queried.
‘Yes, salad.’
‘What is it, exactly?’
‘It is vegetables that grow in the ground and you eat them without cooking them,’ she explained. ‘I was asking if he could plant some for me.’
‘You eat them raw? Without boiling?’
‘Yes, why not?’
‘Because you will be dreadfully ill, eating uncooked food in this country.’
‘Like fruit, like apples. You eat them raw.’
He was unconvinced. ‘More often cooked, or preserved or dried. And anyway, that is a fruit and not leaves. But what sorts of vegetables do you want?’
‘Lactuca,’ she said.
‘Lactuca?’ he repeated. ‘I have never heard of it.’
She sighed. ‘I know. You none of you seem to know anything of vegetables. Lactuca is like…’ She searched her mind for the truly terrible vegetable that she had been forced to eat, boiled into a pulp at one dinner at Greenwich. ‘Samphire,’ she said. ‘The closest thing you have to lactuca is probably samphire. But you eat lactuca without cooking and it is crisp and sweet.’
‘Vegetables? Crisp?’
‘Yes,’ she said patiently.
‘And you eat this in Spain?’
She nearly laughed at his appalled expression. ‘Yes. You would like it.’
‘And can we grow it here?’
‘I think he is telling me: no. He has never heard of such a thing. He has no seeds. He does not know where we would find such seeds. He does not think it would grow here.’ She looked up at the blue sky with the scudding rain clouds. ‘Perhaps he is right,’ she said, a little weariness in her voice. ‘I am sure that it needs much sunshine.’
Arthur turned to the gardener. ‘Ever heard of a plant called lactuca?’
‘No, Your Grace,’ the man said, his head bowed. ‘I’m sorry, Your Grace. Perhaps it is a Spanish plant. It sounds very barbaric. Is Her Royal Highness saying they eat grass there? Like sheep?’
Arthur’s lip quivered. ‘No, it is a herb, I think. I will ask her.’
He turned to Catalina and took her hand and tucked it in the crook of his arm. ‘You know sometimes in summer, it is very sunny and very hot here. Truly. You would find the midday sun was too hot. You would have to sit in the shade.’
She looked disbelievingly from the cold mud to the thickening clouds.
‘Not now, I know; but in summer. I have leaned against this wall and found it warm to the touch. You know, we grow strawberries and raspberries and peaches. All the fruit that you grow in Spain.’
‘Oranges?’
‘Well, perhaps not oranges,’ he conceded.
‘Lemons? Olives?’
He bridled. ‘Yes, indeed.’
She looked suspiciously at him. ‘Dates?’
‘In Cornwall,’ he asserted, straight-faced. ‘Of course it is warmer in Cornwall.’
‘Sugar cane? Rice? Pineapples?’
He tried to say yes, but he could not repress the giggles and she crowed with laughter, and fell on him.
When they were steady again he glanced around the inner bailey and said, ‘Come on, nobody will miss us for a while,’ and led her down the steps to the little sally-port and let them out of the hidden door.
A small path led them to the hillside which fell away steeply from the castle down to the river. A few lambs scampered off as they approached, a lad wandering after them. Arthur slid his arm around her waist and she let herself fall into pace with him.
‘We do grow peaches,’ he assured her. ‘Not the other things, of course. But I am sure we can grow your lactuca, whatever it is. All we need is a gardener who can bring the seeds and who has already grown the things you want. Why don’t you write to the gardener at the Alhambra and ask him to send you someone?’
‘Could I send for a gardener?’ she asked incredulously.
‘My love, you are going to be Queen of England. You can send for a regiment of gardeners.’
‘Really?’
Arthur laughed at the delight dawning on her face. ‘At once. Did you not realise it?’
‘No! But where should he garden? There is no room against the castle wall, and if we are to grow fruit as well as vegetables…’
‘You are Princess of Wales! You can plant your garden wherever you please. You shall have all of Kent if you want it, my darling.’
‘Kent?’
‘We grow apples and hops there, I think we might have a try at lactuca.’
Catalina laughed with him. ‘I didn’t think. I didn’t dream of sending for a gardener. If only I had brought one in the first place. I have all these useless ladies-in-waiting and I need a gardener.’
‘You could swap him for Dona Elvira.’
She gurgled with laughter.
‘Ah God, we are blessed,’ he said simply. ‘In each other and in our lives. You shall have anything you want, always. I swear it. Do you want to write to your mother? She can send you a couple of good men and I will get some land turned over at once.’
‘I will write to Juana,’ she decided. ‘In the Netherlands. She is in the north of Christendom like me. She must know what will grow in this weather. I shall write to her and see what she has done.’
‘And we shall eat lactuca!’ he said, kissing her fingers. ‘All day. We shall eat nothing but lactuca, like sheep grazing grass, whatever it is.’
‘Tell me a story.’
‘No, you tell me something.’
‘If you will tell me about the fall of Granada, again.’
‘I will tell you. But you have to explain something to me.’
Arthur stretched out and pulled her so that she was lying across the bed, her head on his shoulder. She could feel the rise and fall of his smooth chest as he breathed and hear the gentle thud of his heartbeat, constant as love.
‘I shall explain everything.’ She could hear the
