Dogmersfield Palace, Hampshire, Autumn 1501

‘I say, you cannot come in! If you were the King of England himself – you could not come in.’

‘I am the King of England,’ Henry Tudor said, without a flicker of amusement. ‘And she can either come out right now, or I damned well will come in and my son will follow me.’

‘The Infanta has already sent word to the king that she cannot see him,’ the duenna said witheringly. ‘The noblemen of her court rode out to explain to him that she is in seclusion, as a lady of Spain. Do you think the King of England would come riding down the road when the Infanta has refused to receive him? What sort of a man do you think he is?’

‘Exactly like this one,’ he said and thrust his fist with the great gold ring towards her face. The Count de Cabra came into the hall in a rush, and at once recognised the lean forty-year-old man threatening the Infanta’s duenna with a clenched fist, a few aghast servitors behind him, and gasped out: ‘The king!’

At the same moment the duenna recognised the new badge of England, the combined roses of York and Lancaster, and recoiled. The count skidded to a halt and threw himself into a low bow.

‘It is the king,’ he hissed, his voice muffled by speaking with his head on his knees. The duenna gave a little gasp of horror and dropped into a deep curtsey.

‘Get up,’ the king said shortly. ‘And fetch her.’

‘But she is a princess of Spain, Your Grace,’ the woman said, rising but with her head still bowed low. ‘She is to stay in seclusion. She cannot be seen by you before her wedding day. This is the tradition. Her gentlemen went out to explain to you…’

‘It’s your tradition. It’s not my tradition. And since she is my daughter-in-law in my country, under my laws, she will obey my tradition.’

‘She has been brought up most carefully, most modestly, most properly…’

‘Then she will be very shocked to find an angry man in her bedroom. Madam, I suggest that you get her up at once.’

‘I will not, Your Grace. I take my orders from the Queen of Spain herself and she charged me to make sure that every respect was shown to the Infanta and that her behaviour was in every way…’

‘Madam, you can take your working orders from me; or your marching orders from me. I don’t care which. Now send the girl out or I swear on my crown I will come in and if I catch her naked in bed then she won’t be the first woman I have ever seen in such a case. But she had better pray that she is the prettiest.’

The Spanish duenna went quite white at the insult.

‘Choose,’ the king said stonily.

‘I cannot fetch the Infanta,’ she said stubbornly.

‘Dear God! That’s it! Tell her I am coming in at once.’

She scuttled backwards like an angry crow, her face blanched with shock. Henry gave her a few moments to prepare, and then called her bluff by striding in behind her.

The room was lit only by candles and firelight. The covers of the bed were turned back as if the girl had hastily jumped up. Henry registered the intimacy of being in her bedroom, with her sheets still warm, the scent of her lingering in the enclosed space, before he looked at her. She was standing by the bed, one small white hand on the carved wooden post. She had a cloak of dark blue thrown over her shoulders and her white nightgown trimmed with priceless lace peeped through the opening at the front. Her rich auburn hair, plaited for sleep, hung down her back, but her face was completely shrouded in a hastily thrown mantilla of dark lace.

Dona Elvira darted between the girl and the king. ‘This is the Infanta,’ she said. ‘Veiled until her wedding day.’

‘Not on my money,’ Henry Tudor said bitterly. ‘I’ll see what I’ve bought, thank you.’

He stepped forwards. The desperate duenna nearly threw herself to her knees. ‘Her modesty…’

‘Has she got some awful mark?’ he demanded, driven to voice his deepest fear. ‘Some blemish? Is she scarred by the pox and they did not tell me?’

‘No! I swear.’

Silently, the girl put out her white hand and took the ornate lace hem of her veil. Her duenna gasped a protest but could do nothing to stop the princess as she raised the veil, and then flung it back. Her clear blue eyes stared into the lined, angry face of Henry Tudor without wavering. The king drank her in, and then gave a little sigh of relief at the sight of her.

She was an utter beauty: a smooth, rounded face, a straight, long nose, a full, sulky, sexy mouth. Her chin was up, he saw; her gaze challenging. This was no shrinking maiden fearing ravishment. This was a fighting princess standing on her dignity even in this most appalling moment of embarrassment.

He bowed. ‘I am Henry Tudor, King of England,’ he said.

She curtseyed.

He stepped forwards and saw her curb her instinct to flinch away. He took her firmly at the shoulders, and kissed one warm, smooth cheek and then the other. The perfume of her hair and the warm, female smell of her body came to him and he felt desire pulse in his groin and at his temples. Quickly he stepped back and let her

go.

‘You are welcome to England,’ he said. He cleared his throat. ‘You will forgive my impatience to see you. My son too is on his way to visit you.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said icily, speaking in perfectly phrased French. ‘I was not informed until a few moments ago that Your Grace was insisting on the honour of this unexpected visit.’

Henry fell back a little from the whip of her temper. ‘I have a right…’

She shrugged, an absolutely Spanish gesture. ‘Of course. You have every right over me.’

At the ambiguous, provocative words, he was again aware of his closeness to her: of the intimacy of the small room, the tester bed hung with rich draperies, the sheets invitingly turned back, the pillow still impressed with the shape of her head. It was a scene for ravishment, not for a royal greeting. Again he felt the secret thud-thud of lust.

‘I’ll see you outside,’ he said abruptly, as if it was her fault that he could not rid himself of the flash in his mind of what it would be like to have this ripe little beauty that he had bought. What would it be like if he had bought her for himself, rather than for his son?

‘I shall be honoured,’ she said coldly.

He got himself out of the room briskly enough, and nearly collided with Prince Arthur, hovering anxiously in the doorway.

‘Fool,’ he remarked.

Prince Arthur, pale with nerves, pushed his blond fringe back from his face, stood still and said nothing.

‘I’ll send that duenna home at the first moment I can,’ the king said. ‘And the rest of them. She can’t make a little Spain in England, my son. The country won’t stand for it, and I damned well won’t stand for it.’

‘People don’t object. The country people seem to love the princess,’ Arthur suggested mildly. ‘Her escort says…’

‘Because she wears a stupid hat. Because she is odd: Spanish, rare. Because she is young and –’ he broke off ’– pretty.’

‘Is she?’ he gasped. ‘I mean: is she?’

‘Haven’t I just gone in to make sure? But no Englishman will stand for any Spanish nonsense once they get over the novelty. And neither will I. This is a marriage to cement an alliance; not to flatter her vanity. Whether they like her or not, she’s marrying you. Whether you like her or not, she’s marrying you. Whether she likes it or not, she’s marrying you. And she’d better get out here now or I won’t like her and that will be the only thing that can make a difference.’

I have to go out, I have won only the briefest of reprieves and I know he is waiting for me outside the door to my bedchamber and he has demonstrated, powerfully enough, that if I do not go to him, then the mountain will come to Mohammed and I will be shamed again.

I brush Dona Elvira aside as a duenna who cannot protect me now, and I go to the door of my rooms. My servants are frozen, like slaves enchanted in a fairy tale by this extraordinary behaviour from a king. My heart hammers in my ears and I know a girl’s embarrassment at having to step forwards in public, but also a soldier’s desire to let battle be joined, the eagerness to know the worst, to face danger rather than evade it.

