Anxiously waiting for Ferdinand’s return, Juana knew that her chance of governing as a queen in her own right was slipping inexorably from her grasp. She did not give up: she brought her second son, three-year-old Prince Ferdinand, whom she had seen so infrequently, to her side so that he could not be used as a hostage against her; she signed decrees; she kept trying to re-form her council; she continued a few miles farther toward Granada with Philip’s corpse. Once Ferdinand was back, she knew that it would be to him that most eyes would turn.
For Juana, 1506 had been pivotal—but not in the ways she had hoped. The year had seen her return to Spain, but instead of independence it had brought her widowhood and a sharp lesson in the realities of power and the limitations of gender. With Ferdinand waiting impatiently for the weather to improve so that he could board his ship, 1507 boded no better.
Aside from the rare happiness of seeing her sister, albeit for such a short time, 1506 had brought Katherine no joy either. Her wedding to Prince Henry seemed as far away at the end of the year as it had been at the beginning. Her personal situation, dependent on Henry’s occasional handouts, had failed to improve. Yet it was in the years between Arthur’s death and her own eventual remarriage that so much of Katherine’s character formed and crystallized. As a fifteen-year-old, she had come from Spain with firmly fixed ideas that would never change until her dying day: marriage mattered; family mattered; dynasty mattered; religion underpinned everything and must be defended at all costs; life brought suffering and struggle as well as joy and happiness. But she had known nothing of the nature of power, or that success in her world required pragmatism, scheming, even downright deceit and mendacity. Juana had learned that lesson in Burgundy; she was experiencing it all too painfully in Spain. Only after the incident with Doña Elvira did Katherine start to realize the skills she needed to function effectively in a male-dominated society: she became a student of the art of politics. Once perfected, it was a craft she would never lose, and one for which she developed an abiding passion—her mother’s daughter indeed.
In Ferdinand and in Henry VII, both highly polished tacticians, Katherine had superb tutors. In Dr. Roderigo Gonzalvo de Puebla, she had another. An expert in canon and civil law and a former royal administrator in Andalusia, de Puebla first came to England in 1487 or 1488 to negotiate Katherine’s marriage to Arthur. He returned in 1494 and remained for the next twenty years. Though there was a succession of additional ambassadors, including Don Pedro de Ayala, Ferdinand, Duke of Estrada, and the Knight Commander of Membrilla, Gutierre Gomez de Fuensalida, none stayed as long as de Puebla, and none could match him in his understanding of England, its peoples, and above all its king.
Fiercely loyal to the Catholic Monarchs, he supported their daughter through the many trials of her widowhood with commendable tolerance, tact, and at times sheer genius. Her battles were his battles. All was at considerable cost to himself, for though Ferdinand and Isabella demanded almost body and soul dedication to their causes from their ambassador, they berated him soundly if things went wrong and paid him his meager salary only sporadically. Tacked on to the end of many a dispatch to his monarchs, we read his ever-respectful requests for payment. In one, he begs them to send him “enough to have always something to eat”; in another, he says that his salary “is only half as great as that of other Spanish ambassadors” and begs for money to be sent; in another, he writes that he had “sold all his property, and been obliged to incur debts” for which he lived “in fear of being sent to prison.” His penchant for eating at the royal palace whenever he could, supposedly to save money, made him the butt of jokes that brought a rare smile to the austere features of Margaret Beaufort and made Henry VII laugh out loud.
The one person who could empathize with Katherine’s financial predicament was de Puebla. And yet she never liked him and spent hours writing to her father demanding that the ambassador be recalled; if the princess disliked anyone, she did so in spades. De Puebla, she told Ferdinand waspishly, was “a most faithful servant,” but “to the King of England”; he was more a “vassal of the King of England” than a servant of her father’s; the ambassador was “the cause” of all her troubles; his letters were likely to be “full of calumny and lies,” particularly if they were about her or her conduct. Sometimes she was still more explicit:
I beg your Highness that nothing which he [de Puebla] may say or write to you may be credited, excepting in so far as it shall agree with what I say. For if what I say be contrary to what he reports, your Highness may be assured that what he writes is also contrary to the interests of your Highness.
She took pride in her ability to “dissimulate” with de Puebla, using against him the very technique he had been at pains to instill in her over the Doña Elvira affair. As for why she was not married, that too was the fault of poor de Puebla, who, she continued, “puts more difficulties than ever in the way of my marriage being concluded.” The only thing to do, she repeatedly told her father, was to send a better, more accomplished ambassador who would serve both Ferdinand and herself with the steadfast commitment that they undoubtedly deserved. Only when it was too late did the rash princess come to respect the fidelity and sheer expertise of the man she had derided and whose qualities she had been so quick to dismiss.
