unless we can keep France out of the narrow seas.’
‘If Juana’s son inherits the Hapsburg lands then he will have two kingdoms,’ she indicated. ‘Spain and also the Netherlands.’
‘And your son will have all of England, an alliance with Scotland, and all our lands in France,’ he said, making a sweep with his spread palm. ‘They will be a powerful pair of cousins.’
She smiled at the thought of it, and Henry saw the ambition in her. ‘You would like to have a son who would rule half of Christendom?’
‘What woman would not?’ she said. ‘And my son and Juana’s son could surely defeat the Moors, could drive them back and back beyond the Mediterranean Sea?’
‘Or perhaps you might find a way to live in peace,’ he suggested. ‘Just because one man calls Him Allah, and another calls him God is no reason for believers to be enemies, surely?’
At once Catalina shook her head. ‘It will have to be a war forever, I think. My mother says that it is the great battle between Good and Evil which will go on until the end of time.’
‘Then you will be in danger forever,’ he started, when there was a tap on the great wooden door of the library. It was the page that Henry had sent running, bringing a flustered goldsmith who had been waiting for days to show his work to the king and was rather surprised to be summoned in a moment.
‘Now,’ Henry said to his daughter-in-law, ‘I have a treat for you.’
She looked up at him. ‘Good God,’ he thought. ‘It would be a man of stone who did not want this little flower in his bed. I swear that I could make her smile, and at any rate, I would enjoy trying.’
‘Have you?’
Henry gestured to the man who flapped out a cloth of maroon velvet from his pocket, and then spilled the contents of his knapsack on to the scarlet background. A tumble of jewels, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, pearls, chains, lockets, earrings and brooches was swiftly spread before Catalina’s widening gaze.
‘You shall have your pick,’ Henry said, his voice warm and intimate. ‘It is my private gift to you, to bring the smile back to your pretty face.’
She hardly heard him, she was at the table in a moment, the goldsmith holding up one rich item after another. Henry watched her indulgently. So she might be a princess with a pure blood line of Castilian aristocrats, while he was the grandson of a working man; but she was a girl as easily bought as any other. And he had the means to please her.
‘Silver?’ he asked.
She turned a bright face to him. ‘Not silver,’ she said decisively.
Henry remembered that this was a girl who had seen the treasure of the Incas cast at her feet.
‘Gold then?’
‘I do prefer gold.’
‘Pearls?’
She made a little moue with her mouth.
‘My God, she has a kissable mouth,’ he thought. ‘Not pearls?’ he asked aloud.
‘They are not my greatest favourite,’ she confided. She smiled up at him. ‘What is your favourite stone?’
‘Why, she is flirting with me,’ he said to himself, stunned at the thought. ‘She is playing me like she would an indulgent uncle. She is reeling me in like a fish.’
‘Emeralds?’
She smiled again.
‘No. This,’ she said simply.
She had picked out, in a moment, the most expensive thing in the jeweller’s pack, a collar of deepest blue sapphires with a matching pair of earrings. Charmingly, she held the collar against her smooth cheeks so that he could look from the jewels to her eyes. She took a step closer towards him so that he could smell the scent on her hair, orange-blossom water from the gardens of the Alhambra. She smelled as if she were an exotic flower herself. ‘Do they match my eyes?’ she asked him. ‘Are my eyes as blue as sapphires?’
He took a little breath, surprised at the violence of his response. ‘They are. You shall have them,’ he said, almost choking on his desire for her. ‘You shall have this and anything else you like. You shall name your … your … wish.’
The look she threw up at him was of pure delight. ‘And my ladies too?’
‘Call your ladies, they shall have their pick.’
She laughed with pleasure and ran to the door. He let her go. He did not trust himself to stay in the room without chaperones. Hastily, he took himself out into the hall and met his mother, returning from hearing Mass.
He kneeled and she put her fingers on his head in her blessing. ‘My son.’
‘My lady mother.’
He rose to his feet. She quickly took in the flush of his face and his suppressed energy. ‘Has something troubled you?’
‘No!’
She sighed. ‘Is it the queen? Is it Elizabeth?’ she asked wearily. ‘Is she complaining about the Scots’ marriage for Margaret again?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I have not seen her today.’
‘She will have to accustom herself,’ she said. ‘A princess cannot choose whom she marries and when she leaves home. Elizabeth would know that if she had been properly brought up. But she was not.’
He gave his crooked smile. ‘That is hardly her fault.’
His mother’s disdain was apparent. ‘No good would ever have come from her mother,’ she said shortly. ‘Bad breeding, the Woodvilles.’
Henry shrugged and said nothing. He never defended his wife to his mother – her malice was so constant and so impenetrable that it was a waste of time to try to change her mind. He never defended his mother to his wife; he never had to. Queen Elizabeth never commented on her difficult mother-in-law or her demanding husband. She took him, his mother, his autocratic rule, as if they were natural hazards, as unpleasant and as inevitable as bad weather.
‘You should not let her disturb you,’ his mother said.
‘She has never disturbed me,’ he said, thinking of the princess who did.
I am certain now that the king likes me, above all his daughters, and I am so glad of it. I am used to being the favourite daughter, the baby of the family. I like it when I am the favourite of the king, I like to feel special.
When he saw that I was sad at my court going back to Spain and leaving me in England he spent the afternoon with me, showing me his library, talking about his maps, and finally, giving me an exquisite collar of sapphires. He let me pick out exactly what I wanted from the goldsmith’s pack, and he