Henry of England wants me to meet his son, before his travelling party, without ceremony, without dignity as if we were a scramble of peasants. So be it. He will not find a princess of Spain falling back for fear. I grit my teeth, I smile as my mother commanded me.

I nod to my herald, who is as stunned as the rest of my companions. ‘Announce me,’ I order him.

His face blank with shock, he throws open the door. ‘The Infanta Catalina, Princess of Spain and Princess of Wales,’ he bellows.

This is me. This is my moment. This is my battle cry.

I step forwards.

The Spanish Infanta – with her face naked to every man’s gaze – stood in the darkened doorway and then walked into the room, only a little flame of colour in both cheeks betraying her ordeal.

At his father’s side, Prince Arthur swallowed. She was far more beautiful than he had imagined, and a million times more haughty. She was dressed in a gown of dark black velvet, slashed to show an undergown of carnation silk, the neck cut square and low over her plump breasts, hung with ropes of pearls. Her auburn hair, freed from the plait, tumbled down her back in a great wave of red-gold. On her head was a black lace mantilla flung determinedly back. She swept a deep curtsey and came up with her head held high, graceful as a dancer.

‘I beg your pardon for not being ready to greet you,’ she said in French. ‘If I had known you were coming I would have been prepared.’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t hear the racket,’ the king said. ‘I was arguing at your door for a good ten minutes.’

‘I thought it was a pair of porters brawling,’ she said coolly.

Arthur suppressed a gasp of horror at her impertinence; but his father was eyeing her with a smile as if a new filly was showing promising spirit.

‘No. It was me; threatening your lady-in-waiting. I am sorry that I had to march in on you.’

She inclined her head. ‘That was my duenna, Dona Elvira. I am sorry if she displeased you. Her English is not good. She cannot have understood what you wanted.’

‘I wanted to see my daughter-in-law, and my son wanted to see his bride, and I expect an English princess to behave like an English princess, and not like some damned sequestered girl in a harem. I thought your parents had beaten the Moors. I didn’t expect to find them set up as your models.’

Catalina ignored the insult with a slight turn of her head. ‘I am sure that you will teach me good English manners,’ she said. ‘Who better to advise me?’ She turned to Prince Arthur and swept him a royal curtsey. ‘My lord.’

He faltered in his bow in return, amazed at the serenity that she could muster in this most embarrassing of moments. He reached into his jacket for her present, fumbled with the little purse of jewels, dropped them, picked them up again and finally thrust them towards her, feeling like a fool.

She took them and inclined her head in thanks, but did not open them. ‘Have you dined, Your Grace?’

‘We’ll eat here,’ he said bluntly. ‘I ordered dinner already.’

‘Then can I offer you a drink? Or somewhere to wash and change your clothes before you dine?’ She examined the long, lean length of him consideringly, from the mud spattering his pale, lined face to his dusty boots. The English were a prodigiously dirty nation, not even a great house such as this one had an adequate hammam or even piped water. ‘Or perhaps you don’t like to wash?’

A harsh chuckle was forced from the king. ‘You can order me a cup of ale and have them send fresh clothes and hot water to the best bedroom and I’ll change before dinner.’ He raised a hand. ‘You needn’t take it as a compliment to you. I always wash before dinner.’

Arthur saw her nip her lower lip with little white teeth as if to refrain from some sarcastic reply. ‘Yes, Your Grace,’ she said pleasantly. ‘As you wish.’ She summoned her lady-in-waiting to her side and gave her low-voiced orders in rapid Spanish. The woman curtseyed and led the king from the room.

The princess turned to Prince Arthur.

‘Et tu?’ she asked in Latin. ‘And you?’

‘I? What?’ he stammered.

He felt that she was trying not to sigh with impatience.

‘Would you like to wash and change your coat also?’

‘I’ve washed,’ he said. As soon as the words were out of his mouth he could have bitten off his own tongue. He sounded like a child being scolded by a nurse, he thought. ‘I’ve washed,’ indeed. What was he going to do next? Hold out his hands palms-upwards so that she could see he was a good boy?

‘Then will you take a glass of wine? Or ale?’

Catalina turned to the table, where the servants were hastily laying cups and flagons.

‘Wine.’

She raised a glass and a flagon and the two chinked together, and then chink-chink-chinked again. In amazement, he saw that her hands were trembling.

She poured the wine quickly and held it to him. His gaze went from her hand and the slightly rippled surface of the wine to her pale face.

She was not laughing at him, he saw. She was not at all at ease with him. His father’s rudeness had brought out the pride in her, but alone with him she was just a girl, some months older than him, but still just a girl. The daughter of the two most formidable monarchs in Europe; but still just a girl with shaking hands.

‘You need not be frightened,’ he said very quietly. ‘I am sorry about all this.’

He meant – your failed attempt to avoid this meeting, my father’s brusque informality, my own inability to stop him or soften him, and, more than anything else, the misery that this business must be for you: coming far from your home among strangers and meeting your new husband, dragged from your bed under protest.

She looked down. He stared at the flawless pallor of her skin, at the fair eyelashes and pale eyebrows.

Then she looked up at him. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I have seen far worse than this, I have been in far worse places than this, and I have known worse men than your father. You need not fear for me. I am afraid of nothing.’

No-one will ever know what it cost me to smile, what it cost me to stand before your father and not tremble. I am not yet sixteen, I am far from my mother, I am in a strange country, I cannot speak the language and I know nobody here. I have no friends but the party of companions and servants that I have brought with me, and they look to me to protect them. They do not think to help me.

I know what I have to do. I have to be a Spanish princess for the English, and an English princess for the Spanish. I have to seem at ease where I am not, and assume confidence when I am afraid. You may be my husband, but I can hardly see you, I have no sense of you yet. I have no time to consider you, I am absorbed in being the princess that your father has bought, the princess that my mother has delivered, the princess that will fulfil the bargain and secure a treaty between England and Spain.

No-one will ever know that I have to pretend to ease, pretend to confidence, pretend to grace. Of course I am afraid. But I will never, never show it. And, when they call my name I will always step forwards.

The king, having washed and taken a couple of glasses of wine before he came to his dinner, was affable with the young princess, determined to overlook their introduction. Once or twice she caught him glancing at her sideways, as if to get the measure of her, and she turned to look at him, full on, one sandy eyebrow slightly raised as if to interrogate him.

‘Yes?’ he demanded.

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said equably. ‘I thought Your Grace needed something. You glanced at me.’

‘I was thinking you’re not much like your portrait,’ he said.

She flushed a little. Portraits were designed to flatter the sitter, and when the sitter was a royal princess on the marriage market, even more so.

‘Better-looking,’ Henry said begrudgingly, to reassure her. ‘Younger, softer, prettier.’

She did not warm to the praise as he expected her to do. She merely nodded as if it were an interesting observation.

‘You had a bad voyage,’ Henry remarked.

‘Very bad,’ she said. She turned to Prince Arthur. ‘We were driven back as we set out from Corunna in August and we had to wait for the storms to pass. When we finally set sail it was still terribly rough, and then we were forced into Plymouth. We couldn’t get to Southampton at all. We were all quite sure we would be drowned.’

