Autumn 1509

At nighttime in October, after Katherine had refused to dance after midnight for the previous three weeks, and had insisted, instead, on watching Henry dance with her ladies, she told him that she was with child, and made him swear to keep it secret.

‘I want to tell everyone!’ he exclaimed. He had come to her room in his nightgown and they were seated either side of the warm fire, on their way to bed.

‘You can write to my father next month,’ she specified. ‘But I don’t want everyone to know yet. They will all guess soon enough.’

‘You must rest,’ he said instantly. ‘And should you have special things to eat? Do you have a desire for anything special to eat? I can send someone for it at once, they can wake the cooks. Tell me, love, what would you like?’

‘Nothing! Nothing!’ she said, laughing. ‘See, we have biscuits and wine. What more do I ever eat this late at night?’

‘Oh usually, yes! But now everything is different.’

‘I shall ask the physicians in the morning,’ she said. ‘But I need nothing now. Truly, my love.’

‘I want to get you something,’ he said. ‘I want to look after you.’

‘You do look after me,’ she reassured him. ‘And I am perfectly well fed, and I feel very well.’

‘Not sick? That is a sign of a boy, I am sure.’

‘I have been feeling a little sick in the mornings,’ she said, and watched his beam of happiness. ‘I feel certain that it is a boy. I hope this is our Arthur Henry.’

‘Oh! You were thinking of him when you spoke to me at the archery contest.’

‘Yes, I was. But I was not sure then, and I did not want to tell you too early.’

‘And when do you think he will be born?’

‘In early summer, I think.’

‘It cannot take so long!’ he exclaimed.

‘My love, I think it does take that long.’

‘I shall write to your father in the morning,’ he said. ‘I shall tell him to expect great news in the summer. Perhaps we shall be home after a great campaign against the French then. Perhaps I shall bring you a victory and you shall give me a son.’

Henry has sent his own physician, the most skilled man in London, to see me. The man stands at one side of the room while I sit on a chair at the other. He cannot examine me, of course – the body of the queen cannot be touched by anyone but the king. He cannot ask me if I am regular in my courses or in my bowels; they too are sacred. He is so paralysed with embarrassment at being called to see me that he keeps his eyes on the floor and asks me short questions in a quiet, clipped voice. He speaks English, and I have to strain to hear and understand him.

He asks me if I eat well, and if I have any sickness. I answer that I eat well enough but that I am sick of the smell and sight of cooked meats. I miss the fruit and vegetables that were part of my daily diet in Spain, I am craving baklava sweetmeats made from honey, or a tagine made with vegetables and rice. He says that it does not matter since there is no benefit to eating vegetables or fruit for humans, and indeed, he would have advised me against eating any raw stuff for the duration of my pregnancy.

He asks me if I know when I conceived. I say that I cannot say for certain, but that I know the date of my last course. He smiles as a learned man to a fool and tells me that this is little guide as to when a baby might be due. I have seen Moorish doctors calculate the date of a baby’s birth with a special abacus. He says he has never heard of such things and such heathen devices would be unnatural and not wanted at the treatment of a Christian child.

He suggests that I rest. He asks me to send for him whenever I feel unwell and he will come to apply leeches. He says he is a great believer in bleeding women frequently to prevent them becoming overheated. Then he bows and leaves.

I look blankly at Maria de Salinas, standing in the corner of the room for this mockery of a consultation. ‘This is the best doctor in England?’ I ask her. ‘This is the best that they have?’

She shakes her head in bewilderment.

‘I wonder if we can get someone from Spain,’ I think aloud.

‘Your mother and father have all but cleared Spain of the learned men,’ she says, and in that moment I feel almost ashamed of them.

‘Their learning was heretical,’ I say defensively.

She shrugs. ‘Well, the Inquisition arrested most of them. The rest have fled.’

‘Where did they go?’ I ask.

‘Wherever people go. The Jews went to Portugal and then to Italy, to Turkey, I think throughout Europe. I suppose the Moors went to Africa and the East.’

