Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1: The Constant Princess, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Boleyn Inheritance

‘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 was 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 councillors.

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 centre 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 toe-hold 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 English men 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 travellers 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 honour. 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 Maria 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.