Six Wives (12 page)

Everybody, it seemed, had got what they wanted.

* * *

Then the difficulties began.

    The first problem was that Catherine suffered a bad attack of homesickness. It came on immediately after the departure of the highranking Spaniards. Catherine's mask of good manners slipped and she became 'annoyed and pensive'. Her reaction, as the herald sensibly noted, was entirely predictable: it was 'as nature, kind and manner will'. More surprising is Henry VII's response. For one of the many contradictory elements compounded into the King's complex and hard-to-read character was charm combined with an almost feminine sensitivity. These were turned to their full effect on the disconsolate Catherine. Guessing, probably correctly, that she was bored after the masculine war games of the jousts (as well as homesick), he devised a gentler entertainment and invited Catherine and a mixed party of Spanish and English ladies to inspect his library at Richmond. Henry had serious scholarly interests (especially, according to Erasmus, in history). He was also a notable connoisseur of fine and costly workmanship. The pride of his collection was on display and he took a personal pleasure in showing Catherine 'many goodly pleasant books of works' (that is, illuminated manuscripts). The herald seems to have caught a glimpse, too, and found them 'full delightful, sage, merry and also right cunning, both in Latin and English'.
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    But the King also knew that, while books are good for reading, diamonds are a girl's best friend – especially when she is down. So he had a jeweller on hand, 'with many rings, and huge diamonds, and jewels of most goodly fashion', and gave Catherine first pick, followed by her ladies. Such kind attentions 'somewhat a-slaked her heaviness'. They even, according to the herald, began to reconcile her to 'the manner, guise and usages of England' and to her place in the English royal family.
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* * *

    Francophone courts tended to be brutal and pack the lot off as quickly as possible. This had been the experience of Catherine's sister Juana when she was sent to Flanders as the bride of the Archduke Philip. It was also to be the fate of Catherine's English sister-in-law, Mary, when she became Queen of France. Mary had to say good-bye even to her Lady Mistress, Lady Guildford. For, despite her linguistic skills, Lady Guildford proved a particular obstacle to good marital relations between Mary and her much older husband, Louis XII. The moment she arrived in France, she set herself 'not only to rule the Queen' but everybody else as well. Louis was blunt: he declared he loved his pretty young wife, but if he could only have her with Lady Guildford 'he had lever [rather] be without her'.
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    Dona Elvira was cast of the same brazen metal as Lady Guildford. But she was not Henry VII's prime target. Instead, the difficulties were 'especially with respect to the male servants' in Catherine's Household. The English 'even refused to hear mention of a Lord High Steward, of a Lord High Gentleman in Waiting, of a Lord Treasurer'. These were usual posts in the household of a Spanish Infanta so Fuensalida, one of the occasional ambassadors in England, was unable to understand the English objection to them. But the resident ambassador, De Puebla, who had lived in England for a decade and knew English ways, immediately grasped the difficulty. 'Lord High Steward (
Mayor Domo Mayor
)', he repeated, tut-tutting the while. The English, he explained to Fuensalida, 'especially abhorred a Lord High Steward'.
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    The root of the problem lay in the differences between the English and Spanish royal Households. Royal Courts, like the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge, look much the same to outsiders. But seen from within it is the differences which count. English Queens (and in this respect, as most others, the Princess of Wales was treated as Queen-in-Waiting) had a Chamber or Household-above-stairs. It was headed by a man, the Queen's Lord Chamberlain (the then holder of the post was the elderly and distinguished Anglo-Irish peer, the Earl of Ormond, who had conducted Catherine to Queen Elizabeth's presence at Baynard's Castle). And there was a handful of other male officers under the Queen's Lord Chamberlain, including the Gentlemen Ushers. But, since the most important responsibility of the Chamber was the Queen's body service, the great bulk of its servants were perforce women. The organisation of the Spanish Chamber (
camera
) was similar. But in Spain the Queen or Infanta also had a Hall or Household-below-stairs. In England, she did not. There was only one Hall, the King's, and there was only one Lord Steward, who was the King's also. For its below-stairs needs, the Queen's Household simply drew on the King's. In their ignorance of English practice, the Spanish were giving Catherine as Princess of Wales a Household more ambitious than her mother-in-law, Elizabeth, as Queen of England. Naturally the English objected.
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    And naturally too, Catherine's pompous establishment of male servants soon found their grand foreign titles and functions clipped and replaced with modest, familiar English ones. Her Master of the Hall (
Maestra Sala
), Alonso de Esquivel, was told that 'he should not serve in that quality'; instead, he was given the lesser position of Gentleman Usher. Juan de Cuero, who, according to Spanish custom, had charge of Catherine's state rooms, experienced a similar demotion. But the principal target, naturally, was Catherine's
Mayor Domo Mayor
. As early as January 1502, Ferdinand and Isabella had heard that Henry VII 'does not wish Don Pedro Manrique to retain the office he has hitherto held'. The Spanish responded by defending his position with equal tenacity (in part, no doubt, because he was Dona Elvira's husband) and De Puebla was instructed to make strong representations against such an 'affront'.
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    Not for the first time, De Puebla must have despaired at the obtuseness of his own government. For not only did no English Queen or Princess have a Lord Steward, no one
at all
in England held the post of Lord
High
Steward. This is because the High Stewardship, as one of the hereditary great offices, had developed dangerously high pretensions, with its holders claiming to act as viceroys or even as anti-kings. The office had therefore been abolished as a permanent position and instead was only conferred from time to time, usually for no more than a day, for special ceremonial or judicial occasions. All this De Puebla had explained to Fuensalida in 1500. But he had neither understood nor properly reported the matter back home. Now De Puebla would have to try all over again.
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    The finer points of the status, function and precedence of noble Household officers are infinitely remote from the concerns of the twentyfirst century. But they were central to Catherine's world and to Catherine herself. Isabella was a notorious stickler for proper form and Catherine was her mother's daughter. Indeed, in the fullness of time, Catherine was prepared to stake everything – perhaps even life itself – on defending her own status as Queen, together with the titles, forms of address and style of service that went with it. She lost then, just as she lost in 1501.