‘Can we not find someone from Turkey?’ I suggest. ‘Not a heathen, of course. But someone who has learned from a Moorish physician? There must be some Christian doctors who have knowledge. Some who know more than this one?’

‘I will ask the ambassador,’ she says

‘He must be Christian,’ I stipulate. I know that I will need a better doctor than this shy ignoramus, but I do not want to go against the authority of my mother and the Holy Church. If they say that such knowledge is sin, then, surely, I should embrace ignorance. It is my duty. I am no scholar and it is better if I am guided by the ruling of the Holy Church. But can God really want us to deny knowledge? And what if this ignorance costs me England’s son and heir?

Katherine did not reduce her work, commanding the clerks to the king, hearing petitioners who needed royal justice, discussing with the Privy Council the news from the kingdom. But she wrote to Spain to suggest that her father might like to send an ambassador to represent Spanish interests, especially since Henry was determined on a war against France in alliance with Spain as soon as the season for war started in the spring, and there would be much correspondence between the two countries.

‘He is most determined to do your bidding,’ Catalina wrote to her father, carefully translating every word into the complex code that they used. ‘He is conscious that he has not been to war and is anxious that all goes well for an English-Spanish army. I am very concerned, indeed, that he is not exposed to danger. He has no heir, and even if he did, this is a hard country for princes in their minority. When he goes to war with you, I shall trust him into your safekeeping. He should certainly feel that he is experiencing war to the full, he should certainly learn how to campaign from you. But I shall trust you to keep him from any real danger. Do not misunderstand me on this,’ she wrote sternly. ‘He must feel that he is at the heart of war, he must learn how battles are won; but he must not ever be in any real danger. And,’ she added, ‘he must never know that we have protected him.’

King Ferdinand, in full possession of Castile and Aragon once more, ruling as regent for Juana who was now said to be far beyond taking her throne, lost in a dark world of grief and madness, wrote smoothly back to his youngest daughter that she was not to worry about the safety of her husband in war, he would make sure that Henry was exposed to nothing but excitement. ‘And do not let your wifely fears distract him from his duty,’ he reminded her. ‘In all her years with me your mother never shirked from danger. You must be the queen she would want you to be. This is a war that has to be fought for the safety and profit of us all, and the young king must play his part alongside this old king and the old emperor. This is an alliance of two old warhorses and one young colt; and he will want to be part of it.’ He left a space in the letter as if for thought and then added a postscript. ‘Of course, we will both make sure it is mostly play for him. Of course he will not know.’

Ferdinand was right. Henry was desperate to be part of an alliance that would defeat France. The Privy Council, the thoughtful advisors of his father’s careful reign, were appalled to find that the young man was utterly set on the idea that kingship meant warfare, and he could imagine no better way to demonstrate that he had inherited the throne. The eager, boastful young men that formed the young court, desperate for a chance to show their own courage, were egging Henry on to war. The French had been hated for so long that it seemed incredible that a peace had ever been made and that it had lasted. It seemed unnatural to be at peace with the French – the normal state of warfare should be resumed as soon as victory was a certainty. And victory, with a new young king, and a new young court, must be a certainty now.

Nothing that Katherine might quietly remark could completely calm the fever for war, and Henry was so bellicose with the French ambassador at their first meeting that the astounded representative reported to his master that the new young king was out of his mind with choler, denying that he had ever written a peaceable letter to the King of France, which the Privy Council had sent in his absence. Fortunately, their next meeting went better. Katherine made sure that she was there.

‘Greet him pleasantly,’ she prompted Henry as she saw the man advance.

‘I will not feign kindness where I mean war.’

‘You have to be cunning,’ she said softly. ‘You have to be skilled in saying one thing and thinking another.’

‘I will never pretend. I will never deny my righteous pride.’

‘No, you should not pretend, exactly. But let him in his folly misunderstand you. There is more than one way to win a war, and it is winning that matters, not threatening. If he thinks you are his friend, we will catch them unprepared. Why would we give them warning of attack?’

He was troubled, he looked at her, frowning. ‘I am not a liar.’

