The Nymph from Heaven, page 4
part #1 of The Tudor Chronicles Series
But if Katharine were virgin still, and her marriage indeed had not been consummated, then she was not the Dowager Princess of Wales. King Henry saw an opportunity there and demanded that Katharine renounce her dower rights. Henry had to tread carefully; the alliance with Spain, which all had assumed was assured when the Spanish princess married the heir to the throne of England, was now in danger. But money was important, too, and if Katharine was not, by her own admission, the Princess of Wales, then she was not entitled to the income of one-third of the revenues of Wales, Chester and Cornwall.
In the meantime, an unseemly wrangle broke out over Katharine’s dowry. King Henry would rather have lost an arm than refund the one hundred thousand gold crowns that had been so joyfully paid by Spain into England’s treasury to celebrate Katharine and Arthur’s wedding day. Arthur was barely a month cold in his grave at Worcester when the second installment of the dowry came due, another fifty thousand crowns. Henry, of course, wanted the money; but Ferdinand and Isabella, shrewd themselves, demurred and said that if Katharine was not the Princess of Wales then the first installment of the dowry should be returned to them along with their still virgin, and thus very marketable, daughter. Henry backed down on the second installment of the dowry and, on the strength of possession being most of the law, kept both Katharine and the first installment of the dowry in England. But the dower rights were withheld.
Finally, tempers cooled, good sense prevailed, and a dispensation for Prince Henry to marry his brother’s widow was applied for. King Henry then confounded the issue by deciding that he wanted to marry Katharine himself; he was not too old to get more sons, and with only Prince Henry between the English succession and disaster, it made sense for the king to remarry. Isabella refused this proposition, not because the idea of a father marrying his son’s widow was repugnant, but because it would relegate Katharine to relative obscurity, as the former queen had been obscure despite her superior claim to the throne, and might mean that Katharine could spend most of her days as Henry’s widow. Henry was an astute ruler and would not need, nor would he tolerate, Katharine playing the role of Queen of England that her royal parents expected her to play; that of unofficial Spanish ambassadress at the least and, at best, the power behind the throne. An experienced king such as Henry would not heed a woman’s advice. But, the Catholic Kings reasoned, His Grace would probably not live much longer in any case. No, they decided, it would be far better to cut their losses and support the new marriage with Prince Henry. In anticipation of the granting of the papal dispensation, the seventeen-year-old Katharine and the Prince of Wales were formally betrothed just before Henry’s twelfth birthday. No one could have predicted that the dispensation would be delayed by the deaths of two popes and, in the end, would take well over a year to materialize.
While the dispensation hung fire, King Henry relented and allowed Katharine to reside with her much-dwindled suite of Spaniards at Durham House, the old London palace of the Bishops of Durham. But the small allowance vouchsafed her was barely enough to keep food in everyone’s mouths and wood on their fires. Pay for Katharine’s Spanish attendants was over a year in arrears; before long, all the Spanish, including Katharine, were turning their hems and looking very threadbare.
Queen Elizabeth had been as protective of Katharine as it was possible to be. After her death in childbed, it was logical for Katharine to turn for comfort and protection to that mainstay of the Tudor dynasty, the Lady Margaret Beaufort; but for once, that lady was not to be relied upon. Lady Beaufort had had Mary and Henry under her wing since before their mother died, but she would have none of the poor, grieving Katharine. Her behavior, to some, was inexplicable; court gossip said that Lady Margaret’s animosity towards Katharine had its roots in the fact that they shared a common ancestor in John of Gaunt, the much-married son of Edward III. Katharine had Plantagenet blood in her veins; she was in fact a distant cousin of the Tudors, through John of Gaunt’s marriage to Costanza of Castile. But Katharine’s Plantagenet blood was from the right side of the blanket, not from a left-handed marriage like that of John of Gaunt to Catherine Swynford. This Lady Margaret could neither forgive nor forget, and she refused Katharine the comfort one would have thought was her due as Lady Margaret’s grandson’s widow, if not as the prospective bride of his brother. And it did not help matters that King Ferdinand seemed to be constantly dragging his feet in regard to the furthering of the Princess Mary’s marriage to Katharine’s cousin, Charles of Ghent, heir to the Holy Roman Empire through his father, Philip of Burgundy, and to the crowns of Aragon and Castile through his mother, Katharine’s sister, Joanna.