‘Well, you couldn’t have come overland,’ Henry said flatly, thinking of the parlous state of France and the enmity of the French king. ‘You’d be a priceless hostage for a king who was heartless enough to take you. Thank God you never fell into enemy hands.’

She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Pray God I never do.’

‘Well, your troubles are over now,’ Henry concluded. ‘The next boat you are on will be the royal barge when you go down the Thames. How shall you like to become Princess of Wales?’

‘I have been the Princess of Wales ever since I was three years old,’ she corrected him. ‘They always called me Catalina, the Infanta, Princess of Wales. I knew it was my destiny.’ She looked at Arthur, who still sat silently observing the table. ‘I have known we would be married all my life. It was kind of you to write to me so often. It made me feel that we were not complete strangers.’

He flushed. ‘I was ordered to write to you,’ he said awkwardly. ‘As part of my studies. But I liked getting your replies.’

‘Good God, boy, you don’t exactly sparkle, do you?’ asked his father critically.

Arthur flushed scarlet to his ears.

‘There was no need to tell her that you were ordered to write,’ his father ruled. ‘Better to let her think that you were writing of your own choice.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Catalina said quietly. ‘I was ordered to reply. And, as it happens, I should like us always to speak the truth to each other.’

The king barked out a laugh. ‘Not in a year’s time you won’t,’ he predicted. ‘You will be all in favour of the polite lie then. The great saviour of a marriage is mutual ignorance.’

Arthur nodded obediently, but Catalina merely smiled, as if his observations were of interest, but not necessarily true. Henry found himself piqued by the girl, and still aroused by her prettiness.

‘I daresay your father does not tell your mother every thought that crosses his mind,’ he said, trying to make her look at him again.

He succeeded. She gave him a long, slow, considering gaze from her blue eyes. ‘Perhaps he does not,’ she conceded. ‘I would not know. It is not fitting that I should know. But whether he tells her or not: my mother knows everything anyway.’

He laughed. Her dignity was quite delightful in a girl whose head barely came up to his chest. ‘She is a visionary, your mother? She has the gift of Sight?’

She did not laugh in reply. ‘She is wise,’ she said simply. ‘She is the wisest monarch in Europe.’

The king thought he would be foolish to bridle at a girl’s devotion to her mother, and it would be graceless to point out that her mother might have unified the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon but that she was still a long way from creating a peaceful and united Spain. The tactical skill of Isabella and Ferdinand had forged a single country from the Moorish kingdoms, they had yet to make everyone accept their peace. Catalina’s own journey to London had been disrupted by rebellions of Moors and Jews who could not bear the tyranny of the Spanish kings. He changed the subject. ‘Why don’t you show us a dance?’ he demanded, thinking that he would like to see her move. ‘Or is that not allowed in Spain either?’

‘Since I am an English princess I must learn your customs,’ she said. ‘Would an English princess get up in the middle of the night and dance for the king after he forced his way into her rooms?’

Henry laughed at her. ‘If she had any sense she would.’

She threw him a small, demure smile. ‘Then I will dance with my ladies,’ she decided, and rose from her seat at the high table and went down to the centre of the floor. She called one by name, Henry noted, Maria de Salinas, a pretty, dark-haired girl who came quickly to stand beside Catalina. Three other young women, pretending shyness but eager to show themselves off, came forwards.

Henry looked them over. He had asked Their Majesties of Spain that their daughter’s companions should all be pretty, and he was pleased to see that however blunt and ill-mannered they had found his request, they had acceded to it. The girls were all good-looking but none of them outshone the princess who stood, composed, and then raised her hands and clapped, to order the musicians to play.

He noticed at once that she moved like a sensual woman. The dance was a pavane, a slow ceremonial dance, and she moved with her hips swaying and her eyes heavy-lidded, a little smile on her face. She had been well-schooled, any princess would be taught how to dance in the courtly world where dancing, singing, music and poetry mattered more than anything else; but she danced like a woman who let the music move her, and Henry, who had some experience, believed that women who could be summoned by music were the ones who responded to the rhythms of lust.

He went from pleasure in watching her to a sense of rising irritation that this exquisite piece would be put in Arthur’s cold bed. He could not see his thoughtful, scholarly boy teasing and arousing the passion in this girl on the edge of womanhood. He imagined that Arthur would fumble about and perhaps hurt her, and she would grit her teeth and do her duty as a woman and a queen must, and then, like as not, she would die in childbirth; and the whole performance of finding a bride for Arthur would have to be undergone again, with no benefit for himself but only this irritated, frustrated arousal that she seemed to inspire in him. It was good that she was desirable, since she would be an ornament to his court; but it was a nuisance that she should be so very desirable to him.

Henry looked away from her dancing and comforted himself with the thought of her dowry which would bring him lasting benefit and come directly to him, unlike this bride who seemed bound to unsettle him and must go, however mismatched, to his son. As soon as they were married her treasurer would hand over the first payment of her dowry: in solid gold. A year later he would deliver the second part in gold and in her plate and jewels. Having fought his way to the throne on a shoestring and uncertain credit, Henry trusted the power of money more than anything in life; more even than his throne, for he knew he could buy a throne with money, and far more than women, for they are cheaply bought; and far, far more than the joy of a smile from a virgin princess who stopped her dance now, swept him a curtsey and came up smiling.

‘Do I please you?’ she demanded, flushed and a little breathless.

‘Well enough,’ he said, determined that she should never know how much. ‘But it’s late now and you should go back to your bed. We’ll ride with you a little way in the morning before we go ahead of you to London.’

She was surprised at the abruptness of his reply. Again, she glanced towards Arthur as if he might contradict his father’s plans; perhaps stay with her for the remainder of the journey, since his father had bragged of their informality. But the boy said nothing. ‘As you wish, Your Grace,’ she said politely.

The king nodded and rose to his feet. The court billowed into deep curtseys and bows as he stalked past them, out of the room. ‘Not so informal, at all,’ Catalina thought as she watched the King of England stride through his court, his head high. ‘He may boast of being a soldier with the manners of the camp, but he insists on obedience and on the show of deference. As indeed, he should,’ added Isabella’s daughter to herself.

Arthur followed behind his father with a quick ‘Goodnight’ to the princess as he left. In a moment all the men in their train had gone too, and the princess was alone but for her ladies.

‘What an extraordinary man,’ she remarked to her favourite, Maria de Salinas.

‘He liked you,’ the young woman said. ‘He watched you very closely, he liked you.’

‘And why should he not?’ she asked with the instinctive arrogance of a girl born to the greatest kingdom in Europe. ‘And even if he did not, it is all already agreed, and there can be no change. It has been agreed for almost all my life.’

He is not what I expected, this king who fought his way to the throne and picked up his crown from the mud of a battlefield. I expected him to be more like a champion, like a great soldier, perhaps like my father. Instead he has the look of a merchant, a man who puzzles over profit indoors, not a man who won his kingdom and his wife at the point of a sword.

