and find the world dominated by men. Of course I have my rooms and my ladies, but any man can come and ask for admittance at any time. Sir Richard Pole or any other of Arthur’s gentlemen can come to my rooms without notice and think that they are paying me a compliment. The English seem to think it right and normal that men and women should mix. I have not yet seen a house with rooms that are exclusive to women, and no woman goes veiled as we sometimes did in Spain, not even when travelling, not even among strangers.
Even the royal family is open to all. Men, even strangers, can stroll through the royal palaces as long as they are smart enough for the guards to admit them. They can wait around in the queen’s presence chamber and see her any time she walks by, staring at her as if they were family. The great hall, the chapel, the queen’s public rooms are open to anyone who can find a good hat and a cape and pass as gentry. The English treat women as if they are boys or servants, they can go anywhere, they can be looked at by anyone. For a while I thought this was a great freedom, and for a while I revelled in it; then I realised the English women may show their faces but they are not bold like men, they are not free like boys; they still have to remain silent and obey.
Now with Lady Margaret Pole returned to the warden’s rooms it feels as if this castle has come under the rule of women. The evenings in the hall are less hearty, even the food at dinner has changed. The troubadours sing of love and less of battles, there is more French spoken and less Welsh.
My rooms are above, and hers are on the floor below, and we go up and down stairs all day to see each other. When Arthur and Sir Richard are out hunting, the castle’s mistress is still at home and the place does not feel empty any more. Somehow, she makes it a lady’s castle, just by being here. When Arthur is away, the life of the castle is not silent, waiting for his return. It is a warm, happy place, busy in its own day’s work.
I have missed having an older woman to be my friend. Maria de Salinas is a girl as young and silly as I am, she is a companion, not a mentor. Dona Elvira was nominated by my mother the queen to stand in a mother’s place for me; but she is not a woman I can warm to, though I have tried to love her. She is strict with me, jealous of her influence over me, ambitious to run the whole court. She and her husband, who commands my household, want to dominate my life. Since that first evening at Dogmersfield when she contradicted the king himself, I have doubted her judgement. Even now she continually cautions me against becoming too close with Arthur, as if it were wrong to love a husband, as if I could resist him! She wants to make a little Spain in England, she wants me to still be the Infanta. But I am certain that my way ahead in England is to become English.
Dona Elvira will not learn English. She affects not to be able to understand French when it is spoken with an English accent. The Welsh she treats with absolute contempt as barbarians on the very edge of civilisation, which is not very comfortable when we are visiting the townspeople of Ludlow. To be honest, sometimes she behaves more grandly than any woman I have ever known, she is prouder than my mother herself. She is certainly grander than me. I have to admire her, but I cannot truly love her.
But Margaret Pole was educated as the niece of a king and is as fluent in Latin as me. We speak French easily together, she is teaching me English, and when we come across a word we don’t know in any of our shared languages, we compose great mimes that set us wailing with giggles. I made her cry with laughing when I tried to demonstrate indigestion, and the guards came running, thinking we were under attack when she used all the ladies of the court and their maidservants to demonstrate to me the correct protocol for an English hunt in the field.
With Margaret, Catalina thought she could raise the question of her future, and her father-in-law of whom she was frankly nervous.
‘He was displeased before we came away,’ she said. ‘It is the question of the dowry.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Margaret replied. The two women were seated in a window, waiting for the men to come back from hunting. It was bitterly cold and damp outside, neither of them had wanted to go out. Margaret thought it better to volunteer nothing about the vexed question of Catalina’s dowry; she had already heard from her husband that the Spanish king had perfected the art of double dealing. He had agreed a substantial dowry for the Infanta, but then sent her to England with only half the money. The rest, he suggested, could be made up with the plate and treasure that she brought as her household goods. Outraged, King Henry had demanded the full amount. Sweetly Ferdinand of Spain replied that the Infanta’s household had been supplied with the very best, Henry could take his pick.
It was a bad way to start a marriage that was, in any case, founded only on greed and ambition, and a shared fear of France. Catalina was caught between the determination of two cold-hearted men. Margaret guessed that one of the reasons that Catalina had been sent to Ludlow Castle with her husband was to force her to use her own household goods and so diminish their value. If King Henry had kept her at court in Windsor or Greenwich or Westminster, she would have eaten off his plates and her father could have argued that the Spanish plate was as good as new, and must be taken as the dowry. But now, every night they ate from Catalina’s gold plates and every scrape of a careless knife knocked a little off the value. When it was time to pay the second half of the dowry, the King of Spain would find he would have to pay cash. King Ferdinand might be a hard man and a cunning negotiator but he had met his match in Henry Tudor of England.
‘He said that I should be a daughter to him,’ Catalina started carefully. ‘But I cannot obey him as a daughter should, if I am to obey my own father. My father tells me not to use my plate and to give it to the king. But he won’t accept it. And since the dowry is unpaid the king sends me away with no provision, he doesn’t even pay my allowance.’
‘Does the Spanish ambassador not advise you?’
Catalina made a little face. ‘He is the king’s own man,’ she said. ‘No help to me. I don’t like him. He is a Jew, but converted. An adaptable man. A Spaniard, but he has lived here for years. He is become a man for the Tudors, not for Aragon. I shall tell my father that he is poorly served by Dr de Puebla, but in the meantime, I have no good advice, and in my household Dona Elvira and my treasurer never stop quarrelling. She says that my goods and my treasure must be loaned to the goldsmiths to raise money, he says he will not let them out of his sight until they are paid to the king.’
‘And have you not asked the prince what you should do?’
Catalina hesitated. ‘It is a matter between his father and my father,’ she said cautiously. ‘I didn’t want to let it disturb us. He has paid for all my travelling expenses here. He is going to have to pay for my ladies’ wages at midsummer, and soon I will need new gowns. I don’t want to ask him for money. I don’t want him to think me greedy.’
‘You love him, don’t you?’ Margaret asked, smiling, and watched the younger woman’s face light up.
‘Oh yes,’ the girl breathed. ‘I do love him so.’
The older woman smiled. ‘You are blessed,’ she said gently. ‘To be a princess and to find love with the husband you are ordered to marry. You are blessed, Catalina.’
‘I know. I do think it is a sign of God’s especial favour to me.’
The older woman paused at the grandness of the claim, but did not correct her. The confidence of youth would wear away soon enough without any need for warnings. ‘And do you have any signs?’
Catalina looked puzzled.
‘Of