Mary’s own hand stopped in mid-stitch when the thought of Charles and Joanna crossed her mind. She had done her best to keep the rumors from Katharine’s ears, but Mary was almost certain that Katharine had heard them. The most incredible tales were seeping through to England about Mad Juana, as she was beginning to be called. Apparently obsessed with her husband (the epithet he was known by, Philip the Handsome, told its own tale), Juana had attacked with a pair of scissors a woman whom Philip had taken as one of his numerous mistresses. Joanna had made certain that no man would ever find the woman attractive again. This sort of behavior would have been unacceptable from any woman of rank, but from an archduchess, it bordered on the fantastic.
The very idea of marrying the deformed son of a madwoman, even if she was Katharine’s sister, made Mary’s blood run cold. And she had other plans. She was young enough to believe that she could somehow attain her heart’s desire, but royal enough to dismiss it as the daydream it was. A royal princess would never be allowed to marry a simple squire who was the nephew of the King’s Master of Horse.
When the papal dispensation allowing Prince Henry to marry his dead brother’s widow finally arrived in November of 1504, there was barely time for Katharine to rejoice and to hope for an end to her troubles when another messenger arrived, this time from Spain. Queen Isabella, Katharine’s mother, had died, and with her death, the never-secure union between the Spanish lands of Castile and Aragon was already crumbling. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that Ferdinand had never endeared himself to Isabella’s Castilian nobles, and that Philip, as Joanna’s husband, now styled himself King of Castile and was willing to fight Ferdinand for the crown. For the Kingdom of Castile passed not to Isabella’s husband upon her death, but to her eldest daughter, Joanna. Joanna, so infatuated with Philip that she would make war on her own father to please him, was helping Philip to muster an army to do just that.
With Isabella dead and Spain no longer the power it had once been, King Henry thought that perhaps there was a better match than Katharine for Prince Henry in the marriage market. The longed-for dispensation was laid aside and on the eve of his fourteenth birthday, barely two years after their formal betrothal, Prince Henry had publicly denounced, on his father’s instructions, his intended match with Princess Katharine. Hard on this event came the announcement from King Henry that he was discontinuing Katharine’s allowance. She was forced to give up her residence at Durham House and went to live at court. This meant that most of her remaining suite had to be dismissed, most without enough money to eat, let alone return to their Spanish homeland. Katharine was mortified, and concerned on their behalf, but her appeals to her father fell on seemingly deaf ears. She was now in England on sufferance, but was not allowed to return to Spain. Her father continued to ignore her letters, and urged patience and prayer upon her second-hand through the Spanish ambassador.
And then in October of 1505 the final blow had come. Ferdinand announced the Treaty of Blois between Spain and France. This shattered the remaining threads of the Anglo-Spanish alliance, and made Ferdinand, along with his daughter, unnecessary to English politics.
But the Franco-Spanish treaty had another result; it closed the way for Philip and Joanna’s grand land invasion into Castile to claim her throne. King Henry, shrewd as ever, opened the sea route to them, in exchange for their consideration of a slew of marriage alliances with the Hapsburgs; it was proposed that King Henry marry Margaret, Philip’s sister, the widowed Duchess of Savoy; Prince Henry was to marry the Princess Eleanor, Philip and Juana’s eldest child; and discussions of the marriage plans between Mary and Charles were to be renewed.
Mary shuddered again at the thought of marrying Charles, by all accounts a drooling, gangling youth who had inherited the over-sized Hapsburg jaw. There was even talk that he was simple. When Mary compared this picture to her Charles, Charles Brandon, it was all she could do not to scream aloud in fright. But Mary hid her feelings from Katharine. After all, it would ill become Mary to confide in Katharine her distaste at being expected to marry the idiot son of a mentally deranged virago, when the people in question were Katharine’s nephew and sister. Mary shuddered, but she uncertain if the violent tremor that shook her was from fear or from the cold.
