Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 by Philippa Gregory Page A

passionate, so besotted with each other, that his health failed, he was dead within six months of their wedding. Is there anything more tragic than a young man dying six months into his marriage? I come from passionate stock – but what about me? Shall I ever fall in love?
    Not with this clumsy boy, for a certainty. My early liking for him has quite melted away. He is too shy to speak to me, he mumbles and pretends he cannot think of the words. He forced me to command in the bedroom, and I am ashamed that I had to be the one to make the first move. He makes me into a woman without shame, a woman of the marketplace when I want to be wooed like a lady in a romance. But if I had not invited him – what could he have done? I feel a fool now, and I blame him for my embarrassment. ‘In Spain,’ indeed! He would have got no closer than the Indies if I had not showed him how to do it. Stupid puppy.
    When I first saw him I thought he was as beautiful as a knight from the romances, like a troubadour, like a poet. I thought I could be like a lady in a tower and he could sing beneath my window and persuade me to love him. But although he has the looks of a poet he doesn’t have the wit. I can never get more than two words out of him, and I begin to feel that I demean myself in trying to please him.
    Of course, I will never forget that it is my duty to endure this youth, this Arthur. My hope is always for a child, and my destiny is to keep England safe against the Moors. I shall do that; whatever else happens, I shall be Queen of England and protect my two countries: the Spain of my birth and the England of my marriage.

London, Winter 1501
    Arthur and Catalina, standing stiffly side by side on the royal barge, but not exchanging so much as one word, led a great fleet of gaily painted barges downriver to Baynard’s Castle, which would be their London home for the next weeks. It was a huge, rectangular palace of a house overlooking the river, with gardens running down to the water’s edge. The Mayor of London, the councillors, and all the court followed the royal barge; and musicians played as the heirs to the throne took up residence in the heart of the City.
    Catalina noticed that the Scots envoys were much in attendance, negotiating the marriage of her new sister-in-law, Princess Margaret. King Henry was using his children as pawns in his game for power, as every king must do. Arthur had made the vital link with Spain, Margaret, though only twelve years old, would make Scotland into a friend, rather than the enemy that it had been for generations. Princess Mary also would be married, when her time came, either to the greatest enemy that the country faced, or the greatest friend that they hoped to keep. Catalina was glad that she had known from childhood that she should be the next Queen of England. There had been no changes of policy and no shifting alliances. She had beenQueen of England-to-be almost from birth. It made the separation from her home and from her family so much easier.
    She noticed that Arthur was very restrained in his greeting when he met the Scots lords at dinner at the Palace of Westminster.
    ‘The Scots are our most dangerous enemies,’ Edward Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, told Catalina in whispered Castilian, as they stood at the back of the hall, waiting for the company to take their seats. ‘The king and the prince hope that this marriage will make them our friend forever, will bind the Scots to us. But it is hard for any of us to forget how they have constantly harried us. We have all been brought up to know that we have a most constant and malignant enemy to the north.’
    ‘Surely they are only a poor little kingdom,’ she queried. ‘What harm can they do us?’
    ‘They always ally with France,’ he told her. ‘Every time we have a war with France they make an alliance and pour over our northern borders. And, they may be small and poor but they are the doorway for the terrible danger of