There had already been much delay, and her father was anxious for her marriage; so, it seemed, were the King and Queen who were to be her parents-in-law.

‘It is their will, not mine,’ she murmured.

Some girls of sixteen might have been terrified. There were so many events looming ahead of her which could be terrifying. There was to be a new life in a strange country, a new husband; even closer was a threatening storm at sea.

But the expression on the face of the Archduchess was calm. She had been sufficiently buffeted by life to have learned that it is foolish to suffer in anticipation that which one may or may not have to suffer in fact.

She turned to the trembling attendant at her side and laid a hand on the woman’s arm.

‘The storm may not touch us,’ she said. ‘It may break behind us. That can happen at sea. The strong wind is carrying us fast to Spain.’

The woman shuddered.

‘And if we are to die,’ mused Margaret, ‘well then, that is our fate. There are worse deaths, I believe, than drowning.’

‘Your Grace should not talk so. It is tempting God.’

‘Do you think God would change His plans because of the idle chatter of a girl like myself?’

The woman’s lips were moving in prayer.

I should be praying with her, thought Margaret. This is going to be a bad storm. I can feel it in the air. Perhaps I am not meant to be a wife in reality.

Yet she did not move, but stood holding her face up to the sky – not with defiance but with resignation.

How can any of us know, she asked herself, when our last hour will come?

She turned her comely face to the woman. ‘Go to my cabin,’ she said. ‘I will join you there.’

‘Your Grace should come with me now. This is no place for you.’

‘Not yet,’ said Margaret. ‘I will come when the rain starts.’

‘Your Grace …’

‘That was an order,’ said Margaret with a quiet firmness, and a few seconds later she was smiling to see with what alacrity the woman left her side.

How terrified people were of death, mused Margaret. Was it because they remembered their sins? Perhaps it was safer to die when one was young. At sixteen a girl, who had been watched over as she had been, could not have committed a great many sins.

She held up her face to the rising anger of the wind.

How far are we from the coast of Spain? she wondered. Can we reach it? I have a feeling within me that I am destined to die a virgin.

It was unusual that a young girl could feel so calm when she was leaving her home for a strange country. But then her father’s dominions had not been home to her for so long. She scarcely knew Maximilian, for he was a man of many engagements. His children were to him as counters in a great game to be used in winning him possessions in the world. He was fortunate to have a son and a daughter both strong and healthy, both comely enough; in the case of Philip extremely so. But it was not the appearance of men that was so important. Nevertheless Maximilian had nothing of which to complain in his children. He had a worthy son and a daughter with whom to bargain in the markets of the world.

Margaret smiled. The men were the fortunate ones. They did not have to leave their homes. Arrogant Philip had merely to wait for his bride to be delivered to him. It was the women who must suffer.

And for that, thought Margaret, I should be grateful, since I suffer scarcely at all. Does it matter to me whether I am in France, in Flanders or in Spain? None has seemed to be home to me. I am too young to have had so many homes, and as I quickly learned that my hold on any of them lacked permanence, I learned also not to attach myself too tenderly to any one of them.

She faintly remembered her arrival in France. She had been barely three years old at the time and had been taken from her home in Flanders to be brought up at the French Court because, through her mother, Mary of Burgundy, she had inherited Burgundy; and the French King, Louis XI, had sought to bring Burgundy back to France by betrothing her to his son, the Dauphin Charles.

So to Amboise she had come. She often thought of the great château which had been her home for so many years. Even now, with the storm imminent, she could imagine that she was not on this deck but within those thick walls. She recalled the great buttresses, the cylindrical towers and the rounded roofs, which looked as if they could defy the wind and rain to the end of time.

Within those walls she had been prepared to meet her betrothed – a rather terrifying experience for a little girl of three and a half whose bridegroom was a boy of twelve.