‘No, for you told him last time that the vain ambitions of his king would be corrected by you. The French cannot be allowed to capture Venice. We have an ancient alliance with Venice…’

‘Do we?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Katherine said firmly. ‘England has an ancient alliance with Venice, and besides, it is the very first wall of Christianity against the Turks. By threatening Venice the French are on the brink of letting the heathens into Italy. They should be ashamed of themselves. But last time you met, you warned the French ambassador. You could not have been more clear. Now is the time for you to greet him with a smile. You do not need to spell out your campaign. We will keep our own counsel. We will not share it with such as him.’

‘I have told him once, I need not tell him again. I do not repeat myself,’ Henry said, warming to the thought.

‘We don’t brag of our strength,’ she said. ‘We know what we can do, and we know what we will do. They can find out for themselves in our own good time.’

‘Indeed,’ said Henry, and stepped down from the little dais to greet the French ambassador quite pleasantly, and was rewarded to see the man fumble in his bow and stutter in his address.

‘I had him quite baffled,’ he said to Katherine gleefully.

‘You were masterly,’ she assured him.

If he was a dullard I would have to bite back my impatience and curb my temper more often than I do. But he is not unintelligent. He is bright and clever, perhaps even as quick-witted as Arthur. But where Arthur had been trained to think, had been educated as a king from birth, they let this second son slide by on his charm and his ready tongue. They found him pleasing and encouraged him to be nothing more than agreeable. He has a good brain and he can read, debate and think well – but only if the topic catches his interest, and then only for a while. They taught him to study, but only to demonstrate his own cleverness. He is lazy, he is terribly lazy – he would always rather that someone does the detailed work for him, and this is a great fault in a king, it throws him into the power of his clerks. A king who will not work will always be in the hands of his advisors. It is a recipe for overmighty councillors.

When we start to discuss the terms of the contract between Spain and England he asks me to write it out for him, he does not like to do this himself, he likes to dictate and have a clerk write it out fair. And he will never bother to learn the code. It means that every letter between him and the emperor, every letter between him and my father, is either written by me, or translated by me. I am at the very centre of the emerging plans for war, whether I want to be or no. I cannot help but be the decision-maker at the very heart of this alliance, and Henry puts himself to one side.

Of course I am not reluctant to do my duty. No true child of my mother’s would ever have turned away from effort, especially one that led to war with the enemies of Spain. We were all raised to know that kingship is a vocation, not a treat. To be a king means to rule; and ruling is always demanding work. No true child of my father’s could have resisted being at the very heart of planning and plotting, and preparing for war. There is no-one at the English court better able than I to take our country into war.

I am no fool. I guessed from the start that my father planned to use our English troops against the French, and while we engage them at the time and place of his choosing, I wager that he will invade the kingdom of Navarre. I must have heard him a dozen times telling my mother that if he could have Navarre he would have rounded the north border of Aragon and besides, Navarre is a rich region, growing grapes and wheat. My father has wanted it from the moment he came to the throne of Aragon. I know that if he has a chance at Navarre he will win it, and if he can make the English do the work for him he would think that even better.

But I am not fighting this war to oblige my father, though I let him think that. He will not use me as his instrument, I will use him for mine. I want this war for England, and for God. The Pope himself has ruled that the French should not overrun Venice, the Pope himself is putting his own holy army into the field against the French. No true son or daughter of the church needs any greater cause than this: to know that the Holy Father is calling for support.

And for me there is another reason, even more powerful than that. I never forget my mother’s warning that the Moors will come against Christendom again, I never forget her telling me that I must be ready in England as she was always ready in Spain. If the French defeat the armies of the Pope and seize Venice, who can doubt but that the Moors will see it as their chance to snatch Venice in their turn from the French? And once the Moors get a toe-hold in the heart of Christendom once more, it will be my mother’s war to be fought all over again. They will come at us from the East, they will come at us from Venice, and Christian Europe will lie at their mercy. My father himself told me that Venice with its great trade, its arsenal, its powerful dockyards, must never be taken by the Moors, we must never let them win a city where they could build fighting galleys in a week, arm them in days, man them in a morning. If they have the Venetian dockyards and shipwrights then we have lost the seas. I know that it is my given duty, given to me by my mother and by God: to send English men to serve the Pope, and to defend Venice from any invader. It is easy to persuade Henry to think the same.

