“Because you’re here . . . that’s why. They loved poor Arthur. We all did. Particularly Katharine.”
“Katharine will have a new husband now.”
“Poor Katharine. She cannot like the change to a little boy.”
“How do you know?”
“I listen. She has asked her mother to take her away from here . . . to take her home . . . so that she doesn’t have to marry you.”
“She wants to marry me.”
“Oh no, she does not. I know she has written to her mother asking to be taken home.”
His eyes narrowed. It couldn’t be true. He was feeling gallant. He would have smiled at her, pressed her hand reassuringly. He liked to play the noble knight. That was what he had been taught to believe in. Chivalry. It was so necessary to knighthood. He had been thinking that he was rescuing Katharine from poverty at Durham House, making her important because of her alliance with him . . . and all the time she was writing to her mother begging to be taken home!
He would have liked to appear in her eyes as the chivalric knight who was going to rescue her from poverty and uncertainty, who was going to protect her from her fate. It should all have been very much in the knightly tradition and she had spoilt it all by writing to her mother and begging her to take her away.
She was seventeen years old. It was a mature age of course but that had not deterred him. He had cast his eyes on many a woman of her age who had been ready to fondle him. Charles Brandon had talked to him of his adventures with women and Charles had already a reputation of being a rake.
So it was not her age. And to think that he . . . Henry the Prince of Wales, king-to-be, did not appear in an attractive light to this woman who was so sorely in need of his protection.
His grandmother had explained to him how important the ceremony was. She often talked to him in place of his father who was too busy to do so. His father believed that the Countess of Richmond, being a woman and an extremely clever one, would understand children better than he did.
She was fifty-eight years old, for she had been barely fourteen when her son Henry Tudor had been born so that there was not a great difference in their ages. She seemed very old to Young Henry; she was small and thin and very austere looking; and rarely wore anything but the black and white of a nun. She was very religious, attended Mass five times a day, and spent a great time on her knees praying although she confessed that this resulted in excruciating back pains.
Skelton had said ironically: “That will increase her reward in Heaven.” And Henry had laughed as he always had laughed with Skelton. But he was in awe of his grandmother all the same.
Yet she adored him. He sensed that and he loved her for it. Not that she actually put her adoration into words. That would not have been her way. But her assiduous care for him and the manner in which she looked at him— when she thought he was not aware of it—betrayed her. He was strong, healthy and vigorous and she liked it. Of course Arthur had been something of a paragon with his quiet and studious ways but he had made them anxious in a way he, Henry, never had.
His grandmother’s piety impressed the people although Henry perceived that they did not greatly like her. It was the same with his father. Serious-minded men knew that Henry the Seventh had done a great deal for the country’s prosperity, but they did not like him all the same.
Henry was constantly hearing about his maternal grandfather, Edward the Fourth. There was a king they liked. He had heard the whispered comments of those who had grandparents old enough to remember. “When he came riding through the town the citizens hid their daughters.”
There was a king. Large, handsome and romantic.
Henry thought that when he was a king he would like to resemble his maternal grandfather rather than his father.
Meanwhile he was only twelve years old and he had to attend his betrothal to his brother’s widow.
His grandmother explained to him. “This betrothal will be
“So,” said Henry, “I shall be married to Katharine of Aragon.”
“No, not exactly married. But you will have gone through this form of betrothal.”
“Does it mean that we shall most certainly be married later?”
His grandmother hesitated. She knew what was in the King’s mind and that he was determined to leave a loophole of escape so that he might keep the Spanish Sovereigns on tenterhooks—and at the same time keep that part of the dowry which they had already paid.
Henry noticed her hesitation and was nonplussed. “Why do we go through with such a ceremony if it is not really a marriage?” he demanded.
“The Spaniards want it.”
“Ah, they think I am a desirable husband do they?”
His grandmother gave one of her wintry smiles, which sat oddly on her austere features.
“They know, my boy,” she said firmly, “that you are one of the most desirable
“Who are the others equally so?” cried Henry, who could not bear competition without the immediate desire to eliminate it.
“Oh, we cannot go into that,” said his grandmother. “There are a few princes with hopes of inheritance. But you will be the King of England.”
Her face darkened for she thought immediately that he could only be so on the death of his father and her love for her son was almost fanatical and far exceeded even that she felt for her grandchildren.
