The Shadow of the Pomegranate (13 page)

K
atharine rejoiced to see the change in her husband. She was sure that the irresponsible boy had been left behind and the King was growing to maturity.

He had forgotten their differences and talked with her of his ambitions; this made her very happy; he had even ceased to ask questions as to whether or not she had conceived again.

She had said to him: ‘It may be that the fact that we concern ourselves so constantly with my pregnancies is the reason that I am not with child. I have heard that constant anxiety can make one sterile.’

He may have taken this to heart, but on the other hand the prospect of war may have been entirely responsible for turning his interest into other channels.

One day he swept into her apartments, and she was aware that instead of glancing appreciatively at the prettiest of her women with that glazed look in his eyes which she had noticed with some alarm on previous occasions, he waved his hands for their dismissal.

‘Ah, Kate,’ he cried when they were alone. ‘I chafe at this
delay. I would I could set out this day for France. These ministers of mine think the time is not meet for me to leave the country.’

‘I have heard from my father,’ she told him. ‘He writes that he knows that you would be welcomed in Guienne. The people there have never taken kindly to French rule, he says, and have always considered the English their true rulers. He says that once they see Your Grace they would rally to your banner.’

Henry smiled complacently. He could well believe that. He was certain that the wars with France should never have been allowed to die out while the position was so unsatisfactory for England. England had been torn by her own Wars of the Roses – which was a matter he could not regret as out of that had come the victorious conclusion which had set the Tudors on the throne; but now that there was peace within England and there was a King on the throne who was as strong and eager for conquest as Henry V had been, why should not the struggle be continued?

But Guienne! His ministers were a little anxious. It would have been so much simpler to have attacked nearer home. Calais was the natural starting point.

He would of course be near his ally if he attacked in the South; delay galled him. He could not imagine defeat, so he longed to set forth, to show the people his conquests.

‘It would please me, Kate,’ said Henry, ‘to lead my army and join up with that of your father. Together we should be invincible.’

‘I am sure that you would. My father is considered one of the greatest soldiers in Europe.’

Henry frowned. ‘You would imply, Kate, that I should find it necessary to learn from him?’

‘He is a man of great experience, Henry.’

Henry turned from her. ‘There are some who are born to be conquerors. They are endowed with the gift. They do not need lessons in bravery.’

She went on as though she had not heard him. ‘He and my mother had to fight for their kingdoms. She often said that without him she would have been lost.’

‘I like to hear of a wife who appreciates her husband.’

‘She appreciated him . . . although he was often unfaithful to her.’

‘Ha!’ cried Henry. ‘You have no such complaint.’

She turned to him smiling. ‘Henry, never give me cause for such complaint. I swear to love and serve you with all my might. I picture us growing old together with our children about us.’

His eyes were misted with sentiment. The thought of children could always produce this result. Then his face puckered suddenly.

‘Kate, I do not understand. We have been unfortunate, have we not?’

‘Many are unfortunate, Henry. So many children die in infancy.’

‘But three times.’

‘There will be many times, Henry.’

‘But I cannot understand. Look at me. See my strength. My good health is something all marvel at. And yet . . .’He was looking at her almost critically.

She said quickly: ‘I too enjoy good health.’

‘Then why . . . I could almost believe that some spell has been cast upon us . . . that we have offended God in some way.’

‘We cannot have done that. We are devout worshippers,
both of us. No, Henry, it is natural to lose children. They are dying every day.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘One, two, three or four in every family. But some live.’

‘Some of ours will live.’

He stroked her hair, which was her claim to beauty, and as he watched the sun bring out the red in it he felt a sudden rush of desire for her.

He laughed and taking her hand he began to dance, twirling her round, releasing her to caper high in the air. She watched him, clapping her hands, happy to see him so gay.

He grew excited by the dancing and he seized her and hugged her so tightly that she could not breathe.

‘A thought comes to me, Kate,’ he said. ‘If I go to France with my armies, you must stay behind. We shall be apart.’

‘Oh Henry, that will make me very sad. I shall miss you so sorely.’

‘Time will pass,’ he assured her ‘and while we are separated how can I get you with child?’ Then he began to laugh afresh. ‘And we squander our time in dancing!’

Then with a swift gesture – eager in this moment of excitement that she should marvel at his strength – he swung her into his arms and carried her across the apartment to the bedchamber.

Ferdinand, King of Aragon and Regent of Castile until his grandson Charles should come of age, was eagerly awaiting despatches from England.

His great desire at the moment was for the conquest of Navarre. He had made Naples safe and this left him free to
make new conquests. It had always been one of his ambitions that Navarre should be under Spanish dominion; his great concern now was to persuade the Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain, Francesco Ximenes de Cisneros, of the justice of this.

He had summoned Ximenes to his presence with the sole purpose of winning his approval of the project. Ximenes came, but from the moment he entered the King’s apartments in the Alhambra he showed his reluctance to be torn from his beloved University of Alcalá, which he himself had built and where he was now finishing that great work, his polyglot bible.

Ferdinand felt a surge of resentment as Ximenes entered the apartment. Whenever he saw the man he remembered how his first wife, Isabella, had bestowed the Archbishopric of Toledo on this recluse when he, Ferdinand, had so deeply desired it for his illegitimate son. He had to admit that Isabella’s trust in Ximenes had not been ill-founded; the man was a brilliant statesman as well as a monk; yet the resentment lingered.