But I don’t forget Scotland. I never forget Arthur’s fear of Scotland. The Privy Council has spies along the border, and Thomas Howard, the old Earl of Surrey, was placed there, quite deliberately I think, by the old king. King Henry my father-in-law gave Thomas Howard great lands in the north so that he, of all people, would keep the border safe. The old king was no fool. He did not let others do his business and trust to their abilities. He tied them into his success. If the Scots invade England they will come through Howard lands, and Thomas Howard is as anxious as I that this will never happen. He has assured me that the Scots will not come against us this summer, in any numbers worse than their usual brigand raids. All the intelligence we can gather from English merchants in Scotland, from travellers primed to keep their eyes open, confirms the earl’s view. We are safe for this summer at least. I can take this moment and send the English army to war against the French. Henry can march out in safety and learn to be a soldier.

Katherine watched the dancing at the Christmas festivities, applauded her husband when he twirled other ladies around the room, laughed at the mummers, and signed off the court’s bills for enormous amounts of wine, ale, beef, and the rarest and finest of everything. She gave Henry a beautiful inlaid saddle for his Christmas gift, and some shirts that she had sewn and embroidered herself with the beautiful blackwork of Spain.

‘I want all my shirts to be sewn by you,’ he said, putting the fine linen against his cheek. ‘I want to never wear anything that another woman has touched. Only your hands shall make my shirts.’

Katherine smiled and pulled his shoulder down to her height. He bent down like a grown boy, and she kissed his forehead. ‘Always,’ she promised him. ‘I shall always sew your shirts for you.’

‘And now, my gift to you,’ he said. He pushed a large leather box towards her. Katherine opened it. There was a great set of magnificent jewels: a diadem, a necklace, two bracelets and matching rings.

‘Oh, Henry!’

‘Do you like them?’

‘I love them,’ she said.

‘Will you wear them tonight?’

‘I shall wear them tonight and at the Twelfth Night feast,’ she promised.

The young queen shone in her happiness, this first Christmas of her reign. The full skirts of her gown could not conceal the curve of her belly; everywhere she went the young king would order a chair to be brought for her, she must not stand for a moment, she must never be wearied. He composed for her special songs that his musicians played, special dances and special masques were made up in her honour. The court, delighted with the young queen’s fertility, with the health and strength of the young king, with itself, made merry late into the night and Katherine sat on her throne, her feet slightly spread to accommodate the curve of her belly, and smiled in her joy.

Westminster Palace, January 1510

I wake in the night to pain, and a strange sensation. I dreamed that a tide was rising in the river Thames and that a fleet of black-sailed ships were coming upriver. I think that it must be the Moors, coming for me, and then I think it is a Spanish fleet – an armada, but strangely, disturbingly, my enemy, and the enemy of England. In my distress I toss and turn in bed and I wake with a sense of dread and find that it is worse than any dream, my sheets are wet with blood, and there is a real pain in my belly.

I call out in terror, and my cry wakes Maria de Salinas, who is sleeping with me.

‘What is it?’ she asks, then she sees my face and calls out sharply to the maid at the foot of the bed and sends her running for my ladies and for the midwives, but somewhere in the back of my mind I know already that there is nothing that they can do. I clamber into my chair in my bloodstained nightdress and feel the pain twist and turn in my belly.

By the time they arrive, struggling from their beds, all stupid with sleep, I am on my knees on the floor like a sick dog, praying for the pain to pass and to leave me whole. I know that there is no point in praying for the safety of my child. I know that my child is lost. I can feel the tearing sensation in my belly as he slowly comes away.