Just then the unmistakable sound of hooves on stone sounded below them in the courtyard. All at once Mary, Katharine, and Jane, who had awakened and who had been idly plucking out notes on the lute, ran to the front window to see what was afoot.
“Jesu in heaven,” cried Mary. “A messenger!”
“Oh, I wonder what it is about?” cried Jane. “Perhaps it is a summons back to court…”
“The poor man,” said Katharine. “In this weather! He must be frozen to the bone.”
When Katharine had fallen further out of favor in the King of England’s eyes due Ferdinand’s latest treachery, she was always left behind for long periods whenever the court moved on. She too cherished a hope that this was a summons back to court.
Just as suddenly as the girls had leapt from their chairs and run to the window, they seated themselves and each picked up their previous occupation. It would not do for the messenger to be presented to three breathless, giddy girls; they must be seated, at their needles, calm and dignified, to receive him properly.
Just when the waiting had reached the point of agonizing curiosity, the door opened, the guards outside lifted their crossed pikes and Dona Elvira appeared with a sour look on her face, and with her lips tightly compressed into a thin white line. This did not alarm Mary; it was the disagreeable woman’s perpetual expression. Try as she might, Mary would never understand the unrelenting severity of Spanish manners.
“Your Grace,” said Dona Elvira, with just the hint of a curtsey. As ranking noblewoman, Katharine would receive the messenger. “There is a message from His Grace, the King.”
Mary was beside herself but sat with as composed a countenance as she could muster. Jane sat on Mary’s other side, and Mary could sense her excitement. Only Katharine remained completely serene. She rose and said, “Dona Elvira, please bring this man a sup of mulled ale. Good man, please, you must stand closer to the fire and warm yourself.” The astonished messenger did so. It was rare that anyone took his comfort into account, let alone before hearing his news. Dona Elvira scampered away to do the Princess’s bidding, and once the man’s clothes had started to steam from his proximity to the fire, Katharine said pleasantly, “What news have you for us?”
The man knelt and withdrew from his pouch a thick vellum packet sealed with blood-red wax. “My lady,” he said, handing the packet to Katharine with both hands.
Katharine took the packet, broke the seal, opened the paper and began to read. Dona Elvira returned followed by a page with a steaming pewter mug on a tray.
Katharine was a master at maintaining her outward calm, but Mary could see that her hands were trembling. However, her voice was steady when she refolded the paper and said, “Good man, please go the kitchens to refresh yourself. When you have rested and eaten, Dona Elvira will bring you my reply.” She held her hand out, the messenger brushed it with his lips and was gone. Dona Elvira never by word or gesture indicated how frustrated she was not to be able to stay and hear the news, but Mary could see her eyes smoldering. She would have to ply the messenger with undignified questions in the kitchen or wait until Katharine chose to take her into her confidence. Fortunately, Mary and Jane did not have to wait, indeed, could wait no longer.
As soon as the door closed behind them Mary blurted out, “Oh, what news, Katharine? I pray you, do not make us wait any longer!”
Windsor Castle, February 1506
Prince Henry sat next to the King on the dais, under the crimson velvet cloth of state. Tudor roses were embroidered in gold on the cloth, its borders edged with golden tinsel. The prince reflected that the rumors abounding throughout the continent that his father was an unstinting miser were both unfair and untrue. When the occasion called for expenditure, spend he would, and lavishly. This was one of those occasions. But the Prince promised himself that when he was king, there would be no cause for such slighting remarks against England’s dignity.
The Princesses Katharine and Mary sat on velvet-covered chairs just below the dais, at the feet of the King and the heir to the throne. Katharine seemed her usual serene self; Mary wondered what she was feeling at this moment. Mary was as nervous as a cat, but tried hard to benefit from Katharine’s example of calm dignity. This was after all, a meeting with the parents of her future husband, if all went as planned.
