half of the dowry paid; but it was a gloomy couple of days while they packed their bags and said goodbye to the princess. She would be left with her small domestic household, her ladies, her chamberlain, her treasurer, and her immediate servants, but the rest of her entourage must leave. Even knowing as she did that this was the way of the world, that the wedding party always left after the wedding, did not make her feel any less bereft. She sent them with messages to everyone in Spain and with a letter for her mother.
From her daughter, Catalina, Princess of Wales, to Her Royal Highness of Castile and Aragon, and most dearest Madre,
Oh, Madre!
As these ladies and gentlemen will tell you, the prince and I have a good house near the river. It is called Baynard’s Castle although it is not a castle but a palace and newly built. There are no bath houses, for either ladies or men. I know what you are thinking. You cannot imagine it.
Dona Elvira has had the blacksmith make a great cauldron which they heat up on the fire in the kitchen and six serving men heave it to my room for my bath. Also, there are no pleasure gardens with flowers, no streams, no fountains, it is quite extraordinary. It all looks as if it is not yet built. At best, they have a tiny court which they call a knot garden where you can walk round and round until you are dizzy. The food is not good and the wine very sour. They eat nothing but preserved fruit and I believe they have never heard of vegetables.
You must not think that I am complaining, I wanted you to know that even with these small difficulties I am content to be the princess. Prince Arthur is kind and considerate to me when we meet, which is generally at dinner. He has given me a very beautiful mare of Barbary stock mixed with English, and I ride her every day. The gentlemen of the court joust (but not the princes); my champion is often the Duke of Buckingham who is very kind to me, he advises me as to the court and tells me how to go on. We all often dine in the English style, men and women together. The women have their own rooms but men visitors and male servants come and go out of them as if they were public, there is no seclusion for women at all. The only place I can be sure to be alone is if I lock myself in the necessary house – otherwise there are people everywhere.
Queen Elizabeth, though very quiet, is very kind to me when we meet and I like being in her company. My Lady the King’s Mother is very cold; but I think she is like that with everyone except the king and the princes. She dotes on her son and grandsons. She rules the court as if she were queen herself. She is very devout and very serious. I am sure she is very admirable in every way.
You will want to know if I am with child. There are no signs yet. You will want to know that I read my Bible or holy books for two hours every day, as you ordered, and that I go to Mass three times a day and I take communion every Sunday also. Father Alessandro Geraldini is well, and as great a spiritual guide and advisor in England as he was in Spain, and I trust to him and to God to keep me strong in the faith to do God’s work in England as you do in Spain. Dona Elvira keeps my ladies in good order and I obey her as I would you. Maria de Salinas is my best friend, here as at home, though nothing here is like Spain, and I cannot bear her to talk of home at all.
I will be the princess that you want me to be. I shall not fail you or God. I will be queen and I will defend England against the Moors.
Please write to me soon and tell me how you are. You seemed so sad and low when I left, I hope that you are better now. I am sure that the darkness that you saw in your mother will pass over you, and not rest on your life as it did on hers. Surely, God would not inflict sadness on you, who has always been His favourite? I pray for you and for Father every day. I hear your voice in my head, advising me all the time. Please write soon to your daughter who loves you so much,
Catalina
PS Although I am glad to be married, and to be called to do my duty for Spain and God, I miss you very much. I know you are a queen before a mother but I would be so glad to have one letter from you. C
The court bade a cheerful farewell to the Spanish but Catalina found it hard to smile and wave. After they had gone she went down to the river to see the last of the barges shrink and then disappear in the distance and King Henry found her there, a lonely figure, on the pier looking downstream, as if she wished she were going too.
He was too skilled with women to ask her what was wrong. He knew very well what was wrong: loneliness, and homesickness natural enough in a young woman of nearly sixteen years old. He had been an exile from England for almost all his own life, he knew very well the rise and fall of yearning that comes with an unexpected scent, the change of seasons, a farewell. To invite an explanation would only trigger a flood of tears and achieve nothing. Instead, he tucked her cold little hand under his arm and said that she must see his library which he had newly assembled at the palace and she could borrow books to read at any time. He threw an order over his shoulder to one of his pages as he led the princess to the library and walked her round the beautiful shelves, showing her not only the classical authors and the histories that were his own interest, but also the stories of romance and heroism which he thought more likely to divert her.
She did not complain, he noticed with pleasure, and she had rubbed her eyes dry as soon as she had seen him coming towards her. She had been raised in a hard school. Isabella of Spain had been a soldier’s wife and a soldier herself, she did not raise any of her girls to be self-indulgent. He thought there was not a young woman in England who could match this girl for grit. But there were shadows under the princess’s blue eyes and though she took the proffered volumes with a word of thanks she still did not smile.
‘And do you like maps?’ he asked her.
She nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘In my father’s library we have maps of the whole world, and Cristóbal Colón made him a map to show him the Americas.’
‘Does your father have a large library?’ he asked, jealous of his reputation as a scholar.
Her polite hesitation before she replied told him everything, told him that his library here, of which he had been so proud, was nothing to the learning of the Moors of Spain. ‘Of course my father has inherited many books, they are not all his own collection,’ Catalina said tactfully. ‘Many of them are Moorish authors, from Moorish scholars. You know that the Arabs translated the Greek authors before they were ever made into French or Italian, or English. The Arabs had all the sciences and all the mathematics when they were forgotten in Christendom. He has all the Moorish translations of Aristotle and Sophocles and everyone.’
He could feel his longing for the new learning like a hunger. ‘He has many books?’
‘Thousands of volumes,’ she said. ‘Hebrew and Arabic, Latin, and all the Christian languages too. But he doesn’t read them all, he has Arab scholars to study them.’
‘And the maps?’ he asked.
‘He is advised mostly by Arab navigators and map-makers,’ she said. ‘They travel so far overland, they understand how to chart their way by the stars. The sea voyages are just the same to them as a journey through the desert. They say that a watery waste is the same as a plain of sand, they use the stars and the moon to measure their journey in both.’
‘And does your father think that much profit will come from his discoveries?’ the king asked curiously. ‘We have all heard of these great voyages of Cristóbal Colón and the treasures he has brought back.’