I suppose I hoped for a man like Don Hernando, a hero that I could look up to, a man I would be proud to call father. But this king is lean and pale like a clerk, not a knight from the romances at all.

I expected his court to be more grand, I expected a great procession and a formal meeting with long introductions and elegant speeches, as we would have done it in the Alhambra. But he is abrupt; in my view he is rude. I shall have to become accustomed to these northern ways, this scramble to do things, this brusque ordering. I cannot expect things to be done well or even correctly. I shall have to overlook a lot until I am queen and can change things.

But, anyway, it hardly matters whether I like the king or he likes me. He has engaged in this treaty with my father and I am betrothed to his son. It hardly matters what I think of him, or what he thinks of me. It is not as if we will have to deal much together. I shall live and rule Wales and he will live and rule England, and when he dies it will be my husband on his throne and my son will be the next Prince of Wales, and I shall be queen.

As for my husband-to-be – oh! – he has made a very different first impression. He is so handsome! I did not expect him to be so handsome! He is so fair and slight, he is like a page boy from one of the old romances. I can imagine him waking all night in a vigil, or singing up to a castle window. He has pale, almost silvery skin, he has fine golden hair, and yet he is taller than me and lean and strong like a boy on the edge of manhood.

He has a rare smile, one that comes reluctantly and then shines. And he is kind. That is a great thing in a husband. He was kind when he took the glass of wine from me, he saw that I was trembling, and he tried to reassure me.

I wonder what he thinks of me? I do so wonder what he thinks of me?

Just as the king had ruled, he and Arthur went swiftly back to Windsor the next morning and Catalina’s train, with her litter carried by mules, with her trousseau in great travelling chests, her ladies-in-waiting, her Spanish household, and the guards for her dowry treasure, laboured up the muddy roads to London at a far slower pace.

She did not see the prince again until their wedding day, but when she arrived in the village of Kingston-upon-Thames her train halted in order to meet the greatest man in the kingdom, the young Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, and Henry, Duke of York, the king’s second son, who were appointed to accompany her to Lambeth Palace.

‘I’ll come out,’ Catalina said hastily, emerging from her litter and walking quickly past the waiting horses, not wanting another quarrel with her strict duenna about young ladies meeting young men before their wedding day. ‘Dona Elvira, say nothing. The boy is a child of ten years old. It doesn’t matter. Not even my mother would think that it matters.’

‘At least wear your veil!’ the woman implored. ‘The Duke of Buck…Buck…whatever his name, is here too. Wear your veil when you go before him, for your own reputation, Infanta.’

‘Buckingham,’ Catalina corrected her. ‘The Duke of Buckingham. And call me Princess of Wales. And you know I cannot wear my veil because he will have been commanded to report to the king. You know what my mother said: that he is the king’s mother’s ward, restored to his family fortunes, and must be shown the greatest respect.’

The older woman shook her head, but Catalina marched out bare-faced, feeling both fearful and reckless at her own daring, and saw the duke’s men drawn up in array on the road and before them, a young boy: helmet off, bright head shining in the sunshine.

Her first thought was that he was utterly unlike his brother. While Arthur was fair-haired and slight and serious-looking, with a pale complexion and warm brown eyes, this was a sunny boy who looked as if he had never had a serious thought in his head. He did not take after his lean-faced father, he had the look of a boy for whom life came easily. His hair was red-gold, his face round and still baby-plump, his smile when he first saw her was genuinely friendly and bright, and his blue eyes shone as if he was accustomed to seeing a very pleasing world.

‘Sister!’ he said warmly, jumped down from his horse with a clatter of armour, and swept her a low bow.

‘Brother Henry,’ she said, curtseying back to him to precisely the right height, considering that he was only a second son of England, and she was an Infanta of Spain.

‘I am so pleased to see you,’ he said quickly, his Latin rapid, his English accent strong. ‘I was so hoping that His Majesty would let me come to meet you before I had to take you into London on your wedding day. I thought it would be so awkward to go marching down the aisle with you, and hand you over to Arthur, if we hadn’t even spoken. And call me Harry. Everyone calls me Harry.’

‘I too am pleased to meet you, Brother Harry,’ Catalina said politely, rather taken-aback at his enthusiasm.

‘Pleased! You should be dancing with joy!’ he exclaimed buoyantly. ‘Because Father said that I could bring you the horse which was to be one of your wedding-day presents and so we can ride together to Lambeth. Arthur said you should wait for your wedding day, but I said, why should she wait? She won’t be able to ride on her wedding day. She’ll be too busy getting married. But if I take it to her now we can ride at once.’

‘That was kind of you.’

‘Oh, I never take any notice of Arthur,’ Harry said cheerfully.

Catalina had to choke down a giggle. ‘You don’t?’

He made a face and shook his head. ‘Serious,’ he said. ‘You’ll be amazed how serious. And scholarly, of course, but not gifted. Everyone says I am very gifted, languages mostly, but music also. We can speak French together if you wish, I am extraordinarily fluent for my age. I am considered a pretty fair musician. And of course I am a sportsman. Do you hunt?’

‘No,’ Catalina said, a little overwhelmed. ‘At least, I only follow the hunt when we go after boar or wolves.’

‘Wolves? I should so like to hunt wolves. D’you really have bears?’

‘Yes, in the hills.’

‘I should so like to hunt a bear. Do you hunt wolves on foot like boar?’

‘No, on horseback,’ she said. ‘They’re very fast, you have to take very fast dogs to pull them down. It’s a horrid hunt.’

‘I shouldn’t mind that,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind anything like that. Everyone says I am terribly brave about things like that.’

‘I am sure they do,’ she said, smiling.

A handsome man in his mid-twenties came forwards and bowed. ‘Oh, this is Edward Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham,’ Harry said quickly. ‘May I present him?’

Catalina held out her hand and the man bowed again over it. His intelligent, handsome face was warm with a smile. ‘You are welcome to your own country,’ he said in faultless Castilian. ‘I hope everything has been to your liking on your journey? Is there anything I can provide for you?’

‘I have been well cared for indeed,’ Catalina said, blushing with pleasure at being greeted in her own language. ‘And the welcome I have had from people all along the way has been very kind.’

‘Look, here’s your new horse,’ Harry interrupted, as the groom led a beautiful black mare forwards. ‘You’ll be used to good horses, of course. D’you have Barbary horses all the time?’

‘My mother insists on them for the cavalry,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ he breathed. ‘Because they are so fast?’

‘They can be trained as fighting horses,’ she said, going forwards and holding out her hand, palm upwards, for the mare to sniff at and nibble at her fingers with a soft, gentle mouth.

‘Fighting horses?’ he pursued.

‘The Saracens have horses which can fight as their masters do, and the Barbary horses can be trained to do it too,’ she said. ‘They rear up and strike down a soldier with their front hooves, and they will kick out behind, too. The Turks have horses that will pick up a sword from the ground and hand it back to the rider. My mother says that one good horse is worth ten men in battle.’

‘I should so like to have a horse like that,’ Harry said longingly. ‘I wonder how I should ever get one?’