After a long, bitter day, when Henry comes to the door again and again, and I send him away, calling out to him in a bright voice of reassurance, biting the palm of my hand so that I do not cry out, the baby is born, dead. The midwife shows her to me, a little girl, a white, limp little thing: poor baby, my poor baby. My only comfort is that it is not the boy I had promised Arthur I would bear for him. It is a girl, a dead girl, and then I twist my face in grief when I remember that he wanted a girl first, and she was to be called Mary.

I cannot speak for grief, I cannot face Henry and tell him myself. I cannot bear the thought of anyone telling the court, I cannot bring myself to write to my father and tell him that I have failed England, I have failed Henry, I have failed Spain, and worst of all – and this I could never tell anyone – I have failed Arthur.

I stay in my room, I close the door on all the anxious faces, on the midwives wanting me to drink strawberry-leaf tisanes, on the ladies wanting to tell me about their still births, and their mothers’ still births and their happy endings, I shut them away from me and I kneel at the foot of my bed, and press my hot face against the covers. I whisper through my sobs, muffled so that no-one but him can hear me. ‘I am sorry, so sorry, my love. I am so sorry not to have had your son. I don’t know why, I don’t know why our gentle God should send me this great sorrow. I am so sorry, my love. If I ever have another chance I will do my best, the very best that I can, to have our son, to keep him safe till birth and beyond. I will, I swear I will. I tried this time, God knows, I would have given anything to have your son and named him Arthur for you, my love.’ I steady myself as I can feel the words tumbling out too quickly, I can feel myself losing control, I feel the sobs starting to choke me.

‘Wait for me,’ I say quietly. ‘Wait for me still. Wait for me by the quiet waters in the garden where the white and the red rose petals fall. Wait for me and when I have given birth to your son Arthur and your daughter Mary, and done my duty here, I will come to you. Wait for me in the garden and I will never fail you. I will come to you, love. My love.’

The king’s physician went to the king directly from the queen’s apartments. ‘Your Grace, I have good news for you.’

Henry turned a face to him that was as sour as a child’s whose joy has been stolen. ‘You have?’

‘I have indeed.’

‘The queen is better? In less pain? She will be well?’

‘Even better than well,’ the physician said. ‘Although she lost one child, she has kept another. She was carrying twins, Your Grace. She has lost one child but her belly is still large and she is still with child.’

For a moment the young man could not understand the words. ‘She still has a child?’

The physician smiled. ‘Yes, Your Grace.’

It was like a stay of execution. Henry felt his heart turn over with hope. ‘How can it be?’

The physician was confident. ‘By various ways I can tell. Her belly is still firm, the bleeding has stopped. I am certain she is still with child.’

Henry crossed himself. ‘God is with us,’ he said positively. ‘This is the sign of His favour.’ He paused. ‘Can I see her?’

‘Yes, she is as happy at this news as you.’

Henry bounded up the stairs to Katherine’s rooms. Her presence chamber was empty of anyone but the least informed sight-seers, the court and half the City knew that she had taken to her bed and would not be seen. Henry brushed through the crowd who whispered hushed blessings for him and the queen, strode through her privy chamber, where her women were sewing, and tapped on her bedroom door.

Maria de Salinas opened it and stepped back for the king. The queen was out of her bed, seated in the window seat, her book of prayers held up to the light.

‘My love!’ he exclaimed. ‘Here is Dr Fielding come to me with the best of news.’

Her face was radiant. ‘I told him to tell you privately.’

‘He did. No-one else knows. My love, I am so glad!’

Her eyes were wet with tears. ‘It is like a redemption,’ she said. ‘I feel as if a cross has been lifted from my shoulders.’

‘I shall go to Walsingham the moment our baby is born and thank Our Lady for her favour,’ he promised. ‘I shall endow the shrine with a fortune, if it is a boy.’

‘Please God that He grants it,’ she murmured.

‘Why should He not?’ Henry demanded. ‘When it is our desire, and right for England, and we ask it as holy children of the church?’

‘Amen,’ she said quickly. ‘If it is God’s will.’

He flicked his hand. ‘Of course it must be His will,’ he said. ‘Now you must take care and rest.’