Ha! thought Mary. If all went as planned, indeed! Nowhere on the face of the earth, she was sure, were the matrimonial tangles as complicated and treacherous, as changeable and ephemeral, as that which existed between the courts of Europe. Mary had been promised to Charles of Ghent once already, in June of 1500, when she was just five years old and Charles a babe in arms. But by the summer of 1503 those betrothal plans had been broken and Charles was promised instead to Claude, the infant daughter of King Louis of France and Anne, Queen of France and Duchess of Brittany. After all, Claude had Brittany as her dowry, which made her a much more attractive parti than the daughter of a parvenu king, at that time still shaky on his throne and besieged by pretenders. This was the betrothal that Grandmother Beaufort had spoken of to Mary at the time of Margaret’s wedding. That news had shaken Mary so; she had already fallen in love with Charles Brandon, but knew that as a royal princess, her fate was not her own to decide, and that her desires would not even be considered.
But now the nightmare was to begin all over again. The political situation in Europe had shifted. Louis had broken the betrothal of Claude and Charles, to give Claude to his cousin and heir apparent, François d’Angouleme. It was ironic in the extreme, reflected Mary, that a betrothal between herself and François had been discussed just a year previously. But now it seemed as if Louis was doomed never to get a son and if that were to be the case, he at least wanted Brittany to be joined to France. And now Philip, Archduke of Austria and Duke of Burgundy, his nose well-tweaked by Louis’ defection, was once again open to discussing an Anglo-Burgundian alliance, including the marriage of Charles and Mary. Mary was in despair, faced once again with the prospect of marrying the drooling son of the Duke of Burgundy and the Queen of Castile. Even François, who was rumored at least to be handsome and charming, would have been better than that.
All might yet have been well, except for the violent storms that besieged the Channel that winter. Against all counsel and with the encouragement of King Henry, Philip and Joanna had set out in the dangerous winter waters of the English Channel with their fleet to fight Ferdinand for possession of Castile. Their sights set on this goal, the marriage plans of their son might have been shelved for years. But a violent tempest had scattered their ships, and landed Philip and Joanna in their flagship not at Corunna on the Spanish coast, as planned, but at Melcombe Regis on the shores of England. For the King of England, it was an opportunity not to be missed.
Mary remembered Katharine’s shaking hands that day as she announced the news to her and Jane that they were called to court to welcome the Duke of Burgundy and the Queen of Castile to England. Katharine had not seen her sister since she was a child, and longed to see her once again. But she also longed to see Joanna in her new role as Queen of Castile, an office her mother Isabella had held until her death in November of 1504. Katharine now swerved the beacon of her hopes from her father Ferdinand as King of Aragon to her sister Joanna as Queen of Castile. Here, where she could see and talk to her sister, describe to her first-hand the slights, the penury she had suffered over the past difficult years since Arthur’s death, she felt certain that help would be forthcoming.
But although the summons to court had been swift, and the girls had managed to arrive at Windsor first, Katharine had been disappointed to find that when Philip of Burgundy arrived, Joanna was not with him. Philip had been formally received by the royal family, and royally entertained for the past nine days. He and King Henry had spent long hours closeted together discussing numerous mutually beneficial plans and hatching plots to discomfit their common enemies, King Louis of France and King Ferdinand of Aragon. And still Joanna did not come.
Philip had explained that Joanna was ill from the violent storm that had almost sunk their ship and drowned them, and that she needed time to rest. Katharine sought permission to go to her, but that had been refused; the weather was foul and unpredictable, and she might miss Joanna on the road. It was always one more day, wait one more day… And now the visit was almost over. The ships had been repaired and revictualled, and sat waiting at various ports along the southern coast.
Then a message had come; Joanna was half a day’s journey away. She would arrive after all, just in time to meet with the sister whom she had not seen for so many years. Katharine’s hopes were high. But upon her arrival, Joanna had been closeted with her husband and had not sent for her sister. With time running short, a formal presentation of the Queen of Castile to the King of England would take place that very day, before any personal interviews could be considered or arranged.
And so here Katharine sat, seemingly calm and poised, but who knew, thought Mary, what tempests, what torrents of emotion, raged under that placid exterior?
