one hand on the central stone post, one on the wall. Catalina followed him, lingering at every deep-set arrowslit window, looking down into the valley where the Teme had burst its banks and was like a silver lake over the water meadows. It was cold, even for March in the Borders, and Catalina shivered as if a stranger was walking on her grave.
‘My love,’ he said, looking back up the narrow stairs towards her. ‘Courage. Your mother would have courage.’
‘She ordered this thing,’ she said crossly. ‘She thought it was for my benefit. But a man died for her ambition, and now I have to face his sister.’
‘She did it for you,’ he reminded her. ‘And nobody blames you.’ They came to the floor below the princess’s suite of rooms and without hesitation, Arthur tapped on the thick wooden door of the warden’s apartments and went in.
The square room overlooking the valley was the match of Catalina’s presence chamber upstairs, panelled with wood and hung with bright tapestries. There was a lady waiting for them, seated by the fireside, and when the door opened she rose. She was dressed in a pale grey gown with a grey hood on her hair. She was about thirty years of age; she looked at Catalina with friendly interest, and then she sank into a deep, respectful curtsey.
Disobeying the nip of his bride’s fingers, Arthur withdrew his arm and stepped back as far as the doorway. Catalina looked back at him reproachfully and then bobbed a small curtsey to the older woman. They rose up together.
‘I am so pleased to meet you,’ Lady Pole said sweetly. ‘And I am sorry not to have been here to greet you. But one of my children was ill and I went to make sure that he was well nursed.’
‘Your husband has been very kind,’ Catalina managed to say.
‘I hope so, for I left him a long list of commandments; I so wanted your rooms to be warm and comfortable. You must tell me if there is anything you would like. I don’t know Spain, so I didn’t know what things would give you pleasure.’
‘No! It is all…absolutely.’
The older woman looked at the princess. ‘Then I hope you will be very happy here with us,’ she said.
‘I hope to…’ Catalina breathed. ‘But I…I…’
‘Yes?’
‘I was very sorry to hear of the death of your brother.’ Catalina dived in. Her face, which had been white with discomfort, now flushed scarlet. She could feel her ears burning, and to her horror she heard her voice tremble. ‘Indeed, I was very sorry. Very…’
‘It was a great loss to me, and to mine,’ the woman said steadily. ‘But it is the way of the world.’
‘I am afraid that my coming…’
‘I never thought that it was any choice or any fault of yours, Princess. When our dear Prince Arthur was to be married his father was bound to make sure that his inheritance was secured. I know that my brother would never have threatened the peace of the Tudors, but they were not to know that. And he was ill-advised by a mischievous young man, drawn into some foolish plot…’ She broke off as her voice shook; but rapidly she recovered herself. ‘Forgive me. It still grieves me. He was an innocent, my brother. His silly plotting was proof of his innocence, not of his guilt. There is no doubt in my mind that he is in God’s keeping now, with all innocents.’
She smiled at the princess. ‘In this world, we women often find that we have no power over what men do. I am sure you would have wished my brother no harm, and indeed, I am sure that he would not have stood against you or against our dearest prince here – but it is the way of the world that harsh measures are sometimes taken. My father made some bad choices in his life, and God knows he paid for them in full. His son, though innocent, went the way of his father. A turn of the coin and it could all have been different. I think a woman has to learn to live with the turn of the coin even when it falls against her.’
Catalina was listening intently. ‘I know my mother and father wanted to be sure that the Tudor line was without challenge,’ she breathed. ‘I know that they told the king.’ She felt as if she had to make sure that this woman knew the depth of her guilt.
‘As I might have done if I had been them,’ Lady Margaret said simply. ‘Princess, I do not blame you, nor your mother or father. I do not blame our great king. Were I any one of them, I might have behaved just as they have done, and explained myself only to God. All I have to do, since I am not one of these great people but merely the humble wife to a fine man, is to take care how I behave, and how I will explain myself to God.’
‘I felt that I came to this country with his death on my conscience,’ Catalina admitted in a sudden rush.
The older woman shook her head. ‘His death is not on your conscience,’ she said firmly. ‘And it is wrong to blame yourself for another’s doing. Indeed, I would think your confessor would tell you: it is a form of pride. Let that be the sin that you confess, you need not take the blame for the sins of others.’
Catalina looked up for the first time and met the steady eyes of Lady Pole, and saw her smile. Cautiously she smiled back, and the older woman stretched out her hand, as a man would offer to shake on a bargain. ‘You see,’ she said pleasantly. ‘I was a Princess Royal myself once. I was the last Plantagenet princess, raised by King Richard in his nursery with his son. Of all the women in the world, I should know that there is more to life than a woman can ever control. There is the will of your husband, and of your parents, and of your king, and of your God. Nobody could blame a princess for the doings of a king. How could one ever challenge it? Or make any difference? Our way has to be obedience.’
Catalina, her hand in the warm, firm grasp, felt wonderfully reassured. ‘I am afraid I am not always very obedient,’ she confessed.
The older woman laughed. ‘Oh yes, for one would be a fool not to think for oneself,’ she allowed. ‘True obedience can only happen when you secretly think you know better, and you choose to bow your head. Anything short of that is just agreement, and any ninny-in-waiting can agree. Don’t you think?’
And Catalina, giggling with an English woman for the first time, laughed aloud and said: ‘I never wanted to be a ninny-in-waiting.’
‘Neither did I,’ gleamed Margaret Pole, who had been a Plantagenet, a Princess Royal and was now a mere wife buried in the fastness of the Tudor Borders. ‘I always know that I am myself, in my heart, whatever title I am given.’
I am so surprised to find that the woman whose presence I have dreaded is making the castle at Ludlow feel like a home for me. Lady Margaret Pole is a companion and friend to comfort me for the loss of my mother and sisters. I realise now that I have always lived in a world dominated by women: the queen my mother, my sisters, our ladies- and maids-in-waiting, and all the women servants of the seraglio. In the Alhambra we lived almost withdrawn from men, in rooms built for the pleasure and comfort of women. We lived almost in seclusion, in the privacy of the cool rooms, and ran through the courtyards and leaned on the balconies secure in the knowledge that half the palace was exclusively in the ownership of us women.
We would attend the court with my father, we were not hidden from sight; but the natural desire of women for privacy was served and emphasised by the design of the Alhambra where the prettiest rooms and the best gardens were reserved for us.