He paused, but she did not rise to the bait. ‘If only someone would give me a horse like that, I could learn how to ride it,’ he said transparently. ‘Perhaps for my birthday, or perhaps next week, since it is not me getting married, and I am not getting any wedding gifts. Since I am quite left out, and quite neglected.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Catalina, who had once seen her own brother get his way with exactly the same wheedling.

‘I should be trained to ride properly,’ he said. ‘Father has promised that though I am to go into the church I shall be allowed to ride at the quintain. But My Lady the King’s Mother says I may not joust. And it’s really unfair. I should be allowed to joust. If I had a proper horse I could joust, I am sure I would beat everyone.’

‘I am sure you would,’ she said.

‘Well, shall we go?’ he asked, seeing that she would not give him a horse for asking.

‘I cannot ride, I do not have my riding clothes unpacked.’

He hesitated. ‘Can’t you just go in that?’

Catalina laughed. ‘This is velvet and silk. I can’t ride in it. And besides, I can’t gallop around England looking like a mummer.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Well, shall you go in your litter then? Won’t it make us very slow?’

‘I am sorry for that, but I am ordered to travel in a litter,’ she said. ‘With the curtains drawn. I can’t think that even your father would want me to charge around the country with my skirts tucked up.’

‘Of course the princess cannot ride today,’ the Duke of Buckingham ruled. ‘As I told you. She has to go in her litter.’

Harry shrugged. ‘Well, I didn’t know. Nobody told me what you were going to wear. Can I go ahead then? My horses will be so much faster than the mules.’

‘You can ride ahead but not out of sight,’ Catalina decided. ‘Since you are supposed to be escorting me you should be with me.’

‘As I said,’ the Duke of Buckingham observed quietly and exchanged a little smile with the princess.

‘I’ll wait at every crossroads,’ Harry promised. ‘I am escorting you, remember. And on your wedding day I shall be escorting you again. I have a white suit with gold slashing.’

‘How handsome you will look,’ she said, and saw him flush with pleasure.

‘Oh, I don’t know…’

‘I am sure everyone will remark what a handsome boy you are,’ she said, as he looked pleased.

‘Everyone always cheers most loudly for me,’ he confided. ‘And I like to know that the people love me. Father says that the only way to keep a throne is to be beloved by the people. That was King Richard’s mistake, Father says.’

‘My mother says that the way to keep the throne is to do God’s work.’

‘Oh,’ he said, clearly unimpressed. ‘Well, different countries, I suppose.’

‘So we shall travel together,’ she said. ‘I will tell my people that we are ready to move on.’

‘I will tell them,’ he insisted. ‘It is me who escorts you. I shall give the orders and you shall rest in your litter.’ He gave one quick sideways glance at her. ‘When we get to Lambeth Palace you shall stay in your litter till I come for you. I shall draw back the curtains and take you in, and you should hold my hand.’

‘I should like that very much,’ she assured him, and saw his ready rush of colour once again.

He bustled off and the duke bowed to her with a smile. ‘He is a very bright boy, very eager,’ he said. ‘You must forgive his enthusiasm. He has been much indulged.’

‘His mother’s favourite?’ she asked, thinking of her own mother’s adoration for her only son.

‘Worse still,’ the duke said with a smile. ‘His mother loves him as she should; but he is the absolute apple of his grandmother’s eye, and it is she who rules the court. Luckily he is a good boy, and well-mannered. He has too good a nature to be spoiled, and the king’s mother tempers her treats with lessons.’

‘She is an indulgent woman?’ she asked.

He gave a little gulp of laughter. ‘Only to her son,’ he said. ‘The rest of us find her – er – more majestic than motherly.’

‘May we talk again at Lambeth?’ Catalina asked, tempted to know more about this household that she was to join.

‘At Lambeth and London, I shall be proud to serve you,’ the young man said, his eyes warm with admiration. ‘You must command me as you wish. I shall be your friend in England, you can call on me.’

I must have courage, I am the daughter of a brave woman and I have prepared for this all my life. When the young duke spoke so kindly to me there was no need for me to feel like weeping, that was foolish. I must keep my head up and smile. My mother said to me that if I smile no-one will know that I am homesick or afraid, I shall smile and smile however odd things seem.

And though this England seems so strange now, I will become accustomed. I will learn their ways and feel at home here. Their odd ways will become my ways, and the worst things – the things that I utterly cannot bear – those I shall change when I am queen. And anyway, it will be better for me than it was for Isabel, my sister. She was only married a few months and then she had to come home, a widow. Better for me than for Maria, who had to follow in Isabel’s footsteps to Portugal, better for me than for Juana, who is sick with love for her husband Philip. It must be better for me than it was for Juan, my poor brother, who died so soon after finding happiness. And always better for me than for my mother, whose childhood was lived on a knife edge.

My story won’t be like hers, of course. I have been born to less exciting times. I shall hope to make terms with my husband Arthur and with his odd, loud father, and with his sweet little braggart brother. I shall hope that his mother and his grandmother will love me or at the very least teach me how to be a Princess of Wales, a Queen of England. I shall not have to ride in desperate dashes by night from one besieged fortress to another, as my mother did. I shall not have to pawn my own jewels to pay mercenary soldiers, as she did. I shall not have to ride out in my own armour to rally my troops. I shall not be threatened by the wicked French on one side and the heretic Moors on the other, as my mother was. I shall marry Arthur and when his father dies – which must be soon, for he is so very old and so very bad-tempered – then we shall be King and Queen of England and my mother will rule in Spain as I rule in England and she will see me keep England in alliance with Spain as I have promised her, she will see me hold my country in an unbreakable treaty with hers, she will see I shall be safe forever.

London, 14th November 1501

On the morning of her wedding day Catalina was called early; but she had been awake for hours, stirring as soon as the cold, wintry sun had started to light the pale sky. They had prepared a great bath – her ladies told her that the English were amazed that she was going to wash before her wedding day and that most of them thought that she was risking her life. Catalina, brought up in the Alhambra where the bath houses were the most beautiful suite of rooms in the palace, centres of gossip, laughter and scented water, was equally amazed to hear that the English thought it perfectly adequate to bathe only occasionally, and that the poor people would bathe only once a year. She had already realised that the scent of musk and ambergris which had wafted in with the king and Prince Arthur had underlying notes of sweat and horse, and that she would live for the rest of her life among people who did not change their underwear from one year to the next. She had seen it as another thing that she must learn to endure, as an angel from heaven endures the privations of earth. She had come from al Yanna – the garden, the paradise – to the ordinary world. She had come from the Alhambra Palace to England, she had anticipated some disagreeable changes.

‘I suppose it is always so cold that it does not matter,’ she said uncertainly to Dona Elvira.

‘It matters to us,’ the duenna said. ‘And you shall bathe like an Infanta of Spain though all the cooks in the kitchen have had to stop what they are doing to boil up water.’

Dona Elvira had commanded a great tureen from the flesh kitchen which was usually deployed to scald beast carcases, had it scoured by three scullions, lined it with linen sheets and filled it to the brim with hot water scattered with rose petals and scented with oil of roses brought from Spain. She lovingly supervised the washing of Catalina’s long white limbs, the manicuring of her toes, the filing of her fingernails, the brushing of her teeth and finally the three-rinse washing of her hair. Time after time the incredulous English maids toiled to the door to receive another ewer of hot water from exhausted page boys, and tipped it in the tub to keep the temperature of the bath hot.

