Catherine of Aragon Read Free Page B

tournaments and jousting have been glorious to watch and the sumptuous banqueting has gone on and on. Every evening has been filled with music and dancing, and with astonishing theatrical events. Ingenious moving platforms brought in pageant after pageant – great structures peopled with choristers and actors, with gold and silver wolves that were really men and, amazingly, a ship in full sail that moved as though floating on water. Such artistry! And when the displays were over, musicians played for dancing. Catherine and I performed a Spanish seguidilla and everyone clapped and cheered us, then young Prince Harry danced with his sister Margaret. He is a great expert for one so young, quick and neat – but he was soon too hot in the many layers of his embroidered clothes (beautiful the way the fine-worked shirt sleeves are allowed to show through the slashed doublet), so he simply stripped off his overgown and tossed it aside, never breaking the rhythm as he danced on.
    The last celebration was the best. After a banquet in the Parliament Chamber, they brought on what looked like a giant lantern as big as a bedchamber, with light glowing from inside its translucent panels – and within it were twelve beautiful ladies. It was as if we looked into a private fairyland. After this there arrived a towering, fantastic chapel of many layers and compartments, with children singing at its upper windows while doors below opened to release a whole colony of baby rabbits that ran everywhere. Then eight ladies appeared at other doors in the intricately painted structure, and opened basketfuls of white doves that flew round the vast hall and settled on the high beams above us. Glorious, glorious.
    But yesterday the festivities ended, and the Spanish nobles and their ladies who came only for the wedding are preparing to leave. Everything seems very flat.
    26th November 1501
    The King had one more trick up his sleeve. This morning he asked Catherine and her ladies to come to his library, and while he was showing us the books with their beautifully painted pictures and their tooled and gilded covers, a man suddenly came out from behind the shelves, holding a great casket. He opened it at the King’s instruction, and we all gasped, for it was full of magnificent jewellery – diamonds, sapphires, rubies and emeralds set into necklaces, coronets, rings, brooches and bracelets, all with intricate gold and silver work. The King told Catherine to take what she wanted, and she dipped her hand into the sparkling mass, lifting out one beautiful thing after another and exclaiming with delight at each one.
    When she had made her choices, King Henry turned to us and said we, too, might select a gift. Doña Elvira took a large brooch set with rubies and garnets, and Maria had a delicate necklace of pearls and filigree silver. And I have an opal ring. The stone seems to glow with fire and blue sky, and it is the most wonderful thing I have ever owned.
    29th November 1501
    A bustle of packing is going on, for the court is soon to move from Baynard’s Castle to Windsor. Catherine and what remains of her Spanish entourage will not be going with them. We are to move to a manor owned by Prince Arthur in a place called Bewdley, in Worcestershire.
    There has been much debate, Uncle Rod confided to me, about whether Catherine and Arthur are old enough to live yet as man and wife. I couldn’t see why not – what is the point of being married if your lives are not shared? But he looked reserved, as he often does, and reminded me that Catherine’s brother, Juan, had died in the early months of his marriage to the Princess of Portugal – a terrible tragedy for Isabella and Ferdinand to lose their only son. The doctors thought, he said, that his death might have been caused by over-exertion. I do not see why marriage should be considered an exertion. At worst, it seems likely to be merely tiresome.
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    10th December