year, he reached fifteen years, and nobody came for me. So Harry reached his sixteenth and then his seventeenth birthday, and still nobody came for me. Those years turned. I grew older. I waited. I was constant. It was all I could be.
I turned the panels on my gowns and sold my jewels for food. I had to sell my precious plate, one gold piece at a time. I knew it was the property of the king as I sent for the goldsmiths. I knew that each time I pawned a piece I put my wedding back another day. But I had to eat, my household had to eat. I could pay them no wages, I could hardly ask them to beg for me as well as go hungry on their own account.