“But if they don’t?” I press her. “If my lady grandmother wants Harry for another princess?”
She turns and looks me directly in the eye, her beautiful face open to my scrutiny. “Margaret, I pray that this never happens to you. To love and to lose a husband is a terrible grief. But the only comfort I have is that I will do what my parents require, what Arthur wanted, and what God Himself has set as my destiny. I will be Queen of England. I have been called Princess of Wales since I was a baby in the nursery, I learned it as I learned my name. I won’t change my name now.”
I am stunned by her certainty. “I hope it never happens to me too. But if it did—I wouldn’t stay in Scotland. I’d come home to England.”
“You can’t do what you want when you are a princess,” she says simply. “You have to obey God and the king and queen, your mother and father. You’re not free, Margaret. You’re not like a plowman’s daughter. You are doing the work of God, you are going to be mother to a king, you are one below the angels, you have a destiny.”
I look around the bare room, and I notice for the first time that one or two of the tapestries are missing from the walls, and that there are gaps in the collection of silver plate on the sideboard. “Do you have enough money?” I ask her diffidently. “Enough for your household.”
She shakes her head without shame. “No,” she says. “My father will not send me an allowance, he says I am the responsibility of the king, and your father will not pay me my widow’s dower until all my bridal money has been paid to him. I am between two millstones and they are grinding me down.”
“But what will you do?”
She smiles at me as if she is quite unafraid. “I’ll endure. I will outlast them both. Because I know my destiny is to be Queen of England.”
“I wish I were like you,” I say honestly. “I am certain of nothing.”
“You will be. When you are tested, you will be certain too. We are princesses, we were born to be queens, we are sisters.”
I ride away from the house on my expensive palfrey with my fur cape buttoned up to my nose, and I think I will report to my grandmother that Katherine of Arrogant is as proud and as beautiful as ever, but that she does not intend to marry my father. I will not tell her that the princess reminded me, in her stubborn determination, of my lady grandmother herself. If it comes to a battle of wills they will be well matched—but, actually, I would put my money on Katherine.
I will not tell my grandmother either that, for the first time, I like Katherine. I cannot help but think she will make a wonderful Queen of England.
THE BISHOP OF SALISBURY’S HOUSE, LONDON, ENGLAND, JUNE 1503
I don’t know what my grandmother says to her son my father; but he comes out of his mourning, there is an exchange of letters with Spain, and never another word about his courting Katherine. Instead, he pursues the marriage contract that is going to save him so much money with as much enthusiasm as Katherine’s mother in faraway Spain. Together they instruct the Pope to send a dispensation so that a brother-and sister-in-law can marry, and Katherine of Arrogant dresses in virginal white and spreads her bronze hair over her shoulders for yet another grand wedding occasion.
At least this is not in the abbey, and we don’t spend a fortune on it. This is a betrothal, not a wedding—a promise to marry when Harry is fourteen. She walks into the bishop’s chapel as smiling and as queenly as she was just nineteen months ago, and she takes Harry’s hand as if she is glad to promise herself to a boy five years her junior. It is as if Arthur, their wedding, and their bedding never happened. Now she is Harry’s bride and she will be known as the Princess of Wales once again. Her serene dismissal, “Alas, it never happened for us,” seems to be the last word that anyone will ever say about it.
My lady grandmother is there too. She does not smile on the match, but she does not oppose it. For me, it is just another event in this world that means nothing. A mother can die, a brother can die, and a woman can deny her husband and retain her title. The only person who makes any sense to me is Katherine herself. She knows who she was born to be; I wish I had her certainty. When she follows me out of the chapel I know that I am trying to hold my head as she does—as if I were wearing a crown already.
RICHMOND PALACE, ENGLAND, JUNE 1503
I go to the nursery to say good-bye to my sister Mary, and who should I find but Katherine, teaching her to play the lute as if we don’t employ a music master, as if Katherine has nothing better to do. I don’t trouble to conceal my irritation. “I have come to say good-bye to my sister,” I say as a broad hint to Katherine that she might leave us alone.
“And here are both your sisters!”
“I have to say good-bye to Mary.” I ignore Katherine and guide Mary to the seat in the oriel window and pull her down to sit beside me. Katherine stands before us and listens. Good, I think, now you can see that I too have a sense of my destiny.
“I am going to Scotland to my husband; I am going to be a great queen,” I inform Mary. “I will own a fortune, a queen’s fortune. I will write to you and you must reply. You must write properly, not a silly scribble. And I will tell you how I get on as queen in my own court.”
She is seven years old, no longer a baby, but her face puckers up and she reaches out her arms to me. I receive the full sobbing weight of her on my lap. “Don’t cry,” I say. “Don’t cry, Mary. I will come back on visits. Perhaps you will come to visit me.”
She only sobs more passionately, and I meet Katherine’s concerned gaze over her heaving shoulder. “I thought she would be glad for me,” I say. “I thought I should tell her—you know—that a princess is not like a plowman’s daughter.”
“It is hard for her to lose a sister,” she says with ready sympathy. “And she has just lost a mother and a brother.”
“I have too!” I point out.
The older girl smiles and puts her hand gently on my shoulder. “It’s hard for us all.”
“It wasn’t very hard for you.”
I see the shadow pass over her face. “It is,” she says shortly. She kneels beside the two of us and puts her arm around my sister’s thin shaking shoulders. “Little Princess Mary,” she says sweetly. “One sister is leaving you, but one has arrived. I am here. And we will all write to each other, and we will always be friends. And one day, you will go to a beautiful country and be married, and we will always remember our royal sisters.”
Mary raises her tearstained face and reaches out for Katherine’s neck so she is holding us both. It is almost as if we are welded together by sisterly love. I can’t pull away, and I find that I don’t want to. I put my arms around Katherine and Mary and our three golden heads come together as if we were swearing an oath.
“Friends forever and ever,” Mary says solemnly.
“We are the Tudor sisters,” Katherine says, though obviously she’s not.
“Two princesses and one queen,” I say.
Katherine smiles at me, her face close to mine, her eyes shining. “I am sure we will all be queens one day,” she says.
ON PROGRESS, RICHMOND TO COLLYWESTON, ENGLAND, JUNE 1503