Katherine smiled at him. ‘As you see.’

‘Well, you must. And anything you want, you shall have.’

‘I shall tell the cooks if I want anything.’

‘And the midwives shall attend you night and morning to make sure that you are well.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘And if God is willing, we shall have a son.’

It was Maria de Salinas, my true friend who had come with me from Spain, and stayed with me through our good months and our hard years, who found the Moor. He was attending on a wealthy merchant, travelling from Genoa to Paris, they had called in at London to value some gold and Maria heard of him from a woman who had given a hundred pounds to Our Lady of Walsingham, hoping to have a son.

‘They say he can make barren women give birth,’ she whispers to me, watching that none of my other ladies have come close enough to overhear.

I cross myself as if to avoid temptation. ‘Then he must use black arts.’

‘Princess, he is supposed to be a great physician. Trained by masters who were at the university of Toledo.’

‘I will not see him.’

‘Because you think he must use black arts?’

‘Because he is my enemy and my mother’s enemy. She knew that the Moors’ knowledge was unlawfully gained, drawn from the devil, not from the revealed truth of God. She drove the Moors from Spain and their magical arts with them.’

‘Your Grace, he may be the only doctor in England who knows anything about women.’

‘I will not see him.’

Maria took my refusal and let a few weeks go by and then I woke in the night with a deep pain in my belly, and slowly, felt the blood coming. She was quick and ready to call the maids with the towels and with a ewer to wash, and when I was back in bed again and we realised that it was no more than my monthly courses returned, she came quietly and stood beside the head of the bed. Lady Margaret Pole was silent at the doorway.

‘Your Grace, please see this doctor.’

‘He is a Moor.’

‘Yes, but I think he is the only man in this country who will know what is happening. How can you have your courses if you are with child? You may be losing this second baby. You have to see a doctor that we can trust.’

‘Maria, he is my enemy. He is my mother’s enemy. She spent her life driving his people from Spain.’

‘We lost their wisdom with them,’ Maria says quietly. ‘You have not lived in Spain for nearly a decade, Your Grace, you do not know what it is like there now. My brother writes to me that people fall sick and there are no hospitals that can cure them. The nuns and the monks do their best; but they have no knowledge. If you have a stone it has to be cut out of you by a horse doctor, if you have a broken arm or leg then the blacksmith has to set it. The barbers are surgeons, the tooth drawers work in the market place and break people’s jaws. The midwives go from burying a man sick with sores to a childbirth and lose as many babies as they deliver. The skills of the Moorish physicians, with their knowledge of the body, their herbs to soothe pain, their instruments for surgery, and their insistence on washing – it is all lost.’

‘If it was sinful knowledge it is better lost,’ I say stubbornly.

‘Why would God be on the side of ignorance and dirt and disease?’ she asks fiercely. ‘Forgive me, Your Grace, but this makes no sense. And you are forgetting what your mother wanted. She always said that the universities should be restored, to teach Christian knowledge. But by then she had killed or banished all the teachers who knew anything.’

‘The queen will not want to be advised by a heretic,’ Lady Margaret said firmly. ‘No English lady would consult a Moor.’

Maria turns to me. ‘Please, Your Grace.’

I am in such pain that I cannot bear an argument. ‘Both of you can leave me now,’ I say. ‘Just let me sleep.’

Lady Margaret goes out of the door but Maria pauses to close the shutters so that I am in shadow. ‘Oh, let him come then,’ I say. ‘But not while I am like this. He can come next week.’

She brings him by the hidden stairway which runs from the cellars through a servants’ passage to the queen’s private rooms at Richmond Palace. I am wearily dressing for dinner, and I let him come into my rooms while I am still unlaced, in my shift with a cape thrown on top. I grimace at the thought of what my mother would say at a man coming into my privy chamber. But I know, in my heart, that I have to see a doctor who can tell me how to get a son for England. And I know, if I am honest, that something is wrong with the baby they say I am carrying.

