I march in and I snap as if I were my lady grandmother: “What is this?”
It’s all I say; but I swear that Katherine understands. The laughter dies in her eyes and she turns to face me, a little shrug suggesting that there is nothing very serious here, just playing in the nursery with my sister. “Nothing. This is nothing,” she says in English, her Spanish accent strong.
I see that she understands English perfectly, just as I had always thought.
“These are not the days for silly games,” I say slowly and loudly.
Again that little foreign roll of the shoulders. I think with a pang of pain that perhaps Arthur found that little gesture charming. “We are in mourning,” I say sternly, letting myself look around the room, resting my eyes on every downcast face, just as my lady grandmother does when she scolds the entire court. “We are not playing silly games like idiots on the village green.”
I doubt that she understands “idiots on the village green,” but no one could misunderstand my tone of contempt. Her color rises as she pulls herself up to her greatest height. She is not tall; but now she seems to be above me. Her dark blue eyes look into mine and I stare back at her, daring her to argue with me.
“I was playing with your sister,” she says in her low voice. “She needs a happy time. Arthur did not want . . .”
I can’t bear her to say his name, this girl who came from Spain and took him away from court and watched him die. How dare she so casually say “Arthur” to me—who cannot speak his name for grief?
“His Grace would want his sister to behave as a Princess of England,” I spit out, more like my grandmother than ever. Mary lets out a wail and runs to one of the ladies to cry in her lap. I ignore her completely. “The court is in full mourning, there are to be no loud games, or dances, or heathen pursuits.” I look Katherine up and down with disdain. “I am surprised at you, Dowager Princess. I shall be sorry to tell my lady grandmother that you were forgetful of your place.”
I think I have shamed her in front of everyone, and I turn to the door glowing with triumph. But just as I am about to go out she says quietly and simply, “No, it is you who are wrong, Sister. Prince Arthur asked me to play with Princess Mary, and to walk and talk with you. He knew that he was dying, and he asked me to comfort you all.”
I spin round and I fly at her and pull her arm, drawing her away from the others, so that no one else can hear. “He knew? Did he give you a message for me?”
In that moment I am certain he has sent me words of farewell. Arthur loved me, I loved him, we were everything to each other. He would have sent a private good-bye just for me. “What did he tell you to tell me? What did he say?”
Her eyes slide away from mine and I think: there is something here that she is not telling me. I don’t trust her. I press her close to me as if I were embracing her.
“I am sorry, Margaret. I am so sorry,” she says, detaching herself from my hard grip. “He said nothing more than that he hoped no one would grieve for him and that I would comfort his sisters.”
“And you?” I say. “Did he command you not to grieve for him?”
Her eyelids lower; now I know there is some secret here. “We spoke privately before he died,” is all she says.
“About what?” I ask rudely.
She looks up suddenly and her eyes are blazing dark blue with passion. “I gave him my word,” she flares out. “He asked for a promise and I gave it.”
“What did you promise?”
The fair eyelashes shield her eyes again; once more she looks down, keeping her secret, keeping my brother’s last words from me.
“Non possum dicere,” she says.
“What?” I give her arm a little shake as if she were Mary and I might slap her. “Speak in English, stupid!”
Again she gives me that burning look. “I may not say,” she says. “But I assure you that I am guided by his last wishes. I will always be guided by his wishes. I have sworn.”
I feel completely blocked by her determination. I can’t persuade her and I can’t bully her. “Anyway, you shouldn’t be running about and making a noise,” I say spitefully. “My lady grandmother won’t like it, and my lady mother is resting. You have probably disturbed her already.”
“She is with child?” the young woman asks me quietly. Really, it is none of her business. And besides, my mother would not have had to conceive another child if Arthur had not died. It is practically Katherine’s fault that my mother is exhausted and facing another confinement.
“Yes,” I say pompously. “As you should be. We sent a litter to Ludlow to bring you home so you did not have to ride because we thought that you would be with child. We were being considerate to you, but it seems that there was no need for our courtesy.”
“Alas, it never happened for us,” she says sadly, and I am so furious that I go out of the room slamming the door, before I have time to wonder just what she means by that. “Alas, it never happened for us”?
What never happened?
WESTMINSTER ABBEY, LONDON, ENGLAND, FEBRUARY 1503
I think this must be the most miserable day of my life. I had thought that nothing would be worse than the loss of Arthur but now, only a year later, I have lost my mother, in childbed—trying to give my father and the country a son to replace the one we have lost. As if any child could ever replace Arthur! It was an insult to him to even think it, it was madness for her to attempt it. She wanted to console my father, to do the duty of a good queen to provide two heirs, and then she had a hard pregnancy and nothing to show at the end of it but a girl; so it was not worth the effort, anyway. I am in a rage of grief, furious with her, with my father, with God Himself, for the way that one terrible loss has turned into three: first Arthur and then my mother, and then her baby. And yet we still have Katherine of Arrogant. Why would we lose those three and keep her?
The funeral is a triumph of my lady grandmother’s ability to put on a grand show. She has always said that the royal family have to blaze before the people like saints in an altarpiece, and my mother’s death is an opportunity to remind the country that she was a Plantagenet princess who married a Tudor king. She did what the country should have done: submit to the Tudors and learn to love them. My mother’s coffin is draped in black with cloth of gold forming a cross on the hearse. They make a beautiful effigy of her for the top of the coffin, and my little sister Mary thinks it is her real mother, just sleeping, and that she will wake up soon and everything will be as it was. This fails to move me to tears, though it makes Princess Katherine bow her head and take Mary’s hand in her own. I think it is just part of the whole irritating stupidity of my family and the way that, except for my lady grandmother, we can never be anything but ridiculous. Now my father has disappeared, refusing to rule, refusing to eat, refusing to see any of us, even me. This is all so miserable that I can barely speak for bad temper and grief.
It should be me, as Queen of Scotland, who takes over my mother’s rooms and the running of the court. I should have the best rooms and her ladies should serve me. But it is all done wrong: her household is turned away without my being consulted, and her ladies go back to live with their families in their London houses, in rooms at court or on their country estates. Although I am now the most important Tudor lady, and the only queen in England, I keep my old rooms. I don’t even have new mourning clothes but I have to wear the same things from when Arthur died. I keep expecting to see her, I keep listening for her voice. One day I find I am going to her rooms to see her, and then I remember that they are closed up and empty. It is strange that someone who was so quiet and discreet, who was always happy to step back and hold her peace, should leave such an aching silence when she is gone. But it is so.