* * *

But the final area of difficulty between Catherine and her in-laws was a universal one. It is important and comprehensible at all times and in all places, though the rules governing it differ. It was sex. Catherine and Arthur had slept together in the same bed on their wedding night, though just what happened remains a matter of unresolvable dispute. But should they continue to live together as man and wife? Or should they be separated?

    When Catherine's arrival had first been seriously mooted, in 1500, there was no doubt which course would be followed. She was due to arrive in time to marry Arthur on his fourteenth birthday, 19 September 1500. Arthur would then be old enough to enter into a canonically binding marriage; but he was not quite old enough, his father felt, for him to live as a married man. Instead, as Henry VII told De Puebla more than once in the summer of 1500, it was 'his intention to keep the Prince and Princess of Wales, during the first year of their marriage, about his person and at his court'. But of course Catherine's arrival was delayed for more than a year. The result was that, when they were finally married in November 1501, she was sixteen and Arthur fifteen. They had, that is to say, reached exactly the age that Henry VII, speaking in 1500, had deemed old enough to allow them to begin to live together.
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    Nevertheless, it seems to have remained his intention to keep them apart. Indeed, according to De Ayala, Henry VII had now lengthened the period he proposed to retain Catherine 'near his person' from one to two years. He was not of course protecting Catherine's youthful bloom (as modern sentimentalists assume), for no one then doubted Catherine's capacity at the age of sixteen to begin full sexual relations. The issue, rather, was 'the tender age of the Prince', who was nine months younger than his wife.
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    But in the middle of December the question was suddenly reopened. Arthur, it was decided, should return to his government of Wales. But what of his wife? Should she remain at Court as planned? Or would it be better if she accompanied her husband? The King claimed that there was difference of opinion between his councillors and those of his son. And he tried to get Catherine to express a preference. In vain. With perfect propriety, she replied that 'neither in this nor in any other respect had she any other will than his'. Stonewalled by this submission, the King then set his son to work on Catherine, 'to persuade her to say that she preferred rather to go than to stay'. But she remained sweetly and immovably indifferent, or so she said.
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    What was going on? At bottom, probably, was a division within both the Spanish Embassy and Catherine's Spanish entourage. De Ayala was disarmingly honest about the conflicts. At the moment, he wrote in December 1501, 'everyone reads, and asks and speaks what he likes'; surely it would be better, he implored the Catholic Kings, if they ordered 'that all we who are here, men as well as women, act in unison'. Some hope! Moreover, De Ayala was not an impartial witness. Instead, he was the leader of one faction, with Dona Elvira as his able second within Catherine's Household. The leader of the other party was De Puebla. De Puebla correctly saw the Anglo-Spanish match as, in large part, his own personal achievement and he wished to do everything he could to further its development. The best way to do that, he seems to have decided, was to bring Arthur and Catherine together as husband and wife, in fact as well as in name, so that Catherine would quickly bear a child as the literal fruit of the alliance.

