Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set by Philippa Gregory Read Free Book Online Page B

de Salinas.
    “He liked you,” the young woman said. “He watched you very closely, he liked you.”
    “And why should he not?” she asked with the instinctive arrogance of a girl born to the greatest kingdom in Europe. “And even if he did not,it is all already agreed, and there can be no change. It has been agreed for almost all my life.”
    *     *     *
    He is not what I expected, this king who fought his way to the throne and picked up his crown from the mud of a battlefield. I expected him to be more like a champion, like a great soldier, perhaps like my father. Instead he has the look of a merchant, a man who puzzles over profit indoors, not a man who won his kingdom and his wife at the point of a sword.
    I suppose I hoped for a man like Don Hernando, a hero that I could look up to, a man I would be proud to call father. But this king is lean and pale like a clerk, not a knight from the romances at all.
    I expected his court to be more grand: I expected a great procession and a formal meeting with long introductions and elegant speeches, as we would have done it in the Alhambra. But he is abrupt; in my view he is rude. I shall have to become accustomed to these northern ways, this scramble to do things, this brusque ordering. I cannot expect things to be done well or even correctly. I shall have to overlook a lot until I am queen and can change things.
    But, anyway, it hardly matters whether I like the king or he likes me. He has engaged in this treaty with my father and I am betrothed to his son. It hardly matters what I think of him, or what he thinks of me. It is not as if we will have to deal much together. I shall live and rule Wales, and he will live and rule England, and when he dies, it will be my husband on his throne and my son will be the next Prince of Wales, and I shall be queen.
    As for my husband-to-be—oh!—he has made a very different first impression. He is so handsome! I did not expect him to be so handsome! He is so fair and slight, he is like a page boy from one of the old romances. I can imagine him waking all night in a vigil, or singing up to a castle window. He has pale, almost silvery skin, he has fine golden hair, and yet he is taller than me and lean and strong like a boy on the edge of manhood.
    He has a rare smile, one that comes reluctantly and then shines. And he is kind. That is a great thing in a husband. He was kind when he took the glass of wine from me: he saw that I was trembling, and he tried to reassure me.
    I wonder what he thinks of me. I do so wonder what he thinks of me.
    *     *     *
    Just as the king had ruled, he and Arthur went swiftly back to Windsor the next morning, and Catalina’s train, with her litter carried by mules, with her trousseau in great traveling chests, her ladies-in-waiting, her Spanish household, and the guards for her dowry treasure, labored up the muddy roads to London at a far slower pace.
    She did not see the prince again until their wedding day, but when she arrived in the village of Kingston-upon-Thames, her train halted in order to meet the greatest man in the kingdom, the young Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, and Henry, Duke of York, the king’s second son, who were appointed to accompany her to Lambeth Palace.
    “I’ll come out,” Catalina said hastily, emerging from her litter and walking quickly past the waiting horses, not wanting another quarrel with her strict duenna about young ladies meeting young men before their wedding day. “Doña Elvira, say nothing. The boy is a child of ten years old. It doesn’t matter. Not even my mother would think that it matters.”
    “At least wear your veil!” the woman implored. “The Duke of Buck . . . Buck . . . whatever his name, is here too. Wear your veil when you go before him, for your own reputation, Infanta.”
    “Buckingham,” Catalina corrected her. “The Duke of Buckingham. And call me Princess of Wales. And you know I cannot wear my veil because he