Patience, Princess Catherine (2 page)

"I feel homesick already," Inez confessed. "Do you not also, my lady Catalina?"

I gazed straight ahead and lifted my chin, attempting to appear braver than I felt. "I cannot allow myself to be homesick," I said. "One day all of you will return to Spain to marry, but I shall live in England for the rest of my life."

"Oh, no!" cried Maria. "I promise I will never leave you!"

"Maybe an English duke will ask for your hand, Maria," said Francesca. "You will marry well and become a duchess."

"Not a duke—that would be too far above you," Inez pointed out. "But a baron would be nice."

"We shall all marry English barons," Francesca declared. "And stay in England with our lady princess."

"I hear the weather is dreadful," sighed Maria, a small girl with delicate features.

"Cold and rainy," agreed Inez, who was tall and awkward. "And you must not drink the water. I am told the English drink ale morning, noon, and night. It is said to be very bitter."

For a time we stared glumly at the sea. The wind had shifted, stirring up lacy whitecaps on the dark water.

"Let us speak of something cheerful," Francesca suggested. "My lady Catalina, tell us what you know of your intended husband."

"Nothing," I said, attempting to laugh. "Padre Alessandro tells me that, when he visited England as a youth, he found the king tall and manly with blond hair and the queen fair and well favored. From that evidence my chaplain concludes that Prince Arthur must surely have inherited his parents' noble bearing and fine features."

"And his letters?" asked Maria. "What have you learned from them?"

I thought of the letters I carried in a fine leather case trimmed in silver. The letters declared Prince Arthurs ardent love for me in Latin as stiffly formal as though he were writing to a foreign ambassador. "He calls me his wife and says he is impatient for my arrival," I said.

"Love letters?" teased Francesca boldly.

But Doña Elvira's long beak of a nose had already begun to twitch at the scent of impropriety, and we turned our conversation to other matters.

 

On the fourth day at sea the sky darkened to a bruised purple, erratic winds tore at the sails, and the waters that had seemed so pleasant only hours earlier turned violently angry.

As the wooden ship plunged from the crest of one monstrous wave to the trough of the next, I huddled in my cabin with my ladies and Doña Elvira. Terrified, we clung to our pallets, watching helplessly as our belongings were flung about and seawater surged past the bulkhead.

I clutched at my mattress, weak with seasickness and terror, listening to Doña Elvira and Maria reciting their prayers, Francesca weeping, and Inez calling for her mother.

The sounds outside our cabin were terrible. I heard the shouts of the sailors and the dreadful cry, "Man overboard!" I heard an awful boom, like the firing of a cannon—later I learned that it was a topmast breaking off and dragging ropes and sails into the sea. I despaired of the fate of the other ships. How could any of us survive such a dreadful battering?

The storm raged for three days, perhaps longer—I had lost count. Hourly I expected to die and cried out for God's mercy. Hourly I was grateful to find myself still alive. Then suddenly the skies cleared and the troubled sea was tranquil again. Miraculously, we had survived.

The admiral appeared at the door of the royal cabin, his eyes exhausted and his face haggard and bloody. His left arm dangled uselessly. He looked us over hastily, and assured that we were all alive and uninjured, told us that the fleet must return to port as quickly as possible. The seams were opening, the ship was taking on water, the sails hung in tatters. Worse yet—and here his voice broke—one of the ships was unaccounted for.

We looked at each other, stricken. Which ship? Whom had we lost?

Doña Elvira, whose usual response was complaint and blame, insisted that we had been poorly cared for; she would see the responsible party punished. I opened my mouth to protest such a harsh view and then thought better of it—I had learned in the past weeks that disagreeing with Doña Elvira often made matters worse. "Let us fall to our knees and thank God that we have survived," I said. "And when we set foot again on dry land, we shall thank God—and our brave seamen—for that, too."