‘If only we had a proper bath house,’ Dona Elvira mourned. ‘With steam and a tepidarium and a proper clean marble floor! Hot water on tap and somewhere for you to sit and be properly scrubbed.’

‘Don’t fuss,’ Catalina said dreamily as they helped her from the bath and patted her all over with scented towels. One maid took her hair, squeezed out the water and rubbed it gently with red silk soaked in oil to give it shine and colour.

‘Your mother would be so proud of you,’ Dona Elvira said as they led the Infanta towards her wardrobe and started to dress her in layer after layer of shifts and gowns. ‘Pull that lace tighter, girl, so that the skirt lies flat. This is her day, as well as yours, Catalina. She said that you would marry him whatever it cost her.’

Yes, but she did not pay the greatest price. I know they bought me this wedding with a king’s ransom for my dowry, and I know that they endured long and hard negotiations, and I survived the worst voyage anyone has ever taken, but there was another price paid that we never speak of – wasn’t there? And the thought of that price is in my mind today, as it has been on the journey, as it was on the voyage, as it has been ever since I first heard of it.

There was a man of only twenty-four years old, Edward Plantagenet, the Duke of Warwick and a son of the kings of England, with – truth be told – a better claim to the throne of England than that of my father-in-law. He was a prince, nephew to the king, and of blood royal. He committed no crime, he did nothing wrong, but he was arrested for my sake, taken to the Tower for my benefit, and finally killed, beheaded on the block, for my gain, so that my parents could be satisfied that there were no pretenders to the throne that they had bought for me.

My father himself told King Henry himself that he would not send me to England while the Duke of Warwick was alive, and so I am like Death himself, carrying the scythe. When they ordered the ship for me to come to England: Warwick was a dead man.

They say he was a simpleton. He did not really understand that he was under arrest, he thought that he was housed in the Tower as a way of giving him honour. He knew he was the last of the Plantagenet princes, and he knew that the Tower has always been royal lodgings as well as a prison. When they put a pretender, a cunning man who had tried to pass himself off as a royal prince, into the room next door to poor Warwick, he thought it was for company. When the other man invited him to escape, he thought it was a clever thing to do, and like the innocent he was, he whispered of their plans where his guards could hear. That gave them the excuse they needed for a charge of treason. They trapped him very easily, they beheaded him with little protest from anyone.

The country wants peace and the security of an unchallenged king. The country will wink at a dead claimant or two. I am expected to wink at it also. Especially as it is done for my benefit. It was done at my father’s request, for me. To make my way smooth.

When they told me that he was dead, I said nothing, for I am an Infanta of Spain. Before anything else, I am my mother’s daughter. I do not weep like a girl and tell all the world my every thought. But when I was alone in the gardens of the Alhambra in the evening with the sun going down and leaving the world cool and sweet, I walked beside a long canal of still water, hidden by the trees, and I thought that I would never walk in the shade of trees again and enjoy the flicker of hot sunshine through cool green leaves without thinking that Edward, Duke of Warwick, will see the sun no more, so that I might live my life in wealth and luxury. I prayed then that I might be forgiven for the death of an innocent man.

My mother and father have fought down the length of Castile and Aragon, have ridden the breadth of Spain to make justice run in every village, in the smallest of hamlets – so that no Spaniard can lose his life on the whim of another. Even the greatest lords cannot murder a peasant; they have to be ruled by the law. But when it came to England and to me, they forgot this. They forgot that we live in a palace where the walls are engraved with the promise: ‘Enter and ask. Do not be afraid to seek justice for here you will find it.’ They just wrote to King Henry and said that they would not send me until Warwick was dead, and in a moment, at their expressed wish, Warwick was killed.

And sometimes, when I do not remember to be Infanta of Spain nor Princess of Wales but just the Catalina who walked behind her mother through the great gate into the Alhambra Palace, and knew that her mother was the greatest power the world had ever known; sometimes I wonder childishly, if my mother has not made a great mistake? If she has not driven God’s will too far? Farther even than God would want? For this wedding is launched in blood, and sails in a sea of innocent blood. How can such a wedding ever be the start of a good marriage? Must it not – as night follows sunset – be tragic and bloody too? How can any happiness ever come to Prince Arthur and to me that has been bought at such a terrible price? And if we could be happy would it not be an utterly sinfully-selfish joy?

Prince Harry, the ten-year-old Duke of York, was so proud of his white taffeta suit that he scarcely glanced at Catalina until they were at the west doors of St Paul’s Cathedral and then he turned and stared, trying to see her face through the exquisite lace of the white mantilla. Ahead of them stretched a raised pathway, lined with red cloth, studded with golden nails, running at head height from the great doorway of the church where the citizens of London crowded to get a better view, up the long aisle to the altar where Prince Arthur stood, pale with nerves, six hundred slow ceremonial paces away.

Catalina smiled at the young boy at her side, and he beamed with delight. Her hand was steady on his proffered arm. He paused for a moment more, until everyone in the enormous church realised that the bride and prince were at the doorway, waiting to make their entrance, a hush fell, everyone craned to see the bride, and then, at the precise, most theatrical moment, he led her forwards.

Catalina felt the congregation murmur around her feet as she went past them, high on the stage that King Henry had ordered to be built so that everyone should see the flower of Spain meet the rosebush of England. The prince turned as she came towards him, but was blinded for a moment by irritation at the sight of his brother, leading the princess as if he himself were the bridegroom, glancing around as he walked, acknowledging the doffing of caps and the whispering of curtseys with his smug little smile, as if it were him that everyone had come to see.

Then they were both at Arthur’s side and Harry had to step back, however reluctantly, as the princess and prince faced the archbishop together and kneeled together on the specially embroidered white taffeta cushions.

‘Never has a couple been more married,’ King Henry thought sourly, standing in the royal pew with his wife and his mother. ‘Her parents trusted me no further than they would a snake, and my view of her father has always been that of a half-Moor huckster. Nine times they have been betrothed. This will be a marriage that nothing can break. Her father cannot wriggle from it, whatever second thoughts he has. He will protect me against France now; this is his daughter’s inheritance. The very thought of our alliance will frighten the French into peace with me, and we must have peace.’

He glanced at his wife at his side. Her eyes were filled with tears, watching her son and his bride as the archbishop raised their clasped hands and wrapped them in his holy stole. Her face, beautiful with emotion, did not stir him. Who ever knew what she was thinking behind that lovely mask? Of her own marriage, the union of York and Lancaster which put her as a wife on the throne that she could have claimed in her own right? Or was she thinking of the man she would have preferred as a husband? The king scowled. He was never sure of his wife, Elizabeth. In general, he preferred not to consider her.