Fortunately for de Puebla, he was not the only envoy Katherine so casually castigated. Though Ferdinand might profess to love her the most, preferring her “to all his other children” and assuring her that he “loved her more than ever a father loved his daughter,” he understood that her outbursts were born of frustration at her situation in political limbo. Katherine could be charming, virtuous, gracious, sweet, and kind, but she was also impatient, stubborn, quick to express her feelings, and quick to judge. Her view of the world was still monochromatic. Given time, she would learn to ponder, to hold back, to appreciate the good qualities of those around her, but until she did, her father knew how to handle her. Thus he could soothe her ruffled feathers by declaring that he placed “as implicit faith in her communications as in the Gospel” while simultaneously allaying his ambassadors’ disquiet.
Writing to Fuensalida, the ambassador he sent to assist de Puebla in response to Katherine’s repeated demands, only for the princess to rapidly transfer her fire from de Puebla to the new envoy, the king said he was “very sorry to hear what had passed” but appealed to Fuensalida “to forget what has happened.” Knowing that appeasement tended to disarm Katherine, Ferdinand recommended that Fuensalida practice it when coping with her tempers and moods, even suggesting that the ambassador should “beg the princess to forgive” him. In any case, warned Ferdinand, nothing about her views or her treatment of the affronted ambassador should leak out to the English, even if Fuensalida suffered “injustice” as a result. It was far better that Henry see only her submissive, docile side; he would not want a headstrong bride for his only son.
Yes, Ferdinand certainly knew his daughter. And he also realized that if treated carefully, she could become a valuable tool in attaining the marriage that Ferdinand was deeply convinced would benefit Spain and of which she was the living symbol. Now in her early twenties, she was of an age to show her worth. If her role in life was to represent her country’s interests, it was time she started doing that more vigorously.
From 1502 onward, but especially after Doña Elvira departed in disgrace to Burgundy, Katherine embarked upon a period of apprenticeship in which she learned the mechanics of diplomacy. The major topic upon which she honed her craft was the one of paramount importance to her sex: marriage. She certainly had plenty of material, for she had seen several matches. While still a girl in Spain she had witnessed her sisters Isabella, Juana, and Maria used as agents of foreign policy; indeed, that was what she was herself. Then, in the summer of 1503, she watched Henry VII’s eldest daughter, thirteen-year-old Princess Margaret, used in a similar fashion when Margaret left Richmond for Scotland to marry King James IV. By then far more worldly wise than the young girl who had come to marry Arthur, Katherine was beginning to perceive the complex negotiation, delicate bargaining, and consummate skill needed to effect royal marriages.
In very few marriages, however, did the bride herself play much part in the behind-the-scenes maneuverings that would so determine the shape of her life: Katherine was an exception. She worked to bring about her match with Prince Henry and she worked tirelessly, because to her this union was her God-given destiny. The match was important; it could not be allowed to slip away.
Ferdinand had encouraged her to believe that her marriage to Prince Henry was already a fact and was accepted as such by God. In 1507, advising her to “try to win the good will” of Henry VII, he reminded his daughter always to speak of her marriage “as a thing beyond doubt.” Such advice fell on highly receptive ears; to the princess, her marriage to the English heir apparent was indeed “a thing beyond doubt.” The only question was how to persuade Henry and his son of that. In pursuing her goal, Katherine was to discover that few policy objectives could be viewed in isolation; each was but one strand among many. For Ferdinand, upon these strands depended the security of Spain; Katherine, obsessed with her own match, began to appreciate how that slotted into the wider European picture and why she must strive to bring it about.
Ferdinand continued his tutelage by explaining to her just why he had decided to return to Spain and take up the burden of ruling Castile. Katherine had seen Juana before Philip’s death. Then, she had not considered her sister deranged. Indeed, the two had corresponded since Juana’s return to Castile. In a letter dated October 17, 1506, and once erroneously believed to be addressed to Ferdinand’s second wife, Germaine de Foix, Katherine put her sister’s mind at rest on the state of her own health. “Since I wrote the other day,” Katherine said, “I had more attacks of fever, but they have left me, as you desire, so that, thanks to God, I am somewhat better now, and in better spirits.” Her note gives no hint that Katherine thought her sister anything but rational.