I know him for an unbeliever the moment I see him. He is black as ebony, his eyes as dark as jet, his mouth wide and sensual, his face both merry and compassionate, all at the same time. The back of his hands are black, dark as his face, long-fingered, his nails rosy pink, the palms brown, the creases ingrained with his colour. If I were a palmist I could trace the lifeline on his African palm like cart tracks of brown dust in a field of terracotta. I know him at once for a Moor and a Nubian; and I want to order him away from my rooms. But I know, at the same time, that he may be the only doctor in this country who has the knowledge I need.

This man’s people, infidels, sinners who have set their black faces against God, have medicine that we do not. For some reason, God and his angels have not revealed to us the knowledge that these people have sought and found. These people have read in Greek everything that the Greek physicians thought. Then they have explored for themselves, with forbidden instruments, studying the human body as if it were an animal, without fear or respect. They create wild theories with forbidden thoughts and then they test them, without superstition. They are prepared to think anything, to consider anything; nothing is taboo. These people are educated where we are fools, where I am a fool. I might look down on him as coming from a race of savages, I might look down on him as an infidel doomed to hell; but I need to know what he knows.

If he will tell me.

‘I am Catalina, Infanta of Spain and Queen Katherine of England,’ I say bluntly, that he may know that he is dealing with a queen and the daughter of a queen who had defeated his people.

He inclines his head, as proud as a baron. ‘I am Yusuf, son of Ismail,’ he says.

‘You are a slave?’

‘I was born to a slave, but I am a free man.’

‘My mother would not allow slavery,’ I tell him. ‘She said it was not allowed by our religion, our Christian religion.’

‘Nevertheless, she sent my people into slavery,’ he remarks. ‘Perhaps she should have considered that high principles and good intentions end at the border.’

‘Since your people won’t accept the salvation of God then it doesn’t matter what happens to your earthly bodies.’

His face lights up with amusement, and he gives a delightful, irrepressible chuckle. ‘It matters to us, I think,’ he says. ‘My nation allows slavery, but we don’t justify it like that. And most importantly, you cannot inherit slavery with us. When you are born, whatever the condition of your mother, you are born free. That is the law, and I think it a very good one.’

‘Well, it makes no difference what you think,’ I say rudely. ‘Since you are wrong.’

Again he laughs aloud, in true merriment, as if I have said something very funny. ‘How good it must be, always to know that you are right,’ he says. ‘Perhaps you will always be certain of your rightness. But I would suggest to you, Catalina of Spain and Katherine of England, that sometimes it is better to know the questions than the answers.’

I pause at that. ‘But I want you only for answers,’ I say. ‘Do you know medicine? Whether a woman can conceive a son? If she is with child?’

‘Sometimes it can be known,’ he says. ‘Sometimes it is in the hands of Allah, praise His holy name, and sometimes we do not yet understand enough to be sure.’

I cross myself against the name of Allah, quick as an old woman spitting on a shadow. He smiles at my gesture, not in the least disturbed. ‘What is it that you want to know?’ he asks, his voice filled with kindness. ‘What is it that you want to know so much that you have to send for an infidel to advise you? Poor queen, you must be very alone if you need help from your enemy.’

My eyes are filling with too-quick tears at the sympathy in his voice and I brush my hand against my face.

‘I have lost a baby,’ I say shortly. ‘A daughter. My physician says that she was one of twins, and that there is another child still inside me, that there will be another birth.’

‘So why send for me?’

‘I want to know for sure,’ I say. ‘If there is another child I will have to go into confinement, the whole world will watch me. I want to know that the baby is alive inside me now, that it is a boy, that he will be born.’

‘Why should you doubt your own physician’s opinion?’

I turn from his inquiring, honest gaze. ‘I don’t know,’ I say evasively.

‘Infanta, I think you do know.’

‘How can I know?’

‘With a woman’s sense.’

‘I have it not.’

He smiles at my stubbornness. ‘Well, then, woman without any feelings, what do you think with your clever mind, since you have decided to deny what your body tells you?’