That ceremony of betrothal was an occasion which would never be obliterated from Margaret’s memory. Clearly she could recall meeting her bridegroom at a little farm near the town of Amboise, which was afterwards called La Métairie de la Reyne, whither she had been carried in a litter. It was a strange ceremony, doubtless considered fitting for children of such tender years. She remembered being asked if she would take Monsieur le Dauphin in marriage, and how the Grand Sénéchal, who stood close to her, prodded her and told her she must say that she would.

Then she had been put into the arms of young Charles and told to kiss him. She was to be a wife to the future King of France, and the people of Amboise showed their pleasure by hanging scarlet cloth from their windows and putting up banners which were stretched across the streets.

After that she had been taken back to the château, and her sister-in-law, Anne, the Duchess of Bourbon who was the eldest daughter of the reigning King and past her twentieth birthday, had been her guardian.

Margaret had quickly adjusted herself and had pleased her tutors by her love of learning. She will make a good Queen of France, they often said; she is the best possible wife for the Dauphin.

Charles had very soon become King, and that meant that she, Margaret, was an even more important person than before.

Yet she had never been Charles’s wife in reality, for eight years after her arrival in France, while she was still a child, Charles decided that he preferred Anne, Duchess of Brittany, to be his wife.

So, to the wrath of Margaret’s father, Charles sent her back to Flanders, ignoring the vows he had taken in the Métairie de la Reyne on that day eight years before.

Maximilian was infuriated by the insult, but Margaret had felt philosophical.

She thought of Charles now. He was far from the handsome husband a girl might long for. He was short and, because his head was enormous, his lack of inches was accentuated. His expression was blank and his aquiline nose so enormous that it overpowered the rest of his features. He seemed to find it difficult to keep his mouth closed, for his lips were thick and coarse and he breathed heavily and took a long time to consider what he was going to say; whereas Margaret herself was quick-witted and fluent.

He was kind enough; but he had little interest in books and ideas, which made him seem dull to her; she could not share his interest in sport and jousting.

So, she thought, perhaps it was not such a tragedy that he shipped me back to Flanders.

And now she was being shipped to Spain. ‘If I ever reach there,’ she murmured.

Two of the ship’s high-ranking officers had approached her, and so deep was she in her thoughts that she had not noticed them.

‘Your Grace,’ said one, bowing low, ‘it is unsafe for you to remain on deck. The storm is about to break and we must ask you to seek the shelter of your cabin.’

Margaret inclined her head. They were anxious about her, she knew. She was the most important cargo they had ever carried. She represented all the advantages that union with a daughter of Maximilian could bring to Spain.

They were right too. She was almost blown off her feet, as she started across the deck. The two men held her, and laughing, she accepted their assistance.


* * *

The ship tossed and rolled, and the din was terrific. As she sheltered in her cabin with two of her attendants she occasionally heard the shouts of the sailors above the roar of the wind.

She saw two of her attendants clinging together. They were terrified. Their orders had been not to leave her if there was any danger, and their fear of Maximilian was greater than their fear of the storm.

She saw the tears on their faces as their fingers clutched their rosaries and their lips moved in continual prayer.

‘How frail a thing is a ship,’ said Margaret.’ How fierce is an ocean!’

‘You should pray, Your Grace. I fear some of the smaller ships will have been lost and we shall never come out of this alive.’

‘If it is the end, then it is the end,’ said Margaret.

The two women looked at each other. Such calmness alarmed them. It was unnatural.

‘We shall die without a priest,’ sighed one of the women, ‘with all our sins on us.’

‘You have not sinned greatly,’ Margaret comforted her. ‘Pray now for forgiveness, and it will be granted you.’

‘You pray with us.’

‘I find it difficult to ask God to spare my life,’ said Margaret, ‘for, if He has decided to take it, I am asking Him to go against His wishes. Perhaps we shall hate living so much that it will be more intolerable than death.’

‘Your Grace! Do not say such things!’

‘But if we are to find bliss in Heaven why should we be so distressed at the thought of going there? I am not distressed. If my time has come, I am ready. I do not think that my new father and mother-in-law are going to be very pleased with me. Perhaps they will already have heard of the manner in which Philip is treating their daughter.’