Rationality, of course, was not what Ferdinand wanted associated with Juana. And when writing to Katherine, he was quick to act as his own propagandist: he wanted to ensure that Katherine did not support her sister against him. Thus he was at pains to tell her that he was going back to Castile only because everyone, including Juana herself, was entreating him to do so. Having heard these pleas, Ferdinand, a devoted father and responsible monarch, could never desert his daughter or her people in their hour of need. Or so he said. What he did not say, of course, was that those who so earnestly begged him to return were in fact his own supporters, men such as Archbishop Cisneros.
Katherine, however, believed her father. She responded as he had known she would:
I am so glad your Highness is returning to Castile … The advantages are very great. Not to speak of the comfort and consolation of the Queen [Juana], although that is also of great importance. I rejoice to think that the kingdom to which the Queen my lady [Isabella] succeeded is to remain in the hands of your Highness, and will lose nothing of the prosperity and security in which she left it.
Even at this juncture, though, Katherine did not forget her own predicament, for she continued: “Besides, I hope that, by staying in that kingdom, your Highness will be in a better position to remedy all that concerns me.” Since her father had blamed Philip for the nonpayment of her dowry, she had very neatly hoisted Ferdinand by his own petard. Now that Ferdinand was in control again, perhaps he would sort things out and procure the requisite funds so that a date could be set for her wedding. Katherine was nothing if not single-minded and perseverant.
Ferdinand’s story was that Juana could not rule herself because she was too devastated by Philip’s demise to do anything. She had suffered a blow that caused her “unspeakable affliction,” rendering her incapable of action. She was in retirement, seclusion, despair, her country going to rack and ruin around her. And he assiduously spread the stories of Juana’s worryingly unhealthy devotion to her husband’s corpse as manifested by her refusal to sanction its burial. In a later letter to de Puebla, Ferdinand craftily gave voice to his counterfeit concern:
The said Queen, my daughter, still carries about with her the corpse of King Philip, her late husband. Before I arrived they could never persuade her to bury him, and since my arrival she has declared that she does not wish the said corpse to be buried. On account of her health, and in order to content her, I do not contradict her in anything … but I shall endeavour to persuade her by degrees to permit the corpse to be buried.
What the king would not tell Katherine was that he was just as determined that Philip would not be buried in Granada as Juana was determined that he would be. Juana’s true reason for pushing for the Granada interment—that it was better for her children’s inheritance prospects—was better left unexplained, the fiction of a distraught Juana maintained.
Fighting a lone and punishing battle, Juana could not look to Katherine for help, for she too was on Ferdinand’s side. So, almost certainly, was Juana’s third sister, Maria. Since traveling to Portugal to marry King Manuel more than six years previously, she had settled down to contented domesticity with alacrity. She bore child after child, most of whom survived, and gave way to her husband in all things. Manuel supported Ferdinand and had done so since 1504, when he had been forced to choose between him and Philip. “He loveth and favoureth most the King of Arragon,” Henry VII had been informed by the envoys he had instructed to investigate the matter. And Manuel was hardly likely now to switch his support from Ferdinand to Juana, the woman who was so weighed down by grief that she could not bear to part with her husband’s coffin. Thus neither of her sisters would help Juana; they had no reason to question Ferdinand’s statements that she was unfit to govern.
Katherine, moreover, was starting to enjoy becoming so involved in Ferdinand’s schemes and strategies. Sitting within her apartments, she penned letter after letter to him in her own hand, even managing to write in cipher, although she said that her father and his secretary would laugh if they could see her. She pored over Ferdinand’s replies, and slowly she began to act as his ambassador herself. She could not instigate events or change her father’s decisions—nor did she try to, particularly because father and daughter were at one over the question of her remarriage. Yet if policy formation could never be within her remit, steering through what her father determined, and perhaps venturing to give advice, was a different matter, and those were the areas in which the princess found her vocation. She was learning to be a political animal.
To think of Katherine as a passive, submissive woman, akin to the legendary Patience sitting on her monument, is romantic but very wrong. She might whine and wail to Ferdinand that she could no longer endure what she had gone through after Arthur’s death, or that “no woman, of whatever station in life can have suffered more,” but, in what to her was a just cause, a godly cause, she would fight to the bitter end. And it was as a widow that she developed the skills that one day would be her lifeline, skills that enabled her to fight a form of crusade which to her was every bit as important as that once fought by her mother.