The next day the five ships limped into Laredo, Spain's largest northern port, and we straggled ashore. To our relief, the missing ship appeared only hours after the others, though a number of her men had been lost at sea. The company of grateful survivors—including the sixty persons who would stay with me to become the permanent members of my household in England together with all the others who would return to Spain after the wedding—gathered on the beach to hear a mass of thanksgiving said by the archbishop.

While workmen labored to repair the damaged ships, caulk the leaking seams with tar, and replace the missing masts and rigging, seamen unloaded thirty leather-bound wooden chests with my initials hammered on the lids in brass nails. I knew what was in those trunks. Some were filled with my gowns and jewels, while others contained flagons and ewers, platters and goblets, candlesticks and candelabra, all wrought of silver or gold, representing a portion of my dowry. Divided among the chests were two hundred kidskin bags, each containing five hundred gold escudos—half of my dowry—to be paid over to King Henry VII on my wedding day. The balance was to be paid within a year, part from the plate and jewels, part in escudos to be sent by my father.

Under the direction of Doña Elvira's husband, Don Pedro Manrique, every item was unpacked, tallied, dried, mended, and replaced in new trunks. Meanwhile, we waited.

Weeks passed. My ladies grew dull and restless, especially Francesca, always the most vigorous and adventurous of them all. When it was discovered that Francesca had made the acquaintance of one of the ship's officers and had been seen in conversation with him, the wrath of Doña Elvira came down upon her. "Are you without shame, Lady Francesca?" she cried. "I am of a mind to send you back to your parents! Let your father deal with you!"

From that time forward, Doña Elvira was relentless in her discipline of Francesca. And Francesca was frank about her feelings for Doña Elvira. "I neither like nor trust her," Francesca whispered to me. "Anyone so suspicious of others is unlikely to be trustworthy herself."

"I am certain our duenna intends it for our own good," I replied, though in my heart I agreed with Francesca.

 

For a full month, while the ships made ready once more, I waited restlessly to resume the voyage to my new life as the bride of Arthur, prince of Wales, and the future queen of England.

 

At the end of September, several days before we set sail for the second time, Captain Stephen Brett of the English navy arrived at Laredo, dispatched by King Henry VII to search for his son's missing bride. Captain Brett would guide us across the Bay of Biscay, grown even more dangerous now with autumn storms rolling in from the Atlantic Ocean, to safety in England.

"You have nothing further to fear, mistress," the grizzled captain assured me, displaying a smile of blackened teeth. "You will shortly be on English soil, and all will be well."

"I pray that you are right, sir," I replied through an interpreter, though I had no confidence that he was.

As it turned out, the captain was wrong. On the last day of the voyage, the seas again turned treacherous. The six ships were lashed by one furious squall after another as thunder boomed and lightning crackled ominously close by.

"Surely this is an ill omen, my lady," gasped Francesca, dark eyes wide with fright. "Perhaps God does not want you to go to England after all."

"Perhaps He is testing me," I replied, struggling not to let my fear overwhelm me. "And I shall not be found wanting."

The storms ceased as suddenly as they had begun, and hours later the Spanish ships entered Plymouth harbor under a bright sun, led by Captain Brett in the pilot boat. Dressed in a gown that had somehow escaped a second soaking, I waited in the waist of the ship with the count of Cabra, the bishop of Majorca, and the archbishop of Santiago, the three who would stand in place of my parents at my marriage ceremony. The ladies of my court, miserable in their damp clothes, arranged themselves behind me according to rank. I had never felt worse in my life—my head throbbed, my stomach churned, my legs were so weak that I could scarcely stand upright. Doña Elvira braced herself to catch me if I should falter.

A huge crowd had gathered on the wharf, watching as the ship was warped in by seamen pulling hard on stout ropes. "I shall never willingly set foot on board a ship as long as I live," I whispered to Maria, whose pallor surely reflected my own.

In the front of the cheering throng, feet wide apart, stood a short, round man arrayed in a red velvet cloak and a hat with a plume nearly as long as his arm. Whoever he was, he swept off the hat as he fell to his knees and shouted up to me. I wanted nothing more than a warm, dry place to lie down, but despite my wretchedness I behaved as my mother had taught me: I smiled and nodded through the official speeches, words that I did not recognize but believed I understood.