Beyond her, his flint-faced mother, Margaret Beaufort, watched the young couple with a glimmer of a smile. This was England’s triumph, this was her son’s triumph, but far more than that, this was her triumph – to have dragged this base-born bastard family back from disaster, to challenge the power of York, to defeat a reigning king, to capture the very throne of England against all the odds. This was her making. It was her plan to bring her son back from France at the right moment to claim his throne. They were her alliances who gave him the soldiers for the battle. It was her battle plan which left the usurper Richard to despair on the field at Bosworth, and it was her victory that she celebrated every day of her life. And this was the marriage that was the culmination of that long struggle. This bride would give her a grandson, a Spanish-Tudor king for England, and a son after him, and after him: and so lay down a dynasty of Tudors that would be never-ending.

Catalina repeated the words of the marriage vow, felt the weight of a cold ring on her finger, turned her face to her new husband and felt his cool kiss, in a daze. When she walked back down that absurd walkway and saw the smiling faces stretching from her feet to the walls of the cathedral she started to realise that it was done. And when they went from the cool dark of the cathedral to the bright wintry sunlight outside and heard the roar of the crowd for Arthur and his bride, the Prince and Princess of Wales, she realised that she had done her duty finally and completely. She had been promised to Arthur from childhood, and now, at last, they were married. She had been named the Princess of Wales since she was three years old and now, at last, she had taken her name, and taken her place in the world. She looked up and smiled and the crowd, delighted with the free wine, with the prettiness of the young girl, with the promise of safety from civil war that could only come with a settled royal succession, roared their approval.

They were husband and wife; but they did not speak more than a few words to each other for the rest of the long day. There was a formal banquet, and though they were seated side by side, there were healths to be drunk and speeches to be attended to, and musicians playing. After the long dinner of many courses there was an entertainment with poetry and singers and a tableau. No-one had ever seen so much money flung at a single occasion. It was a greater celebration than the king’s own wedding, greater even than his own coronation. It was a redefinition of the English kingly state, and it told the world that this marriage of the Tudor rose to the Spanish princess was one of the greatest events of the new age. Two new dynasties were proclaiming themselves by this union: Ferdinand and Isabella of the new country that they were forging from al Andalus, and the Tudors who were making England their own.

The musicians played a dance from Spain and Queen Elizabeth, at a nod from her mother-in-law, leaned over and said quietly to Catalina, ‘It would be a great pleasure for us all if you would dance.’

Catalina, quite composed, rose from her chair and went to the centre of the great hall as her ladies gathered around her, formed a circle and held hands. They danced the pavane, the same dance that Henry had seen at Dogmersfield, and he watched his daughter-in-law through narrowed eyes. Undoubtedly, she was the most beddable young woman in the room. A pity that a cold fish like Arthur would be certain to fail to teach her the pleasures that could be had between sheets. If he let them both go to Ludlow Castle she would either die of boredom or slip into complete frigidity. On the other hand, if he kept her at his side she would delight his eyes, he could watch her dance, he could watch her brighten the court. He sighed. He thought he did not dare.

‘She is delightful,’ the queen remarked.

‘Let’s hope so,’ he said sourly.

‘My lord?’

He smiled at her look of surprised inquiry. ‘No, nothing. You are right, delightful indeed. And she looks healthy, doesn’t she? As far as you can tell?’

‘I am sure she is, and her mother assured me that she is most regular in her habits.’

He nodded. ‘That woman would say anything.’

‘But surely not; nothing that would mislead us? Not on a matter of such importance?’ she suggested.

He nodded and let it go. The sweetness of his wife’s nature and her faith in others was not something he could change. Since she had no influence on policy, her opinions did not matter. ‘And Arthur?’ he said. ‘He seems to be growing and strong? I would to God he had the spirits of his brother.’

They both looked at young Harry who was standing, watching the dancers, his face flushed with excitement, his eyes bright.

‘Oh, Harry,’ his mother said indulgently. ‘But there has never been a prince more handsome and more full of fun than Harry.’

The Spanish dance ended and the king clapped his hands. ‘Now Harry and his sister,’ he commanded. He did not want to force Arthur to dance in front of his new bride. The boy danced like a clerk, all gangling legs and concentration. But Harry was raring to go and was on the floor with his sister Princess Margaret in a moment. The musicians knew the young royals’ taste in music and struck up a lively galliard. Harry tossed his jacket to one side and threw himself into the dance, stripped down to his shirtsleeves like a peasant.

There was a gasp from the Spanish grandees at the young prince’s shocking behaviour, but the English court smiled with his parents at his energy and enthusiasm. When the two had romped their way through the final turns and gallop, everyone applauded, laughing. Everyone but Prince Arthur, who was staring into the middle distance, determined not to watch his brother dance. He came to with a start only when his mother put her hand on his arm.

‘Please God he’s daydreaming of his wedding night,’ his father remarked to Lady Margaret his mother. ‘Though I doubt it.’

She gave a sharp laugh. ‘I can’t say I think much of the bride,’ she said critically.

‘You don’t?’ he asked. ‘You saw the treaty yourself.’

‘I like the price but the goods are not to my taste,’ she said with her usual sharp wit. ‘She is a slight, pretty thing, isn’t she?’

‘Would you rather a strapping milkmaid?’

‘I’d like a girl with the hips to give us sons,’ she said bluntly. ‘A nursery-full of sons.’

‘She looks well enough to me,’ he ruled. He knew that he would never be able to say how well she looked to him. Even to himself he should never even think it.

Catalina was put into her wedding bed by her ladies, Maria de Salinas kissed her goodnight, and Dona Elvira gave her a mother’s blessing; but Arthur had to undergo a further round of backslapping ribaldry, before his friends and companions escorted him to her door. They put him into bed beside the princess, who lay still and silent as the strange men laughed and bade them goodnight, and then the archbishop came to sprinkle the sheets with holy water and pray over the young couple. It could not have been a more public bedding unless they had opened the doors for the citizens of London to see the young people side by side, awkward as bolsters, in their marital bed. It seemed like hours to both of them until the doors were finally closed on the smiling, curious faces and the two of them were quite alone, seated upright against the pillows, frozen like a pair of shy dolls.

There was silence.

‘Would you like a glass of ale?’ Arthur suggested in a voice thin with nerves.

‘I don’t like ale very much,’ Catalina said.

‘This is different. They call it wedding ale, it’s sweetened with mead and spices. It’s for courage.’

‘Do we need courage?’

He was emboldened by her smile and got out of bed to fetch her a cup. ‘I should think we do,’ he said. ‘You are a stranger in a new land, and I have never known any girls but my sisters. We both have much to learn.’

She took the cup of hot ale from him and sipped the heady drink. ‘Oh, that is nice.’

Arthur gulped down a cup and took another. Then he came back to the bed. Raising the cover and getting in beside her seemed an imposition; the idea of pulling up her night shift and mounting her was utterly beyond him.

‘I shall blow out the candle,’ he announced.

The sudden dark engulfed them, only the embers of the fire glowed red.

‘Are you very tired?’ he asked, longing for her to say that she was too tired to do her duty.

‘Not at all,’ she said politely, her disembodied voice coming out of the darkness. ‘Are you?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want to sleep now?’ he asked.

‘I know what we have to do,’ she said abruptly. ‘All my sisters have been married. I know all about it.’

‘I know as well,’ he said, stung.

‘I didn’t mean that you don’t know, I meant that you need not be afraid to start. I know what we have to do.’