‘How can I know what I should think?’ I ask. ‘My mother is dead. My greatest friend in England…’ I break off before I can say the name of Arthur. ‘I have no-one to confide in. One midwife says one thing, one says another. The physician is sure…but he wants to be sure. The king rewards him only for good news. How can I know the truth?’

‘I should think you do know, despite yourself,’ he insists gently. ‘Your body will tell you. I suppose your courses have not returned?’

‘No, I have bled,’ I admit unwillingly. ‘Last week.’

‘With pain?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your breasts are tender?’

‘They were.’

‘Are they fuller than usual?’

‘No.’

‘You can feel the child? He moves inside you?’

‘I can’t feel anything since I lost the girl.’

‘You are in pain now?’

‘Not any more. I feel…’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing. I feel nothing.’

He says nothing, he sits quietly, he breathes so softly it is like sitting with a quietly sleeping black cat. He looks at Maria. ‘May I touch her?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘She is the queen. Nobody can touch her.’

He shrugs his shoulders. ‘She is a woman like any other. She wants a child like any woman. Why should I not touch her belly as I would touch any woman?’

‘She is the queen,’ she repeats. ‘She cannot be touched. She has an anointed body.’

He smiles as if the holy truth is amusing. ‘Well, I hope someone has touched her, or there cannot be a child at all,’ he remarks.

‘Her husband. An anointed king,’ Maria says shortly. ‘And take care of how you speak. These are sacred matters.’

‘If I may not examine her, then I shall have to say only what I think from looking at her. If she cannot bear examination then she will have to make do with guesswork.’ He turns to me. ‘If you were an ordinary woman and not a queen, I would take your hands in mine now.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it is a hard word I have to tell you.’

Slowly, I stretch out my hands with the priceless rings on my fingers. He takes them gently, his dark hands as soft as the touch of a child. His dark eyes look into mine without fear, his face is tender, moved. ‘If you are bleeding then it is most likely that your womb is empty,’ he says. ‘There is no child there. If your breasts are not full then they are not filling with milk, your body is not preparing to feed a child. If you do not feel a child move inside you in the sixth month, then either the child is dead, or there is no child there. If you feel nothing then that is most probably because there is nothing to feel.’

‘My belly is still swollen.’ I draw back my cloak and show him the curve of my belly under my shift. ‘It is hard, I am not fat, I look as I did before I lost the first baby.’

‘It could be an infection,’ he says consideringly. ‘Or – pray Allah that it is not – it could be a growth, a swelling. Or it could be a miscarriage which you have not yet expelled.’

I draw my hands back. ‘You are ill-wishing me!’

‘Never,’ he says. ‘To me, here and now, you are not Catalina, Infanta of Spain, but simply a woman who has asked for my help. I am sorry for you.’

‘Some help!’ Maria de Salinas interrupts crossly. ‘Some help you have been!’

‘Anyway, I don’t believe it,’ I say. ‘Yours is one opinion, Dr Fielding has another. Why should I believe you, rather than a good Christian?’

He looks at me for a long time, his face tender. ‘I wish I could tell you a better opinion,’ he says. ‘But I imagine there are many who will tell you agreeable lies. I believe in telling the truth. I will pray for you.’

‘I don’t want your heathen prayers,’ I say roughly. ‘You can go, and take your bad opinion and your heresies with you.’

‘Go with God, Infanta,’ he says with dignity, as if I have not insulted him. He bows. ‘And since you don’t want my prayers to my God (praise be to His holy name), I shall hope instead that when you are in your time of trouble that your doctor is right, and your own God is with you.’

I let him leave, as silent as a dark cat down the hidden staircase, and I say nothing. I hear his sandals clicking down the stone steps, just like the hushed footsteps of the servants at my home. I hear the whisper of his long gown, so unlike the stiff brush of English cloth. I feel the air gradually lose the scent of him, the warm spicy scent of my home.

And when he is gone, quite gone, and the downstairs door is shut and I hear Maria de Salinas turn the key in the lock, then I find that I want to weep – not just because he has told me such bad news, but because one of the few people in the world who has ever told me the truth has gone.