Welcome to England!

Richmond Palace, October 1501

 

Several days' journey to the east of Plymouth, Henry slid an ebony bishop across the chessboard. Brandon peered down hard at his few remaining pieces, and Henry congratulated himself that within the next move or two Brandon would fall into his trap. If Henry could not defeat Brandon at archery, he could easily do so at chess. Brandon himself readily conceded that he had no talent for the game.

Brandon had been brought by the king as a companion for Arthur, but even before Arthur was packed off to the Marches, Brandon had begun to spend much of his time with Henry. An orphan lacking both position and title, Brandon was a year older than the prince, six years older than Henry, and a superb athlete. He could outwrestle both
of them—Arthur was no challenge—outride them, outshoot them, win every tennis match. But Henry was confident that in a few years he would lively best Brandon at every sport.

The duke loved Brandon like a brother—perhaps even more, but he could never admit that, even to himself—and the affection was returned. "My grandfather was once your father's standard-bearer at Bosworth Field," Brandon often told him. "My grandfather died defending your father."

Henry enjoyed hearing that story and understood its significance: His father had not inherited the throne; he had won it on Bosworth Field by killing the usurper, King Richard III.
Exactly as I would have done,
thought Henry. He could not imagine Arthur fighting to the death for anything, even the throne.

Henry barely glanced up from the board when a messenger clattered through the gallery with a letter for the king. Moments later the king burst out of his chambers and rushed to the queen's chambers, shouting, "She is here! She is here! The princess has arrived at Plymouth, and she is making her way toward London!"

Afresh messenger was dispatched immediately to carry the news to Arthur at Ludlow. Long-laid plans to welcome Princess Catherine to London with all the pomp and ceremony due the daughter of the monarchs of Spain must be set in motion. Arrangements for the wedding must now go forward. The king stomped about, shouting orders and announcing that no expense was to be spared, so great was the
importance of this event. This announcement surprised Henry and Brandon, both aware of how close fisted the king was known to be. Henry felt a sudden, sharp twinge of jealousy—Arthur was getting all the attention, as usual.

But Henry said nothing and concentrated again on the chessboard, where Brandon had finally made his move.

"Check," said Henry.

 

M
Y JOURNEY HAD BEGUN IN
M
AY OF
1501
WHEN
I left Granada. At the farewell celebration, bright flowers decorated every corner of the Alhambra, the great square-towered Moorish citadel at the foot of the looming Sierra Nevada. Every morning for a week I awakened to the smell of roasting meat, and every night, after we had feasted on venison and spring lamb and cakes made of pomegranates and almonds, my ladies and I danced for the members of the court. As much as I loved the feasting and dancing, each day was a painful reminder that I would soon set out on a journey to a distant land and might never see my parents again.

My mother, Queen Isabella, had been preparing me for my departure since my betrothal to Prince Arthur at the age of two. I was the last of her children to marry, and she was reluctant to let me go. The wounds inflicted by the deaths of my eldest sister Isabel, of Prince Juan, my only brother, and most recently of Isabel's little son were still fresh in my mother's heart. My sister Maria had left for Portugal seven months earlier to marry Isabel's widower, King Manoel, and my next eldest sister, Juana, had been in the Netherlands for almost five years as wife of Philip of Burgundy. Once I passed my fifteenth birthday, my mother could no longer postpone the inevitable. When the moment came for me to take my leave, she was unable to hold back her tears. I could scarcely bear to see the pain written so clearly on her dear face.

"You will be in good hands," my mother assured me, as she assured herself, and named some of those familiar faces who would accompany me: Padre Alessandro, who had been my lifelong tutor and chaplain, Juan de Cuero as household treasurer, and so on. "I can think of no lady better to serve as your duenna than Doña Elvira. She has been a member of my court for many years, and I know her character to be above reproach. We are little acquainted with the English and their ways, and I trust Doña Elvira to protect your reputation resolutely."