I visit Princess Katherine before I go home to Stourton Castle. She is very young to be left all alone with no one but paid companions—her strict duenna and her ladies-in-waiting, her confessor and her servants—in the beautiful palace with great terraced gardens leading down to the river. I wish they would take her into the queen’s rooms at court and not leave her here, to run her own household.
She has grown more beautiful in the months of mourning, her pale skin luminous against the bronze of her hair. She is thinner and it makes her blue eyes seem larger in her heart-shaped face.
“I have come to say good-bye,” I tell her with forced cheerfulness. “I am going to my home at Stourton and I expect you will soon be on your way back to Spain.”
She looks around as if to make sure that we are not overheard; but her ladies are at a distance, and Doña Elvira does not speak English.
“No, I’m not going home,” she says with quiet determination.
I wait for an explanation. She gives me a swift, mischievous smile that brightens the gravity of her sad face. “I am not,” she repeats. “So there’s no need to look at me like that. I’m not going.”
“There’s nothing for you here anymore,” I remind her.
She takes my arm so that she can speak very low as we walk down the length of the gallery, away from the ladies, with the slap of our slippers on the wooden floor hiding the sound of our words.
“No, you are wrong. There is something here for me. I made a promise to Arthur on his deathbed, that I would serve England as I had been born and raised to do,” she says quietly. “You yourself heard him say, ‘Promise me now, beloved’—they were his last words to me. I will keep that promise.”
“You can’t stay.”
“I can, and in the most simple way. If I marry the Prince of Wales, I become Princess of Wales once more.”
I am stunned into silence, then I find my voice. “You can’t want to marry Prince Harry.” I state the obvious.
“I have to.”
“Was this your promise to Prince Arthur?”
She nods.
“He can’t have meant you to marry his little brother.”
“He did. He knew it would be the only way that I would be Princess of Wales and Queen of England, and he and I had many plans, we had agreed many things. He knew that the Tudor rule of England is not as the Yorks had ruled. He wanted to be a king from both houses. He wanted to rule with justice and compassion. He wanted to win the respect of the people, not coerce them. We had plans. When he knew he was dying, he still wanted me to do as we had planned—even though he could not. I shall guide Harry and teach him. I will make him into a good king.”
“Prince Harry has many strengths.” I try to choose my words. “But he is not, and he will never be, the prince we have lost. He is charming, and energetic; he is brave as a little lion cub and ready to serve his family and his country . . .” I hesitate. “But he is like enamel, my dear. He shines on the surface, he sparkles; but he’s not pure gold. He’s not like Arthur—who was true, through and through.”
“Even so, I will marry him. I will make him better than he is.”
“Your Grace, my dear, his father will be looking for a great match for him, another princess. And your parents will be looking for a second marriage for you.”
“Then we solve two problems with one answer. And besides, this way the king avoids paying my widow’s allowance. He’ll like that. And he’ll get the rest of my dowry. He’ll like that. And he keeps an alliance with Spain, which he wanted so much that he . . .” She breaks off.
“He wanted it so much that he killed my brother for it.” I finish the sentence quietly. “Yes, I know. But you are not the Spanish Infanta anymore. You have been married. It’s not the same. You are not the same.”
She flushes. “It will be the same. I shall make it be the same. I shall say that I am a virgin, and that the marriage was not consummated.”
I gasp. “Your Grace, nobody would ever believe you . . .”
“But nobody will ever ask!” she declares. “Who would dare to challenge me? If I say such a thing, it must be so. And you will stand as my friend, won’t you, Margaret? Because I am doing this for Arthur and you loved him as I did? If you don’t deny what I say, then no one will question it. Everyone will want to think that I can marry Harry, nobody is going to question servants and companions for gossip. None of my ladies would answer a question from an English spy. If you don’t say anything, nobody else is going to.”
I am so astounded by this jump from heartbreak into conspiracy that I can only gasp and look at her. Her face is completely determined, her jaw set.
“Believe me, you cannot do this.”
“I am going to do this,” she says grimly. “I promised. I am going to do this.”
“Your Grace, Harry is a child . . .”
“Don’t you think I know that? It’s to the good. It’s why Arthur was so determined. Harry has to be trained. Harry will be guided by me. I will advise him. I know he’s a vain, spoiled little boy. But I am going to make him into the king that he has to be.”
I am about to argue but suddenly I see her as the queen she may become. She will be formidable. This girl was raised to be Queen of England from the age of three. It seems she will be Queen of England however the luck runs against her.
“I don’t know what’s the right thing to do,” I say uncertainly. “If I were you . . .”
She shakes her head, smiling. “Lady Margaret, if you were me, you would go home to Spain and hope to live your life in quiet safety, because you have learned to keep your distance from the throne; you were raised in fear of the king, any king. But I was raised to be Princess of Wales and then Queen of England. I have no choice. They called me the Princess of Wales from the cradle! I can’t just change my name now and hide from my destiny. I have to do what I promised to Arthur. You have to help me.”
“Half the court saw you put to bed together on your wedding night.”
“I’ll say that he was incapable if I have to.”
I gasp at her determination. “Katherine! You would never shame him?”
“It’s no shame to him,” she says fiercely. “It is a shame on anyone who asks me. I know what he was to me and what I was to him. I know how he loved me and what we were to each other. But nobody else need know. Nobody else will ever know.”
I see her passion for him still. “But your duenna . . .”
“She’ll say nothing. She doesn’t want to go back to Spain with spoiled goods and a half-spent dowry.”
She turns to me and smiles her fearless smile, as if it will be easy. “And I’ll have a son with Harry,” she promises. “Just as Arthur and I hoped. And a girl called Mary. Will you look after my children for me, Lady Margaret? Don’t you want to care for the children that Arthur wanted me to have?”
I would have been wiser to say nothing, though I should have told her that women have to change their names and silence their own wills, though I could have told her that destinies are for men. “Yes,” I say reluctantly. “Yes. I do want to care for the children you promised him. I do want to be Mary’s governess. And I’ll never say anything about you and Arthur. I knew nothing for sure, I was not even there at your wedding night, and if you are truly determined, then I will not betray you. I will have no opinion.”
She bows her head, and I realize that she is deeply relieved at my decision. “I am doing this for him,” she reminds me. “For love of him. Not for my own ambition, not even for my parents. He asked it of me, and I am going to do it.”
“I’ll help you,” I promise her. “For him.”
STOURTON CASTLE, STAFFORDSHIRE, AUTUMN 1502
But there is little I can do for her. I am no longer the wife of the guardian of the Prince of Wales, because there is no longer a court for the Prince of Wales or a Welsh household. The new prince—Harry—is declared to be too precious to be sent away. While my cousin the queen grows big with a child which everyone says must be a boy, their only living heir, Harry, is raised at Eltham Palace near Greenwich with his sisters Margaret and Mary, and though he is a sturdy, strong eleven-year-old, old enough to take up his duties as a royal heir, old enough to have his own council and learn from them to make careful judgments, My Lady the King’s Mother demands that he be kept at home like his sisters, the adored and indulged lord of the nursery kingdom.