‘I am not afraid, it is just that I…’

To his absolute horror he felt her hand pull his nightshirt upwards, and touch the bare skin of his belly.

‘I did not want to frighten you,’ he said, his voice unsteady, desire rising up even though he was sick with fear that he would be incompetent.

‘I am not afraid,’ said Isabella’s daughter. ‘I have never been afraid of anything.’

In the silence and the darkness he felt her take hold of him and grasp firmly. At her touch he felt his desire well up so sharply that he was afraid he would come in her hand. With a low groan he rolled over on top of her and found she had stripped herself naked to the waist, her nightgown pulled up. He fumbled clumsily and felt her flinch as he pushed against her. The whole process seemed quite impossible, there was no way of knowing what a man was supposed to do, nothing to help or guide him, no knowing the mysterious geography of her body, and then she gave a little cry of pain, stifled with her hand, and he knew he had done it. The relief was so great that he came at once, a half-painful, half-pleasurable rush which told him that, whatever his father thought of him, whatever his brother Harry thought of him, the job was done and he was a man and a husband; and the princess was his wife and no longer a virgin untouched.

Catalina waited till he was asleep and then she got up and washed herself in her privy chamber. She was bleeding but she knew it would stop soon, the pain was no worse than she had expected, Isabel her sister had said it was not as bad as falling from a horse, and she had been right. Margot, her sister-in-law, had said that it was paradise; but Catalina could not imagine how such deep embarrassment and discomfort could add up to bliss – and concluded that Margot was exaggerating, as she often did.

Catalina came back to the bedroom. But she did not go back to the bed. Instead she sat on the floor by the fire, hugging her knees and watching the embers.

‘Not a bad day,’ I say to myself, and I smile; it is my mother’s phrase. I want to hear her voice so much that I am saying her words to myself. Often, when I was little more than a baby, and she had spent a long day in the saddle, inspecting the forward scouting parties, riding back to chivvy up the slower train, she would come into her tent, kick off her riding boots, drop down to the rich Moorish rugs and cushions by the fire in the brass brazier and say: ‘Not a bad day.’

‘Is there ever a bad day?’ I once asked her.

‘Not when you are doing God’s work,’ she replied seriously. ‘There are days when it is easy and days when it is hard. But if you are on God’s work then there are never bad days.’

I don’t for a moment doubt that bedding Arthur, even my brazen touching him and drawing him into me, is God’s work. It is God’s work that there should be an unbreakable alliance between Spain and England. Only with England as a reliable ally can Spain challenge the spread of France. Only with English wealth, and especially English ships, can we Spanish take the war against wickedness to the very heart of the Moorish empires in Africa and Turkey. The Italian princes are a muddle of rival ambitions, the French are a danger to every neighbour, it has to be England who joins the crusade with Spain to maintain the defence of Christendom against the terrifying might of the Moors; whether they be black Moors from Africa, the bogeymen of my childhood, or light-skinned Moors from the dreadful Ottoman Empire. And once they are defeated, then the crusaders must go on, to India, to the East, as far as they have to go to challenge and defeat the wickedness that is the religion of the Moors. My great fear is that the Saracen kingdoms stretch forever, to the end of the world and even Cristóbal Colón does not know where that is.

‘What if there is no end to them?’ I once asked my mother, as we leaned over the sun-warmed walls of the fort and watched the despatch of a new group of Moors leaving the city of Granada, their baggage loaded on mules, the women weeping, the men with their heads bowed low, the flag of St James now flying over the red fort where the crescent had rippled for seven centuries, the bells ringing for Mass where once horns had blown for heretic prayers. ‘What if now we have defeated these, they just go back to Africa and in another year, they come again?’

‘That is why you have to be brave, my Princess of Wales,’ my mother had answered. ‘That is why you have to be ready to fight them whenever they come, wherever they come. This is war till the end of the world, till the end of time when God finally ends it. It will take many shapes. It will never cease. They will come again and again, and you will have to be ready in Wales as we will be ready in Spain. I bore you to be a fighting princess as I am a Queen Militant. Your father and I placed you in England as Maria is placed in Portugal, as Juana is placed with the Hapsburgs in the Netherlands. You are there to defend the lands of your husbands, and to hold them in alliance with us. It is your task to make England ready and keep it safe. Make sure that you never fail your country, as your sisters must never fail theirs, as I have never failed mine.’

Catalina was awakened in the early hours of the morning by Arthur gently pushing between her legs. Resentfully, she let him do as he wanted, knowing that this was the way to get a son and make the alliance secure. Some princesses, like her mother, had to fight their way in open warfare to secure their kingdom. Most princesses, like her, had to endure painful ordeals in private. It did not take long, and then he fell asleep. Catalina lay as still as a frozen stone in order not to wake him again.

He did not stir until daybreak, when his grooms of the bedchamber rapped brightly on the door. He rose up with a slightly embarrassed ‘Good morning’ to her; and went out. They greeted him with cheers and marched him in triumph to his own rooms. Catalina heard him say, vulgarly, boastfully, ‘Gentlemen, this night I have been in Spain,’ and heard the yell of laughter that applauded his joke. Her ladies came in with her gown and heard the men’s laughter. Dona Elvira raised her thin eyebrows to heaven at the manners of these English.

‘I don’t know what your mother would say,’ Dona Elvira remarked.

‘She would say that words count less than God’s will, and God’s will has been done,’ Catalina said firmly.

It was not like this for my mother. She fell in love with my father on sight and she married him with great joy. When I grew older I began to understand that they felt a real desire for each other – it was not just a powerful partnership of a great king and queen. My father might take other women as his lovers; but he needed his wife, he could not be happy without her. And my mother could not even see another man. She was blind to anybody but my father. Alone, of all the courts in Europe, the court of Spain had no tradition of love-play, of flirtation, of adoration of the queen in the practice of courtly love. It would have been a waste of time. My mother simply did not notice other men and when they sighed for her and said her eyes were as blue as the skies she simply laughed and said, ‘What nonsense,’ and that was an end to it.

When my parents had to be apart they wrote every day, he would not move one step without telling her of it, and asking for her advice. When he was in danger she hardly slept.

He could not have got through the Sierra Nevada if she had not been sending him men and digging teams to level the road for him. No-one else could have driven a road through there. He would have trusted no-one else to support him, to hold the kingdom together as he pushed forwards. She could have conquered the mountains for no-one else, he was the only one that could have attracted her support. What looked like a remarkable unity of two calculating players was deceptive – it was their passion which they played out on the political stage. She was a great queen because that was how she could evoke his desire. He was a great general in order to match her. It was their love, their lust, which drove them; almost as much as God.

We are a passionate family. When Isabel, my sister, now with God, came back from Portugal a widow she swore that she had loved her husband so much that she would never take another. She had been with him for only six months but she said that without him, life had no meaning. Juana, my second sister, is so in love with her husband Philip that she cannot bear to let him out of her sight, when she learns that he is interested in another woman she swears that she will poison her rival, she is quite mad with love for him. And my brother…my darling brother Juan…simply died of love. He and his beautiful wife Margot were so 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.