flurries of slush which clings in clumps to trees and turrets and sits in the river like old sherbet.
When Arthur comes to my room he slips along the battlements like a skater and this morning, as he went back to his room, we were certain we would be discovered because he slid on fresh ice and fell and cursed so loud that the sentry on the next tower put his head out and shouted ‘Who goes there?’ and I had to call back that it was only me, feeding the winter birds. So Arthur whistled at me and told me it was the call of a robin and we both laughed so much that we could barely stand. I am certain that the sentry knew anyway, but it was so cold he did not come out.
Now today Arthur has gone out riding with his council, who want to look at a site for a new corn mill while the river is in spate and partly blocked by snow and ice, and Lady Margaret and I are staying at home and playing cards.
It is cold and grey, it is wet all the time, even the walls of the castle weep with icy moisture, but I am happy. I love him, I would live with him anywhere, and spring will come and then summer. I know we will be happy then too.
The tap on the door came late at night. She threw it open.
‘Ah love, my love! Where have you been?’
He stepped into the room and kissed her. She could taste the wine on his breath. ‘They would not leave,’ he said. ‘I have been trying to get away to be with you for three hours at the very least.’
He picked her up off her feet and carried her to the bed. ‘But Arthur, don’t you want…?’
‘I want you.’
‘Tell me a story.’
‘Are you not sleepy now?’
‘No. I want you to sing me the song about the Moors losing the battle of Malaga.’
Catalina laughed. ‘It was the battle of Alhama. I shall sing you some of the verses; but it goes on and on.’
‘Sing me all of them.’
‘We would need all night,’ she protested.
‘We have all night, thank God,’ he said, joy in his voice. ‘We have all night and we have every night for the rest of our lives, thank God for it.’
‘It is a forbidden song,’ she said. ‘Forbidden by my mother herself.’
‘So how did you learn it?’ Arthur demanded, instantly diverted.
‘Servants,’ she said carelessly. ‘I had a nursemaid who was a Morisco and she would forget who I was, and who she was, and sing to me.’
‘What’s a Morisco? And why was the song banned?’ he asked curiously.
‘A Morisco means “little Moor” in Spanish,’ she explained. ‘It’s what we call the Moors who live in Spain. They are not really Moors like those in Africa. So we call them little Moors, or Moros. As I left, they were starting to call themselves Mudajjan – one allowed to remain.’
‘One allowed to remain?’ he asked. ‘In their own land?’
‘It’s not their land,’ she said instantly. ‘It’s ours. Spanish land.’
‘They had it for seven hundred years,’ he pointed out. ‘When you Spanish were doing nothing but herding goats in the mountains, they were building roads and castles and universities. You told me so yourself.’
‘Well, it’s ours now,’ she said flatly.
He clapped his hands like a sultan. ‘Sing the song, Scheherazade. And sing it in French, you barbarian, so I can understand it.’
Catalina put her hands together like a woman about to pray and bowed low to him.
‘Now that is good,’ Arthur said, revelling in her. ‘Did you learn that in the harem?’
She smiled at him and tipped up her head and sang.
“An old man cries to the king: Why comes this sudden calling? – Alas! Alhama!
Alas my friends, Christians have won Alhama – Alas! Alhama! A white-bearded imam answers: This has thou merited, oh King! – Alas! Alhama!
In an evil hour thou slewest the Abencerrages, flower of Granada – Alas! Alhama!
Not Granada, not kingdom, not thy life shall long remain – Alas! Alhama!’
She fell silent. ‘And it was true,’ she said. ‘Poor Boabdil came out of the Alhambra Palace, out of the red fort that they said would never fall, with the keys on a silk cushion, bowed low and gave them to my mother and my father and rode away. They say that at the mountain pass he looked back at his kingdom, his beautiful kingdom, and wept, and his mother told him to weep like a woman for what he could not hold as a man.’
Arthur let out a boyish crack of laughter. ‘She said what?’
Catalina looked up, her face grave. ‘It was very tragic.’
‘It is just the sort of thing my grandmother would say,’ he said delightedly. ‘Thank God my father won his crown. My grandmother would be just as sweet in defeat as Boabdil’s mother. Good God: “weep like a woman for what you cannot hold as a man.” What a thing to say to a man as he walks away in defeat!’
Catalina laughed too. ‘I never thought of it like that,’ she said. ‘It isn’t very comforting.’
‘Imagine going into exile with your mother, and she so angry with you!’
‘Imagine losing the Alhambra, never going back there!’
He pulled her to him and kissed her face. ‘No regrets!’ he commanded.
At once she smiled for him. ‘Then divert me,’ she ordered. ‘Tell me about your mother and father.’
He thought for a moment. ‘My father was born an heir to the Tudors, but there were dozens in line for the throne before him,’ he said. ‘His father wanted him called Owen, Owen Tudor, a good Welsh name, but his father died before his birth, in the war. My grandmother was only a child of twelve when he was born, but she had her way and called him Henry – a royal name. You can see what she was thinking even then, even though she was little more than a child herself, and her husband was dead.
‘My father’s fortunes soared up and down with every battle of the civil war. One time he was a son of the ruling family, the next they were on the run. His uncle Jasper Tudor – you remember him – kept faith with my father and with the Tudor cause, but there was a final battle and our cause was lost, and our king executed. Edward came to the throne and my father was the last of the line. He was in such danger that Uncle Jasper broke out of the castle where they were being held and fled with him