    De Puebla too had a powerful adjutant within Catherine's Household, in the person of Fra Alessandro Geraldini. Alessandro had been Catherine's tutor; now he was promoted to her confessor. As her tutor, he could claim an ascendancy over her mind; as her confessor, over her soul. Bearing in mind Catherine's piety and knowing his own authority, Alessandro set himself up as a rival to Dona Elvira for influence over the Princess. With Dona Elvira in cahoots with De Ayala, his own alliance with De Puebla was an obvious tactic.

    Alessandro struck quickly and hard. He sought an interview with Henry VII and asked him, 'in the name of [the Catholic Kings and] as a man who knows your intentions', not to force Catherine and Arthur to live apart. 'On no condition in the world', he said, 'should [Henry VII] separate them, but send her with her husband.' Otherwise, Ferdinand and Isabella would be dissatisfied and Catherine 'he knows, would be in despair'. Meanwhile, De Ayala and Dona Elvira, claiming equally to know the minds of the Catholic Kings, were taking the opposite tack and insisting that Ferdinand and Isabella 'would rather be pleased than dissatisfied if they for some time did not live together'. It becomes, indeed, almost possible to feel sympathy for Henry VII in his dilemma.
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    Both Elvira and Alessandro had, of course, their own private motives. From Alessandro's point of view, to bring Catherine's husband into Catherine's life was (as we have seen in the parallel case of Lady Guildford) the best way to ensure that there was no place for Dona Elvira. For Dona Elvira, on the other hand, the longer Catherine remained a child rather than a woman, the longer her own influence would endure.

    Finally, there was a subplot. It had always been the intention that the jewels and valuable household goods brought by Catherine should count towards the dowry of 200,000 crowns payable by her parents. But the exact status of her possessions had changed between the original treaty, which formed part of the settlement reached at Medina del Campo in Catherine's girlhood, and the final treaty of 1497. In the former, the goods were to form part of the first instalment; they were to be accepted at face value, and they were to be retained by Catherine. All that, like the remainder of the settlement at Medina del Campo, was very much in Spain's favour. By 1496, things had changed. The goods were now to form part of the second instalment, with the first now consisting entirely of cash; they were to be appraised by London goldsmiths and accepted only at the London valuation; finally, their eventual destination became unclear, 'for [in the second treaty] it is said that Henry is to receive the ornaments'. These changes, as Ferdinand and Isabella complained in an aggrieved letter to De Puebla, were greatly to their disadvantage and, in 1500, at the eleventh hour, he was instructed to renegotiate them. In the event, the Catholic Kings accepted his protestation that such second thoughts would imperil the whole project and nothing was done.
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