Ferdinand of Aragon. He came to her in disguise. Without any servants, without any soldiers, he rode through the night and came to the castle where she was struggling to survive. He had himself brought in, and threw off his hat and cape so she saw him, and knew him at once.’
Arthur was rapt. ‘Really?’
Catalina smiled. ‘Isn’t it like a romance? She told me that she loved him at once, fell in love on sight like a princess in a poem. He proposed marriage to her then and there, and she accepted him then and there. He fell in love with her that night, at first sight, which is something that no princess can expect. My mother, my father, were blessed by God. He moved them to love and their hearts followed their interests.’
‘God looks after the kings of Spain,’ Arthur remarked, half-joking.
She nodded. ‘Your father was right to seek our friendship. We are making our kingdom from al Andalus, the lands of the Moorish princes. We have Castile and Aragon, now we have Granada and we will have more. My father’s heart is set on Navarre, and he will not stop there. I know he is determined to have Naples. I don’t think he will be satisfied until all the south and western regions of France are ours. You will see. He has not made the borders he wants for Spain yet.’
‘They married in secret?’ he asked, still amazed at this royal couple who had taken their lives into their own hands and made their own destiny.
She looked slightly sheepish. ‘He told her he had a dispensation, but it was not properly signed. I am afraid that he tricked her.’
He frowned. ‘Your wonderful father lied to his saintly wife?’
She gave a little rueful smile. ‘Indeed, he will do anything to get his own way. You quickly learn it when you have dealings with him. He always thinks ahead, two, perhaps three, steps ahead. He knew my mother was devout and would not marry without the dispensation and ole! – there is a dispensation in her hand.’
‘But they put it right later?’
‘Yes, and though his father and her brother were angry, it was the right thing to do.’
‘How could it be the right thing to do? To defy your family? To disobey your own father? That’s a sin. It breaks a commandment. It is a cardinal sin. No Pope could bless such a marriage.’
‘It was God’s will,’ she said confidently. ‘None of them knew that it was God’s will. But my mother knew. She always knows what God wills.’
‘How can she be so sure? How could she be so sure then, when she was only a girl?’
She chuckled. ‘God and my mother have always thought alike.’
He laughed and tweaked the lock of her hair. ‘She certainly did the right thing in sending you to me.’
‘She did,’ Catalina said. ‘And we shall do the right thing by the country.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have such plans for us when we come to the throne.’
‘What shall we do?’
Arthur hesitated. ‘You will think me a child, my head filled with stories from books.’
‘No I shan’t. Tell me!’
‘I should like to make a council, like the first Arthur did. Not like my father’s council, which is just filled with his friends who fought for him, but a proper council of all the kingdom. A council of knights, one for each county. Not chosen by me because I like their company, but chosen by their own county – as the best of men to represent them. And I should like them to come to the table and each of them should know what is happening in their own county, they should report. And so if a crop is going to fail and there is going to be hunger we should know in time and send food.’
Catalina sat up, interested. ‘They would be our advisors. Our eyes and ears.’
‘Yes. And I should like each of them to be responsible for building defences, especially the ones in the north and on the coasts.’
‘And for mustering troops once a year, so we are always ready for attack,’ she added. ‘They will come, you know.’
‘The Moors?’
She nodded. ‘They are defeated in Spain for now, but they are as strong as ever in Africa, in the Holy Lands, in Turkey and the lands beyond. When they need more land they will move again into Christendom. Once a year in the spring, the Ottoman sultan goes to war, like other men plough the fields. They will come against us. We cannot know when they will come, but we can be very certain that they will do so.’
‘I want defences all along the south coast against France, and against the Moors,’ Arthur said. ‘A string of castles, and beacons behind them, so that when we come under attack in – say – Kent, we can know about it in London, and everyone can be warned.’
‘You will need to build ships,’ she said. ‘My mother commissioned fighting ships from the dockyard in Venice.’
‘We have our own dockyards,’ he said. ‘We can build our own ships.’
‘How shall we raise the money for all these castles and ships?’ Isabella’s daughter asked the practical question.
‘Partly from taxing the people,’ he said. ‘Partly from taxing the merchants and the people who use the ports. It is for their safety, they should pay. I know people hate the taxes but that is because they don’t see what is done with the money.’
‘We will need honest tax collectors,’ Catalina said. ‘My father says that if you can collect the taxes that are due and not lose half of them along the way it is better than a regiment of cavalry.’
‘Yes, but how d’you find men that you can trust?’ Arthur thought aloud. ‘At the moment, any man who wants to make a fortune gets himself a post of collecting taxes. They should work for us, not for themselves. They should be paid a wage and not collect on their own account.’
‘That has never been achieved by anyone but the Moors,’ she said. ‘The Moors in al Andalus set up schools and even universities for the sons of poor men, so that they had clerks that they could trust. And their great offices of court are always done by the young scholars, sometimes the young sons of their king.’
‘Shall I take a hundred wives to get a thousand clerks for the throne?’ he teased her.
‘Not another single one.’
‘But we have to find good men,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You need loyal servants to the crown, those who owe their salary to the crown and their obedience to the crown. Otherwise they work for themselves and they take bribes and all their families become over-mighty.’
‘The church could teach them,’ Catalina suggested. ‘Just as the imam teaches the boys for the Moors. If every parish church was as learned as a mosque with a school attached to it, if every priest knew he had to teach reading and writing, then we could found new colleges at the universities, so that boys could go on and learn more.’
‘Is it possible?’ he asked. ‘Not just a dream?’
She