Even now, thought Ferdinand, I must make excuses for my conduct to this man. I must
win
him to myself, because he wields as much power as I do, since while I am Regent for my grandson, he is Primate in his own right.

‘Your Highness wished to see me,’ Ximenes reminded Ferdinand.

‘I am concerned about the French, and the dilatory ways of the English.’

‘Your Highness is eager to make war on the French for, I believe, the purpose of annexing Navarre.’

Ferdinand felt the warm blood rushing to his face.

‘Your Eminence has forgotten that I have a claim to Navarre, through my father’s first wife.’

‘Who was not Your Highness’ mother.’

‘But I claim through my father.’

‘Through his marriage into the royal house of Navarre,’ Ximenes reminded Ferdinand, ‘it would seem that Jean d’Albret is the rightful King of Navarre.’

Ferdinand said impatiently: ‘Navarre is in a strategic position. It is necessary to Spain.’

‘That is scarcely a reason for making war on a peaceful state.’

You old fool! thought Ferdinand. Go back to your university and your polyglot bible. Leave me to fight for my rights.

But he said craftily: ‘How can we be sure that their intentions are peaceful?’

‘We have no evidence to the contrary, and it is scarcely likely that such a small kingdom would seek to make war on Spain.’

Ferdinand changed the subject.

‘The English are eager to take Guienne.’

‘A foolish project,’ said Ximenes, ‘and one doomed to failure.’

Ferdinand smiled slyly. ‘That is a matter for them to decide.’

‘Your Highness has doubtless roused these ambitions in the mind of the young King of England.’

Ferdinand lifted his shoulders. ‘Should it be my concern if the King of England becomes ambitious to regain territories in France?’

‘It could well be,’ retorted Ximenes, ‘since the English could harry the French, leaving you free to walk into Navarre.’

The sly old fox! thought Ferdinand. There was little he did
not know of European affairs. There he sat in his gloomy cell in his grimy old university, scratching away with his scholars at their polyglot bible. Then he took one look at affairs and saw the position as clearly as those did who studied it hourly.

The man had genius. Trust Isabella to discover it and use it. If I could but lure him to my side, the conquest of Navarre would be as good as achieved.

But the Primate was not with him; it was against his principles to make war on a peaceful state. Ximenes did not wish for war. He wanted peace, that he might make a great Christian country, a country which was the strongest in the world, and in which no man could live and prosper unless he was a Christian. The Inquisition was dear to his heart; he was eager that every Spaniard should be as devout as himself and he was ready to torture them to make them so – for he was a man who did not hesitate to torture himself. Ferdinand knew that, beneath the grand robes of his office – which he wore only because he had been ordered to do so by the Pope – was the hair shirt and the rough serge of the Franciscan habit.

We shall always pull one against the other, thought Ferdinand. It was inevitable that he, the ambitious, the sensuous, the avaricious, should be in continual conflict with the austere monk.

Yet, he thought, he shall not hold me back. I must lure the English to France, and this I shall do for I have the best ambassador a man could have at the Court of England. My daughter is the Queen, and the King cherishes her, and as the King is young, inexperienced and inordinately vain, it should not be difficult.

He began to talk of other matters because he saw it was useless to try to convince Ximenes of the need to take
Navarre. But all the time he was thinking of the instructions he would give to Katharine and Luis Caroz in London. With the English as his ally he would do without the approval of Ximenes.

He hid his resentment and feigned such friendship for his Primate that he accompanied him to his apartments. A faint sneer touched his lips as he saw the elaborate bed – worthy of the Cardinal, Inquisitor General and Primate of Spain – because he knew that Ximenes used it only for ceremonial occasions and spent his nights on a rough pallet with a log of wood for a pillow. It was incongruous that such a man should hold such a position in a great country.

Ferdinand, however, lost no time in returning to his own apartments and writing to his ambassador in London.

The King of England must be persuaded to join Spain in the war against France without delay. The Queen of England must influence her husband. It would not be good policy of course to let her know how, in inducing England to make war, she was serving Spain rather than England; but she must be made to use all her power to persuade the King. It was clear that certain of the King’s ministers were restraining him. Those ministers should be promised bribes . . . anything they wished for . . . if they would cease to dissuade the King of England from war. But the most important influence at the Court of England was the Queen; and if Caroz could not persuade her to do what her father wished, he should consult her confessor and let the priest make Katharine see where her duty lay.

Ferdinand sealed the despatches, called for his messengers and, when they had gone, sat impatiently tapping his foot. He felt exhausted, and this irked him for it was yet another indication that he was growing old. He thought with regret of
those days of glowing health and vitality; he was a man of action and he dreaded the thought of encroaching old age.

If he could not be a soldier leading men into battle, a statesman artfully seeking to get the better of his opponents, a lusty lover of women, a begetter of children, what was left to him? He was not one who could enjoy the quiet pleasures of old age. He had always been a man of action, first and foremost.

And now there was grey in his beard, pouches beneath his eyes and a stiffness in his limbs. He had a young and beautiful wife, yet his pleasure in her was spoilt by the contrast in their ages; he could not forget his age when he was with her, but rather was more conscious of the years.

He longed for sons, because he was feeling a growing animosity towards his young grandson Charles, a boy who was being brought up in Flanders and who could inherit not only the dominions of his grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian, but those of Isabella and Ferdinand and all the Spanish dependencies . . . unless Ferdinand’s wife Germaine gave him a son to whom he could leave Aragon.

So much! thought Ferdinand. For one young boy who has done nothing to win it for himself !